A new US Republican thread 2016

[Khers]

Considering I'm a european with limited interest in US politics, this may be very ignorant and naïve and whatnot, but, shouldn't the real question concern why he was let in there in the first place?

[andrewjoy]

Considering I'm a european with limited interest in US politics, this may be very ignorant and naïve and whatnot, but, shouldn't the real question concern why he was let in there in the first place?

By he and there i assume you mean Trump and the presidency ?

And yes you are right that is exactly what the "left" in the US should be asking themselves .

But all they do is cry and moan about how mean and evil the orange man is, look at yourself in the mirror.

Calling half a nation a basket of deplorables is not exactly the best way to get them to vote for you now is it. How do you think people are going to react when you treat them like that. It lets trump do this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukXLKaAkDCo

So the question is not how he got there , the question is why did the opposition lose.

This tells it better than i can.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLG9g7BcjKs

[Khers]

No, I was speaking of Bannon and how and why he was ever on the NSC, something I, due to my lack of interest, wasn't aware of until he was kicked out.

Didn't realize my reply was at the top of a new page, or I'd included some quote.

[seebart]

My question regarding Bannon is who and why decided to kick him off the NSC. Remember I'm one of those lame Europeans with limted US political knowledge.

Well, there are several accounts, and no telling which one is real.

http://www.salon.com/2017/04/06/why-ste ... d-reports/

https://qz.com/950989/four-reasons-stev ... y-council/

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-04-0 ... ty-council

http://www.breitbart.com/big-government ... -takedown/

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/201 ... mp-shakeup

Tried to include links from all sides that I could find.

OK thanks for the info.

Considering I'm a european with limited interest in US politics, this may be very ignorant and naïve and whatnot, but, shouldn't the real question concern why he was let in there in the first place?

That would be my next question but I guess it's obvious.

[jacobolus]

Bannon was put in because he snuck his name onto an executive order putting himself there (along with various other stuff), and Trump didn’t bother to read it before signing.

A few days later when it blew up into a controversy, Trump (according to anonymous sources in the white house) got mad that the first person to tell him what he had signed was cable news.

[seebart]

Bannon was put in because he snuck his name onto an executive order putting himself there (along with various other stuff), and Trump didn’t bother to read it before signing.

A few days later when it blew up into a controversy, Trump (according to anonymous sources in the white house) got mad that the first person to tell him what he had signed was cable news.

Seriously? That's almost pure kindergarden.

[jacobolus]

The whole institutional Republican Party is pure kindergarten.

* * *

Nunes (clownish House Intelligence Committee chairman CA–R who was leading the House investigation into Russian shenanigans) is out, but the GOP found a real winner to replace him in Conaway. Here’s a direct quotation:

"Harry Reid and the Democrats brought in Mexican soap opera stars, singers and entertainers who had immense influence in those communities into Las Vegas, to entertain, get out the vote and so forth. Those are foreign actors, foreign people, influencing the vote in Nevada. You don’t hear the Democrats screaming and saying one word about that.”

‘When asked if he would compare the performance by a Mexican singer to Russian cyber attacks, Conaway replied, "Sure it is, it’s foreign influence. If we’re worried about foreign influence, let’s have the whole story."’

He apparently doesn’t understand the difference between “foreign actors” meaning Russian hackers, spies, and propaganda officers, vs. “foreign actors” meaning Mexican singer/actor Vicente Fernández singing at a campaign rally. http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/m ... an-singers

[seebart]

The whole institutional Republican Party is pure kindergarten.

But see when you say something like that as a foreigner that's somewhat difficult for me to believe. With Trump yes, but the whole GOP? Hmm...

[jacobolus]

Don’t worry, It’s difficult for us to believe too, and pretty depressing.

[cml]

Waht I'll do now is an excersice in futility because I can't vote on US elections, but, what the hell...

My Rep. candidate for the next election would be John McCain (or Arnold Schwarzenegger, but he was born on foreign soil).


And the I'd vote Libertarian.

[seebart]

Sorry I have to post this, it's not offtopic though:

http://theconcourse.deadspin.com/look-a ... 1794077117

Unbenannt.PNG (587.95 KiB) Viewed 12414 times

[fohat]

The whole institutional Republican Party is pure kindergarten.

difficult for me to believe.
With Trump yes, but the whole GOP?

But that is precisely the point.

Trump is the Frankenstein monster that the GOP has been building since the 1980 election.

Until 2016, they had successfully kept it veiled behind smoke and mirrors.

[chuckdee]

Bannon was put in because he snuck his name onto an executive order putting himself there (along with various other stuff), and Trump didn’t bother to read it before signing.

