The Goat Pen

sardis wrote:Per CNN, R's most likely will pick up 8 seats in 2018.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/09/politics/ ... index.html

When I vote in 2018, I plan to skip over the Senator line item. If the GOP Senate refuses to do anything to advance the agenda that won the election of 2016, then there is simply no point in having a GOP Senate.

If Kennedy hasn't retired and been replaced by a conservative on SCOTUS by 2018, I might reconsider.

Somebody has selective amnesia about certain actors and timelines wrt the nork's nuke proliferation.

This week, after 20 months of doing nothing about North Korea's drive to build nuclear weapons, President Bush finally put a proposal—a set of incentives for disarmament—on the negotiating table. The remarkable thing is, the deal is practically identical to the accord that President Clinton signed with Pyongyang in 1994—an accord that Bush condemned and scuttled from the moment he took over the White House. (For more on this tale, click here and here.)

It's good that Bush has at last realized that diplomacy is the only way to solve the crisis. But he's come a bit late to this epiphany. North Korea has greatly strengthened its hand in the interim. Two years ago, its 8,000 fuel rods were padlocked under international inspection. Now they've been re-processed into bomb-grade plutonium.

Correct. Bush was equally to blame for the NK having nukes and missiles to deliver them. So stipulated.

His culpability goes even deeper than that. He sent us on a wild goose chase into Iraq to save us from WMD. The whole "we cannot let the first proof that Saddam has nukes be a mushroom cloud over an American city" and all that. That led us into a 10 year misadventure that morphed from preventing a "mushroom cloud over an American city" to "bringing freedom and democracy to the Middle East and the people there who are thirsting for it." As a result, he spent trillions of dollars and thousands of soldiers' lives on a fool's errand.

Thanks to W, the American people's willingness to fight to prevent nukes being used on our homeland was squandered on a war where there was no such threat. Now there is a REAL threat of nukes being used on us, and the American people are understandably weary and wary of it. Bush's incompetence did more to bring us to this situation than Clinton's intern banging ever could.

Still no answer, huh?

"Correct. Bush was equally to blame for the NK having nukes and missiles to deliver them. So stipulated."

Funny you never mentioned that in any of your posts blaming Obama for the current state of affairs...

Clinton started the process of presidents screwing up with NK. Obama screwed up with NK. And in between, W screwed up with NK. Now Trump is having to clean up the mess left to him by his last three predecessors.

The next nuclear crisis with Iran will be squarely on Obama's shoulders. Clinton and W had no part in that.

hedge, would you care to answer my question: what do you want Trump to do about NK? Tick took a pass...

Send a bunch of christian martyrs over there and evangelize the populace. Sure, many would perish, but if we send enough, the light of Christ will eventually prevail (surely you must concur with this last part, at least). I think you should volunteer...

Professor Tiger wrote:hedge, would you care to answer my question: what do you want Trump to do about NK? Tick took a pass...

You won't take 'nothing' for an answer I guess. Again, stfu about NK and let the military and our under-staffed State Dept. deal with it. Trump is out of his league here. It's exactly the same as him not getting any key legislation passed because of his inexperience and ineptitude, only the stakes are infinitely higher. People in his own party (which he joined 7 yrs ago) are saying these same things.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/ ... id=U142DHP

Old-time republicans must be shitting bricks re: the Trump wing/cult of the party.

hedge wrote:Send a bunch of christian martyrs over there and evangelize the populace. Sure, many would perish, but if we send enough, the light of Christ will eventually prevail (surely you must concur with this last part, at least). I think you should volunteer...

Cute.

At least your answer didn't follow the usual Tick template:

"What I want Trump to do with the NK situation is I hate him because he has fake hair and colluded with the Russians and he has little hands and colluded with the Russians and he is a fat slob and colluded with the Russians and uses aggressive language against the Norks and colluded with the Russians and makes crazy tweets and colluded with the Russians and his wife and daughters are whores and he colluded with the Russians and his son and son in law are going to prison because they helped him collude with the Russians and he never released his tax records because he colluded with the Russians and he should let the generals decide what to do because he is a dictator and he is lazy and an idiot and colluded with the Russians and this whole NK crisis is his fault because he colluded with the Russians and he will be impeached soon because he colluded with the Russians.

Did I mention I hate Trump and he colluded with the Russians?

I would like Trump to kill himself. If that doesn't happen, I would like him to resign. If that doesn't happen, I would like him to completely recuse himself from anything to do with North Korea. If that doesn't happen, I would like him to take every instinct and thought he's got about the way to handle this and do the exact opposite.

