President Assad gasses and Donald fiddles

[jimmy eat jazz]

The oil explanation doesn't make sense. How does invading Iraq help energy interests?

Not sure I can answer this in total, BUT (and putting on my cynical hat here), it sure as hell helped Haliburton's business interests (Cheney was former CEO of Haliburton). A large number of business interests made a killing from all the killing.

I don't mean to suggest that the invasion was done at the bidding of business interests, but I'm cynical enough not to dismiss this entirely as a contributing motivating factor.

 

[jimmy eat jazz]

Argh, still no. The "state" in Iraq is a big part of what caused the pot to boil over. Saddam maintained "cohesion" by suppressing the Kurds and the Shia majority and elevating his Sunni minority. If it wasn't for the Western-created fake state, each community would have formed its own entity, and we would be in a better situation.

I think you're way overly optimistic about how harmoniously this process would have worked. (I'm not aruging for a centrally imposed solution by either local or foreign controlled government). I would imagine that there would have arisen significant fighting among groups for control of territory or resources (or just to play out long-standing or new grudges), plus plenty of infighting within groups for control. It may or may not have been better than what happened, perhaps so, but it also may have turned itself plenty chaotic and bloody.

Iraq itself is a 'modern state' cobbled together post WW I, if I remember correctly, yet another future crap storm created by Western imperialists by cobbling together people into a single 'state' who had no history of cultural affinty, and then imposing on top, and supporting, a dictatorial, repressive regime.

 

[RandyForRubio]

Yeah but would u happily eat that dog?


Extra question: If you're forced to hear a cow wailing for 30 seconds before having a steak, could you happily eat that steak? Could you do that everytime you're about to eat beef?


Extra extra question: If you're forced to kill everything you're about to eat 'by hand' and use that meat to cook every meal, not counting the hassle of it all, could you stomach each meal?


I dunno about you but if I'm forced to do those things I might just become a vegetarian.. LOL..

1) I literally live 20 feet from a cow pasture. I've never heard a cow wail before.

2) It doesn't take 30 seconds to kill a cow. Technically takes less than a second, usually.

3) Yes, I would still eat that steak. It will be delicious, as long as it's from a nice black angus. Only the best, get them Herefords out of here.

4) I kill antelope, deer, elk, and pheasants every year, butcher them, and eat them. I think I enjoy them more because of the work that went into it, and I know where exactly the meat came from and what it looks like. Not that big of deal. Try it sometime.

 

[Saint Cy of JFC]

Also think it's an 'out of sight out of mind' thing.



If you're made to watch a chicken being killed before a KFC meal, I think many people would rather skip that meal.

Precisely why they had the ad-gag laws that lobbyist of the meat industries put in place.

 

[Scat]

bigoted chickenist!

I believe the correct term is anti-chickite

 

[babe]

I'm sorry, but I think you're unecessarily dismissing his post and its questions. His larger point is absolutely valid; Asad has been acting very bad for a while now, while, previously, the Republican controlled Congress effectiely handcuffed Obama in dealing with it, saying he could not act uniltaterally without Congression approval. Now that a Republican is in the White House, suddenly it's ok for the President to act unilterally.

Syria and the Middle East, generally, are a big mess. Judgement, prudence, wisdom, and a long-term view are necessary to figure it out without making things worse. While Obama's ME policy was far from perfect, we now have a man in the White House who lacks judgment, prudence, wisdom or long-term perspective, and a Congress who now appears ready to let him act on his worst impulses without adequated checks and balances (frankly, all of Trump's impluses can be categorized as 'worst.')

Does anyone feel comfortable with Trump calling the shots on this (or other international crises) and with a Congress who has abdicated its oversight responsiblity to him?

Sorry, but this is a pretty fundamentally ignorant take on it all. Not that Republicans are any more intelligent than you are.

A lot of Trump's conservative base is alienated by his unconstitutional behavior, just like they were with Obama's. Rand Paul said he had no constitutional authority for it, and a few other republicans and even a few democrats side with that minority view.

