[Cog]

MODERATE LIBERTARIAN

Libertarians may as well be the Koch brothers as far as their approach towards energy and the environment.

You are demanding that people care about things that they don't care about. How do you figure on doing that?

I guess you can put a gun to their head and make them care about it, but otherwise you are just whistling past the graveyard.

[Tanada]

MODERATE LIBERTARIAN

Libertarians may as well be the Koch brothers as far as their approach towards energy and the environment.

Just for the sake of argument lets say I believe you really were a fresh new member starting in February 2017 after the last previous incarnation got permanently blocked.

What have I posted in the last 34 months to indicate to you I am a true blue member of the Koch brothers fan club? I have made my opinions on energy and environmental issues abundantly clear time and time again, so what is it that makes me a brown thumb pro unlimited growth member of this board?

[careinke]

Trump has in effect been LESS militaristic than his immediate predecessors.

Trump is not a foreign policy genius. What he's been up until now is lucky, nothing more, nothing less.

So with the last administration, their messed up foreign policy was deliberate??? That's way more sinister than lucky.

[asg70]

So with the last administration, their messed up foreign policy was deliberate??? That's way more sinister than lucky.

I don't consider Obama's foreign policy "messed up", certainly not compared to what came before.

[careinke]

So with the last administration, their messed up foreign policy was deliberate??? That's way more sinister than lucky.

I don't consider Obama's foreign policy "messed up", certainly not compared to what came before.

Yep, give a guy a medal for what he might do...

[Cog]

Giving pallets of cash to the Iranians and starting a war with Libya was wise foreign policy? Ok redcoat.

[asg70]

Trump destroyed the Iran deal, raising tensions back to GW levels, and has done nothing to tamp down NK's nuclear ambitions (hence the "christmas present"). He's also all but encouraged Russian expansionism and damaged our relationship with NATO. His sudden pullout (or non-pullout) from Syria also angered the hawks of his own party. This is not wise foreign policy.

[Cog]

You do realize the Chinese, and not the Russians, are the major threat to the USA? Iran was always going to build a bomb, with or without a Iran deal. What Trump is forcing is harsh economic sanctions on Iran instead of showering them with pallets of cash. What American president has ever stopped North Korea with their missile and nuclear ambitions? Name one. Trump is trying the carrot with North Korea but we reserve the stick should we have to use it.

I'm surprised at how hawkish the left has become with reference to sustaining war with everyone in the Middle East. I do remember the no blood for oil protests against Bush. But now the left wants no end to war in the Middle East but wants war with Russia as well. What changed?

[asg70]

You do realize the Chinese, and not the Russians, are the major threat to the USA?

Why? Because you say so? Imagine a world in which the US no longer does any business with China or vice versa. Our relationship with china is co-dependent. That co-dependency keeps the peace.

BTW, this is the same Russia that wags its dick at the US with things like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3iQ3CyX1U04

Iran was always going to build a bomb, with or without a Iran deal.

How do you know? You keep making categorical statements.

What Trump is forcing is harsh economic sanctions on Iran

Which was tried before and accomplished nothing.

What American president has ever stopped North Korea with their missile and nuclear ambitions?

That doesn't mean we shouldn't expect them to try.

the left wants no end to war in the Middle East

Another categorical statement that has no backing.

And how do you think sanctions on Iran doesn't edge the US towards a war in the Middle East? You're making no sense. Do you know how close we came to war recently with ships bumping into each other in the Gulf? How many threads are there here with doomers salivating over these close calls???

Do you understand how much of a tinderbox things are? Trump contributed to that.

This is why I say he's been LUCKY. And it may seem like wise foreign policy only up to the point where war breaks out due to a miscalculation, one that is more likely to happen with someone as dumb and unpredictable as Trump at the wheel.

[evilgenius]

Evil genius wrote:

That's simply not true. Obama, being an ex-president, is as thoroughly removed from office as conviction upon impeachment would be for Trump. You have to limit the potential damage.

I think we are talking last one another. I agree that we can not now impeach Obama because he is removed from office.

My point was that there should be a consistent standard for impeachment. Do you not agree?

People like Trump take nations like the US into war, because they don't think before they speak. Trump is the next thing to insane. He is a solipsistic nightmare. He measures the future prospects of his country according to how low he can get the corresponding representative of a foreign country to bow to him. He offers offense to people we will need to rely upon, probably sooner than later. He is not thinking about the best future for the country, unless that has something to do with rewriting school books, so that he can come off as the best president since sliced cheese.

There is something to what you say. Yet, Trump has in effect been LESS militaristic than his immediate predecessors. Consider this, just because someone thinks about a problem does not mean they make the correct choices. It may well be that in the process of “thinking” they are really constructing some justification for the action they re about to commit. There is a great deal of research that shows we make the majority of our decisions without much conscious thought, off the cuff. That can be curtailed if you have a rigorous process for making the decision.

