I have just noticed a positive thing about Donald Trump.
Isn't that amazing?
I could be wrong, but Trump seems
the first President to say new-klee-are instead of new-cue-lur.
17 seconds into this You-Tube video by Bernie Sander's supporters:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phKKJfm3MDQ&feature=em-uploademail
Is that true?
I don't think it means much, by the way.
Obama said it both ways but I believe he said it the wrong way more often.
shareIt doesn't really matter. I thought it was funny though.
Trump may be able to say nuclear, but he seemed to struggle
with lots of other words, like Ghi-Na, for China, Poo-Err-Toe Rick-o
for Puerto Rico and tons of other words and names.
He knows how to annoy people and keep them talking about him,
that is for sure. How that qualifies him to make national and
international policy when he does not know the issues, I don't
know.
It’s because his writers spell it out phonetically for him with a bouncing ball for him to follow. Don’t give him too much credit.
Other Presidents winged it on their own.
Right on! He probably doesn't know how to spell it anyway.
shareSince other Presidents pronounced it wrong, perhaps they all should have it spelled out phonetically for them.
shareYeah, I can't stand new-kew-ler, either, but I hear a lot of supposedly knowledgeable people say it that way. Ol' W really influenced this pronunciation, the dumb ass.
But what surprises me about the current d---a-- is he wants to pull our boys out of Syria. I def don't like how he wants to go about it, but anyone who wants to get our guys out of harms way I can agree with. It's a complicated situation, but I appreciate the sentiment.
Overall he's arguably the worst President ever, or at least in living memory, but, for better or worse, he's an isolationist. Whatever else his myriad of sins and failures, we're probably less likely to see him instigate another war.
shareThere are arguments to be made for both sides, staying there and pulling
out, but what annoys me about Trump is that he seems to always go against
a big majority of advisors on a whim, and then reverse course, and flip-flop
in full view of the world's media back and forth like a blithering idiot.
Aye to that. He needs to listen to his cabinet and top advisers, hammer out a plan that most will agree is wise and prudent. And maybe that's what's happening, but I know one of his guys got blind-sided by an out-of-nowhere tweet and said, screw this, I'm gone.
shareHe's willing to pull out of Syria so brazenly because Syria is Russia's top ally. I'd definitely prefer that over Hillary Clinton basically wanting to stay in Syria forever but that whole thing is nullified by Trump's decision to aid the Saudis in Yemen. So Trump is merely trading Syrian lives for Yemeni lives. He's doing it just so he can please Putin and the Saudi Prince at the same time who traditionally don't like each other.
shareHow do you know what HRC's policy was? She never implemented one.
shareWhatever Clinton would or would not do, she would be backed by the best advisors in the US military and have a real plan and a reason for it. Trump just plays to his base who do not really seem big on expertise or information.
shareBecause of her debate with Bernie where he was saying he would ignore Assad and she swore up and down that we needed to be there to defeat him.
shareThis area is not pacified, and so at some point the US or someone else is going to have to come in to take out Daesh, or whatever comes after Daesh/IS. It will cost more lives and more money to leave and return that it will to just stay there.
shareThats a fair point. I can see it possibly being pacified with Hillary but I can't say for sure. But I do know Trump has made it worse by selling weapons to saudis for their war in Yemen. The weapons we sell them end up in the hands of alqaeda and isis which makes Syria an unwinnable situation. So on one hand I kinda commend him for getting out of Syria but he's the one who has made it too bad for us to be there.
Trump keeps selling the misinformation that isis has been defeated because he doesn't want people to know he's the one breathing life back into them through his deals with the saudi prince. It would be wonderful if Jeff Bezos and the Washington Post could find a way to show what the white house is really up to.
I cannot say for certain of course, but I think the real long term plans of the US ... looking forward throughout this century is to take out Iran, and then Saudi Arabia ... only then can this area be free of the oppression and coercion of their militant fascist versions of Islam and move forward to join the modern world. It is kind of ironic that by that time oil will not really be as important as it has historically been.
But getting rid of the tyrannies in the Middle East will also make those countries and their neighbors much less likely to want to side with Russia or China.
We all know the Saudi-US relationship is just one of mutual convenience, and at some point it is not going to be worth the pain of bowing to this most corrupt of regimes in the world, and Iran, same there, but Iran is the weaker of the two power blocks and has lost most of its cache in the region.
In terms of Syria being unwinnable, maybe or maybe not, but there is little left in Syria to "win" .... Bashir al-Assad has pretty much destroyed his own country, not to mention all the groups inside it that made it up.
Finally, it should be time for an independent Kurdistan, but I don't know if the US has ever gotten anything right like that, so I won't be holding my breath.
We shake hands with the saudis because they have so much money. They fund our military contractors and thats it. We get most of our oil from Canada and Mexico. The days of the saudis having us on a leash for oil is over. But they are so wealthy that they can literally get away with murder and have a president look the other way. The only way to defeat it is to get money out of politics. Also the only reason we go after Iran is because the saudis tell us to. We help them in Yemen because its a proxy war against Iran. We help them in Syria because its a proxy war against Iran. Its all about Saudi Arabia maintaining its dominance in the region.
shareDid you know that it is an American state secret as to how much money the Saudis have invested in the US economy? There is a very informative book called Secrets of the Kingdom by Gerald Posner that goes into the history of the Saudis, and as we all know it is not pretty. These were ignorant warring tribespeople that murdered each other for centuries, and that is their mindset, criminality on a vast scale now that they are rich. The spend more on defense than Russia, third under the US and China I believe. Also they are still paying and exporting radical Islam to the world. They also still have slavery ... they are an ugly barbaric people. At least Iran has a civilized long history and does things on their own. There is a lot to admire in the Iranian culture ... not so much at all in Saudi ... whatever one could call it.
shareI can already agree the saudis are the real problem and not Iran. We were the ones that turned Iran's government into religious fundamentalists. However there was a period around the 1920s when Saudi Arabia was secular.
share> We were the ones that turned Iran's government into religious fundamentalists.
Not really, that was the excesses of the Shah. We did put him in power, which was a stupid movie, but he might still be there today or his descendants if he had not taken too much from the country and oppressed his people.
I am not familiar with any secular past in Saudi Arabia, they have been warring about religion for centuries, controlled by Egypt or the Ottomans. Do you have any information about this time?
Well Iran had a prime minister that we kicked out and replaced with the shah. Then the ayatollah took over because the shah was an obvious puppet. It seems that without any of our interference then the prime minister's leadership would have likely continued. But who knows for sure I guess.
shareThe ayatollah did not take over because the shah was a puppet, but because he was a lousy ruler and administrator and could to stomach or manage diversity and was killing and torturing people. That was not strictly done by the USA.
That is like saying the US tells Saudi Arabia what to do, who to kill, etc.
I agree the best thing that should have happened was that Mosadegh was left in power and negotiated reasonably with, but that is not the US's way, even today sometimes.
The shah was a puppet for us because we and Britain put him in power. We led a coup against the PM because the PM wanted the oil strictly for Iranians.
The saudis aren't our puppets because we did not put those royals in power. They always had it.
You might want to read the book I cited above. The Shah was removed basically by the oil companies, like Arbenz in Guatemala was removed by United Fruit.
I always get a kick out of the ignorant people who pass on the meme that the US is Israel's puppet, when in fact it is far more Saudi Arabia that has influence in the US, but they are happy to remain in the background pulling strings.