You can't just assume Obama would have done "right" if he could have, that is where your own partisanship misdirects your analysis. Obama is fundamentally as idiotic as Trump is, in his own extreme arrogant and contemptuous ways. Obama didn't give a damn about law or the principles of the American Constitution, or for that matter about all the gassings Assad did. Obama is and was essentially an asset of his globalist visions of a transformed managed world where human beings have essentially no real rights but what the super-government managers deem convenient. He was a pocket puppet of the Rockefeller/Soros billionaire club.

I agree with Putin that our little hissy fit over the gas was premature. I think a lot of people close on the ground believe it was Assad's doing, but I am slow to just believe I know for sure. I would have acted diplomatically and would have asked for a UN fact-finding task force half Russian and half American so far as world interests need to addressed, and I would look to negotiate a settlement of it all that secures the "good" rebels their rights, and eliminates the ISIS insurgency.... which I believe Obama and Hillary encouraged initially. If Assad stays, he will not be allowed with the help of the Russians to do genocide against the moderate rebel ethnics.

I do think Trump was encouraged to take this action by British high diplomats/leaders who egged him on to do it, and in doing so Trump lost his credentials as a real "American". I place the ultimate responsibility for it on the British, and on the oligarch western leaders like Soros, whom I believe are moving towards another useless Great War.

 

[Siro]

Sentience

Curious, where do you draw the line? Is a chicken different from say a rat? Is the suffering of feral animals, like the exploding feral cat population or selective breeding for pets that creates meant animals with small miserable lifespans different than other man-made problems like killing chickens? What about fish? Or termites? Is killing an entire colony of termites through gassing a house the same? If all suffering is equal where do you draw the line?

What is sentience? There is no such thing, I don't think. We have a bunch of mental faculties that we lump into consciousness or sentience. Self-awareness? Does not exist in infants. Is inflicting suffering on an infant okay? On the other hand, many animals, like the high apes, elephants, and crows, do pass the mirror test and can be said to possess self-awareness. All of our mental faculties that create consciousness, like memory and its effect on perspective and identity, or our conscious mind, seem to exist in other mammals and some birds to SOME EXTENT. But what matters is that some animals express anguish and suffering in ways that are recognizable to humans as such. Unless you're a solipsist who does not believe you can know anyone beside yourself experiences the world in a similar way as you, then you have to acknowledge that suffering exists, in similar ways, to some non-human animals. If human suffering counts for something, then so must animal suffering. Even if you don't believe it counts for as much.

 

[Saint Cy of JFC]

What is sentience? There is no such thing, I don't think. We have a bunch of mental faculties that we lump into consciousness or sentience. Self-awareness? Does not exist in infants. Is inflicting suffering on an infant okay? On the other hand, many animals, like the high apes, elephants, and crows, do pass the mirror test and can be said to possess self-awareness. All of our mental faculties that create consciousness, like memory and its effect on perspective and identity, or our conscious mind, seem to exist in other mammals and some birds to SOME EXTENT. But what matters is that some animals express anguish and suffering in ways that are recognizable to humans as such. Unless you're a solipsist who does not believe you can know anyone beside yourself experiences the world in a similar way as you, then you have to acknowledge that suffering exists, in similar ways, to some non-human animals. If human suffering counts for something, then so must animal suffering. Even if you don't believe it counts for as much.

I'm confused. You asked him what sentience was then directly after you used it in a sentence.

 

[Siro]

I'm sorry, but I think you're unecessarily dismissing his post and its questions. His larger point is absolutely valid; Asad has been acting very bad for a while now, while, previously, the Republican controlled Congress effectiely handcuffed Obama in dealing with it, saying he could not act uniltaterally without Congression approval. Now that a Republican is in the White House, suddenly it's ok for the President to act unilterally.