A few days later when it blew up into a controversy, Trump (according to anonymous sources in the white house) got mad that the first person to tell him what he had signed was cable news.

Any references for that? I'd not heard that account.

[chuckdee]

I wasn't trying to characterize it in any way, truthfully. Nor was I assigning blame for it,

Fair enough. But if you listen to e.g. Senator McConnell or Grassley, they have a big sob story about the mean old Democrats who wouldn’t let them keep filibustering dozens of uncontroversial Obama appointees for giggles.

That has nothing to do with the path our political system is on. When you're in power, and can change the rules, then have to deal with it when the others are in power (look at several Trump appointees and the need for only a simple majority), there are major ramifications of decisions being made. That's my point.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/201 ... votes.html

Take a look at the chart. There are several close votes that would have needed more work if the former rules were in place, most interestingly DeVos. It's not a partisan issue, as should be plain to anyone.

And the nuclear option has been invoked.

http://www.npr.org/2017/04/06/522847700 ... nfirmation

and a pretty good non-partisan account of why it's important

http://www.npr.org/2017/04/06/522701122 ... nomination

So, next up on the chopping block- the legislative filibuster. Will it happen?

Mitch Mconnell says that it won't happen while he runs the chamber, but not really sure how much I believe it.

[jacobolus]

chuckdee: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/05/us/p ... ategy.html

Mr. Priebus has also created a 10-point checklist for the release of any new initiatives that includes signoff from the communications department and the White House staff secretary, Robert Porter, according to several aides familiar with the process.

Mr. Priebus bristles at the perception that he occupies a diminished perch in the West Wing pecking order compared with previous chiefs. But for the moment, Mr. Bannon remains the president’s dominant adviser, despite Mr. Trump’s anger that he was not fully briefed on details of the executive order he signed giving his chief strategist a seat on the National Security Council, a greater source of frustration to the president than the fallout from the travel ban.

[...]

Mr. Trump remains intensely focused on his brand, but the demands of the job mean he spends less time monitoring the news media — although he recently upgraded the flat-screen TV in his private dining room so he can watch the news while eating lunch.

He often has to wait until the end of the workday before grinding through news clips with Mr. Spicer, marking the ones he does not like with a big arrow in black Sharpie — though he almost always makes time to monitor Mr. Spicer’s performance at the daily briefings, summoning him to offer praise or criticism, a West Wing aide said.

Visitors to the Oval Office say Mr. Trump is obsessed with the décor — it is both a totem of a victory that validates him as a serious person and an image-burnishing backdrop — so he has told his staff to schedule as many televised events in the room as possible.

To pass the time between meetings, Mr. Trump gives quick tours to visitors, highlighting little tweaks he has made after initially expecting he would have to pay for them himself.

Flanking his desk are portraits of Presidents Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson. He will linger on the opulence of the newly hung golden drapes, which he told a recent visitor were once used by Franklin D. Roosevelt but in fact were patterned for Bill Clinton. For a man who sometimes has trouble concentrating on policy memos, Mr. Trump was delighted to page through a book that offered him 17 window covering options.

[vivalarevolución]

Hi, my country is now firing missiles at Syrian air bases. I find it incredibly ironic that 80 deaths from a chemical attack are enough to push things over the edge, but the first 500,000 or so were not worth it. I wonder how Putin and Iran will respond. Fuck.

Anybody know some good spots to wait out World War III?

[jacobolus]

So... escalating war in Syria?

“Will Russia leaking the Trump pee pee tape lead to World War 3? Find out on next month’s episode of Cranky babies with nukes.”

[jacobolus]

Sounds slightly less risky than at first news.

U.S. gave the Russians (and therefore also the Syrians) advance notice of their missile strike. http://www.reuters.com/article/mideast- ... SW1N1H4031 http://time.com/4730306/donald-trump-vl ... ard-assad/

So the Russians and Syrians could get their people out and avoid casualties, while still getting some of their infrastructure destroyed as a warning about the use of chemical weapons. Sounds like it may not actually presage additional escalation, e.g. ground invasions, wider-scale bombings, etc.

It’s also not clear to me how much Trump himself was involved in the decisionmaking here, vs. Mattis and McMaster calling the shots, considering this is nearly a 180° turn from his previous public positions.

There aren’t a lot of good choices on the table here. Pretty much whoever wins the war in Syria, the country is a wreck and lots of people are dead. I’m not personally all too clear on what the US military thinks the outcomes will be if Assad is overthrown vs. if he wins. Between posturing vs. Iran, wiping out ISIL, keeping Israel and its neighbors from getting in another war, not pissing off the Turks too much by giving aid to the Kurds, trying to stabilize the Iraqi US client state, preventing the Russians from having too much military influence in the Mid East, etc., there’s too much involved for me to really keep on top of.

