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The nonsense thread - Enter at your own risk! Warning… 100% off topic and full of nonsense inside (Read 890,715 times)
sirmoonie
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Re: Politics thread (ssc!!)
Reply #1875 - Aug 3rd, 2017 at 4:07pm
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This other time I showed up for work loaded.  It was the day after Labor Day, I recall because it was befitting.  So they were onto me pretty quick, because I was knocking down artwork in the halls, eating coffee grinds, and my shoes were untied.  I figure I best skedaddle, so I head down to the loading dock.  Now, don't let ANYONE tell you loading dock guys have the best weed.  Urban miff.  They got jack weed.  Scull weed.  Vanilla Biff cake weed.  It sucks.  They work on a fucking a loading dock, for J.Christ's sakes.  Hand these bozos a pacifier and they'll smoke it.  Anyway, I get down there, and I'm dropping stuff left and right.  I busted like 200 square feet of mauve kitchen ceramic tile.  I fucking backed a forklift over all the backup comm equipment.  They call the shop steward in from downtown, but in the meantime, I'm out front mooning all the drivers.  The day just got out of hand.  It was fucked up.
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"But in terms of what's left of white people, we're still it." - Andrew Moof Oldham
 
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Re: Politics thread (ssc!!)
Reply #1876 - Aug 3rd, 2017 at 4:41pm
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This other time, we all got summoned to an employee meeting with the new office manager.  To be perfectly honest, I was hungover as a moose.  I was disheveled in my appearance - the hue of my socks didn't even match.  It was bad, and I didn't feel like getting hustled down to the auditorium to listen to this college educated schmuck tell us how to do our goddam jobs.  So I'm raising my hand "where's the baffroom?" "What's your name, again?" and stuff like that.  They want me out of the room at some point, which is fine.  I don't need this, you know?  So I go back to the telemode desk and start moving stuff around.  I know how to keep this company in the black.  I'm not some fool.  Experience counts.  I've done it all.  I know what sells in America to these schlubs.  I could sell piss to an Eskimo.  I could seek futons to fat boy.
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Re: Politics thread (ssc!!)
Reply #1877 - Aug 3rd, 2017 at 5:04pm
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So this other time, a few years back, they send me to this anger management symposium because of what I did to the automatic room fresheners.  Now I'm fucking livid that I have to go waste my goddam time with this stuff, so I'm doing anything I can to get tossed out, dancing the Jordache, flossing my teeth, sniffing peoples' socks.  But they're telling me my pay is already docked, and I'm suspected of other stuff.  So I get pissed and put on a gas mask and start urinating on the overhead projector.  I'm not exactly comfortable doing this, but I have my limits, you know?  You give these corporate fucks an inch, they'll take a fucking yard.  I swear to fucking J.Christ they will take a fucking yard.
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Re: Politics thread (ssc!!)
Reply #1878 - Aug 3rd, 2017 at 5:22pm
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So this other time, a few years back, they have me down in Distribution.  I'll admit I was drinking over by the hull of the heating unit.  But I'm mellow, not like I'm going to trash the bathroom again.  These fucks though, they want blood from a cabbage.  Some prick from HR shows up with a 50 milliliter cantilevered beaker he says I agreed to piss in per my renegotiated Amended Employment Agreement (AEA).  I know I'm cooked at this because I did agree, at the behest of my lawyer, to pissing in beakers, so I start yelling about efficiency and urine and the Constitution.  Why the fuck should I piss in a beaker because of something I signed over a fucking year ago?!?!  Fucking bullshit.  But this is what they do.  They just want to grind the common guy, Joe Q. Suburb, into a bowl of tepid piss!
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Re: Politics thread (ssc!!)
Reply #1879 - Aug 3rd, 2017 at 9:32pm
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https://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21725768-there-are-no-good-options-curb-k...



" It could happen "

" How to avoid nuclear war with North Korea "

" There are no good options to curb Kim Jong Un. But blundering into war would be the worst  "



"IT IS odd that North Korea causes so much trouble. It is not exactly a superpower. Its economy is only a fiftieth as big as that of its democratic capitalist cousin, South Korea. Americans spend twice its total GDP on their pets. Yet Kim Jong Un’s backward little dictatorship has grabbed the attention of the whole world, and even of America’s president, with its nuclear brinkmanship. On July 28th it tested an intercontinental ballistic missile that could hit Los Angeles. Before long, it will be able to mount nuclear warheads on such missiles, as it already can on missiles aimed at South Korea and Japan. In charge of this terrifying arsenal is a man who was brought up as a demigod and cares nothing for human life—witness the innocents beaten to death with hammers in his gigantic gulag. Last week his foreign ministry vowed that if the regime’s “supreme dignity” is threatened, it will “pre-emptively annihilate” the countries that threaten it, with all means “including the nuclear ones”. Only a fool could fail to be alarmed.

Yet the most serious danger is not that one side will suddenly try to devastate the other. It is that both sides will miscalculate, and that a spiral of escalation will lead to a catastrophe that no one wants. Our briefing this week lays out, step by step, one way that America and North Korea might blunder into a nuclear war (see article). It also lists some of the likely consequences. These include: for North Korea, the destruction of its regime and the death of hundreds of thousands of people. For South Korea, the destruction of Seoul, a city of 10m within easy range of 1,000 of the North’s conventional artillery pieces. For America, the possibility of a nuclear attack on one of its garrisons in East Asia, or even on an American city. And don’t forget the danger of an armed confrontation between America and China, the North’s neighbour and grudging ally. It seems distasteful to mention the economic effects of another Korean war, but they would of course be awful, too.

President Donald Trump has vowed to stop North Korea from perfecting a nuclear warhead that could threaten the American mainland, tweeting that “it won’t happen!” Some pundits suggest shooting down future test missiles on the launchpad or, improbably, in the air. Others suggest using force to overthrow the regime or pre-emptive strikes to destroy Mr Kim’s nuclear arsenal before he has a chance to use it.

Yet it is just this sort of military action that risks a ruinous escalation. Mr Kim’s bombs and missile-launchers are scattered and well hidden. America’s armed forces, for all their might, cannot reliably neutralise the North Korean nuclear threat before Mr Kim has a chance to retaliate. The task would be difficult even if the Pentagon had good intelligence about North Korea; it does not. The only justification for a pre-emptive strike would be to prevent an imminent nuclear attack on America or one of its allies.

Can Mr Kim be cajoled or bribed into giving up his nuclear ambitions? It is worth trying, but has little chance of success. In 1994 President Bill Clinton secured a deal whereby Kim Jong Il (the current despot’s father) agreed to stop producing the raw material for nuclear bombs in return for a huge injection of aid. Kim took the money and technical help, but immediately started cheating. Another deal in 2005 failed, for the same reason. The younger Kim, like his father, sees nuclear weapons as the only way to guarantee the survival of his regime. It is hard to imagine circumstances in which he would voluntarily give up what he calls his “treasured sword of justice”.

