Page 30 of 56 FirstFirst ... 2026272829303132333440 ... LastLast
Results 871 to 900 of 1675

Thread: Life in the Trump Era, Part 2

  1. #871
    Quote Originally Posted by UTEopia View Post
    i don’t know how I feel about this. The article is correct about at least one thing - If approached directly Trump, like the 12 year old he is, would do the opposite. I expect Trump will scuttle the deal and will use NK as his justification and his proof that he will get a better deal. To me the NK deal is like a verbal commitment from a 9th grader. A lot of water will flow under the bridge before anything substantive happens.
    Based on how Russia has bullied and invaded Ukraine after they gave up their Soviet-era nukes, what are the odds that Kim will fully denuclearize? Scuttle the first generation testing and development environment, a low cost, but who really thinks he'll get rid of the existing weapons or halt further development? But like with Iran-Contra under Reagan, what is the underlying priority of Republican concerns? To make Trump look better in the short term, not worry about the long term?

    Different situation, same basic issue: Reagan rode into power in large part criticizing how Carter handled the Iranian hostage situation. But how many Republicans today care that Reagan also broke the law & sold weapons to Iran, to fund arming the Contras in Central America? My guess is fewer than 1% of Republicans remember or care about how they strengthened Iran under Reagan... but Obama supporting the Iranian framework is just awful - just ask Netanyahu.
    Last edited by Ma'ake; 05-06-2018 at 08:45 AM.

  2. #872
    Quote Originally Posted by Ma'ake View Post
    Based on how Russia has bullied and invaded Ukraine after they gave up their Soviet-era nukes, what are the odds that Kim will fully denuclearize? Scuttle the first generation testing and development environment, a low cost, but who really thinks he'll get rid of the existing weapons or halt further development? But like with Iran-Contra under Reagan, what is the underlying priority of Republican concerns? To make Trump look better in the short term, not worry about the long term?

    Different situation, same basic issue: Reagan rode into power in large part criticizing how Carter handled the Iranian hostage situation. But how many Republicans today care that Reagan also broke the law & sold weapons to Iran, to fund arming the Contras in Central America? My guess is fewer than 1% of Republicans remember or care about how they strengthened Iran under Reagan... but Obama supporting the Iranian framework is just awful - just ask Netanyahu.
    Israel has good reason to be distrusting of Iran. I'll also note that when the Iran deal came out I was critical of it for the same reasons that it is showing problems. I don't agree with Trump's tactics but I also think there needs to be further enforcement that Iran is living up to its part of the deal - and I remain skeptical that they truly are.

    Trump thinks he has more power than he does, and Obama was pretty mealy-mouthed when it came to wielding the power he actually had, and both of these things are evidenced by the negotiations around the treaty.

  3. #873
    Obama was pretty mealy-mouthed when it came to wielding the power he actually had
    As one of my liberal friends put it regarding the Red Line in Syria: Unlike TR's quote about speaking softly while carrying a big stick, Obama's philosophy appeared to be to speak loudly and often while carrying no stick.

    As Admiral Arleigh Burke, CNO under Eisenhower and Kennedy put it:

    "America and the West in general have a guilt complex about power. It frustrates our very use of power. In Cuba, Suez, in Korea . . . in Laos, we half use it in a compromise between dream and reality. In a schizoid manner we have balanced a Department of Defense with a Committee on Disarmament, ballistic missiles with the position that war is unthinkable. Basically, we oscillate between an unpalatable reality and an act of faith. No one really knows what we will do because we ourselves do not know."
    Last edited by USS Utah; 05-05-2018 at 06:35 PM.
    "It'd be nice to please everyone but I thought it would be more interesting to have a point of view." -- Oscar Levant

  4. #874
    Quote Originally Posted by Rocker Ute View Post
    Israel has good reason to be distrusting of Iran. I'll also note that when the Iran deal came out I was critical of it for the same reasons that it is showing problems. I don't agree with Trump's tactics but I also think there needs to be further enforcement that Iran is living up to its part of the deal - and I remain skeptical that they truly are.

