America - The Official Thread
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- Bratvegas
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Reagan at least was rather heavily and publicly involved in politics for 25 years or so before becoming President; maybe 15 years or so before becoming governor.
There was at least evidence of him wanting to be involved in politics for quite some time rather than be a loudmouth conspiracy theorist (KENYAN BIRTH CERTIFICATE) who later ran on a 'Speak Your Mind' ticket against the most dislikable Republican nominees and Democrat candidate in decades.
Eisenhower is a more interesting one, having never held elected office but had served the public as a General and Supreme Allied Commander of the European forces.
There was at least evidence of him wanting to be involved in politics for quite some time rather than be a loudmouth conspiracy theorist (KENYAN BIRTH CERTIFICATE) who later ran on a 'Speak Your Mind' ticket against the most dislikable Republican nominees and Democrat candidate in decades.
Eisenhower is a more interesting one, having never held elected office but had served the public as a General and Supreme Allied Commander of the European forces.
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- TexRex72
That's all partisan, though. Well...he did have some folks over for dinner; I guess he didn't do nothing.
That's the biggest issue I have with him--he'd be far more effective if he wasn't so damn childish. Even some of the bat crap crazy ideas he has would be a whole lot easier to swallow if he'd just move the spoon through the air like a plane and make engine noises rather than flick it at our faces.
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When Oprah gets elected, if her first decree is, "You get a Mustang!... You get a Mustang!... You get a Mustang!... Everybody gets a Mustaaaaaaannng!.". Then, I'll move back.
If only Trump had taken the Oprah approach to things; perhaps it wouldn't have been so bad:
"You get a tax cut!"
"You get a tax cut!"
"In fact, you ALL get a tax cut!"
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- Johnnypenso
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It was before The Interview was released, and the "some production company" was Sony.
Certainly North Korea has been waving sticks in the direction of the USA for decades. North Koreans have been taught since Kim Il-Sung that the USA is the great devil, North Korea's number one enemy. There's a few factors here - the fact that North Korea was essentially under Russian control and South Korea was under US control, the association of the USA with Japan, the Korean War - but basically the USA has been literally the most hated entity for four generations of North Koreans.
Generally speaking, the situation of North Korea hasn't changed in 70 years. Most of the developed world has trading sanctions against them. Every now and then, they'll rattle a sabre, the UN will give them a bit of oil, food and medicine, and it goes quiet again.
More recent interactions have been a bit weirder. Thanks to probably Iran and Pakistan, North Korea got its hands on uranium and uranium processing equipment. It would say it was for power generation (and it had a nuclear power station, courtesy of Russia), but was enriching uranium beyond power generation and into weapons territory. It would rattle a nuclear sabre, then the UN would give them a bit of oil, food and medicine, and it goes quiet again.
Then in 1993 it withdrew from the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. Things got a lot weird, but the USA agreed to build it some light water reactors for power. Which it never did, so North Korea held a middle finger up by 2003 and went hard into nuclear weapons research free from - or possibly free from (it's a matter of legal argument) NNPT. There were a few "We're gonna make nukes!" sabres rattled, but under Kim Jong-Il, North Korea remained non-nuclear. Then he died and Kim Jong-Un - who, we should remember, is the third generation of Kims to rule North Korea as a deity, after 70 years of the country having anti-US, anti-west, pro-war, pro-nuclear rhetoric shoved into its face.
That brings us to today where instead of having a North Korea waving crap weapons at South Korea and threatening to make nukes, we've got a North Korea that actually has nuclear weapons and can probably stick them on missiles that might hit anywhere in the world except Uruguay. That's definitely a problem, and one that's the result of pretty much the whole planet allowing a cargo cult to go unchecked for 70 years - the WW2 Allies split it up, Russia and China defended it and traded with it, Pakistan and Iran fuelled it, the West ignored it when it wasn't threatening war (again) with South Korea and Japan, and everyone allowed incredible human rights violations to continue unchecked for fear of sparking a US/Russia conflict.
But Trump is also a problem. He's thin-skinned and impulsive, and takes every opportunity to belittle and threaten Kim Jong-Un by social media. This is a man who in essence believes he's a deity, and has the statues, palace, power and 25 million worshippers to prove it. He has unshakeable belief he's immortal, courts a war he believes he could win, hates the USA and probably possesses some long-range nuclear missiles - and has no problem killing his brother with prohibited chemical weapons on foreign soil. And Trump calls him names on Twitter.
