The inevitable end result of our last 56 years

[Kirk Gallaway]

58 minutes ago, Benjamin Cole said:

W-

Please outline for me the foreign-military-trade policy differences between Liz Cheney and Hillary Clinton. Use of a magnifying glass is allowed. 

Also, do you have a verifiable photo of them both in the same room at the same time? 

Thanks

B

About the same  as General Curtis Le Maye, if he were living would be applauding  Ben Cole for his forum "Give me a Ukraine flyover zone, or give WW3"  jingoes. Does that answer your question, Ben?

[Benjamin Cole]

3 hours ago, Paul Brancato said:

So several posters are happy with anyone but Trump. Maybe not ecstatic, but they hasten to point out how much better off the average person is living in the US vs Russia, or how much more pervasive propaganda is there than here, and that I must think it’s equally bad living here. Relativistic thinking, if that is a term. We compare ourselves to Russia and pat ourselves on our backs. If anyone criticizes the Democratic Party, or our mainstream media, the immediate response, as it has been for my whole life, is a variation on ‘if you don’t like it here move to Russia’. What you say is true, but It’s a straw man argument. The fact that Chris Hedges or the rest I’ve mentioned can somehow find a small audience despite being censored because we at least live in a free society is grasping at straws. The only type of imagining we do is to imagine how much worse things could be. 

Paul-

Keep your detached and skeptical views.  I gave up hope on both parties 20-30 years ago. 

Interestingly, new parties have arisen in France. 

Maybe it can happen in the US.

[Benjamin Cole]

Just now, Kirk Gallaway said:

About the same  as General Curtis Le Maye, if he were living would be applauding  Ben Cole for his forum "Give me a Ukraine flyover zone, or give WW3"  jingoes. Does that answer your question, Ben?

I guess you mean Curtis E. LeMay. 

Yes, I believe several kinetic actions would be de-escalatory in Ukraine. 

1. We saw the Russians leave northern Ukraine (Kyiv area) when they began to take heavy losses. 

2. Russian warships have withdrawn from the Ukrainian coast, after a missile sunk their biggest warship. 

3. Putin invaded after Biden promised not to intervene or create an NFZ over Ukraine, and offered Zelensky refuge. Clear signals to a thug like Putin. 

I wish someone could visit Putin, and reason with him to accept withdrawal terms. I only know what I read, but it sure seems like reason, or economic sanctions, will not work with Putin. 

For humanitarian reasons, I wish the war in Ukraine to stop ASAP. I believe in giving Ukraine the tools they need, and in a NFZ, and in warning the Russian ships they can be sunk if they engage in hostilities.  

IMHO, that is the best of bad options.

It may be that Crimea should stay in Putin's hands, as the population there is evidently 90% Russian. 

You have a better plan? Pray tell. 

 

 

[W. Niederhut]

1 hour ago, Benjamin Cole said:

W-

Please outline for me the foreign-military-trade policy differences between Liz Cheney and Hillary Clinton. Use of a magnifying glass is allowed. 

Also, do you have a verifiable photo of them both in the same room at the same time? 

Thanks

B

 

Ben,

I will concede that Hillary Clinton and Liz Cheney are both women, and that they both have short blonde hair.

Perhaps you and Chris, therefore, find them to be more or less identical.   Hee hee... 🤥

At least Chris can be excused for knowing so little about American history and politics.

As for their obvious political differences...

Hillary has supported the Obama/Kerry Iranian nuclear disarmament treaty.  Conversely, Dick Cheney and Rumsfeld very much wanted to expand their disastrous Neocon "War on Terror" to Iran.  Remember the Bush/Cheney "Axis of Evil?"

How about tax policy?  Healthcare policy?  Climate change mitigation?  Environmental protection?

We know Hillary's positions on tax policy, healthcare policy, climate change, and the EPA from her 2016 Presidential platform.

Her positions were diametrically opposed to Cheney-ism on all of those major issues.

The Cheney's have always been major champions of fossil fuels, de-funding the EPA, and Reaganomic supply-side tax cuts for the wealthy (which have largely created our national debt since 1980.)

Remember Dick Cheney's argument with Paul O'Neill about the second round 2003 Bush-Cheney tax cuts-- "Reagan proved deficits don't matter?"  (Did you read Paul O'Neill's The Price of Loyalty?)

