US Politics Mega-thread - Page 4919

On September 08 2016 02:18 xDaunt wrote:

It's not the fact that Nieto is in trouble that benefits Trump. What matters is why Nieto is in trouble. He's in trouble because he has single-handedly given Trump an image of legitimacy, credibility, and seriousness as a potential head of state. As far as Mexicans are concerned, Nieto has laid down the first brick in Trump's wall.

On September 08 2016 02:22 Acrofales wrote:

He has? All I saw was two dudes shake hands on a stage, then go home and yell that the other was a liar. While that doesn't make Nieto look good, I don't see how it legitimizes Trump. No statesmanship was displayed on either side.

The establishment doesn’t want to admit it, but Trump’s heretical denial of Republican dogma about government incapacity is exactly what we need to move the party — and the country — in a new direction. For the Republican Party to be a credible alternative to the Democrats’ enabling, it must stand for effective government, not for giving up on government.

I believe that effective government will require less bureaucracy and less rulemaking; we may need to have fewer public servants, and we might need to pay some of them more. At a minimum, we should recognize that success cannot be reduced to the overall size of the budget: Spending money and solving problems are not the same thing.

This is an abysmal failure of the foreign policy establishment on both sides of the aisle, with the Obama administration deserving much of the current blame.

From the beginning of the Syrian civil war, this has been the problem. The Obama administration drew red lines that made no sense. It armed opposition it did not know well or understand.

Worse yet, the opposition to Bashar al-Assad has never been unified, and their hatred for each other typically trumps their desire to attack ISIS.

In fact, for many of the so called moderate Syrian rebels, ISIS and Al Qaeda are still viewed as allies against Assad.

Some rebel groups even acknowledge publicly that if and when Assad is defeated, their next target will be Israel -- not ISIS. And yet, despite this precarious state, Obama sends a steady drip of U.S. soldiers, a dozen at a time, into the cauldron of chaos.

So far in this war we have funneled weapons to terrorists, armed multiple sides and generally acted as if we don’t have a clue what to do in the region -- and we’ve done it all unconstitutionally, with the president far exceeding his authority.

On September 08 2016 02:38 KwarK wrote:
Out of curiousity, what does Fox News think Obama should do about the ongoing melee between ISIS, Assad, Hezbollah, Iran, Russia, Al Qaeda and the PKK? Get in the middle of it? Send cheerleaders? Nuke the region?

On September 08 2016 02:36 Slaughter wrote:
I can see XDaunt being correct in the sense that the average American voter probably didn't pay attention to how things played out in Mexico after, IE how Nieto slagged him off after.

If you know the full context then Trump looks like a toy that was played with to grand stand against . If you only saw the press conference then tuned the rest out you can say that Trump "looked good" doing political things with another head of state.

On September 08 2016 02:38 KwarK wrote:
Out of curiousity, what does Fox News think Obama should do about the ongoing melee between ISIS, Assad, Hezbollah, Iran, Russia, Al Qaeda and the PKK? Get in the middle of it? Send cheerleaders? Nuke the region?

PROPOSAL: Immediately after taking office, Mr. Trump will ask the generals to present a plan within 30 days to defeat and destroy ISIS.

PROPOSAL: Mr. Trump will ask Congress to fully eliminate the defense sequester and will submit a new budget to rebuild our military as soon as he assumes office.

PROPOSAL: Mr. Trump will build an active Army of around 540,000, as the Army’s chief of staff has said he needs.

PROPOSAL: Mr. Trump will build a Marine Corps based on 36 battalions, which the Heritage Foundation notes is the minimum needed to deal with major contingencies.

PROPOSAL: Mr. Trump will build a Navy approaching 350 surface ships and submarines, as recommended by the bipartisan National Defense Panel.

PROPOSAL: Mr. Trump will build an Air Force of at least 1,200 fighter aircraft, which the Heritage Foundation has shown to be needed to execute current missions.

PROPOSAL: Mr. Trump will seek to develop a state of the art missile defense system.

PROPOSAL: Mr. Trump will modernize our nation’s naval cruisers to provide Ballistic Missile Defense capabilities.

PROPOSAL: Mr. Trump will enforce all classification rules, and enforce all laws relating to the handling of classified information.

PROPOSAL: One of Mr. Trump’s first commands after taking office will be asking the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and all relevant federal departments, to conduct a thorough review of United States cyber defenses and identify all vulnerabilities – in our power grid, our communications systems, and all vital infrastructure.

On September 08 2016 02:38 KwarK wrote:
Out of curiousity, what does Fox News think Obama should do about the ongoing melee between ISIS, Assad, Hezbollah, Iran, Russia, Al Qaeda and the PKK? Get in the middle of it? Send cheerleaders? Nuke the region?

On September 08 2016 02:44 xDaunt wrote:
So here is the list of US Military proposals that Trump released today:

On September 08 2016 02:44 xDaunt wrote:
So here is the list of US Military proposals that Trump released today:

On September 08 2016 00:26 Plansix wrote:

It was a deposition, so the standard response if you do no remember is “I don’t recall.” If she didn’t know what the “C” meant, she would only say that and not speculate. Speculating what she believed it would mean nearly four years later wouldn’t be helpful to her, wouldn’t reflect what she thought at the time and would imply she was aware of the symbol and thought about it. From the deposition, she received almost all her classified documents in person. The few that were sent via email with the “C” marking were either mislabeled or shouldn’t have been sent in that manner by the sender.

“When asked what the parenthetical ‘C’ meant before a paragraph within the captioned email, [Clinton] stated she did not know and could only speculate it was referencing paragraphs marked in alphabetical order,” read the FBI’s notes from the interview.