The phrase “President Hillary” has a strange sound to it.
But other than Supreme Court appointments, we may as well have elected her.
Let’s count the ways.
- Hillary would be going after Russia
- Hillary would be going after China
- Hillary would send more troops to Afghanistan
- Hillary would not scrap Obamacare, but neither did the Republicans
- Hillary would not overhaul the tax code and it appears neither will Trump
- Hillary would want to take away gun rights, but it would never pass Congress.
- Hillary would want more of your tax dollars, but huge tax hikes would not pass Congress either.
- Hillary would have scrapped the Trans-Pacific Trade Partnership (at least she claims she would have).
Let’s hone in on point number 3.
Hillary Clinton, Senator John McCain, and Senator Lindsey Graham are three of the biggest warmongers on the planet. Yesterday, Trump joined the group.
Candidate Trump said, “After 16 years – the longest war in US history – no one even remembers what we are fighting for in Afghanistan. The war is over. Not another American (or innocent Afghan) life for one of the most convoluted and idiotic wars in history!“
After 16 years, and trillions of dollars wasted, today Trump says “a few thousand more troops would help the US break the current stalemate against the Taliban.”
Trump also stated US support “is not a blank check.” Really? What else do you call perpetual war?
This is sadly funny: CNN reports: Trump argued his plan has a key difference from that of his predecessor: no timelines on the withdrawal of US troops.
That’s not a blank check?
Lindsey Graham Praises Trump
MarketWatch reports Lindsey Graham’s spirited defense of Trump White House’s ‘solid plan’ for Afghanistan.
After the president’s speech at Fort Myer in Virginia on the military strategy for Afghanistan, Senator Graham had this to say: “To my colleagues in Congress, you will own a “no” vote. The next 9/11 will be your fault, not President Trump’s fault, if you shoot down this plan, because this is a solid plan.”
Pardon me for pointing out the similarities between Trump’s Afghanistan plan and the “domino theory” leading up to the Vietnam War.
For further discussion, ZeroHedge has an excellent article: Ron Paul Institute Statement On Trump’s Afghanistan Speech.
Transformation of Trump
For all the pissing and moaning about the need to “dump Trump”, here’s the sorry truth:
Hello president Hillary.
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
Hillary would have also gone after Assad, the same guy trying to kill off ISIS in Syria.
Max Abraham had probably the correct take in that Trump knows he can’t win in Afghanistan but leaving would create the same power vacuum that happend in Iraq.
Trying to win a war of attrition in that God forsaken region is a lost cause.
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A couple or more of points;
1) Without the military support, Trump is at least gone or dead because everybody in DC hates him. If the military says; we good with The Don, he will stay. That’s our only hope.
2) If we leave Afga, it’s going to become again an hotbed for terrorism, absolutely.
3) Vitrification and further gasification of Afga is the only solution (MOAB was only a square of sugar on the problem). I don’t know their strategy since they don’t divulgue it. But I must say they are right about that.
We’ll see what they do, in the meantime I don’t think there was a better decision.
4) We’ll certainly wanker with this for eons because we don’t want to admit that this is a clash of civilization vs barbarism. If we don’t show utter dominance to barbarism, it will end badly because demography is not on our side.
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It is an unwinnable war. They are for the most part stuck in the middle ages. Se are trying to make Afghanistan something it has never been. President Trump has back tracked on everything Candidate Trump said…LOL..People should not look for a messiah in people who run for office.
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If we cannot win, it is because we REFUSE to win.
If we are to recognize and admit that we absolutely lack the willingness to do what is required to win, then we should destroy all weapons and commit ourselves to absolute pacifism, surrendering to any and all demands placed upon us.
It is folly to believe we can indefinitely subdue our enemies with empty threats.
. The world has no fear of America as it knows NOTHING will be done beyond what benefits political corruption. North Korea knows how to play the game. But Trump has changed the equation. They have no idea what he might do. The media plays up his mental instabilities for their own agenda, but the rest of the world just doesn’t know what he might do.
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What a stupid, unqualified remark you’ve made. Refuse to win? Explain to the audience here your boots on the ground experience. Give us the details on how you have been an eyewitness to the efforts expended. Cat got your tongue? Yeah, right. You’re just another keyboard kommando with a totally unqualified opinion – and no real world experience. You stupid motherfucker. The rest of your screed was just as stupid as the first – and not worth responding to.