Hopefully we can stay away from serious war with the Russians though. These proxy wars are atrocious enough.

[adhoc]

So now you're against war when Trump did it, but you weren't against it when Hillary was rooting for it? You disgusting fucking hypocrite.

Congrats america, you're at war with yet another country. I can't believe this shit.

[jacobolus]

I don’t think you can read English very well, adhoc. If you try reading the comment immediately above yours again, slowly and out loud (or maybe hire someone skilled in English to translate it to a language you speak), you’ll realize that your interpretation is absurd.

I’m against war either way. Clinton was much more hawkish than my preference, and I would have opposed escalation of the conflict in Syria under any president. I thought that Obama’s policy of trying for diplomatic solutions first, and going to Congress instead of unilaterally undertaking any escalation in Syria was the right strategy from the perspective of US law and US interests. On the other hand, some of his critics do have a point that in practice the results were pretty bad for US-allied groups in Syria who got bombed repeatedly by the Russians. There were also very high civilian casualties in Aleppo, and the best the US could do was beg the Russians to allow humanitarian aid in.

I’m also against chemical weapons attacks in violation of international law and recent explicit agreements.

I sincerely hope that this air strike is nothing more than a shot across the bow. I am concerned that Trump has started to use language of regime change and so on. I think sending the US military to Syria as a full-fledged participant in a shooting war would be a terrible idea.

What scares me about Trump is that he can do a 180° about his long-standing policy about Syria (he has been talking about being non-interventionist there for years, and criticizing Obama for being to aggressive, etc.) in a matter of days. If we get into a more serious escalation of the conflict, I don’t have faith in Trump’s ability to make difficult decisions under pressure.

[chuckdee]

hmmm.... has there been a change to the forums? This thread shows up neither (a) in the spy, (b) in unread topics, nor (c) in my own posting history. I call 'foul' if this was universally and under the table changed...

[jacobolus]

Yeah, webwit apparently went and made a special case in the forum software for this thread.

To be honest I’d rather have the passive-aggressive secret software change if it means he’ll go away and stop hurling tired obscenities at me twice a day though.

[chuckdee]

Yeah, webwit apparently went and made a special case in the forum software for this thread.

To be honest I’d rather have the passive-aggressive secret software change if it means he’ll go away and stop hurling tired obscenities at me twice a day though.

I've been advocating for a change, but one that the user would not control instead of this arbitrary special case. And sneaking the change in... it just seems contrary to what Deskthority has been.

[fohat]

Doing the right thing for the wrong reason.

I don't use "Spy" or "Most Recent" or "Unread" or whatever else they are - and don't care - but I am certainly in favor of a setup where nothing is pushed into someone's face and they search out and read whatever they want - or not.

But the converse of that notion is like an inside-out "filter bubble" which is the greatest moral and ethical failing of Google and others like it, in my opinion.

[adhoc]

I don’t think you can read English very well, adhoc. If you try reading the comment immediately above yours again, slowly and out loud (or maybe hire someone skilled in English to translate it to a language you speak), you’ll realize that your interpretation is absurd.

No it's not, as webwit would put it, you nasty retard. You're criticising now, but were applauding when someone else spoke of it half a year ago.

And keep in mind I still speak 400% more languages than you do.

But then again, why would I expect any rational consistency from an idiot such as yourself.

You're just using dead people to propagate your hateful bullshit propaganda - AGAIN. On deskthority of all places.

[jacobolus]

“400% more languages” – so you speak 15 languages at a level of basic conversational fluency, and somewhat can understand another 5 or maybe 10 more? I’m very impressed. Sad that the list doesn’t include basic English reading proficiency then.

Sadly, you also have a failing memory and are too lazy to find evidence for your absurd claims. Here are some quotations of mine about the subject of Clinton/Obama, military adventurism, the Middle East, and Russia from past threads and past comments in this thread which I found in a google search (it’s likely I’m missing some, so please feel free to read through this whole thread and the related other threads to fill in the gaps for us). I’d love to see your link to me “applauding when someone else spoke of [military attacks on Syria] half a year ago”. P.S. which part of my recent comments about the missile strikes on Syria do you consider “criticism”? Can you explain precisely what you think my criticism is?

It was a great disappointment that Obama went back on his campaign promises and did nothing to investigate torture, military “black sites”, or the military’s crimes during the Iraq war, etc., and did nothing to investigate the lies and cover-ups of the Bush II administration’s initial claimed rationale for going to war or of the war’s conduct.

