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TobiasDrake (•̀⤙•́) (Edited uphill both ways) Relationship Status: Arm chopping is not a love language!
(•̀⤙•́)
#238751: Apr 14th 2018 at 6:29:59 AM

Given how highly Trump values Jones's show, I can't wait to see what happens when he hears this.

My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.
Deadbeatloser22 from Disappeared by Space Magic (Great Old One) Relationship Status: Tsundere'ing
#238752: Apr 14th 2018 at 6:31:39 AM

From the AP News twitter.

BREAKING: French defense minister says Russia was warned ahead of joint US, UK, French military attacks on Syria.

Now can we start looking at fingering Trump for those treason charges?

"Yup. That tasted purple."
NesClassic Meh-meh!? from Flyover Country Since: Dec, 2012 Relationship Status: In another castle
Meh-meh!?
#238753: Apr 14th 2018 at 6:35:49 AM

I'm a bit late to the discussions, but just to surmise quickly- the Syria strikes are proooobably Right for the Wrong Reasons yeah?

A more rational person would've struck Syria to get Russia to bugger off, and Trump did it as a distraction/dick wave/"I did something"?

[up]...and I guess a more rational person wouldn't of essentially been like "pssst pretend we did something to hurt you guys, ice cream later?" either, huh.

🏳️‍⚧️she/her | Vio Rhyse Alberia
JBC31187 Since: Jan, 2015
#238754: Apr 14th 2018 at 6:41:22 AM

[up]It would have been more effective and cheaper to take in refugees, I believe. I think there's some value in bombing, but not the way Trump and the GOP uses it. If it ends here we're lucky- I don't believe Trump would start WWIII by bombing Syria, but he's an idiot who could start a third war in the Middle East and kill a lot more people than are dying now, not to mention blow another hole in our budget.

Alex Jones on Trump’s decision to approve strikes against Syria (continued): “He said Hillary’s the founder of Al-Qaeda. Well, you’re the butt boy of Al-Qaeda, Trump”
And now I agree with Jones on something. I hate my life.

NesClassic Meh-meh!? from Flyover Country Since: Dec, 2012 Relationship Status: In another castle
Meh-meh!?
#238755: Apr 14th 2018 at 6:49:05 AM

More ethical, too; but "Trump" and "hospitality" isn't really a combination I think we'd ever get and his staunch opposal to helping refugees has been around since before he became president.

So... okay, guess I was just a tad optimistic. Thanks for the clarification.

🏳️‍⚧️she/her | Vio Rhyse Alberia
M84 Oh, bother. from Our little blue planet Since: Jun, 2010 Relationship Status: Chocolate!
Oh, bother.
#238756: Apr 14th 2018 at 6:53:46 AM

And now I agree with Jones on something. I hate my life.

Don't worry, Jones will say something asinine soon enough and start sucking up to Trump again. It won't last.

Disgusted, but not surprised
sgamer82 Since: Jan, 2001
#238757: Apr 14th 2018 at 6:59:21 AM

The thing that always occurs to me re: Alex Jones is The Last Podcast on the Left series on Bill Cooper, one of the biggest conspiracy theorists there's been. Even that guy thought Jones was full of shit.

edited 14th Apr '18 6:59:43 AM by sgamer82

megaeliz Since: Mar, 2017
#238758: Apr 14th 2018 at 7:18:24 AM

I think this sums it up pretty well.

Call me a neo-con shill, but maintaining the global norm against the use of chemical weapons on civilians is essential. Last night’s strikes were appropriate, limited, and effective.

They were also illegal, and an attempt to distract from the coverup of the 2016 Election Fraud.

edited 14th Apr '18 7:20:43 AM by megaeliz

Wyldchyld (Old as dirt)
#238759: Apr 14th 2018 at 7:38:50 AM

edited 15th Apr '18 5:10:06 PM by Wyldchyld

If my post doesn't mention a giant flying sperm whale with oversized teeth and lionfish fins for flippers, it just isn't worth reading.
BlueNinja0 The Mod with the Migraine from Taking a left at Albuquerque Since: Dec, 2010 Relationship Status: Showing feelings of an almost human nature
The Mod with the Migraine
#238760: Apr 14th 2018 at 7:47:16 AM

anyone care to guess how many Syrian Refuges we have admitted this year?
I'm betting zero, because why would the GOP save the lives of Muslims?
A more rational person would've struck Syria to get Russia to bugger off, and Trump did it as a distraction/dick wave/"I did something"?
Everything Trump does is a dick-waving distraction.

