CU77 wrote: ↑Mon Dec 14, 2020 2:02 pm
So, contra your new sig, opposing China no longer matters?
I'm so confused ...
You picked up on that, too, didya?
I can tell you exactly what Old Salt's position is: whatever Biden's position on both China and Russia is in the coming weeks? That's the wrong position.
And that's all you need to know.
...good point. I need to update now that it's no longer being implied (at least recently) that I'm a Russian secret agent.
FTR -- I was the USS Midway Battle Group's Senior Shore Patrol Officer (ashore) in Hong Kong for New Year's Eve 1977.
The deal I'll make with you, OS? I won't give you a word of grief about your changing tune when Biden takes office. Clean slate. No 'you didn't say that when Trump did it". I'll just let it allllll go.
So that gives me a few more weeks of hassling!
Wow. Did you like Hong Kong? What the heck was that city like in 1977? Can't even imagine!
We're in the middle of arranging distribution to HK. American whiskey is big there just now, and my brother likes the city...so...
As for me? I can't stomach a 12 hour flight. So I'll be handling the UK and EU for the foreseeable future! Shorter flight...and one of my biggest weaknesses is that I can't handle spicy food. Meaning: scoville units. So as much as I'd like to travel to the PacRim? I likely couldn't handle anything other than rice. It's SO sad to be that guy---the American who can't handle spice. Price I pay for a sensitive spirits palate, I guess!
a fan wrote: ↑Mon Dec 14, 2020 4:27 pm
Wow. Did you like Hong Kong? What the heck was that city like in 1977? Can't even imagine!
We're in the middle of arranging distribution to HK. American whiskey is big there just now, and my brother likes the city...so...
As for me? I can't stomach a 12 hour flight. So I'll be handling the UK and EU for the foreseeable future! Shorter flight...and one of my biggest weaknesses is that I can't handle spicy food. Meaning: scoville units. So as much as I'd like to travel to the PacRim? I likely couldn't handle anything other than rice. It's SO sad to be that guy---the American who can't handle spice. Price I pay for a sensitive spirits palate, I guess!
Hong Kong was magic then. Just like in the movies. It was wide open. The entire Midway Battle Carrier Group was in HK for both Xmas & NY. The US Navy was welcomed with open arms then, in both HK & Taiwan. We could also visit Macao on leave.
For that HK visit, my wife was among a large gaggle of wives from the ship & air wing who flew down from Japan to join us.
She was able to tag along with me on Shore Patrol duty & loved it. We were welcomed into every bar & hotel.
Celebrated New Year's with a bunch of happy sailors & officers. Helped keep a few out of trouble.
Marveled at the ability of my [SP] Chiefs & Petty Officers to get all hands back to their ships unharmed & uncharged.
The HK Police were hands off & a pleasure to work with. The merchants & hospitality industry staffs loved us.
Along with Taiwan, I never felt as genuinely welcome anywhere.
Get over there & check it out before it changes, while you still can.
Island hop to break up the long flight. Layover for a day or two in HI each way.
Check out Japan, S Korea & Taiwan along the way.
Lots of mild food options too. Do the soups & noodles.
old salt wrote: ↑Mon Dec 14, 2020 5:09 pm
Lots of mild food options too. Do the soups & noodles.
My son did an LREC in Vietnam, ate a bunch of soups and noodles, but also had some their homemade spirits...which seem to always be in clear bottles with no labels...he said his favorite had a purple tint to it, had no clue what it was. While sitting at the bar, in the community snack bowls, are salted crickets....he said those were quite tasty actually. They then go to a fun little dinner party in the local community, dance the night away, drinking Vietnamese beer...he heads to bed and this wave hits in the shadows of the night. Mind you, no A/C, hotel is unlike here in the states with a community bathroom down the hall....one that he can not find in the dark, and with a sleeping alcohol stupor in effect, and that 'wave' we've all had. Makes it to the restroom, only to learn they have no toilets, you squat over a hole. I will spare the graphic details of what happened next, but it was not pretty.
I'd say the LREC was a huge success....he said he would love to go back. He also picked up two custom tailored suits, belts, and shoes, for under $200 US dollars.
A fraudulent intent, however carefully concealed at the outset, will generally, in the end, betray itself.