If military action is reckless and diplomacy insufficient, the only remaining option is to deter and contain Mr Kim. Mr Trump should make clear—in a scripted speech, not a tweet or via his secretary of state—that America is not about to start a war, nuclear or conventional. However, he should reaffirm that a nuclear attack by North Korea on America or one of its allies will immediately be matched. Mr Kim cares about his own skin. He enjoys the life of a dissolute deity, living in a palace and with the power to kill or bed any of his subjects. If he were to unleash a nuclear weapon, he would lose his luxuries and his life. So would his cronies. That means they can be deterred.

To contain Mr Kim, America and its allies should apply pressure that cannot be misconstrued as a declaration of war. They should ramp up economic sanctions not only against the North Korean regime but also against the Chinese companies that trade with it or handle its money. America should formally extend its nuclear guarantee to South Korea and Japan, and boost the missile defences that protect both countries. This would help ensure that they do not build nuclear weapons of their own. America should convince the South Koreans, who will suffer greatly if war breaks out, that it will not act without consulting them. China is fed up with the Kim regime, but fears that if it were to collapse, a reunified Korea would mean American troops on China’s border. Mr Trump’s team should guarantee that this will not happen, and try to persuade China that in the long run it is better off with a united, prosperous neighbour than a poor, violent and unpredictable one.

Everyone stay calm
All the options for dealing with the North are bad. Although America should not recognise it as a legitimate nuclear power, it must base its policy on the reality that it is already an illegitimate one. Mr Kim may gamble that his nukes give him the freedom to behave more provocatively, perhaps sponsoring terrorism in the South. He may also sell weapons to other cruel regimes or terrorist groups. The world must do what it can to thwart such plots, though some will doubtless succeed.

It is worth recalling that America has been here before. When Stalin and Mao were building their first atom bombs, some in the West urged pre-emptive strikes to stop them. Happily, cooler heads prevailed. Since then, the logic of deterrence has ensured that these terrible weapons have never been used. Some day, perhaps by coup or popular uprising, North Koreans will be rid of their repulsive ruler, and the peninsula will reunite as a democracy, like Germany. Until then, the world must keep calm and contain Mr Kim.  "
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Re: Politics thread (ssc!!)
Reply #1880 - Aug 3rd, 2017 at 9:55pm
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<  ------------ Some Guy   ..... ?!  .... !!!!!   :




https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-scandal-that-matters-1501801333


" The Scandal That Matters "

" Democratic IT staff who had access to sensitive data stand accused of fraud.  "



By Kimberley A. Strassel



" Imran Awan was arrested at Dulles International Airport July 24, while attempting to board a flight to Pakistan. For more than a decade the congressional staffer had worked under top House Democrats, and he had just been accused by the FBI of bank fraud.

It was a dramatic moment in a saga that started in February, when Capitol Police confirmed an investigation into Mr. Awan and his family on separate accusations of government theft. The details are tantalizing: The family all worked for top Democrats, were paid huge sums, and had access to sensitive congressional data, even while having ties to Pakistan.

The media largely has ignored the affair, the ho-hum coverage summed up by a New York Times piece suggesting it may be nothing more than an “overblown Washington story, typical of midsummer.” But even without evidence of espionage or blackmail, this ought to be an enormous scandal.

Because based on what we already know, the Awan story is—at the very least—a tale of massive government incompetence that seemingly allowed a family of accused swindlers to bilk federal taxpayers out of millions and even put national secrets at risk. In a more accountable world, House Democrats would be forced to step down.

Mr. Awan, 37, began working for House Democrats as an IT staffer in 2004. By the next year, he was working for future Democratic National Committee head Debbie Wasserman Schultz. Over time he would add his wife, two brothers, a brother’s wife and a friend to the payroll—and at handsome sums. One brother, Jamal, hired in 2014 reportedly at age 20, was paid $160,000. That’s in line with what a chief of staff makes—about four times the average Capitol Hill staffer. No Democrat appears to have investigated these huge numbers or been asked to account for them.

According to an analysis by the Daily Caller’s Luke Rosiak, who has owned this story, the family has collected $5 million since 2003 and “appeared at one time or another on an estimated 80 House Democrats’ payrolls.” Yet Mr. Rosiak interviewed House staffers who claim most of the family were “ghost” employees and didn’t come to work. Only in government does nobody notice when staffers fail to show up.

The family was plenty busy elsewhere. A litany of court documents accuse them of bankruptcy fraud, life-insurance fraud, tax fraud and extortion. Abid Awan, a brother, ran up more than $1 million in debts on a failed car dealership he somehow operated while supposedly working full time on the Hill. One document ties the family to a loan from a man stripped of his Maryland medical license after false billing. Capitol Police are investigating allegations of procurement fraud and theft. The brothers filed false financial-disclosure forms, with Imran Awan claiming his wife had no income, even as she worked as a fellow House IT staffer.

This is glaringly shady stuff, in no way “typical,” yet nobody noticed. Federal contractors are subject to security standards, but individual congressional offices have giant leeway over their hiring—and apparently no quality control. If a private firm had such shoddy employee oversight, it’d be sued into oblivion.

The most recent FBI affidavit accuses Imran Awan of defrauding the Congressional Federal Credit Union by lying about the use of his rental properties to get a $165,000 home-equity loan—which he immediately wrapped into a $283,000 wire transfer to Pakistan. At one point, when the credit union asked Mr. Awan (who was pretending to be his wife on the phone) why he wanted to send money to Pakistan, he replied, “funeral arrangements.”

Told this was not an acceptable reason, Mr. Awan went to “look online for an acceptable reason” and responded “buying property.” The bright bulbs at the credit union approved the transfer. His wife was already in Pakistan. The FBI stopped her at the airport in March, and despite finding $12,400 in undeclared cash (in excess of the legal limit), they let her go. Seriously.

Imran Awan has pleaded not guilty to bank fraud. The law office representing him issued a statement casting the investigation as “part of a frenzy of anti-Muslim bigotry in the literal heart of our democracy.” It calls the accusations “utterly unsupported, outlandish, and slanderous.”

Yes, it is weird that Ms. Wasserman Schultz continued to shield Imran Awan to the end. Yes, the amounts of money, and the ties to Pakistan, are strange. Yes, it is alarming that emails show Imran Awan knew Ms. Wasserman Schultz’s iPad password, and that the family might have had wider access to the accounts of lawmakers on the House Intelligence and Foreign Affairs committees.

Yet even if this never adds up to a spy thriller, it outranks most of the media’s other obsessions. The government, under the inattentive care of Democrats, may have been bilked for ages by a man the FBI has alleged to be a fraudster. That’s the same government Democrats say is qualified to run your health care, reform your children’s schools, and protect the environment. They should explain this first. "
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Re: Politics thread (ssc!!)
Reply #1881 - Aug 4th, 2017 at 5:46am
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sirmoonie wrote on Aug 3rd, 2017 at 5:22pm:
These fucks though, they want blood from a cabbage. They just want to grind the common guy, Joe Q. Suburb, into a bowl of tepid piss!



