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Frazzled wrote: I guess saying the US is becoming a pariah state is ok though.
So you don't think that Trump is alienating your allies? Have you followed this thread? His relations with Mexico, how is diplomatic exchanges with the UK went? Dude sorry but he IS making the US more isolated. Both by being brash and abrasive and arrogant, and by going back on deals established previously and on changing long established US policies, showing that the US are an unreliable partner.
"Our fantasy settings are grim and dark, but that is not a reflection of who we are or how we feel the real world should be. [...] We will continue to diversify the cast of characters we portray [...] so everyone can find representation and heroes they can relate to. [...] If [you don't feel the same way], you will not be missed"
https://twitter.com/WarComTeam/status/1268665798467432449/photo/1
Frazzled wrote: That was when Putin makes his big move you come crying to us
Why would we? We have nukes. Russia wouldn't risk nuclear war. And even for conventional war, both the UK and France have military expenditure that are close to Russia's, and then there's Germany, Italy, …
You should really give up that silly, unsupported by evidence claim that European countries are defenseless puny countries that ain't capable of defending themselves. I already told you about it, and you completely ignored all facts once again.
Besides, MAD means that if a country with nukes gets invaded everybody dies. Going "Nuh-uh, we're neutral" isn't going to work out very well. We are best served in going closer to our European allies than further away. Plus, if Russia's economy keeps going the way it's going, that doesn't bode well for their military spending.
Homosexuality is the #1 cause of gay marriage.
kronk wrote: Every pizza is a personal sized pizza if you try hard enough and believe in yourself.
sebster wrote: Yes, indeed. What a terrible piece of cultural imperialism it is for me to say that a country shouldn't murder its own citizens
BaronIveagh wrote: Basically they went from a carrot and stick to a smaller carrot and flanged mace.
Frazzled wrote: I guess saying the US is becoming a pariah state is ok though.
So you don't think that Trump is alienating your allies? **Yep
Have you followed this thread? ***Yep, and your posts.
His relations with Mexico, ***Could care less actually. I am a Texan.
how is diplomatic exchanges with the UK went? ***He can't pick out the UK on a map. Probably not so hot.
Dude sorry but he IS making the US more isolated. ***Isolated does not equal pariah. Your use of pariah is off.
Both by being brash and abrasive and arrogant, and by going back on deals established previously and on changing long established US policies, showing that the US are an unreliable partner. ***Excellent. Its the sketchy guys you have to watch. Thats why no one will expect it when we invade the Isle of Mann. Its just a crazy thought. Crazy...like a fox!
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Besides, MAD means that if a country with nukes gets invaded everybody dies. Going "Nuh-uh, we're neutral" isn't going to work out very well. We are best served in going closer to our European allies than further away. Plus, if Russia's economy keeps going the way it's going, that doesn't bode well for their military spending.
Meh, being neutral is boring. Lets be the bad guy for once. We already have the toys and we just need to twirl our mustaches and laugh maniacally.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2017/02/13 22:32:51
-"Wait a minute.....who is that Frazz is talking to in the gallery? Hmmm something is going on here.....Oh.... it seems there is some dispute over video taping of some sort......Frazz is really upset now..........wait a minute......whats he go there.......is it? Can it be?....Frazz has just unleashed his hidden weiner dog from his mini bag, while quoting shakespeares "Let slip the dogs the war!!" GG
-"Don't mind Frazzled. He's just Dakka's crazy old dude locked in the attic. He's harmless. Mostly."
-TBone the Magnificent 1999-2014, Long Live the King!
From the FB page of one of the Mar-a-Lago members who happened to be present when Trump stopped by on Saturday
Spoiler:
That Mar-a-Lago member deleted his FB post with photos of Trump's team apparently reading North Korea docs by iPhone flashlight.
'
Glad to know that freedom is so secure.
It's worth noting that this country club just doubled the membership fee after Trump became president, that Trump makes a direct profit from these membership fees, and that people are paying these membership fees for the opportunity to see stuff like this and rub elbows with the POTUS. But he doesn't run his business, so he doesn't know that he benefits from this, so it's not conflict of interest I guess...
I am sure its above board in the the most ethical way possible...