Syria and the Middle East, generally, are a big mess. Judgement, prudence, wisdom, and a long-term view are necessary to figure it out without making things worse. While Obama's ME policy was far from perfect, we now have a man in the White House who lacks judgment, prudence, wisdom or long-term perspective, and a Congress who now appears ready to let him act on his worst impulses without adequated checks and balances (frankly, all of Trump's impluses can be categorized as 'worst.')

Does anyone feel comfortable with Trump calling the shots on this (or other international crises) and with a Congress who has abdicated its oversight responsiblity to him?

The judgement, prudence, wisdom, and long-term thinking of the powers-that-be is a big reason we have this mess. So describing Obama's, and other administrations', policies as "not perfect" does disservice to simple common sense.

Either way, someone starting an argument by calling Assad "President Assad" and Trump "Donald" might as well start it by holding a sign that reads "I'm a partisan ideologue, please ignore everything I say". So my dismissal was justified.

 

[Siro]

I'm confused. You asked him what sentience was then directly after you used it in a sentence.

There is no singular attribute that defines sentience. It is a bunch of different mental faculties that are lumped together into a vague concept. I never used it in a sentence without qualification.

 

[Siro]

I think you're way overly optimistic about how harmoniously this process would have worked. (I'm not aruging for a centrally imposed solution by either local or foreign controlled government). I would imagine that there would have arisen significant fighting among groups for control of territory or resources (or just to play out long-standing or new grudges), plus plenty of infighting within groups for control. It may or may not have been better than what happened, perhaps so, but it also may have turned itself plenty chaotic and bloody.

Iraq itself is a 'modern state' cobbled together post WW I, if I remember correctly, yet another future crap storm created by Western imperialists by cobbling together people into a single 'state' who had no history of cultural affinty, and then imposing on top, and supporting, a dictatorial, repressive regime.

That's fair. I have no way of knowing how it would've turned out. But given how terrible the situation in the ME is, we can safely say that it would have probably turned out better had it been done with more input from the local populace.

 

[DutchJazzer]

1) I literally live 20 feet from a cow pasture. I've never heard a cow wail before.

2) It doesn't take 30 seconds to kill a cow. Technically takes less than a second, usually.

3) Yes, I would still eat that steak. It will be delicious, as long as it's from a nice black angus. Only the best, get them Herefords out of here.

4) I kill antelope, deer, elk, and pheasants every year, butcher them, and eat them. I think I enjoy them more because of the work that went into it, and I know where exactly the meat came from and what it looks like. Not that big of deal. Try it sometime.

give this man a steak!


this is how real men do it! but society has become to easy for beta males to thrive! in the olden days people who got squeemish of slaughter would become a vegetarian and die off before he can procreate they expect all men to be beta C**** dont know if this world is allowed rimes with ruck .

 

[jimmy eat jazz]

Sorry, but this is a pretty fundamentally ignorant take on it all. Not that Republicans are any more intelligent than you are.

A lot of Trump's conservative base is alienated by his unconstitutional behavior, just like they were with Obama's. Rand Paul said he had no constitutional authority for it, and a few other republicans and even a few democrats side with that minority view.

You can't just assume Obama would have done "right" if he could have, that is where your own partisanship misdirects your analysis. Obama is fundamentally as idiotic as Trump is, in his own extreme arrogant and contemptuous ways. Obama didn't give a damn about law or the principles of the American Constitution, or for that matter about all the gassings Assad did. Obama is and was essentially an asset of his globalist visions of a transformed managed world where human beings have essentially no real rights but what the super-government managers deem convenient. He was a pocket puppet of the Rockefeller/Soros billionaire club.

I agree with Putin that our little hissy fit over the gas was premature. I think a lot of people close on the ground believe it was Assad's doing, but I am slow to just believe I know for sure. I would have acted diplomatically and would have asked for a UN fact-finding task force half Russian and half American so far as world interests need to addressed, and I would look to negotiate a settlement of it all that secures the "good" rebels their rights, and eliminates the ISIS insurgency.... which I believe Obama and Hillary encouraged initially. If Assad stays, he will not be allowed with the help of the Russians to do genocide against the moderate rebel ethnics.