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“What rap did that was impressive was to show there are so many tone-deaf people out there,” he says. “All they need is a drum beat and somebody yelling over it and they’re happy. There’s an enormous market for people who can’t tell one note from another.” - Keef
 
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Re: Politics thread (ssc!!)
Reply #1882 - Aug 4th, 2017 at 11:25am
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This other time, like 3-4 years ago, I had shot gunned a couple of beers I had stashed in my locker.  It was a Friday, and I was getting jacked up for the weekend.  I was giddy with anticipation.  Anyway, I got it in my head that it was unfair that I couldn't use the backhoe just because I failed the certification.  I mean, how fucking hard is it to backhoe something.  So I get one out of maintenance and drive it to the southwest corner of the employee lot, and start digging a moat around the Bulger Ash trees out there.  I'm about half way done and the Relay Supervisor comes running over all "what the fuck are you doing?!?!"  He's fucking all excited and I told him "don't get your balls in uproar.  I'm finishing up my cert."  He's all "turn that fucking thing off!" and calling security on me.  What a dick.
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Re: Politics thread (ssc!!)
Reply #1883 - Aug 4th, 2017 at 1:30pm
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sirmoonie wrote on Aug 4th, 2017 at 11:25am:
This other time, like 3-4 years ago, I had shot gunned a couple of beers I had stashed in my locker.  It was a Friday, and I was getting jacked up for the weekend.  I was giddy with anticipation.  Anyway, I got it in my head that it was unfair that I couldn't use the backhoe just because I failed the certification.  I mean, how fucking hard is it to backhoe something.  So I get one out of maintenance and drive it to the southwest corner of the employee lot, and start digging a moat around the Bulger Ash trees out there.  I'm about half way done and the Relay Supervisor comes running over all "what the fuck are you doing?!?!"  He's fucking all excited and I told him "don't get your balls in uproar.  I'm finishing up my cert."  He's all "turn that fucking thing off!" and calling security on me.  What a dick.





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Re: Politics thread (ssc!!)
Reply #1884 - Aug 4th, 2017 at 1:54pm
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This other time, I think it was last summer, they send me and those two other guys up on the warehouse roof to re-bleach the skylights, because we did a lousy job the last time.  The other two guys are not that bright.  A pair of dopes, really.  Easily led, like most dummies.  So we're up there and I'm getting bored, so I start mouthing off at people across the street.  Pretty soon the dummies are doing it too.  We're insulting people's clothes, making obscene gestures, just having a good time on a sunny afternoon.  So that same Relay supervisor gets wind of what we're up to, and he's down on the ground yelling at us all "Get down here right now!  Get off that goddam roof!"  We're pretending we can't hear him all waving at him "Hey there...what?  Yes, it is a nice day!"  This makes him livid.  The guy is just incensed, and he starts throwing dirt clods up at us, yelling at us to get down off the roof.  So one of the dummies takes a thermos of chicken noodle soup out of his lunch and pours it on the guy.

We're still mouthing off at people down on the street.  We've got a pretty big audience now, so we're emboldened.  The dummies actually start twerking and dancing the butt jig, while I'm threatening to piss on some of the ugly people below.  I'm like "You.  Yeah you, the one with the face like a salamander.  I'm going to piss on you, fatso."  Things started getting really out of hand.  When you get some idiots up on a roof, things can really develop.
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Re: Politics thread (ssc!!)
Reply #1885 - Aug 4th, 2017 at 2:39pm
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sirmoonie wrote on Aug 4th, 2017 at 1:54pm:
This other time, I think it was last summer, they send me and those two other guys up on the warehouse roof to re-bleach the skylights, because we did a lousy job the last time.  The other two guys are not that bright.  A pair of dopes, really.  Easily led, like most dummies.  So we're up there and I'm getting bored, so I start mouthing off at people across the street.  Pretty soon the dummies are doing it too.  We're insulting people's clothes, making obscene gestures, just having a good time on a sunny afternoon.  So that same Relay supervisor gets wind of what we're up to, and he's down on the ground yelling at us all "Get down here right now!  Get off that goddam roof!"  We're pretending we can't hear him all waving at him "Hey there...what?  Yes, it is a nice day!"  This makes him livid.  The guy is just incensed, and he starts throwing dirt clods up at us, yelling at us to get down off the roof.  So one of the dummies takes a thermos of chicken noodle soup out of his lunch and pours it on the guy.

We're still mouthing off at people down on the street.  We've got a pretty big audience now, so we're emboldened.  The dummies actually start twerking and dancing the butt jig, while I'm threatening to piss on some of the ugly people below.  I'm like "You.  Yeah you, the one with the face like a salamander.  I'm going to piss on you, fatso."  Things started getting really out of hand.  When you get some idiots up on a roof, things can really develop.