    Trump thinks he has more power than he does, and Obama was pretty mealy-mouthed when it came to wielding the power he actually had, and both of these things are evidenced by the negotiations around the treaty.
    The funny thing about Netanyahu claiming Israel had detected that Iran has been lying about their nuclear program is that Israel that was accusing *any* other country of lying about a nuclear program.

    Israel !


    The very same Israel that lied through their teeth to four different US Presidents (2 Dems, 2 GOP) about developing their own nuclear program... AND they got the US tax payer to foot the bill.


    Americans are complete dopes when it comes to Israel.

  5. #875
    Quote Originally Posted by USS Utah View Post
    As one of my liberal friends put it regarding the Red Line in Syria: Unlike TR's quote about speaking softly while carrying a big stick, Obama's philosophy appeared to be to speak loudly and often while carrying no stick.

    As Admiral Arleigh Burke, CNO under Eisenhower and Kennedy put it:

    "America and the West in general have a guilt complex about power. It frustrates our very use of power. In Cuba, Suez, in Korea . . . in Laos, we half use it in a compromise between dream and reality. In a schizoid manner we have balanced a Department of Defense with a Committee on Disarmament, ballistic missiles with the position that war is unthinkable. Basically, we oscillate between an unpalatable reality and an act of faith. No one really knows what we will do because we ourselves do not know."
    We have 15 aircraft carriers. China has one and a half. Russia's carrier lists & smokes like a tire fire.

    Trump's supporters & many liberals have one thing in common - questioning for how long we need to be the world's cop.

    In addition to our general numbness about garden variety shootings, we're even more numb about the issue of PTSD and the mental plight of Vets. But we're ready to go back to war, at any time, and make sure the rest of the world knows it.

    We're the 21st century Vikings, a warlike people. Our vision of "liberty" includes the ability to kill each other, sometimes over just suspected property theft and almost always if we feel threatened (especially if you happen to be a police officer).

    The Department of Defense, while asking for more & more money, frequently gets outflanked by the secret Keynesians in Congress, which procures money beyond that requested, keeps weapons programs that were headed for the scrapheap (B1 bomber, A10 Warthog, etc).

    In the Guns vs Butter debate, we've opted to do both, now charging on credit - at the height of the business cycle - at levels last seen during the worst part of the Great Recession .

    Everyone expected Paul Ryan to lead the charge to slash Medicare & Social Security, but he declared victory and got the hell outta there.

    In context, Obama erred on the side of restraint, preferring consensus over unilateral action, coaxing more immediate parties to seek solutions for themselves.

    Where Dick Cheney declared "we'll be greeted as liberators!" and instead we got Fallujah and then ISIS, Obama sought to ease America into a more sustainable, less Viking-esque future.
    Last edited by Ma'ake; 05-06-2018 at 08:20 AM.

  6. #876
    Five-O Diehard Ute's Avatar
    Join Date
    Feb 2013
    Location
    Salt Lake City
    Posts
    4,894
    Quote Originally Posted by Ma'ake View Post
    We have 15 aircraft carriers.

    The Department of Defense, while asking for more & more money, frequently gets outflanked by the secret Keynesians in Congress, which procures money beyond that requested, keeps weapons programs that were headed for the scrapheap (B1 bomber, A10 Warthog, etc).
    We only have 11 aircraft carriers. There are two more under construction.

    The B1 and A10 shouldn’t have been headed for the scrapheap.

    Honestly Congress is overly involved in the details of defense spending.

    Prime examples are programs such as the B-2 and F-22.

    When those were launched both were to produce far more aircraft. But Congress got cold feet with the budget mid construction and cancelled the programs.

    While that saved production money, it was a more expensive decision. The construction of the hardware is the cheapest part of the process. The R&D for the program is where the most money is spent these days.

    By canceling those programs the cost per unit sky rocketed. And now we’re left short of what is truly needed with each plane.




    Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

  7. #877
    We have 15 aircraft carriers. China has one and a half.


    Nimitz
    Eisenhower
    Vinson
    Theodore Roosevelt
    Abraham Lincoln
    George Washington
    Stennis
    Truman
    Reagan
    GHW Bush

    Gerald R. Ford's first expected deployment is still two years off in 2020.

    The Chinese are using
    Liaoning as a training ship (she is their Langley). Meanwhile, the as yet unamed Type 001A (they skipped the Lexington for their Ranger) is ahead of schedule and may join the PLAN fleet by the end of this year.

    Both China and Russia are developing their own stealth fighters.

    China's strategy involves the South China Sea, and their focus is on becoming a regional power. There is a similarity to Japan after WWI when the Washington Naval Treaty limited their navy to a portion of the size of the British and U.S. fleets -- the 5:5:3 formula. But Japan had only one ocean to concern themselves with, while the U.S had two, and the British had three.

    Now, It's not so much that I want to keep being the world's policemen, but rather that I do not wish to return to the foreign and military policy of the 1920s and 1930s any more than my liberal friends would want to return to the economic policies of the 1920s.
    Last edited by USS Utah; 05-06-2018 at 12:25 PM.
    "It'd be nice to please everyone but I thought it would be more interesting to have a point of view." -- Oscar Levant

  8. #878
    Point taken on the number of carriers.

    Congress' involvement in the F22 is a really good example of Eisenhower's warning about the "Military Industrial Complex". I remember well the hype about the Mig-25 Foxbat and how the F14, F15 and F16 were reasonable *beginnings* of a response, but what the Mig25 could do we couldn't possibly match... until the Soviet pilot defected to Japan in one, and we found out it was an interceptor only, unable to dog fight, with welding marks on the body.

    Another good one was the $500M we spent in the 60s on a nuclear powered airplane, you know, to match what the Soviets were doing. In the post WWII economy, we had money to burn.

    (Fast forward to 2018, and the Russian autocrat has one of his oligarchs send $500,000 to the US President's clumsy "fixer" lawyer, to help pay hush money to a porn star who is angry her own previous lawyer was complicit in keeping the amount so low. Times change. Wow.)

    Anyway, back to defense spending: the big tax cuts, followed by the incoherent drunken sailor spending bill threaten $1T deficits as far as the eye can see - and this is all before interest rates on T-bills really begin to manifest themselves - and by 2025 even our always robust defense spending falls below interest payments on the debt.

    Who in the world could possible want this set of circumstances on the world's most powerful nation? The checker-playing clowns at the national level have no idea the ground is shifting under their feet... under *all* of our feet.

    "Well, lookie here! Sure, it might be harder to drive up & down the street, but with this neato lava coming through the ground, we won't need hot water heaters anymore!"

  9. #879
    Sam the Sheepdog LA Ute's Avatar
    Join Date
    Feb 2013
    Location
    Los Angeles, California
    Posts
    17,726

    "It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
    --Antoine de Saint-Exupery

    "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold."
    --Yeats

    “True, we [lawyers] build no bridges. We raise no towers. We construct no engines. We paint no pictures - unless as amateurs for our own principal amusement. There is little of all that we do which the eye of man can see. But we smooth out difficulties; we relieve stress; we correct mistakes; we take up other men's burdens and by our efforts we make possible the peaceful life of men in a peaceful state.”

    --John W. Davis, founder of Davis Polk & Wardwell

  10. #880
    Quote Originally Posted by LA Ute View Post
    Nice - something to offer those who want the anti-Utah County experience.

