(12-12-2016, 03:51 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote:

(12-12-2016, 07:51 AM)Odin Wrote: A puppet of the Russian state cannot be allowed to become president. The electoral college must do it's duty as Hamilton described in No. 68 of the Federalist Papers and chose someone else. I don't care if it's another Republican. Romney, Jeb, or McMullen would be fine, just not Trump.

If the Trumpistas want to revolt over it, kill them.

We may need to have a coup.

First one ever in the US.

The CIA, NSA plus loyal military could pull it off.

(12-13-2016, 02:10 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: Fools here did question or deny that the Russians hacked and disrupted our election, didn't they?





Trump is the BIG LIAR and anyone who supports him is a fool.

(12-12-2016, 08:08 PM)taramarie Wrote:

(12-12-2016, 05:44 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote:

(12-12-2016, 04:08 PM)taramarie Wrote:

(12-12-2016, 07:51 AM)Odin Wrote: A puppet of the Russian state cannot be allowed to become president. The electoral college must do it's duty as Hamilton described in No. 68 of the Federalist Papers and chose someone else. I don't care if it's another Republican. Romney, Jeb, or McMullen would be fine, just not Trump.

If the Trumpistas want to revolt over it, kill them.

I hope you did not really mean killing people who oppose you in thought.

We are in uncharted territory. This could well be this century's equivalent to Vichy or Quisling. If it's proved that Trump & company are unregistered foreign agents, it means they violated several federal election laws, these are serious felonies. If it is further proved they aided and abetted cyberwar, it is treason. Should supporting groups revolt, the National Guard would be within rights to shoot them.

Disgusting. Well I do not condone murder as the "right" option.

(12-13-2016, 06:19 AM)radind Wrote: I am expecting the USA to be better off by Summer 2017. Still not totally convinced that the US has escaped from Clinton. Waiting on 19 Dec election.

(12-13-2016, 06:19 AM)radind Wrote: I am expecting the USA to be better off by Summer 2017. Still not totally convinced that the US has escaped from Clinton. Waiting on 19 Dec election.

(12-13-2016, 07:47 AM)Odin Wrote:

(12-13-2016, 06:19 AM)radind Wrote: I am expecting the USA to be better off by Summer 2017. Still not totally convinced that the US has escaped from Clinton. Waiting on 19 Dec election.

You will be BEGGING for Clinton by next summer.

(12-11-2016, 02:41 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(12-10-2016, 11:54 PM)Warren Dew Wrote:

(12-10-2016, 07:51 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(12-09-2016, 02:21 PM)Cynic Hero Wrote: Playwrite: Most Xers and Millies opposed the Iraq war (and Afghanistan after Bin Laden was killed) because boomers refused to allow the troops to fight with the gloves OFF.

I can't speak for all Boomers, just for this one, but when Bush 43's "surge" occurred as the 2008 election cycle was gearing up, there was a shift in tactics that came with it.  The early battle against the insurgency focused on killing bad guys.  As in Vietnam, the Army kept score with a body count.  It was presumed that if we killed more people than we lost, we must be winning.

With the surge, came a shift in tactics from killing Iraqis to protecting Iraqis.  They built a lot of walls and tried to protect the people within the walls.  There was no small amount of racial cleansing.  If the different tribal and religious factions lived in separate neighborhoods separated by walls with various forces covering the perimeter, the civilian deaths at least became less.  The phrase 'hearts and minds' was thrown around.  The new thought was that if you killed people, they'd get mad and try to kill you back.  If you protected people, they might start treating you as a friend.  This approach was called counterinsurgency.  It didn't pacify Iraq, but it did significantly better than the initial 'increase the bodycount' approach.

Protecting people, trying to end the fighting, might be less gratifying to the young boots on the ground than killing people.  It might be more fun, if a hostile sniper starts shooting at US troops from a village, to call in an air strike on the village.  Entertaining the troops isn't the general's job, though.  If you want to entertain the troops, you call in the USO.  If you want to end an insurgency, you use counterinsurgency tactics.

But even with the new tactics, if you are fighting an insurgency, you really want a certain ratio of occupying troops to boots on the ground.  LBJ was told that the troop level he was intending to use in Vietnam would not be sufficient if the opposition went to insurgent warfare.  LBJ went in anyway, the enemy went insurgent, and the US didn't have the will to escalate.  The exact same thing happened in Iraq.  If you don't have the will and the funds for a lot of boots on the ground, the tactics don't matter a lot, you are going to get a quagmire.  After years of trying to make it work with inadequate force, and knowing full well that they were fielding an inadequate force, even Bush 43 recognized that it was time to start bringing the troops home.