I also personally think that the ongoing “war on terror” with drone strikes, arms supply to various local militias, etc. has been stupid and destructive policy. They aren’t blatantly illegal in the same way (sure, the USA and Europe set the rules, so this is not fair), so there’s probably not much to build a case against folks in the military during the Obama years. Just leaving ISIS to rule Iraq and Syria is not a happy outcome either though (either for people locally or for US/western interests), so they are having to make hard choices. After the Iraq War, the USA is going to be blamed for whatever happens in the Middle East in the next 20 years, so we have a lingering responsibility to work toward some kind of stability. For instance the US deserves significant blame for the current refugee crisis in Syria, along with the Assad regime, ISIS, Turkey, Russia, Iran, and Saudi Arabia.

I think the USA should significantly down-size its military, stop spending unlimited money on weapons systems and military aid, and redirect its resources toward more productive uses. Unfortunately, a large proportion of Americans have a knee-jerk pro-military stance, and building weapons is extremely profitable for some powerful lobbying groups, so nothing too drastic is likely to change in the near future.

Moreover, the US and Europe should stop allowing local companies to produce unlimited numbers of small arms and sell them on the black market throughout the world. Illegal small arms sales to various military and paramilitary groups has caused much more death and destruction than drone strikes or direct Western military action.

Clinton is much more hawkish than my preference, and is friends with a number of prominent American war criminals, but she’s also not an idiot, is not suffering from a serious personality disorder, and is not nearly so trigger-happy as most of the Republican foreign policy establishment.

Eliot Cohen is a hard-liner military hawk. Friend of other Bush II neocon hawks like Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Richard Perle, and Paul Wolfowitz. He was involved in the neocon “Project for the New American Century”, whose explicit goal is to protect US interests by projecting US power around the world.

Not really surprising that these guys are opposed to Trump. Trump is down with bombing people’s families for sport, but otherwise has no attention span to worry about US interests in general, only about winning 20-year-old grudge matches with B-list celebrities and forcing his own allies to grovel while he makes degrading comments about it.

Neocon hawks were arguably evil people, and many of their foreign policy choices were disastrous (cough Iraq war cough). In general we shouldn’t listen to their policy prescriptions. But for all that, they’re still not total morons. Cohen is a career scholar of military strategy, working in both academia and the civilian side of the US defense/state departments.

Nixon got elected by secretly derailing the Vietnam War peace process (the original “October surprise”, and an act of treason), and then went on to carpet bomb Laos and Cambodia just for funsies, along with a wheelbarrowful of other war crimes.

I’m opposed to drone strikes in Afghanistan and elsewhere, and I find the US military’s cavalier attitude toward mistakes and collateral damage to be shameful, but the scope is nowhere near comparable.

Amazingly enough, Obama is actually the least war-crimey US president, with the exception of Jimmy Carter, in the past 50 years, maybe in the past 100.

US / Russia friendship would be entirely plausible if the Russians would give up on their ambition of breaking NATO and reconquering Eastern Europe, stop meddling in politics across Europe (e.g. funding pro-Brexit propaganda and far-right parties across the continent), and commit to building a less authoritarian society.

The problem for Russia is that they need foreign militarism as a distraction from the complete collapse of the Russian economy under the weight of low oil prices. This is roughly comparable to the US Republican Party’s political calculus (see: various support for nasty dictators, money funneled to paramilitaries, military adventures in Latin America and the Middle East, etc. under Reagan and both Bushes), where foreign military adventures are a substitute for any kind of domestic policy proposals.

The Russian state today is weak, political corruption is endemic, and domestic stability is tenuous. Oligarchs have smuggled vast wealth out of the country, and wages, employment, healthcare, education, etc. are all in a crippled state, far below the standard of, say, 1975 USSR. Russia has fallen from world superpower status down to mid-level regional power. This leaves Russian nationalists pining for the good old days, and war in e.g. Crimea and denunciations of the USA are one way for Putin and his cronies to rally public support.

Even as a mid-level regional power, Russia is a serious threat to world stability though. They have nuclear weapons, a large army, plenty of computer hackers, and strongly centralized wealth in the hands of people who are willing to go to great lengths to keep it. Russia is scarier than roughly comparable powers like, say, Brazil, Italy, Mexico, or Indonesia.

There is surely a great deal of ugly nationalism, xenophobia, military triumphalism, “we’re number one, USA, USA, USA” nonsense in the US. US foreign policy of the past century has often been incredibly destructive and self-defeating, and US money props up a lot of really nasty foreign governments.