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Re: Politics thread (ssc!!)
Reply #1886 - Aug 4th, 2017 at 5:05pm
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The one dumb guy got fired.  Not for the roof thing.  They blamed me for that.  Some other alleged infraction.  An alleged infraction stemming from an alleged incident.  He works for the county now. I still see him at happy hour, though.  Two weeks ago, we were pounding some beers, and there is the guy in a suit across from us.  I can't stand those suit and tie fucks.  All like magnates or tycoons.  I was going to be a tycoon once, but I didn't want to put on a suit and tie every day and hob nob around a bunch of dickhead tycoons.  I'm more the free spirit type.  So anyway, I dared the dumb guy to take the jalapeño cheese sauce and dump it on the tycoon.  I had to explain to him what a tycoon is.  Anyway, the crazy bastard does it.  Just dumps cheese sauce all over the fucking tycoon!  He's furious!  I knew he'd start spazzing.  He's all "What the fuck, asshole?!?!  This is a 2 thousand dollar suit, you fucking idiot!"  Cheese sauce all over his neck, dropping down his suit, even some on his socks!  I'm just cracking up.  Just pounding the table and guffawing like a madman.  I'm all like "Har Har har!"  So the tycoon gets mad at me!  He's all like "you think this is funny, pal?!?!"  I didn't care for his tone particularly.  These tycoon fucks think they are the only ones who can guffaw.  So the guy next to me had a roast beef sandwich with all that silly au jus sauce they put on them, so I grab it and clock the tycoon on the side of his face.  Au jus sauce spraying everywhere.  I'm like "there!  Now your face matches your suit."  He's pissed!  He starts swinging at me calling me names, and I'm dodging him, looking for another sandwich to pop him with. The dumb guy is wrestling with one of the tycoon's friends.  The whole bar starts getting weird, people yelling and throwing food around.  I don't know if they were all drunk or what.  It was pretty fucked up, though.  I ended up having to buy a round of drinks for an elderly couple after I accidentally poured a beer on their fat grandson's head.  Some of the au jus sauce got on them too when it ricocheted off the tycoon's creepy ass face.
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Re: Politics thread (ssc!!)
Reply #1887 - Aug 5th, 2017 at 8:37am
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sirmoonie wrote on Aug 4th, 2017 at 5:05pm:
The one dumb guy got fired.  Not for the roof thing.  They blamed me for that.  Some other alleged infraction.  An alleged infraction stemming from an alleged incident.  He works for the county now. I still see him at happy hour, though.  Two weeks ago, we were pounding some beers, and there is the guy in a suit across from us.  I can't stand those suit and tie fucks.  All like magnates or tycoons.  I was going to be a tycoon once, but I didn't want to put on a suit and tie every day and hob nob around a bunch of dickhead tycoons.  I'm more the free spirit type.  So anyway, I dared the dumb guy to take the jalapeño cheese sauce and dump it on the tycoon.  I had to explain to him what a tycoon is.  Anyway, the crazy bastard does it.  Just dumps cheese sauce all over the fucking tycoon!  He's furious!  I knew he'd start spazzing.  He's all "What the fuck, asshole?!?!  This is a 2 thousand dollar suit, you fucking idiot!"  Cheese sauce all over his neck, dropping down his suit, even some on his socks!  I'm just cracking up.  Just pounding the table and guffawing like a madman.  I'm all like "Har Har har!"  So the tycoon gets mad at me!  He's all like "you think this is funny, pal?!?!"  I didn't care for his tone particularly.  These tycoon fucks think they are the only ones who can guffaw.  So the guy next to me had a roast beef sandwich with all that silly au jus sauce they put on them, so I grab it and clock the tycoon on the side of his face.  Au jus sauce spraying everywhere.  I'm like "there!  Now your face matches your suit."  He's pissed!  He starts swinging at me calling me names, and I'm dodging him, looking for another sandwich to pop him with. The dumb guy is wrestling with one of the tycoon's friends.  The whole bar starts getting weird, people yelling and throwing food around.  I don't know if they were all drunk or what.  It was pretty fucked up, though.  I ended up having to buy a round of drinks for an elderly couple after I accidentally poured a beer on their fat grandson's head.  Some of the au jus sauce got on them too when it ricocheted off the tycoon's creepy ass face.








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Re: Politics thread (ssc!!)
Reply #1888 - Aug 7th, 2017 at 8:21am
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<  ----- Edith ?!    .... !!!!!!   :






https://www.wsj.com/articles/college-is-trade-school-for-the-elite-1502051874





" College Is Trade School for the Elite   '

" Even education in the humanities has become vocationalized, though the transformation is subtle.    "




By Allen Guelzo



" Donald J. Trump has a degree from an Ivy League university—my alma mater, in fact—but he is not one of the Ivies’ admirers. “We must embrace new and effective job-training approaches, including online courses, high school curricula, and private-sector investment that prepare people for trade, manufacturing, technology and other really well-paying jobs and careers,” the president declared in March. “These kinds of options can be a positive alternative to a four-year degree.”

If ever an issue seemed assured of bipartisan support, you’d think it would be an initiative that helps connect workers with work. But up went the howls of injury anyway. “I’m worried that the idea of vocational education has become so popular,” wrote David Leonhardt of the New York Times . “We shouldn’t be promoting vocational education at the expense of general education.” Instead, “expanding the number of four-year college graduates also deserves to be a national priority.”

Maybe. Mr. Leonhardt is pitting vocational education against the ideals of higher education—independence of thought, breadth of knowledge and understanding. It’s not hard to see how important these ideals are to a democracy, in which political sovereignty lies with the people at large. If the people are ignorant or fixed only on grubbing for a living, they may make awful—and irreversible—mistakes.

The problem is that so little of those ideals really operate in most of American higher education.

Judged by the catalogs, curricula and websites of American colleges and universities, American higher education already is vocational. The number of degrees in nursing, social work, education and the holy quartet of STEM—science, technology, engineering and mathematics—vastly outweighs those awarded in the humanities, which is where we’re supposed to find the pure arts of thinking. One out of every five bachelor-level degrees is in business—which is to say, accounting, marketing, management and real estate—while one in 10 is in a health-related field.

Business and education lead the parade among master’s-level degrees; the bulk of doctoral degrees are in medicine, law, biology and engineering. The highest-growth fields since 2008 have been homeland security, law enforcement, firefighting, parks, recreation, leisure and fitness studies.

Even education in the humanities has become vocationalized, although the transformation is subtle. Take almost any college or university literature department at random, and its faculty will be composed of people who have been trained in other college and university literature programs to be literature professors. History majors are, in department after department, seen—and taught—as future history professionals, whether in museums or colleges. Even in schools that still valiantly defend the virtue of a liberal arts education, much of it tends ineluctably toward professional formation, not breadth or understanding. Vocational training is what higher education has been doing without even realizing it.

I wonder if the real complaint about Mr. Trump’s praise of vocational education is that his interest in the “wrong” vocations—“trade, manufacturing, technology”—and in the wrong places.

College-based vocationalism is still vocationalism; there’s no intrinsic difference between peeling a spud and popping a vein. But it is a vocationalism of merit, defined by testing, credentials and cultural signaling. In this version of vocationalism, the four-year college experience becomes a path by which the talented and brainy are induced to abandon their neighborhoods, churches and families to become the next generation of staffers for multinational corporations and nonprofits. Either you arrive already equipped with merit (through your meritocratic parents and your meritocratic college-prep program) or you are cherry-picked to receive it, and thereafter spurn the base rungs by which you do ascend.

Why the meritocracy’s college-based vocationalism should be considered superior to Mr. Trump’s vocationalism has little to do with dollars and cents and a lot to do with the cultural imperialism of the meritocracy. Mike Rowe, creator of “Dirty Jobs” and “Somebody’s Gotta Do It,” was perplexed to find that even in the depths of the Great Recession small-business owners hung out “Help Wanted” signs in all 50 states, but couldn’t find people to hire. Why? Because of “the stigmas and stereotypes that dissuaded people from exploring a career in the trades.”

Everywhere, Mr. Rowe met with the blank convictions that “opportunity is dead” and “success can only occur if you purchase a four-year college degree.” Tell that, he says, to the employers who have 5.6 million job openings that aren’t in danger of being filled by robots.

