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Perpetual Middle East Geopolitical Quagmire Megathread


Hugo Stiglitz

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4 hours ago, Goredho said:

Yeah, one thing I do try to keep in mind about Trump’s grift is that everyone who has been in an administration has profiteered.  Most are able to wait to capitalize or otherwise maintain some semblance of superficial propriety but Trump is either too unrefined to pull that off or just doesn’t give a shit.

It’s everything else that is Trump — the would-be despot, the Richard Spencer domestic policy, the normalization of hatred, the assault on American democracy, the alienation of western allies and alignment with totalitarians — that  makes me want him to Mr Creosote himself at one of these Wendy’s catered White House luncheons.

Now back to your regularly scheduled even bigger than the crusades BEST war...

I think Carter was the exception to prove your rule.  Unless you count Billy Beer. 

Eisenhower, Truman and both Roosevelts seemed to place country over grift.    I'm not saying there couldn't have been some self serving or feathering nests, and golden parachutes weren't devised.  But I think that public service outweighed personal gratification.  Would make an interesting study.  The balance towards corruption seems to have begun to shift back to corruption in the Johnson/Nixon era. 

The gilded age was powered by a huge income/wealth disparity.   And that gilded age was aided and abetted by self serving politicians, all the way up to the WH.  Great Depression and WW2 broke that system.  History repeats itself, and it's doubling down.  Those at the top have taken measures to not lose power with gerrymandering, voter suppression, packing the courts, influencing public knowledge/perception and other measures. 

Trump will be defeated.  He will leave office and then begin his life either in court or on the run.   Whoever takes the office after that will need to be a strong leader, a statesman, not a politician.  And have a bang on crew as cabinet and support.   To overcome the negativity and hate in our country held by the trump supporters will be a must.   To turn that somehow.  And you need the proper media to do it.  8 years of Obama couldn't do it.  Maybe he was too slick.  He didn't speak like a lot of them.

I think if America can right itself and show the world that Trump was a one off, and we as a country have used our government to strengthen itself against Trump-type shit happening again, we can begin to regain the confidence of our allies.

If we can't, then we get what we deserve. 

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47 minutes ago, pyrohornIII said:

I think Carter was the exception to prove your rule.  Unless you count Billy Beer. 

Eisenhower, Truman and both Roosevelts seemed to place country over grift.    I'm not saying there couldn't have been some self serving or feathering nests, and golden parachutes weren't devised.  But I think that public service outweighed personal gratification.  Would make an interesting study.  The balance towards corruption seems to have begun to shift back to corruption in the Johnson/Nixon era. 

The gilded age was powered by a huge income/wealth disparity.   And that gilded age was aided and abetted by self serving politicians, all the way up to the WH.  Great Depression and WW2 broke that system.  History repeats itself, and it's doubling down.  Those at the top have taken measures to not lose power with gerrymandering, voter suppression, packing the courts, influencing public knowledge/perception and other measures. 

Trump will be defeated.  He will leave office and then begin his life either in court or on the run.   Whoever takes the office after that will need to be a strong leader, a statesman, not a politician.  And have a bang on crew as cabinet and support.   To overcome the negativity and hate in our country held by the trump supporters will be a must.   To turn that somehow.  And you need the proper media to do it.  8 years of Obama couldn't do it.  Maybe he was too slick.  He didn't speak like a lot of them.

I think if America can right itself and show the world that Trump was a one off, and we as a country have used our government to strengthen itself against Trump-type shit happening again, we can begin to regain the confidence of our allies.

If we can't, then we get what we deserve. 

This is a good post.  I'm outta rep, but want to acknowledge it.  I think pretty much every other president (at least in my voting lifetime) has tried to do what they felt was best for the country.  I might not have agreed with their decisions, but there was a comprehensible logic behind what they were doing as statesmen and my lack of confidence in their decisions often proved wrong.  And whatever profiteering happened during or after their time in office, I never doubted they understood the gravity of their responsibility and that they were at least attempting to steward the country responsibly.

Trump is different.  I think he is so narcissistic that he believes whatever makes his needy ego comfortable to live with is best for the country.  That is to say, whatever makes Cletus worship him.  It is a fucked up codependence.  Cletus is Trump's ego fuel.  Trump is Cletus' vengeful Dr Manhattan.

Edited by Goredho
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Administrations always release a photo of the situation room during these significant military actions. Is the photo unavailable for the assassination of Soleimani or is it just Trump on the crapper smashing his iPhone on twitter? 

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8 minutes ago, LABEVO said:

Administrations always release a photo of the situation room during these significant military actions. Is the photo unavailable for the assassination of Soleimani or is it just Trump on the crapper smashing his iPhone on twitter? 

Wasn't he at Mar-a-Lago when it went down?

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24 minutes ago, LABEVO said:

Administrations always release a photo of the situation room during these significant military actions. Is the photo unavailable for the assassination of Soleimani or is it just Trump on the crapper smashing his iPhone on twitter? 

Trump was in no state to take a photo at that time.

He had just shanked his drive on 17 and was pretty pissed about it.

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Once again there is no perfect cenerio...   So your answer is to do like Greece or Italy or most of Europe now and give free everting to everyone?  How are those economies doing right now?  Jfc wakeup there is no perfect solution but to run a good economy the answer isn’t to pay for everyone no matter what blindly.  I agree it shouldn’t be far right but it shouldn’t be far left either.  Also economically it’s been moved so far right right now and fucked up the country So bad, pleas tell me how??  Stock at all time highs, unemployment is down, so how is it So Fucked up?  Lol.  Once again not a Trump guy but you are pulling to say on things I based my thoughts on to say it fucked up.   I’m only talking economy here not all his other bs.  You want Warren and no oil and gas production is the US and 50% and over taxes let’s see what that does to the econemy.... I’ll hang up and listen.  I don’t have to wait I’ve seen it in Europe and Greece ect.  If you think socialism is the cure for the US you are a special kind of moron or you call them centralist which isn’t even correct.

