Billions and most likely trillions of wasted dollars say you're wrong, Ray.
Darren, you're always thinking stuff.
Damn, Ray. I didn't know you were a warmonger.RayThom wrote: ↑Sat Jun 06, 2020 5:14 pmDarren, you're always thinking stuff.
I'm going to do just that. Thanks.
Shit happens.Drivel wrote: ↑Sat Jun 06, 2020 6:22 pmDamn, Ray. I didn't know you were a warmonger.You must be super pissed the orange cheato is pulling 9,500 troops out of Germany and screwing that commie bitch, Merkel. If he pulls the troops out of Afghanistan too, how are we going to kill muricans kids that haven't been born yet? And Syria too! Holy crap! You don't want to lay off big boy generals and admirals much less the military industrial complex. Way to go Ray!It would be a crying shame to take the money that's saved and cut the hell out of the military budget.After all $700 billion is a fart in a windstorm. What good is $70 billion from a 10% cut? I guess fucked up water in Flint, bridges rotting away and piss poor schools for Blacks in inner city neighborhoods is A OK with you.Same with those blue cities run by Democrats for decades where Blacks killing Blacks is a regular thing. Obviously you're in favor of the same mismanagement the military is gifted at.It's the American way, Ray. The way it is and ever will be thanks you for your support.
Trump just revealed a huge weakness. It may prove fatal.
(AP Photo/Patrick Semansky, File)
(Patrick Semansky, File)
By Greg Sargent
Opinion writer
June 8, 2020 at 10:29 AM EDT
President Trump’s advisers are letting it be known that he is seriously considering a televised national address on race and national unity. When your paroxysms of laughter subside, consider the serious point here: This reveals just how badly Trump misread the politics of this moment, to a potentially fatal degree.
This misreading highlights a political vulnerability on Trump’s part that has been exposed by the seismic events of the past few months — pandemic, economic depression and, now, a level of civil ferment sweeping the country not seen in perhaps a half century.
What’s been exposed is this: Trump simply will not, or cannot, operate out of any conception of what’s good for the country — the whole country. Faced with enormous crises, he has tried to pretend they don’t exist, or has tried gaslighting us into disbelieving our own eyes and ears about them, or has used them as occasions to demagogue and incite hatreds in ways he believes will help his reelection.
But all the gaslighting and demagoguery have failed. Indeed, they have only further exposed that vulnerability.
A new $20 million ad campaign from the Democratic super PAC American Bridge homes in on this very weakness.
The group is targeting mostly seniors in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania with spots such as this one, which features a Vietnam veteran who voted for Trump in 2016 but is now voting for Joe Biden, because Biden has “the good of the country in his heart”:
“I wouldn’t bet my life on the next three things that come out of Donald Trump’s mouth,” he says.
The crucial link drawn here is between Trump’s lack of concern for what’s good for the country and his uncontrollable lying. Precisely because Trump has no such concern, he constantly lies to the country about the challenges it faces.
This point is driven home in another one of the ads, which features an elderly Pennsylvania woman talking about the novel coronavirus. Biden, she says, “would have come forward at the very beginning and told people the truth,” that “they had something really dangerous coming.”
By contrast, of course, Trump lied incessantly to downplay the threat, largely because he feared the truth would rattle the markets and imperil his reelection. Here again the nonstop lying is the direct outgrowth of lack of concern for what’s good for the country.
Trump’s lying has grave consequences
Bradley Beychok, the president of American Bridge, tells me the group’s research has discovered a type of Trump voter who doesn’t follow politics closely but has grown persuaded that “Trump only cares about himself” and that “he’s not the president they expected.”
“Right now is a clear moment to hold Trump accountable for not operating in the best interests of the country,” Beychok told me.
Beychok noted that the scale of the crises rocking the country have driven this home even more starkly. On the coronavirus, for instance, his lying has crossed from something that could easily be tuned out into something that concerns countless Americans’ lives and economic survival.