Mr. Trump’s determination to revive vocational education is a validation of varieties of work the meritocracy disdains. But meritocracy, as the cultural critic Christopher Lasch wrote, “is a parody of democracy.” It promises advancement, but only for a few, and only at the expense of a common culture. By validating a real vocationalism, we might also arrive at a new revival of democracy, and even—who knows?—a true rediscovery of the humanities.  "

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Re: Politics thread (ssc!!)
Reply #1889 - Aug 7th, 2017 at 3:11pm
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Joey wrote on Aug 7th, 2017 at 8:21am:
<  ----- Edith ?!    .... !!!!!!   :








https://www.wsj.com/articles/college-is-trade-school-for-the-elite-1502051874





" College Is Trade School for the Elite   '

" Even education in the humanities has become vocationalized, though the transformation is subtle.    "




By Allen Guelzo



" Donald J. Trump has a degree from an Ivy League university—my alma mater, in fact—but he is not one of the Ivies’ admirers. “We must embrace new and effective job-training approaches, including online courses, high school curricula, and private-sector investment that prepare people for trade, manufacturing, technology and other really well-paying jobs and careers,” the president declared in March. “These kinds of options can be a positive alternative to a four-year degree.”

If ever an issue seemed assured of bipartisan support, you’d think it would be an initiative that helps connect workers with work. But up went the howls of injury anyway. “I’m worried that the idea of vocational education has become so popular,” wrote David Leonhardt of the New York Times . “We shouldn’t be promoting vocational education at the expense of general education.” Instead, “expanding the number of four-year college graduates also deserves to be a national priority.”

Maybe. Mr. Leonhardt is pitting vocational education against the ideals of higher education—independence of thought, breadth of knowledge and understanding. It’s not hard to see how important these ideals are to a democracy, in which political sovereignty lies with the people at large. If the people are ignorant or fixed only on grubbing for a living, they may make awful—and irreversible—mistakes.

The problem is that so little of those ideals really operate in most of American higher education.

Judged by the catalogs, curricula and websites of American colleges and universities, American higher education already is vocational. The number of degrees in nursing, social work, education and the holy quartet of STEM—science, technology, engineering and mathematics—vastly outweighs those awarded in the humanities, which is where we’re supposed to find the pure arts of thinking. One out of every five bachelor-level degrees is in business—which is to say, accounting, marketing, management and real estate—while one in 10 is in a health-related field.

Business and education lead the parade among master’s-level degrees; the bulk of doctoral degrees are in medicine, law, biology and engineering. The highest-growth fields since 2008 have been homeland security, law enforcement, firefighting, parks, recreation, leisure and fitness studies.

Even education in the humanities has become vocationalized, although the transformation is subtle. Take almost any college or university literature department at random, and its faculty will be composed of people who have been trained in other college and university literature programs to be literature professors. History majors are, in department after department, seen—and taught—as future history professionals, whether in museums or colleges. Even in schools that still valiantly defend the virtue of a liberal arts education, much of it tends ineluctably toward professional formation, not breadth or understanding. Vocational training is what higher education has been doing without even realizing it.

I wonder if the real complaint about Mr. Trump’s praise of vocational education is that his interest in the “wrong” vocations—“trade, manufacturing, technology”—and in the wrong places.

College-based vocationalism is still vocationalism; there’s no intrinsic difference between peeling a spud and popping a vein. But it is a vocationalism of merit, defined by testing, credentials and cultural signaling. In this version of vocationalism, the four-year college experience becomes a path by which the talented and brainy are induced to abandon their neighborhoods, churches and families to become the next generation of staffers for multinational corporations and nonprofits. Either you arrive already equipped with merit (through your meritocratic parents and your meritocratic college-prep program) or you are cherry-picked to receive it, and thereafter spurn the base rungs by which you do ascend.

Why the meritocracy’s college-based vocationalism should be considered superior to Mr. Trump’s vocationalism has little to do with dollars and cents and a lot to do with the cultural imperialism of the meritocracy. Mike Rowe, creator of “Dirty Jobs” and “Somebody’s Gotta Do It,” was perplexed to find that even in the depths of the Great Recession small-business owners hung out “Help Wanted” signs in all 50 states, but couldn’t find people to hire. Why? Because of “the stigmas and stereotypes that dissuaded people from exploring a career in the trades.”

Everywhere, Mr. Rowe met with the blank convictions that “opportunity is dead” and “success can only occur if you purchase a four-year college degree.” Tell that, he says, to the employers who have 5.6 million job openings that aren’t in danger of being filled by robots.

Mr. Trump’s determination to revive vocational education is a validation of varieties of work the meritocracy disdains. But meritocracy, as the cultural critic Christopher Lasch wrote, “is a parody of democracy.” It promises advancement, but only for a few, and only at the expense of a common culture. By validating a real vocationalism, we might also arrive at a new revival of democracy, and even—who knows?—a true rediscovery of the humanities.  "



Maybe Trump should open his own University?...oh wait.....never mind!


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Re: Politics thread (ssc!!)
Reply #1890 - Aug 7th, 2017 at 9:11pm
Alert Board Moderator about this Post! 





<  ------ Some Guy   ... ?!  .... !!!!!   :





THE EXODUS IS HERE !!!!









https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/north-korea-now-making-mi...




" North Korea now making missile-ready nuclear weapons, U.S. analysts say   "





" A confidential assessment by the Defense Intelligence Agency says that North Korea has already developed a miniaturized nuclear weapon that can fit on top of an ICBM. (The Washington Post)   "




By Joby Warrick, Ellen Nakashima and Anna Fifield August 8 at 4:04 PM



" North Korea has successfully produced a miniaturized nuclear warhead that can fit inside its missiles, crossing a key threshold on the path to becoming a full-fledged nuclear power, U.S. intelligence officials have concluded in a confidential assessment.

The new analysis completed last month by the Defense Intelligence Agency comes on the heels of another intelligence assessment that sharply raises the official estimate for the total number of bombs in the communist country’s atomic arsenal. The U.S. calculated last month that up to 60 nuclear weapons are now controlled by North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. Some independent experts believe the number of bombs is much smaller.

The findings are likely to deepen concerns about an evolving North Korean military threat that appears to be advancing far more rapidly than many experts had predicted. U.S. officials last month concluded that Pyongyang is also outpacing expectations in its effort to build an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of striking cities on the American mainland.

President Trump, speaking at an event at his Bedminster, N.J. golf course, said North Korea will face a devastating response if its threats continue.

“They will be met with the fire and fury and frankly power, the likes of which this world has never seen before,” Trump said.


Earlier Tuesday, North Korea described a new round of United Nations sanctions as an attempt “to strangle a nation” and warned that in response “physical action will be taken mercilessly with the mobilization of all its national strength.”

While more than a decade has passed since North Korea’s first nuclear detonation, many analysts believed it would be years before the country’s weapons scientists could design a compact warhead that could be delivered by missile to distant targets. But the new assessment, a summary document dated July 28, concludes that this critical milestone has already been reached.

“The IC [intelligence community] assesses North Korea has produced nuclear weapons for ballistic missile delivery, to include delivery by ICBM-class missiles,” the assessment states, in an excerpt read to The Washington Post. The assessment’s broad conclusions were verified by two U.S. officials familiar with the document. It is not yet known whether the reclusive regime has successfully tested the smaller design, although North Korea officially last year claimed to have done so.