But Americans don’t have any kind of monopoly on egocentrism, “narcissism”, stupid arguments, etc. The US just happens to have more geopolitical influence at the moment, so whatever traits you find seem exaggerated compared to some tiny country that doesn’t threaten anyone.

[adhoc]

Are you insane, you don't know what you're writing, or don't read the articles you keep linking?

Unless you're linking articles you don't agree with ... I always assumed you copy paste the shit you agree with here. Maybe I assumed wrong, that is a possibility.

I sincerely hope that this air strike is nothing more than a shot across the bow. I am concerned that Trump has started to use language of regime change and so on. I think sending the US military to Syria as a full-fledged participant in a shooting war would be a terrible idea.

What is this, if not criticism? Please tell me how "I think this would be a terrible idea" in reality means "I am all for it"!

EDIT: Actually, I am fucking done with you and this stupid ass thread. You're either schizophrenic or plain stupid. I can't tolerate idiots.

[Daniel Beardsmore]

Are you insane …?

I always ask myself this when nobody seems to agree with what I'm saying — am I the only person who's right, or the only person who's wrong? And I can never tell …

[jacobolus]

In short, adhoc, you haven’t found any evidence, your comments are clearly not based in the factual history of the discussion here, and your insults are purely gratuitous. It’s not clear whether you’re trying to become webwit’s little sidekick by parroting his inane obscenities, or whether you’re just incidental kindred spirits in preferring primary-school name-calling to adult conversation.

What is this, if not criticism? Please tell me how "I think this would be a terrible idea" in reality means "I am all for it"!

Well, we haven’t gotten into a full-scale war yet. We’re not sending 100,000 American soldiers in tanks and helicopters to conquer Syria. The US military is not directly firing at Russian soldiers, and they’re not directly firing at us. Etc.

So sure, I’m “criticizing” possible future decisions that have not yet been made, and possible motivations that might or might not be behind the actions we have seen. Which is rather different than criticizing real things that have already happened in the world, don’t you think? Do you think a war in Syria between the US and Russia would be a good idea? Let’s hear your thoughts on US military actions in Syria beyond “jacob is a poopy-head”.

Here’s my concrete criticism of Trump’s Syria missile strike, which I will try to put in very simple English for you: Trump spent 4 years up until last week promoting a position of US non-intervention and non-escalation in Syria, scolding Obama for being too aggressive there, and suggesting that the USA work with the Russians to take down ISIS. Then in the space of a few days, he did a 180° turn, was suddenly concerned for the “beautiful babies” of Syria involved in chemical weapons attacks, started suggesting that Assad might need to be removed, and then did a big missile strike against a Syrian airfield.

Basically Trump ditched 4 years of his own strongly-stated positions in order to adopt something seemingly similar to Hillary Clinton’s position within a week’s time.

Either (a) Trump doesn’t know anything about anything and isn’t really calling the shots, (b) Trump doesn’t know anything about anything and is just impulsively green-lighting a missile strike as a distraction from the Russian election leaking/etc. scandal, (c) Trump didn’t know anything about anything until last week, when suddenly he was educated on all the finer points of geopolitics and military strategy, and now he is a deep expert, or (d) Trump is actually a secret master-mind who duped all of his supporters by intentionally lying to them for 4 years and then flipped the tables on them suddenly.

My money is on (a); (c) and (d) seem implausible.

Even if Trump is letting the US military leadership do what it wants right now, when political stresses become greater he could assert a more active control over decisions and the US president has immense unilateral power when it comes to military action, including the ability to personally order the use of nuclear weapons. This scares me.

[fohat]

I am also unable to make heads or tails of adhoc's proclamations, beyond a generalized exposition of hatred of the US.
They do have a distinctly different flavor and orientation from webwit's blasts, although they share some surface similarities.

It seems clear to me that Trump's order was pure theatrics to distract from his real and pressing issues. And possibly a far-fetched wet dream that he could become a "wartime president" like Bush Jr and win adulation from the troglodytes.

The Russians were notified in advance and they surely informed the Syrians. My guess is that the damaged airplanes were the old junk and that the "good stuff" was well out of harm's way. And the fact that the airfield itself was undamaged is laughable.

Syria is an impossible and intractable situation in its present form. A 3-way war is the ultimate absurdity. Russia's argument that "any" standing government is better than no government is at least reasonable - look at what has happened when other governments in the region were demolished by outsiders without viable replacements in place, or at least under construction.

The stakes are high, but Assad must go, whether now or later. The deal that Trump needs to make with Putin is to negotiate the withdrawal of Russian support for Assad and for both the US and Russia to assist the Syrian people in re-structuring a government that they - the people - are comfortable with. But unfortunately I doubt that either side is willing to be that magnanimous.