~Livy
CU77 wrote: ↑Mon Dec 14, 2020 2:02 pm
So, contra your new sig, opposing China no longer matters?
I'm so confused ...
You picked up on that, too, didya?
I can tell you exactly what Old Salt's position is: whatever Biden's position on both China and Russia is in the coming weeks? That's the wrong position.
And that's all you need to know.
...good point. I need to update now that it's no longer being implied (at least recently) that I'm a Russian secret agent.
FTR -- I was the USS Midway Battle Group's Senior Shore Patrol Officer (ashore) in Hong Kong for New Year's Eve 1977.
"secret agent"?...did we imply that?
Russian shill maybe, Russian troll maybe (well, not really)...'useful idiot'...well, there are worse...
a fan is probably more correct, whatever Biden says and does, we'll then know your position....Biden's being the wrong one.
So...the only incursions into government agencies that get reported on are the Russian ones? The Chinese ones get covered up?
Obviously we shouldn't be bothered by the Russians penetrating the Pentagon, Homeland security, Treasury, State, the White House...who cares, they're a second rate power...
CU77 wrote: ↑Mon Dec 14, 2020 2:02 pm
So, contra your new sig, opposing China no longer matters?
I'm so confused ...
You picked up on that, too, didya?
I can tell you exactly what Old Salt's position is: whatever Biden's position on both China and Russia is in the coming weeks? That's the wrong position.
And that's all you need to know.
...good point. I need to update now that it's no longer being implied (at least recently) that I'm a Russian secret agent.
FTR -- I was the USS Midway Battle Group's Senior Shore Patrol Officer (ashore) in Hong Kong for New Year's Eve 1977.
"secret agent"?...did we imply that?
Russian shill maybe, Russian troll maybe (well, not really)...'useful idiot'...well, there are worse...
a fan is probably more correct, whatever Biden says and does, we'll then know your position....Biden's being the wrong one.
So...the only incursions into government agencies that get reported on are the Russian ones? The Chinese ones get covered up?
Obviously we shouldn't be bothered by the Russians penetrating the Pentagon, Homeland security, Treasury, State, the White House...who cares, they're a second rate power...
That's OK. I can understand why you are an apologist for the Chinese Communists. The Russians make a useful diversion.
The Russians were once our allies. After Putin departs, they could be again (just like other nations we've defeated). The EUros see that. They'e realistic enough to endure the Russian interference, counter it, & push back in proportion (while hiding behind US troops). They don't blame everything on a Russian boogeyman.
The Chinese were once our allies too, but those remaining Chinese allies are trapped on Formosa & in Hong Kong. Prospects for a rapprochement with the Chinese Communists are not good, unless done on their terms. They have a huge head start on infiltrating our economy, many of our institutions & centers of power.
Russia was broke & contained until Obama's failed reset. Then we questioned Putin's legitimacy, fomented another color revolution in Ukraine which imperiled Russia's Black Sea Fleet base in Crimea, then we were surprised when they annexed Crimea with no resistance from Ukraine.
It fell to Trump to provide the lethal military assistance necessary to prevent a further invasion of Ukraine & to contain Russia in the Baltics.
Trump also had to contain the Russians in Syria after Obama invited them in to bail him out on his line in the sand threat. After lighting the fuse on the Arab Spring, Obama pulled out, leaving the door to the ME open for Russia, so long as they supported JCPOA. Meanwhile, AQ flourished & IS emerged. Biden was a part of all that & he's bringing back the team who did it. Let's see what they learned in the 4 years Trump was cleaning up their mess.
old salt wrote: ↑Mon Dec 14, 2020 5:09 pm
=Get over there & check it out before it changes, while you still can.
Island hop to break up the long flight. Layover for a day or two in HI each way.
Check out Japan, S Korea & Taiwan along the way.
Lots of mild food options too. Do the soups & noodles.
Wonderful advice...hadn't thought about Hawaii...thanks!
ABV 8.3% wrote: ↑Tue Dec 15, 2020 2:32 pm
To be clear, old salt. US Senator Mitchell m=CC2onL2, aka Mr. CHow, is Secretary of Transportation the good kind of friend from China, or not?
