President Trump

Sure, but both sides do this equally. It's resulted in most of the population thinking politics are like sports and it's about your team winning - and the other team losing. There is no incentive to be productive and not political.

 

Thoughts on his speech about the middle east?

 

I thought it was a huge contrast from the rhetoric he used in his campaign, especially in regards to his tone when referring both to Islam in general and Islamic extremism. I think it'll be really interesting to see how the administration decides to build relationships with the Middle East in the future, especially considering that many people who voted for Trump probably wouldn't like the new tone.

I generally liked the speech, but given Trump's earlier rhetoric, I'm a little confused as to what to think, and I wonder if we'll start to see a shift in the Trump administration's policies regarding both terrorism, and Islam in general. I also don't know if Trump is just being diplomatic because he's in another country, or why exactly his tone has shifted so drastically.

I'm also a little worried by his stance on Iran, especially considering the fact that Rouhani (a relative moderate) just won the election, and they seem to be abiding by Obama's nuclear deal. But whatever, I don't think Trump's going to start a war on Iran, so it doesn't bother me that much.

 

Let me start by saying Donald & Melania Trump and everyone who accompanied them on their trip to Saudi Arabia (as well as the other countries they will be visiting) but more so Saudi Arabia. I believe they were truly blessed. Now I know the left, especially the Obamas are furious, angered and probably a bit jealous for the way Saudi Arabia treated them. I think it was excellent, let alone the fact that they signed a $110 Billion deal with us (please let's just say screw it and take $29 Billion of it out and move it to I don't know... THE WALL!). I am very pleased with his "world tour".

Anyway,
@Deljikho I am trying to be nice, civil, friendly and mature within this debate (despite the past) but you are making it very very hard for me to do that.

@BlackJack Well I don't see Israel getting angry about it, they certainly love the great Trump!

@metr0n0me There is nothing wrong with talking about the "Russian ties". However, you as well as most left leaners are beating the dead horse with this crap. Why are we evening discussing something when there is absolutely 0 evidence that Trump or anyone on Trumps team have treasonous ties to Russia?

I can 100% agree with @Deinen on getting rid of people in the government and "cleaning the swamp". Can we start with Paul Ryan!? Please!? I want him gone!

@Deinen If it is not about winning or losing then why are the Democrats mad at the fact that there is a Republican in office? It's literally killing them. Hillary Clinton called Trump supporters deplorable, Bernie supporters as likely to be living in their parents basements and here is where I'll defend Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump, neither one of them name called the opposing sides voters.

@MeepLord27 I think our relationship with the Middle East will be just fine! Trump presented a fine speech as always.

@metr0n0me I wouldn't be scared or worried about anything under Trumps administration. People said North Korea was "going to nuke us" that didn't happen. Russia was going to "go to war with us" because of what we did to North Korea and everyone said China was going to attack us but oh look! THEY AGREE WITH TRUMP!

Bringing up old points. If Donald Trump "loves Russia so much" why did he attack North Korea?

 

Report: Israeli intel officials 'furious' over Trump leak to Russians

I think we'll have to agree to disagree there. I very much admire Paul Ryan.

How do you define treasonous? Trump himself admits that he leaked classified intelligence information to Russia; that compromised national security, and, as explained above, the life of an Israeli intelligence officer. If Clinton's emails were treasonous, Trump's leak should also be treasonous, right? Now, I don't think Trump leaked that on purpose, but that's not a mistake you can be making when you're the President of the USA. And then of course there's Michael Flynn, who you could make a very strong case had treasonous ties to Russia.

And who are you to say there's absolutely 0 evidence that Trump or anyone on Trump's team have treasonous ties to Russia? Most of this is classified anyways; that's why there's an investigation going on. When there's smoke, there's usually fire, and the government doesn't usually pursue investigations for no reason. Before the details of the investigation are released, it's fine to speculate.

I hope so. As they always say, actions speak louder than words, and until Trump backs up his speech with actions, I'll believe it. Until then though, his speech is just that--a bunch of words.

North Korea said that, but which actual credible political analyst (or politician) said that? North Korea doesn't even have the capability to send a nuke as far as the US.

Source? The only thing Russia said was to please not unilaterally invade North Korea, as far as I found. Maybe I'm not looking hard enough though.

Who's "everyone," again?

He didn't attack North Korea, though. He just basically spewed forth a bunch of fiery bluster, but he didn't actually attack them...?

 

Trump can declassify whatever he wants?

 

Donald Trump drops out of Saudi Arabia event due to exhaustion.

But the best part is his hypocritical barrage of tweets attacking others for their "stamina."

"President Obama looks absolutely exhausted in the Netherlands. He is not a natural leader, was never ment to lead - it is tough work for him"

Trump tweet: Mar 26, 2014 03:46:47 AM (spelling error is his)

source: Trump Twitter Archive

"Obama looks exhausted and beaten. He was never made or prepared for the job. Like it or not, he doesn't have "it"

Trump tweet: Jul 9, 2014 11:48:34 PM

source: Trump Twitter Archive

"Bernie's exhausted, he just wants to shut down and go home to bed!

