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Politics' Official Eighteenth Thread


Amentep

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Seems the summit didn't result in anything screwing up, so that's good.  DPRK commits to denuclearization (again) and US to stop wargames and lots of other good sounding stuff.   Apparently ROK was surprised by the wargames bit.

 

 


The South Korean military issued a statement to NBC News saying: “Regarding President Trump’s comment regarding ending of the combined military drills … we need to find out the exact meaning or intention behind his comments at this point.”

 

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/jun/12/us-to-suspend-war-games-with-south-korea-donald-trump-kim-jong-un-north-summit

 

 

Sounds like a day at my company, to be honest.

Why has elegance found so little following? Elegance has the disadvantage that hard work is needed to achieve it and a good education to appreciate it. - Edsger Wybe Dijkstra

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It's certainly a win, for North Korea.... While I'd prefer that they sit down to talk rather than slinging schoolyard insults at each other, it's too soon to call it a true win for Trump due to how vague it is and the fact that we haven't even verified that NK is actually moving towards denuclearization. Cessation of missile and nuke tests nonwithstanding, which is still an important step.

 

Also, I think Sen. Tom Cotton basically said that for us to sit down with Cuba, they need to develop nukes. While he has a point as far as nukes go, NK just set a precedent.

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nothing burger

 

This will certainly be one of the high points of Trump's legacy that will be remembered ad nauseam come election cycles.

 

 

It seem very solid strategy first escalate things between your country and hostile country where people start to fear that war is immediate and then have meeting where you promise said hostile country things that they have wanted for years without getting anything from them just to get relationship between your countries to same level what it was before you started to escalate things and then recive praise how good negotiator you are.

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yeah, its not like its anything new for world Dictators, does not work that well in countries with educated population and relative democracies

Edited by Chilloutman

I'm the enemy, 'cause I like to think, I like to read. I'm into freedom of speech, and freedom of choice. I'm the kinda guy that likes to sit in a greasy spoon and wonder, "Gee, should I have the T-bone steak or the jumbo rack of barbecue ribs with the side-order of gravy fries?" I want high cholesterol! I wanna eat bacon, and butter, and buckets of cheese, okay?! I wanna smoke a Cuban cigar the size of Cincinnati in the non-smoking section! I wanna run naked through the street, with green Jell-O all over my body, reading Playboy magazine. Why? Because I suddenly may feel the need to, okay, pal? I've SEEN the future. Do you know what it is? It's a 47-year-old virgin sitting around in his beige pajamas, drinking a banana-broccoli shake, singing "I'm an Oscar Meyer Wiene"

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Trump sould have just made Kim agree on ITunes' terms of service and he would have had much more limiting agreement :dancing:

DfeM2PzX0AAEwI6.jpg

Does that mean people making WMD aren't allow to listen to music?

I'd say the answer to that question is kind of like the answer to "who's the sucker in this poker game?"*

 

*If you can't tell, it's you. ;)

village_idiot.gif

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It still won't read!!!

 

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"While it is true you learn with age, the down side is what you often learn is what a damn fool you were before"

Thomas Sowell

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It's certainly a win, for North Korea.... While I'd prefer that they sit down to talk rather than slinging schoolyard insults at each other, it's too soon to call it a true win for Trump due to how vague it is and the fact that we haven't even verified that NK is actually moving towards denuclearization. Cessation of missile and nuke tests nonwithstanding, which is still an important step.

 

Nothing practical has changed. The only concession DPRK got was the wargames thing, and that is as easily reversible as anything DPRK have done. If it had been a full military withdrawal then it would be different, but it wasn't, and drills can be reinstated quickly if needed. It's also perhaps the single most obvious sign of good faith that could be made. Politically it's a win for Trump since to a casual viewer it looks like his policy is working and (he hopes) looks like it's the G6 leaders, Iran etc who are the problem with international diplomacy rather than him.

 

Everybody got a bit of a feel good feeling and some purely political pluses from the meeting, nobody got much practical at all. Expecting anything else was unrealistic though.

 

 

It seem very solid strategy first escalate things between your country and hostile country where people start to fear that war is immediate and then have meeting where you promise said hostile country things that they have wanted for years without getting anything from them just to get relationship between your countries to same level what it was before you started to escalate things and then recive praise how good negotiator you are.

 

 

The one critical aspect to that strategy is to have a credible threat beforehand though. For North Korea it was their huge arsenal of conventional and bio/ chemical weapons pointed at the south and the US troops there that bought them time to make nukes and long range rockets. Their strategy would not work for others, Venezuela for example cannot threaten the US in the same manner because, well, any threat made is not backed up by the ability to deliver. They'd either get laughed at or it would be used as a pretext for direct intervention.

 

It does encourage nations threatened by the US to get deterrents as quickly as possible so the US will negotiate rather than invade, but that's been the consequence of US foreign policy in general since at least Iraq 2, reinforced further by Libya only being attacked after giving up its deterrent.

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"It does encourage nations threatened by the US to get deterrents as quickly as possible so the US will negotiate rather than invade, but that's been the consequence of US foreign policy in general since at least Iraq 2, reinforced further by Libya only being attacked after giving up its deterrent."

