Background - my family is Catholic. All of us have a pretty good sense of humor. Sooo on facebook I posted a picture of a pomeranian dog dressed in a Pope outfit. My relatives all thought it was both cute as all gitout, and funny as well. And it was.
Well, an old GF posted how she found it really offensive.
Also depends on whether the joke about a group is made by 1) someone who is part of the group and 2) is good natured rather than mean spirited.
Similar to the Seinfeld episode where he is accused of being an "anti-dentite" because he makes dentist jokes without being a dentist after becoming upset that his dentist who recently converted to Judaism is already making Jew jokes. Although this offends Jerry as a comedian, not as a Jew because it's not fair you get to convert for jokes.
I'm Catholic and thought Kevin Smith's movie "Dogma" was funny. Smith grew up Catholic and while he is no longer practicing it was obvious from the movie he didn't hate Catholics, he was just poking fun at things like declining attendence and a funny attempt to "rebrand" the Church with the "Buddy Christ." That was funny. But then you've got Sarah Silverman screaming about how she's glad the Jews killed Jesus and she'd do it again. That's not good natured, or even a joke. That's just spewing hate. Gets to keep her job, though.
Same thing with Jews who are openly hateful of whites, like Lena Dunham saying we need to "eliminate white males." I don't see the difference between that and PewDiePie's "kill all jews," except I think Lena's serious. And that's dangerous because if people don't realize she's Jewish (and therefore is not just poking fun at her own race, but is instead stirring up hate against another) then it passes the criterion of embarrassment and people think she knows what she's talking about. There's a reason Dave Chappelle had a crisis of conscience about whether people were laughing with his characterizations of blacks or at them, or why Chris Rock stopped telling the "well there's black folk, and then there's n*****s!" joke, because when you say shit about your own race, racists say "oh look, see, I'm right, they even say it about themselves!" No Jew says "kill all the Jews," no white person says "kill all the whites," and people should be very careful talking about other races that way. It's very difficult to maintain a civil society when members of one race are openly talking about killing members of another, and I kind of like civil society.
Consider for instance the idea that the pope can make no mistakes
Only when speaking Ex Cathedra, which they rarely do, and has nothing to do with the Pope's personal behavior or Church management. The Pope is just a man, and just a priest (though first among equals). You are not required to agree with the Pope and everything he does, and arguing with him is not verboten. Many Catholics, myself included, have deep disagreements with the way Pope Francis has been conducting himself, for example. But I am in no danger of excommunication.
You're delusional if you think Trump support is "fringe." It's only "fringe" on TV, because all the news networks are in deep blue cities. It never occurs to them that the man on the street outside the city might have a different opinion than the man on the city sidewalk.
You know exactly jack about our military capability, eh? Roughly three days of US Air Superiority would guarantee that it wouldn't be much of a fucking fight, let me tell you.
Just park a couple of destroyers in the Gulf of Oman, blow up anything going to or from Iran and wait a few weeks.
The prequels were all the argument anyone needs to show Lucas was turning Star Wars to shit.
At least they were memorable. The Disney ones will be entirely forgotten in 5 years. No memes...no quotable lines. They're entertaining to watch, sure, but whatever made Star Wars "Star Wars" is gone. It's just a corporate product by committee now.
Well your German comparison is rediculous. While hate speech is indeed illegal there (personally I prefer US style more open free speech) no one has ever been killed by the government over it.
I'm saying the entire "muh 1st amendment" argument is worthless, because the only people in the entire world who have a cultural value of free speech/press are American libertarian/conservatives. There is no free speech in China, there is no free speech in Europe, there is no free speech in Russia, there is no free speech in Saudi Arabia or the rest of the Islamic world, there is no free speech in Canada, and the only reason "free speech" half exists in the US is because of the pesky 1st amendment. The American left resorts to shouting down any dissenters, deplatforming, or just straight up putting on masks and beating with flagpoles people who want to hear a gay conservative make fun of fat feminists. If they could get away with passing "hate speech" laws in the US (with "hate speech" being defined as anything to the right of the love child of Joseph Stalin and Jane Fonda, natch) they would do it in a heartbeat. So let's not pretend there's any moral arguments going on here. If I'm supposed to hate everyone who doesn't support free speech then I need to hate everyone who isn't on the American right.
