August 1, 20177 yr On 7/30/2017 at 1:55 AM, Niels von Wittelsbach said: I love neither politics or politicians .... I believe that some of you intensely dislike " the socialist " Bernie Sanders and the movement " Our Revolution " .... I have just received an e mail from Nina Turner President " Our Revolution " : " Everyone in our country should be able to go to the doctor when they are sick. Everyone, regardless of income, should not have to choose between the care they need and feeding their family. " Who can be hostile to this idea ? Most Americans seem to ignore that there is a system of very high social protection in Europe for exemple in France " La Sécurité Sociale ", in Germany " Bundesministerium fur Gesundheit " .... The system is perfectly integrated into everyday life .... It is possible in Europe .... Why it seems almost impossible in the US ? .... I have been living in California for quite a while .... And I still do not understand .... ?? .... I think that the voting public bought into Make America Great Again, and that as a whole, we the voting public is afraid of anything labeled socialist. I think it harks back to the Cold War. Which, it looks like that N. Korea, China and Russia 's leaders are working on bringing that relic back from the dead. My family of two can not afford even the "Obamacare" options in my state. So, we've had to pay through the nose not only to our physicians, but to the IRS in penalties and late fees on our income taxes. Seriously, if we could have afforded the Healthcare Marketplace, we would have been good. But the premiums just for the insurance, is well over $1200.00 per person, per month. We're working class, and so we're suffering for it. /Rant Off.
August 1, 20177 yr Author On 7/30/2017 at 0:04 AM, jkjk said: I'm not sure how much conservatism has to do with it. I know there are many conservatives who are quite disappointed with him, for various reasons. Most of the Trump voters I know did not like Trump. They voted out of hatred for the left. Trump is actually not a real conservative, he is a "RINO"
August 1, 20177 yr 2 hours ago, Cult Icon said: Most of the Trump voters I know did not like Trump. They voted out of hatred for the left. Trump is actually not a real conservative, he is a "RINO" Republican in Name Only?
August 1, 20177 yr It seems to me that Bernie Sanders was wrong to present himself as a socialist .... For the many Americans .... Socialism = Communism .... !! .... Just now .... E mail of Sanders .... Medicare for All .... " Too many Americans continue to have no health insurance .... Too many cannot afford the outrageously hight cost of prescription drugs they need. Too many cannot gain access to high quality primary health care or dental care, even when they have insurance. Our goal is not complicated and it is not radical. It is to have the United States join every other industrialized country on Earth in guaranteeing health care for all. Health care must not be considered as a privilege or a commodity. It is a human right to which every man, woman and child is entitled." Apparently this very difficult situation dos not shock many people .... !! .... Especially not the supporters of the Republican Party .... !! ....
August 1, 20177 yr Author 4 hours ago, Niels von Wittelsbach said: It seems to me that Bernie Sanders was wrong to present himself as a socialist .... For the many Americans .... Socialism = Communism .... !! .... Socalism as a trigger word in conservative politics = government waste, increasing costs in both private/public sectors, wealth redistribution, increased taxes, forcing business owners to reorganize operations, increased regulation/compliance costs, SJW , etc. Conservative talking points are fairly plain, they are largely covered by Thomas Sowell's books like "Basic Economics". What you can find here is examples from the communist failures to prove his points. It's a shitty book that oversimplifies things IMHO but that's what politics is. Being anti-federal gov't or anti-gov't in general is an American pastime since its founding. I believe that, in general, the more rural the area, the less trusting they are of government. The cities on the east and west coast tend to be left wing enclaves. The health care sector in general has been organized in a pre-universal health care fashion unlike many countries in Europe/Asia. Much of its value is tied up in the stock and bond markets. So, especially for mega-corporations, you have decades of entrenched interests that want to maintain the status quo. The US health care sector is among the most inefficient/ overpriced/ profitable in the world and, for the same reason, performs the disproportionate share of world medical R & D expenditures. My issue with Bernie Sanders is not "simple human decency", but that he is devoid of specifics and he mainly agitates for more free services. I don't see him as a serious candidate.
