Trump

Morkonan · Post by **Morkonan** » Thu, 7. Dec 17, 05:22

mrbadger wrote:...Good riddance. I say, I don't want money from slave trade in my life, but my grandfather wasn't best pleased....

The "sins of the father?"

Your life is what you make of it. It wasn't made for you.

mrbadger · Post by **mrbadger** » Thu, 7. Dec 17, 07:30

Masterbagger wrote:The madman went and did it. We can stop pretending Jerusalem isn't the capital of Israel.

I must have missed a memo, why did he do that? Another case of throwing the distraction ball?

Golden_Gonads · Post by **Golden_Gonads** » Thu, 7. Dec 17, 10:28

mrbadger wrote:I must have missed a memo, why did he do that? Another case of throwing the distraction ball?

Yup. He's officially recognised Jerusalem as the Capital of Israel, something no nation has ever done (except Israel of course) thus practically guaranteeing the bombing of the US Embassy (which he says he'll move to Jerusalem as some later point). Thats one hell of a distraction from the trial of whats-his-face.

Bishop149 · Post by **Bishop149** » Thu, 7. Dec 17, 13:24

Skism wrote:There you go have I proven that BLM is equivalent to WLM?

Or do you require more?

You have provided information from secondary or tertiary sources whose bias is incredibly obvious.

As someone whose previously looked into theses figures on multiple occasions I can tell you the following: Good data is very hard to find.
Official sources such as the FBI and police departments tend either not to record racial data at all or obfuscated / generalise it. When they are called out on why this is the response (if one is provided) is usually along the lines of: We don't want to provide racially inflammatory information.
This is either well-meaning but incredibly misguided or it's a blatant cover-up. In the case of federal sources I tend to think its the former, for local police departments the latter.

The sources we are left with are usually data mining operations (often charitable) with the specific agenda of trying to build or expose that hidden or obfuscated data. I tend to trust these, but they could certainly be said to have their own bias.
Then there is Ann Coulter and websites who describe people that disagree with them as "brain-dead" in the first line of their articles.

I'm not going to go into the links between Race, poverty, crime and prison populations because its far too complicated. There are literally millions of pages written on this by US criminologists go read some.
But as far as killing by police go, literally every source I can find for every single year is at least 2-3x higher for Blacks than it is for any other group, unadjusted for population (which would of course bump it higher).
Making a link to crime rate is tempting but really very racist. A person killed by police officer is almost by definition never convicted of a crime, to link it to crime rate you have to do the following:
- Assume everyone shot by police was guilty of a crime.
- Assume that any racial bias in the killings is unrelated to any racial bias in conviction rates.
- Assume that their race allows them to be grouped with all convicted criminals of the same race.
The latter is VERY DEFINITION of racist.

Basically all this boils down to: Do you think US society is racist and disadvantages non-white people.
I do, but I suspect you don't.

Antilogic wrote:Correct. The "British Empire" fought in the second world war, not "Antilogic personally took up a gun and shot some ebil krout, no matter what his COD K/D has to say about it". But this doesn't mean you are responsible for either, a person not present for either event.

I thought I'd pick up on this. You are absolutely correct that no one should be held directly responsible for the actions of their ancestors, this is obviously unfair.

What can be expected of you today however is the following:
To realise that the world we live in today is built upon the actions of the past and that those actions though they may be 100's or 1000's of years old continue to have consequences for people alive today both positive and negative. If you are fortunate enough to belong to one of the groups that our society tends to grant privilege then I think you can be asked to try an use that advantage not only for yourself but also to help correct the inequalities generated by the "mistakes" of the past.
And yes it is usually the case that the group privileged by a society are the descendants of the group that did all those horrible things in the past to establish their dominance in the first place.

As a slight counter argument I also don't think that an oppressed group expecting or asking for, to paraphrase: "All the stuff their ancestors had taken off them" is especially helpful or realistic and is most likely to just maintain the conflict and animosity.

Morkonan · Post by **Morkonan** » Thu, 7. Dec 17, 13:24

mrbadger wrote:
Masterbagger wrote:The madman went and did it. We can stop pretending Jerusalem isn't the capital of Israel.
I must have missed a memo, why did he do that? Another case of throwing the distraction ball?

He's making good on his promises to his base in order to try to solidify their support and be able to give a year-end "victory speech" or something.

