More Trump vs Biden (from Ukraine war making you feel queasy)

[glenn239]

14 hours ago, crazyinsane105 said:

Western way of war has been to win against an opponent that can barely fight back. And not by design, but simply by chance. Past two decades, we've fought against opponents who literally could barely fight back. 

Not by chance.  Bush, Clinton, Obama, Trump, they were all careful that any opponents they fought did not have any (or little) Great Power backing.  Elections have consequences, and Biden has gone a different path.  

[Josh]

41 minutes ago, glenn239 said:

Not by chance.  Bush, Clinton, Obama, Trump, they were all careful that any opponents they fought did not have any (or little) Great Power backing.  Elections have consequences, and Biden has gone a different path.  

A path with overwhelming bipartisan support from voters and Congress that doesn't involve the US being at war.

[glenn239]

On 6/2/2022 at 1:15 PM, Josh said:

A path with overwhelming bipartisan support from voters and Congress that doesn't involve the US being at war.

Trump handed Biden a functional world order and a decent American economy.  Now both are in doubt and history will judge Biden on the outcome.

[BansheeOne]

1 minute ago, glenn239 said:

Trump handed Biden a functional world order

[Stuart Galbraith]

 

[sunday]

29 minutes ago, glenn239 said:

Trump handed Biden a functional world order and a decent American economy.  Now both are in doubt and history will judge Biden on the outcome.

But Biden is not Orange so he is, by definition, better than Trump, and the ones afflicted by TDS will surely go forward to remind you of that.

[Stuart Galbraith]

Oh, I think Biden is just one more example of failing US leadership, which every President since Clinton has been happy to demonstrate. Trump abandoned Kurds, Biden abandoned Afghans, Clinton abandoned Somalians, Bush Junior abandoned Georgians. Can't see much in it really.

 

[DB]

55 minutes ago, BansheeOne said:

One does wonder how well the caption fits with "Merkel" instead of "Trump" here.

Different methods, same result?

[glenn239]

5 hours ago, sunday said:

But Biden is not Orange so he is, by definition, better than Trump, and the ones afflicted by TDS will surely go forward to remind you of that.

Indeed they will.  I'm not saying that Biden can't pull a rabbit out of the hat before 2024, just that from the day he took over at the Oval Office it's been downhill on both the G7 economy and global security front.  

[Josh]

7 hours ago, glenn239 said:

Trump handed Biden a functional world order and a decent American economy.  Now both are in doubt and history will judge Biden on the outcome.

You are apparently completely forgetting about a number of things that happened under Trump, including the economic crash that resulted from Covid, the riot he encouraged, and the coup he attempted. We do at least agree that history will judge.

Edited June 4, 2022 by Josh

[R011]

3 hours ago, Josh said:

You are apparently completely forgetting about a number of things that happened under Trump, including the economic crash that resulted from Covid, the riot he encouraged, and the coup he attempted. We do at least agree that history will judge.

What coup?

[Josh]

2 hours ago, R011 said:

What coup?

The attempts at multiple levels to have election results thrown out that we can now confirm were the intention of members of the administration before the election was even called for Biden, just based on publicized texts to date.

[R011]

1 hour ago, Josh said:

The attempts at multiple levels to have election results thrown out that we can now confirm were the intention of members of the administration before the election was even called for Biden, just based on publicized texts to date.

So the fantasy coup that never happened.

[BansheeOne]

The primary fallacy here is the one noted elsewhere already, that everything in the world depends upon the actions or inaction of who happens to be in the White House. That includes the US economy - it has been pointed out frequently (mostly by people who try to refute that "their" guy wrecked it) that even if you include Congress into the American government, effects in economic cycles are more long-time than a single or even two presidential terms (of course somehow the same people tend to argue the reverse when they can credit "their guy").

In the overall world situation, I've said before that the same fallacy could lead to the well-reasoned statement that "Reagan was a weak-dick president because all of the shit aggressors pulled on his watch (Argentina invaded the Falklands, Islamic Jihad blew up the Marines in Beirut, Iran mined the Persian Gulf, Iraq attacked the Stark, etc.), but none of them tried that with a real leader like Clinton".

Now Trump was certainly not helpful to world stability with his purposefully disruptive style, what with undermining trust in American leadership by kicking the shins of allies while fellating dictators, tearing the JCPOA bandaid off the Iranian nuclear problem, declaring the North Korean threat solved by strength of ignorance etc.; but even then most of the chasms which opened after he was done had been brewing for a long time before him, and in some parts he was merely expanding on policies of previous administrations because they were popular. In the end, the current situation is the result of decisions made by US, allied and, not least, opposing governments over the last 30 years.

[futon]

Well there's campaign talk on one hand and there's diplomatic talk on the other. There's also different meaning behind threat. As far as DPRK threat.. there's the immidiate threat and there's the long term threat. The immediate threat was stopped or solved for other words. The DPRK stopped sending new forms of BMs and hasn't reach demonstrating reentry capability. The long term has not been solved. What solving that would entail is the DPRK agreeing to terms of CVID for relief in sanctions. The second meeting (Feb 2019) between Trump and Fat-Kim was supposedly the point whether such agreement would be made. Fat-Kim didn't find CVID terms acceptable so in Trump's words, he walked away without conceding sanction relief and warned to not send off anymore medium or long term rockets. So for the rest of Trump's term, the DPRK hasn't but he didn't claim solving the DPRK matter in the long term because he couldn't get CVID. But who could without total war? No one.

