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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
While the internet might be the tipping point, Republican voters are so servile and/or willing to blame their problems on others that I'll believe them taking action against the party when I see it happen. Its just as likely that they'll end up staffing death squads...
Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.
Overlording the Underworld
When he tries to limit it. Not if. He is going to. It's inevitable given his friends have tried in the past. The big question is whether he actually cares about the riots in a way that helps us, and I severely doubt that. It's probably more like the western Anthropologist who tries to improve the lot of a primitive tribe and then winds up getting attacked by those they were trying to help. He probably thinks his magnanimous rule is a good thing for everybody who matters, and is angry that we don't get how he's doing a good thing.
"You don't matter. You're bad for the country. You're blocking our progress. WE matter. Don't you want to participate and help those who matter?"
Destroyer of Worlds
Pompeo's confirmed as CIA director
https://www.c-span.org/video/?422416-1/us-senate-votes-6632-confirm-mike-pompeo-cia-director&live=
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
And is this a good thing or a bad thing? (Do I even have to ask?)
Oh, bother.
Guy recently backpedaled on his opposition to torture, among other things.
It's a bad thing.
Disgusted, but not surprised
Oh goodie. For a minute there I thought we were getting someone with a modicum of decency. Glad to see that the Trump regime's staying true to form.
My Hair Provides Affordable Healthcare
The Guardian: Trump White House warns against Beijing 'takeover' of South China Sea
Speaking at a press briefing on Monday White House press secretary Sean Spicer vowed the US would “make sure that we protect our interests” in the resource-rich trade route, through which some $4.5tn (£3.4tn) in trade passes each year.
His comments come less than a fortnight after Rex Tillerson, Trump’s nominee for secretary of state, set the stage for a potentially explosive clash with Beijing by likening its artificial island building campaign in the South China Sea to “Russia’s taking of Crimea”.
Tillerson told his confirmation hearing the White House needed to send China a “clear signal” that such activities had to stop and that its access to such territories was “not going to be allowed”.
“They are taking territory or control or declaring control of territories that are not rightfully China’s,” Tillerson said.
Chinese media responded by warning that any attempt to prevent China accessing its interests in the region risked sparking a “large-scale war”.
At his first question and answer session with the press on Monday Spicer again hinted Trump’s administration would take a harder line on the South China Sea.
“It’s a question of if those islands are in fact in international waters and not part of China proper, then yeah, we’re going to make sure that we defend international territories from being taken over by one country,” he told reporters.
Spicer declined to explain how such steps might be enforced. “I think, as we develop further, we’ll have more information on it,” he said.
However, scholars who have been advising Trump’s team on China policy back a more muscular military approach, primarily through a dramatically strengthened navy in the region.
“We’ve talked a big game on security but haven’t really followed it up all that well with the military muscle that was needed,” Daniel Blumenthal, the director of Asian Studies at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative Washington-based thinktank, told the Guardian.
Blumenthal said a “strong, persistent US naval presence” was now required to back up a foreign policy “that at its bottom line says that China’s not going to control the South China Sea … But you can’t do that without military resources.”
China claims sovereignty over nearly the entire South China Sea and in recent years has stepped up a campaign to cement its control over a region where Brunei, Japan, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam also have claims.
It has done so partly by transforming a series of remote coral reefs into what experts say are effectively military outposts designed to help enforce its territorial claims.
Last month a US thinktank said “significant” weapons systems, including anti-aircraft and anti-missile system, had been deployed on China’s artificial islands. Beijing claims it has no intention of militarising them.
Blumenthal said he believed there was now “broad bipartisan support for trying to stem this expansionism, which is leading to effective Chinese control over the South China Sea”.
In July 2016, a judgment by an international tribunal in The Hague came down overwhelmingly in favour of claims by the Philippines to rocky outcrops in the South China Sea, a verdict disputed by Beijing.
“If indeed [the artificial islands] are not sovereign territory – and we don’t recognise them as so, and the region doesn’t recognise them as so, and the Hague didn’t recognise them as so – then there are all sorts of activities, up and down an escalation ladder, that the United States could take should we want to in terms of Chinese encroachment,” Blumenthal said.
Critics believe such moves would spark a furious reaction from Beijing and throw US-China ties into turmoil.
“This administration is shaping up to be the most hawkish administration against China in living memory … and this is not a recipe for great power stability, it is a recipe for great power friction,” said Ashley Townshend, a South China Sea expert from the University of Sydney’s United States studies centre.
“A blockade [of China’s artificial islands] would be incredibly provocative and would almost certainly spark a US-China confrontation on the water … If the US is going to blockade China’s access to territories which it – rightly or wrongly – believes are its, then we are in for a confrontation.”