-"Wait a minute.....who is that Frazz is talking to in the gallery? Hmmm something is going on here.....Oh.... it seems there is some dispute over video taping of some sort......Frazz is really upset now..........wait a minute......whats he go there.......is it? Can it be?....Frazz has just unleashed his hidden weiner dog from his mini bag, while quoting shakespeares "Let slip the dogs the war!!" GG
-"Don't mind Frazzled. He's just Dakka's crazy old dude locked in the attic. He's harmless. Mostly."
-TBone the Magnificent 1999-2014, Long Live the King!
jmurph wrote: Probably doesn't help that Trump's rhetoric seems to be backfiring. Mexico is now looking at cutting US corn imports, which could be extremely costly for US ag. We sent $2.4 billion worth to Mexico in 2015.
It's only the beginning. Trump is working hard to make the US a pariah state.
Man I hope so. That was when Putin makes his big move you come crying to us, because we'll be busy building our East America Co Prosperity Sphere.
WrentheFaceless wrote: So this far after the election people are still attacking Hillary, is it because Trump is that bad, anything to deflect away from what he's doing?
So, if someone specifically asks me why I didn't vote for Clinton, I can't list the reasons because it's "attacking" her? Gotcha. I'd have done the same thing if someone asked me about the 2000 election, but then I guess that doesn't fit your agenda.
What agenda? The election was 3 months ago, who cares about what Hillary supposedly did or didnt do. Why bring it up again if not to deflect from what Trump is actually proven to be doing.
Why bring it up? In case you didn't notice I had someone accuse me of being a sexist because I didn't bring it up. Now I'm a Clinton basher because I did bring it up. Honestly, I really didn't want to get into those muddy waters again, but I was forced.
WrentheFaceless wrote: So this far after the election people are still attacking Hillary, is it because Trump is that bad, anything to deflect away from what he's doing?
So, if someone specifically asks me why I didn't vote for Clinton, I can't list the reasons because it's "attacking" her? Gotcha. I'd have done the same thing if someone asked me about the 2000 election, but then I guess that doesn't fit your agenda.
What agenda? The election was 3 months ago, who cares about what Hillary supposedly did or didnt do. Why bring it up again if not to deflect from what Trump is actually proven to be doing.
Why bring it up? In case you didn't notice I had someone accuse me of being a sexist because I didn't bring it up. Now I'm a Clinton basher because I did bring it up. Honestly, I really didn't want to get into those muddy waters again, but I was forced.
While strawmen show up a lot in this thread, fitting two of them in one line of text is rather unusual.
Engel was photographed in a prone position, pointing a rifle through a crack in the jersey barrier. He said he was down in that position for about 10 minutes to rest his back following a recent surgery.
I'm sure.
Homosexuality is the #1 cause of gay marriage.
kronk wrote: Every pizza is a personal sized pizza if you try hard enough and believe in yourself.
sebster wrote: Yes, indeed. What a terrible piece of cultural imperialism it is for me to say that a country shouldn't murder its own citizens
BaronIveagh wrote: Basically they went from a carrot and stick to a smaller carrot and flanged mace.
Vladimir Putin's entourage cheered the outcome of the U.S. election – until they saw exactly what they were dealing with.
In 2016, a senior Russian official explained to a group of visiting foreigners why the government had decided not to celebrate the upcoming 100th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution. Yes, it was a turning point in Russian history, he argued, and, yes, President Vladimir Putin sees today’s Russia as a successor to both the tsars and the Bolsheviks. But celebrating a revolution would send the wrong message to society. The Kremlin today is staunchly opposed to “regime change,” the visitors were told, and thus skittish about eulogizing 1917. It plans to use the centenary, instead, to draw attention to the catastrophic consequences of resorting to revolution to solve social and political problems.
The last thing the Russian government expected was that 2017 would bring it face to face not with a revolution of the past but with a revolution of the present — the radical regime change taking place in the United States as a result of the electoral victory of Donald Trump. It is Trump’s electoral revolution that has captured the imagination, and fanned the fears, of Russian elites today.