 

After Sen. Cottons comment, it does make you wonder if Cuba will decide they need to get nukes. Though I'm not sure how much Cuba actually fears that we'd try to militarily invade, given that relations have always been not great and even now they're still not what you'd call mutual neutrality.

 

Then again, Cuba probably decided long ago that the best way to survive is to just not do anything that would provoke the US or give them a reason to militarily invade.

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I don't think Cuba has either the means- or the political desire- to go nuclear under any realistic scenario anyway. If they had to some rockets and chemical weapons would be enough given the proximity to the US, but yeah, despite Trump's rhetoric Cuba ain't under any more meaningful threat now that it hasn't been in the past 50 years, probably less than for most of it and the main deterrent to the US acting on them is political and only likely to strengthen in the medium term so long as the boat isn't shaken.

 

When it comes right down to it the Castros weren't Kims or Saddams and lacked their particular brand of repression and monomania; and Cuba isn't India nor Pakistan nor Israel economically or politically either.

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Needed a better narrator.

Why has elegance found so little following? Elegance has the disadvantage that hard work is needed to achieve it and a good education to appreciate it. - Edsger Wybe Dijkstra

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Are you trying to hit on Kim Jong-Uns sister, HoonDing? ;)

 

You know that three Californias thing you may have heard of? Well, it's now on the ballot for November. Ballotpedia page

While it makes for an interesting thought experiment and a discussion on the merits of it is fine, I'm not okay with having a single person decide how to split up California, it should be the people of California that decide how to split it up.

 

The guy behind the ballot measure is also rumored to have Russian connections, so, nope.

Edited by smjjames
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So get this. This is making news here in Memphis. A guy gets his car stolen and reports it. The police recover the car and the thief. well they search the car and and found a half a gram of marijuana that they decide belong to the owner of the car. It probably did. So no the car owner has been arrested and is actually facing more time than the guy who stole the car.

 

Government at work. All those goddamed democrats in Memphis clamoring for more government here is some more government for you. 

"While it is true you learn with age, the down side is what you often learn is what a damn fool you were before"

Thomas Sowell

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So get this. This is making news here in Memphis. A guy gets his car stolen and reports it. The police recover the car and the thief. well they search the car and and found a half a gram of marijuana that they decide belong to the owner of the car. It probably did. So no the car owner has been arrested and is actually facing more time than the guy who stole the car.

 

Government at work. All those goddamed democrats in Memphis clamoring for more government here is some more government for you. 

 

half gram? Lol, also how they know its his?

I'm the enemy, 'cause I like to think, I like to read. I'm into freedom of speech, and freedom of choice. I'm the kinda guy that likes to sit in a greasy spoon and wonder, "Gee, should I have the T-bone steak or the jumbo rack of barbecue ribs with the side-order of gravy fries?" I want high cholesterol! I wanna eat bacon, and butter, and buckets of cheese, okay?! I wanna smoke a Cuban cigar the size of Cincinnati in the non-smoking section! I wanna run naked through the street, with green Jell-O all over my body, reading Playboy magazine. Why? Because I suddenly may feel the need to, okay, pal? I've SEEN the future. Do you know what it is? It's a 47-year-old virgin sitting around in his beige pajamas, drinking a banana-broccoli shake, singing "I'm an Oscar Meyer Wiene"

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I am so happy that I live where I live guys

I'm the enemy, 'cause I like to think, I like to read. I'm into freedom of speech, and freedom of choice. I'm the kinda guy that likes to sit in a greasy spoon and wonder, "Gee, should I have the T-bone steak or the jumbo rack of barbecue ribs with the side-order of gravy fries?" I want high cholesterol! I wanna eat bacon, and butter, and buckets of cheese, okay?! I wanna smoke a Cuban cigar the size of Cincinnati in the non-smoking section! I wanna run naked through the street, with green Jell-O all over my body, reading Playboy magazine. Why? Because I suddenly may feel the need to, okay, pal? I've SEEN the future. Do you know what it is? It's a 47-year-old virgin sitting around in his beige pajamas, drinking a banana-broccoli shake, singing "I'm an Oscar Meyer Wiene"

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So get this. This is making news here in Memphis. A guy gets his car stolen and reports it. The police recover the car and the thief. well they search the car and and found a half a gram of marijuana that they decide belong to the owner of the car. It probably did. So no the car owner has been arrested and is actually facing more time than the guy who stole the car.

 

Government at work. All those goddamed democrats in Memphis clamoring for more government here is some more government for you. 

 

Let me guess, the thief is white and the car owner is black?

 

And to reiterate chilloutman, how do they even know the weed is the car owners? The thief said it wasn't his and took him at his word? The word of a thief? heh.

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I'm more curious how they determined it was the owner's, seems like a nice target for reasonable doubt. 

Why has elegance found so little following? Elegance has the disadvantage that hard work is needed to achieve it and a good education to appreciate it. - Edsger Wybe Dijkstra

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^Possession is 9/10ths of the law.

 

Im more shocked that in TN the penalty for .5g of weed is higher than stealing a car! Im pretty sure they wouldn't even bother with you here over that amount.

This is TN, where porn causes school shooting and one sniff of marijuana will turn a kid into a liquor store robbing crack cocaine addict. And Nathan Bedford Forest was a patriot.

"While it is true you learn with age, the down side is what you often learn is what a damn fool you were before"

Thomas Sowell

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