  11. #881
    Administrator U-Ute's Avatar
    Join Date
    Feb 2013
    Location
    Salt Lake City
    Posts
    5,526


    via GIPHY


  12. #882
    Sam the Sheepdog LA Ute's Avatar
    Join Date
    Feb 2013
    Location
    Los Angeles, California
    Posts
    17,726
    We read every one of the 3,517 Facebook ads bought by Russians. Their dominant strategy: Sowing racial discord

    https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/...ing/602319002/

    "It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
    --Antoine de Saint-Exupery

    "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold."
    --Yeats

    “True, we [lawyers] build no bridges. We raise no towers. We construct no engines. We paint no pictures - unless as amateurs for our own principal amusement. There is little of all that we do which the eye of man can see. But we smooth out difficulties; we relieve stress; we correct mistakes; we take up other men's burdens and by our efforts we make possible the peaceful life of men in a peaceful state.”

    --John W. Davis, founder of Davis Polk & Wardwell

  13. #883
    Quote Originally Posted by LA Ute View Post
    We read every one of the 3,517 Facebook ads bought by Russians. Their dominant strategy: Sowing racial discord

    https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/...ing/602319002/
    One result of the strategy was a presidential race that reflected racial discord. I have no idea whether Trump colluded with the Russians. He did, however, utilize what the Russians were doing in designing his campaign strategy.

  14. #884

  15. #885
    Quote Originally Posted by tooblue View Post
    thats funny.

  16. #886
    Administrator U-Ute's Avatar
    Join Date
    Feb 2013
    Location
    Salt Lake City
    Posts
    5,526
    Smart and witty. I wonder whom did it. Obviously not the DNC.




    Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

  17. #887
    Administrator U-Ute's Avatar
    Join Date
    Feb 2013
    Location
    Salt Lake City
    Posts
    5,526
    Interesting turn.





    Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

  18. #888
    Sam the Sheepdog LA Ute's Avatar
    Join Date
    Feb 2013
    Location
    Los Angeles, California
    Posts
    17,726
    Quote Originally Posted by U-Ute View Post
    Interesting turn.

    Mr. Avenatti seems a little too slick to me. This op-ed is by Bill Clinton’s pollster, which is a little surprising.

    Who is paying Michael Avenatti?

    http://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary...chael-avenatti

    "It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
    --Antoine de Saint-Exupery

    "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold."
    --Yeats

    “True, we [lawyers] build no bridges. We raise no towers. We construct no engines. We paint no pictures - unless as amateurs for our own principal amusement. There is little of all that we do which the eye of man can see. But we smooth out difficulties; we relieve stress; we correct mistakes; we take up other men's burdens and by our efforts we make possible the peaceful life of men in a peaceful state.”

    --John W. Davis, founder of Davis Polk & Wardwell

  19. #889
    Administrator U-Ute's Avatar
    Join Date
    Feb 2013
    Location
    Salt Lake City
    Posts
    5,526
    These are definitely fair questions to ask.

    It reminds me of this.



    It seems like everyone has one now.

  20. #890
    Quote Originally Posted by U-Ute View Post
    These are definitely fair questions to ask.

    It reminds me of this.
    Avenatti is a self-described "adrenaline junkie" and has a fairly lengthy career as a race car driver to back up that claim.

    I think he wants to be Dos Equis' *REAL* Most Interesting Man in the World.

  21. #891
    Sam the Sheepdog LA Ute's Avatar
    Join Date
    Feb 2013
    Location
    Los Angeles, California
    Posts
    17,726
    Since the 1960s the prosperity and ethos of the California working class have spread to workers all over America–so much so that the terms working class and workers have become archaic. Today electricians, air-conditioning mechanics, burglar-alarm installers, cablevision linemen are routinely spoken of as middle-class. Many journeymen mechanics live on a scale that would have made the Sun King blink. They are a new class that has seriously altered the political make-up of this country over the past 25 years. And Ronald Reagan was their first spokesman, their first leader, their first philosopher. The existence of this class continues to baffle Democratic Party leaders. Their biggest problem in the presidential election this fall is what to do about these people whose goals they still do not understand.
    -- Tom Wolfe, August 1988

    "It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
    --Antoine de Saint-Exupery

    "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold."
    --Yeats

    “True, we [lawyers] build no bridges. We raise no towers. We construct no engines. We paint no pictures - unless as amateurs for our own principal amusement. There is little of all that we do which the eye of man can see. But we smooth out difficulties; we relieve stress; we correct mistakes; we take up other men's burdens and by our efforts we make possible the peaceful life of men in a peaceful state.”