Trump did apppoint her, just like Cheney/Shrub did, no?
the only good communist is the one that owns my stock.......or bond. Or lets me trade in child slavery. karma's a friend ,eh Mr. Jobs
Voices across the foreign-policy spectrum have called attention to how self-dealing, fraud, and corruption threaten U.S. national and international security, eroding faith in private and public institutions, diverting resources from productive to unproductive ends, and undermining the trust needed for markets to work and governments to work together.
But at the same time, figures like Anna Chennault, while helping themselves, also helped usher in a more peaceful, globalized world, in which international disputes have mostly been subordinated to business as usual and hundreds of millions of people have left poverty behind—even as inequality has grown to staggering heights in both China and the United States. Whether they have done more good than bad depends on partisan filters and ideological priors. Liberals have long believed that the pursuit of material interests, however vulgar, serves to dampen the prejudicial passions that can yield conflict. Yet as the Western and Chinese elites have socialized in corporate settings like McKinsey & Company, Harvard Business School, and the Brookings Institution, where Xi Jinping’s nephew served as an intern, a chasm has opened up between nationalist rhetoric and international business.
Whether you want to re-up George Kennan’s containment for the 21st century or work with Beijing to address climate change, how to bridge that chasm requires serious thought. The increasingly flagrant abuses of laws against the use of public office for private gain, the Hatch Act, and the emoluments clause of the Constitution are national security threats of the first degree. The normalization of financial ties between the elites of both the United States and China is not just a moral challenge, but a security issue.
CU77 wrote: ↑Mon Dec 14, 2020 2:02 pm
So, contra your new sig, opposing China no longer matters?
I'm so confused ...
You picked up on that, too, didya?
I can tell you exactly what Old Salt's position is: whatever Biden's position on both China and Russia is in the coming weeks? That's the wrong position.
And that's all you need to know.
...good point. I need to update now that it's no longer being implied (at least recently) that I'm a Russian secret agent.
FTR -- I was the USS Midway Battle Group's Senior Shore Patrol Officer (ashore) in Hong Kong for New Year's Eve 1977.
"secret agent"?...did we imply that?
Russian shill maybe, Russian troll maybe (well, not really)...'useful idiot'...well, there are worse...
a fan is probably more correct, whatever Biden says and does, we'll then know your position....Biden's being the wrong one.
So...the only incursions into government agencies that get reported on are the Russian ones? The Chinese ones get covered up?
Obviously we shouldn't be bothered by the Russians penetrating the Pentagon, Homeland security, Treasury, State, the White House...who cares, they're a second rate power...
That's OK. I can understand why you are an apologist for the Chinese Communists. The Russians make a useful diversion.
The Russians were once our allies. After Putin departs, they could be again (just like other nations we've defeated). The EUros see that. They'e realistic enough to endure the Russian interference, counter it, & push back in proportion (while hiding behind US troops). They don't blame everything on a Russian boogeyman.
The Chinese were once our allies too, but those remaining Chinese allies are trapped on Formosa & in Hong Kong. Prospects for a rapprochement with the Chinese Communists are not good, unless done on their terms. They have a huge head start on infiltrating our economy, many of our institutions & centers of power.
Russia was broke & contained until Obama's failed reset. Then we questioned Putin's legitimacy, fomented another color revolution in Ukraine which imperiled Russia's Black Sea Fleet base in Crimea, then we were surprised when they annexed Crimea with no resistance from Ukraine.
It fell to Trump to provide the lethal military assistance necessary to prevent a further invasion of Ukraine & to contain Russia in the Baltics.
Trump also had to contain the Russians in Syria after Obama invited them in to bail him out on his line in the sand threat. After lighting the fuse on the Arab Spring, Obama pulled out, leaving the door to the ME open for Russia, so long as they supported JCPOA. Meanwhile, AQ flourished & IS emerged. Biden was a part of all that & he's bringing back the team who did it. Let's see what they learned in the 4 years Trump was cleaning up their mess.
Got it: Obama bad, Trump good.
Russia good (or irrelevant), China bad...unless Biden says China bad, Russia good, then oh boy whadda we do now?
Here's where I agree, Russia is not a permanently lost cause...just is while Putin is in control. And China is going to be far more strategically important, and challenging, than Russia is likely to ever be again.
old salt wrote: ↑Tue Dec 15, 2020 2:19 pm
The Russians were once our allies.
