By Chris Cillizza January 5 at 8:25 AM Donald Trump went to Lowell, Mass. — a town about five miles south of the New Hampshire border — for one of his now-trademark big-arena rallies on Monday night. This is what the crowd looked like per WaPo's Jenna Johnson. Thousands and thousands packed into arena in Lowell, MA, for Donald Trump's rally. 4:35 PM - 4 Jan 2016 Crowds like the one in Lowell on Monday should make clear to the last few lingering doubters that the Trump phenomenon isn't going away as voters begin the process of picking a Republican presidential nominee. Hell, he might even be getting stronger. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...donald-trump-rally-is-absolutely-eye-popping/
Trump has frequently lambasted the horrific "deal" with Iran. And the fallout continues: At the root of the problem for Sunni Arab states is the nuclear deal reached last summer by Iran and Western nations. When the White House sold the pact to Congress and Middle Eastern allies, its message was clear: Nothing in the deal would prevent the U.S. from sanctioning Iran for non-nuclear issues. Yet that has not been the case. Aaron David Miller, a former Middle East negotiator who is a vice president at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, said that the Obama administration sees the Iran deal as the one stabilizing factor in a region that is increasingly spinning out of control, and is therefore giving the U.S.-Iranian relationship top priority. “The Iranians hold the Obama legacy in their hands,” he said. “We are constrained and we are acquiescing to a certain degree to ensure we maintain a functional relationship with the Iranians.” At the same time, though, the U.S. is losing leverage over Iran and its ability to influence the actions of the new Saudi leadership is also waning. The Saudis have given up on building ties to the Obama administration and are pursuing their own course until the next president takes office. “It is the worst position for the great power, because everyone says no to us without cost or consequence,” Miller said. http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2016-01-05/obama-s-middle-east-balancing-act-tilts-toward-iran
It's rather awkward quoting a person and addressing them as 'he'. I ramble. It's a real life thing too. My mind is generally haywire 24/7, which causes me to skip a lot of train of thoughts during conversations because I assume I've already had them with that person because I've went over them a bunch of times before. Anyhow, Jello and I have been over this in some other thread (might be earlier in this one too, not sure). tldr Islam is more than a religion. Sharia courts seem very wonky to me. That doesn't mean we should be eager to bomb random countries/make this out to be a global Islamic problem, countries like Indonesia, with the highest population of Muslims, do alright (if we're talking non-extremism wise). The line starts to blur when they're trying to impose sharia law in "our" countries, where we have secular states and a different judicial system. My law professors weren't exactly soft on sharia law. It's a hard topic to get a meaningful discussion/answers/anything out of. As someone who has never really believed, but is interested in the social and psychological part of religion (finding a place in the world, purpose, etc), religion is very confusing to me.
This article, also from Bloomberg View, gives a good history of what things was like before this deal and what the previous approach accomplished: " At the start of Bush's presidency, Iran had no operational centrifuge cascades and no stocks of enriched fuel, so it had no means of making a nuclear weapon. In their talks, the Europeans sought to offer Iran trade and investment incentives to end to the fuel program. The Bush administration supported this approach, setting zero enrichment as a red line. The Iranians refused to consider abandoning their fuel cycle ambitions, but they agreed to suspend "enrichment activities" while talks progressed. This was a temporary deal designed to give space for a final agreement to be worked out -- and if that sounds familiar, it should. It was in many ways similar to the agreement reached in 2013 to enable the current talks. The 2003 language, however, was vague, and the Iranians gamed it. Iran decided that the suspension applied only to actual uranium enrichment, and not to other activities. So by June 2004, there were 1,140 fully installed centrifuges at Natanz. In October of that year, Iran announced it had substantial feedstocks ready to enrich in the centrifuges. The Europeans hurried to produce a proposed final deal, which again required that Iran make "a binding commitment not to pursue fuel cycle activities." Iran refused, offering instead to limit enrichment capacity to a pilot program of a few thousand centrifuges and to send everything produced abroad for conversion into fuel rods. This was a better deal than the one that's likely to be reached in June. Under pressure from the Bush administration, however, the Europeans refused to cross their zero-enrichment red line. So the talks collapsed. The Iranian parliament voted to end its voluntary application of the IAEA's enhanced inspection regime and, by 2006, Iran was enriching uranium. By the time Bush left office in January 2009, Iran had just under 4,000 working centrifuges and an additional 1,600 installed. These had, to that point, produced 171 kilos of low-enriched uranium. Oh, and Iran had covertly built a new enrichment facility under a mountain at Qom. Obama at first continued with Bush's policy of keeping to a zero-enrichment red line while piling on sanctions, to similar effect. Iran pressed ahead, producing 20 percent enriched fuel for use in medical equipment -- an alarming development, because the time needed to enrich 20 percent fuel to weapons grade is short. ... Since Iran entered into a second temporary agreement in November 2013, it has stopped producing 20 percent uranium; the number of installed centrifuges has been frozen; and the rate at which Iran has been increasing its production of low-grade uranium has slowed accordingly. " http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-04-28/bush-s-iran-plan-is-worse-than-obama-s Like the deal or not. What we have now is still objectively miles better than what was happening previously, and has opened the door to diplomacy.