An editorial in the NY Times is basically begging people to support a new centrist party, declaring the GOP in jeopardy with Paul Ryan's retirement. Full article text 

To adapt the old phrase to today’s G.O.P.: The ships are leaving the sinking rat.

That’s the moral of Paul Ryan’s unexpected but not surprising announcement this week that he will give up the speakership — the second Republican speaker to do so in just three years — and retire after 20 years in the House.

Ryan’s departure comes atop the three dozen and counting House Republicans who’ve decided they have better things to do in life than either lose their seats in November or spend the next few years in the likely minority.

Many of these Republicans once believed that Donald Trump alone possessed the virility needed to vanquish Hillary Clinton. Only belatedly have they figured out that the virility comes with a case of syphilis.

The world will little note nor long remember that in 2017 Republicans cut the top marginal tax rate to 37 percent from 39.6 percent and otherwise tried but failed to kill Obamacare. It will remember the alacrity and ease with which the supposedly likable face of pro-growth, family-friendly conservatism opportunistically played the sycophant to the congenitally mendacious and previously priapic nativist bigot who captured the White House.

Congress and the White House are coequals, and Ryan and other Republicans who saw Trump for what he is never owed him obeisance. They owed the country an alternative political vision. Ryan’s failure to deliver one will be remembered as the central fact of his once-bright career. Is there an alternative?

Among Republicans, Ohio’s John Kasich, Nebraska’s Ben Sasse, and Arizona’s Jeff Flake and John Mc Cain have sought in different ways to offer one, without immediate success but with integrity, honor and a sense of the long view.

There are also grass-root efforts. One of them is the nonpartisan Renew Democracy Initiative, led by Garry Kasparov, which had its launch this month.

“There is still a center in Western politics, and it needs to be revitalized intellectually, culturally, and politically,” reads a plank in its manifesto (to which I’m a signatory).

“The center-right and center-left are still joined by a broad set of common values, including respect for free speech and dissent, a belief in the benefits of international trade and immigration, respect for law and procedural legitimacy, a suspicion of cults of personality, and an understanding that free societies require protection from authoritarians promising easy fixes to complex problems.”

This may not be a strictly Republican position. It is a republican one. And it offers conservatives disgusted with what their former partisan home has become a different sort of base from which they can begin to build a better form of politics, free of both the corruptions of Trumpism and the capitulations of Ryanism.

Liberals who understand that our common political health requires a morally and intellectually sound conservative movement might consider getting aboard.

Because we really need more liberals supporting conservative causes.

That’s the epitome of privilege right there, not considering armed nazis a threat to your life. - Silasw
TobiasDrake (•̀⤙•́) (Edited uphill both ways) Relationship Status: Arm chopping is not a love language!
(•̀⤙•́)
#238761: Apr 14th 2018 at 7:48:08 AM

I might be talking out of my arse here, but I think it's standard operating procedure to warn Russia. We weren't attacking Russia. We were attacking Syria. Warning Russia is a diplomatic move that says, "Hey, this attack is happening despite your saber rattling, but we are not trying to pick a fight with you or cause harm to your direct assets. This is your formal alert to extract any people or equipment you have in the area. Anything that happens to them because of a failure to do so is now officially on you, not us."

It's how we avoid the headline, "Russia had 20 important generals in the area that just got bombed! War has been declared!"

edited 14th Apr '18 7:50:20 AM by TobiasDrake

My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.
Kayeka (4 Score & 7 Years Ago)
#238762: Apr 14th 2018 at 7:58:07 AM

[up]Yeah, pretty sure that's the case.

BlueNinja0 The Mod with the Migraine from Taking a left at Albuquerque Since: Dec, 2010 Relationship Status: Showing feelings of an almost human nature
The Mod with the Migraine
#238764: Apr 14th 2018 at 8:13:07 AM

So we're saving three refugees per month. Yeah, that'll really help the humanitarian situation.

That’s the epitome of privilege right there, not considering armed nazis a threat to your life. - Silasw
megaeliz Since: Mar, 2017
#238765: Apr 14th 2018 at 9:41:26 AM

Takeaways from the Pentagon brief:

  • No missiles were intercepted by Russia’s vaunted S-400 systems.
  • JASSM Air-launched missiles were utilized from B1 Bombers.
  • UK Tornado and French Rafale strike fighters utilized Storm Shadow missiles.
  • Aircraft fired from outside Syrian airspace.
  • In addition to air-fired cruise missiles, the Tomahawk and French Md CN missiles were utilized.
  • Zero civilian casualties.
[1]

Not a bad outcome, honestly.