More likely, Townshend said, was that Trump would order the stepping-up of freedom of navigation and overflight operations, which have come increasingly close to features in the South China Sea claimed by China.
Despite fears about the direction US policy towards China may take under the new president, Blumenthal argued a more robust stance from Washington could in fact improve ties.
“My own view and my own experience in government is that when you are very clear with China about what your national interests are and what you are going to do in the region, they become very clear as well and say, ‘You know what, we’re going to stop pushing’ and the relationship in certain areas can improve.
“I think the most dangerous scenario was the one we were heading towards: a lot of tough talk on the South China Sea, but China continuing to encroach and the United States not really putting a lot of muscle behind the statements it was making.”
Tell Me, Have You Seen the Yellow Sign?
Huh. If only there were some kind of Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement to counter Chinese influence that had been on the table all wrapped in a nice bow with the diplomacy already done. Guess life just doesn't work that way.
Ah well, wars are easier events for future historians to mark declines.
Edit: Page topper in response to Trump Warns China against a takeover of the South China Sea
PS: A sidebar open to any but to Captain Capsase in particular note
edited 23rd Jan '17 6:59:04 PM by CenturyEye
Look with century eyes... With our backs to the arch And the wreck of our kind We will stare straight ahead For the rest of our lives
The Democrats who voted to confirm Pompeo
◊.
WTF guys. I thought/hoped he would be one of the pics (ditto De Vos) who would get 0 Dem votes.
I mean I'm ambivalent but relatively supportive toward the idea that Democrats should oppose every single pick/decision, but I would have thought this was a pretty clear choice.
If only they would have gotten rid of the copyright garbage on it. Though, we have much bigger worries about the future of the internet (At least in the US) right now.
edited 23rd Jan '17 6:53:37 PM by Bat178
Remind me why China doing stuff in the South China Sea is contentious? It's neighbors putting up a stink?
Yeah. And so much for the US being non-interventionist under Trump...
edited 23rd Jan '17 7:21:07 PM by Bat178
His isolationism is only limited to Europe, and maybe the Middle East. Asia (and possibly South America) is going to get very interesting over the next four years...
Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.
Trump was never going to be non-interventionist, he took out full page ads back in the 80s dissing Reagan for not being tough like Nixon, the President who he seemingly looks to as a role model, and whose numerous negative traits Trump takes Up To Eleven.
He's also a massive China hawk, to the point where I wouldn't rule out Korean War part II: Electric Boogaloo under his tenure. We're also going to probably see a return to the time honored American tradition of fucking over Latin America, though instead of doing it for talking with the Soviets this time it'll be for talking with the Chinese.
edited 23rd Jan '17 7:25:53 PM by CaptainCapsase
The difference is, 'only Nixon could go to China.' I don't think Trump would even be allowed there.
Tell Me, Have You Seen the Yellow Sign?
Personally, I have little interest in China doing stuff in the South China Sea. The world's been carved up into spheres of influence before.
Equally personally, if my government must intervene, I prefer the route that doesn't lead to Pacific War, the even bigger Sequel.
Only Nixon could go to China, but only Trump could go to Russia seems to be what he's thinking, and while historical reasons would seem to make a Russo-American partnership unlikely, they do share an interest in high energy prices, since the Russian economy depends on oil, and with the United States increasingly using natural gas produced domestically, it also stands to benefit from high oil prices.
edited 23rd Jan '17 7:28:38 PM by CaptainCapsase
Destroyer of Worlds
Seems like he's trying to split the world between Russia and him.
Europe and Central Asia go to Russia.
Latin America and the Pacific region goes to America.
"You can't change the world without getting your hands dirty."
Don't forget the South Caucasus for Russia.
Europe is home to several great powers of its own with enough economic clout to match Russia quite easily in military terms if they were sufficiently motivated, but Eastern Europe is likely going to become embroiled in a massive tug of war between Germany and Russia when Germany inevitably rearms itself in earnest if the Untied States's commitment to European defense seems flaky.
edited 23rd Jan '17 7:33:58 PM by CaptainCapsase
I'm guessing the "Untied States" was intentional.
Last post of yours:
Which is a surprisingly apt description actually.
"All you Fascists bound to lose."
Asgore Adopts Noelle
You mean the same Germany that might vote in the "Alternative for Germany" Party this year?
They might re-arm themselves, but I have a hard time believing that they're going to be playing Tug of War with anyone for a few years...
And since almost everything and everyone depends on the internet nowadays, if he tries to limit it, there would be full blown riots across the US, some of them probably by his own former supporters. Not just protests, riots.
edited 23rd Jan '17 6:27:54 PM by Bat178