That said, who knows, this might be the right way to treat him. A different approach worked with the other Kims - it was always lather, rinse, repeat with them - but Jong-Un isn't them and perhaps Trump is doing it right. Stand up to bullies and all that jazz... but from North Korea's point of view, the USA is the bully. It's been the oppressor for 70 years, with only the godly Kim family keeping it at bay, remember. The more Trump bangs on about how big his button is (he doesn't have one, just FYI), the more he plays into the role. It's a positive feedback loop.
The one saving grace now is that Russia and China are holding North Korea at arm's length. A war with North Korea, particularly a retaliatory one, is no longer going to inevitably lead to a nuclear conflict among superpowers. North Korea's possession of nuclear weapons seems difficult for Moscow and Beijing to stomach (especially as the borders are downwind of the nuclear test site) and they may allow a US-led or UN incursion to go unchecked except for objecting to the UN.
Joey D
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The very poor.
From what I understand those filling jointly with an income of less than $19,000 saw no breaks. (Source)
The poverty line in the US for a family of three is something like $20,500 in income. So a majority of those under the poverty line saw no breaks.
Trump is to blame for the recent escalations with NK though. Handling foreign affairs by acting like a jackass on social media isn't the correct way to handle that. Especially when you look that the talks between NK and SK yesterday and how productive they seemed to be.
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- Johnnypenso
The deduction for Married and Joint Filers increases from $12,700 to $24,000. They pay no taxes. You can't pay less than zero. Leaving the tax rate the same and increasing the deduction above the level of income in the tax bracket sounds like a tax break to me.
What escalations? You mean some words on twitter? Or are you claiming Trump is making Kim set off nukes and missles they otherwise wouldn't have.
Too late, the South Korean President already has. Fact is, they are making diplomatic overtures they weren't making before Trump. If we're going to give Trump the blame if fireworks break out and we surely will, you can't deny him some credit when diplomacy breaks out as well.
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Danoff
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Sure, I felt so much safer about NK before Trump was throwing around his tweets
Nope, it's always been the same and he's not hurting anything at all on that front.
My comment was specifically aimed at financial markets. The trump pissing contest with NK did not help stocks rise. It sounds like instability, and companies don't like that.
Me.
Edit:
All of the NK talk on this page came from my post about stocks. You guys are a little too happy to rush to Trump's defense.
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Dotini
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Prominent political scientist Edward Luttwak, writing in the pages of Foreign Policy, urges an immediate limited attack of North Korea. He says the reasons not to do so are far weaker than generally acknowledged.
IMO Luttwak's record as an historian and prognosticator is not strong, and Foreign Policy, despite a fair reputation, has a history of neo-connish musings. But everything considered, I think the attack should and will go ahead soon.
http://foreignpolicy.com/2018/01/08/its-time-to-bomb-north-korea/
IMO Luttwak's record as an historian and prognosticator is not strong, and Foreign Policy, despite a fair reputation, has a history of neo-connish musings. But everything considered, I think the attack should and will go ahead soon.
http://foreignpolicy.com/2018/01/08/its-time-to-bomb-north-korea/
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- Johnnypenso
I'm guessing you're not living under the poverty line
. I am not defending Trump but it's a fact that if things go badly with NK he'll get all the blame. So if they go well he has to get some of the credit as well. It sort of looks like a good cop/bad cop thing. If it gets them to the table and real progress is made I'll take all the 5am twitter rants and more.
Danoff
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Ugh....
Nuclear missiles net North Korea nothing. Absolutely nothing. They can't use them. I mean yes, technically they could use them, once... and then be dead. But that's not a fantastic option for them. Bombing them preemptively only strengthens their resolve (the resolve of their people) and plays into their victimhood. They've had this battle cry for so long, that all they need is nukes. Let's see what happens when it takes them nowhere. Letting Russia build nukes, submarines, a space program, etc. at breakneck pace is what won the Cold War without a holocaust.