[glenn239]

11 hours ago, R011 said:

So the fantasy coup that never happened.

He's talking about The Underpants Knome coup.  

Step 1: Trump supporters storm the Congressional buildings.

Step 2: ???

Step 3: Donald Trump appointed Emperor of the United States!

CNN has been blathering about Step 1 and 3 since January 2020, but they never quite get around to explaining Step 2....

 

On the original topic, I prefer the outcomes where the targets survive and felt bad when they did not.  But over time, the more of this I see, the less each video has any reaction beyond a clinical interest in why the attack was successful or not, and what alteration in tactics the information implies.   So, for example, in early war Ukrainian drone ambush videos, the lesson seemed to be that mech columns advancing too quickly would outrun their integrated AD network coverage and become vulnerable to lethal drone counterattack.

 

Edited June 5, 2022 by glenn239

[glenn239]

3 hours ago, BansheeOne said:

The primary fallacy here is the one noted elsewhere already, that everything in the world depends upon the actions or inaction of who happens to be in the White House.

Yeah, I just went through 4 years of anti-Trump fanatics railing that EVERYTHING depended on getting rid of Trump.  Now, when Trump is replaced by a president who apparently did not even understand that if you shut down 40% of your baby formula production that babies still get hungry, suddenly on multiple fronts where Biden has made things noticeably much worse than what Trump left him, it's no longer about the criticality of  presidential leadership that required Trump to go.  No, suddenly it's about nebulous factors causing things.

Biden will be judged responsible by history for the success or failure of the West in the problems he is dealing with.

Edited June 5, 2022 by glenn239

[NickM]

16 hours ago, R011 said:

What coup?

"Just" What coup? What about those 'mostly peaceful demonstrations' that resulted in 'boo coo' fire damage, vandalism, murder and mayhem that were winked and nodded at by the pressies, the H'woodies , the 'loyal(?) opposition' that Josh totally skipped over?

[Josh]

18 hours ago, R011 said:

So the fantasy coup that never happened.

The actual attempts to overturn the electoral college that failed, along with the riot encouraged by the same group.

Edited June 5, 2022 by Josh

[Josh]

5 hours ago, NickM said:

"Just" What coup? What about those 'mostly peaceful demonstrations' that resulted in 'boo coo' fire damage, vandalism, murder and mayhem that were winked and nodded at by the pressies, the H'woodies , the 'loyal(?) opposition' that Josh totally skipped over?

Rioters should be brought to justice regardless of why they are rioting. If more Jan6th rioters were sentenced then perhaps it was due to the stupidity of rioting on camera and even live streaming one’s self while making no attempt at anonymity. That and the somewhat more sensitive nature of the site they were rioting at.

That said, I don’t consider the riot a coup; I consider the attempts to throw out electors or have states substitute their electors, or to simply pressure election officials to produce more votes (as Trump was recorded doing) as an attempt at overturning the legitimate results…a coup attempt, if a peaceful and  poorly organized one. And it seems likely that in addition to the actions of the Trump admin that definitely were documented there were numerous other plans to seize voting machines, declare martial law, etc that ultimately weren’t acted on but set a disturbing trend in their owe right.

Bottom line, I have no doubt that Trump and his crew tried to overturn the election and that he personally would absolutely have done so if he could just snap his fingers to get it done. That it didn’t end up that way doesn’t solve the underlying problem.

Edited June 5, 2022 by Josh

[futon]

Has any video of the mob breaking through security line been released to the public?

[R011]

3 hours ago, Josh said:

The actual attempts to overturn the electoral college that failed, along with the riot encouraged by the same group.

Contesting an election by legal means is certainly no coup and no riot was encouraged, save in the minds of some very deluded people not residing in the White House.

[R011]

3 hours ago, Josh said:

. If more Jan6th rioters were sentenced then perhaps it was due to the stupidity of rioting on camera and even live streaming one’s self while making no attempt at anonymity.

But mostly because police were ordered not to even try to arrest rioters.

[Josh]

1 hour ago, R011 said:

Contesting an election by legal means is certainly no coup and no riot was encouraged, save in the minds of some very deluded people not residing in the White House.

The sixty failed lawsuits due to lack of evidence are also not what I’m referring to.

[Josh]

1 hour ago, R011 said:

But mostly because police were ordered not to even try to arrest rioters.

That seems like a local police problem you should take up with the specific departments involved, though again it seems far more likely to me that the timing, place, and methods made jan6th rioters more susceptible to convictions.

 

Do you disagree with the premise that Jan 6th rioters were photographed tens or hundreds of times more often due to the disturbances taking place in the Capitol in daylight while many of the perpetrators were filming themselves? Ie, they were either drastically more stupid or felt that Trumps blessing gave them some kind of immunity?