Trump tweet: Jul 26, 2016 02:27:58 PM

source: Trump Twitter Archive

Almost forgot these:

"Hillary Clinton does not have the STRENGTH or STAMINA to be President. We need strong and super smart for our next leader - or trouble!"
Donald J. Trump on Twitter

"Hillary Clinton is weak and ineffective - no strength, no stamina."
Donald J. Trump on Twitter

"We need a #POTUS with great strength & stamina. Hillary does not have that."
Donald J. Trump on Twitter

"I beat Hillary in the new @FoxNews Poll head to head. SHE HAS NO STRENGTH OR STAMINA, both of which are needed to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!"
Donald J. Trump on Twitter

"Crooked Hillary has zero imagination and even less stamina. ISIS, China, Russia and all would love for her to be president. 4 more years!"
Donald J. Trump on Twitter

 

.....

At least Roger Ailes is dead

 

Personally, I would much rather Donald attend to something important and send one of his advisors to tell a bunch of kids to tell terrorists there mean on twitter. He didn't drop out of anything significant.

Kinda low :/

 

If the subject of the joke was a decent person, sure.

Thank god there is one less crappy person in the world.

--- Double Post Merged, May 22, 2017, Original Post Date: May 22, 2017 ---

US, Turkey dispute fighting in DC as ambassador summoned

 

Turkey is being a ****, but I don't see any good options.
If we take action against them, which we have the authority to do, they will shut us out. Or worse, they might start helping Russia.

 

Even though Erdogan is insane, I still heavily doubt Turkey would jump ship from long-time ally America to rival for literally hundreds of years, Russia, that quickly, though.

Some response has to be had.

 

That's actually a good idea, except he didn't send an advisor or expert he sent his daughter.

It's just comical because he's berated people for having too low stamina for the presidency and he is continuously being exhausted. It's fair to be tired, but it's not fair to be a hypocrite.

 

Oh my bad, I thought you believed his stamina was a problem. I'm certainly no fan of how he acted like a child during the campaign, I absolutely agree with your point.

 

Trump asked intelligence chiefs to push back against FBI collusion probe after Comey revealed its existence

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/23/...p-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0
Yah lets fly tens of thousands of people who hate our values into our countries.

 

Quantify this.

What % of Muslim's "hate our values?"

Do they hate our values, or the fact we've intervened in their countries since the 50s?

--- Double Post Merged, May 23, 2017, Original Post Date: May 23, 2017 ---

The thing that really gets me is you have no interest is having a legitimate discussion on the merit of terrorism from radical Islam because you always state your side in a disingenuous way.

It's always "Islam is a religion of violence" while ignoring the exact same rhetoric is in the Bible.

It's always "Muslim's hate our value/freedom" while ignoring the geopolitical context.

You have no interest, otherwise you'd be trying to find specific answers, not make blanket statements. This same argument poisons every other argument made, like the travel ban.


Maybe, just maybe, the issue is very complex originating from religion/cultural/societal/economic conditions, and it can't be fixed by simply making the enemy of an entire group of people because you're literally ignoring 90% of the problem to focus on the 10%

How do you defeat an enemy you don't even try to understand?

 

only 35% would report there friends/family to the police if they thought they had gotten involved with jihadists.
23% think sharia law should supersede british law.
52% think homosexuality should be illegal.
31% think polygamy is good.
39% think that women should always obey there husbands.
35% think jews have too much power.
4% are sympathetic with suicide bombers

UK: What British Muslims Really Think

I'll also link a pew survey, which didn't survey very many muslims in the western world, so its not as relevant, but it still gives some valuable insight -> The World’s Muslims: Religion, Politics and Society

False equivalents. There is nowhere near the same amount of radical christians. If 1/3 of all christians thought that everyone should follow the laws laid down in leviticus, It would be a problem. Any incidents involving "radical christians" are few and far between, aren't part of any organized terrorist group, and "radical christians" aren't destabilizing governments (unless you count George bush ). I don't really care about rhetoric, I care about quantifiable risk, relaxing immigration policies to bring in tens of thousands of immigrants from backwards countries is a risk to us.

Its way more than 10%. I if the group your talking about are the muslims who support throwing gays off buildings, I'm 100% ok with them being my enemies. I don't think all muslims are terrorists or bad people, but I think that the lefts culture towards islam is extremely dangerous and I think that subsidizing tons of these people to move to our country is a good idea. Make them have to go through the same process a european would, and don't subsidize there move, that way we only get the ones who have an education and have enough money to support themselves.

I think its pretty simple. There a bunch of people who's values are antithetical to mine, and a lot of them are willing to kill me to make sure there values are the ones everyone else values.

 

Thanks, considering this is the only single poll quoted here, I did some digging and began looking at the raw data of the survey here. The survey states it asked roughly 1081 muslims these questions, and a control group of roughly 1008

35% of muslims would report etc etc to the cops but it says only 30% of the control group would report the same etc etc.