The search for a key to Trump’s mind-boggling and miscellaneous gusher of policy directives has tended to focus on his disturbingly erratic, vindictive, simplistic, narcissistic, insecure, and occasionally delusional personality, due exception being made for those conspiracy theorists who treat him as a kind of Manchurian candidate or sock puppet of the Kremlin. What most observers have been late to recognize is the extent to which, behind his mask as a showman, Trump views himself as a revolutionary insurgent with a mission to dismantle America’s “old regime.”
Trump’s tactics certainly belong to the classic revolutionary playbook. His shock-and-awe style of executive action is designed to rattle Congress, catch his opponents unprepared, and incite his base to wage war on the establishment. The extreme polarization he deliberately foments allows him to fend off an opportunistic alliance of the Republican elite with the Democratic Party in defense of the constitutional system, ensuring that protests will be largely impotent. In the words of White House strategist-in-chief Stephen Bannon, Trump is positioning himself as the global leader of an anti-global movement that is anti-elite, anti-establishment, anti-liberal, and nationalistic. “What we are witnessing now,” Bannon told the Washington Post, “is the birth of a new political order, and the more frantic a handful of media elites become, the more powerful that new political order becomes itself.”
Russian policymakers, obsessed as they are with the fear of “color revolutions,” may understand better than Americans and Europeans the radical nature of the political change that has descended on Washington. Indeed, when it comes to the ongoing Trump revolution, Russian policymakers are in much the same position as the German General Staff one century ago. In 1917, the German government concluded that the best hope for a German victory in World War I was for a revolution to erupt in Russia. It thus allowed some of the leaders of the Bolshevik party, Lenin among them, to pass through Germany and make their way back to Russia. The hope was that a revolution in Russia would pull the country out of the war — and the plan worked. But by the beginning of 1918, the German government started to fear that the virus of revolution that it had surreptitiously help spread to Russia might circle back calamitously to Germany itself.
Our conversations with Russian policymakers and experts indicate they are starting to have similar fears and doubts today.
There is no way of knowing if Russian interference contributed decisively to Trump’s upset victory. But it’s fair to say that the Kremlin viewed the outcome as a divine gift. Since at least 2011-2012, when Russia witnessed widespread popular protests, and particularly after the Ukrainian Maidan uprising — events that elicited heartfelt praise and encouragement from then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton — Russia’s leadership had been convinced that her election would spell disaster for Russia and that it might even lead to war. So Russians did what they could to prevent Clinton from getting into the White House. But while they welcomed her defeat, they were wholly unprepared for the ensuing regime change in Washington.
Now that Trump is in power, political elites in Moscow have stopped cheering. They recognize that Russia’s position has become abruptly and agonizingly complex.
It’s true that Trump’s accession opens up the possibility of “normalizing” Russia’s relations with the West, beginning with a reduction or even elimination of sanctions. It also validates many of Russia’s ideological criticisms of the liberal order and may perhaps foreshadow policy reversals that Moscow has long hoped for: from Washington’s disengagement from the Ukraine crisis to its dissolution of the Cold War Western alliance. Russians also celebrate Trump’s unfiltered stream-of-consciousness diatribes as signaling a welcome end to America’s hypocrisy and condescension.
But Trump’s revolution is also ushering in a period of turmoil and uncertainty, including the likelihood of self-defeating trade wars. Still traumatized by the disintegration of the Soviet Union, Russia’s present leadership has no appetite for global instability.
With Trump in the White House, moreover, Putin has lost his monopoly over geopolitical unpredictability. The Kremlin’s ability to shock the world by taking the initiative and trashing ordinary international rules and customs has allowed Russia to play an oversized international role and to punch above its weight. Putin now has to share the capacity to keep the world off balance with a new American president vastly more powerful than himself. More world leaders are watching anxiously to discover what Trump will do next than are worrying about what Putin will do next. Meanwhile, using anti-Americanism as an ideological crutch has become much more dubious now that the American electorate has chosen as their president a man publicly derided as “Putin’s puppet.”
What the Kremlin fears most today is that Trump may be ousted or even killed. His ouster, Kremlin insiders argue, is bound to unleash a virulent and bipartisan anti-Russian campaign in Washington. Oddly, therefore, Putin has become a hostage to Trump’s survival and success. This has seriously restricted Russia’s geopolitical options. The Kremlin is perfectly aware that Democrats want to use Russia to discredit and possibly impeach Trump while Republican elites want to use Russia to deflate and discipline Trump. The Russian government fears not only Trump’s downfall, of course, but also the possibility that he could opportunistically switch to a tough anti-Moscow line in order to make peace with hawkish Republican leaders in Congress.