And dinosaurs once roamed the earth. Both facts are about equally relevant.
You equate the mid-2000's as the same time period as the dinosaurs, as being the same for silliness? What than?
I can use your smarrmy remark in the climate warming or change thread, say, if I am replying to manipulated weather data or "named storm" increases, because, earth IS, after all, only 150 years old (weather records in the USA )
old salt wrote: ↑Tue Dec 15, 2020 2:19 pm
The Russians were once our allies.
And dinosaurs once roamed the earth. Both facts are about equally relevant.
That was just yesterday to the Russian people. It's a part of their history that has been glorified & sustained at the front of their national consciousness.
They remain aggrieved about their disproportionate sacrifice & the way their former provinces were severed from Mother Russia.
That remains Putin's greatest source of popular support. Look at the celebrations among the Russian people when Trump was elected.
They were anxious for rapprochement with a US that respected them & no longer talked down to them.
...& he's right about the early to mid 2000's. They were very helpful after 9-11 & in Afghanistan.
W looked into Putin's soul & hosted him at his ranch.
old salt wrote: ↑Tue Dec 15, 2020 2:19 pm
The Russians were once our allies.
And dinosaurs once roamed the earth. Both facts are about equally relevant.
That was just yesterday to the Russian people. It's a part of their history that has been glorified & sustained at the front of their national consciousness.
They remain aggrieved about their disproportionate sacrifice & the way their former provinces were severed from Mother Russia.
That remains Putin's greatest source of popular support. Look at the celebrations among the Russian people when Trump was elected.
They were anxious for rapprochement with a US that respected them & no longer talked down to them.
...& he's right about the early to mid 2000's. They were very helpful after 9-11 & in Afghanistan.
W looked into Putin's soul & hosted him at his ranch.
old salt wrote: ↑Tue Dec 15, 2020 2:19 pm
The Russians were once our allies.
And dinosaurs once roamed the earth. Both facts are about equally relevant.
That was just yesterday to the Russian people. It's a part of their history that has been glorified & sustained at the front of their national consciousness.
They remain aggrieved about their disproportionate sacrifice & the way their former provinces were severed from Mother Russia.
That remains Putin's greatest source of popular support. Look at the celebrations among the Russian people when Trump was elected.
They were anxious for rapprochement with a US that respected them & no longer talked down to them.
...& he's right about the early to mid 2000's. They were very helpful after 9-11 & in Afghanistan.
W looked into Putin's soul & hosted him at his ranch.
You sound like Marko Ramius
When I was twelve, I helped my Daddy build a bomb shelter in our basement, because some damn fool parked a dozen warheads ninety miles off the coast of Florida. This thing could park a couple hundred warheads in New York harbor and no-one would know anything about it until it was all over.
old salt wrote: ↑Tue Dec 15, 2020 2:19 pm
The Russians were once our allies.
And dinosaurs once roamed the earth. Both facts are about equally relevant.
That was just yesterday to the Russian people. It's a part of their history that has been glorified & sustained at the front of their national consciousness.
They remain aggrieved about their disproportionate sacrifice & the way their former provinces were severed from Mother Russia.
That remains Putin's greatest source of popular support. Look at the celebrations among the Russian people when Trump was elected.
They were anxious for rapprochement with a US that respected them & no longer talked down to them.
...& he's right about the early to mid 2000's. They were very helpful after 9-11 & in Afghanistan.
W looked into Putin's soul & hosted him at his ranch.
You sound like Marko Ramius
When I was twelve, I helped my Daddy build a bomb shelter in our basement, because some damn fool parked a dozen warheads ninety miles off the coast of Florida. This thing could park a couple hundred warheads in New York harbor and no-one would know anything about it until it was all over.
On January 20, 2017, Trump took the oath of office and gave his “American Carnage” speech describing America as a hellscape, and we were off to the races.
Trump vowed he would smash norms and boundaries to “drain the swamp.” He filled positions in his administration with political operatives and appointed his son-in-law Jared Kushner to manage so many projects it would have been funny if it weren’t so deadly serious. The policies the administration advanced were usually hastily and poorly conceived; when the courts overturned them, Trump complained of “the Deep State.”