    --John W. Davis, founder of Davis Polk & Wardwell

  22. #892
    THE UNTOLD STORY OF ROBERT MUELLER'S TIME IN COMBAT

    https://www.wired.com/story/robert-mueller-vietnam/

  23. #893
    Missing Files Motivated the Leak of Michael Cohen’s Financial Records

    https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/missing-files-motivated-the-leak-of-michael-cohens-financial-records?mbid=social_twitter


    Whistleblower Leaked Damning Cohen Financial Documents Because They Were Disappearing From Government Financial Crimes Database


    https://slate.com/news-and-politics/...-database.html

  24. #894
    Sam the Sheepdog LA Ute's Avatar
    Join Date
    Feb 2013
    Location
    Los Angeles, California
    Posts
    17,726
    Andrew McCarthy:

    It has now been confirmed that the Trump campaign was subjected to spying tactics under counterintelligence law — FISA surveillance, national-security letters, and covert intelligence operatives who work with the CIA and allied intelligence services. It made no difference, apparently, that there was an ongoing election campaign, which the FBI is supposed to avoid affecting; nor did it matter that the spy targets were American citizens, as to whom there is supposed to be evidence of purposeful, clandestine, criminal activity on behalf of a foreign power before counterintelligence powers are invoked.

    But what was the rationale for using these spying authorities?

    The fons et origo of the counterintelligence investigation was the suspicion — which our intelligence agencies assure us is a fact — that the Democratic National Committee’s server was hacked by covert Russian operatives. Without this cyber-espionage attack, there would be no investigation. But how do we know it really happened? The Obama Justice Department never took custody of the server — no subpoena, no search warrant. The server was thus never subjected to analysis by the FBI’s renowned forensics lab, and its evidentiary integrity was never preserved for courtroom presentation to a jury.

    How come? Well, you see, there was an ongoing election campaign, so the Obama Justice Department figured it would be a terrible imposition to pry into the Democrats’ communications. So, yes, the entire “Russia hacked the election” narrative the nation has endured for nearly two years hinges on the say-so of CrowdStrike, a private DNC contractor with significant financial ties to the Clinton campaign.

    In Investigations 101, using foreign-intelligence authorities to spy on Americans is extraordinary, while taking custody of essential physical evidence is basic. By the way, the government’s failure to ensure the evidentiary integrity of the DNC server by taking possession of it and performing its own rigorous testing on it makes it practically impossible to prosecute anyone for “colluding” in Russia’s cyber-espionage. It’s tough to prove that anyone conspired in something unless you can prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the something actually happened the way you say it happened. To do that in a courtroom, you need evidence — a confident probability analysis by your intelligence agencies won’t do.
    https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/...ble-standards/

    "It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
    --Antoine de Saint-Exupery

    "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold."
    --Yeats

    “True, we [lawyers] build no bridges. We raise no towers. We construct no engines. We paint no pictures - unless as amateurs for our own principal amusement. There is little of all that we do which the eye of man can see. But we smooth out difficulties; we relieve stress; we correct mistakes; we take up other men's burdens and by our efforts we make possible the peaceful life of men in a peaceful state.”

    --John W. Davis, founder of Davis Polk & Wardwell

  25. #895
    Quote Originally Posted by LA Ute View Post
    I may be wrong, but in addition there were people heavily involved in the Trump campaign who had multiple contacts with questionable Russians and Russian companies.