I read a long article about Obama’s decision to attack Lybia, the regular army. Obama was extensively quoted and the article was very flattering of the great man with weighty decision upon his shoulders. Obama talked about having all his advisors around him providing alternatives but what caused him to call for the attack was the concept of the masses column of regulars ready to defend upon the rebels cut off from retreat by the sea. He foresaw a massacre and decided to stop it, by ordering a different massacre.

At first glance it seems Trump is more impetuous, and he may be. But the differences are small. Obama was surrounded by alternatives and yet went with his gut. My assertion is that Trump has a strong personal dislike for killing and seeks alternatives, that’s his gut. I have less sense of Obama’s gut but it seems it is more open to hostility.

Point one is the historical record is that Trump’s ACTIONS have been more passive than Obama’s.

Point two is that the impeachment documents say nothing about Trump bring us to war. If that is the reasoning behind impeachment then it should be surfaced and discussed.

PLEASE NOTE: NONE of this is to support Trump. I’m trying to support logic and the constitutional process.

Just think about Neville Chamberlain, and then think about Trump. Trump is that kind of historically stupid person in charge. He may come with a whole lot more conservative rhetoric, sometimes even imitating Nixon, but that's all it is.

[dissident]

Funny you invoke Chamberlain. He and the participants of the 1938 appeasement conference in Munich represents the modern non-Trump mainstream in the EU and the rest of NATO. Recent resolutions revising the causes and chronology of WWII are designed to whitewash 1938 and fob off the whole war onto Russia. The "carve" up of Poland is a brazen lie since the USSR only reclaimed the eastern Ukraine and Belorus territory grabbed by the Poles in 1920 during their invasion of the USSR after the revolution taking advantage of the chaos and civil war. The revisionist lie spouted ad nauseam would have you believe that it was some sort of 50/50 split between Stalin and Hitler. And it has been established without a shadow of doubt that Hitler was preparing to invade Poland before the infamous Molotov-Ribbentrop non-aggression pact was made in August of 1939. Poland had one just like it with Hitler as well. That included getting parts of Czechoslovakia during its carve up by the Nazis. The Chamberlain sellout whitewash rampant in the NATO west today is that Hitler and Stalin were allies. What retarded BS. The USSR was full bore preparing for a war with Germany and the non-aggression pact bought it enough time to increase its war readiness by 40%. Without this pact, Hitler may have won on the Eastern front and that is what the British and the French wanted. Naturally, the deciders in these bastions of human civilization assumed that Hitler would somehow only ever point himself east.

As for Trump, he is not being allowed to make any serious decisions. The D. Party has hijacked the process of government through hysteria and show trials to push its Cold War II agenda. Like its European clown predecessors during the 1930s, the D. Party is assuming it can have some sort of cake walk and not get offed thanks to their policy of imperial aggression. Keep worrying about Trump being Chamberlain, when all the empirical evidence points to the D. Party and its EU fellow travelers being even worse.

[Newfie]

OK, I’m completely lost on Evils post re: Chamberlin.

My point was that we should be applying some kind of even standard for impeachment, and that if you don’t then it is just political maneuvering. It is disingenuous to impeach Trump when BushII and Obama each perpetrated greater crimes.

Really difficult to see how that relates to Chamberlin. He got himself locked into a political rhetorical trap he could not work out of. But I don’t think he was corrupt.

[evilgenius]

OK, I’m completely lost on Evils post re: Chamberlin.

My point was that we should be applying some kind of even standard for impeachment, and that if you don’t then it is just political maneuvering. It is disingenuous to impeach Trump when BushII and Obama each perpetrated greater crimes.

Really difficult to see how that relates to Chamberlin. He got himself locked into a political rhetorical trap he could not work out of. But I don’t think he was corrupt.

I can clarify it, relative to my previous posts. Trump is the equivalent of Chamberlain, when he retreats from globalization rather than confronts those who aren't happy with it. He could really shake up the way that America faces the future. He could see to it that the country is prepared for the workplaces of the future. He could address the Russians in a manner which might forever relegate them to second class status, yet he takes his foot off of the gas pedal. We only need them to commit to free markets. Their oligarchical structure, of course, can't take that. Their people would benefit almost as much as whatever group of rich guys took that challenge and ran with it. But the corruption is too great for any such altruistic expectation to materialize. The real danger is allowing the future prospects of the US to be reliant upon Russian altruism, however. Trump is blind to that. He would rather placate them. I wonder if he is, secretly, afraid of Putin?

[Newfie]

Evil,

Well you and I apparently have a very different view of what is good for the world. I strongly support DE-growth as the only viable solution for minimizing the negative impacts we have been inflicting our the ecology we require to survive. At some point we will get to a population on the order of 1 billion. It could be done through planning to minimize the suffering or without planning, which would likely create far more suffering.