This reads like it was pulled straight from texags or tigerdroppings. Perhaps you'd be more at home on one of those sites.

Sent from my SM-G920V using Tapatalk

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1 hour ago, Goredho said:

Trump is different.  I think he is so narcissistic that he believes whatever makes his needy ego comfortable to live with is best for the country.  That is to say, whatever makes Cletus worship him.  It is a fucked up codependence.  Cletus is Trump's ego fuel.  Trump is Cletus' vengeful Dr Manhattan.

We’re being governed by a doomsday cult.   

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3 hours ago, Goredho said:

The GOP has a contingency for catastrophic unpopularity.

Does it include subsidizing Cletus when gas prices shoot up?  Once again, another area where Trump has no experience, both because he doesn’t understand the O&G industry and how important the Strait of Hormuz is, and because High gas prices have never affected his bank account.  

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4 hours ago, atomheartbevo said:

And they think that if we hit Iran any more, that Iran should bow and submit, rather than fight back.  

Turtle should remember - in 2008, Obama got 365 EVs and McCain 178, in large part because of Iraq.   Have an unpopular President who didn’t even win the popular vote, get us in an even more disastrous more without even an excuse of WMDs and see how that goes.  

I am with you, Atom, but that was a 2008 electorate.  When I see all of the idiocy around this country today, I don’t have a lot of confidence with 2020 voters.

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9 minutes ago, ruitxn said:

I am with you, Atom, but that was a 2008 electorate.  When I see all of the idiocy around this country today, I don’t have a lot of confidence with 2020 voters.

Oh, they’ll bite the pillow, errr pay much higher gas and shipping prices, sure.

But we don’t have to sway many.   

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Seems ripe for a head fake, however even the threat of an attack on a Trump property will cause avoidance and hurt the brand. 

It'd be far more damaging to fuck with Trump and fam business by exposing their international money laundering and other corrupt entanglements.  But then I remind myself to consider Iran may not want to actually get rid of Trump.  

 

gettyimages-927683784.jpg

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11 minutes ago, GRHorn said:

Who first published/tweeted that letter? 

Cross-posting from the Trump thread in case you haven't been in there recently.

The name at the bottom reads Brig. Gen. William H. Seely, commander of the US forces in the fight against ISIS. The Iraqis have confirmed that they received the letter.

 

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This rogue assassination is so bad even Israel is coming out saying they had no part in it and want no part of being dragged into this. Lulz, this shit was too far for even the Muslim hating Jews. America is flying solo on this one. It's a good time for the American people and democratic leaders to publicly distance this attack from America and put it squarely on trump. Hell trump even took full credit for it already so would be easy to keep hammering home how reckless this guy is and how he's trying to get America into another un-winnable war. 

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7 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

Let's do just a short intellectual exercise here.

Imagine that the US was a company, and you were a shareholder in said company.  It comes to your attention that the leadership of the company is repeatedly doing slap-dick shit like this -- inadvertently sending out major pieces of correspondence on the direction of the company, inadvertently copying the competition on internal emails, the CEO is regularly making decisions that require board approval without getting such approval, and the board maintains that they are not concerned by that, the CEO is making impulsive decisions that repeatedly ignore the advice of the expert consultants that the company has on staff to analyze specific issues, the CEO refuses to even read the short briefings put together by those consultants, the CEO is booking company events at his private properties, charging the company top-dollar to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars....and well, we could go on.

How in the BLUE FUCK would you not be at the next shareholders meeting trying to vote every fucking one of the current board members out, and demanding that the CEO be terminated immediately thereafter?  You'd be the dumbest goddamned shareholder the world has ever seen if you DIDN'T do that....but we have millions of people who think that this is cool, cool.

We are Moronistan, the worst of all the stans.

BuT tRuMp Is A gReAt bUsInEsSmAn!!!

Edited by bolverk
Great analogy btw
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14 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

Let's do just a short intellectual exercise here.

Imagine that the US was a company, and you were a shareholder in said company.  It comes to your attention that the leadership of the company is repeatedly doing slap-dick shit like this -- inadvertently sending out major pieces of correspondence on the direction of the company, inadvertently copying the competition on internal emails, the CEO is regularly making decisions that require board approval without getting such approval, and the board maintains that they are not concerned by that, the CEO is making impulsive decisions that repeatedly ignore the advice of the expert consultants that the company has on staff to analyze specific issues, the CEO refuses to even read the short briefings put together by those consultants, the CEO is booking company events at his private properties, charging the company top-dollar to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars....and well, we could go on.

How in the BLUE FUCK would you not be at the next shareholders meeting trying to vote every fucking one of the current board members out, and demanding that the CEO be terminated immediately thereafter?  You'd be the dumbest goddamned shareholder the world has ever seen if you DIDN'T do that....but we have millions of people who think that this is cool, cool.

We are Moronistan, the worst of all the stans.

Can we short America?

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2 minutes ago, Goredho said:

Can we short America?

It would be wise.

As would be getting into defense stocks.  Chaos and collapse still feed certain types of "economic activity."  Might as well make a buck off the carnage -- I mean, morality and decency are dead, so fucking get some, man.

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