Come to think of it....
The problem is with Russia's policy of disupting or outright invading any country in their claimed sphere of influence that threatens to go pro West (in other words line them selves up with us and the rest of the West).
Ukraine had a democratically elected government that was pro-Russian. This is not a shocking development as Ukraine has been in a polity with Russia off and on for a thousand years now. Is it so shocking Canadian governments tend to be pro-American? But because Ukraine is letting Russia ship oil via the black sea and western bankers and EU technocrats aren't going to get a taste of that sweet cheddar State/CIA and western NGOs like Open Society stage a coup to install a pro-NATO puppet in Russia's primary buffer state.
So here we have Russia backing the democratically elected government of his next door neighbor, while you're backing the unelected coup sponsored by foreigners on the other side of the world and you have the audacity to lecture Putin about throwing his weight around and undermining us? I mean, the only good moral and just thing for Putin to do is enjoy getting fucked in the ass by the US in his backyard and how dare he not say "thank you sir may I have another?"
This is all about money. This is about oil, and money. Syria is not about "democratic freedom fighters!" Assad picked the Russian-backed Iran->Iraq->Syria->Med pipeline instead of the Qatar->KSA->Syria->Turkey->Europe pipeline so Hillary and Obama said "oh no le human rights violations these fuckers need some democracy!" just like Saddam did and they funded and armed the moderate beheaders and we've got 400k+ Syrians dead, ISIS, the refugee crisis that threatens to destabilize all of Europe. But Putin, throwing his weight around and meddling in his own fucking backyard, trying to stop the bloodshed we fucking started for Saudi money for American politicians, for shame for shame. How stupid are Americans? Are we never going to stop falling for this same stupid excuse for war and geopolitical meddling?
So what do you recommend we do about Crimea, anyway? You've got a peninsula full of ethnic Russians (not Ukrainians) who speak Russian (not Ukrainian) and were only attached to Ukraine by Soviet social engineers for a few decades. You may not agree with the way the referendum were held, but the results hardly seem unreasonable. Crimea is a tourist spot for wealthy Russians, and they were sending all their money to Kiev to be squandered while their infrastructure went to shit (which would eventually end their tourist industry). If you were a Crimean, would you want t
There you go again. If I don't hate Putin it means I like Putin.
And I don't even know what to tell you about McCain. I am hardly the first to call out McCain for being a D in R's clothing. Go read any Tea Party-type blog, read the comments to pretty much any article about McCain, Pat Buchanan calls him and his cohorts "the War Party," etc. This is not exactly a fringe opinion. McCain wins reelection because primarying out a long established incumbent with his kind of financial backing is next to impossible, but he's not popular with Republican voters. You'll notice Trump shit on McCain's war record and Trump's numbers went up. Doesn't that maybe indicate lots of people have seen things wrong with McCain?
But there literally is no crime. Flynn could have said "tell my very best friend Vlad that the sanctions will be lifted as soon as Trump's in office" and that's not a crime. To what crime would Trump be an accomplice?
Perhaps a different metaphor would help then. Think of Trump as an escort. At any given moment he is doing whatever he is doing to please whoever is currently paying him. He doesn't have just one client, he doesn't even have just one regular.
I saw a list made up the other day by anti-Semites of "proof" that Trump is a puppet of the Jews. Married his kids off to Jews, says nice things about Israel, Israel says nice things about him, tweets stuff like thispair (say, isn't that an even bigger smoking gun for "telling foreign nations you'll do stuff for them after inauguration" than the Flynn calls?), why even today he's meeting with the Chief Jew. So do you also agree Trump is a puppet of the Jews?
Can we get the shorter list? Is there anyone Trump is not a puppet of?