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That's perfectly reasonable, and while news of his tweeting is terribly tiresome, I would concede that tactics may have played a part. That probably sounds noncommittal, and I suppose it is in part, but it's because I, just as the overwhelming majority of onlookers, don't know what all is going on behind the scenes. If it were not for all of his other nonsense, my initial assumption would be that "POTUS," whomever that may be, was responsible for facilitating these steps.
Dotini
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Danoff
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That's much more likely to get your property irradiated. I love that your primary concern is for your property instead of, you know, innocent people?
You can't de-fang this viper. It's a lovely notion, let's just stop them from developing stuff, problem solved. Not possible. Especially not at this point. NK is a country obsessed with being a nuclear power. But nuclear power only buys you one thing... the ability to prevent a preemptive nuclear attack. I say nuclear, rather than other, because they won't respond to a targeted cruise missile with an ICBM over Seattle, that would just get them killed.
NK is in absolutely no danger of being preemptively attacked by nuclear weapons. We're certainly not going to nuke them. China isn't going to. Russia isn't going to. No problems with South Korea either. That means that their nuclear program has bought them ZERO. In the meantime, they've rested their hopes and dreams on it as a means of prosperity.
This is the game that is played in the nuclear era. We know that other countries can kill lots of our people, and we're fine with that because we know that they'll be retaliated against. Many countries even use this (wisely) to their advantage by not even bothering to build their own arsenal. They can spend the time working on other things that make their country prosperous. Makes sense as long as they have allies that will spend and retaliate for them. Trump is changing that game a little bit, making a few more countries realize that they should spend a little extra dough on military strength. But not too many countries need to play that game before the rest of them can just sit back and mind their own business.
The only way that I know of that this game breaks is if you get a suicidal government in a country with nuclear arms (ah, religion). But usually the people in power don't want to die, and don't want to see their power (country) destroyed. The other issue created by nuclear power is proliferation (thanks Russia), but I don't think that's what NK has in mind, and we'll cross that bridge if we have to when NK falls apart of its own devices.
Edit:
Look, the best weapon against NK is their own prosperity (or lack thereof) and information.
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- Neomone
Unreal. You would start a war simply because you're worried that the other guy might devalue your property, and so you want to strike first?
You know that this is exactly why North Korea is scared of the US, right? And that this is why that fear is absolutely legitimate, because there are people in the US that think that attacking another country as a preventative measure is somehow acceptable.
The North Korean thinking is actually not really that far from the justification Americans use for weapons for home defense. The weapons won't be used, but if you attack our home then you can expect maximum force to be used against you. Which is considered acceptable when you're talking about handguns or long arms to protect your family home, but if it's about protecting an entire country then that's scary and we better get in there and wreck up the place before they can use those weapons.
As far as vipers with fangs capable of striking, there's one major military power that has a recent history of striking without suitable provocation and it's not North Korea.
P.S. Colour me unsurprised that you're a rich property owner though. That explains the justification behind some of your opinions.
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Dotini
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My Seattle (trendy Ballard neighborhood) home and Kitsap County waterfront home and boat house property is owned 100% free and clear. I have no debts of any kind whatsoever. Next time any GTP member is in town, I will be happy to give you a tour.
I'm in my 70th year, retired for 14 years, and happy to say I've worked hard, been frugal and fortunate, and I'm now - as always - enjoying life very greatly indeed. 5 years ago I retired from racing karts (with multiple regional and national championships) and I'm currently progressing in my study of fencing, believe it or not. Drop by, and I'll treat you to a beer and prove everything I've said. I have zero to hide and everything to be proud of. 
Danoff
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My Seattle (trendy Ballard neighborhood) home and Kitsap County waterfront home and boat house property is owned 100% free and clear. I have no debts of any kind whatsoever. Next time any GTP member is in town, I will be happy to give you a tour.
I didn't mean to imply that debt is bad. Cheap money is cheap money.
Anyway, if you're 70 (and I'm kinda recalling this from previous conversations), aren't you supposed to start worrying a little more about future generations than your personal property? Maybe you've got some family that your irradiated property comments were directed to? You figured you'd get wiped out but the real bummer is that your kids don't have anything valuable handed down because it's been wasted by nuclear fallout? I'm trying to help you out here.
Anyway, nobody can take you up on that beer now that we know you're about to get nuked by North Korea.
