StrangeSox Posted June 7, 2018 Share Posted June 7, 2018 no mention of the 4600+ Americans dead in Puerto Rico due to his administration's completely inept response to Maria last year Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
StrangeSox Posted June 7, 2018 Share Posted June 7, 2018 23 hours ago, StrangeSox said: apparently we're just going to get multiple "good lord look how corrupt this guy is" stories every week Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
caulfield12 Posted June 8, 2018 Share Posted June 8, 2018 Trump clearly believes he’s being “tough” with these other countries, and protecting American jobs, with his ineptly-designed tariffs. In fact, he’s putting many more jobs in other industries at risk. A report released this week by the Trade Partnership, a consulting and research firm, estimated that the ratio of jobs lost to jobs gained from Trump’s trade actions will be about 16 to 1: 26,280 steel and aluminum jobs gained, compared with 432,747 jobs eliminated throughout the rest of the economy. And that’s presumably not even counting any of the hundreds of jobs now held by Trump’s fellow Republicans on Capitol Hill. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trump-is-waging-a-trade-war-in-the-dumbest-way-possible/2018/06/07/88a2d302-6a96-11e8-bf8c-f9ed2e672adf_story.html?utm_term=.2abbab7048a8 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kyyle23 Posted June 9, 2018 Share Posted June 9, 2018 This is going swell Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
greg775 Posted June 9, 2018 Share Posted June 9, 2018 Does Trump ever meet the press in press conference settings or just talk to his buddy on that late night show, I forget his name? I feel like those daily sessions with Sarah Sanders are kind of useless. I did find her a rock star in this interview however. Chris Cuomo tried and tried and she wouldn't bite on his question. Thing is, who cares what some spokesperson thinks? If you can't get Trump to talk it all seems a waste of time. Do press secretaries ever say anything of value? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kyyle23 Posted June 9, 2018 Share Posted June 9, 2018 She is a rock star for refusing to admit she lied? Interesting point of view, greg Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pettie4sox Posted June 10, 2018 Share Posted June 10, 2018 On 6/9/2018 at 12:11 PM, greg775 said: Does Trump ever meet the press in press conference settings or just talk to his buddy on that late night show, I forget his name? I feel like those daily sessions with Sarah Sanders are kind of useless. I did find her a rock star in this interview however. Chris Cuomo tried and tried and she wouldn't bite on his question. Thing is, who cares what some spokesperson thinks? If you can't get Trump to talk it all seems a waste of time. Do press secretaries ever say anything of value? The woman has zero shame. She lies all the time. I'm pretty sure that's on the 10 commandments, greg. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RockRaines Posted June 11, 2018 Share Posted June 11, 2018 He is a moron and everyone in the world knows it. Defending him is equally moronic. Conservative viewpoints and leadership are a fine thing to present. But this guy isn’t that. He’s making a mockery of that side of the aisle and nobody seems to have the balls to stand up. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brian Posted June 11, 2018 Author Share Posted June 11, 2018 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pettie4sox Posted June 11, 2018 Share Posted June 11, 2018 5 hours ago, Brian said: Oh my... freudian slip? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brian Posted June 11, 2018 Author Share Posted June 11, 2018 What aboutism! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
StrangeSox Posted June 11, 2018 Share Posted June 11, 2018 A Senior White House Official Defines the Trump Doctrine: ‘We’re America, b****’ The president believes that the United States owes nothing to anyone—especially its allies. https://www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/562511/?__twitter_impression=true Many of Donald Trump’s critics find it difficult to ascribe to a president they consider to be both subliterate and historically insensate a foreign-policy doctrine that approaches coherence. A Trump Doctrine would require evidence of Trump Thought, and proof of such thinking, the argument goes, is scant. This view is informed in part by feelings of condescension, but it is not meritless. Barack Obama, whose foreign-policy doctrine I studied in depth, was cerebral to a fault; the man who succeeded him is perhaps the most glandular president in American history. Unlike Obama, Trump possesses no ability to explain anything resembling a foreign-policy philosophy. But this does not mean that he is without ideas. Over the past couple of months, I’ve asked a number of people close to the president to provide me with short descriptions of what might constitute the Trump Doctrine. I’ve been trying, as part of a larger project, to understand the revolutionary nature of Trump’s approach to world affairs. This task became even more interesting over the weekend, when Trump made his most ambitious move yet to dismantle the U.S.-led Western alliance; it becomes more interesting still as Trump launches, without preparation or baseline knowledge, a complicated nuclear negotiation with a fanatical and bizarre regime that quite possibly has his number. Trumpian chaos is, in fact, undergirded by a comprehensible worldview, a number of experts have insisted. The Brookings Institution scholar (and frequent Atlantic contributor) Thomas Wright argued in a January 2016 essay that Trump’s views are both discernible and explicable. Wright, who published his analysis at a time when most everyone in the foreign-policy establishment considered Trump’s candidacy to be a farce, wrote that Trump loathes the liberal international order and would work against it as president; he wrote that Trump also dislikes America’s military alliances, and would work against them; he argued that Trump believes in his bones that the global economy is unfair to the U.S.; and, finally, he wrote that Trump has an innate sympathy for “authoritarian strongmen.” Wright was prophetic. Trump’s actions these past weeks, and my conversations with administration officials and friends and associates of Trump, suggest that the president will be acting on his beliefs in a more urgent, and focused, way than he did in the first year of his presidency, and that the pace of potentially cataclysmic disruption will quicken in the coming days. And so, understanding Trump’s foreign-policy doctrine is more urgent than ever. The third-best encapsulation of the Trump Doctrine, as outlined by a senior administration official over lunch a few weeks ago, is this: “No Friends, No Enemies.” This official explained that he was not describing a variant of the realpolitik notion that the U.S. has only shifting alliances, not permanent friends. Trump, this official said, doesn’t believe that the U.S. should be part of any alliance at all. “We have to explain to him that countries that have worked with us together in the past expect a level of loyalty from us, but he doesn’t believe that this should factor into the equation,” the official said. The second-best self-description of the Trump Doctrine I heard was this, from a senior national-security official: “Permanent destabilization creates American advantage.” The official who described this to me said Trump believes that keeping allies and adversaries alike perpetually off-balance necessarily benefits the United States, which is still the most powerful country on Earth. When I noted that America’s adversaries seem far less destabilized by Trump than do America’s allies, this official argued for strategic patience. “They’ll see over time that it doesn’t pay to argue with us.” The best distillation of the Trump Doctrine I heard, though, came from a senior White House official with direct access to the president and his thinking. I was talking to this person several weeks ago, and I said, by way of introduction, that I thought it might perhaps be too early to discern a definitive Trump Doctrine. “No,” the official said. “There’s definitely a Trump Doctrine.” “What is it?” I asked. Here is the answer I received: “The Trump Doctrine is ‘We’re America, b****.’ That’s the Trump Doctrine.” It struck me almost immediately that this was the most acute, and attitudinally honest, description of the manner in which members of Trump’s team, and Trump himself, understand their role in the world. I asked this official to explain the idea. “Obama apologized to everyone for everything. He felt bad about everything.” President Trump, this official said, “doesn’t feel like he has to apologize for anything America does.” I later asked another senior official, one who rendered the doctrine not as “We’re America, b****” but as “We’re America, b****es,” whether he was aware of the 2004 movie Team America: World Police, whose theme song (YT: Team America: World Police - America (Fuck Yeah)) was “America, Fuck Yeah!” “Of course,” he said, laughing. “The president believes that we’re America, and people can take it or leave it.” “We’re America, b****” is not only a characterologically accurate collective self-appraisal—the gangster fronting, the casual misogyny, the insupportable confidence—but it is also perfectly Rorschachian. To Trump’s followers, “We’re America, b****” could be understood as a middle finger directed at a cold and unfair world, one that no longer respects American power and privilege. To much of the world, however, and certainly to most practitioners of foreign and national-security policy, “We’re America, b****” would be understood as self-isolating, and self-sabotaging. I’m not arguing that the attitude underlying “We’re America, b****” is without any utility. There are occasions—the 1979 Iran hostage crisis comes to mind—in which a blunt posture would have been useful, or at least ephemerally satisfying. President Obama himself expressed displeasure—in a rhetorically controlled way—at the failure of American allies to pay what he viewed as their fair share of common defense costs. And I don’t want to suggest that there is no place for self-confidence in foreign policymaking. The Iran nuclear deal was imperfect in part because the Obama administration seemed, at times, to let Iran drive the process. One day the Trump administration may have a lasting foreign-policy victory of some sort. It is likely that the North Korea summit will end, if not disastrously, then inconclusively. But there is a slight chance that it could mark the start of a useful round of negotiations. And I’m not one to mock Jared Kushner for his role in the Middle East peace process. There is virtually no chance of the process succeeding, but the great experts have all tried and failed, so why shouldn’t the president’s son-in-law give it a shot? But what is mainly interesting about “We’re America, b****” is its delusional quality. Donald Trump is pursuing policies that undermine the Western alliance, empower Russia and China, and demoralize freedom-seeking people around the world. The United States could be made weaker—perhaps permanently—by the implementation of the Trump Doctrine. The administration officials, and friends of Trump, I’ve spoken with in recent days believe the opposite: that Trump is rebuilding American power after an eight-year period of willful dissipation. “People criticize [Trump] for being opposed to everything Obama did, but we’re justified in canceling out his policies,” one friend of Trump’s told me. This friend described the Trump Doctrine in the simplest way possible. “There’s the Obama Doctrine, and the ‘Fuck Obama’ Doctrine,” he said. “We’re the ‘Fuck Obama’ Doctrine.” Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jenksismyhero Posted June 11, 2018 Share Posted June 11, 2018 I think the whole "the rest of the world hates us" stuff is overplayed, as it was during the Bush years. I didn't see much change in the radical shift during Obama's admn. That said, neither Bush nor Obama were anti-globalization and they, for better or for worse, still wanted the US to lead the world in just about every way. Trump isolationism mixed with his "fuck you, we're America" attitude is pretty alarming. I guess we'll see how badly the world needs us/relies on us in the coming years.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