Since none of that will happen, what will happen is that we'll get as close to a nuclear war as we have in decades, if not ever, and then China will step in. They'll be the adults in the room and settle things down and, in doing so, they will assume complete leadership over global affairs. The era of American leadership in the world is about to be over.

"At least your answer didn't follow the usual Tick template"

Have you got anything to offer on this subject besides your typical lame sarcasm?

the axis of evil

NK
Iraq
iran

GB looks pretty good right now

eventually somebody was going to have to scare off NK development

this is their mode

rattle sabers to get concessions
did the saber rattling since kimjong's daddy was in power

he should be put on ignore unless he cracks and fires something that hits something

then he should be obliterated with fire and fury unfortunately i'm sure he has a hole somewhere and will use conventional to wipe out south lorea before he is taken out

hedge wrote:"At least your answer didn't follow the usual Tick template"

Have you got anything to offer on this subject besides your typical lame sarcasm?

Here's my offering. I posted it on TGP, but it also answers your question here. Unlike your silly ideas, these are all within US capabilities. This is not hyperbole or sarcasm. This is exactly what I want Trump to do about North Korea, word for word.

I want Trump to address the nation and the world from the Oval Office and say:

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. I will get right to the point:

The Obese Child running North Korea says he will launch four missiles at Guam. If he does that, we will shoot all four of them down. For that matter, we will shoot down all your future missile launch tests. Furthermore, Guam is a territory of the United States. Any missile launched anywhere near Guam by the Fat Boy running North Korea will be regarded as an attack on the United States. And I will order a full response against the Porky Teenager who ordered that launch, with all the weapons at my disposal.

I am ordering the US military to DEFCON 2 worldwide.

I am ordering all dependents of US military and diplomatic personnel in South Korea and Japan to evacuate to the US mainland, beginning immediately. I am recommending that the South Korean president evacuate Seoul.

I have ordered all the B-2 bombers at Whiteman Air Force Base to deploy to bases in the Western Pacific and await further taskings. I have also ordered three carrier battle groups to assemble off the coast of North Korea, prepared to conduct combat operations on a moment's notice.

I have ordered Seal Team Six, Delta force, and Special Activities Division elements to infiltrate North Korea and prepare to assassinate Fatso-in-Chief, his political leadership, all his generals, and all their families.

I have directed the CIA and NSA to prepare to disable all internet, communications and electricity grids in North Korea, which will take about five minutes for your stone age country.

In closing, I would like to address Kim Jong Un directly. Listen up, you pre-pubescent tub of lard: you are used to dealing with weak, incompetent, and feckless US Presidents. I am not one of them. if you want a war with the United States, launch your missiles anywhere near Guam or any US soil and you shall have one. If you want to go nuclear, I will put on an anti-radiation suit, unzip the fly, and personally piss on the smoking crater where your sorry molecules were scattered.

ESAD, MFer.

Good night.

That would be a good start.

You think the world is a Marvel comic...

I live in the real world, where bullies must be confronted with a credible threat of being kicked in the groin, or they will just become more emboldened bullies.

You live in a make believe world where if you just give a bully everything he demands, he will realize the error of his ways, and go open a sustainable organic vegetable market and drive a Prius.

I bet you gave up a lot of lunch money in grade school.

Yeah. North Koreans really have a bully in Fat Kim. Over there, Kim is a weak person's idea of a strong leader. A neurotic ego-maniac, a big talker who makes threats and demands fealty from all around him, who only looks out for #1..

Yeah, somebody like that needs to go... ...

"I live in the real world, where bullies must be confronted with a credible threat of being kicked in the groin, or they will just become more emboldened bullies."

I'm sure that's how Iran and N. Korea (and plenty of others) feel about us...

"I bet you gave up a lot of lunch money in grade school."

I wish we had gone to grade school together...

I wish we had gone to grade school together...

That would have been cool. I'd have taken your lunch money every day, and used it to take your girlfriend to hotels.

Yeah. North Koreans really have a bully in Fat Kim. Over there, Kim is a weak person's idea of a strong leader. A neurotic ego-maniac, a big talker who makes threats and demands fealty from all around him, who only looks out for #1..

Yeah, somebody like that needs to go... ...

So you believe that Trump and Kim are morally about the same? One's no better than the other?

I think they are very similar people operating under different constraints.