The DIA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined to comment.   "

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Re: Politics thread (ssc!!)
Reply #1891 - Aug 8th, 2017 at 9:14pm
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<  ----------- Sir Moonie  ?!   ... !!!!  :



https://www.wsj.com/articles/north-korea-says-it-has-released-korean-canadian-pa...




" North Korea Frees Korean-Canadian Pastor  "

" Release of Rev. Lim Hyeon-soo comes as tensions with U.S. rise   "



By Jonathan Cheng



" SEOUL—North Korea released a Korean-Canadian pastor following a detention of more than two years, a move that comes amid a war of words between the U.S. and North Korea and follows the death of a U.S. college student held in Pyongyang’s custody.

The release of Rev. Lim Hyeon-soo, a day after the arrival in Pyongyang of Daniel Jean, a top aide to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, could potentially lower tensions between North Korea and the Western world. Hours before Mr. Lim was released, North Korea’s military and U.S. President Donald Trump had exchanged heated public threats.

Mr. Lim, 62 years old, was arrested by North Korea in 2015 and given a lifetime sentence of hard labor in December that year for conducting “hostile deeds” against the state.

The length of Mr. Lim’s detention surpassed that of Kenneth Bae, a Korean-American missionary whose imprisonment in North Korea was the longest known for a U.S. citizen. Mr. Bae was released in late 2014, roughly two years after his detention.

North Korea said in a brief statement through its official state media that Mr. Lim was released “on sick bail,” citing a humanitarian concern for his health.

The release comes about two months after Pyongyang released Otto Warmbier, a former University of Virginia undergraduate, to the U.S. following a lengthy detention and sentencing of hard labor.

Mr. Warmbier returned to the U.S. with a severe brain injury and died six days after his return.

Mr. Lim, pastor of Light Korean Presbyterian Church in Mississauga, Ontario, was accused of committing “anti-DPRK religious activities” and acting with U.S. and South Korean authorities “to lure and abduct DPRK citizens,” using the abbreviation for North Korea’s formal name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

Yonah Martin, a Canadian senator who has advocated for Mr. Lim’s release since his detention, said the pastor’s family and his church members had grown increasingly worried about his health, with word he had lost upward of 60 pounds. The death of Mr. Warmbier also escalated lobbying efforts of Canadian officials, she said.

“Everyone is waiting with bated breath until the moment of the reunion,” said Ms. Martin, who was born in Seoul before immigrating to Canada more than four decades ago. She said she has been in regular communication with family and church members about Mr. Lim’s fate, including early on Wednesday.

A spokesman for the Light Korean Presbyterian Church in suburban Toronto didn’t respond to requests for comment.

While Canada has diplomatic relations with North Korea, it doesn’t have an embassy in Pyongyang or an accredited ambassador to the North. Sweden looks after the consular affairs of Canadian citizens in North Korea.

A spokeswoman for the Lim family didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment. A spokesman for Mr. Trudeau declined to comment on the reports out of North Korea about Mr. Lim’s release. The spokesman added a delegation led by Mr. Jean was in Pyongyang to discuss the pastor’s case, given that his health was of importance to the government, but declined to elaborate further.

With the release of Mr. Lim, North Korea is known to have three remaining U.S. citizens in its custody: all of them Korean-Americans.

Two of them, Tony Kim and Kim Hak-song, are affiliated with the Pyongyang University of Science and Technology, a Christian-backed university that teaches the children of North Korea’s elite.

North Korea, while officially atheist, worships its founder Kim Il Sung as a deity and views the spread of organized religion as a threat to the ruling family’s grip on power. Many of the U.S. citizens detained in recent years have been engaged in missionary work.  "
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Re: Politics thread (ssc!!)
Reply #1892 - Aug 9th, 2017 at 6:57am
Alert Board Moderator about this Post! 
Joey wrote on Aug 7th, 2017 at 9:11pm:
<  ------ Some Guy   ... ?!  .... !!!!!   :





THE EXODUS IS HERE !!!!









https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/north-korea-now-making-mi...




" North Korea now making missile-ready nuclear weapons, U.S. analysts say   "





" A confidential assessment by the Defense Intelligence Agency says that North Korea has already developed a miniaturized nuclear weapon that can fit on top of an ICBM. (The Washington Post)   "




By Joby Warrick, Ellen Nakashima and Anna Fifield August 8 at 4:04 PM



" North Korea has successfully produced a miniaturized nuclear warhead that can fit inside its missiles, crossing a key threshold on the path to becoming a full-fledged nuclear power, U.S. intelligence officials have concluded in a confidential assessment.

The new analysis completed last month by the Defense Intelligence Agency comes on the heels of another intelligence assessment that sharply raises the official estimate for the total number of bombs in the communist country’s atomic arsenal. The U.S. calculated last month that up to 60 nuclear weapons are now controlled by North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. Some independent experts believe the number of bombs is much smaller.

The findings are likely to deepen concerns about an evolving North Korean military threat that appears to be advancing far more rapidly than many experts had predicted. U.S. officials last month concluded that Pyongyang is also outpacing expectations in its effort to build an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of striking cities on the American mainland.

President Trump, speaking at an event at his Bedminster, N.J. golf course, said North Korea will face a devastating response if its threats continue.

“They will be met with the fire and fury and frankly power, the likes of which this world has never seen before,” Trump said.


Earlier Tuesday, North Korea described a new round of United Nations sanctions as an attempt “to strangle a nation” and warned that in response “physical action will be taken mercilessly with the mobilization of all its national strength.”

While more than a decade has passed since North Korea’s first nuclear detonation, many analysts believed it would be years before the country’s weapons scientists could design a compact warhead that could be delivered by missile to distant targets. But the new assessment, a summary document dated July 28, concludes that this critical milestone has already been reached.

“The IC [intelligence community] assesses North Korea has produced nuclear weapons for ballistic missile delivery, to include delivery by ICBM-class missiles,” the assessment states, in an excerpt read to The Washington Post. The assessment’s broad conclusions were verified by two U.S. officials familiar with the document. It is not yet known whether the reclusive regime has successfully tested the smaller design, although North Korea officially last year claimed to have done so.

The DIA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined to comment.   "



Is this the same agency that told us Sadam's green truck had weapons of mass destruction?
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Re: Politics thread (ssc!!)
Reply #1893 - Aug 9th, 2017 at 8:20am
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" Is this the same agency that told us Sadam's green truck had weapons of mass destruction? "



*************************************************************




Good One !!!!  Smiley



Nope .  As you well know Gimmekeef , we went into Iraq because Saddam once tried to assassinate the then President's Daddy  .

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Re: Politics thread (ssc!!)
Reply #1894 - Aug 9th, 2017 at 10:25am
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Joey wrote on Aug 7th, 2017 at 9:11pm:
THE EXODUS IS HERE !!!!! 



