impeachment stupidity

[hodad]

I'm glad I've come by for this discussion.  It's enlightening to see how Trump followers see the world. 

 

[Matador]

indoctrinated much?

Are you really calling someone out for being indoctrinated?  You, who linked to 'Clinton kill count / body count' websites during the 2016 election?

Physician, heal thyself.

I think Recording Engineer and Boji have the right of it:  until we de-incentivize shenanigans, said shenanigans will continue. 

 

[Matador]

I guess Trump is going full, "Do the crimes in the open then they aren't crimes!" thing again:

“Well, I would think that if they were honest about it, they would start a major investigation into the Bidens. It's a very simple answer. They should investigate the Bidens,” the president told reporters about Ukraine. “Likewise, China should start an investigation into the Bidens. Because what happened in China is just about as bad as what happened with Ukraine."
...
“I have a lot of options on China,” he said of the trade talks, “but if they don't do what we want, we have tremendous power.”

So, in other words, investigate Biden, or I turn up the heat on more tariffs?

It makes sense: everyone knows if you rob someone in front of a camera, then it's no longer a crime.

 

[CJ]

trying to do the same thing that got you investigated by the FBI in the first place is insane stupidity.

 

[iomegaman]

I honestly cannot see how anyone can stand back and not admit that Trump is very clearly asking for foreign governments to investigate his political opponents (Biden AND Warren per China phone call), this is a CLEAR violation of the Constitution and the framers intentionally made it illegal for foreign governments to interfere in US elections...

I mean he stood on the lawn today and ASKED China to investigate Biden...based on what?

A debunked conspiracy theory...

Bidens actions in the Ukraine were supported by the State dept AND many many GOP Senators...there is no cover-up and even if there were asking THEM to investigate it for you is a violation...

At this point Trump is not even trying to follow the law...

When this is over...we will have either a dictatorship under the power of foreign influence or the end of the GOP...

There is already serious movement in a place like TEXAS to turn it blue...

The thing they fear the most will be upon them.

But frankly I'm done with it all...arrest the motherfucker and throw him and everyone who abetted him in jail.

It's going to get much worse.

 

[Recording Engineer]

I feel like this is just going to be part of a defense case: Look, he was just talking out of frustration for being attacked so much. This is just how he is and always talks. He wouldn’t ever really do that.

 

[okgb]

might as well start a poll , fer or aginst

he seems to spend allot of time trying to discredit other people,
what positive things has he done ?  [  that won't  affect  the deficit after he's gone ]

 

[CJ]

what's with these Canadian women every time i go to Hidden Beach  at Lake Tahoe half of them are not even attired legally. 

 

[JohnRoberts]

might as well start a poll , fer or aginst

he seems to spend allot of time trying to discredit other people,
what positive things has he done ?  [  that won't  affect  the deficit after he's gone ]

The next official poll occurs in a little over a year from right now.

The democrats should put their energy into removing him from office then. That has a higher probability of success than removing him with a (republican controlled) senate trial before then.

JR

PS: I'm not ignoring you guys because I disrespect you'r opinions, just too much work for such a modest possible benefit. Please do try to keep it civil.

 

[living sounds]

Didn't I say the only good thing was that Trump hasn't started a war? Now he may have done just that in effect, by abandoning the Kurds in Syria. Even the usually unshakable Trump apoligists at Fox and Friends object:

https://twitter.com/revrrlewis/status/1181171727453364225

 

[JohnRoberts]

Didn't I say the only good thing was that Trump hasn't started a war? Now he may have done just that in effect, by abandoning the Kurds in Syria. Even the usually unshakable Trump apoligists at Fox and Friends object:

https://twitter.com/revrrlewis/status/1181171727453364225

Sorry I don't watch F&F...

Trump responsible for starting a war in Syria, seriously?

The end game in Syria will be pretty brutal and they have already been caught using illegal weapons there in the final Syrian government push to clear the last opposition stronghold (allepo?).  Since Russia and Turkey have been exerting more influence over that region, the Kurds are getting less and less support. Turkey wouldn't mind disappearing the Kurds entirely as they have their own internal Kurdish problems. Russia probably doesn't much care. 
======
Speaking of hot spots not in the headlines Kashmir seems to be heating up, and that involves two nuclear armed nations (India/Pakistan).
=======
Afghanistan was close to a signed peace deal, when Taliban blew it with too many car/truck bombs (celebrating too soon? Sorry bad joke, more likely they perceive weakness from us). Expecting the Taliban to behave after a deal  seems dubious.
======
Iraq has some fresh internal conflict (karbala?).

