OMG Politics, I'm over it already.

Status
Not open for further replies.
puppet show.jpg
 
Mark Wein said:
Click to expand...


Well, if she gets through we can stick a knife in public education. She can't even grasp proficiency vs growth. It is like she is going into a job interview to be a computer programmer and asking the guy interviewing her what is that rectangular thing with all the letters on it.
 
wagdog said:
Pardoning Chelsea Manning is a slap in the face to anyone who ever served in our military, me included. Absolutely erases any goodwill I ever felt towards Obama.

As for Bergdahl, he abandoned his post on foreign soil and put soldiers at risk during wartime. I've read that people died looking for him. Mistakes have consequences and his certainly did.
Click to expand...

I would think that it shouldn't be more so than George W. Bush (and several members of his administration) and Trump being elected President. Both of these presidents garnered a large majority of the military vote, while either avoiding service or being unaccounted for and never serving in Vietnam despite their age/eligibility. Bush's team threw an active CIA agent under the bus to cover their asses. Morality related to the safety of people in the field was a none issue for Dubya's administration. Trump has the further audacity to call out military leaders and by proxy the work that soldiers are doing on the ground, putting their lives at risk for our nation (and various other agendas). He has neither the understanding of military strategy/actions nor the concern of service men and women (and certainly not their families), insulting fallen soldiers and their families by questioning their loyalties based on their religion. He, like way too many American citizens, is too fucking dense to realize that the First Amendment is the foundation of all of our freedoms and therefore our nation...except when it comes to spewing hateful, fear-mongering, misogynistic, un/misinformed, prejudicial, unfounded, and reactionary statements.

Flagrant lack of respect for the sacrifices made by our military, whether you agree with their actions or not, should be a potential disqualifier for anyone that aspires to be Commander in Chief. Or even those that end up in the position nearly by accident.

That said, I'm not sure how one gets let off for committing treason. The traditional punishment was death/execution, and maybe that is a bit harsh unless true strategic compromise and deaths can be attributed to a given treasonous act. I'm sure fear of death is at the heart of why Snowden isn't rushing back to the U.S. Manning is a very unique case given the entirety of her circumstances. By all accounts transitioning is extremely difficult for anyone, add to that being in the military which has traditionally frowned on homosexuality (and their myopic perspective won't distinguish between these two different things). So there are larger psychological issues that the military isn't prepared to understand, let alone deal with. A significant amount of her transition has happened while in various military prisons while being tried for espionage...I can't even begin to imagine what that might be like.

And even add to that her age at the time and to whole concept of evaluating one's life...if you are among that reassess what the military does while you're there. It can easily be argued that one might think they're doing something for a greater good or purpose. The files leaked weren't plans for further attacks or impending actions, but information that would one day be available via the freedom of information act. Again, that doesn't make it right, but it is not the same as leaking secrets that would compromise active soldiers.

She'll never be a position to access, let alone disseminate information like this again. Being in prison for discovering a new set of ideals based on disillusionment seems harsh, but there are laws about this in place and they are there for a reason. According to President Obama's people, Chelsea has serve close to the average amount of time as others that have been imprisoned for the same crime. If that's true, it becomes another consideration...but I'm not having any luck finding data relating to time served for this/similar crimes.

Any deaths related to searches for Bergdahl are questionable. The searches were officially ended and the six soldiers that were part of battalion that died, died on other missions. The accusations that he was responsible for their deaths come from the idea that they never stopped looking for him, which is purely speculation. We can't know how quickly after he left his post he was captured or if he would have come back. Letting assumptions fueled by anger be the basis of judgment and not actual information is why we are inaugurating a piece of shit for POTUS in two days. Essentially, it is ALWAYS a bad idea.
 
Chad said:
Well, if she gets through we can stick a knife in public education. She can't even grasp proficiency vs growth. It is like she is going into a job interview to be a computer programmer and asking the guy interviewing her what is that rectangular thing with all the letters on it.
Click to expand...

She's a fucking tool, further showing not only Trump's inability to understand his job and those that would head these various departments, but that those career politicians/political insiders within the party that are part of his advisory team don't give a shit about our greater good. Of course, most of the asshats "helping" with these decisions are NOT politicians, but their aversion to hiring properly qualified people for these positions and/or listening to advice from people that understand the system is absolutely stupid.

Once healthcare, education, and the environment are ravaged by this Presidency, what's next.
 
I agree that the facts are murky regarding whether any were harmed in searching for Bowe. He shouldn't have gone off base. But, he stayed in captivity for a long, long time. Not sure what is to be gained by further punishment. Well, in any case, it does not look like President Obama is going to act on Bergdahl's request anyway.
 
Actually I heard the douche being floated for Commerce Secretary (Ross) is going to initially focus on renegotiating NAFTA.

Again, instead of offering anything new and helpful, the Republican idea to waste time/money/resources on undoing Democratic legislation.

If done, and done to greatly favor the U.S., MIM Fenders and Godin guitars will likely stop being reasonably priced.
 
