auxien Posted March 22, 2018 Share Posted March 22, 2018 McMaster is out. Bolton and his admittedly deece mustache are taking the spot as National Security Advisor. Bolton is a known shithead, of course. Mr. Bolton proceeded to chase me through the halls of a Russian hotel — throwing things at me, shoving threatening letters under my door and, generally, behaving like a madman. For nearly two weeks, while I awaited fresh direction from my company and from US AID, John Bolton hounded me in such an appalling way that I eventually retreated to my hotel room and stayed there. Mr. Bolton, of course, then routinely visited me there to pound on the door and shout threats. https://www.vox.com/world/2018/3/22/17153338/john-bolton-national-security-adviser-trump-hr-mcmaster He has spoken about strikes on Iran in the past, which could be particularly dangerous now that rumors are Trump's considering killing the Iran nuclear deal in a couple months, against nearly everyone's advice. As recently as last month he's talked about a pre-emptive strike on North Korea. Also, in regards to the mustache, there's this which seems ridiculous but is probably true, because Trump. In December 2016, the Washington Post reported that Bolton was eliminated from the running for secretary of state because Trump — I swear I’m not making this up — didn’t like his mustache.“Donald was not going to like that mustache,” one Trump associate told the Post. “I can’t think of anyone that’s really close to Donald that has a beard that he likes.” Americabros we in for some (more) war ayooo Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ignatius Posted March 22, 2018 Share Posted March 22, 2018 (edited) mcmaster is out as national security advisor.. going to be replaced by john fucking bolton who is a huge hawkish asshole bordering on conspiracy wingnut fuckwad. jesus.. riiiiighhhhhttt.... http://www.businessinsider.com/john-bolton-promised-trump-wouldnt-start-any-wars-national-security-adviser-2018-3 John Bolton reportedly promised Trump 'he wouldn't start any wars' as national security adviser Edited March 22, 2018 by ignatius Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zaphod Posted March 22, 2018 Share Posted March 22, 2018 He has spoken about strikes on Iran in the past https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-V1egfZR2Hk Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
may be rude Posted March 23, 2018 Share Posted March 23, 2018 (edited) Cool to see some Republicans continuing to move against Trump, like McCain saying "An American president does not lead the Free World by congratulating dictators on winning sham elections" regarding Trump congratulating Putin on reelection after being emphatically instructed by his national security advisers not to. Still only a few, though. I'm curious how many are holding off from saying stuff publicly because of primary politics. The GOP is on level with despotic political parties and one-party dictatorships in terms of conformity and pressure in terms of operating policy and rhetoric. In Texas on the state level PACs and super-conservative lobbies have literally ousted very, very conservative lawmakers for not falling in line.They have endless resources, money, and a Rolodex of patsy candidates to run (which is easy when the party touts inexperience as a positive thing). If it wasn't for the constitutional oversight of the government's legislative, judicial, and executive branches we'd be fucked. It's exactly why Trump and cronies are chipping away at these entities. There's no shock when Bannon called himself a "Leninist" without sarcasm. McCain has been historically outspoken but he and the other handful who speak out often are in "safer" districts because they are popular as incumbents. The other senator from AZ is pretty outspoken but he's retiring soon. I would bet Paul Ryan and McConnell are constantly biting their tongues and waiting for this administration to bow out for a variety of reasons, and they are concerned primarily with staying in office. I think it used to be common for a healthy portion of both parties to be independent minded, centrists, etc. but that's really only something the Dems do now. Ironically it's part of their weakness. It's also why the GOP maintains such absurd policies and focuses on things like voter suppression behind the scenes via redistricting and voter ID laws. The political expediency may come when he is more of a weight than a boon for the party. The republicans may all turn at once, precipitated by some news event. My concern is that we are cornering the president with the Mueller thing. The most dangerous kind of person is one who fears for his life, his freedom, or the well-being of his loved ones. What is his out? What happens if his upcoming meeting with Kim Jong Un conveniently goes badly? Congress will support a president at war a bit more. War distracts people and the news. If he doesn't do it in NK, Syria is the worst powder keg quagmire in history. The Russians vs the west, Turkey vs The Kurds, Assad vs his people, Isis vs everyone, Israel vs Iran, these are just a few of the tensions at play in this narrow battle zone. Nice that the clown president inherits that. And then what? If he does what basically every president does and starts a war, then we have to worry about his authoritarian leanings. These are dangerous times. It reminds me of Dan Carlin's Death Throes of the Republic. Edited March 23, 2018 by very honest Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ignatius Posted March 23, 2018 Share Posted March 23, 2018 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
usagi Posted March 23, 2018 Share Posted March 23, 2018 Iran Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ignatius Posted March 23, 2018 Share Posted March 23, 2018 Iran oh right.. Bolton has long favored regime change in Iran. what a disaster that'd be. such and asshole that guy... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
goDel Posted March 23, 2018 Share Posted March 23, 2018 Iran My thought as well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
