Credit Where Due

[Jules Troy]

2 hours ago, Jon Letendre said:

Trudeau must be responsible for that.

It is  his one and only “accomplishment.”

Destroying Alberta’s oil and gas industry.

Flight of billions of dollars from Canada as businesses pack up and leave or cancel projects.

Changes in the NEB as well as Bill C-69 ensuring no new pipelines get built everrrr.

Bill C-48 making sure tanker traffic is completely fucked.

Adding another tax bracket targeting the “1% causing even more people to leave Canada.  The ones that actually create jobs..

On and on..

[Brant Gaede]

The US cannot comport itself geo-politically by playing morality games abroad. We don't really know who cut up this K guy and why. The msm "knows" of course and saturate tells us all about it.

In the Persian Gulf we are talking about an incipient nuclear situation policy wise and can't afford to take our eye off the ball. Maybe this distraction is the whole point courtesy of real bad actors.

I'm not saying the Saudis didn't do it. I'm saying we chose to work a long time ago in that cesspool because of oil. Several wars and counting.

We're shaking hands with the Devil trying to avoid hell.

--Brant

I know I misused "we" and I apologize to the offended

[Brant Gaede]

There are various types of torture depending on motivation. If the desire is information it's a very poor way to go for the information gained is not to be trusted.

A German in WWII interrogated captured American airmen and all gave him all the information he sought with only one exception. It was just conversation. After the war those particular techniques he used were adopted by US intelligence agencies.

Just for information there us a drug that will make it impossible for the interrogated to stop spilling the beans. So why torture the sap?

--Brant

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

3 hours ago, Brant Gaede said:

I'm saying we chose to work a long time ago in that cesspool because of oil. Several wars and counting.

Brant,

This is the ONLY way to frame the USA's dealings with the Middle East and have a semblance of rationality.

When people go into that place and start slinging around good and evil (with them always being the good, of course), and worse, designating who is good and who is evil over there, they always get bit hard by Middle Easterners. Those suckers never seem to act like they are supposed to. And the do-gooders always end up wondering in the end what the hell happened.

But what happened is that they did not identify correctly who they were dealing with. This goes for pro-Islamic and anti-Islamic Westerners. Pro-Iran, Pro Saudi, pro-Western, pro-peace and love. All of them. Even the anti-Islamic folks who try to understand the culture by reading Islamic literature do a lousy job of it. They think that just because a verse or other exists in the Qu'ran, that people will strap on suicide belts. 

President Trump is one of the few people I have seen who deal with Islamic Middle Easterners on their own terms. For example, he said no gassing. It doesn't matter who. No gassing. Someone gassed, then the US went boom over the heads of where the gassers were. Not this state or that rebel movement. He went to the airports and gas factories. And then he did not invade. He went boom right there. Notice that there is no more gassing? (At least for now.)

President Trump said no more ISIS chopping off heads of victims, burning them alive, etc. And guess what? That stopped practically everywhere.

As to local politics, Middle Easterners have been bickering and killing each other for centuries. President Trump says don't kill Americans, the rest is up to you. (And don't kill Jews since the US has committed to protecting them.)

The only people who seem to think this is awful are Westerners with oil greed or political agendas that have nothing to do with Middle Eastern culture.

I guarantee that Middle Easterners are far more willing to behave due to US fracking and natural gas production within the US than they are by any military interventions.

The truth is, very few people in the US understand the Middle East. And they are all in love with their own misconceptions. We are lucky that our President does understand them. He respects them without condescension, unlike just about all other Presidents going back to Calvin Coolidge or so...

Michael

[william.scherk]

23 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

On 12/14/2018 at 10:10 AM, william.scherk said:

Does the unanimous voice of the Senate 'impact' the relationships?  Can it?  Or does the extraordinary war in Yemen continue with USA support?

Does it matter?

It basically doesn't matter.

Let's see if something concrete comes of this or just hot air.

Some people get paid to think and opine on these matters. Some of them have expertise and a deep field of knowledge. Here is another podcast from the Lawfare blog, "The War in Yemen (and Congress’s Response)"

Last week, Benjamin Wittes sat down with Gregory Johnsen, a former member of the U.N. Security Council Panel of Experts on Yemen and the author of the book "The Last Refuge: Yemen, Al-Qaeda, and America’s War in Arabia," to do a deep dive on the conflict in Yemen: its origins; its current state; and the role Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United States have played and are likely to play moving forward. Joining Ben and Greg was Daniel Byman, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Center for Middle East Policy and Lawfare’s own Foreign Policy Editor.

After Ben and Dan’s conversation with Greg, Brookings Fellow Molly Reynolds and Lawfare's Scott R. Anderson sat down for a conversation about Yemen-related legislation that is currently churning on Capitol Hill, and what it may mean for the future of U.S. involvement in the conflict there.

Direct download: Episode_373.mp3

[Jon Letendre]

Doesn’t matter. Just like it didn’t matter that Obama murdered countless civilians with drone strikes. People tried for years to make it matter. It didn’t matter. But keep screaming into the night anyway, cunt!

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

49 minutes ago, william.scherk said:

Some people get paid to think and opine on these matters.

William,

That makes me wonder...

Paid by whom?

I certainly have no interest in paying for them.

For that matter, I'm mostly not interested in why those who pay for them pay for them.

Well, when it's propaganda, I'm interested in why they pay...

 

Otherwise, even when these hired brain surrogates are not openly doing propaganda, they are generally paid to promote one agenda or other.

I don't trust them. And neither should you.

If anyone wishes to have someone think for him, or at least, research for him, he better use strong rigid criteria in choosing such a person--and with caveats. There is a lot of schlock out there dressed up and intellectual product. And it's not intellectual. It's not honest inquiry. It's just posturing with cherry-picked data.

You can see a lot of these folks on the mainstream fake news media--the vast majority of the pundits on the mainstream fake news media, in fact, are pure schlock... And, now, most of the reporters are, too.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

34 minutes ago, Jon Letendre said:

Doesn’t matter. Just like it didn’t matter that Obama murdered countless civilians with drone strikes. People tried for years to make it matter. It didn’t matter.

Jon,

That is right on point.

The true issue is never Democrats versus Republicans.

It's the elitist powermongering "endless war for profit" assholes versus the rest of us.

Michael

[Peter]

On 12/15/2018 at 2:29 PM, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Jon,

That is right on point.

The true issue is never Democrats versus Republicans.

It's the elitist powermongering "endless war for profit" assholes versus the rest of us.

Michael

Wow. Trump is sounding like more of an objectivist like MSK. So, where will we withdraw next? I would suggest holding off withdrawals in war zones or likely war zones. And our bases in Japan are very handy. South Korea? The last I heard we keep 50k of our troops there. Germany? Heck yes.

I went for a blood draw at the Georgetown VA today in anticipation of a Doctor's appt. next week. I walked in and put my card in a scanner, sat down, and one minute later my name was called. I was in and out in about 10 minutes tops. It was done well, the people were friendly, and the guy sitting next to me giving blood had an Air Force insignia on his hat. The worst part of the visit was not having coffee this morning, but I am having some now with a Thomas' English muffin.