Days after he took office, he issued the travel ban aimed at Muslims, the first in a series of actions throughout his presidency designed to subordinate people of color to white Americans. The racism in his rhetoric and regulations pulled white supremacists behind him. On August 11-12, 2017, they rioted in Charlottesville, Virginia. Their protest of the removal of a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee became an attempt to create a political vanguard.
The “Unite the Right” rally turned violent, injuring more than 30 people and killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer, whose last Facebook post before she joined the counter protest in Charlottesville read: “If you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention.” Three days after the riots, asked about the violent protests in Charlottesville, Trump said that “you… had people that were very fine people, on both sides.” People took that, rightly, as Trump’s support for white supremacy and the gangs that advanced it, a support illustrated dramatically in summer 2020, when he and his attorney general, William Barr, used federal troops against peaceful Black Lives Matter protesters.
By spring 2017, there was another crisis on the horizon. The FBI was investigating the cooperation of Trump’s presidential campaign with Russian spies. Trump’s former National Security Adviser, retired lieutenant general Michael Flynn, had lied to the FBI about conversations with then-Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, and Trump pressured then-FBI Director James Comey to stop the agency’s investigation of Flynn. When Comey refused, Trump fired him, prompting the deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to appoint Special Counsel Robert Mueller (then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions had recused himself because he, too, had lied about conversations with Russians) to investigate the ties between Trump campaign officials and Russian operatives.
Both Mueller’s report and the report of the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee established that Russian operatives had interfered in the 2016 election to help Trump. They indicated that Trump campaign officials knew what the Russians were doing and were willing to accept their help. The Senate Intelligence Committee also noted that Trump’s campaign chair Paul Manafort gave sensitive internal information about the campaign to a Russian operative in Ukraine. Trump continued to call these allegations the “Russia hoax,” but observers noted that, for all his feuds with other leaders, he seemed oddly solicitous of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Trump came to office with an expanding economy. In the first three years of his presidency, the economy continued to grow, in part because of tax cuts that slashed the corporate tax rate by 40%. Trump promised that these cuts would be “rocket fuel for our economy,” but economic growth stayed at about 2.9%, the same as it had been in 2015, and more than 60% of the benefits from the cuts went to those at the top 20% of the economic ladder. Even before the pandemic, Trump’s economic policies were projected to add about $10 trillion to the national debt by 2025, an increase of more than 50%.
And then the pandemic hit. Trump first downplayed the crisis, then insisted that Democrats demanding he address the crisis were overplaying it: he called it a Democratic “hoax.” The pandemic tanked the economy, undercutting his best argument for reelection, and by summer 2020 the administration had decided its best option was to reopen schools and the economy and to try to achieve herd immunity through infections. The result was a disaster. Today, on the last day of Trump’s administration, the number of Americans we have officially lost to Covid-19 has topped 400,000. That’s about the same number of people we lost in World War Two.
The pandemic threw about 22 million people out of work and forcing businesses into bankruptcy. As the faltering economy undercut Trump’s plans for reelection, he tried to destroy faith in mail-in ballots, trying to drive people to in-person voting sites. Then, when that didn’t work, he pushed the idea that Democrats would steal the election. Although his Democratic challengers Joe Biden and Kamala Harris won the 2020 election by more than 7 million popular votes and secured the Electoral College by a vote of 306 to 232, Trump and his supporters continued to insist the election was stolen.
On January 6, 2021, Trump and key members of his administration rallied his supporters to attack the counting of the certified electoral ballots for Biden and Harris. Encouraged by the president, the crowd marched to the Capitol with the plan of disrupting the vote. They overpowered the police, killing one officer; broke into the building; and came within a minute of taking our elected leaders hostage, or perhaps executing them on the gallows they built.
In the wake of the attack on the Capitol, the House of Representatives impeached Trump for the second time—the first was in 2019 after he withheld congressionally-approved money to Ukraine in an attempt to bully the newly-elected Ukraine president into announcing an investigation into Joe Biden’s son Hunter in the hopes of weakening Biden as a potential rival in the 2020 election.
So, Trump leaves the White House tomorrow facing a second Senate impeachment trial.