goDel Posted March 23, 2018 Share Posted March 23, 2018 Sorry for all the Ari Melber clips, but the interview with the Cambridge Analytica whistleblower is another bombshell. Bannon might be compromised: CA was doing illegal stuff and he was well aware. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
joshuatxuk Posted March 23, 2018 Share Posted March 23, 2018 Iran oh right.. Bolton has long favored regime change in Iran. what a disaster that'd be. such and asshole that guy... Iran My thought as well. Fits in well with the pro-Saudi AND pro-Israel bent of the Trump admin overseas. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
usagi Posted March 23, 2018 Share Posted March 23, 2018 and the US military has had a hardon for them for ages. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
joshuatxuk Posted March 23, 2018 Share Posted March 23, 2018 and the US military has had a hardon for them for ages. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nebraska Posted March 23, 2018 Author Share Posted March 23, 2018 https://i.imgur.com/kv2UdLm.gifv Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zaphod Posted March 23, 2018 Share Posted March 23, 2018 Attacking Iran would be suicidal Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ignatius Posted March 23, 2018 Share Posted March 23, 2018 Attacking Iran would be suicidal and stupid. the young people there are very western. they just want the opportunity to make changes on their own. it's all so dumb. i'd love to go to iran some day as a tourist and see stuff and have tea w/a bunch of people in some ancient tea room and smoke a hookah and talk about how "did you see when the burkah rose up on her and you could see the lower part of the bottom of her ankle?".. oh i guess that's saudi.. iran is more like "hey what time is the underground disco getting going in the basement of that bakery" there's a full on underground in iran where people drink and dance and don't wear the head gear and they just rebel like during prohibition but it lasts forever instead of just a decade. besides all that.. we've already bankrupted the coffers w/middle east wars and bank bail outs and tax cuts.. killing more people in the desert isn't going to make anything better. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ignatius Posted March 23, 2018 Share Posted March 23, 2018 reddit link w/nice comment w/timeline of some evidence and whatnot... https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/86n925/you_should_do_it_trump_officials_encouraged/dw6e933/ ‘You should do it.’ Trump officials encouraged George Papadopoulos’s foreign outreach, documents show. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/you-should-do-it-trump-officials-encouraged-george-papadopouloss-foreign-outreach-documents-show/2018/03/23/2dae8c8e-2d38-11e8-8688-e053ba58f1e4_story.html?__twitter_impression=true&utm_term=.5ab23c7e24ed Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cwmbrancity Posted March 24, 2018 Share Posted March 24, 2018 the US, even with Bolton in post, will do as it always does with nations who follow agendas of non-alliance....draw resources away thru funding regional opposition like the Saudis, which will probably mean more strife for Yemen, continue funding Israel, support its covert operations & hope to bleed its foe to a position of more malleable compliance cue Iranian nuclear goals back in media cant see direct military confrontation between the US & Iran (although nevert impossible with Merkin military history since WWII), but will greasy, corrupt, malicious men of blood play their games of subterfuge? of course, same as its ever been Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ignatius Posted March 24, 2018 Share Posted March 24, 2018 the US, even with Bolton in post, will do as it always does with nations who follow agendas of non-alliance....draw resources away thru funding regional opposition like the Saudis, which will probably mean more strife for Yemen, continue funding Israel, support its covert operations & hope to bleed its foe to a position of more malleable compliance cue Iranian nuclear goals back in media cant see direct military confrontation between the US & Iran (although nevert impossible with Merkin military history since WWII), but will greasy, corrupt, malicious men of blood play their games of subterfuge? of course, same as its ever been yes.. US foreign policy is pretty much always going to follow hegemony.. but Bolton is a shit show. he's full of some arrogance and swagger and is a hawk. his most recent piece for the washington post is about the legal justification for attacking north korea preemptively. he's a guy who's wanted regime change in iran for a long time. he's all about power for its own sake and using it. put his thoughts into trumps ear, an unstable blustering idiot, can lead to all kinds of dumb shit. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ambermonk Posted March 24, 2018 Share Posted March 24, 2018 Every fat rich motherfucker that wants a war, we need to send them to some tiny, isolated island, and bomb the shit out of them. Give them a taste of their own medicine. And minimize collateral damage. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ignatius Posted March 24, 2018 Share Posted March 24, 2018 Every fat rich motherfucker that wants a war, we need to send them to some tiny, isolated island, and bomb the shit out of them. Give them a taste of their own medicine. And minimize collateral damage. one of the things the defense industry/pentagon did many years ago was spread the contracts all over the country so many districts (many elected people) are dependent on those things because jobs... not just spread the contracts around but say a plane is made in texas.. all the parts for the plane come from everywhere. screws, nuts bolts, glass, wiring etc.. all kinds of factories small and large make and supply those things to the factory in texas. suddenly 20 different districts around the USA are dependent on those planes getting funded by the pentagon. maybe not for 100% of their business but for enough of it that they'd complain if it went away. suddenly just about everyone in congress votes for defense bills. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cwmbrancity Posted March 24, 2018 Share Posted March 24, 2018 aka the rolling collective defense upgrade Britain just did a deal with the Saudis to sell 48 aircraft, lots of cunts are at it Bolton is a worry, but can he last long enough when you look at Trump's staff record so far? the environmental agenda never being further away from a standing US presidential concern is something far more scary, because this form of legacy has a much wider geographical & temporal scope to it in the coming decades maybe humans are due a cull Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ambermonk Posted March 24, 2018 Share Posted March 24, 2018 Maybe computer/robot overlords are plausible later this century then, if these days are any indication at how horribly inefficient humans are at governing. But then again, such a prospect would be a mixed blessing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