I do think Trump was encouraged to take this action by British high diplomats/leaders who egged him on to do it, and in doing so Trump lost his credentials as a real "American". I place the ultimate responsibility for it on the British, and on the oligarch western leaders like Soros, whom I believe are moving towards another useless Great War.

Wtih Babe, it's always opposite day. So when he says something is 'fundamentally ignorant' it is, in fact, the exact opposite.

By the way, I've never said, nor remotely suggested, that Obama would have done "right." Honestly, Babe, if you're going to criticize what I've written, please try to criticize what I've actually written.

 

[babe]

Wtih Babe, it's always opposite day. So when he says something is 'fundamentally ignorant' it is, in fact, the exact opposite.

By the way, I've never said, nor remotely suggested, that Obama would have done "right." Honestly, Babe, if you're going to criticize what I've written, please try to criticize what I've actually written.

Actually, looking at some of your contributions in here, I don't care to pick at you much. I like being the opposition, underdog, or poor little picked on dumbass because that's a great way to troll the swamps and wrestle with the alligators.....or dragons.

Some days I get dragon steaks, some days I'm the steak.

But, srs, I really just won't believe anything in print, or anything considered to be incontrovertible. The whole Idea of posting in here is in hopes of provoking some actual thought, or actual information I haven't realized yet, at least in my "sentient" faculties if not in others'.....

My main point about Trump is that he is actually pretty smart. Reputedly has an IQ of 178. Is socially a gutter rat who works for a living. And really cares about people. And is a huckster out to shake up the status quo and unsettle folks enough to bring them to the table to settle with better terms.

One of his better friends who has known him for over thirty years says that within a year he'll be cookin' deals with Pelosi and Shumer that'll have his conservative base on fire, and the CFR rethinking their model for the future of mankind, and supporting him.

 

[Gameface]

Actually, looking at some of your contributions in here, I don't care to pick at you much. I like being the opposition, underdog, or poor little picked on dumbass because that's a great way to troll the swamps and wrestle with the alligators.....or dragons.

Some days I get dragon steaks, some days I'm the steak.

But, srs, I really just won't believe anything in print, or anything considered to be incontrovertible. The whole Idea of posting in here is in hopes of provoking some actual thought, or actual information I haven't realized yet, at least in my "sentient" faculties if not in others'.....

My main point about Trump is that he is actually pretty smart. Reputedly has an IQ of 178. Is socially a gutter rat who works for a living. And really cares about people. And is a huckster out to shake up the status quo and unsettle folks enough to bring them to the table to settle with better terms.

One of his better friends who has known him for over thirty years says that within a year he'll be cookin' deals with Pelosi and Shumer that'll have his conservative base on fire, and the CFR rethinking their model for the future of mankind, and supporting him.

How you can see Trump as your hero just baffles me.

You pretend to value human rights and then support Trump? You really think he's the white knight fighting to save humanity from Rockefeller and some British elites that you think pull the puppet-strings of the world? I think you're projecting your hopes and dreams onto him, because he hasn't said a damn thing to indicate he's interested in any of that.

 

[babe]

How you can see Trump as your hero just baffles me.

You pretend to value human rights and then support Trump? You really think he's the white knight fighting to save humanity from Rockefeller and some British elites that you think pull the puppet-strings of the world? I think you're projecting your hopes and dreams onto him, because he hasn't said a damn thing to indicate he's interested in any of that.

You remind me of the line in the poem "If" by Rudyard Kipling....

"if you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools...."

It's really just stupid to think I make a hero of Trump. He's a dumbass IQ 178 alpha male, pretty much less intelligent than I consider myself. I am too damn smart for a stupid IQ measurement contrived by educational establishment dolts. I am not an alpha male. I was everybody's little brother, and I had to use my wits to survive in adverse circumstances where presumably I had no chance, from a position of total powerlessness......