“Where they used to just chalk this up to, ‘there he goes again,’ they’re thinking, ‘now I don’t have a job, now I don’t have any health care, I may be worried about my parents,'” Beychok told me. “He’s saying it’s all fine.”
Indeed, Trump just laughably spun the new jobs numbers as a “rocket ship” amid the most severe economic depression in nearly a century. Ludicrously, his campaign used those numbers to launch a $10 million ad campaign proclaiming “the great American comeback has begun,” even though Trump’s massive failures are a large reason we’re in such a deep economic hole.
It’s precisely for this reason that Democrats believe the stretch between now and Labor Day may be extraordinarily critical. As Beychok told me, Trump is using his massive financial advantage “to recover,” and Democrats need to “make sure that doesn’t happen.”
The damage Trump has done to himself with his lies and failures on the coronavirus is already obvious. But it’s now becoming evident that he badly damaged himself with his response to the protests in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd, too.
Trump badly misread the moment
A new CNN poll finds Biden leads Trump among national adults by 55 percent to 41 percent. Only 38 percent approve of Trump’s performance — down seven points in the past month — while 57 percent disapprove.
The CNN poll also finds that 67 percent say the criminal justice system favors whites over blacks, that 60 percent say sending in troops is unjustified and — importantly — that 65 percent say Trump’s response has been “more harmful."
The CNN poll might be an outlier. But other recent high-quality polls have put Biden up by seven, eight, 10 and 11 points. And some of these polls have also confirmed that large majorities see the protesters’ grievances as legitimate and broadly disapprove of Trump’s response to them.
Meanwhile, new Marist polling finds that 67 percent say Trump’s response has “mostly increased tensions,” mirroring CNN’s findings.
Trump — who has worked to deceive the country about the true nature of these protests by threatening to send in the military to quell “domestic terror” — thought he could use them to foment hatred and fear, to win back wavering (white) swing voters. But he badly misread the politics of this moment.
That’s only further revealed by the amusing spectacle of Trump’s advisers suddenly scrambling to persuade us that he will now give an address on race and national unity. But such a speech would just amount to the ultimate in gaslighting from a president who has deliberately incited hate for years, all to benefit himself.
And it’s likely to be received by the public as exactly that.
Don't worry, they can still be used to patrol the cages in which the damn illegal kids are placed in after we yank them from their parents.You must be super pissed the orange cheato is pulling 9,500 troops out of Germany and screwing that commie bitch, Merkel. If he pulls the troops out of Afghanistan too, how are we going to kill muricans kids that haven't been born yet? And Syria too! Holy crap! You don't want to lay off big boy generals and admirals much less the military industrial complex. Way to go Ray!
We would have to keep that along with primary centers for logistical support. I can see facilities like Diego Garcia retained too.
I just said that.
Based on moves so far, I don't think we understand how far reaching the changes in the military will be for a variety of reasons.BoSoxGal wrote: ↑Tue Jun 09, 2020 1:23 pmWhat exactly is the advantage to bringing troops home from Germany? We have a strong strategic interest in having our foothold in Central Europe, and it is hardly a hardship duty - I have family who served tours there and numerous friends from my JROTC days as well. It’s a plum assignment, coveted among Army and Air Force enlisted. Any deaths that have occurred there for decades are accidental, and just as many such deaths occur on military bases here in the States.
I hardly think that when Americans talk about bringing the troops home, they’re talking about troops in Germany - or for that matter, South Korea, Japan, Guam, or any of the many other overseas stations where we keep our folks at the ready. They’re talking about Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Yemen, etc. Places where our troops get killed in hostile confrontations.
Here's the real danger if Donald Trump loses the 2020 election
Analysis by Chris Cillizza, CNN Editor-at-large
Updated 10:07 AM ET, Thu June 11, 2020
(CNN)Joe Biden said Wednesday night that he believes if President Donald Trump loses the election and refuses to leave the White House, many of the former generals who used to work for him "will escort him from the White House with great dispatch."