August 2, 20177 yr Quote Trump Intel Chief: North Korea Learned From Libya War to “Never” Give Up Nukes The media is now filled with headlines about North Korea’s missile test on Friday, which demonstrated that its ICBMs may be able to reach the continental U.S. What isn’t mentioned in any of these stories is how we got to this point — in particular, what Dan Coats, President Donald Trump’s director of national intelligence, explained last week at the Aspen Security Forum. North Korea’s 33-year-old dictator Kim Jong-un is not crazy, said Coats. In fact, he has “some rationale backing his actions” regarding the country’s nuclear weapons. That rationale is the way the U.S. has demonstrated that North Korea must keep them to ensure “survival for his regime, survival for his country.” Kim, according to Coats, “has watched, I think, what has happened around the world relative to nations that possess nuclear capabilities and the leverage they have and seen that having the nuclear card in your pocket results in a lot of deterrence capability.” In particular, “The lessons that we learned out of Libya giving up its nukes … is, unfortunately: If you had nukes, never give them up. If you don’t have them, get them.” This is, of course, blindingly obvious and has been since the U.S. helped oust longtime Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi’s regime in 2011. But U.S. officials have rarely if ever acknowledged this reality. Here’s the timeline: In December 2003, Libya announced that it would surrender its biological and chemical weapons stockpiles, as well as its rudimentary nuclear weapons program. In celebrating Libya’s decision, President George W. Bush declared that the rest of the world should take away the message that “leaders who abandon the pursuit of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, and the means to deliver them, will find an open path to better relations with the United States and other free nations.” Paula DeSutter, Bush’s Assistant Secretary of State for Verification and Compliance, explained that “we want Libya to be a model for other countries.” In 2011, the U.S. and NATO conducted a bombing campaign to assist Libyan rebels in overthrowing the Gaddafi government. Gaddafi himself was captured by one rebel faction, who apparently sodomized him with a bayonet and then killed him. You would definitely expect this to get the attention of North Korea’s ruling clique — especially given that Iraq had also disarmed and then been invaded, with its dictator executed by a howling mob. And, indeed, North Korea said this explicitly at the time. Its foreign ministry stated, “The Libyan crisis is teaching the international community a grave lesson,” which was that the deal to rid Libya of weapons of mass destruction had been “an invasion tactic to disarm the country.” Yet the Obama administration shamelessly denied this. A reporter told State Department spokesperson Mark Toner that “North Koreans are looking at this” and it didn’t “give them a lot of incentive to give up their nuclear weapons.” Toner replied that “where [Libya is] at today has absolutely no connection with them renouncing their nuclear program and nuclear weapons.” Moreover, North Koreans and other countries can read, and so understand what America’s foreign policy elite has repeatedly explained why we want small countries to disarm. It’s not because we fear that they will use WMD in a first strike on us, since nations like North Korea understand that would immediately lead to their obliteration. Instead, our mandarins explicitly say the problem is that unconventional weapons help small countries deter us from attacking them. There are many examples. For instance, in a 2001 memo, then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld stated: Several of these [small enemy nations] are intensely hostile to the United States and are arming to deter us from bringing our conventional or nuclear power to bear in a regional crisis.... niversally available [WMD] technologies can be used to create “asymmetric” responses that cannot defeat our forces, but can deny access to critical areas in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia…“asymmetric” approaches can limit our ability to apply military power. The think tank Project for a New American Century, a neoconservative pressure group that had a heavy influence on George W. Bush’s administration, made the same point in an influential paper called “Rebuilding America’s Defenses” : The United States also must counteract the effects of the proliferation of ballistic missiles and weapons of mass destruction that may soon allow lesser states to deter U.S. military action by threatening U.S. allies and the American homeland itself. Of all the new and current missions for U.S. armed forces, this must have priority... In the post-Cold War era, America and its allies, rather than the Soviet Union, have become the primary objects of deterrence and it is states like Iraq, Iran and North Korea who most wish to develop deterrent capabilities. In fact, even Dan Coats himself has said this, in a 2008 op-ed he co-wrote. “An Islamic Republic of Iran with nuclear weapons capability would be strategically untenable,” Coats said, because it would possess a “deterrent” against U.S. attack. And to prevent Iran from acquiring the ability to deter us, he explained, we might have to attack them. Video of Coats speaking and his full remarks are below: DAN COATS: It has become a potential existential threat to the United States and it is of great concern. LESTER HOLT: And in terms of the number of options available publicly we know that there aren’t a lot of great options there, and a lot of it is trying to see into Kim Jong-un’s head and that’s I suspect that most difficult kind of intelligence trying to predict someone’s behavior. COATS: Well, he’s demonstrated behavior publicly that really raises some questions about who he is and how he thinks and how he acts, what his behavior is, but our assessment has come — has pretty much resulted in the fact that while he’s a very unusual type of person, he’s not crazy. And there is some rationale backing his actions which are survival, survival for his regime, survival for his country, and he has watched I think what has happened around the world relative to nations that possess nuclear capabilities and the leverage they have and seen that having the nuclear card in your pocket results in a lot of deterrence capability. The lessons that we learned out of Libya giving up its nukes and Ukraine giving up its nukes is unfortunately if you had nukes, never give them up. If you don’t have them, get them, and we see a lot of nations now thinking about how do we get them and none more persistent than North Korea.