Anyway, this Boomer at least favors counterinsurgency tactics when fighting insurgencies because expending ammunition with the goal of maximizing the bodycount just helps the insurgents recruit.

I was going to post most of the same thing - all except that protecting ordinary Iraqis was actually a goal from the beginning; it was just that the surge was needed to have enough troops to do it.  Iraq would ultimately have been a success had the US followed through on ensuring democratic traditions were established, rather than corrupted.

However, I disagree that "will" would have been sufficient to do the same in Vietnam.  Human nature is such that it's difficult to make people enthusiastic about fighting and sacrificing for the benefit of people who are on the other side of the world.  It's far easier to make them enthusiastic about fighting and sacrificing to fight against the evil of people on the other side of the world.  In that respect, Cynic Hero's view is much closer to what most people could feel emotionally, even if logically it's a mistake.

There was a significant change of tactics that came with the surge.  Whether the numbers was more important or the tactics seems to be tied in with values.  Conservatives seem to think it was a matter of will and brute force.  Progressives tend to think how one interacts with the people whose front yards are being turned into battlegrounds is important.  I wouldn't neglect either factor.  I doubt there will be agreement on such.

But we weren't going to do well in either Vietnam or Iraq with just numbers.  Whether it is money or political capitol, we just weren't willing or able to put enough boots on the ground to get critical mass given the local population levels.  From day one, the Democrats were telling the Bush 43 administration that they weren't putting in enough troops.  The Democrats were listening to the Pentagon's briefings.  Thus, the Democrats correctly predicted quagmire.  It took Bush 43 far too many years and lives before he finally accepted that fighting insurgency isn't easy and started pulling out, pulling the rug out of McCain's "stay the course" presidential run.  

Bush also had the "Read my lips, no new taxes" problem.  He wanted to fight wars but not pay for them.  This limited numbers available and will continue to limit numbers as long as Reagan unravelling era economics continues to dominate Congress.

At the same time, the surge did change the situation.  Before the surge, the "stay the course" vs "cut and run" debate was divisive and values locked, both sides convinced and not listening.  The surge started to work.  I went from a full 'quagmire' position -- saying that you can't get there from here -- to saying you can do nation building at gunpoint, but it is very expensive in gold, iron and blood.  It just isn't worth it.  

I do believe the Iraq war changed US values at a national scale.  The "stay the course" v. "cut and run" debate was to a great degree a reprise of the Vietnam War debates.  I see this debate as essentially settled.  It is now understood that fighting insurgency is a tough tough thing, that occupying territory requires lots of effort and lives, that it should be avoided if one doesn't have a clear path to victory and an exit strategy.

I'm concerned that Trump might not get it.  I worry that his call for more aggressive use of force wasn't just another of his empty campaign promises, that he will try to sell a 'short victorious war' that will be anything but.

I don't get the feeling that "Cynic Hero's view is much closer to what most people could feel emotionally, even if logically it's a mistake."  Then again, I live in a predominantly blue region.  It's a values thing.  (Yes, I know you are from Massachusetts as well.)  Most people I talk to would fight a war to win rather than to gratify emotions, and if they aren't fighting to win they would rather not fight at all.  While there is much to be prideful regarding Scotts-Irish heritage and values, their tendency to embrace violence isn't shared in the Whig Yankee tradition.  The country is very much split.

(12-11-2016, 02:45 PM)Warren Dew Wrote: ...Speak for yourself, please.  As an actual conservative, it looks from my side like it's the progressives who think it's a matter of will and brute force, and indeed, you're the one who wants to talk in those terms.  Conservatives understand a lot more of the nuances of different missions, the force levels needed to achieve them, and how they fit together into a geopolitical strategy.  Policing and pacification for the benefit of the locals is a very different mission from simply invading to remove an evil dictator and then leaving the locals to fend for themselves....

(12-12-2016, 01:21 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: ...I dread Trump taking over the war on IS.... 

(12-13-2016, 10:31 AM)radind Wrote:

(12-13-2016, 07:47 AM)Odin Wrote:

(12-13-2016, 06:19 AM)radind Wrote: I am expecting the USA to be better off by Summer 2017. Still not totally convinced that the US has escaped from Clinton. Waiting on 19 Dec election.

You will be BEGGING for Clinton by next summer.