Iran is a bad actor, so words on a paper mean little to nothing. Kerry was schooled. GW spent his political power in Afghanistan and Iraq. Trump was correct, while Hillary was wrong.
I get where you are coming from with that ! I also appreciate the conversation, apologies for any petty attacks I try not to but hey I am petty lol I find I agree with you on many concepts and we may differ on ideas of execution but I really don't think we are that far apart. And besides if everyone agreed these threads wouldn't keep the mods busy at all! Here is to constructive dialogue and hopefully at least understanding and respecting each others opinions more and I will be more careful when reading . I completely agree with thoughts you just posted sharia btw so its nice find things in common. I am of the mindset that bombing anything almost always makes things worse not better and ten fold if they aren't dropping bombs/ attacking you.
****s sake it was a statement towards the feeling anyone might have of bombing countries. Stop taking it so seriously, jeez.
I get carried away easily. And yeah, I don't believe much in bombing for the sake of it either. Exceptions exceptions. Who knows though, things are infinitely more complex once you're in the white house. More info, more insights. More responsibility. Tough questions
Good information! I get the feeling it is just Iran getting sanctions eased and buying time while reformatting/researching/planning their way to get the bomb and not be attacked. I don't think they take the deal serious at all its just biding time and making the right call for them. Hope it works but form how I understand the structure of who "checks" on what Iran is doing to verify is shaky at best if not laughable.
I mean, I honestly don't begrudge other nations for wanting to do what is best for their interests. Just as the US does in its deals with other countries. If this makes them "bad actors" then I guess many non-Americans view of the US in this light would also be justified. But hey, when you have the nukes and the stealth bombers and carriers... I guess you have a bit of a leg up on getting your way. And yea, I don't know exactly how one enforces this kind of thing (other than indefinite sanctions, which seems to have done little to slow them down), and it seems to depend on who you ask whether 24 days is long enough to wipe all traces of covert activity. But we on the internet can all be nuclear experts and speculate, of course!
And the Obama supporters! Or does my video not count? Anyway... I've spoken with some people IRL about what they think of Trump. What stood out to me most about these conversations, was this sort of drumbeat of "Trump is scary." But when it got further down into it, it had more to do with the manner of his speech, and his seemingly more blunt approach to politics that was unsettling. Of course, there were also policies and such that many didn't approve of (most agreed with me or like some others in this thread, didn't think I went far enough in terms of Immigration policies for example). But the main thing that struck people was his manners (or lack thereof). I find this very interesting. While, to an extent, manners of course matters for any politician, particularly a head of state with negotiation powers, it seemed more like an automated response to something being different, rather than the content of it in many cases. An uncomfortableness based on a lack of political correctness in a sense, but a bit more than that as well. It's hard to properly describe with words. Of course, this is just my sense of things from talking with a few people. I still don't much care for Trump*, though I personally appreciate his "blunt manner" to a degree. I think it's likely to do with how well ingrained certain things are in people, and perhaps how disenchanted with politics people are as well. Or it could just be the culture of my local area, as I've always been a bit "different" when it comes to fitting into local cultural and political norms. *(I probably like him more than Clinton [though that's not saying much, considering I think she should be indited and probably thrown in prison following a proper trial if convicted]. I'm still not sure on Sanders, though what little I've heard wasn't encouraging I'm not taking that at face value without more information. Overall I've mostly been keeping half an eye on the candidates as a whole and haven't gotten fully into it, as there's still a long ways to go before it's fully relevant.)