It was a totally nonsensical move. No reason at all, nothing pressing, no urgency at all to do it and absolutely no policy advantages gained whatsoever. Everything about it, other than some wacky reason to fulfill this worthless promise, is a "fail." It serves to inflame things, alienates allies, raises anti-American sentiment further and, all in all, is exactly the sort of thing I think Trump would call "a great idea", which means it's a steaming turd of an idea.

Watching protests in Israel on TV right now. Hamas calling for a general uprising. Looks like rioting, now, with burning vehicles and ambulances. Oooh, teargas and watercannons, now.

Thanks, Donald.

You know, it's almost as if what a President of the United States actually says has an impact in other places. Imagine that!

(I don't think he reads this thread, though. Too busy with his morning constitutional of squat-thrusting fireplugs while listening to recordings of himself saying how great he is... /nothappyatm :/ )

Bishop149 · Post by **Bishop149** » Thu, 7. Dec 17, 13:25

Morkonan wrote: It was a totally nonsensical move. No reason at all, nothing pressing, no urgency at all to do it and absolutely no policy advantages gained whatsoever.

I did see one thing that said apparently its something that his evangelical Christian following are very keen on. . . . why?
Because they think its one of things that has to happen as herald of the end times they think we are living in, to bring on the rapture and literal apocalypse.

Great.

http://time.com/time-person-of-the-year ... -breakers/

Well I guess we know what was behind that bizarre Trump tweet now huh. Why Time may have wanted to talk to him about "Person of the Year". . . .

Morkonan · Post by **Morkonan** » Thu, 7. Dec 17, 13:45

Bishop149 wrote:
Morkonan wrote: It was a totally nonsensical move. No reason at all, nothing pressing, no urgency at all to do it and absolutely no policy advantages gained whatsoever.
I did see one thing that said apparently its something that his evangelical Christian following are very keen on. . . . why?
Because they think its one of things that has to happen as herald of the end times they think we are living in, to bring on the rapture and literal apocalypse.

Great.

I don't quite think that's the idea. Somewhat of an explanation, here: https://www.theatlantic.com/internation ... sy/547643/

ie: General support of the State of Israel among evangelicals means support for Jerusalem as the cultural/religious capital, but it doesn't have to be the actual "capitol."

(YAY - WORDZ! Sorta...)

Well I guess we know what was behind that bizarre Trump tweet now huh. Why Time may have wanted to talk to him about "Person of the Year". . . .

Time basically said "That's a lie. That's not how we go about the selection process."

BUT, I bet it's possible someone called him and asked if he'd like to respond to accusations of fondling/attempted fondlings. That's only good journalism.

Besides, he has enough fake "Man of the Year" magazine covers, he doesn't need any legitimate ones.

Bishop149 · Post by **Bishop149** » Thu, 7. Dec 17, 13:58

Morkonan wrote:BUT, I bet it's possible someone called him and asked if he'd like to respond to accusations of fondling/attempted fondlings. That's only good journalism.

He's specifically highlighted in the article as one of the most high profile examples of powerful men who think they have a right to do whatever they like to whomever they like.
They may indeed have been offering him a right to reply, which he either completely misconstrued or just spun in his favour.

Morkonan · Post by **Morkonan** » Thu, 7. Dec 17, 14:07

Bishop149 wrote:....just spun in his favour.

^--- This.

"Mr. Trump, why did you rape that woman?"

"Hey, had sex! I was great! Really great!"

RegisterMe · Post by **RegisterMe** » Thu, 7. Dec 17, 14:40

Re Jerusalem and the US recognition of it as Israel's capital city. I understand that it was an election pledge. What I don't get is how Trump / the administration think that doing so would aid his additional espoused pledge to "get a great peace deal".

Short of the 101st dropping on Mecca I find it hard to think of anything more likely to inflame passions across the Arab world.....

Usenko · Post by **Usenko** » Thu, 7. Dec 17, 14:48

I am an evangelical Christian (though in the last two or three years that's become an increasingly tarnished branding.

), so I can understand some of the appeal of Trump's move. Most evangelicals have a broadly pro-Israel stance. Contrary to popular opinion, it's not about hastening the apocalypse (although the highly literalist interpretations of the Bible common amongst my friends and relations certainly would make you THINK it was). Whilst there's a sense in which many Christians believe that the return of Israel to nationhood in 1948 is a literal fulfilment of apocalyptic prophecy, the main point is that much biblical literature (especially the book of Acts) talks about how Christians are sort of a continuation of the people of Israel.