We can compare notes then. I have been in mourning for the last 8 years and finally have  a glimmer of hope. I saw no hope with Clinton.

Quote:It sounds like the stuff of conspiracy theorists and the tinfoil brigade.
It’s even straight out of Cold War fiction.

But in the shadowy world of espionage, accusations and counter-accusations, how can the ordinary citizen tell if the next U.S. president is actually an agent of the Kremlin?

Good news: We’ve got your back.

Here are 10 “telltale signs” that a U.S. president might be a Russian spy, and how we might be able to swear in a “Comrade-in-Chief” next month.

1. U.S. intelligence concludes that the Kremlin helped put him in power.
That’s usually a pretty strong giveaway right there. The CIA has never before accused the Kremlin of interfering in a U.S. election. They’re probably not 0-for-1.
Mind you, when Russian hackers pointedly attacked and embarrassed Donald Trump’s opponent, but left him completely alone, you have to ask: Did we really need a report by the CIA?

2. The new president sides with the Kremlin against the CIA.
Trump’s dismissive response to this news includes three classic spin techniques: shooting the messenger, by attacking the CIA; misdirection, by raising doubts about the CIA’s competence, namely the claim that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction when it didn’t; and begging the question, by implying we should now “move on.”
Neither is a serious argument. Indeed, if the CIA’s report is accurate, why on Earth would we “move on”?
Imagine Ronald Reagan or Dwight Eisenhower reacting this way to a CIA statement about Kremlin activities in the U.S.
Go on — try.

3. He receives vast sums of money from mysterious Russians.
This even includes an astonishing $95 million that Trump personally received from a Russian billionaire during the 2008 collapse.
In Vladimir Putin’s kleptostate, there is no fine line between the state and the private sector, the president and the oligarchs.
As Trump’s son Eric confessed: “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets. … We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.”

4. His election suddenly makes a lot of people rich … in Moscow.
You think Wall Street has done well since Trump’s election victory?
The S&P 500 stock index SPX, +0.68% of the U.S. is up about 5% since Nov. 8.
Moscow’s RTS index: 20%.
Yes, really — from 973 to 1,148. Let the vodka flow! It’s not just about the oil rally, either. The RTS’s increase is more than twice that of global energy stocks.
Putin and his pals were nursing painful losses for several years. But no longer — Moscow stocks are back to their highest levels since the Ukrainian crisis.

5. He wants to end Russia’s global isolation.
Vladimir Putin’s sinister state has been subject to global sanctions since 2014, and for good reason. He’s destabilized Ukraine and annexed Crimea. The British government concluded he had “probably” assassinated a critic in London. He helped arm the people who blew up Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, killing 298 people.
Trump’s response? He praises Putin’s leadership, wants to “get along” with Russia, and hints strongly at ending those sanctions — something he can do by executive order.

6. He surrounds himself with known Russian agents and sympathizers.

Those include Carter Page and the menacing Paul Manafort. You’d imagine that a Kremlin agent in the White House would appoint a close friend of Russia — indeed, someone who actually won the Russian Order of Friendship award — as secretary of state.
No wonder one of Putin’s advisers is praising Trump’s “fantastic” team.


7. He repeatedly refuses to criticize the Kremlin.
It’s been Sherlock Holmes’s dog that didn’t bark.
Time and again, during the election campaign and since, Trump has had every opportunity and incentive to criticize Vladimir Putin. He was repeatedly criticized on the campaign trail for being too soft on Putin, or too friendly toward him, or even in Putin’s pocket.
And each time, Trump failed. He just couldn’t criticize Putin. Not even for allegedly murdering journalists. I mean, how hard is that?
Sometimes silence speaks louder than words.

8. He immediately drives a wedge between the U.S. and Russia’s chief Asian rival, China.
What could make the Kremlin happier than a public feud between Washington and Beijing — for example, over Taiwan?
A full trade war between the two, including tariffs — that’s what!
In retrospect, doesn’t it seem odd that so much of Trump’s campaign has been devoted to attacking China and demonizing the Chinese (oh, and the Japanese) before the eyes of the American public?
Any conflict or tension between the U.S. and China, the world’s two biggest economic powers, is great news for Russia. It weakens China, hurts international unity against Russia and reduces America’s strategic options. Brilliant!