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Re: Politics thread (ssc!!)
Reply #1895 - Aug 9th, 2017 at 10:46am
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...
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“What rap did that was impressive was to show there are so many tone-deaf people out there,” he says. “All they need is a drum beat and somebody yelling over it and they’re happy. There’s an enormous market for people who can’t tell one note from another.” - Keef
 
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Re: Politics thread (ssc!!)
Reply #1896 - Aug 9th, 2017 at 8:51pm
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<  ------------  Some Guy    .... ?!  ... !!!!  :




https://www.wsj.com/articles/liberalisms-summer-of-17-1502320215




" Liberalism’s Summer of ’17 "

" Liberals whine about being governed by Trump. Pity those governed by them.  "





By Daniel Henninger



" Liberals whine and wail about being governed by Donald Trump. But what about the millions who wake up every day to be governed by liberals?

This is the summer of ’17 for people who live in politically blue northern cities, but few would call it the best days of their lives.

New Yorkers are living through the “Summer of Hell,” the phrase that defines a city whose ancient transportation infrastructure has finally hit the wall. It’s hard to say who got the worst of it—the commuters trapped for 45 minutes without air or lights on a southbound F train or the riders in Harlem who were evacuated after the tracks caught fire.

Naturally, Mayor Bill de Blasio says the solution is a $700 million tax increase on “the wealthiest in our city.”

In Chicago, more than 100 people were shot over July Fourth weekend, with 14 ending up dead. So naturally Mayor Rahm Emanuel has filed a sanctuary-cities lawsuit against the federal government to protect the city’s immigrants.

Hartford, Conn., at the brink of insolvency, last month hired a law firm specializing in bankruptcy. The owners of dozens of destroyed businesses sued the city of Baltimore in June for mishandling the mayhem, two years after the riots ended.

For decades, urban liberalism has sold itself as a compact between government and taxpayers. The people paid, and with that revenue liberal politicians would deliver infrastructure, services, economic opportunity and civil order. But liberal governance, instead of keeping its side of the bargain, is at a dead end.

Writing in City Journal last year on the widespread fiscal distress of northern cities, Stephen Eide noted a study which found that “among the 1,100 census tracts in major metropolitan areas with poverty rates of 30 percent or more in 1970, only about 100 had seen their poverty rates drop below the national average by 2010.”

Defenders of the liberal model argue that cities like New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles are changing into sophisticated, cosmopolitan hubs that attract a new class of young professionals who will restore urban America. Instead, many of these urban revivals are producing a phenomenon economists now call “racially concentrated areas of affluence,” or RCAAs.

An area gets RCAAed when the residents who pack themselves into it are mostly white people whose median incomes are unprecedentedly greater than the city’s poverty level. Some of the most RCAAed cities are liberal duchies like Boston, Baltimore, Chicago and Philadelphia.

Economists for Citigroup have called cities like New York and San Francisco “plutonomies”—urban economies propped up by a plutocratic minority, which is to say, young professionals inured to both taxes and nearby poverty. But they vote their “consciences.”

Progressives are acutely aware of this embarrassing reality in cities under their control. A writer for In These Times identified the problem as “a lack of revenue caused by the refusal of Wall Street banks, big corporations and millionaires to pay their fair share in taxes.” Put forth solutions, he said, “to make them pay.”

“Make them pay” might work if the U.S. were East Germany, so that the wealthy could be captured and jailed as they tried to escape across the border.

We’re not living yet under a President Sanders or Warren, so the steady, documented outflow of residents will continue from New York, Connecticut, Illinois, Maryland, California and New Jersey.

Many of those now climbing over the Democrats’ blue walls were willing to live under the original liberal governance model that existed before 1960 because it recognized the legitimacy of private economic life. The wealthy agreed then to pay their “fair share.”

Today, private economic life, especially that of the urban middle class, is no longer a partner in the liberal model. It’s merely a “revenue source” for a system whose patronage is open-ended welfare and largely uncapped public-employee pensions. I’d describe the liberal-progressive governing strategy as ruin and rule.

Not widely noticed is that liberalism’s claimed beneficiaries—black Americans—are also fleeing its failures. Demographers have documented significant black out-migration from New York, Michigan, California and Illinois into Florida, Georgia, Texas and North Carolina. North to south.

Now comes the summer-of-hell infrastructure crisis. Residents of the northeastern slab from New Jersey to Boston have been living off infrastructure created by their grandparents and great-grandparents during the golden age of American capitalism.


They are now asking the federal government, meaning taxpayers who live in parts of the U.S. not hostile to capitalism, to give them nearly $15 billion to replace the 100-year-old train tunnel beneath the Hudson River. Why should they? Why send money to a moribund, dysfunctional urban liberal politics that will never—as in, not ever—clean up its act or reform?

Maybe we need a new default solution to the urban crisis: Let internal migration redistribute the U.S. population away from liberalism’s smug but falling-apart plutonomies.  "
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Re: Politics thread (ssc!!)
Reply #1897 - Aug 9th, 2017 at 9:01pm
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<  ------------ Edith ?!  ... !!!!!   :







https://www.wsj.com/articles/putins-goal-revenge-and-restoration-1502234364?mod=...





" Putin’s Goal: Revenge and Restoration "

" What ties hacking and election meddling to Syria and Ukraine? A nostalgia for Soviet-era power. "



By Leon Aron



" As the Russian hacking and “collusion” sagas consume Washington elites and the media, a more important question has gone unanswered: Why is Vladimir Putin engaging in such activity, and what should Americans expect next?

By temperament and KGB training, Mr. Putin is not an easy man to read. Secrecy is an integral part of the regime he has forged, as in all authoritarian states. Yet surmise about his motives and goals we must, since the alternative is to be unpleasantly surprised every time he acts.

“Who is Mr. Putin?” was the refrain in the early 2000s after this obscure director of the FSB—the post-Soviet successor to the KGB—became first prime minister and then a phenomenally popular president. Seeking clues to his behavior, experts labeled him an “authoritarian modernizer,” a spy-agency “operative,” a “bureaucrat” and a Russian “nationalist.”

Yet what seemed to explain his policies most consistently was another gradually emerging identity: that of an ardent Soviet patriot. Mr. Putin’s speeches and off-the-cuff remarks seem to indicate that, unlike Western and Russian democrats, he never bought into the narrative that there were no winners in the Cold War. He appears to view the global order as unfair and immoral, having been hijacked by America. This conviction solidified in 2003 after the U.S. invaded Iraq. Then in 2011 the West helped topple Libya’s Moammar Gadhafi, an intervention Mr. Putin likened to the Crusades.

The Russian president acts as if he imposed on himself a historical mission to rebalance the world’s “correlation of forces,” as the Soviets used to say in Brezhnev’s time. Resentment and restoration looked like his twin mottos. While leaving the door open to cooperation with the U.S. on antiterrorism, arms control and nuclear nonproliferation, Mr. Putin came to view the rest of geopolitics as largely a zero-sum game: If the West wins, Russia loses—and vice versa.