The world is not a tea party.

Trump is not a war monger IMO, if anything John Bolton wore that hat in his administration and Trump fired Bolton after he screwed up more than once with bellicose public comments. 

JR

 

[s2udio]

Trump responsible for starting a war in Syria, seriously?

Trump derangement syndrome seems like a cult nowadays.
What a bunch of lemmings, stupids always follow the idiots at the front to jump of the cliff.
Whatever happened to critical thinking.

 

[dogears]

I, for one, love foreigners lecturing the US about what we should or shouldn’t do, all the while demonstrating a poverty of understanding about the contents of the US Constitution and the workings of US politics that is rivaled only by that of the general US citizen.  ;D

 

[living sounds]

It's pretty simple: If the US moves out, the Turks move in and the slaughter (arguably genocide) will commence. Incientally also making a return of ISIS much more likely.

That's why you have the people at the Pentagon and even Trump fanboy Lindsay Graham condemning the move.

Even former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney wrote:

“The President’s decision to abandon our Kurd allies in the face of an assault by Turkey is a betrayal. It says that America is an unreliable ally, it facilitates ISIS resurgence, and it presages another humanitarian disaster.

The world is more complicated than most can imagine, it's not "the" war in Syria, but another war, battle, slaughter (the semantics don't matter for tens of thousands of likely victims) - also fought on the territory of Syria.


And yes, "foreigners" should care. Even if you didn't care about the victims, it affects people in Europe directly. Germany has taken in a million refugees from Syria, fleeing a war that was ultimately the consequence of Bush and Cheyney's oil-grabbing adventure in Iraq.

 

[dogears]

It's pretty simple: If the US moves out, the Turks move in and the slaughter (arguably genocide) will commence. Incientally also making a return of ISIS much more likely.

That's why you have the people at the Pentagon and even Trump fanboy Lindsay Graham condemning the move.

Even former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney wrote:

“The President’s decision to abandon our Kurd allies in the face of an assault by Turkey is a betrayal. It says that America is an unreliable ally, it facilitates ISIS resurgence, and it presages another humanitarian disaster.

The world is more complicated than most can imagine, it's not "the" war in Syria, but another war, battle, slaughter (the semantics don't matter for tens of thousands of likely victims) - also fought on the territory of Syria.


And yes, "foreigners" should care. Even if you didn't care about the victims, it affects people in Europe directly. Germany has taken in a million refugees from Syria, fleeing a war that was ultimately the consequence of Bush and Cheyney's oil-grabbing adventure in Iraq.

Then feel free to sashay your happy selves down there and do what needs to be done.  Then you wouldn’t have to worry about what President Trump or President Obama or anyone else does or doesn’t do.  :


Edit - and for what it’s worth you conveniently skipped over President Obama’s administration’s culpability in Syria. Foreign / Western meddling in the Middle East is a tradition practically on par with Christmas. No major European nation has clean hands there going back for centuries. But everyone loves to wag the finger and demand to deploy other people’s sons and spend other people’s money.

 

[JohnRoberts]

It's pretty simple: If the US moves out, the Turks move in and the slaughter (arguably genocide) will commence. Incientally also making a return of ISIS much more likely.

That's why you have the people at the Pentagon and even Trump fanboy Lindsay Graham condemning the move.

vague weak call to authority fallacy

Even former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney wrote:

etc, and known anti-Trumper after Trump refused to give him a position in the administration. Trump did endorse Romney for his senate run but that loyalty is apparently not reciprocated.

“The President’s decision to abandon our Kurd allies in the face of an assault by Turkey is a betrayal. It says that America is an unreliable ally, it facilitates ISIS resurgence, and it presages another humanitarian disaster.

That is a very EU way of looking at it, since the EU (and Turkey) have not stepped up to help secure the captured ISIS fighters.

Erdogan is no fan of the Kurds, and very likely sees this as an opportunity to diminish their influence in the region. 

I am uncertain about the possibility of rehabilitating captured ISIS fighters. We already have our share in GITMO, maybe NATO needs their own GITMO. It was simpler in the bad old days when these unredeemable fighters would end up in a mass grave.

The world is more complicated than most can imagine, it's not "the" war in Syria, but another war, battle, slaughter (the semantics don't matter for tens of thousands of likely victims) - also fought on the territory of Syria.

Yes it's complicated... I have been trying to explain some of these situations right here for years.

The Kurds were strong US allies, perhaps because we protected them with a no fly zone over northern Iraq when Saddam was fighting dirty (used poison gas) against the Kurds there years ago.

These days the geopolitics with Turkey and Russia, make this even more difficult. For us to effect no fly zones over syria we have to coordinate with Russian air power.  Turkey is a NATO member so why wouldn't they protect their EU friends? Perhaps because they hate/fear the Kurds.

And yes, "foreigners" should care. Even if you didn't care about the victims, it affects people in Europe directly. Germany has taken in a million refugees from Syria, fleeing a war that was ultimately the consequence of Bush and Cheyney's oil-grabbing adventure in Iraq.

Take a breath..  this is precisely the consequence of Assad's civil war...  and longstanding enmity between Erdogan and the Kurds.

It might seem convenient to blame the US for everything, but it doesn't always hold water. We are not the world's only cop, and others also have some responsibility here. 

Lets see how this turns out...

JR

 

[living sounds]

vague weak call to authority fallacy

Actually not. They are the experts. Lindsay Graham (who I am not generally a fan of) had a career in the military. They understand what will follow from this decision. Trump either doesn't or he doesn't care. Which of these would be worse?

BTW, now even Mitch McConnel has critizied Trump for this move. Not a "known anti-Trumper"...

[quote author=dogears]
But everyone loves to wag the finger and demand to deploy other people’s sons and spend other people’s money.
[/quote]

If you look at all the money the US spends and has spent on its military and where it exerts its power, this is not a big item on the spending list. It shows where Trump is weak, and where he doesn't care about loyalty or about human life. He's giving in to the autocrats again.

I guess it will take still more time and more deplorable acts of Trump for you to see him for what he is.

 

[dogears]

Love the binary thinking. I say, it’s none of your business where the US deploys if it’s not Germany or the EU, and you say - see Trump for who he is? I didn’t vote for the guy. I don’t care about him much one way or another. But I also know if you care about Syria and the Kurds so dang much you can volunteer, sign up, get yourself down there and fight. I’m sure they’d be glad to have a volunteer.

If you look at all the money the US spends and has spent on its military and where it exerts its power, this is not a big item on the spending list. It shows where Trump is weak, and where he doesn't care about loyalty or about human life. He's giving in to the autocrats again.

what does the US DOD budget have a tinker’s damn to do with whether it is in the strategic interests of the US to stand between Turkey, an ally and NATO member, and the Kurdish forces?

Look I’m not even saying I think we should bail. But I am certain that it is none of YOUR business. All these hand wringing, pearl clutching folks should go petition their own government to save the Kurds, or the Syrians, or the whales, or whatever. What the US does with our blood and our treasure is quite literally up to us. Go wag your finger to Merkel now that you’ve heard of the Kurds for the first time yesterday and learned which side you think you should be on by picking the one opposed to President Trump this morning.

 

[boji]

They are the experts

  Does this not then by definition make it an "appeal to authority"?

No problem when used to substantiate facts, but I'd like to think Trump is not deliberately sending us into war for its own sake. At worst, he's doing it unconsciously and refuses to listen to his staff.  At best, his choices will be modified once the chorus of analyst reports suggest a more humane course of action.

fwiw, I love that we try around here to be careful about logical fallacies.  Best solution (in short supply everywhere) would be to steel man each other.

 

[boji]

Edit:

Trump derangement syndrome seems like a cult nowadays

More church than cult.  Though the line grows thin.  Nietzsche's quote, "God is Dead" has never been more prescient.  I've begun to agree with those who say it is not the decree, but the rejoinder to the claim that best expresses the blue-state zeitgeist.  I believe Nietzsche's point was/is, what does it mean for the world to renounce the penultimate symbol of perfection?  To what infallible creature should we now attribute our most worthy of goals? Who are we best to model ourselves after? 

As i've said before, the 'death of god' brings with it a crisis of hierarchy.  A vacuum where social justice and moral guidance are desperately in need of restructuring.  Since the left are the "dark-matter torchbearers" (atheism), they also lay claim to the new language (control) of good and evil. Because we are now taught that all truth is relative, that language is the tool of the powerful, the left believes itself the only party responsible enough to speak into existence,  "the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government". (F. Fukuyama)