StrangeSox Posted June 11, 2018 Share Posted June 11, 2018 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
southsider2k5 Posted June 12, 2018 Share Posted June 12, 2018 Either the President doesn't know what GDP is or he thinks we send $800 billion a year for nato. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brian Posted June 12, 2018 Author Share Posted June 12, 2018 Weird seeing the 🤝. Hope he doesn’t screw it up 48 hours after pissing over our actual allies. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
caulfield12 Posted June 12, 2018 Share Posted June 12, 2018 The remarks came amid an improbable series of events that few could have anticipated even three months ago. The unlikely images of US and North Korean counterparts engaging in friendly dialogue lent the day an air of unreality. In a detailed menu, the White House said the men were served Häagen-Dazs vanilla ice cream for dessert. Other developments also fueled that impression. Minutes before the historic handshake, Trump tweeted that his top economic adviser Larry Kudlow had suffered a heart attack. Immediately after the encounter, Dennis Rodman -- one of the only Americans to have met Kim -- was openly weeping while being interviewed by CNN's Chris Cuomo. Even Kim seemed to acknowledge the surreality of the day. "Many people in the world will think of this as a (inaudible) form of fantasy ... from a science fiction movie," his translator was overheard saying as the two leaders walked down a white-columned colonnade. source: cnn.com Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
caulfield12 Posted June 12, 2018 Share Posted June 12, 2018 5 hours ago, southsider2k5 said: Either the President doesn't know what GDP is or he thinks we send $800 billion a year for nato. NATO is based on the principle of collective defense: an attack against one or more members is considered an attack against all. So far that has only been invoked once -- in response to the September 11 attacks. To make the idea work, it is important for all members to make sure their armed forces are in good shape. So NATO sets an official target on how much they should spend. That currently stands at 2% of GDP. The 2% target is described as a "guideline." There is no penalty for not meeting it. It is up to each country to decide how much to spend and how to use the money. source: CNN Not exactly, Southsider2k5, he's just TRYING to say Germany is paying 1.2% (out of 3.467 trillion USD, Trump actually said the number was closer to just 1% in his verbatim quotes) for military expenses/defense (this ALSO doesn't count all the costs of taking on the burden of immigrants flowing into Germany from the Middle East and Sub-Saharan Africa.) That would be about $41 billion USD for Germany The North Atlantic alliance has its own military budget worth €1.29 billion ($1.4 billion), which is used to fund some operations and the NATO strategic command center, as well as training and research. But it is miniscule compared to overall spending on defense by NATO countries, which NATO estimates will total more than $921 billion in 2017. The alliance also has a civilian budget of €234.4 million ($252 million), used mainly to fund the NATO headquarters in Belgium, and its administration. Only five of NATO's 28 members -- the U.S., Greece, Poland, Estonia and the U.K. -- meet the 2% target. The US is 3.61% X $19 trillion=$686 billion (total spending on NATO/defense) From doing some more internet research, the USA pays for 73% of NATO dues/costs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
StrangeSox Posted June 13, 2018 Share Posted June 13, 2018 Pruitt probably deserves his own thread at this point Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dick Allen Posted June 13, 2018 Share Posted June 13, 2018 So let me get this straight, illegals are pouring in even though border patrol is doing a great job , so we need a wall. The economy is better than it's ever been. Ever. Although in every trade deal, and in all alliances the US is being ripped off beyond belief. We do have to spend more money than ever on military, although the smart, funny, talented dictator of NK doesn't like military exercises in South Korea, so those can be stopped, because, they are expensive. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dick Allen Posted June 13, 2018 Share Posted June 13, 2018 Looks like Cohen is going to sing. The tweets should get entertaining soon. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
greg775 Posted June 13, 2018 Share Posted June 13, 2018 1 hour ago, Dick Allen said: Looks like Cohen is going to sing. The tweets should get entertaining soon. Trump will not finish the four years. He will be ousted. Next election should be interesting. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dick Allen Posted June 13, 2018 Share Posted June 13, 2018 (edited) 5 minutes ago, greg775 said: Trump will not finish the four years. He will be ousted. Next election should be interesting. No chance. "Republicans" love him. He has an R after his name. That's all that matters. he doesn't have to truly be a republican. Edited June 13, 2018 by Dick Allen Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
greg775 Posted June 13, 2018 Share Posted June 13, 2018 7 minutes ago, Dick Allen said: No chance. "Republicans" love him. He has an R after his name. That's all that matters. he doesn't have to truly be a republican. I mean his personal atrocities and dealings with Russia will catch up to him and he'll be removed via impeachment. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dick Allen Posted June 13, 2018 Share Posted June 13, 2018 (edited) 13 minutes ago, greg775 said: I mean his personal atrocities and dealings with Russia will catch up to him and he'll be removed via impeachment. No he won't. Republicans would never remove him. If the exact same crap were coming out about Hillary right now, the proceedings would have already begun without any charges from Mueller. But Trump is a victim. Why should he be held accountable for anything he's ever done? Edited June 13, 2018 by Dick Allen Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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