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“They are for the most part stuck in the middle ages. Se are trying to make Afghanistan something it has never been.”
http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/women-of-afghanistan-then-and-now-pictures-that-show-how-life-went-horribly-wrong/1/425338.html
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There is certainly no possibility of “winning” if no one in charge can precisely define what that means. Killing every last adversary hidden under every last rock is not achievable, so I sure as heck hope that is not the objective.
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That’s the only way this will ever end.
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If that is the *only* way this will ever end, then why not break out the nukes right now? Sheesh.
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Did we kill every Japanese or German?
War is about killing the will to fight, and that usually occurs by killing soldiers and the people who support them. By that definition we have soundly been defeated, as we have in every other conflict since WWII.
The war we should be worried about is another civil war. If we thought our first was bloody, it will not hold a candle to the next one. We see it in the streets now. People are being attacked for SPEAKING.
I have no idea how we escape this vortex circling the drain. We can no longer fight any war, except our own against our brother.
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The modern definition of “war crimes” precisely forbids what you advocate, or more explicitly “and the people who support them” clause.
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Madashell, since you appear to be replying to my comment, I feel I need to clarify it. I *do not* think making Afghanistan and all of its people glow in the dark is a good solution. The “Sheesh” at the end was meant to indicate that the preceding sentence was filled with sarcasm and disagreement.
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Like any other “war” in Afghanistan, this one will end once the aspiring occupier is sufficiently broken to realize he should never have gone there to begin with. Then the Afghans, as always, will go back to their second favorite passtime (second to fighting an intruder): Fighting each other. Until then, Lindsey the Poof and various dimbulbs-in-chief will keep wasting other people’s lives and treasure pretending, yet again, that this particular imaginary hobgoblin, is even scarier than all the other imaginary hobgoblins they have been trying to scare their captive indoctrinati with, for as long as their useless little selves have been ruining lives and wasting oxygen.
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It’s the world’s largest producer of heroin. Just being Afghanistan’s neighbor has caused Iran to have the greatest addiction epidemic on Earth.
When will it “be over”? Well, in dependency lingo, it’s over everyday. For somebody.
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You know, it’s a good thing we stayed there, because the Taliban had nearly eradicated the cultivation of poppies and production heroin before we arrived on the scene.
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1. TPTB would be going after Russia
2. would be going after China
3. Hillary would send more troops to Afghanistan
4. Hillary would not scrap Obamacare, but neither did the Republicans
5. Hillary would not overhaul the tax code and it appears neither will Trump
6. Hillary would want to take away gun rights, but it would never pass Congress.
7. Hillary would want more of your tax dollars, but huge tax hikes would not pass Congress either.
8. Hillary would have scrapped the Trans-Pacific Trade Partnership (at least she claims she would have).
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TPTB get everything they want…. Everytime, one way or another. The end justifies the means.
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What this proves to me that we, the People, have no chance at ever electing an outsider to the White House again. All you will see run for POTUS are tried and true swamp dwellers. No one outside the ranks of DC’s favorite sons and daughters would ever put themselves (and their families) though what Trump has gone through.
Short of a full-on economic meltdown – I can’t think of any force that would drain the swamp – and there’s some real doubt even that would do it.
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“We the people” just have to wise up, and stop acting like a bunch of well indoctrinated yahoos, dumb enough time and time again, fall for the childish nonsense that government, of all things, is some sort of useful institution.
All it would have taken, was nominating and electing Ron Paul, along with congress critters he endorsed, when he ran; twice in a row! It ain’t that hard! While he, even with a meaningful part of congress beholden to him, still may have had a hard time getting everything he wanted through; there would have been no bailouts, no wars, and at least a very serious push to abolish the income tax and the Fed. To be replaced by nothing. Not by even more insidious sales taxes, vat and direct congressional influence over money creation. Compared to the ever more entrenched dystopia we live in today, that sure sounds like quite the paradise.
But instead “we the people” elect Lindsey the Poof, Rino McCan’t and Tweetie the Orange Toupee. And then wonder why things aren’t looking too chipper………
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Maybe that’s what’s coming in October… We have to see if Trump can offend enough people where there can be no compromise on the raising of the debt ceiling.