It is emblematic that, in their first telephone call, Putin refused to press Trump on lifting the sanctions or on America’s discontinuing support for Kiev. Moscow has also chosen to ignore some harsh anti-Russian statements issued by certain members of the new administration. The renewed fighting in eastern Ukraine might seem like a counterexample, but the Kremlin swears that the Petro Poroshenko government in Kiev is the guilty party, aiming at getting the attention of anti-Russian U.S. Congress members and thereby providing a potent argument against Trump’s appeasement of Putin. In any case, Russia has been trying to find ways to accommodate the U.S. president, including, for example, echoing the White House’s denials that Ambassador Sergei Kislyak discussed sanctions with Michael Flynn before Trump’s inauguration as well as announcing plans to reconsider Trump’s demand to set up safe zones inside Syria—a proposal that was initially rejected by the Russians.
Trump’s presidency has also complicated Moscow’s relations with China and Iran. Moscow is interested in normalization with the West but not at the cost of joining a Washington-led anti-China coalition, which Trump seems insistent on creating. Moreover, Putin’s Russia hosts up to 20 million Muslims and therefore cannot indulge in the radical anti-Islam rhetoric adopted by Trump.
What is especially dangerous from the Kremlin’s perspective is that certain nationalistic circles in Russia are falling in love with Trump’s insurrectionary approach. In January, for the first time since Putin returned to the Kremlin in 2012, Putin was not the most frequently cited name in the Russian media; Trump was. And although most of Trump’s Russian admirers, such as Alexander Dugin, are loyal to Putin personally, they also dream of purging the globalist elites who occupy the rooms adjoining their president’s.
Anyone who spends any time in Moscow will quickly discover that ordinary Russians, in contrast with a majority of Europeans, feel surprisingly positive about Trump. One reason is that they are exhausted at Russia’s confrontation with the West. Another is that they share Trump’s cynical, borderline apocalyptic view of international politics. Like Trump, they never believed in win-win politics in the first place.
Most interesting of all, they readily compare Trump to an early Boris Yeltsin — impulsive, charismatic, trusting only his family, and ready to bomb the parliament if that works to cement his hold on power. The problem for the Kremlin is that Yeltsin was a revolutionary leader and Putin has decided to make 2017 a year for deploring, not celebrating, revolutions.
Why is Trump so constantly worried about imagined voter fraud in an election he won? Such a sore.....winner?
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2017/02/14 00:12:41
"By this point I'm convinced 100% that every single race in the 40k universe have somehow tapped into the ork ability to just have their tech work because they think it should."
1) he knows that it's a big rallying cry for a portion of the electorate. And he has admitted that he has no problem saying stuff he doesn't plan to do anything about as long as it's something people like to hear.
2) he's a narcissist who can't stand the fact that he had fewer people voting for him than his opponent.
AdeptSister wrote: Deleted as this is already mentioned up thread. Sorry.
How is such a lack of security allowed? Jeepers.
Well...it could be that all of those claims are false. I mean, do we know that's really the guy with the nuclear football? I mean, it could be the guy's idea of a joke.
Something like "You know what would be funny? If I posted a bunch of stuff that looks like sensitive material on social media, and watch everyone just gak themselves. Haha I'm drunk"
Or could really be that security is that lax, and that security didn't confiscate phones like they should have. I hope its the joke outcome.
What I have
~4100
~1660
Westwood lives in death!
Peace through power!
A longbeard when it comes to Necrons and WHFB. Grumble Grumble
AdeptSister wrote: Deleted as this is already mentioned up thread. Sorry.
How is such a lack of security allowed? Jeepers.
Well...it could be that all of those claims are false. I mean, do we know that's really the guy with the nuclear football? I mean, it could be the guy's idea of a joke.
Something like "You know what would be funny? If I posted a bunch of stuff that looks like sensitive material on social media, and watch everyone just gak themselves. Haha I'm drunk"
Or could really be that security is that lax, and that security didn't confiscate phones like they should have. I hope its the joke outcome.
