TrickstaPriest

I can't figure out whether Trump makes major policy decisions on impulse without consulting his advisors; he does consult them, but then ignores their advice; his advisors are too inept to recognize the repercussions of their advice; or they recognize the repercussions but are too dogmatic to care.
 
I also can't decide which possibility is worst.

Awesome.

Just keep fighting the good fight; but do it with reason and patience. The reasonable people will eventually hear you. I know they're not as loud as the crazies, but there are more of them, and they're the ones who always clean up after the crazies have inevitably exhausted themselves.

We know most of you like us; but you like us the way you like birds. Sometimes we do something you enjoy. Sometimes we annoy you. Most of the time you don't notice us.

Hey man, um... you, uh, think you could get me into that club sometime?

Getting distracted?  I wanted to do the 50k, then I realized how unlikely that was this year.  So hammer away and get it done!  Nah I kid.  But good luck!
 
Also, happy Tankerday

Getting distracted?  I wanted to do the 50k, then I realized how unlikely that was this year.  So hammer away and get it done!  Nah I kid.  But good luck!
 
Also, happy Tankerday

Handy.

I'm actually not sure they have thousands of artillery tubes in range of Seoul, and I'm also not sure they'd have 2-4 hours to operate before being destroyed by counterbattery fire and/or precision guided munitions. If we pretend that half of North Korea's 14,000 guns are in range of Seoul, and that they are of the longest-range 170mm Koksan type, then that is 7000 * 0.5 rounds per minute (generously) = 3500 170mm projectiles coming down on Seoul per hour, or about 15 per square mile of Seoul per hour. Each round carries about 12kg of high explosive. Dreadful! But hardly worthy of the "sea of fire" rhetoric. And we are deliberately overestimating the number and caliber of tubes, and ignoring the horrible dud rate demonstrated in the shelling of Yeonpyong Island.
 
To be sure, there would be many casualties and lots of expensive property damage. I just need more data before I can buy in to the whole "leveling Seoul" threat. And it has to be weighed against the possibility of North Korea developing a credible nuclear arsenal, which would be way harder on Seoul if launched.

Well, I was promised the end of the world in the 80s and found out they lied to me.
 
But hey, better late than never? 
 
 
Americans (Or at least our armed forces)  have been in a war for over a decade now. And we are exhausted. So good on NK for catching us when the spirit is probably at its weakest...and by good I mean those rat bastards.
 
Exactly why Trump is egging on Iran I don't flipping know. Did we think the Middle East needed shaking up again?
 
Because from what I can tell... Iraq still has problems.
Afghanistan is still a huge mess.
Syria hasn't mysteriously settled down over night.
Terrorists  hate us all.
China is still expanding into the sea one artificial island at a time.
North Korea is lobbing missiles over our allies
Russia has taken Crimea and the Ukraine is helpless to do jack, and the US's election process has been severely compromised by the big R.
 
And our allies look to American leadership to solve it, but at the same time fear American leadership will screw it up more  (Understandable giving who our Potus is)
 
 
Meanwhile the Planet is trying to decide just which element it wants to use most to destroy us and seems to have decided a mix is best. Earthquakes and Fires and Hurricanes OH MY! 
 
Which all signs are we brought on ourselves by not moving on Global warming so even our weather is political. Which absolutely sucks "Hot day isn't it?" "You liberal scum!" "Wha...?" 
 
So I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed by it all. I have gone beyond terrified and am now very much into 'oh get it over with' blah duldrums

I have to admit being a bit torn, here. Nuclear war with North Korea wouldn't be so bad. They don't have many nukes, and they'd be firing them at you guys. I mean, maybe they'd miss by a bit and hit Canada by mistake, but probably not. And in the mean time, it's been really fun watching Kim Jong Un own your President on TV. Pretty much the best thing about this insane reality TV show I fell into last November.
 
On the other hand, there's a good chance that some posters would get blowed up, and I'd miss you guys. I mean, sure, some of you have some weird ideas about Aquaman, but I think, at the end of the day, I'd find that wouldn't matter  very much. 
 
So: Takedowns versus someone I know getting turned into superheated, irradiated plasma. It's a pretty tough call. It's a good thing that the Pyongyang regime seems to be on top of the translation game. Gives me hope that there's an adult in the room. 

The nature of Trump's threat is that is was worded in a way that makes the cause more likely. It's like he's saying "I want you to attack us so we can annihilate you, because you deserve annihilation and i need an excuse."
 
Of course, he has no problem with South Korea and Japan dying in the process of his vendetta. Because hey, he's great and everyone should respect fear appreciate be amused by him.
 
We're all mad here.

The whole point of peaceful, lawful protest is to draw attention to issues and spark public debate that may lead to change.
 
I remember a remark by Edward Snowden: "People who don't care about the right to privacy because they have nothing to hide, are like people who don't care about free speech because they have nothing to say."