The last thing we need is someone in charge who accelerates our growth. Trump may be a dolt, but if he is causing the economy to stall and slow growth then he is better than someone who turbo charges it.

2¢

[asg70]

Well you and I apparently have a very different view of what is good for the world. I strongly support DE-growth

Your political platform will not sell outside of the 0.0001% of Malthusians out there. So your ideals are basically useless outside of a purely intellectual exercise.

Trump may be a dolt, but if he is causing the economy to stall and slow growth then he is better than someone who turbo charges it.

He is also dismantling just about every environmental control and regulation. I don't see how him (potentially) accidentally wrecking the economy compensates for that.

[asg70]

Just think about Neville Chamberlain, and then think about Trump. Trump is that kind of historically stupid person in charge. He may come with a whole lot more conservative rhetoric, sometimes even imitating Nixon, but that's all it is.

I think Newfie is missing the bigger picture.

Neville Chamberlain proved that, beyond a certain point, pacificism can cause more harm than good. However, as was the case with Chamberlain, in the short-run, appeasement seems to be the better path forward. You can only weigh the pros and cons after the fact and even then it's up for debate, like the unending debate as to whether it was the right idea to drop the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Trump is not actually a pacifist as much as he avoids what he sees as any immediate threats. He is NOT good at looking further down the chess-board, and frankly, a lot of people engaging in political debates like these aren't either.

Even GW Bush thought on some level he was avoiding Neville Chamberlain-ing himself in going into Iraq. It was a mistake, but you never really know how history would unfold differently. Maybe Saddam wasn't as much of a threat had he been left in power, but INDIRECTLY by him being in power it would have led to some OTHER domino effect that turned out to be far worse than what we got. That is the responsibility of being a head of state of a major power, to weigh all of the possible causes and effect.

It's like the song Freewill by Rush. If you decide not to decide you still have made a choice. Doing nothing (as in the case of Trump) still has a ripple-effect. It's still too early to know what that will be, so in the short-run it makes him look like he's history's biggest pacifist and worthy of sainthood, which is exactly the sort of praise and worship that Neville Chamberlain enjoyed for a short while.

[jedrider]

Even GW Bush thought on some level he was avoiding Neville Chamberlain-ing himself in going into Iraq. It was a mistake, but you never really know how history would unfold differently. Maybe Saddam wasn't as much of a threat had he been left in power, but INDIRECTLY by him being in power it would have led to some OTHER domino effect that turned out to be far worse than what we got. That is the responsibility of being a head of state of a major power, to weigh all of the possible causes and effect.

Nah. GW had nothing to do with it. It was all based on a lie. It was Cheney's doing that it would prove profitable to the corporations he was allied with. Now, that was impeachable except that they were all in it together.

[careinke]

Just think about Neville Chamberlain, and then think about Trump. Trump is that kind of historically stupid person in charge. He may come with a whole lot more conservative rhetoric, sometimes even imitating Nixon, but that's all it is.

Calling the president stupid is pretty stupid, unless maybe YOU are a billionaire and became president. Before you say it, yes, Trumps dad was a millionaire. So let me rephrase that part. Are YOU worth more than 1,000 times your dad?? Otherwise shut up.

Trump has NOT gotten us into anymore wars, by the time the 2020 elections hit we will have the hottest economy of ANY sitting president facing reelection, with the most people working, and the lowest unemployment rate ever along all ethnic backgrounds. He will also have the highest ethnic support of any Republican president since Nixon. Stupid, I don't think term applies.

So sorry, but you are stuck with him for the next five years.

[careinke]

I can clarify it, relative to my previous posts. Trump is the equivalent of Chamberlain, when he retreats from globalization rather than confronts those who aren't happy with it. He could really shake up the way that America faces the future. He could see to it that the country is prepared for the workplaces of the future. He could address the Russians in a manner which might forever relegate them to second class status, yet he takes his foot off of the gas pedal. We only need them to commit to free markets. Their oligarchical structure, of course, can't take that. Their people would benefit almost as much as whatever group of rich guys took that challenge and ran with it. But the corruption is too great for any such altruistic expectation to materialize. The real danger is allowing the future prospects of the US to be reliant upon Russian altruism, however. Trump is blind to that. He would rather placate them. I wonder if he is, secretly, afraid of Putin?

Thanks for this post, it helped me understand where you are coming from.

You are a Globalist.

Took me awhile....

[Cog]

Trump is a nationalist and approaches treaties, trade deals, and relationships with the idea of what is best for the USA. That is why he got my vote in 2016 and will again in 2020. I don't give a hoot what is best for any other country. That is the job of their leadership.

If Europe thinks Russia is a problem, then they need to man up with their own military spending and sanctions. Don't make your problems our problems.