Mark Wein said:
Another good one: https://www.washingtonpost.com/vide...f60b18-dd5e-11e6-8902-610fe486791c_video.html

Education is such an important issue in this country and a large reason why we are where we are at this moment in history. She is possibly the worst possibly candidate for this position outside of maybe my dog.
Click to expand...

Hey, hey, HEY!

Don't talk about Jack like that! He's a part of your family and deserves much more respect!

He would undoubtedly be a better head of the Dept of Ed.
 
Dogsinotpalc said:
Actually I heard the douche being floated for Commerce Secretary (Ross) is going to initially focus on renegotiating NAFTA.

Again, instead of offering anything new and helpful, the Republican idea to waste time/money/resources on undoing Democratic legislation.

If done, and done to greatly favor the U.S., MIM Fenders and Godin guitars will likely stop being reasonably priced.
Click to expand...
Lots of products actually. And Trump also proposed a 35% tariff on German cars this morning as well. I am not very knowledgeable about the global economy (or the domestic one for that matter either) but it seems like this could start a trade war that would result in a national or even global recession.
 
Mark Wein said:
Lots of products actually. And Trump also proposed a 35% tariff on German cars this morning as well. I am not very knowledgeable about the global economy (or the domestic one for that matter either) but it seems like this could start a trade war that would result in a national or even global recession.
Click to expand...

Yeah, but I won't be buying a German car anytime soon. A Godin is always on my list and I love some the MIM Fender offerings! :thu:

Yeah, I don't get how we're supposed to bring manufacturing jobs back to the U.S. without paying the workers a living wage or having affordable healthcare options for these supposed newly employed folks. How are people going to be able to afford these newly Made in U.S.A. products if we don't pay them well? And if these folks are properly compensated, that cost of the products they manufacture goes up as well, so how will the average person be able to afford all this great new American-made thing-a-ma-bobs?

Further to the jobs point...what'll we do with all of the folks dismissed from the government jobs that will go away in the EPA, Dept of Ed, and elsewhere? Pay them less, without healthcare, to work in the new manufacturing plants?

The lack of logic is dumb-founding.
 
Just as a reminder...here are what are widely considered to be the 10 greatest revelations in the Manning leaks.

  • During the Iraq War, U.S. authorities failed to investigate hundreds of reports of abuse, torture, rape, and murder by Iraqi police and soldiers, according to thousands of field reports.
  • There were 109,032 “violent deaths” recorded in Iraq between 2004 and 2009, including 66,081 civilians. Leaked records from the Afghan War separately revealed coalition troops’ alleged role in killing at least 195 civilians in unreported incidents, one reportedly involving U.S. service members machine-gunning a bus, wounding or killing 15 passengers.
  • The U.S. Embassy in Paris advised Washington to start a military-style trade war against any European Union country that opposed genetically modified crops, with U.S. diplomats effectively working directly for GM companies such as Monsanto.
  • British and American officials colluded in a plan to mislead the British Parliament over a proposed ban on cluster bombs.
  • In Baghdad in 2007, a U.S. Army helicopter gunned down a group of civilians, including two Reuters news staff.
  • U.S. special operations forces were conducting offensive operations inside Pakistan despite sustained public denials and statements to the contrary by U.S. officials.
  • A leaked diplomatic cable provided evidence that during an incident in 2006, U.S. troops in Iraq executed at least 10 Iraqi civilians, including a woman in her 70s and a 5-month-old, then called in an airstrike to destroy the evidence. The disclosure of this cable was later a significant factor in the Iraqi government’s refusal to grant U.S. troops immunity from prosecution beyond 2011, which led to U.S. troops withdrawing from the country.
  • A NATO coalition in Afghanistan was using an undisclosed “black” unit of special operations forces to hunt down targets for death or detention without trial. The unit was revealed to have had a kill-or-capture list featuring details of more than 2,000 senior figures from the Taliban and al-Qaida, but it had in some cases mistakenly killed men, women, children, and Afghan police officers.
  • The U.S. threatened the Italian government in an attempt to influence a court case involving the indictment of CIA agents over the kidnapping of an Egyptian cleric. Separately, U.S. officials were revealed to have pressured Spanish prosecutors to dissuade them from investigating U.S. torture allegations, secret “extraordinary rendition” flights, and the killing of a Spanish journalist by U.S. troops in Iraq.
  • In apparent violation of a 1946 U.N. convention, Washington initiated a spying campaign in 2009 that targeted the leadership of the U.N. by seeking to gather top officials’ private encryption keys, credit card details, and biometric data.
 
Dogsinotpalc said:
Actually I heard the douche being floated for Commerce Secretary (Ross) is going to initially focus on renegotiating NAFTA.

Again, instead of offering anything new and helpful, the Republican idea to waste time/money/resources on undoing Democratic legislation.

If done, and done to greatly favor the U.S., MIM Fenders and Godin guitars will likely stop being reasonably priced.
Click to expand...
NAFTA was actually engineered by Bush Sr. It was just that it took so long to finalize that Bubba was the one to sign off on it.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top