It's not usual that its a decoy... there are numerous stories about that.
Obviously the WH staff/Secret Service can neither confirm nor deny.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2017/02/14 00:30:45
Well, it is probably an accurate reproduction of how Trump spelled it and it's not like he's gonna notice, being illiterate and all.
Honestly, I think it's a sad state of affairs that I didn't see what the typo was until I read the article... That's literally how often I see that particular typo.
They're supported by a base that already believed these things anyway as a matter of course because the world just doesn't make sense to them otherwise. Happens to all of us on some level, but this particular segment is loony.
I've got family that eats it up, that in fact has been making such claims for years just because it's the only way their choices could fail to get elected.
IRON WITHIN, IRON WITHOUT.
New Heavy Gear Log! Also...Grey Knights! The correct pronunciation is Imperial Guard and Stormtroopers, "Astra Militarum" and "Tempestus Scions" are something you'll find at Hogwarts.
Frazzled wrote: I guess saying the US is becoming a pariah state is ok though.
So you don't think that Trump is alienating your allies? Have you followed this thread? His relations with Mexico, how is diplomatic exchanges with the UK went? Dude sorry but he IS making the US more isolated. Both by being brash and abrasive and arrogant, and by going back on deals established previously and on changing long established US policies, showing that the US are an unreliable partner.
No amount of stupid Trump tweets or awkward face to face meetings or phone calls with Trump changes the fact that the EU, China and most of the rest of the world is economically linked and codependent. They might think our PotUS is a buffoon but that doesn't stop their economy from being dependent on being our trading partner. Between economic reality and NATO obligations, we're the only country capable of doing the heavy lifting when it comes to protecting NATO countries and projecting military power globally, the US will never be isolated or a pariah.
Vladimir Putin's entourage cheered the outcome of the U.S. election – until they saw exactly what they were dealing with.
In 2016, a senior Russian official explained to a group of visiting foreigners why the government had decided not to celebrate the upcoming 100th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution. Yes, it was a turning point in Russian history, he argued, and, yes, President Vladimir Putin sees today’s Russia as a successor to both the tsars and the Bolsheviks. But celebrating a revolution would send the wrong message to society. The Kremlin today is staunchly opposed to “regime change,” the visitors were told, and thus skittish about eulogizing 1917. It plans to use the centenary, instead, to draw attention to the catastrophic consequences of resorting to revolution to solve social and political problems.
The last thing the Russian government expected was that 2017 would bring it face to face not with a revolution of the past but with a revolution of the present — the radical regime change taking place in the United States as a result of the electoral victory of Donald Trump. It is Trump’s electoral revolution that has captured the imagination, and fanned the fears, of Russian elites today.
The search for a key to Trump’s mind-boggling and miscellaneous gusher of policy directives has tended to focus on his disturbingly erratic, vindictive, simplistic, narcissistic, insecure, and occasionally delusional personality, due exception being made for those conspiracy theorists who treat him as a kind of Manchurian candidate or sock puppet of the Kremlin. What most observers have been late to recognize is the extent to which, behind his mask as a showman, Trump views himself as a revolutionary insurgent with a mission to dismantle America’s “old regime.”
Trump’s tactics certainly belong to the classic revolutionary playbook. His shock-and-awe style of executive action is designed to rattle Congress, catch his opponents unprepared, and incite his base to wage war on the establishment. The extreme polarization he deliberately foments allows him to fend off an opportunistic alliance of the Republican elite with the Democratic Party in defense of the constitutional system, ensuring that protests will be largely impotent. In the words of White House strategist-in-chief Stephen Bannon, Trump is positioning himself as the global leader of an anti-global movement that is anti-elite, anti-establishment, anti-liberal, and nationalistic. “What we are witnessing now,” Bannon told the Washington Post, “is the birth of a new political order, and the more frantic a handful of media elites become, the more powerful that new political order becomes itself.”