I don't think the average Republican is pro-swastika. That said, it seems overwhelmingly likely that this will increase the number of players taking a knee during the national anthem, not decrease it. And some of those players will be white.

Indeed. See History of Europe, 1914.

Brinksmanship is an extremely dangerous game. If you make a threat of extreme consequences, you need to be prepared for your opponent to call you on it. If Kim Jong Un backs down, he'll look weak to his military and become vulnerable to overthrow. If he doesn't back down, and Trump doesn't follow through on trying to "destroy" Korea, he'll lose what credibility he may still have. What worries me is that Kim may be crazy enough to call, and Trump may be crazy enough to follow through.

So one more time, 74+ million folks depend on Medicaid. Including a disproportionate number of children and the elderly in case that matters to anyone.
 
The proposed change will dramatically restrict access to care, coverage, and will be catastrophically expensive at a local level. I hate a lot about this Administration and political cycle, if they pull this off it may be the biggest "F-U" to the citizens of this country in my lifetime. And I'm 47.
 
I'm 'the Evil' and this is WAY outside my comfort zone.

So here's the scope of Medicaid coverage presently:
 
The basis for objection is in part, most commonly, that health care is not an enumerated right or function of United States government. And if that is the perspective, then the largest source of coverage being governmental coverage is inherently undesirable.
 
I understand the logic behind the position, although I reject it as derived from what I believe is a deeply flawed premise.

It also turns Medicaid into a block grant, which I've discussed in depth earlier in this thread. Something not getting enough press, as it's a long term disaster for every state in the nation and will be brutal for vulnerable populations.

As a fellow long-time NGDer, I respect your opinion.  As a minority, I'm pretty disappointed, and I'm curious as to what the other pursuits are.

Fair enough. Politics and I don't see eye to eye most times. Like almost everybody, I have my own bias and opinion. I also know that the boards are, proudly, Left leaning. We even had a discussion a few years back that included a "Where are you on the political spectrum" personality test. Most of our contemporaries proudly proclaimed their status as Left leaning. I am not going to change your hearts and minds and, to be quite frank, I value the opposing opinion. It keeps me honest and I respect that. For what it is worth, much of my recent opinion has been formed because I get to see the other side and that helps me pull back from the brink of my Jingoist tendencies. That doesn't mean that I won't call out something I see as outright intellectual dishonesty. Anybody here is welcome to their opinion, but when if I think it is wrong, I feel a need to say something.
 
As far as other pursuits, I mean just about anything other than politics. Like I mentioned, our political ideologies are not going to often be changed here. Especially now, division wracks our nation and people are clinging to their comfort zones with all of their might. Why would I want to bat my head against that wall? I certainly have zero loyalty to the idiot in the POTUS office. I have less for my so-called elected, Republican, representatives in Congress. When I look across the aisle, I see people like Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, both of whom I find detestable. Right now, all I see in the political field are enemies and very few neutrals. I don't see friendlies right now. I don't have some fanatical loyalty to anybody and the entire political scene right now is pretty soul crushing. I just think it is better to step back away from the whole Political discussion thread. It was by habit that I clicked on the link to bring me here and I have a lot of respect for you. Enough that I will not ignore a perfectly reasonable question.
 
More specifically, I had to leave a very hostile work environment without the safety net of having a new job in place. It was either that or have a meltdown and probably beat the living crap out of the people that created that environment. So now, though I am starting to come down from that angry and hostile place in my head, I need to find a new job. Also, since I have some downtime, there is a project I want to try and finish before the end of September. Depends on how successful the job hunt is during that time.
 
So without further ado, I am out. Let my twitch reflex reset itself and try to find that calm, reasonable voice again. I'll be back. I always come back. But for now I want to focus on the other topics here on the boards. 

I'm sure there's some confirmation bias at work, but at least early in his presidency there seemed to be a kind of messianic aura about Obama where some people were concerned. So no, it's not just you. I remember remarking how heavily mythologized our last president was.
 
A major difference I note is that as far as I could see Obama never encouraged that kind of apotheosized image, but I get the impression Trump may have swallowed the hype whole.
 
Lucius Alexander
 
The palindromedary advises me to avoid this thread, but surely the occasional post won't hurt...will it?
 
Lucius Alexander

There are different strains of American Conservatism (and, for that matter, American Liberalism). The magazines cited above represent a more intellectual approach (I saw William J. Buckley speak once, when I was on college. Man did he have a huge vocabulary.), while Fox and Breitbart (from what I've heard, as I've never read Breitbart) act out of a great distrust of intellectialism even on the Right. Nuance is weakness -- you are either right or wrong with no middle ground.
 
That is the very definition of alt-right. It makes no allowances for deviation from a fixed ideological norm that never changes.

It really depends on the right wing media in question. I can't speak to Fox or Breitbart or whatever, but National Review and American Conservative frequently oppose him, and generally serve as lukewarm apologists for Trump at most.