What happened during the 2016 presidential election, then, was not an anti-American one-off. It was part of a sustained policy, a tile in the giant geopolitical mosaic of Russian resurgence that Mr. Putin has set out to construct.

Moscow has perpetrated cyberwarfare, hacking, fake news and political interference for years. Last year, in addition to meddling in America’s election, Russia was behind an attempted coup d’état in Montenegro meant to prevent it from joining NATO. Since 2007, Russia has hacked the servers of government, industrial or financial institutions in Estonia, Georgia, Lithuania, Bulgaria and Ukraine. The International Olympic Committee and unclassified computers at the U.S. State Department have been attacked as well. Now Germany’s leaders are alarmed enough about potential interference in their September parliamentary elections to have issued stern warnings to Moscow.

Judging by all this—and especially by what followed Mr. Putin’s election to a third term in 2012—his overarching foreign-policy objective is to weaken Western democratic institutions and alliances by relentlessly chipping away at their legitimacy and popular support. His answer to the Russian saying protiv kogo my za? (“against whom are we for?”) looked more and more like “against the West!” and “for Russia!” Mr. Putin would avenge the Soviet Union’s fall and lead Russia to reclaim its glory as a geopolitical, military, and moral counterbalance to the U.S.

His policies bear out this reading: Ukraine wants to join Europe? This would be a gain for the West (Mr. Putin once called Ukraine “NATO’s Foreign Legion”) and must be reversed by seizing Crimea and initiating a proxy war. The U.S. wants to remove Bashar Assad from power in Syria and supports pro-Western rebels? Russia will ally with America’s sworn enemy, Iran, to keep Mr. Assad in power. Hillary Clinton is likely to be elected president? Moscow must find and release kompromat (compromising materials) to hobble her campaign and delegitimize the election.

This is a dangerous game. At home Mr. Putin has come to depend on foreign-policy successes and military triumphs for his legitimacy. The Russian economy is stagnant, incomes are falling, poverty is up, and revulsion at the regime’s corruption is widespread and intense. The next presidential election comes in March, and Mr. Putin’s victory is assured, but he wants more than a win. He wants a resounding affirmation of his popularity, an outpouring of loyalty and adulation that can carry his regime through the next six years.

Russian proxies have upped their attacks on Ukrainian troops since last month’s Trump-Putin summit in Hamburg. Another catalyst for Russian patriotic hysteria could be Belarus, a “fraternal Slavic state,” which would be “saved” from imminent NATO conquest by valiant Russian soldiers and local “patriots.”

But the largest score would be to invade, most likely by proxy, Estonia, Latvia or Lithuania, thereby exposing NATO as a paper tiger, unable or unwilling to mount a military response. As the world passes the 55th anniversary of the Cuban missile crisis, Mr. Putin may overreach and miscalculate, bringing Russia and the U.S. to the brink of war, just as Nikita Khrushchev did.

Addiction to victories must be among the hardest habits to break. Doubly so if one perceives them, as Mr. Putin does, as a means to right an enormous wrong done to his country—and to remain in power. America’s newly adopted anti-Russian sanctions, though morally correct and damaging in the long term, will not change Mr. Putin’s strategy today. If anything, he could up the ante.

The West’s best option, the only one that has a chance of forcing Mr. Putin to abandon his zero-sum game of revenge and restoration, is to engineer for him unambiguous setbacks and reversals—in Ukraine, Syria and wherever else he chooses to go next. If only the West can muster the will.   "


***********************************



" The Second Coming  "

BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

" Turning and turning in the widening gyre   
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere   
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst   
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.   
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out   
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert   
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,   
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,   
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it   
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.   
The darkness drops again; but now I know   
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,   
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,   
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?  "

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...&&&&D.J. Jazzy Joe and the Fresh Prince of Boca Raton !™&& *** " VICTORY !!!! " ***...
 
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Edith Grove
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Disco STILL sucks!

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Re: Politics thread (ssc!!)
Reply #1898 - Aug 10th, 2017 at 3:12pm
Alert Board Moderator about this Post! 
Some like to harp on the low approval rating for President Trump, but in actuality nobody in Washington seems to be getting good reviews.

This is from CNN so you know it must be true:   Smiley




Both Democrats and Republicans in Congress have earned the ire of most Americans, according to a new CNN poll conducted by SSRS, with nearly seven in 10 (68%) judging the Republican Congress a failure.

Approval of the current Republican leaders in Congress has dropped from 39% in January to just 24% now. President Trump gets the approval of 38% of Americans in the poll.

Only one in three Americans (34%) say they approve of Democratic leaders in Congress, while six in 10 (59%) disapprove.

Congress left for its August recess without passing any sweeping, comprehensive legislation, failing in its attempt to pass something on health care and leaving tax reform on the docket. A vote on the debt ceiling looms this fall.

Separately, a CNN poll found that 70% of Americans feel the President's finances are fair game in a probe of Russian meddling in the 2016 US elections. The poll was conducted in the wake of news that federal investigators are looking into whether Trump and his associates have financial ties to Russia.
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“What rap did that was impressive was to show there are so many tone-deaf people out there,” he says. “All they need is a drum beat and somebody yelling over it and they’re happy. There’s an enormous market for people who can’t tell one note from another.” - Keef
 
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gimmekeef
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Re: Politics thread (ssc!!)
Reply #1899 - Aug 10th, 2017 at 4:05pm
Alert Board Moderator about this Post! 
Edith Grove wrote on Aug 10th, 2017 at 3:12pm:
Some like to harp on the low approval rating for President Trump, but in actuality nobody in Washington seems to be getting good reviews.

This is from CNN so you know it must be true:   Smiley




Both Democrats and Republicans in Congress have earned the ire of most Americans, according to a new CNN poll conducted by SSRS, with nearly seven in 10 (68%) judging the Republican Congress a failure.

Approval of the current Republican leaders in Congress has dropped from 39% in January to just 24% now. President Trump gets the approval of 38% of Americans in the poll.

Only one in three Americans (34%) say they approve of Democratic leaders in Congress, while six in 10 (59%) disapprove.

Congress left for its August recess without passing any sweeping, comprehensive legislation, failing in its attempt to pass something on health care and leaving tax reform on the docket. A vote on the debt ceiling looms this fall.

Separately, a CNN poll found that 70% of Americans feel the President's finances are fair game in a probe of Russian meddling in the 2016 US elections. The poll was conducted in the wake of news that federal investigators are looking into whether Trump and his associates have financial ties to Russia.


The facts remain most Americans are tired of the mess in Washington. It was propelled Trump's campaign. They were willing to overlook his warts and give the outsider a shot. Now he joins Congress as being disliked because of incompetence and lying just like most in Congress and people are even more agitated now. I will be shocked (but not surprised) if most incumbents don't get turfed in 2018 mid terms.
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