Russian policymakers, obsessed as they are with the fear of “color revolutions,” may understand better than Americans and Europeans the radical nature of the political change that has descended on Washington. Indeed, when it comes to the ongoing Trump revolution, Russian policymakers are in much the same position as the German General Staff one century ago. In 1917, the German government concluded that the best hope for a German victory in World War I was for a revolution to erupt in Russia. It thus allowed some of the leaders of the Bolshevik party, Lenin among them, to pass through Germany and make their way back to Russia. The hope was that a revolution in Russia would pull the country out of the war — and the plan worked. But by the beginning of 1918, the German government started to fear that the virus of revolution that it had surreptitiously help spread to Russia might circle back calamitously to Germany itself.
Our conversations with Russian policymakers and experts indicate they are starting to have similar fears and doubts today.
There is no way of knowing if Russian interference contributed decisively to Trump’s upset victory. But it’s fair to say that the Kremlin viewed the outcome as a divine gift. Since at least 2011-2012, when Russia witnessed widespread popular protests, and particularly after the Ukrainian Maidan uprising — events that elicited heartfelt praise and encouragement from then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton — Russia’s leadership had been convinced that her election would spell disaster for Russia and that it might even lead to war. So Russians did what they could to prevent Clinton from getting into the White House. But while they welcomed her defeat, they were wholly unprepared for the ensuing regime change in Washington.
Now that Trump is in power, political elites in Moscow have stopped cheering. They recognize that Russia’s position has become abruptly and agonizingly complex.
It’s true that Trump’s accession opens up the possibility of “normalizing” Russia’s relations with the West, beginning with a reduction or even elimination of sanctions. It also validates many of Russia’s ideological criticisms of the liberal order and may perhaps foreshadow policy reversals that Moscow has long hoped for: from Washington’s disengagement from the Ukraine crisis to its dissolution of the Cold War Western alliance. Russians also celebrate Trump’s unfiltered stream-of-consciousness diatribes as signaling a welcome end to America’s hypocrisy and condescension.
But Trump’s revolution is also ushering in a period of turmoil and uncertainty, including the likelihood of self-defeating trade wars. Still traumatized by the disintegration of the Soviet Union, Russia’s present leadership has no appetite for global instability.
With Trump in the White House, moreover, Putin has lost his monopoly over geopolitical unpredictability. The Kremlin’s ability to shock the world by taking the initiative and trashing ordinary international rules and customs has allowed Russia to play an oversized international role and to punch above its weight. Putin now has to share the capacity to keep the world off balance with a new American president vastly more powerful than himself. More world leaders are watching anxiously to discover what Trump will do next than are worrying about what Putin will do next. Meanwhile, using anti-Americanism as an ideological crutch has become much more dubious now that the American electorate has chosen as their president a man publicly derided as “Putin’s puppet.”
What the Kremlin fears most today is that Trump may be ousted or even killed. His ouster, Kremlin insiders argue, is bound to unleash a virulent and bipartisan anti-Russian campaign in Washington. Oddly, therefore, Putin has become a hostage to Trump’s survival and success. This has seriously restricted Russia’s geopolitical options. The Kremlin is perfectly aware that Democrats want to use Russia to discredit and possibly impeach Trump while Republican elites want to use Russia to deflate and discipline Trump. The Russian government fears not only Trump’s downfall, of course, but also the possibility that he could opportunistically switch to a tough anti-Moscow line in order to make peace with hawkish Republican leaders in Congress.
It is emblematic that, in their first telephone call, Putin refused to press Trump on lifting the sanctions or on America’s discontinuing support for Kiev. Moscow has also chosen to ignore some harsh anti-Russian statements issued by certain members of the new administration. The renewed fighting in eastern Ukraine might seem like a counterexample, but the Kremlin swears that the Petro Poroshenko government in Kiev is the guilty party, aiming at getting the attention of anti-Russian U.S. Congress members and thereby providing a potent argument against Trump’s appeasement of Putin. In any case, Russia has been trying to find ways to accommodate the U.S. president, including, for example, echoing the White House’s denials that Ambassador Sergei Kislyak discussed sanctions with Michael Flynn before Trump’s inauguration as well as announcing plans to reconsider Trump’s demand to set up safe zones inside Syria—a proposal that was initially rejected by the Russians.
Trump’s presidency has also complicated Moscow’s relations with China and Iran. Moscow is interested in normalization with the West but not at the cost of joining a Washington-led anti-China coalition, which Trump seems insistent on creating. Moreover, Putin’s Russia hosts up to 20 million Muslims and therefore cannot indulge in the radical anti-Islam rhetoric adopted by Trump.