The comments, which Biden made in an interview with Trevor Noah on "The Daily Show," are not the first time that the former vice president -- and presumptive Democratic presidential nominee -- has suggested that he believes the incumbent may well seek to fiddle with the election results.
"Mark my words I think he is gonna try to kick back the election somehow, come up with some rationale why it can't be held," Biden said in April.
But the real danger here is not that Trump changes the date of the general election, which is virtually impossible, or that he seeks to claims squatter's rights in the White House.
The thing that could threaten Biden's potential presidency -- and the ability of the country to move on from what will be one of the nastiest elections in modern history -- is if Trump simply refuses to admit he lost, never conceding that Biden is the fair-and-square president.
And that, judging by Trump's long history of refusing to ever acknowledge defeat, and instead claiming he was cheated out of victory by nefarious forces, is not only a possible outcome but a likely one if the incumbent comes up short this fall.
Consider:
* When Trump lost the 2016 Iowa caucuses to Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, he argued he had been cheated. "Ted Cruz didn't win Iowa, he stole it," tweeted Trump. "That is why all of the polls were so wrong and why he got far more votes than anticipated. Bad!"
* When Trump lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton in 2016 -- even while winning the Electoral College and the presidency! -- he said, with zero proof, that 3 to 5 million illegal votes had been cast.
* Following the loss of the House majority in the 2018 election, Trump suggested to House Republicans that they had been victimized by Democratic cheating. "We've gotta watch those vote tallies," Trump told a crowd of Republican lawmakers at a Republican fundraiser in May 2019. "You know, I keep hearing about the election and the various counting measures that they have." He added that Democrats won all of the close elections in 2018; "There's something going on," he said, telling the assembled lawmakers that they needed to "be a little bit more paranoid than you are, OK?"
* In advance of last month's California House special election, which the Republican went on to win, Trump tweeted that "(Democrats) are trying to steal another election. It's all rigged out there."
So, yeah. There's a pattern here.
Given his past comments -- even in an election (2016) that he won! -- there's every reason to believe that even if Trump vacates the White House in January 2021 that he will never, ever concede that he lost. And that would have massive consequences on not only our politics but on the broader foundations on which American democracy is built.
Consider that in 2000, after more than a month of recounts and with considerable uncertainty about who actually won Florida, Al Gore not only ended his campaign but offered a major call for unity in the country.
"Tonight, for the sake of our unity of the people and the strength of our democracy, I offer my concession," Gore said on December 13, 2000. "Neither (George W. Bush) nor I anticipated this long and difficult road, certainly neither of us wanted it to happen. Yet it came, and now it has ended. Resolved, as it must be resolved, through the honored institutions of our democracy."
"For the sake of our unity of the people and the strengths of our democracy."
"Resolved, as it must be resolved, through the honored institutions of our democracy."
Can you imagine Trump, in a similar circumstance, doing or saying the same? Absolutely not! Heck, it's hard to imagine Trump saying those words if it's clear he was beaten on Election Day!
What the lack of any sort of formal concession from Trump would do is clear: For his legions of adoring supporters, they would also never believe that Biden had won -- or that he was the recognized president, whether or not the electoral map or the popular vote proved it. Which would mean that for a decent-sized chunk of the country, Biden would be viewed as an illegitimate president and, therefore, not someone who needed to be listened to.
And it's very easy to imagine Trump -- with his 80-plus million Twitter followers and the potential that he would be the head of a TV network post-presidency -- beating the drum of illegitimacy day in and day out. Because, well, it is in his interest to do so and, as he has shown repeatedly during his presidency, he has very little regard for either the office or its status as a moral beacon within the country and the world.
The result isn't hard to imagine: An even deeper divide within the country between the Trumpists and everyone else. A divide that would make Biden's pledge to create "One America" again an absolute pipe dream
If you can't see it, it's a photo of a heavily armed white guy and a heavily armed black guy (both are carrying assault rifles) giving each other a fistbump while the 2 were standing militia guard over Coeur D'Alene's commercial district.