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Trump’s position on Afghanistan disappointed me. He campaigned on exiting Afghanistan and focusing on domestic problems. It hurt his credibility.
About the only support Trump has is from the military and the defense industry. All the others are chomping at the bit to bring him down. So he probably figures that he can’t afford to alienate his only support base in government. But he knows full well that he violated his campaign commitment to those who voted him into office.
You can’t really blame Trump for failing to repeal Obamacare or to push through tax reform. Blame the Senate Republicans. Blame Ryan and McConnell.
As far as Russia goes – congress voted overwhelmingly to sanction Russia and would have easily overridden a veto from Trump. His veto would have been futile and only fueled more conspiracy theories of being in bed with Putin while the Mueller investigation is in progress.
Trump understands that the swamp is so vast and deep that draining it is pure fantasy. He would drown in the swamp long before it went dry.
Trump is in Phoenix tonight and will address the immigration problem. Let’s see what he has to say.
Still, there’s no question that Trump is head and shoulders above Hillary. She would’ve been a total disaster. And for that reason I still stand proud by my vote for Trump.
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Trump over Hillary, no doubt. I will feel that way until enemies of Trump mysteriously start turning up dead and Trump gives a speech in front of Congress saying, “What difference does at this point does it make [why our people were killed abroad]?”
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He campaigned on a lot of things, and most of them were outright lies, which we are learning every week.
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Don’t make stuff up.
Trump is only one man. There’s only so much he can get done alone. Just because the Senate shot down the Obamacare repeal doesn’t mean that he didn’t do his part to reform it.
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The crux of the argument often returns to “Better than hrc” . That to me rings very true, except for the possibility that she might have brought on a decisive end to her own direction, which even then would likely have been a very negative experience for everyone.
What I am saying though, is that people have to get out of thinking in those terms, just have to. They have a president and congess that is “theirs”, now, this one time. If they want to do something except complain, they have to fuel the ideals they voted him in for.
#realTrump or #pullTrumpfromtheswamp or #thiswayTrump are just oversimplifications of the idea… give Trump something to work with instead of expecting him to sort everything out by himself, it is too easy to leave someone to make their mistakes and sit there criticising them…#werehereTrump or
#wereresponsibleforyouberesponsibleforus
and
#anyotherthingyoucanfigurewouldmakeagoodhashtagcovfefeetcyougettheideaithinkifnotwellmaybeitshouldsaysomethingelseidontknowyoudecide
At the least it would get people reforming their positions constructively. If they understood the alternatives that might be foisted on them (apart from hrc) they would be quicker to act.
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Trump has faced more resistance to do ANYTHING than any president in history I think, and I believe that for the people who have orchestrated this petrified government to accuse Trump of getting nothing accomplished is nothing more than ignorant BRAGGING. For Trump to commit 3500 troops to Afghanistan seems pretty much a small thing policy wise, but what we seem to be willing ignoring is Iraq….how it descended into hell with our pullout, that the massive immigrant flow was a direct result of this enabled ISIS disaster, and how Trump’s policies seem to have resulted in significant improvements in a relatively short time (admittedly fighting against the JV team). I think that this is yet another talking point attack based upon some fake notion of “principle” while deliberately ignoring reality. Obama was responsible for the failure of Iraq and lots of deaths of US soldiers in Afghanistan with a SILENT response. Trump reverses his campaign pledges on this after seeing no other alternatives, and he is deficient. It’s hard to understand how we want people to recognize their mistakes, yet try to destroy them when they do. Trump at least admitted he had changed his mind on this, and did not attempt to pretend he never said it, but yet even still he is evil and a liar. I guess the only reversal on admitted mistakes that is acceptable, is one that supports our opinion. Hypocrisy most definitely is NOT reserved for our politicians.
WE DESERVE EVERYTHING WE GET.
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Get a life.
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While your point are certainly valid, I’d respectfully submit that for most presidents appointing justices is the most consequential thing they ever do.
And on that point, President Trump is infinitely preferable to the Clinton Crime Syndicate.
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Trump paid off the insurance companies to keep the ACA alive. So much for that promise.
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Right on Amish!
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Interesting thing about people and their politicians. Yes, Trump is no longer an outsider but a politician. If that politician is their “Jesus’ then everything they do is holy and we make excuses left and right for them. If the politician is their “devil” then we blame all our wrongs on them and nothing they do is right…You will now get 4 more years of the same. Enjoy.