Trump does not really know Jesus, and does not talk to God either. I know. I tried and God laughed. God would laugh at Trump even more. But hey, if I didn't believe God has a sense of humor, I wouldn't believe in Him either. It is in fact the reality that a lot of smartass humans imagine they know better than God and want to tell Him what's what. How could He speak to us without just offending us??? What gives me faith is that God disregards us in our stupidity and overrules this whole damn world in the end. Meaning all our vaunted imagined pride and accomplishments. In the end, He ensures that this world and this life are experiences for all of us to learn how to endure and overcome the consequences of our evil, and look instead to the better world God does manage beyond the pale of our tragic incompetence.

No sir, all I am saying is that the whole pack of bitter losers who want to demonize Trump are really missing the boat in not just pitching in and helping this country go forward.

The rest of the world is going forward,and we are missing the train.....

Your derisive tone about the very intelligent, I mean very clever, sort of "Brits" who have managed to work the world for a stage to play to their interests for several hundred years, sort of mocking the simplistic little fact of history, just shows me you're too damn smart to learn anything.

Being "manipulative" in any situation, let alone world geopolitics, is no simple proposition. I actually admire the people who have excelled at it. It is their use of their skills, the extended consequences, that I object to.

I am, myself, "British". This is just par for the course in my family.

 

[jimmy eat jazz]

Actually, looking at some of your contributions in here, I don't care to pick at you much. I like being the opposition, underdog, or poor little picked on dumbass because that's a great way to troll the swamps and wrestle with the alligators.....or dragons.

Some days I get dragon steaks, some days I'm the steak.

But, srs, I really just won't believe anything in print, or anything considered to be incontrovertible. The whole Idea of posting in here is in hopes of provoking some actual thought, or actual information I haven't realized yet, at least in my "sentient" faculties if not in others'.....

My main point about Trump is that he is actually pretty smart. Reputedly has an IQ of 178. Is socially a gutter rat who works for a living. And really cares about people. And is a huckster out to shake up the status quo and unsettle folks enough to bring them to the table to settle with better terms.

One of his better friends who has known him for over thirty years says that within a year he'll be cookin' deals with Pelosi and Shumer that'll have his conservative base on fire, and the CFR rethinking their model for the future of mankind, and supporting him.

Babe, I'm jesting with you. I enjoy your posts, as wacky as I find them at times, but one can't say that you don't put thought into them (unlike Dutchjazzer whose knee jerks so fiercly with every post, he's probably due for knee replacement surgery here sometine soon).

Trump may or may not have a high IQ, but if he does, he's an idiot savant combining high intelligence with shocking lack of intellectual curiosity about the world, a poor command of and lack of interest in basic facts, a credulity for flat out dumb consipracies, kiddle pool shallow depth of thinking and understanding, inability to see or even sense nuance, total lack of empathy, and so on. In other words, what good does a high IQ do one if on every single other character trait that one would want in a leader, he is completely lacking?

 

[babe]

Babe, I'm jesting with you. I enjoy your posts, as wacky as I find them at times, but one can't say that you don't put thought into them (unlike Dutchjazzer whose knee jerks so fiercly with every post, he's probably due for knee replacement surgery here sometine soon).

Trump may or may not have a high IQ, but if he does, he's an idiot savant combining high intelligence with shocking lack of intellectual curiosity about the world, a poor command of and lack of interest in basic facts, a credulity for flat out dumb consipracies, kiddle pool shallow depth of thinking and understanding, inability to see or even sense nuance, total lack of empathy, and so on. In other words, what good does a high IQ do one if on every single other character trait that one would want in a leader, he is completely lacking?

While I have no compelling defense for Trump, because he is so direct and unsettling, I think it's a good thing to get a maverick in the game who will challenge a status quo. I started saying, almost a year ago, that the Establishment would be smart to start manipulating him already, not just squawking about how unfair it is to have others in the game.

