American Politics Thread: Orange is the new POTUS (Archive)

[GirlySports]

Originally Posted by Snuffleupagus

Has the media mentioned that Trump has business ventures in Dubai, Turkey, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Qatar.?

How he could leave Saudi Arabia and Qatar off his list borders on a ridiculous low IQ.

He used Obamas list. As mentioned earlier no President has ever touched Saudi Arabia.

[Flash Walken]

Remember everyone, both sides are equally despicable.

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

Originally Posted by Flash Walken

Remember everyone, both sides are equally despicable.

What "sides"? This isn't team sports.

[Drak]

Originally Posted by GirlySports

He used Obamas list. As mentioned earlier no President has ever touched Saudi Arabia.

[kerriffic]

Joint statement (finally) from senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham

[EldrickOnIce]

^ Those 7 countries were the ones the Obama administration identified. The order is linked earlier. There are dire, legitimate concerns with respect to Trump and the dangerous direction of this administration. To extrapolate further meaning, that is merely speculative, not only serves no purpose, but actually shifts the focus away from where it needs to be - on a racist, misogynistic, dangerously volatile man and equally dangerous administration.

[wwkayaker]

^^^So strange to have McCain and Graham being the voices of reason.

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

Disagree; McCain is usually reasonable on at least foreign policy matters, and Graham has been fairly lucid since Trump got the nomination.

[jayswin]

Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague

What "sides"? This isn't team sports.

Unfortunately, American politics absolutely is team sports and there is two teams on the floor.

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

Originally Posted by jayswin

Unfortunately, American politics absolutely is team sports and there is two teams on the floor.

Okay, if the "sides" are Democrat and Republican, I don't know of anyone here who's saying they're equally bad... but more to the point, as shown in the Graham / McCain statement above, the Republicans aren't a monolith. Not even close. I doubt they're alone.

[Snuffleupagus]

Originally Posted by GirlySports

He used Obamas list. As mentioned earlier no President has ever touched Saudi Arabia.

So they can fund and fly into tall buildings and they still don't make a list? truly incredible

[Flash Walken]

Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague

Disagree; McCain is usually reasonable on at least foreign policy matters, and Graham has been fairly lucid since Trump got the nomination.

John McCain is a bumbling, dangerous war monger. The guy may pay lip service to things like nuclear disarmament

Don't buy into the costuming.

It’s a lonely job being an interventionist these days. Not long ago, there were the three amigos — Graham, McCain and Joe Lieberman — leading a powerful group of hawks. Now Lieberman (I-Conn.) is gone, and Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) leads a growing band of isolationists. Americans, exhausted by war, express more isolationist sentiment than they have in decades. President Obama shows little appetite for military conflict. And Republican congressional leaders have gone to ground. At a news conference Wednesday, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) demurred on all questions about involvement in Iraq, finally saying, “I don’t need to get into the specifics.”

This left McCain to make the case for war, with assists from his loyal sidekick Graham and a few others. The problem is that nobody seems to be listening, perhaps because McCain has been a predictable voice for intervention for two decades. He has made noises about U.S. military involvement in Nigeria, Ukraine, Syria, Mali, North Korea, Iran, Libya, Afghanistan, Kosovo, Bosnia, Sudan and Iraq (multiple times).

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...9f1_story.html

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

The "people who disagree with me are inherently dangerous and evil" trope is boring. I didn't say I agree with him on foreign policy, I said he's reasonable. He has actual, considered reasons for his positions on issues that can be reasonably rebutted. He's a hawk. That particular bent does not make him inherently unreasonable in any particular case.

That map is utterly useless, I have no idea, looking at it, what form his proposed intervention took or what the rationale for it could have been in any particular case. Great, he proposed intervening in Mali... for what reason? What sort of intervention? The legend on there speaks for itself.

[GirlySports]

Originally Posted by Snuffleupagus

So they can fund and fly into tall buildings and they still don't make a list? truly incredible

yup. Saudi Arabia and the US have been buddies since WWII and yes 3/4 of the 9/11 attackers were Saudi citizens

[Street Pharmacist]

Originally Posted by GirlySports

He used Obamas list. As mentioned earlier no President has ever touched Saudi Arabia.

The white first said it was congress' list, then when that was questioned they threw Obama's name out

[Flash Walken]

Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague

The "people who disagree with me are inherently dangerous and evil" trope is boring. I didn't say I agree with him on foreign policy, I said he's reasonable. He has actual, considered reasons for his positions on issues that can be reasonably rebutted. He's a hawk. That particular bent does not make him inherently unreasonable in any particular case.

That map is utterly useless, I have no idea, looking at it, what form his proposed intervention took or what the rationale for it could have been in any particular case. Great, he proposed intervening in Mali... for what reason? What sort of intervention? The legend on there speaks for itself.

Does having reasons make someone reasonable? I thought it was having sound judgement or being sensible.

Anyway, if you want to believe McCain is somehow reasonable when it comes to foreign policy decisions or veterans assistance that's ok, but you could easily look at his voting record if you wanted to come to a more accurate conclusion.

[wwkayaker]

http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/29/politi...cts/index.html

I'm curious to see where this ends up. It doesn't state individual countries therefore I understand this policy to be open to all foreigners. What a week; help ISIS in their efforts while potentially pushing away tourists.

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

Originally Posted by Flash Walken

Does having reasons make someone reasonable? I thought it was having sound judgement or being sensible

Having well considered reasons does. Which instances of his support for military intervention demonstrated that he has no judgment, and why? Why was he crazy to support intervening in Sudan, or Syria, for example? Sure, maybe you can give good reasons why he was wrong in those or other cases, and not being a hawk myself I'd probably even agree with you... but a bumbling warmonger?

I gather that you think any support for military intervention is prima facie unreasonable, in any given case, reasonable people can disagree about that. And it's important that someone is making that case, especially if no one else will.

Moreover, even if you think it's in any way useful (rather than the transparent attempt at a hit job) look at that map - the dark red countries are Libya, Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. Pretty sure you could find more than a couple of Democrats who were contemplating intervention in those places as well.

[jayswin]

Semantics? AGAIN???? AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHh!!!!!!!!!

We were doing so well in this thread. It was moving along nicely with lots of updates and banter, and then it comes back to this.

[CorsiHockeyLeague]