What is especially dangerous from the Kremlin’s perspective is that certain nationalistic circles in Russia are falling in love with Trump’s insurrectionary approach. In January, for the first time since Putin returned to the Kremlin in 2012, Putin was not the most frequently cited name in the Russian media; Trump was. And although most of Trump’s Russian admirers, such as Alexander Dugin, are loyal to Putin personally, they also dream of purging the globalist elites who occupy the rooms adjoining their president’s.
Anyone who spends any time in Moscow will quickly discover that ordinary Russians, in contrast with a majority of Europeans, feel surprisingly positive about Trump. One reason is that they are exhausted at Russia’s confrontation with the West. Another is that they share Trump’s cynical, borderline apocalyptic view of international politics. Like Trump, they never believed in win-win politics in the first place.
Most interesting of all, they readily compare Trump to an early Boris Yeltsin — impulsive, charismatic, trusting only his family, and ready to bomb the parliament if that works to cement his hold on power. The problem for the Kremlin is that Yeltsin was a revolutionary leader and Putin has decided to make 2017 a year for deploring, not celebrating, revolutions.
It's an interesting read, it's basically what I would have expected to eventually happen regardless of any truth behind Putin having a hand in the election. Good read.
IRON WITHIN, IRON WITHOUT.
New Heavy Gear Log! Also...Grey Knights! The correct pronunciation is Imperial Guard and Stormtroopers, "Astra Militarum" and "Tempestus Scions" are something you'll find at Hogwarts.
Co'tor Shas wrote: Didn't the Republican party freak out over Obama saying something like "I disagree with the courts but will abide by their ruling," in a speech? I seem to remember something like that. But now we have a Republican president who is openly hostile to the judiciary and they are silent.
They were outraged when Obama mentioned disagreement with the courts over a ruling in his state of the nation speach. They had something of a point, as presidents have disagreed with public rulings before, raising one in the most high profile, official speach a president makes could be seen in a different light. Republicans also freaked out when Obama wanted detainees brought from gitmo for regular trials, and Obama reacted to criticism that they might be acquitted by saying that won't happen. Again, they had something of a point as while Obama was saying they were only going with slam dunk cases, it did sound like he was applying political pressure on a (hypothetical) court decision.
Republicans are the other team so attacking a president is part of the job, but they made it out like it was the collapse of an independent judiciary and the rise of Obama as the absolute power in the US. The hyperbole was incredible.
And now, as you say, Trump is actually directly targeting individual judges with criticism if they rule against him. And the Republicans who were so deathly afraid of Obama just saying he disagreed with judges, or predicting the outcome of a terror trial... suddenly now they're not so worried.
I mean, everyone is a little partisan, but this is way beyond that. There appears to be no values left in Republic rhetoric, they will say anything to score a political point, and they will ignore anything if it is a point against them.
“We may observe that the government in a civilized country is much more expensive than in a barbarous one; and when we say that one government is more expensive than another, it is the same as if we said that that one country is farther advanced in improvement than another. To say that the government is expensive and the people not oppressed is to say that the people are rich.”
Adam Smith, who must have been some kind of leftie or something.
I mean, everyone is a little partisan, but this is way beyond that. There appears to be no values left in Republic rhetoric, they will say anything to score a political point, and they will ignore anything if it is a point against them.
That's exactly how I feel about the Democrat's rhetoric...
ZergSmasher wrote: Okay, so while everyone can cite liberal news and opinion sites, a conservative one must be wrong. Gotcha. And as for the "echo chamber" thing, I've seen the liberal sites do that as well. I suspect it's just the nature of journalism these days.
You're confusing bias with an actual measure of the quality of the reporting. These things are not the same. A report that contains no bias, but relies on speculation and facts that are either unreliable or not substantiated is bad reporting. On the other hand
The problem with the dailycaller piece you provided was that its source was other news reports, which in turn relied on nothing more than a claim that they'd done some research. Whereas the NYT piece provided reliable and substantiated journalism.