August 3, 20177 yr On 01/08/2017 at 2:00 PM, Cult Icon said: Socalism as a trigger word in conservative politics = government waste, increasing costs in both private/public sectors, wealth redistribution, increased taxes, forcing business owners to reorganize operations, increased regulation/compliance costs, SJW , etc. Conservative talking points are fairly plain, they are largely covered by Thomas Sowell's books like "Basic Economics". What you can find here is examples from the communist failures to prove his points. It's a shitty book that oversimplifies things IMHO but that's what politics is. Being anti-federal gov't or anti-gov't in general is an American pastime since its founding. I believe that, in general, the more rural the area, the less trusting they are of government. The cities on the east and west coast tend to be left wing enclaves. The health care sector in general has been organized in a pre-universal health care fashion unlike many countries in Europe/Asia. Much of its value is tied up in the stock and bond markets. So, especially for mega-corporations, you have decades of entrenched interests that want to maintain the status quo. The US health care sector is among the most inefficient/ overpriced/ profitable in the world and, for the same reason, performs the disproportionate share of world medical R & D expenditures. My issue with Bernie Sanders is not "simple human decency", but that he is devoid of specifics and he mainly agitates for more free services. I don't see him as a serious candidate. I was struck by a definition of socialism whose origins I do not know : " Socialism is a version of Christianity " ..... ! .....
August 4, 20177 yr Author http://money.cnn.com/2017/08/04/news/economy/july-jobs-report/index.html *Waiting for the right to support trump and the left to say "it's not a big deal" "Obama did it, not Trump"
August 4, 20177 yr 6 hours ago, Cult Icon said: *Waiting for the right to support trump and the left to say "it's not a big deal" "Obama did it, not Trump" One of the most annoying things about politics is that the reactions to events is based on party and not reality or facts. Although, I do enjoy laughing at videos showing a politician completely changing his/her stance on something based on which party the President belongs to. Spoiler ETA: Bill Maher ended his show with a funny bit about this
August 10, 20177 yr Quote China has been given two headaches – Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un Beijing unlikely to be happy with president’s outburst over North Korea and some observers now feel China should push back against US For months the US’s Twitter-happy commander-in-chief has battled to convince Beijing to join his crusade against Kim Jong-un – and on Saturday he seemed to finally make headway. After China backed a unanimous security council vote targeting Pyongyang, he bragged to his 35 million followers: "United Nations Resolution is the single largest economic sanctions package ever on North Korea. Over one billion dollars in cost to N.K." --Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) Less than 72 hours later, however, and the mercurial US president looked to have repaid China’s support by lobbing a verbal hand grenade on to its doorstep from the comfort of a New Jersey golf club. “North Korea best not make any more threats to the United States [or] they will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen,” Trump told reporters. The comments are likely to have enraged China’s communist rulers as much as they delighted headline-writers. John Delury, a China and North Korea expert from Yonsei University in Seoul, said Pyongyang would relish Trump’s incendiary remarks, which reinforced its claim to be under siege by the US. But China, which saw support for the latest UN sanctions as a big concession, would be less amused. “Trump, after running a victory lap, now unleashes this verbal tirade, heightening all the tensions … It does not play well with Beijing,” Delury said. Beijing responded to Trump’s green-side declaration with a brief foreign ministry statement. It called on “all parties to avoid any words or actions that might escalate the situation” and said “even greater efforts” were now needed to solve the issue. But Shi Yinhong, a foreign policy adviser to China’s cabinet-like state council, said Trump’s “extremely threatening words” – which he believed also partly targeted China – would be a great disappointment to the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, who had been seeking to help his US counterpart. “[Trump’s] language is very provocative,” said Shi, an international relations specialist at Renmin University in Beijing. “It’s 30% serious and 70% rhetoric. But Kim Jong-un is a paranoid guy so this kind of language and threat might have some unfortunate effect [in terms of triggering] … some undesirable preemptive action.” Since his inauguration in January, Trump has attempted to coax Xi into doing more to help him tackle what he has called “the menace of North Korea”. “North Korea is behaving very badly … China has done little to help!” he wrote on Twitter in March. In April, Trump tweeted: "China is very much the economic lifeline to North Korea so, while nothing is