Oddly enough I cannot find any question in all these pages which asks should Sharia law supercede British law. The closest any question comes to this is: Should areas of Britain be set aside and governed under Sharia law, instead of British Law. To this question: Only 1% answered that they would support this. Can you find the page in the study you are quoting which asks the question you are inferring?

This is really not relevant. I couldn't care less if people want to marry 5 other people, nor is it indicative of any threats towards us.

This one is correct, 15% strongly agree / 24% tend to agree. But again, if we're talking about how Islam is a threat to us - This particular idea poses no threat.

This one is wrong; the question is "Jews have too much control over global affairs" with 5% strongly agree and 5% tend to agree. 10% is not 35%

The question is whether or not suicide bombing to fight injustice - to which 4% agree. This one is fairly complex for a yes/no answer, isn't it? What circumstances are we talking about, because I can certainly see myself becoming a suicide bomber in many circumstances. What if China and Russia invade our country and the only way I could defend my family is by bombing some of their soldiers, even if it means I die as well? You bet you're sweet ass I'll be hooking myself up to some bombs.


Overall - The interpretation of the study is misrepresented and flawed on a study which samples only 1100 people at most. 1100 Muslims living in England does not sway me into painting an entire people with an assumption, sorry.

It's not a false equivalent, because both religions both have the same tendencies. Sure, Christianity doesn't have a massive radical and violent portion, today, where as Islam has both, today. Your inherent argument may be right, but why should I consider it when sweeping generalizations and misguided simplistic ideas are used to back it up? In the current iteration of the argument for - It doesn't make a compelling defense. If we're using the "it might happen!" argument to promote this idea, then we have an entire "it might happen!" list with things that have a far greater likelyhood of happening to deal with first. As an average American, I still have not had a single legitimate fear of being involved in a terrorist attack because it's so statistically unlikely to happen.

Of course the left is just as guilty as the right in polarizing the argument to no relevant end. But again, you said that Muslims hate our values and that's why they kill us, which is not completely true. I suspect a lot of them are just really really poor and have no hope for any economic relief in anyway shape or form - living in a country in ruins after being invaded with local warlords holding the power of life or death over the villages they have control over. Or perhaps a few of them are children of innocent civilians we killed, who knows? My position is: There is a billion reasons why we're dealing with the current wave of islamic terrorism, just like there was a billion reasons Irish terrorism was prevalent in the 90s.

Weird, cause I've never once met a Muslim that had such seething hatred of me that they want to murder me and I've been on this planet quite a bit longer than you.

I never said that we should allow them to kill our children, but to have blind indignation at the fact that invading countries makes enemies, eventually it creates enemies to attack us. We have been meddling in the affairs of Middle Eastern countries for nearly 70 years now, do you honestly expect all of them to just sit back and allow us to do that? Of course not, some of them have decided to strike back, for a million religion/geopolitical reasons.

 

I completely understand your point here--"radical Christians" aren't really posing an active security threat to Western governments. However, radical Christian terrorist groups in the Central African Republic have forced ~10,000 Muslim civilians to flee their homes, because they're burning down Muslim villages, blowing up mosques, etc.--there have even reports of cannibalization.

I'm also sure you've heard of the LRA, the Lord's Resistance Army, that operated in Uganda, Sudan, etc., and was led by Joseph Kony, of Kony 2012 fame. His child soldiers went around shouting bible verses they were forced to memorize before gunning down thousands of civilians at a time.

Also, closer to home, there was the Colorado Springs shooting a while back, where an anti-abortion dude broke into a planned parenthood and shot up the place.


Yes, bringing in tens of thousands of immigrants from backwards countries is a potential risk. However, if you look at many of the recent terrorist attacks, the perpetrators were born in the West to Arab muslim parents. Oftentimes, the parents aren't the ones blowing things up--the kids are. A recent poll showed that 16% of French citizens thought favorably of ISIS, with 27% of those 18-24 favoring ISIS (the numbers decreased with age).

You might be asking why. The parents have fled their home countries, which, like you say, are often devoid of economic opportunity, to Europe in search of jobs. They see how bad life is in their home country, and want to work and support their kids. But for whatever reason, they don't assimilate into European/Western culture. Part of that might be because they don't want to, and perhaps a part of it is that Europeans are hesitant to let them assimilate, instead keeping them in Muslim sections of town. These Muslim parts of town are basically really rough places to grow up--the school systems are always terrible, law enforcement is spotty, and crime is rife. And these children of immigrants are basically growing up in sh*tholes where there's no opportunity, no jobs, and no legal (of course, there's drug trafficking and sex work) money--which makes it MUCH easier for groups like ISIS to spread their propaganda and radicicalize young people. Remember, ISIS thrives in places where people lack hope, promising a better life, salvation, and morality--if you imagine a kid growing up in the conditions I described above, a better life, salvation, and morality is pretty much paradise.

This is a really good read about how hard it often is to assimilate in European cultures, if you're not white.

So all in all, I think that governments really need to do more to encourage cultural assimilation and improve conditions in inner-city areas--this will go very far in decreasing terrorists.

--- Double Post Merged, May 23, 2017, Original Post Date: May 23, 2017 ---

Uh, why exactly? This is a very dangerous idea.