A large part of the reason that media trust is so low is because people have little idea how to tell good journalism from bad. Add on top of that an incentive for people to declare all journalism unreliable, which leaves them free to believe whatever publication is telling them what they want to hear.
But it isn't that hard to review journalism based on its merits. Just leave that bs 'bias thing alone. Don't ask if it something sounds left wing or right wing, because that doesn't decide if it is good and reliable information or not. Instead, just ask if the article is giving you reliable, substantiated facts, and if it is combining those facts in to a sensible narrative.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
whembly wrote: That's exactly how I feel about the Democrat's rhetoric...
Of course you do. The issue of course, is that you're wrong. It really just is that simple, the Republican party is not an ordinary political party any more, and claiming something about personal opinions doesn't change that.
This doesn't mean it is wrong to have conservative values, far from it. It means you have to start demanding them of your party. Stop just hoping for them to win an election, start demanding they can actually govern in a decent, honest manner.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2017/02/14 03:22:49
“We may observe that the government in a civilized country is much more expensive than in a barbarous one; and when we say that one government is more expensive than another, it is the same as if we said that that one country is farther advanced in improvement than another. To say that the government is expensive and the people not oppressed is to say that the people are rich.”
Adam Smith, who must have been some kind of leftie or something.
whembly wrote: That's exactly how I feel about the Democrat's rhetoric...
Of course you do. The issue of course, is that you're wrong.
In your opinion.
It really just is that simple,
Not really... otherwise, Democrats would be curbstomping the GOP till kingdom come...
the Republican party is not an ordinary political party any more, and claiming something about personal opinions doesn't change that.
What is "ordinary".
Yes, there's a decidedly recent shift to more of a 'nationalistic' flavor... but, the Tea Party/Freedom Caucus can still throw their weight around.
The GOP couldn't get gak down, other than be a 'speed bump' for Democrats/Obama in recent years.
Now, only the Senate filibuster (for legislation/SCoTUS picks) in the Senate can slow them down...
This doesn't mean it is wrong to have conservative values, far from it. It means you have to start demanding them of your party. Stop just hoping for them to win an election, start demanding they can actually govern in a decent, honest manner.
It's cute that you think this current iteration of the GOP is espousing 'conservative values'. It's a "big government" party still... and that's pretty much it at the moment. I think the party is taking a "wait and see" approach with how the Congressional GOP leader works with Trumpo.
whembly wrote: I hope Trump realizes that Flynn needs to go...
Trump would be more than happy to cut Flynn loose. Trump may be new to politics, but he's not that new, everyone knows what roadkill looks like, and right now Flynn looks like the stuff that roadkill feels sorry for.
The issue, though, is that there's zero chance that Flynn made those phone calls just out of the blue. You don't just decide to make a call like that and talk about how things are okay because the new president will roll back sanctions... without that kind of thing being something the new President had committed to. This doesn't mean Trump himself requested Flynn make the call, but it's pretty clear conversations had been had, and decisions had been made to make sure Russia know things would be different when Trump came to power.
If Trump does what he should, publicly criticise Flynn and fire his ass, well then there's a pretty good chance that Flynn will get pissed and open up a whole bunch of Trump secrets regarding Russia. So he can't do that.
I mean hey, I could be wrong. If I am, we'll know it when Trump publicly condemns Flynn's behaviour and fires him unceremoniously. Let's watch and see.
“We may observe that the government in a civilized country is much more expensive than in a barbarous one; and when we say that one government is more expensive than another, it is the same as if we said that that one country is farther advanced in improvement than another. To say that the government is expensive and the people not oppressed is to say that the people are rich.”
Adam Smith, who must have been some kind of leftie or something.
I was just coming to report that. I'm a little dissapointed though. I wanted Trump to get him on live television and yell "You're fired!". It would be good for a laugh at least.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Apparently they might replace him with Petraeus. Because that would be so much more secure.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2017/02/14 04:15:41
Homosexuality is the #1 cause of gay marriage.
kronk wrote: Every pizza is a personal sized pizza if you try hard enough and believe in yourself.
sebster wrote: Yes, indeed. What a terrible piece of cultural imperialism it is for me to say that a country shouldn't murder its own citizens
BaronIveagh wrote: Basically they went from a carrot and stick to a smaller carrot and flanged mace.
~1660