IMO, the major reason that the corporate M$M sabotaged Hillary Clinton in 2016-- a well-documented historical fact-- is that she was opposed to Trump's proposed income tax and corporate tax cuts.  In fact, she hinted at possible tax increases on America's plutocrats.

She also supported upgrades in Obamacare, and U.S. participation in the Paris Climate Accords.

I doubt that Liz Cheney supports any of those policies.

Perhaps you can enlighten us.

 

 

Edited April 15, 2022 by W. Niederhut

[Kirk Gallaway]

4 minutes ago, Benjamin Cole said:

I guess you mean Curtis E. LeMay

You guess?? The pronunciation I assume was a bit tricky for you. (Was it May-ee?)      heh heh heh 

You must be an expert, what does the E. stand for?

Remember your nostalgic spin out  on the segway speedway, Ben?, That's Italian,  it's segue.

But you missed the whole point. Irony can also be tricky. And serious discussions about Hilary's domestic policies, I can understand would be trickier still for you Ben.  But to give you some foreign policy forum context, the kick on this forum from the Hilary emasculated is HC and Liz Cheney are super hawks. In reality that case can be made more for Cheney's daughter, but actually once Jeff Carter said positively if Hilary was elected President, she was planning a nuclear attack on both Russia and China while a unique window he  said was open but never explained how it was open!

But you and Curtis E. (and maybe GW) make them look like defense pussycats! There's no telling where this could lead. You can claim credit if we eventually invade and gain the  glorious triumph you foresee. But you're actually counting on an attack that would make Putin give up all the gains he's made, so you're confident you could precipitously push Putin in a corner, make him give up everything , including his position as ruler and  the prospect of being tried as a war criminal, and not strike back??  That's easy to say from the jungles of Thailand with no real knowledge of modern warfare, or weaponry or military strategy in an online world where everyone is an expert. Of course,this has been discussed a lot , and  everyone's entitled to their opinion, we'll leave aside past history but why would any of us pay much attention?, as it seems we don't.

[Benjamin Cole]

56 minutes ago, W. Niederhut said:

 

Ben,

I will concede that Hillary Clinton and Liz Cheney are both women, and that they both have short blonde hair.

Perhaps you and Chris, therefore, find them to be more or less identical.   Hee hee... 🤥

At least Chris can be excused for knowing so little about American history and politics.

As for their obvious political differences...

Hillary has supported the Obama/Kerry Iranian nuclear disarmament treaty.  Conversely, Dick Cheney and Rumsfeld very much wanted to expand their disastrous Neocon "War on Terror" to Iran.  Remember the Bush/Cheney "Axis of Evil?"

How about tax policy?  Healthcare policy?  Climate change mitigation?  Environmental protection?

We know Hillary's positions on tax policy, healthcare policy, climate change, and the EPA from her 2016 Presidential platform.

Her positions were diametrically opposed to Cheney-ism on all of those major issues.

The Cheney's have always been major champions of fossil fuels, de-funding the EPA, and Reaganomic supply-side tax cuts for the wealthy (which have largely created our national debt since 1980.)

Remember Dick Cheney's argument with Paul O'Neill about the second round 2003 Bush-Cheney tax cuts-- "Reagan proved deficits don't matter?"  (Did you read Paul O'Neill's The Price of Loyalty?)

IMO, the major reason that the corporate M$M sabotaged Hillary Clinton in 2016-- a well-documented historical fact-- is that she was opposed to Trump's proposed income tax and corporate tax cuts.  In fact, she hinted at possible tax increases on America's plutocrats.

She also supported upgrades in Obamacare, and U.S. participation in the Paris Climate Accords.

I doubt that Liz Cheney supports any of those policies.

Perhaps you can enlighten us.

 

 

Hillary the Hawk

Despite Hillary Clinton’s reputation as a liberal, the record suggests her presidency would push America toward a more militaristic approach to the Middle East.

By Stephen Zunes

Winter 2016

Despite being an icon for many liberals and an anathema to the Republican right, former U.S. Senator and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s positions on the Middle East have more closely resembled those of the latter than the former. Her hawkish views go well beyond her strident support for the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 and subsequent occupation and counter-insurgency war. From Afghanistan to Western Sahara, she has advocated for military solutions to complex political problems, backed authoritarian allies and occupying armies, dismissed war crimes, and opposed political involvement by the United Nations and its agencies. TIME magazine’s Michael Crowley aptly summed up her State Department record in 2014:

As Secretary of State, Clinton backed a bold escalation of the Afghanistan war. She pressed Obama to arm the Syrian rebels, and later endorsed airstrikes against the Assad regime. She backed intervention in Libya, and her State Department helped enable Obama’s expansion of lethal drone strikes. In fact, Clinton may have been the administration’s most reliable advocate for military action. On at least three crucial issues—Afghanistan, Libya, and the bin Laden raid—Clinton took a more aggressive line than [Secretary of Defense Robert] Gates, a Bush-appointed Republican.

https://www.thecairoreview.com/essays/hillary-the-hawk/

There's more. 

