There is no doubt it would be a violent and deadly war. For the North to win it would have to be. It is a small theater and there are a lot of troops on both sides.
A second question would be would the US be willing to stand by with the navy and air force, even if there were no US ground troops, if the North attacked. I think not.
I played the hell out of that game.
Maddow’s A block about Rod Rosenstein brought a tear to my eye. He seems to be a man strongly dedicated to his job and defense of the Constitution.
https://www.npr.org/2018/05/10/610041673/trump-to-meet-north-koreas-kim-in-singapore-in-june
I certainly don’t like the tone Trump’s been taking on foreign policy, but you can’t deny that it seems to be prompting action in North Korea. Whether this will be good in the long term remains to be seen, of course. Personally my expectations are low, but hey, some released prisoners and upcoming talks isn’t nothing.
I mean… more power to him I guess, but this is also the exact thing that every Republican and foreign policy expert has said is a terrible idea since forever. If he wasn’t a fucking moron my hopes would be higher. I expect he’ll make a deal that leaves NK with nukes and drops the sanctions for a pinkie swear they wont do it again, for reals this time. Maybe with us drawing down troops or something for no reason as an added bonus.
It strikes me as odd that Trump is crediting Kim Jong Un with releasing innocents who never should have been imprisoned in the first place. I mean, I’m glad they’re free but maybe we should focus on their unjust confinement instead of fawning over the man responsible for it?
A year of forced labor is “excellent.”
Trump has two modes. He’s either fawning over someone or spitting venom at them.
Kim already got what he, and his father and grandfather before him, wanted. He got the president* of the United States to agree to a face-to-face meeting, greatly increasing his (Kim’s) stature on the international stage. Which is pretty much what the prisoners were seized for in the first place. To be bargaining chips.
This thing is getting the kind of press that USA/USSR summits got. You know: Actual superpowers.
Exactly. Everybody knows that nuance isn’t important in diplomacy, which is why I’m sure the negotiations will go swimmingly.
Trump arranging this ill-advised “deal” where Kim was showered with praise for taking hostages is like a dog farting the Star Spangled Banner.
People are so amazed by the fact that a dumb animal could manage it at all that they completely ignore the fact it was a terrible idea and the world will be a worse place in its wake.
This is long but important (maybe even Pulitzer level reporting) on Trump voters in the Midwest.
It is in the optimist thread for two reasons. First, despite what @ArmandoPenblade says most of the folks interviewed for this piece come across as decent hard working folks. Naive? absolutely, bigotted? some yes, but still not the deplorables they are often portrayed.
The second reason is that patience for Trump is pretty much exhausted among the “Trump Triers” all the Democrat have to do is nominate somebody better than Hillary, who at least pretends to listen to the fly over state concerns.
Of course, Hillary did listen to them, but Fox News said otherwise so it didn’t matter.
Nope, still deplorable.
We live in an age where anyone can type a question into Google and get hundreds of answers. These people could have have typed “Why have unions lost political and local power?” “How come factories have shut down?” “What policies do Republicans support that help working families?” Or even more bluntly: “Who destroyed unions” and “why have incomes remained stagnant for three decades?” Do they even know who is writing legislation in those now-red state governments?
Nope, instead, they demonstrate what nearly all trump voters do - their grievance and sense of entitlement. Journalists label this “racial resentment,” the same way they label lying “reversing positions.”
Candidate Trump’s message caught fire almost immediately here; it is a bond that for many voters lasts to this day
People who went through those changes were particularly receptive to a Trump message focused on job losses, unfair trade agreements and the identity politics of insecure U.S. borders — all wrapped together with a broadside against the political classes of both parties.
And this is the key piece of information: “Trump’s message.” Who conveyed that message to them? How did they translate his hate and bigotry and objective incompetence into a message that meant anything for them? Why in the face of all evidence to the contrary did they even believe it? It is fucking laughable that anyone thought trump cared about them, or that trump cared about anyone other than trump. How is that even possible for anyone with a few working brain cells?
The media shaped the narrative, they saw it reinforced on their Facebook pages and the local diners tuned 24/7 to Fox. It’s confirmation bias, all the way down. This is why propaganda works.
Instead of the Post and all these other media outlets writing sympathetic trump voter pieces, why don’t they instead focus on the victims?
The whole Trump voter apologia genre is just as vile as the poor, misled, helpless babies it aims to exonerate.
If you didn’t know what you were voting for, you either weren’t paying attention to literally anything or you lack even the most rudimentary of critical thinking skills. Either way, don’t fucking vote, idiot. You should have your citizenship revoked.
If you did know what you were voting for, you either hate your fellow citizens enough that anyone who bullies them is who you want to lead, or you’re enough of a piece of shit that lower taxes are literally the only thing that matter to you. Either way, you should be fucking deported. Asshole.
Fuck them. They get nothing.
Yeah, I just… I just can’t anymore. The embedded assumptions and blind spots in that genre are too maddening.
The rest of your post is a bit more forcefully worded that I would do, but still: the voters of 2016 abdicated a sacred charge. History will remember them for it, and not kindly.
Everyone who voted for Trump is a piece of shit deserving of nothing but contempt, scorn, and (verbal, of course) abuse for the remainder of their wretched existence. If they want to feel sorry for it after the fact, they’re welcome to add self-loathing to the above list of deserved punishments.
Don’t look at me, I voted for Nixon.
We all make mistakes. I preordered Sim City 2013!