9. He also undermines NATO.
Trump’s comments undermining NATO, and particularly its commitment to the Baltic states, has long been the stuff of fantasy to Putin’s Kremlin.
The Russians have hated the North Atlantic Treaty Organization since Harry Truman set it up in 1949 to stop the Soviet Union’s expansion of its European sphere of influence. They’re especially furious about the Western alliance’s expansion into Eastern Europe after the collapse of the Berlin Wall.
Many in Russia consider the Baltic states to be traditional subjects of the “Russian empire.”
It tells you a lot that the Lithuanian government recently started handing out instructions to its citizens on how to cope if Russian tanks roll back in.

10. Oh, yeah — and he once marketed his own brand of vodka.
Not beer. Not bourbon. Not even gin.
Vodka.

Really, in retrospect, how hard was this?

(12-13-2016, 01:53 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(12-13-2016, 10:31 AM)radind Wrote:

(12-13-2016, 07:47 AM)Odin Wrote:

(12-13-2016, 06:19 AM)radind Wrote: I am expecting the USA to be better off by Summer 2017. Still not totally convinced that the US has escaped from Clinton. Waiting on 19 Dec election.

You will be BEGGING for Clinton by next summer.

We can compare notes then. I have been in mourning for the last 8 years and finally have  a glimmer of hope. I saw no hope with Clinton.

Mourning? More people will be mourning for loved ones killed in workplace accidents because health and safety laws are gutted. Should there be a war, Donald Trump will make it all the deadlier to Americans through his bungling. If he succeeds in repealing Obamacare without replacing it, then people will die because they will be priced into a grave. 

I expect the Trump economy to have elite profits and compensation as the sole objectives of the American economy. No human suffering will be in excess so long as it turns or indulges a profit. This will be a cheap labor country with brutal management... and the only solution that the elites will offer to the common man is to work harder, ignore hardships, and make sure to appreciate how wonderful their 'benefactors' are. Make America Great Again -- sure, but only for the super-rich.

Many people are going to recognize American citizenship the way Soviet citizens typically saw it -- something one was born with and simply has not yet renounced. It has been a desirable thing to attain and keep -- but not under a dictatorship that mistreats one on behalf of people who have no responsibility for the welfare of any but themselves.

I look at a Trump Presidency and see nothing but despair. Any meaning in life will be from the ordinary joys of consumerism and personal milestones that would happen anyway... and from resisting a vile regime. I have never participated in a protest before -- but I expect to do so often.

(12-13-2016, 10:31 AM)radind Wrote:

(12-13-2016, 07:47 AM)Odin Wrote:

(12-13-2016, 06:19 AM)radind Wrote: I am expecting the USA to be better off by Summer 2017. Still not totally convinced that the US has escaped from Clinton. Waiting on 19 Dec election.

You will be BEGGING for Clinton by next summer.

We can compare notes then. I have been in mourning for the last 8 years and finally have  a glimmer of hope. I saw no hope with Clinton.

(12-13-2016, 02:47 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(12-13-2016, 10:31 AM)radind Wrote:

(12-13-2016, 07:47 AM)Odin Wrote:

(12-13-2016, 06:19 AM)radind Wrote: I am expecting the USA to be better off by Summer 2017. Still not totally convinced that the US has escaped from Clinton. Waiting on 19 Dec election.

You will be BEGGING for Clinton by next summer.

We can compare notes then. I have been in mourning for the last 8 years and finally have  a glimmer of hope. I saw no hope with Clinton.

Mourning for WHAT? That Obama deported millions of illegal aliens? That he kept the nation safe from terrorists? That he asked for more gun laws, and didn't get them? That he appointed a couple of justices who weren't able to protect abortion or voting rights? That he gave health insurance to some people? That he passed some financial reform to keep the financial gamblers from ruining our economy again? That he kept the terrorists at bay without getting us into any ground wars for 8 years? What in GOD'S name do YOU have to "mourn" over?

Now it's time for folks like us to mourn. And we'll have plenty to mourn over. More species killed off for eternity. Coral reefs dying. Forests burned. Our air and water spoiled. Millions dying in storms, floods and fires. More innocent people killed off by crazy people with guns. More innocent lives abroad wiped out. Less and less opportunity for young people. More workers fired and exploited and abused and underpaid. An economy ruined again by trickle-down social darwinism. We'll have plenty to mourn over if Trump gets us involved in some stupid war because he was personally offended. If our rights to vote and speak get taken away. 

YOU won't mourn, because now you have an ideologue of "freedom" to destroy and kill and despoil in the White House, someone who mouths nonsense about the "right to life" and the "freedom" to discriminate against gays. THAT will make you happy. You are so silly, so foolish.