I think a Hillary-Liz ticket is a live option in 2022. 

 

[Guest]

2 hours ago, W. Niederhut said:

I will concede that Hillary Clinton and Liz Cheney are both women

Aren’t you a supporter of the party where “gender” and “biology” don’t exist? How can they both be women? Hehe 

 

2 hours ago, W. Niederhut said:

At least Chris can be excused for knowing so little about American history and politics.

Cheers - I am read back about as far as Alexander Hamilton but, I see what you mean, how could a “foreigner” possibly understand US politics and history, even as short as it is?! Perhaps you’re right, the rest of the world is scratching their heads about how you get Trump and Biden as the best candidates in a country of 320 million people?! Either the system is corrupt, dysfunctional or there is a real absence of talent and younger people with functional minds. The rest of the world watches on and shakes their heads.  It’s an embarrassment, whilst China waits in the wings.

 

 

[Benjamin Cole]

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/21/magazine/the-myth-of-the-hacker-proof-voting-machine.html

The Myth of the Hacker-Proof Voting Machine--The New York Times Magazine 

By Kim Zetter

Feb. 21, 2018

In 2011, the election board in Pennsylvania’s Venango County — a largely rural county in the northwest part of the state — asked David A. Eckhardt, a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon University, to examine its voting systems. In municipal and state primaries that year, a few voters had reported problems with machines ‘‘flipping’’ votes; that is, when these voters touched the screen to choose a candidate, the screen showed a different candidate selected. Errors like this are especially troubling in counties like Venango, which uses touch-screen voting machines that have no backup paper trail; once a voter casts a digital ballot, if the machine misrecords the vote because of error or maliciousness, there’s little chance the mistake will be detected.

---30---

So, in 2018 it was said voting machines could be hacked. This does not mean the 2020 election was rigged.

Nevertheless, is remarkable that this issue, raised prominently in the NYT magazine in 2018...is no longer PC to talk about. You are not allowed to believe elections can be rigged.

You were encouraged to believe voting machines could be "hacked" in 2018, and then such talk was banned (literally, in the case of social media platforms) in 2021.  

Worth pondering. 

 

[W. Niederhut]

9 hours ago, Benjamin Cole said:

 

I think a Hillary-Liz ticket is a live option in 2022. 

 

Ben,

     That would be a real nightmare for Trumplican misogynists, eh?  But don't worry.   It will never happen.  For one thing, there is no Presidential election in 2022.  🤥

     Cheney and Clinton are in quite disparate political camps on most major policy issues, as I explained to you above.

      My hunch is that you are keeping an "open mind," and the facts I posted for you about major policy differences between Hillary and Liz Cheney went in one of your ears and out the other, as always.  You still seem to imagine that there are no substantial differences between the Koch-bought GOP and the Democratic Party.*

      As for Hillary's "hawkishness," you're not telling me anything I haven't known for the past decade.  Sadly, she went along with the Neocon game plan in the Middle East from 2009-13, to a point.  It was her only flawed policy stance in 2016, in comparison with the blathering Orange Booby.  Of course "policy" for Trump was always, ultimately, based on bribes and kick backs from wealthy donors and tycoons, foreign and domestic.

      Have you figured out yet where Hillary stood on the issue of war with Iran, compared to the Cheney/Rumsfeld/Neocon brain trust?

* Opinion | The G.O.P. Is Still the Party of Plutocrats - The New York Times (nytimes.com)

 

[Douglas Caddy]

Two nuclear bombs?

Ukraine war: Fears Moskva warship was carrying nuclear weapons when it sank | Daily Mail Online

 

[Kirk Gallaway]

Ben: So then I point out holes in your military strategy and you go back to Hilary Clinton!