Therefore we tend to be pro-Israel[1], and are predisposed to see Israel as the "good guys" in the Middle East, beset by various Arab and Palestinian "bad guys." When there is a conflict, we often want to hear Israel's side of the story first.

The problem is that our understanding of the issues involved tends to be fairly simplistic. As above, "good guys" and "bad guys", with little appreciation of the nuances involved. In this narrative it's quite difficult to find room for the many shades of grey in real situations[2].

Therefore, the mindset would applaud the idea of "Giving Israel back its true capital", even though 1) this ignores some totally reasonable grievances some people in Jerusalem (and wider Israel) may have against it, and 2) it ignores the political and diplomatic ramifications, which are not necessarily in the US's favour. Not to mention 3) recognition of Jerusalem by one other country, no matter how large and influential, doesn't really change any political realities (and may accidentally create serious problems).

[1] Although curiously a lot of less sophisticated people in this bent can be quite prejudiced against Jews (as opposed to the nation-state of Israel), seeing no contradiction between these two ideas.

[2] For example: An Israeli soldier is attacked by Palestinian youths who pelt her with rocks. This is unreasonable, and the soldier is within her rights to take steps to make it stop. But if she makes them stop by shooting the youths, she's gone way over what is acceptable, and crossed a line into brutality. In the good guys/bad guys narrative, the soldier is in the right simply because she's Israeli, and the youths are in the wrong because they're Palestinian. Reality is not so tidy, and anyone with even the slightest sense of fairness would (and should) be quite appalled at such an example of over-enthusiastic violence.

BugMeister · Post by **BugMeister** » Thu, 7. Dec 17, 16:42

- the road to fascism..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hOky9LFO6o

felter · Post by **felter** » Thu, 7. Dec 17, 17:13

So did anyone actually listen to Trumps speech on Jerusalem.

Observe · Post by **Observe** » Thu, 7. Dec 17, 17:22

I'm guessing Trump always thought Jerusalem was the capital of Israel, was very shocked when he found out our embassy wasn't there and has merely corrected the 'wrong'. Probably Obama put the embassy in the wrong place to begin with.

Post by **Santi** » Thu, 7. Dec 17, 18:24

The Jerusalem move makes a lot of sense. Looking at the facts, we have a "peace process" that has been going on since 1970, since 2003 it has been working on a two state solution. Then the Palestinians changed tack and as a new "negotiation tactic" started a civil war in 2007 among themselves.

On top of that a two state solution can only be agreed with Fatah, as Hamas is considered a terrorist organization and never will be allowed to gain power of an independent Palestinian state by Israel, United States and the European Union among others.

Just think that if Fatah was chosen (that will be) to rule an independent Palestine, Hamas will launch an all out attack, let's remember that Hamas got the biggest vote in the last elections, it will be carnage and South Sudan all over again.

So just carry on, declare Jerusalem the capital of Israel, de facto it already is, a sit down to the table and take what you get or we take everything is probably the best approach to palestinian talks right now.

As for destabilizing the Middle East, people have to be kidding.

Skism · Post by **Skism** » Thu, 7. Dec 17, 19:28

Muellers credibility gong down

The special prosecutor’s probe, which has already cost taxpayers some $5 million, hit a massive speed bump last week — the kind that snaps the axles and blows out the transmission. Reports emerged in both The Washington Post and The New York Times that a lead FBI investigator sent anti-Trump texts to a mistress. Weirdly, the investigator, Peter Strzok, wasn’t fired, just quietly demoted to the Bureau’s human resources department.

“Electronic records show Peter Strzok, who led the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s private email server as the No. 2 official in the counterintelligence division, changed Comey’s earlier draft language describing Clinton’s actions as ‘grossly negligent’ to ‘extremely careless,’ the sources said,” CNN reported. (Good job, Clinton News Network!)

Mr. Strzok was a “key figure in the chain of events when the bureau, in 2016, received the infamous anti-Trump ‘dossier’ and launched a counterintelligence investigation into Russian meddling in the election that ultimately came to encompass FISA surveillance of a Trump campaign associate,” Fox News reported.