- JANUARY 06, 2016 - DONALD TRUMP HAS AMERICA’S PULSE: RICK SCOTT USA Today Political pundits are shocked that Donald Trumpis leading in the polls. The same thing happened in 2010 when I entered the Florida gubernatorial race against the already anointed and establishment-endorsed sitting Republican attorney general. One establishment member even said to me “how can you be Governor? I don’t know you.” I won the governor’s race in 2010 and many outsiders — some businesspeople — continue to shock the political establishment by coming into elected office from careers outside of politics. Attorney Chris Christie was elected governor of New Jersey in 2009; manufacturer Ron Johnson was elected senator in Wisconsin in 2010; businessman Bruce Rauner won the governor’s race in Illinois in 2014; and businessman Matt Bevin won the governorship of Kentucky just a few months ago. Voters have been choosing new ideas and new energy over the old formula of sheer time served in political office. I know Donald Trump personally, and while I currently have no plans to endorse a candidate before Florida’s March presidential primary, there is no doubt that Donald is a man who speaks and tweets his mind freely. But, I don’t think his ability to give the most interesting interviews or speeches is the only thing that has him leading in the polls. I think he is capturing the frustration of many Americans after seven years ofPresident Obama’s very intentional government takeover of the American economy. Our next president will be fed up with the fact that job creation has basically dried up in many states with a few exceptions like Texas, North Dakota and Florida. Our next president will be incensed by the fact that middle-income, hard-working Americans can't even afford to start the business they always dreamed about because they would pay more in taxes and federal healthcare mandates than they could make in profits. http://www.donaldjtrump.com/media/donald-trump-has-americas-pulse-rick-scott
To me Sanders has some good ideas, but some of them go way overboard imo (like the 15$/h). What I like most about him though, is that I know for sure that what I vote for is what he'll try to achieve. He doesn't have some special agenda. He's been fighting for the same thing his whole life, regardless of what the rest did (that solo speech about invading Iraq, great stuff). Man really has got principles, that's rare in a politician these days.
Also if you want to read a pretty thoughtful breakdown of some of what Trump is saying and the psychology and wording etc, go to http://blog.dilbert.com/ edit to include one "All the buzz today is about Trump’s new ad. Some people on Twitter asked for the Master Persuader filter on it. Note: For new readers of this blog, I don’t endorse Trump, or anyone else. I’m not smart enough to know who would be the best president. My interests are in Trump’s persuasion skills. I have a lot of background in that area. My overall grade for the ad is A++++. It might go down in history as one of the best political ads of all time. I’ll break it down. 1. It is horrifingly racist FEELING to some people, and scary, and that is enough to keep it in the news and click-worthy forever. Literally. Your great-grandkids will be studying this ad in history class. This is an intentional part of the ad’s design, and perfectly executed. 2. The best part of the persuasion is cleverly concealed in all that noise. The most active part is the part you probably think is nothing but bad writing. It sounds too folksy, and out of place against the seriousness of the background images. That’s why those words stick out like a dollar on the sidewalk. Here is the active part of the persuasion: “…until we figure out what’s going on.” If you have been reading my Master Persuader series, you might recognize that as the High Ground Maneuver. It works every time, unlike weaker forms of persuasion. “Works every time” doesn’t mean it instantly changed your mind, but it does mean it nudged it. And you can’t go back. The High Ground Maneuver is a sign of a Master Persuader. The low ground on the immigration topic (the weeds) is where everyone else is. That includes endless chatter about the vetting process, the visa process in general, statistics, our national brand, terror recruitment, and on, and on. Weeds. The high ground is that this is a complicated topic full of disagreement about just about everything except that the risk is greater than zero. So Trump says the one thing that everyone can agree: Collectively, we need to better understand our enemies. But in the short term, let’s lock the front door while we figure it out. Who disagrees with that way of thinking? In other words, first you apply the tourniquet, then you figure out why the car crashed. You don’t do those things in the other order. That’s the high ground maneuver. He moved the focus from the weeds – where everyone disagrees – to the high ground where everyone agrees: 1. We all want our fellow citizens and our government to better understand the terrorists’ motivations. (But personally, we think we already know.) 2. We all solve problems in the same order (tourniquet first). But there is even more “work” in Trump’s sentence fragment, and that’s the magical part. You don’t often see this kind of layering. In hypnosis class, we learned to avoid introducing any thoughts that a subject would reflexively find disagreeable. For the same reason, Trump isn’t giving us the answer for why we are under attack. He is letting you fill in the question with your own answer. Why? Because you always agree with yourself. You’re a genius that way. None of this persuasion technique will flip the average Democrat, but a Master Persuader only needs to persuade 20% of the other side in order to win in a landslide. And a person with Trump’s skills can persuade 20% of the public of anything. You will see lots of fuming and hatred about the ad, because it intentionally invites that response. It is part of the design. You can’t ignore it."
Further developments on the petition to ban Donald Trump from the UK: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-35251357 Gist: Trump's conglomeration says it'd pull it's business investments out of the UK if Trump was barred entry to the nation. Petition campaigner calls this "blackmailing" the UK. Personal opinion: For it's own sake, that petition needs better campaigners. "Hey hey guys, just because we think you're an evil racist whose very presence in the country could cause problems doesn't mean we as a nation don't want your business here!"