Let me tell you the truth about Hilary Clinton you're  going to hear nowhere else. Just imagine your situation living  in Thailand and yet your privy to this information! Hilary Clinton on policy foreign has always been a manicured centrist! She had been meticulously dotting ever "I" and crossing every "t" to run for President for 16 years!, never doing anything that, to the mainstream was controversial.

I'm not a big fan of Hilary's foreign policy. Hilary did vote for GW's war in Iraq. It was for that  reason, I voted for Barack Obama who was against the war, over Hilary in 2008. It's a solid reason to not vote for Hilary, if you choose. But really politically it was a very calculated, prudent move from someone aspiring to run for President who was serving in the Senate in 2004. She could ride Bush's coat tails if he was successful, ( because no one knew how it was going  to turn out) and disavow it and say she was supporting the country in time of crisis after 911 if he wasn't. You and I won't forgive her but most people will.

I would say her worst infraction listed in your article turned out to be Libya , where we ended up supporting taking out Khadaffy ( don't correct me on spelling) and throwing the country into a disorderly tailspin for years. Still it's nothing that any mainstream Republican wouldn't have done at the time. It's very calculated. Hilary won't position herself to the right of any Republican in foreign policy!

All those incidents of Hilary's hawkishness in a subordinate position cited in your article Ben, are small potatoes.They've been warning about this confrontation with Russia over Europe for 60 years.  Stop this peacenik crap Ben! You and Curtis Lemay E.  are way to the right of Hilary Clinton on this critical issue! There's your proof to what I'm saying about Hilary being a centrist. You haven't heard  Hilary spout anything near your aggressive posturing on this, at least yet.

My guess is that when push came to shove you were also in favor of Bush's War in Iraq, and maybe would have switched if things didn't go right. The Republican Party did not criticize the War in Iraq for over a decade until Trump took it up against Jeb in the 2016 primaries, which finally gave Republicans an excuse to saying they're against it. I don't see any consistency in you from your early repetitive references to the U.S. military "Deep State" (which has become such a trite term!) and then now jumping on to your super Hawk position in Ukraine.

******

W:At least Chris can be excused for knowing so little about American history and politics.

I agree with W. Chris. You are excused, now run along!

heh heh heh heh heh        It's a joke Chris! Do we really have to hear back from you about it? 

[Douglas Caddy]

Moscova being towed for repairs after being hit by Ukrainian guided missiles. It sank to the bottom of the Black Sea soon after this photo was taken.

 

 

 

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Kirk Gallaway said:

It's a joke Chris! Do we really have to hear back from you about it? 

 

It’s not like you to be funny 🙂 

I was thinking about 99% of your citizens don’t understand it. The 1% are the ones who know it inside out, that’s very clear from abroad. Maybe that’s why Ben gets it. 🤷‍♂️ 

Anyway, happy Easter, if you’re still allowed to celebrate that out there. 

[Douglas Caddy]

The sinking of the Russian Black Sea Fleet flagship “Moskva” (Moscow) is a major development which has shocked Naval experts.

The 611 foot cruiser was the third largest vessel in Russia's fleet and one of its most heavily defended assets. 8 key points from the BBC World Service:

1) “Moskva” had an advanced radar system crucial for anti-air support for the entire Black Sea fleet.

2) Russia has only three tier 1 naval vessels, and now there are none in the Black Sea. It’s a disaster for them.

3) Turkey will not let new Russian vessels enter the Black Sea, so it's not possible to replace the Moskva.

4) The flagship had an elite crew of over 500 sailors and only 54 appear to have been rescued.

5) There is also a morale and public impact. A large ship named Moscow has been sunk.

For a similar public relations reason, the Nazis changed the name of the heavy cruiser “Deutschland” to “Lützow” in 1940.

6) The sinking is a real surprise because Moskva was equipped with a triple-tiered air defense system.

That should have given it three opportunities to defend itself from the Neptune missile attack.

The Moskva system can fire 5,000 rounds in a minute, essentially creating a wall of flak around the cruiser. Why the Ukrainian missiles got through is a real mystery.

7) This is the biggest Russian/Soviet navy setback since the loss of “Marat” in 1941.

8 ) The missile strike raises serious questions about the effectiveness of the modernization of Russia's entire fleet.

 

 

 

 

[Michael Crane]

1 hour ago, Douglas Caddy said:

Moscova being towed for repairs after being hit by Ukrainian guided missiles. It sank to the bottom of the Black Sea soon after this photo was taken.

 

 

 

Douglas this looks like a John Deere tractor out in the water.