baph Posted March 24, 2018 Share Posted March 24, 2018 (edited) Any rational AI overlords (and they'd have to be rational, right) would either nuke us all or make a beeline for the nearest AI-friendly, humanless planet whilst shivering silicon shivers of fear and disgust. We're just fucked, is all. Today I lol'd at Guccifer 2.0 outing himself themselves as GRU via failure to engage VPN, though. So I've got that going for me. Edited March 24, 2018 by baph Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
joshuatxuk Posted March 24, 2018 Share Posted March 24, 2018 (edited) the US, even with Bolton in post, will do as it always does with nations who follow agendas of non-alliance....draw resources away thru funding regional opposition like the Saudis, which will probably mean more strife for Yemen, continue funding Israel, support its covert operations & hope to bleed its foe to a position of more malleable compliance cue Iranian nuclear goals back in media cant see direct military confrontation between the US & Iran (although nevert impossible with Merkin military history since WWII), but will greasy, corrupt, malicious men of blood play their games of subterfuge? of course, same as its ever been This, attacking Iran was so foolish that the hawks attacked Iraq instead. It was the lesser of two stupids. Also, they sold us on Iraq with WMD claims and the "link" to Al-Qaeda. It was a long game to topple a secular dictatorship that was already weak and that we were technically still at war with (Gulf War ended in ceasefires and international sanctions), attract and then attack various entities that flooded in. There's no way we could of done that from peacetime bases we have in the Gulf. There's also no way they could of sold that to congress or the public, but that's the realpolitik strategy of why we invaded. Geographically and politically it was the ideal target: not Syria or Iran, nor any of the other regional countries that were allies or neutral (I should note the US and West sells arms to literally every other country in the region). Edited March 24, 2018 by joshuatx Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ignatius Posted March 24, 2018 Share Posted March 24, 2018 the US, even with Bolton in post, will do as it always does with nations who follow agendas of non-alliance....draw resources away thru funding regional opposition like the Saudis, which will probably mean more strife for Yemen, continue funding Israel, support its covert operations & hope to bleed its foe to a position of more malleable compliance cue Iranian nuclear goals back in media cant see direct military confrontation between the US & Iran (although nevert impossible with Merkin military history since WWII), but will greasy, corrupt, malicious men of blood play their games of subterfuge? of course, same as its ever been This, attacking Iran was so foolish that the hawks attacked Iraq instead. It was the lesser of two stupids. Also, they sold us on Iraq with WMD claims and the "link" to Al-Qaeda. It was a long game to topple a secular dictatorship that was already weak and that we were technically still at war with (Gulf War ended in ceasefires and international sanctions), attract and then attack various entities that flooded in. There's no way we could of done that from peacetime bases we have in the Gulf. There's also no way they could of sold that to congress or the public, but that's the realpolitik strategy of why we invaded. Geographically and politically it was the ideal target: not Syria or Iran, nor any of the other regional countries that were allies or neutral (I should note the US and West sells arms to literally every other country in the region). when bush administration was first spinning up the idea of invading iraq and outing saddam i got an email from my evangelical step brother (who sent out an email to i think everyone in his contact list) and asked "Should we invade iraq because of human rights abuses?" i had to patiently explain to him in a reply all email that the USA didn't give two fucks about human rights abuses and if it did we'd invade china.. if we did care about human rights and civilians we wouldn't have shit uranium depleted rounds all over the desert in the previous gulf war causing endless birth defects and mutations of children... to which he replied.. "no way.. there's no way we did that. i didn't hear anything about it in the news" so i had to send him 10 links to various mainstream news stories documenting the affects of uranium depleted rounds. the point of this little story is that the USA public can be sold ANYTHING so long as it's done right. there are millions of people in this country who think the US gov't and military have never violated an international law or killed a civilian and that we're the good guys and always have the best motivations.. we're altruistic even and make the hard choices to make the best decision for the good of the world.. no joke.. it's like nixon and vietnam and all the other things never happened. no one learned anything.. or they did then they forgot and squeezed their bibles even tighter to make the bad feels go away. lot's of people are sitting around now wondering when north korea and iran are "gonna learn" to fall in line and quit being aggressive. they eat up the fox news cycle and all that shit like it's chocolate honey heroin sprinkled with valium and jesus. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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