Political Posts

[cubsfan]

12 minutes ago, Parsad said:

 

Like this guy?  Kristi Noem's husband...

 

 

Maybe she should shoot those puppies!    Cheers!

 

You have a point there!

 

[Spekulatius]

3 hours ago, RichardGibbons said:

 

I'm curious why you say this.  At the time there were large protests against the regime, and the regime there is bad for both the Iranian people and the rest of the world.

 

To my way of thinking at the time, there was maybe a 50% chance of the Iranian people enacting their own regime change, and it was also unclear if Iran could potentially close the strait against the USA's military might. And, it distracted Trump, preventing him from attacking his allies.  So to me, it looked like a reasonable bet at the time.

 

What, at the time, made you think that it was an obvious foolish thing to do?  Did you just have a different estimate of the probability of positive regime change, or were more confident than me about Iran's ability to control the strait?

The protest were already over 2 month when the war started. The Iranian regime is very good at suppressing protest and they had similar ones several times before. Also, the regime had more popular support than most in the west believe. Even those that don’t exactly like the regime because of corruption likely want to keep an Islamic state rather rather than a western style secular democracy. You can see that on how people vote in surrounding states.

Edited 15 hours ago by Spekulatius

[RichardGibbons]

1 hour ago, changegonnacome said:

I think the fragility of the Iranian regime thesis that was out there turned out to be more Israeli propaganda than reality. Something that JD Vance, Rubio & the Director of the CIA told Trump prior to Epic Fury….i believe the word used by Trump’s senior most advisors on that idea was “bullshit”.

 

At the time I remember being somewhat in your camp assuming that Trump must have been told by his own intelligence agencies that the regime was at a tipping point and just needed a nudge….in that world I had a “worth a shot” opinion too….the subsequent reporting however on the decision timeline for Epic Fury shows the lack of credible US intelligence, only overblown self serving Israeli Iran fragility stories, Bibi’s pitch book and a receptive President interested in glory hunting versus managing risk/reward.

 

In short the judgement of Epic Fury as an ill advised boondoggle is not some after the fact exercise….there is extensive evidence now that prior to Epic Fury the President was ably advised about how ill advised it was and how likely to fail it was!

 

Ah, ok, this makes sense to me, and what @Spekulatius says.  Essentially, my probability estimate was way off, which explains the discrepancy in our views.

[ourkid8]

6 hours ago, Gregmal said:

Sure, but the US needs wars to keep money moving and people distracted. 

Thats a whole different topic which will eventually lead to their downfall but the bigger issue right now is foreign interference in US politics. Do you agree? 

 

I know you got the point of my message  

 

Edited 12 hours ago by ourkid8

[dwy000]

5 hours ago, Gregmal said:

Sure, but the US needs wars to keep money moving and people distracted. 

Cuba should declare war with the US.  They definitely need the money. 

[Maverick47]

12 hours ago, Blake Hampton said:

Abraham Lincoln, incidentally the first ever Republican, was a voracious reader. He had less than one year of formal education before reaching the age of 18. Most of what that great man knew came from a book.

Of course some of our favorite heroes here, being both Buffett and Munger, essentially devoted their entire lives to reading.

Has Donald Trump read a single book in his whole life? The same man who is making unilateral, world defining decisions near daily, has he ever read one book? One? Newspapers? Financial statements, periodicals, literally anything that would give him the knowledge required to make a good decision? Anything?

Maybe he read The Cat in the Hat.

Food for thought, @Blake Hampton!
 

As someone who loves reading, I’d like to think that you’re not altogether wrong in pointing out the challenges with the apparent disinterest in it on the part of either the average American or many of our leaders.

 

And a love of reading and lifelong learning can probably be connected somewhat to an above average level of personal intelligence while not being a reader might be correlated with a below average level of intelligence.
 

But I’m also reminded of Buffett’s comments about what characteristics he looks for in an ideal employee:  energy, integrity and intelligence.

 

 And if a candidate is missing one characteristic in particular (integrity) he  really didn’t want him (or her) to have either of the other two.

 

I guess what I’m saying is, given his lack of personal integrity, I’m not terribly upset that the President lacks an interest in reading.

 

I do wish, however, that  our dear leader would spend much more of his time sleeping or playing golf than he already does….
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Lazarus]

19 hours ago, Blake Hampton said:

 

I'm starting to realize that much of human behavior is actually inverse to itself: extreme arrogance masking insecurity, anger veiling fear, that sort of thing.

 

Is this why you repeatedly make a point of claiming so many people are stupid?

[Blake Hampton]

3 hours ago, Maverick47 said:

Food for thought, @Blake Hampton!
 

As someone who loves reading, I’d like to think that you’re not altogether wrong in pointing out the challenges with the apparent disinterest in it on the part of either the average American or many of our leaders.

 

And a love of reading and lifelong learning can probably be connected somewhat to an above average level of personal intelligence while not being a reader might be correlated with a below average level of intelligence.
 

But I’m also reminded of Buffett’s comments about what characteristics he looks for in an ideal employee:  energy, integrity and intelligence.

 

 And if a candidate is missing one characteristic in particular (integrity) he  really didn’t want him (or her) to have either of the other two.

 

I guess what I’m saying is, given his lack of personal integrity, I’m not terribly upset that the President lacks an interest in reading.

 

I do wish, however, that  our dear leader would spend much more of his time sleeping or playing golf than he already does….

 

I spent nearly my entire childhood growing up with older people. My parents ran into their own set of problems very early in my life, and I subsequently moved in with and became adopted by my grandparents. I lived with them until I was about 16 years old, experienced some events that made me want to live somewhere else, moved in with my dad for about a year or so, and then actually came back to live with my great-grandma. Now that was an interesting experience. Under the age of 20, I probably spent 18 to 19 of those years living with grandparents.

Where am I going with this?

If there is one thing that I've learned having spent so much time living with older people, it's that change does not come easily to them, and oftentimes it's goddamn near impossible. For better or for worse, the vast majority of older adults are largely stuck in their ways.

 

The same of course applies to our now 80-year-old president. I see him as the worst combination of Buffett's trifecta that you mentioned: he is one of the most incompetent people I have ever seen, he is corrupt to the core, and though it seems he's falling asleep quite a bit here lately, I would say he is boundless with energy. Now that is a man who is dangerous, especially so as the president of the United States of America.

I was reading a book late last night that talked about the events that took place during the Pandemic and shortly thereafter. It was still somehow shocking to me how Trump acted during that period, and just how erratic his actions were given the circumstances. It dawned on me that this is a man who has decided his character. He is who he is. There is not a scenario where Trump is going to have some epiphany where he suddenly wants to do good by the American people. Trump will engineer chaos; you can count on it. He will not change.

[Blake Hampton]

13 minutes ago, Lazarus said:

Is this why you repeatedly make a point of claiming so many people are stupid?

 

Not "many people", just the Trumpers.

[changegonnacome]

Read the 14-point draft agreement between the US and Iran -

https://www.cnn.com/2026/06/17/middleeast/us-iran-war-mou-text-intl

 

The simple question remains for those ascribed to the Fox News/Iran totally defeated and on its knees narrative.......if thats the case why did the United States just give away all its leverage here and kick every single major nuclear issues down the road here (& if you think Phase 2 is going to wrap up in 60 days I've got a nuclear bomb in my basement to sell you!)?