 

[jimmy eat jazz]

While I have no compelling defense for Trump, because he is so direct and unsettling, I think it's a good thing to get a maverick in the game who will challenge a status quo. I started saying, almost a year ago, that the Establishment would be smart to start manipulating him already, not just squawking about how unfair it is to have others in the game.

In theory, I have no issue with shaking up the establishment; Lord knows it's always the usual suspects runing the show, but Mavericks that shake things up can be good or bad. Trump is definitely of the bad variety; a maverick who lacks judgement, rejects facts, acts impulsively, nurses grudges, indulges in conspiracy theories, and who has gotten away with bad behavior his entire life and isn't about to change. His potential for really and truly f'ing things up (not shaking them up but f'ing them up) is enormous.

Plus, he's not really a Maverick after all. He has surrounded himself, both in his cabinet and among his advisors, witht he same types of elites who have always run the show. The only thing he's really done different is to bring in in conspiracy mongering, whack job alt-righters (Bannon) and indulge in rank nepotism (Kushner), but other than that, he's pure establishment.

I'd hope that his supporters can see how they've been baited and switched on this score, but, given that they're Trump supporters to begin with, I don't accord them with much intelligence, and thus am not optimistic that they realize they've been conned.

 

[babe]

In theory, I have no issue with shaking up the establishment; Lord knows it's always the usual suspects runing the show, but Mavericks that shake things up can be good or bad. Trump is definitely of the bad variety; a maverick who lacks judgement, rejects facts, acts impulsively, nurses grudges, indulges in conspiracy theories, and who has gotten away with bad behavior his entire life and isn't about to change. His potential for really and truly f'ing things up (not shaking them up but f'ing them up) is enormous.

Plus, he's not really a Maverick after all. He has surrounded himself, both in his cabinet and among his advisors, witht he same types of elites who have always run the show. The only thing he's really done different is to bring in in conspiracy mongering, whack job alt-righters (Bannon) and indulge in rank nepotism (Kushner), but other than that, he's pure establishment.

I'd hope that his supporters can see how they've been baited and switched on this score, but, given that they're Trump supporters to begin with, I don't accord them with much intelligence, and thus am not optimistic that they realize they've been conned.

Trump from the gitgo is "New Money", which all the Old Money "The Right People" diss on whatever convenient plausible lines are available.

He is like all "New Money" movers and shakers, always going to try to pass for real Money by glombing on to whatever shred of respectability he can from amony Old Money sycophants and hangers-on.

I think.... slash that.... I hope.... that beneath his schtick of "devil-may-care" brazen ways (or manners????) he's expertly pushing the right buttons. He has tried to invite the Establishment into his grand vision.

I don't believe he has "conservative principles", just Americana glitz. I believe he represents a challenge to the prevailing general theory of world geopolitics of the past sixty years, maybe the past 100 years, in that he fundamentally rejects, on results, the way we are going. He says it's "bad for America" to step down as the beacon of hope for mankind in the model of American Exceptionalism. What's he's rejected is the degradation of America's post WWII shine, and he---mistakenly I believe--- counts on general good will for America as the great benefactor of the world.

We've done too much shock-and-awe UN global policing, and we've destroyed much of the goodwill people had for us in areas where we turned back really bad aggressors during WWII.

Russia has gatherered it's little pack of allies in the Mideast---Hexbollah, Iran, Syria(Assad)---and declared that the missile strikes were "across the red line", and if we fire on any of their assets again they will retaliate. The cooperation is finished. Russia wasn't really fighting ISIS anyway, just the "good rebels" who were against Assad. Obama started out helping ISIS because ISIS was pushing against Assad, but their outrages were so bad he could not maintain that position. Russia has always just been there to keep Assad in power and their naval base secure.

Obama's gambit to make friends with Iran was sheer folly.... we had no chance of bringing them into our circle.

I think Trump took bad advice from Brit foreign policy authorities. He should not have fired those missiles.

In really dicey situations where nobody's sure what's going on, unless you're the clear super-authority, it's "speak softly" even if you think you have a big stick.