Trump has split the Republican Party. His true loyalists intend to turn America into a right-wing, white, Christian nation as embodied in the 1776 Report the administration released yesterday. In the last days of the administration, Trump’s Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is pretty clearly trying to position himself for a 2024 presidential run, tweeting from the official government account of the State Department a long list of what he considers his accomplishments. Others are likely planning to give him a run for his money. Today Senator Josh Hawley, under suspicion of inciting the January 6 rioters with his support for throwing out Biden’s Electoral College votes, slow-walked Biden’s nominee for Secretary of Homeland Security because Hawley objects to Biden’s plans to create a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.
Establishment Republicans are trying to regain control of the party. After the January coup attempt, some corporations announced they would no longer donate to Republicans who had voted to challenge the certified electoral votes, while others declared a moratorium on all political spending. The corporate turn against the Trump wing of the Republican Party strengthened the backbone of the establishment Republicans. Today Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) stood on the floor of the Senate and put Trump at the center of the January 6 attack on the Capitol. "The mob was fed lies," McConnell said. “They were provoked by the President and other powerful people."
But McConnell went on. He claimed that neither party has a broad mandate after the 2020 elections, which, he said, meant that the Democrats have no call to advance “sweeping ideological change.” He is referring, of course, to the plans of incoming President-Elect Biden and Vice President-Elect Kamala Harris, which he has every intention of stopping.
Today, President-Elect Joe Biden arrived at Joint Base Andrews. He traveled in a private plane since Trump refused to extend him the traditional courtesy of a military plane offered from an outgoing president to an incoming one. Trump will not attend Biden’s swearing-in; he will leave for Florida in the morning. In his place, three of the other living ex-presidents will be attending the inauguration: Republican George W. Bush, Democrat Bill Clinton, and Democrat Barack Obama. It’s a party of ex-presidents, together to emphasize the peaceful transition of power. Trump won’t be there.
The tide is already turning against him. Vice President Mike Pence has announced he will not be able to attend Trump’s farewell ceremony as he is attending Biden’s inauguration instead. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and McConnell—who will become minority leader tomorrow after the two new Democratic senators from Georgia are sworn in—are not going to see Trump off, either: they will be attending church with Biden before his inauguration.
Tomorrow at noon, President-Elect Joe Biden takes the oath of office. He intends to return the government to the principles the Democratic Party has held since the late nineteenth century: that the federal government has a role to play in responding to the needs of ordinary Americans. He has also embraced the traditional Democratic idea that the government should actually look like the people it represents. In an implicit rebuke of Trump’s white nationalism, he has tapped the most diverse set of officials in American history. They are also extraordinarily well-qualified and have many years of experience in government.
Biden and Harris have already outlined a very different administration than Trump’s. Their first task is to combat the coronavirus. Biden wants 100 million vaccinations in his first 100 days in office, and is mobilizing the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the National Guard to make that happen. To rebuild the economy, they have advanced a coronavirus relief package designed to protect children, first, and then women and families. It calls for expanded food relief and rent and mortgage protection, as well as expanded unemployment benefits and a one-time relief payment.
Trump’s administration is, perhaps, ending where it began. This weekend, Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny returned to Russia after his near-fatal poisoning by Putin’s agents in August. Upon his return to Russia, authorities immediately detained him. Trump refused to join other nations in condemning the poisoning, but yesterday, Senator Mitt Romney (R-UT) demanded that the U.S. hold Putin accountable for “the corruption and lawlessness of the Putin regime.” Joining Romney in calling for new sanctions against Russia were a range of senators from both parties.
The act is called the “Holding Russia Accountable for Malign Activities Act.”
by cradleandshoot » Fri Aug 13, 2021 8:57 am Mr moderator, deactivate my account. You have heck this forum up to making it nothing more than a joke. I hope you are happy. This is cradle and shoot signing out.
Garry Kasparov @Kasparov63
7 hours ago
Facebook pages of Navalny and Khodorkovsky groups and supporters have been suspended. Even small accounts like the Free Russia Forum's on Instagram have been blocked after thousands of fake complaints from new Kremlin bot accounts.
...good point. I need to update now that it's no longer being implied (at least recently) that I'm a Russian secret agent.