The dossier was a compilation of rumors and lies about Mr. Trump put together by an opposition research team contracted by Democrats called Fusion GPS. Fusion’s records, obtained by House investigators, show the dossier was funded by the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee.

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/20 ... er-strzok/

Well it seems this investigation might have hit a stumbling block!

felter · Post by **felter** » Thu, 7. Dec 17, 19:31

Santi wrote:The Jerusalem move makes a lot of sense. Looking at the facts, we have a "peace process" that has been going on since 1970, since 2003 it has been working on a two state solution. Then the Palestinians changed tack and as a new "negotiation tactic" started a civil war in 2007 among themselves.

On top of that a two state solution can only be agreed with Fatah, as Hamas is considered a terrorist organization and never will be allowed to gain power of an independent Palestinian state by Israel, United States and the European Union among others.

Just think that if Fatah was chosen (that will be) to rule an independent Palestine, Hamas will launch an all out attack, let's remember that Hamas got the biggest vote in the last elections, it will be carnage and South Sudan all over again.

So just carry on, declare Jerusalem the capital of Israel, de facto it already is, a sit down to the table and take what you get or we take everything is probably the best approach to palestinian talks right now.

As for destabilizing the Middle East, people have to be kidding.

Honestly that makes no sense at all, on what you are saying why didn't Trump just say, Jerusalem was the Palestinian capital as that is what they say it is, and Israel would have to sit down at the table and take what they get. Do you think the Israeli's would agree to this, I doubt it, but you are saying that the Palestinians should.

It is the most stupidest and dangerous idea out of all of the ideas, and the violence of today shows just why it is. All of the American consulates have had to bring in extra security with more marines having to help in protecting them due to this, if it is such a good idea then why have they had to do this.

It will not work and people will die from this simplest of actions, where as before they were not going to die, is that how you create peace, kill people. I know what, why not just kill all of the Palestinians and hey problem solved, that makes about as much sense.

Morkonan · Post by **Morkonan** » Thu, 7. Dec 17, 19:55

Santi wrote:...So just carry on, declare Jerusalem the capital of Israel, de facto it already is, a sit down to the table and take what you get or we take everything is probably the best approach to palestinian talks right now.

Well, the problem with that is that the Palestinian leadership has said that if Jerusalem is recognized as the capital, then they don't want a "two state" solution. Instead, they want a single-state solution in Israel, but with "equal rights" for all citizens including Palestinians.

And, if that happens, then Israel will no longer be a "Jewish State." Palestinians would want equal rights, equal representationin government, cultural and religious recognition, etc... So long "Jewish State", hello "Cosmopolitcan Democratic Government." That would seriously tick off a lot of Israelis and that's probably why the Palestinian leadership is calling for this right now.

As for destabilizing the Middle East, people have to be kidding.

Well, riots have already broken out in Jerusalem. and radical elements across the Middle East are predictably calling for action. It remains to be seen what the full effect will be.

BugMeister · Post by **BugMeister** » Thu, 7. Dec 17, 21:40

Chris Hedges (Dec 06, 2017) - Stop Fascism - Chris Hedges in Portland, Oregon A KBOO Benefit
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRta28B2LTI

- interesting commentary on the dangers of a crumbling empire

Post by **Santi** » Thu, 7. Dec 17, 22:11

felter wrote:Honestly that makes no sense at all, on what you are saying why didn't Trump just say, Jerusalem was the Palestinian capital as that is what they say it is, and Israel would have to sit down at the table and take what they get.

No, because the British made sure that the Jews will get the bigger portion of the cake regarding Palestine. Fair enough, the UN did have a lot of responsibilities regarding the mess Palestine finds themselves right now. But the world at the time, gave the whole of those territories to Israel and that was fine.

Felter wrote:It will not work and people will die from this simplest of actions, where as before they were not going to die, is that how you create peace, kill people. I know what, why not just kill all of the Palestinians and hey problem solved, that makes about as much sense.

So how you explain Palestinians from Hamas killing Fatah palestinians?

Morkonan wrote:Well, the problem with that is that the Palestinian leadership

Is that the Fatah "dealership" or the Hamas "dealership"?

The Middle East is a mess, Libya, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Qatar, Iran the whole lot is on the brink, recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel is just sidenote on the madness that is engulfing the middle eastl

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