edited 14th Apr '18 9:44:01 AM by megaeliz

NativeJovian Jupiterian Local from Orlando, FL Since: Mar, 2014 Relationship Status: Maxing my social links
Jupiterian Local
#238766: Apr 14th 2018 at 9:41:58 AM

Tobias has it right. Warning Russia that an attack was going to happen near them but not directed at them is standard operating procedure when in a complicated situation like this. No one wants to start a major conflict by accident, which means making it very clear that Russian forces are not under attack.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.
archonspeaks Since: Jun, 2013
#238767: Apr 14th 2018 at 9:55:11 AM

Wyldchyld: International law only exists as much as there’s a will to enforce it. Basically, if the US says it’s legal it’s legal until someone challenges that by force. Even if an argument can be made that the US violated international law it’s essentially a moot point.

We generally abide by the norms of international politics but there are obviously exceptions.

They should have sent a poet.
kkhohoho (4 Score & 7 Years Ago)
#238769: Apr 14th 2018 at 10:33:27 AM

[up]And somehow two debacles roll into one.tongue

megaeliz Since: Mar, 2017
#238770: Apr 14th 2018 at 10:38:44 AM

Moving on from that distraction, apparently Mueller has evidence that Cohen was in Prague in 2016, contradicting his previous statements, and confirming yet another part of the Dossier.

The Justice Department special counsel has evidence that Donald Trump’s personal lawyer and confidant, Michael Cohen, secretly made a late-summer trip to Prague during the 2016 presidential campaign, according to two sources familiar with the matter.

Confirmation of the trip would lend credence to a retired British spy’s report that Cohen strategized there with a powerful Kremlin figure about Russian meddling in the U.S. election.

It would also be one of the most significant developments thus far in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of whether the Trump campaign and the Kremlin worked together to help Trump win the White House. Undercutting Trump’s repeated pronouncements that “there is no evidence of collusion,” it also could ratchet up the stakes if the president tries, as he has intimated he might for months, to order Mueller’s firing.

Cohen has vehemently denied for months that he ever has been in Prague or colluded with Russia during the campaign. Neither he nor his lawyer responded to requests for comment for this story.

It’s unclear whether Mueller’s investigators also have evidence that Cohen actually met with a prominent Russian – purportedly Konstantin Kosachev, an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin — in the Czech capital. Kosachev, who chairs the Foreign Affairs Committee of a body of the Russian legislature, the Federation Council, also has denied visiting Prague during 2016. Earlier this month, Kosachev was among 24 high-profile Russians hit with stiff U.S. sanctions in retaliation for Russia’s meddling.

But investigators have traced evidence that Cohen entered the Czech Republic through Germany, apparently during August or early September of 2016 as the ex-spy reported, said the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation is confidential. He wouldn’t have needed a passport for such a trip, because both countries are in the so-called Schengen Area in which 26 nations operate with open borders. The disclosure still left a puzzle: The sources did not say whether Cohen took a commercial flight or private jet to Europe, and gave no explanation as to why no record of such a trip has surfaced.

edited 14th Apr '18 10:41:58 AM by megaeliz

sgamer82 Since: Jan, 2001
#238771: Apr 14th 2018 at 10:39:53 AM

Using a Syria attack to deflect your collusion woes kind of fails when you consult the collusion lawyers about the deflection.

Euodiachloris Since: Oct, 2010
#238772: Apr 14th 2018 at 10:59:37 AM

[up]Dumbception.

EDIT: Wonderful topper regarding Trump's attempts to distract by using the very people he's trying to draw heat from to advise him on his smokescreen.

edited 14th Apr '18 11:01:47 AM by Euodiachloris

TroperOnAStickV2 Call me Stick from Redneck country Since: Dec, 2009 Relationship Status: is commanded to— WANK!
Call me Stick
#238773: Apr 14th 2018 at 11:20:57 AM

BWONG

Forgive me.

Hopefully I'll feel confident to change my avatar off this scumbag soon. Apologies to any scumbags I insulted.
CharlesPhipps Since: Jan, 2001
#238774: Apr 14th 2018 at 11:37:48 AM

I'm going to give trump the benefit of the doubt about the distraction.

Clinton was accused of wagging the dog when he bombed some unimportant nobodies led by a guy named Osama Bin Ladin.

Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.
sgamer82 Since: Jan, 2001
#238775: Apr 14th 2018 at 11:41:36 AM

I'm not sure how that's reason to give him benefit of the doubt

At least in the sense that I don't think anyone here is thinking he acted for the same reasons Clinton did.

edited 14th Apr '18 11:42:42 AM by sgamer82


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