  26. #896
    Sam the Sheepdog LA Ute's Avatar
    Join Date
    Feb 2013
    Location
    Los Angeles, California
    Posts
    17,726

    Life in the Trump Era, Part 2

    Quote Originally Posted by UTEopia View Post
    I may be wrong, but in addition there were people heavily involved in the Trump campaign who had multiple contacts with questionable Russians and Russian companies.
    Yep, and Trump didn’t help at all by continually refusing to criticize Putin, and insisting on saying nice things about him.

    The bottom line for me: I don’t think anyone involved in this opera has covered himself in glory.

    "It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
    --Antoine de Saint-Exupery

    "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold."
    --Yeats

    “True, we [lawyers] build no bridges. We raise no towers. We construct no engines. We paint no pictures - unless as amateurs for our own principal amusement. There is little of all that we do which the eye of man can see. But we smooth out difficulties; we relieve stress; we correct mistakes; we take up other men's burdens and by our efforts we make possible the peaceful life of men in a peaceful state.”

    --John W. Davis, founder of Davis Polk & Wardwell

  27. #897
    Quote Originally Posted by LA Ute View Post
    They had an informant but how did they affect the campaign against Trump? If anything they took great caution not to do anything and announces nothing until after the election was over, so the criticism of the FBI affecting the election by this has no merit. Also, what triggered it was the campaign aid drunkenly popping off to the Australian ambassador. Would we be okay to learn they did nothing at the time?

    Plus Russian tampering went far beyond just hacking the DNC server, they tampered with the election through fake social media groups, implanting fake news and attempting to hacking voting machines.

    I am becoming disgusted with all sides of the press these days. They intentionally leave out facts and express outrage over these half-truths. It happens on both sides to the point where I just don't trust anything on its face.


    Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

  28. #898
    Sam the Sheepdog LA Ute's Avatar
    Join Date
    Feb 2013
    Location
    Los Angeles, California
    Posts
    17,726

    Life in the Trump Era, Part 2

    Quote Originally Posted by Rocker Ute View Post
    They had an informant but how did they affect the campaign against Trump? If anything they took great caution not to do anything and announces nothing until after the election was over, so the criticism of the FBI affecting the election by this has no merit. Also, what triggered it was the campaign aid drunkenly popping off to the Australian ambassador. Would we be okay to learn they did nothing at the time?

    Plus Russian tampering went far beyond just hacking the DNC server, they tampered with the election through fake social media groups, implanting fake news and attempting to hacking voting machines.

    I am becoming disgusted with all sides of the press these days. They intentionally leave out facts and express outrage over these half-truths. It happens on both sides to the point where I just don't trust anything on its face.


    Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
    I am similarly disgusted. It’s hard to get any information these days that’s not laughably slanted one way the other. As far as the “informant,“ or “spy,“ or whatever we want to call that person, I don’t really care if his informant activities/spying affected the outcome of the race. What bothers me is that the FBI assigned an informant to the political campaign of a presidential candidate. I’ll be interested to see what the FBI inspector general report says about all this.


    Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
    Last edited by LA Ute; 05-20-2018 at 04:44 PM.

    "It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
    --Antoine de Saint-Exupery

    "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold."
    --Yeats

    “True, we [lawyers] build no bridges. We raise no towers. We construct no engines. We paint no pictures - unless as amateurs for our own principal amusement. There is little of all that we do which the eye of man can see. But we smooth out difficulties; we relieve stress; we correct mistakes; we take up other men's burdens and by our efforts we make possible the peaceful life of men in a peaceful state.”

    --John W. Davis, founder of Davis Polk & Wardwell

  29. #899
    Administrator U-Ute's Avatar
    Join Date
    Feb 2013
    Location
    Salt Lake City
    Posts
    5,526
    Wut?


  30. #900
    Five-O Diehard Ute's Avatar
    Join Date
    Feb 2013
    Location
    Salt Lake City
    Posts
    4,894
    Well here’s something that probably has Fox News very befuddled.

    Trump has cancelled the meeting with Kim Jong Un.

    Color me shocked.

    In all seriousness, I think it would have been far more surprising if it had actually happened.

    Pretty sure WWE is more realistic than politics these days


    Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •