Please see Styx thread on the Registered Shipmates consultation for the main discussion forums - your views are important, continues until April 4th.

Purgatory: Oops - your Trump presidency discussion thread.

19394969899168

Comments

  • Golden KeyGolden Key Shipmate, Glory
    Right at this moment, HuffPost has an interesting headline article *and* headline display at the very top of the front page:
    ROMNEY THROWS DOWN: TRUMP’S BIDEN COMMENTS ‘WRONG AND APPALLING’

    The headline is accompanied by a really good pic of Mitt Romney...looking very presidential. My inquiring mind wants to know: Is he simply commenting, or is he somehow planning to run--or be drafted to run?

  • Crœsos wrote: »
    Gramps49 wrote: »
    The bet is Mitch will bring the impeachment to the Senate and after a show trial move to dismiss the charges. I think he would only need a simple majority to dismiss the charges.

    Moscow Mitch wouldn't be running the trial though. John Roberts would, assuming such a thing happens. Roberts will have to do it according to Senate rules though, which represent Moscow Mitch's real venue for meddling.

    And because the Trump era has destroyed Friday happy hour for the Washington press corps, we now have the House Oversight Committee (in cooperation with Intelligence and Foreign Affairs) requesting a bunch of documents from Mike Pence. (Letter here [PDF]). They gave him the same deadline as they gave Pompeo last week (October 15). I don't think they included a subpœna (though I've only had a chance to skim this), though they do say failure to comply will be construed as obstruction of the investigation. Unlike the Pompeo letter this one publicly lists the documents they seek.

    And in between subverting the Constitution and using his office to enrich himself Trump signed an executive order today that contains a lot of what used to be Paul Ryan's plan for privatizing (and then looting) Medicare. I guess that's a way of reminding Congressional Republicans why they support him.

    Yes, John Roberts, as the Chief Judge of the Supreme Court, will be presiding; but Senate procedural rules permit any Senator making a motion to dismiss the impeachment charges and that motion is voted on by the Senate. Roberts cannot rule from the chair. Impeachment court and trial courts are horses of different colours.


  • Golden KeyGolden Key Shipmate, Glory
    :)

    So I was watching "Democracy Now" on our local PBS station (KQED). For those unfamiliar with it, DN is quietly kick-ass, and more towards the left wing of American politics.

    Today's episode is From Trump to Nixon: “Watergate” Film Explains “How We Learned to Stop an Out of Control President”. (Has video/audio of the whole episode, and a "rush" preliminary view of the transcript.)

    I saw part of it. Good interview with the director. Clips from the film included Watergate footage. (It was nice to see and hear Congresswoman Barbara Jordan again. Such a great voice and way of speaking.)

    “Watergate - Or: How We Learned To Stop An Out Of Control President."

    Oh, my my my...
    :) :) :)
  • BroJamesBroJames Purgatory Host
    Golden Key wrote: »
    Right at this moment, HuffPost has an interesting headline article *and* headline display at the very top of the front page:
    ROMNEY THROWS DOWN: TRUMP’S BIDEN COMMENTS ‘WRONG AND APPALLING’

    The headline is accompanied by a really good pic of Mitt Romney...looking very presidential. My inquiring mind wants to know: Is he simply commenting, or is he somehow planning to run--or be drafted to run?
    This link takes me to an entirely different story (about Boris Johnson)
  • Golden KeyGolden Key Shipmate, Glory
    Yeah, that was a link to how the top of the front page was "right now", not directly to the story. I was trying to save on number of links in my post. Currently, there is this link in that top section:

    "Mitt Romney Calls Trump’s Ukraine Call, China Comments ‘Brazen And Unprecedented’" (HuffPost).



  • BroJames wrote: »
    Crœsos wrote: »
    For those who are interested in some actual Republican Senators, here's Marco Rubio talking to constituents in Florida and explaining that there's apparently an "owning the libs/press" exemption to the Constitution.

    Joni Ernst is getting questions in Iowa, to which she provides a non-answer. (Ernst's answers start around 1:50 on that video.)

    @Crœsos those two links are to the same tweet.
    BroJames
    Purgatory Host

    Sorry. C&P error. Here is Marco Rubio. Here is Joni Ernst.
  • Golden Key wrote: »
    The headline is accompanied by a really good pic of Mitt Romney...looking very presidential. My inquiring mind wants to know: Is he simply commenting, or is he somehow planning to run--or be drafted to run?

    Mitt Romney's sole political principle is the bedrock belief that Mitt Romney should be president. He has accumulated quite the collection of furrowed brows and statements of concern about Donald Trump, but has done very little about it. He's got a "Trump score*" of 79.2%, which is low for a Republican Senator but 7.4 percentage points higher than would be predicted by his state's Trump vote margin in 2016. Fellow Utah Senator Mike Lee has a Trump score of 52.5% for the 116th Congress (i.e. the same period of time Romney has been a Senator).
    Golden Key wrote: »
    It was nice to see and hear Congresswoman Barbara Jordan again. Such a great voice and way of speaking.

    Fun historical fact: Barbara Jordan was Governor of Texas for one day when both the governor and lieutenant governor were unavailable to fulfill their duties.

    Not-so-fun historical fact: Jordan's one day as temporary acting Governor of Texas still represents 100% of the amount of time an African-American woman has been governor of an American state.


    * The "Trump Score" is the percentage of times a legislator votes the way Trump favors. In the 116th Congress Republican Trump scores range from 95.7% (Shelley Moore Capito) to 33.3% (Susan Collins). Democratic Trump scores range from 4.2% (Jon Tester) to 29.2% (Joe Manchin).

  • Dave WDave W Shipmate
    That's some weak trolling.
  • Dave W wrote: »
    That's some weak trolling.

    I say good enough given he's probably trolling through a language barrier.

  • Romney has quickly gone from 45's BFF list to his PA (Pompous @ss) list.
  • PigletPiglet All Saints Host, Circus Host
    edited October 2019
    Genuine question - I think I've missed something - what are Mr. Biden and his son supposed to have done to make Trump want foreign countries to investigate them?
  • BoogieBoogie Heaven Host
    I read this today -
    This is a drama unfolding on two levels. One is familiar to students of Watergate and other Washington scandals: a river of leaks, subpoenas, transcripts, whistleblowers and closed door committee hearings. The other is something alien: a commander-in-chief who does not deny wrongdoing because he does not see the wrong, but rather recommits in broad daylight, confounding his defenders as if hellbent on self-impeachment.

    I wonder if, subconsciously, this is what tRump is doing?
  • Golden KeyGolden Key Shipmate, Glory
    I think some part of T is shouting, "STOP ME BEFORE I PRESIDENT AGAIN". And I think he's been doing that for a long time.

    Consciously or not, he must be in a personal hell. Besides all his damage and baggage, and whatever health problems (e.g., dementia) he may have...he didn't want to be president, and didn't expect to win. He wanted to leverage the publicity to get a better contract for hosting his various "Apprentice" TV series. And he wanted to get back at Obama for embarrassing him at the White House Correspondents' Dinner. (I do think O is partly responsible for sparking this mess.)

    Then he "won". He had to step out of the world he'd made and tailored to his needs. His need to be the all-out winner in every situation (because he'd been taught that was the only way to be worth being loved) got a paradoxical twist: he's getting more attention than ever; but people expect much more of him, and won't let him alone. He's not necessarily any more loved than he was before--and has attracted a whole lot of anger and hate.

    I think he'd save himself a whole lot of pain and trouble if he'd resign and leave. Leave an "I quit!" note on the desk in the Oval Office, and tweet that out, too. (I figure a signed note on paper might be necessary to be official.)

    Personally, I'm not looking to put him in prison--just get him out of office, legally and non-violently. Put him in a good psych facility and/or sanitarium in the countryside. One that has nice, high walls, so he'll feel safe--and so will everyone else.
  • I know you mean your chiding of Obama gently, GK. I can't help but defend him. He was sore provoked and the evisceration of Trump was artful and done with panache.
  • Simon Toad wrote: »
    I know you mean your chiding of Obama gently, GK. I can't help but defend him. He was sore provoked and the evisceration of Trump was artful and done with panache.

    It was undoubtedly deserved. Whether it's part of the chain of events is a different question.

    AFZ
  • Piglet wrote: »
    Genuine question - I think I've missed something - what are Mr. Biden and his son supposed to have done to make Trump want foreign countries to investigate them?

    Short answer: Joe Biden is the Democratic presidential primary front runner and as a straight white male is the only one Trump considers a legitimate challenger.

    Slightly longer answer: Hunter Biden was on the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian oil and gas corporation. Joe Biden was the Obama administration point man on convincing Ukraine to fire its Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin. This Obama-era policy did not originate with Joe Biden and was shared by other non-American entities (the IMF, the EU, various other nations, etc.), but Biden was the American point-of-contact. The claim is that Biden wanted Viktor Shokin sacked because he would have investigated Burisma (where Hunter Biden was on the board). Shokin was actually (in)famous for not prosecuting large corporations and letting corruption slide, so this accusation never really made sense. The Washington Post (paywall) and The Intercept (free) have more in-depth explanations as to why the accusations are no more honest than anything else Trump says.

    Interestingly this Biden-Ukraine conspiracy theory seems to have been deliberately manufactured rather than growing organically.
    Unlike all the other Ukraine scandals, this Biden conspiracy didn't spring from the right-wing fever swamps, nor did Rudy Giuliani "uncover it" as he likes to brag he did. This one was a professional hit job carried out by the same team that brought you "Clinton Cash," the book about the Clinton Foundation that formed the basis of the "Crooked Hillary" campaign.

    This time it was a book called "Secret Empires: How the American Political Class Hides Corruption and Enriches Family and Friends," by "Clinton Cash" author Peter Schweizer, who is now an editor at Breitbart News and president of the Government Accountability Institute, a nonprofit he founded with Steve Bannon and right-wing billionaire Rebekah Mercer. Its purpose is clear enough: To launder far-right smears and dirty tricks.

    I wrote about this gang back in 2015 for Salon when Schweizer gulled the New York Times and the Washington Post into partnering with him on the Clinton story, apparently convincing them that the man who wrote "Architects of Ruin: How Big Government Liberals Ruined the Global Economy and Will Do It Again if We Don't Stop Them" was a straight journalist just looking for a little accountability. The book was a huge success at what it set out to do: Tar Hillary Clinton as a corrupt criminal. Why not do it again with Joe Biden, who everyone knew was likely to run against Trump in 2020?

    This time, with the notable exception of a couple of dubious stories in the New York Times, the media didn't bite on the Biden story with quite the same eagerness. Bloomberg's Joshua Green points out in this article on the subject that while it didn't catch on in the mainstream press, it was huge in the conservative media, which apparently bothered Bannon a great deal. After all, the GAI was formed to push its smears into the mainstream. Stories that exist only in the conservative bubble simply don't have the same power to move the broader electorate.

    Green notes that because Trump mainlines conservative media, he saw the story as very beneficial to his cause, adding that "what differentiates Trump from other power-consumers of conservative media is that he’s the president and was willing to use his governmental powers to attack a political rival."

    I think there's not been quite enough analysis on what it means to have a Fox News true believer in power. This was always the problem with right wing media (Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, Sinclair, hate radio, etc.). The first generation (Newt Gingrich and company) cynically employed it to rile up their voters, not realizing (or possibly just not caring) that their successors (Gym Jordan, Devin Nunes) would grow up actually believing this stuff. Now we've got a president* who, while not young enough to have "grown up" with the stuff, is pretty much your stereotypical angry "Fox News Grampa".
  • Golden Key wrote: »
    ... Put him in a good psych facility and/or sanitarium in the countryside. One that has nice, high walls, so he'll feel safe--and so will everyone else.
    And please, put a "moot" around it, filled with snakes or alligators.

  • Apparently a second intelligence* whistleblower is now ready to come forward. This person claims (through his/her attorney) to have firsthand knowledge of Trump's Ukrainian shenanigans.

    Trump also has a new excuse for his apparently impeachable Ukrainian call: The Devil Rick Perry made me do it. I've always thought "can be outwitted by Rick Perry" to be sufficient grounds for invoking the Twenty-Fifth Amendment.


    *There is also a whistleblower alleging there's something funny going on with the legally-required audits of Trump's tax returns. This whistleblower is probably from the Treasury Department or the IRS, not the intelligence community.
  • OhherOhher Shipmate
    You know, this all makes me long for efforts on the part of Congress to start reining in Presidential powers.
  • Crœsos wrote: »
    I think there's not been quite enough analysis on what it means to have a Fox News true believer in power. This was always the problem with right wing media (Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, Sinclair, hate radio, etc.). The first generation (Newt Gingrich and company) cynically employed it to rile up their voters, not realizing (or possibly just not caring) that their successors (Gym Jordan, Devin Nunes) would grow up actually believing this stuff. Now we've got a president* who, while not young enough to have "grown up" with the stuff, is pretty much your stereotypical angry "Fox News Grampa".

    A number of TV critics have written about having a different insight into the Trump presidency than their political reporter colleagues, because of seeing him through the lens of reality television. In Trump's world you win by stirring up drama against other "contestants" and avoiding consequences however possible.

    James Poniewozik's new book is about Trump and the evolution of TV, and looks to be really good. I have it on hold at the library but haven't gotten it yet.
  • Ohher wrote: »
    You know, this all makes me long for efforts on the part of Congress to start reining in Presidential powers.

    I think a few weeks ago Rep Ilhan Omar and a few others aired the idea of reasserting Congress’ right to declare war.
  • The most hopeful spin I can put on that article is that it's Pat Robertson setting up his rationale for explaining Trump's imminent downfall to the 700 Club.

    Meanwhile, that Trump quote about his own "great and unmatched wisdom" sounds more like the Antichrist than a mandate of heaven to me.
  • Golden KeyGolden Key Shipmate, Glory
    Maybe, re 700 Club. Might also be that he's waking up (a bit), and remembering all those Bible passages about false prophets/messiahs, the End Times, and "deceiving (if it were possible) the very elect".
  • Golden KeyGolden Key Shipmate, Glory
    Also: It's been a long time since I read the Armageddon passage(s), but I think Syria comes into the story. Might be where the valley of Megiddo was/is supposed to be.
  • “Mandate of Heaven...” interesting choice of words.

    I am a little skeptical as to whether Pat Robinson and friends would really regard the Christians in Syria as Christians. I would guess the objection more comes from Zionism and whatever weird apocalyptic theory he has in mind.
  • Golden Key wrote: »
    Also: It's been a long time since I read the Armageddon passage(s), but I think Syria comes into the story. Might be where the valley of Megiddo was/is supposed to be.

    Mediggo is in Israel, some pretty cool ruins from memory.
  • Barnabas62Barnabas62 Shipmate, Host Emeritus
    I wonder. It's early days but maybe there is a scurrying of rats. Preparing to leave the sinking ship? Not getting my hopes up too far. But that "great and unmatched wisdom" quote might wake a few people up. The unchaining of Trump (via resignations) releases a mad and dangerous demagogue. About time the GOP woke up publicly to the fact that there is a lot more going on than electoral calculations.

  • Barnabas62 wrote: »
    that "great and unmatched wisdom" quote might wake a few people up.

    His base will see it as self-deprecatory irony.
  • Barnabas62Barnabas62 Shipmate, Host Emeritus
    Sure. He could walk down the street and shoot someone and most in the base would still believe in him. But not all. Look out for what happens to the defection rate.
  • Barnabas62 wrote: »
    Not getting my hopes up too far. But that "great and unmatched wisdom" quote might wake a few people up.

    May I introduce you to President Supervillain, a twitter feed that takes Trump quotes and puts them in comics featuring Marvel's Red Skull?

    Here's a still of the "great and unmatched wisdom" tweet.
  • stetsonstetson Shipmate
    edited October 2019
    Slate et al are saying stuff like "Trump invites a new Killing Field".

    Which seems to me raises the question as to what the fuck Turkey is still doing as a member of the supposedly democratic NATO. Did no one notice until now that they are the kind of country capable of doing the sorta stuff the Khmer Rouge did?
  • Crœsos wrote: »
    Barnabas62 wrote: »
    Not getting my hopes up too far. But that "great and unmatched wisdom" quote might wake a few people up.

    May I introduce you to President Supervillain, a twitter feed that takes Trump quotes and puts them in comics featuring Marvel's Red Skull?

    Here's a still of the "great and unmatched wisdom" tweet.

    Ooh, lovely!
  • Hey, it's the sequel everyone's been waiting for! (Provided you mean government document obsessives when you say "everyone".) It's Part 2 of the Senate Intelligence Committee's Report on Russian Active Measures Campaigns and Interference in the 2016 U.S. Election. There's a lot of interesting stuff there, like this:
    The Committee found that the IRA sought to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election by harming Hillary Clinton's chances of success and supporting Donald Trump at the direction of the Kremlin. The Committee found that the IRA targeted not only Hillary Clinton, but also Republican candidates during the presidential primaries. For example, Senators Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio were targeted and denigrated, as was Jeb Bush. As Clint Watts, a former FBI Agent and expert in social media weaponization, testified to the Committee, "Russia's overt media outlets and covert trolls sought to sideline opponents on both sides of the political spectrum with adversarial views towards the Kremlin." IRA operators sought to impact primaries for both major parties and "may have helped sink the hopes of candidates more hostile to Russian interests long before the field narrowed."

    Bad week to be pushing the idea that it was all really the Ukrainians. So apparently Trump was Russia's favored candidate as far back as the primaries and the Russian campaign to get him elected seems more extensive than previously suspected.

    Remember that this comes out of the Senate Intelligence Committee, which is currently controlled by Republicans.
  • If the Russians started their attack in the primaries it makes me wonder if they were interfering before the famous escalator ride ...
  • BroJamesBroJames Purgatory Host
    IRA in this context means the “Internet Research Agency” and not (more familiar to UK readers) the Irish Republican Army!
  • So Russia used twitter bots and propaganda to try to influence the election. Thankfully no one else does that.
  • BroJamesBroJames Purgatory Host
    edited October 2019
    Do you mean that it doesn’t matter because other people do it too? Or do you mean that it doesn’t matter because it’s just the USA getting a taste of its own medicine? Or is my irony meter giving false readings and you genuinely meant your last sentence to be a wholly ingenuous assertion?
  • No. And the USA is very far from getting a taste of its own medicine.

    State propaganda is just part of the modern world. The breathless amazement at the revelation that the Russian government would do this is dumb.

    I’m not a big fan of the Russian government myself, but maybe some Venezuelan or Cuban interference would do us good.
  • Golden KeyGolden Key Shipmate, Glory
    Not Cuban. We'd have something like the Cuban Missile Crisis, etc., all over again.
  • stetsonstetson Shipmate
    edited October 2019
    No. And the USA is very far from getting a taste of its own medicine.

    State propaganda is just part of the modern world. The breathless amazement at the revelation that the Russian government would do this is dumb.

    I’m not a big fan of the Russian government myself, but maybe some Venezuelan or Cuban interference would do us good.

    This is my basic take on it...

    If Russia tried to influence a US election, good for them. The prootocols of international relations allow countries to do that sort of thing to advance their own interests.

    By the same token, if any US citizens illegally assisted the Russians in doing that, they can and should be dealt with according to US law. Because all nations have internal laws restricting what their citizens can do to advance the interests of foreign powers.

    I know that might sound contradictory, but it's the basic logic of international rivalry. And it applies between allied countries as well: I can still recall the mild shock I received when I read an editorial in a conservative, pro-American Korean newspaper, praising Robert Kim as a hero to Korea. Of course, the Americans considered him a criminal, but what the hey.

  • edited October 2019
    The Kurds. From my listen today of Canadian, various European and middle eastern news. Your president is really doing it.

    When the USA stupidly invaded Iraq, the Kurds were their allies. When they helped the Syrian opposition to challenge another Ba'athist government in that country, the Kurds were their allies. Not that either war was supportable, a good idea, nice, reasonable etc: it wasn't. But Turkey is a target for the Russians as ally. And America as weighed that it is worthy to sacrifice the Kurds to gain favour with Turkey. So the USA's president pulled out its military and the Turks are ready to invade Syria as I type this, the part of it which the Kurds are in.

    Will the Turks bother to tell the difference between Kurdish soldiers and civilians? Will Kurds remember the American betrayal? Was it worth it dear America to have your president pre-approve a probable genocide? The message is that America cannot be trusted, America breaks its promises, America sells out its allies. The Kurds and the world are watching, even if Americans can't find any of these countries on a map.

    I think the USA's president doesn't care about the Kurds. He actually probably wants the likely resurrection of ISIS, if he is thinking that far. Because ISIS is great enemy. No redeeming qualities. And he's creating a new enemy of the Kurds. A nice convenient attack on America to unite its people against another incarnation of a nasty, brown-skinned enemy, that's what's going to happen. And this is going to get your president re-elected.

    CBC had it on "Ideas" this evening that this current president didn't get that NATO and America providing security was a post-WW2 feature. America protected the world in it's sphere of influence so trade would make it rich (note that protection was extended to the predominately white countries, exploitation, dictatorship, and lots of state terror and murder was the protection for countries with predominantly non-white populations). American defence isn't a flaw of the world order, it was a deliberately constructed feature, to make it wealthy. Now with its withdrawing of this, it's just another country playing 19th century nationalistic games. But then America's goodness was an illusion for the non-white countries it dominated. Conclusion: America cannot be trusted, it's pretence of goodness and specialness is ended. It's done-ski.

    We can only hope that whatever happens after trumpy's second term of office has some ideas of stepping back from the brinkmanship, assholery, and the severe degradation of your nation, because he's engineering to be re-elected. Your country didn't think it was possible the first time, but it's not okay to not think that the second time. Is there room for another statue at your Mount Rushmore? A bigly one?
  • Your president is really doing it.

    Would you like all the non-Canadians here to consistently refer on Canada-devoted threads to whoever Canada's Prime Minister of the day is, and irrespective of their misdeeds, as "your" Prime Minister, as though these misdeeds were your personal responsibility, NP? Because your above habit is really tiresome - and I'm not even American.

  • Golden KeyGolden Key Shipmate, Glory
    --Thanks for that, Eutychus. :)

    I was trying to think of a non-Hellish response to NP. This is another one of those situations where if an American posted the same sort of thing about a country that was home to Shipmates, there'd be a livid Hell thread and a pond (or other body of water) war.

    It's wearying to be stuck in an infinite loop...

    --NP:

    Newsflash: Most American Shipmates who post about T aren't exactly fans. Even Republican Shipmates--who, BTW, seem able to think and judge for themselves.

    Guess what? The world is complicated. Presuming we're keeping to legal and non-violent boundaries, we can't force the federal gov't to do anything. We can't make Congress critters do the right thing. We can't make the Pentagon tell T to "go pound sand" (in any of its many meanings). We can't make the FBI (or whoever) dump him in Guantanamo. We can't even make doctors take him into care, and do what they can to help him.

    We know he's a walking hot mess, and damages the world every day. We have procedures in place that theoretically should get T out of office...but authorized people have to choose to use the procedures, and complete them successfully.

    And we can't make them do that.

    On the plus side, more of the Congressional Republicans are expressing disapproval of T--particularly regarding abandoning the Kurds.

    What do Canadians do, NP, when there's an extremely bad PM and/or gov't?



  • Robert ArminRobert Armin Shipmate, Glory
    BroJames wrote: »
    IRA in this context means the “Internet Research Agency” and not (more familiar to UK readers) the Irish Republican Army!

    Thank you for the explanation. I wonder if I was the only one to be really puzzled when the IRA became part of this discussion.
  • DooneDoone Shipmate
    BroJames wrote: »
    IRA in this context means the “Internet Research Agency” and not (more familiar to UK readers) the Irish Republican Army!

    Thank you for the explanation. I wonder if I was the only one to be really puzzled when the IRA became part of this discussion.

    No, me too @Robert Armin !
  • Will the Turks bother to tell the difference between Kurdish soldiers and civilians?

    I don't really care, not if the recommended way to curb the Turks is continued American presence.

    If you believe, as I do, that the invasion of Iraq and ongoing US presence in the region is the cause of the problems there, it doesn't really make much sense to say "Well, they shouldn't have gone there in the first place, but now they need to stick around to protect the people who were harmed by their actions." That's just providing a rationale for further American involvement, and all the attendant future awfulness that will result.

    If you are, on principle, against American "interference" in the affairs of other countries, you can't add an "except for..." to your condemnation.



  • State propaganda is just part of the modern world. The breathless amazement at the revelation that the Russian government would do this is dumb.

    Wow. When part one came out three months ago you claimed the Senate were a bunch of filthy liars for saying Russia would ever interfere in an American election. Now they're "dumb" for expressing any kind of concern about Russia possibly installing someone in the presidency because everybody does it. Some would call that inconsistent, but I disagree. You always seem to work your way around to "Uncle Vlad Donny is cool, so don't worry your pretty little head about anything."

    I'd argue the contrary case, that election security is a legitimate concern for the U.S. Senate and the Senate's Intelligence Committee is supposed to worry about foreign intelligence operations in the U.S.
    I’m not a big fan of the Russian government myself, . . .

    Don't be so modest! You've got Russian state media talking points and deceptively misattributed "facts" down pat and can recite them verbatim.
  • I agree that the Americans should not be in Syria. The assumption that the US has some prerogative to occupy another nation's territory over the objections of its government- no matter how we feel about that government- is crazy and yet pretty much ubiquitous in American politics.

    On the other hand I think the US really did wrong by suddenly stepping aside for a Turkish assault (the US troops, as I gather, are actually still in Syria, they're just not in the way). We made certain assurances to the SDF and, because of that, they are much less prepared to defend themselves than they could be. If we were going to leave- as we should- we should have helped the SDF reach a favorable arrangement with the Syrian government and Russia. Assad and the Kurds are not pals but they have a common interest in keeping Turkey out of Rojava. Assad for his part has been warning the Kurds for a long time not to trust the US and he has been sadly proved right.

    In a neighborhood where "good guys" are scarce, the SDF is one group that I would consider unambiguously good guys.
Sign In or Register to comment.