easy, if they want to solve the North Korean problem, they will" --Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) Last month, following North Korea’s first intercontinental ballistic missile test, Trump tweeted:“Perhaps China will put a heavy move on North Korea and end this nonsense once and for all!” Trump has admitted he has refrained from challenging China over trade in order to secure its help and on the eve of Saturday’s UN vote, US officials delayed the expected announcement of an investigation into alleged intellectual property abuses that some feared could spark a trade war. Shi said Xi had been trying to cooperate, pointing to China’s support for the recent UN sanctions. Beijing had hoped such actions and the use of quiet diplomacy could help defuse the current crisis. “But Trump’s statement goes in totally the opposite direction,” Shi added, calling for Chinese moves to challenge the White House. “Chinese pressure has only been directed at North Korea. We should balance it and also put some pressure on the US because the danger is coming from both sides,” Shi said. “China should issue a statement – just like it did a few years ago – saying: ‘Anyone who wants to make fire and fury on China’s doorstep will not be permitted [to do so].’” Delury said Trump’s inflammatory proclamation would complicate his efforts to get China on board. “What he literally did is he threatened war if North Korea continues to threaten the US – that’s what is wild about this comment. That is not a good move if you are trying to keep the Chinese on your side because they give credence to the North Korean view that the reason for the nuclear deterrent in the first place is the American threat. And they would not see military action as being justified by any North Korean rhetoric. “From a Chinese perspective, [Trump] is the one who has escalated.” However, Cheng Xiaohe, a North Korea specialist at Renmin University, said Beijing’s ire would also be directed at Pyongyang. Cheng said Trump’s anger at Kim Jong-un’s “utterly intolerable” behaviour was understandable and believed China would be furious at North Korea’s “irrational and unwise” provocations. “Playing with fire with a superpower can eventually get you burned,” he warned. “Trump has sent a clear message which carries weight: [that] the US is ready to use force … Trump’s team has yet to be fully formed but he is surrounded – and greatly influenced by – generals … so if the US does resort to force in the end, he has a bunch of people who have been to war before.” Cheng said China now needed to intensify its push for a diplomatic solution while also stepping up pressure on Pyongyang. “I’m quite certain that the soft approach towards North Korea has failed.” The crisis represents a severe headache for Xi, who is gearing up for two crucial and politically sensitive events in the second half of this year. Before the year is out Trump is expected to visit China, amid warnings that ties between the world’s top two economies have reached a historic “pivot point”. This autumn Beijing hosts a key Communist party summit marking the end of Xi’s first five-year term, at which he hopes to tighten his grip on power by installing loyalists in key positions. Shi said China’s leader needed to push back against Trump, despite concerns about the “negative impact” the Korean crisis might have on preparations for the congress. “If there is a military conflict this will have a big, big negative impact.”
August 11, 20177 yr 1 hour ago, jj3 said: It's interesting to see that several of these guys see Canada as a threat (and Australia as well). In the end, I suspect that they did all this just to be able to invite the cutest girl to their show
August 12, 20177 yr Quote Golf club diplomacy: Trump thanks Putin for expelling US diplomats During wide-ranging Q&A with reporters in New Jersey, president says Russian move will save US ‘a lot of money’ – and claims he wants to ‘de-nuke the world’ Donald Trump has thanked Vladimir Putin for expelling 755 American diplomatic staff from Russia, claiming that it will save the US “a lot of money”. The US president on Thursday held a characteristically freewheeling, subject-hopping, occasionally stunning question-and-answer session over 20 minutes with reporters at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey. When Putin announced last month that the American diplomatic mission in Russia must cut its staff by 755 employees, an ill-tempered response to new US sanctions, the gesture was seen as putting relations at their lowest ebb since the cold war. But Trump, widely criticised for his warm relationship with Putin, said on Thursday: “I want to thank him, because we’re trying to cut down our payroll and as far as I’m concerned, I’m very thankful that he let go of a large number of people because now we have a smaller payroll. “There’s no real reason for them to go back. I greatly appreciate the fact that we’ve been able to cut our payroll of the United States. We’re going to save a lot of money.” The claim was just one of many surprise insights into the thinking of Trump, who was flanked by Mike Pence, the vice-president, and the national security adviser, HR McMaster.
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