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Disappointing, yes – but should not be shocking to anyone who recognizes the current situation for what it actually is.
This so-called “government” cannot be reformed. It will continue to run its present, terminal, irredeemable course until it can no longer. When that occurs is anybody’s guess. It could be any time. So prepare yourselves accordingly.
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The only way to win in Afghanistan is to follow the ways of the old warlords.
We would need to subjugate the native population and move our own people into the country to take over all power positions. And we would have to have license to freely kill any one who complained or refused to be subjugated.
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Hi friends This is to testify it is 4 . 43 am in France and instead of sleeping I am watching Trump speech/ rally in Arizona
It is great !! I am fed up with antifa violence round the world especially in Europe those thugs are nothing but socialists and neo communists
The antifa gangsters are against capitalism as they are eager to rob us
Racism is bad so then why mainstream media never talk about zimbabwwe state where white farmers are killed and about Mugane dictatorship
Why do mainstream media never talk about Maduro communist dictatorship like Castro in Cuba ?
Hopefully Trump will make a second term for the free world needs it to clean it from leftists and so on
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In Venezuela there is Maduro socialist dictatorship weakening the country as more and more citizens have to flee what a shame ….
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Spot on Mish! I’m sending a copy to the President and both Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh. I doubt any will respond.
Packysite.
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Afghanistan is a non issue – the coming debt ceiling vote is the main event. How can anyone agree with Trump after labelling him a White Supremist? Trump had to throw the military a bone, they’re going to have his back when shut hits the fan.
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I suspect in the future ‘Kabuki Theater’ will be referred to as ‘Debt Ceiling Theater’
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In the USA the antifas are attacking statues yes innocent statues like in Baltimore I read it on the internet of Christopher Colombus
As all the leftists and socialists they are not tolerant they are totalitarian regimes supporters
so they would like to erase the past and make history meet their fantasies
Republican american citizens or europeans should stand up to defend their historical monuments their history and their way of life
Say no to socialist dictatorship !! say no to antifas viloence !!
Proud to be capitalist !!
Law and order should prevail in the streets of the richest countryu in the world with full employment
Democrats should tell antifas and leftists not to be lazy but to go back to work as to make America great again
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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4814024/Now-want-tear-Nelson-s-Column.html
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The practical benefit is the savings of a few quid on pigeon control.
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If you don’t like our pretend election
You can keep your Trump
But we still run the country
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Mish; What is so good about rightwing bias on the Supreme court??
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I expect some badly needed anti-public union rulings
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So “today Trump says “a few thousand more troops would help the US break the current stalemate against the Taliban.””
Yee haw! Worked for LBJ against the Vietcong. USA,USA,USA!
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You don’t have a nationwide live tv broadcast to announce +4000 troops after 16 years in this quagmire, this was Donald’s Gulf of Tonkin announcement, there will be a major redeployments to Afgan. Military pros know you can’t win a war from the air, you need troops to take and occupy territory. Time to reactivate Joe the Plumber. (Maybe they’ll reactivate units from “sanctuary” states that Hillary carried)
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Trump’s a joke, tell me something that wasn’t obvious from his very first campaign rally.
You got what you voted for, Mish.
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Reblogged this on World4Justice : NOW! Lobby Forum..
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Dear Hillary Shedlock,
Your exaggeration and hyperbole has reached Trumpian proportion. Hillary would not have gone after Russia nor China, not with Bill getting 2 million a pop for speeches there under her tenure as POTUS.
In fact, anyone paying up would have had the full faith and credit of the USGovt.
Taxes would have definitely gone up on anyone left making a living in the overground economy. Either directly or through Weimar type inflation, you don’t even need to print it anymore.
The guns issue, carefully crafted legislation following “random” “matters” would have politically swayed the issue.
So, unless Trump’s troops show some real “SHOCK AND AWE” that will be the only part that you are correct on.
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With the left, it is always the race card or the sex card. Smear Smear Smear. I’m sickened by all of this. Damaged as he is, he is still 1000% better than Hellary.
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General Mattis exterminated ISIS fighters in only seven months. Afghanistan is an easy nut to crack without a fifth column imbecile transvestite president.
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