Alternative hypothesis...and bear with me...this sounds crazy...maybe Trump is not a puppet, his platform is genuinely what he and American conservative voters want and think is best for the country, and he's been carrying out said agenda (killed TPP, restructuring H1-Bs, building wall, ICE is rounding up illegal Mexican rapists and booting them over the border, appointing originalist Supreme Court justice, etc)? Do you think there's any chance of that, or is that just too far out in left field?
A great, big, beautiful wall. We spend $110 billion each year on services for illegal immigrants. We should take the savings over 9-10 years and build a trillion dollar wall, made of gold, with flamethrowers and machine gun nests, and casinos and ferris wheels (for Americans only) and safaris where you can catch your own illegal Mexicans. What do you think?
Isn't that entirely dependent on the media filter, though? Every president I can remember has had at least one cabinet member or appointee resign or be dropped because of some kind of impropriety. It's only a "laughingstock" because of the media and your perceptions. In reality it's business as usual.
In the meantime, ICE is rounding up illegal Mexican rapists and dropkicking them over the border, TPP is dead, our arming of the moderate beheaders in Syria is over, Canada and Mexico have agreed to renegotiate NAFTA, Trump's Supreme Court pick looks great, planning for the wall is underway...what exactly do I need to be desperate about? Trump is checking his campaign promises off at lightening speed.
Your mistake is that you think I'm like you, concerned only for myself, and I'm not. I know the chance I'm going to be killed by terrorists is nil, but the chance some of my countrymen will be killed by terrorists is 100%, and I care about them, while you do not give a fuck, or actively hate your countrymen and want them dead. I'm outraged that my countrymen are betrayed by their government. The most basic function of government is "keep out hostile foreigners." The first government was two cavemen saying "okay, if someone tries to come in the cave who isn't one of us, hit him with this rock." And the government is failing in that duty by letting in foreigners who adhere to an ideology that is expressly xenocidal to everything that is not it.
I'm not a xenophobe, I don't hate the ragheads, I just want them to stay over in their desert shitholes away from my countrymen that I do care about. The problem is you're an oikophobe...you hate your neighbors. You will freak the fuck out about the possibility someone might be an evil, evil racist who maybe doesn't like black people and will nitpick every turn of phrase looking for "dog whistles" for evidence of this horrid thought crime. But Ahmed expressly says "death to the west, kill all the infidels, and we will conquer your lands and Islam will rule the world" and you say "come right on in friend!" and will rain scorn on anyone who dares criticize your best buddy Ahmed. Your entire worldview is backwards.
The other reason I don't want muslims (or generally cultures not compatible with our own) is because that's always the excuse used to expand the police and surveillance state. Import incompatible people, and when violence inevitably occurs, "Oops, like we need to take more of your civil rights to keep you safe!" It is the most basic divide and conquer tactics, and is one of the many ways the elite control the populace.
I also think long term, in the hundreds or thousands of years, instead of just what's convenient right now. I know that given enough time, with their mass migrations and high birthrates that eventually our people will come into conflict with them. It happens every damn time, and I know this because I study history. When they are few they say "we are a religion of peace." When they are more they say "we should live under our own laws." When they are many they say "convert or die." The only consolation is that people like you are the first ones they kill. When the Lebanese civil war started the muslims would come to the liberals who would say "but we are your friends, we welcomed you, we opposed the Christians who didn't want you to come!" and they said "you are very stupid!" and sawed off their heads. Cold comfort. I'd rather avoid conflict entirely, but we can't do that when you insist on bringing conflict to us, and actively oppose those who would avoid it. Islam is cancer, but leftism is AIDS.
So as you can see, my opposition to Islamification has nothing to do with fear for my own safety.
Except for every administration, during the transition, appointees involved in foreign policy speak to lots of foreigners about lots of things, particularly about how relations might change with them under the new administration. Even if he said "tell my best friend Vlad to hold on, those sanctions will be lifted soon" that's not a crime.
He literally promised them favors by the President, if they stay cool about sanctions they were given for attacking USA.
No he didn't, unless saying they can review it later = "literally promised favors."
A reward for attacking USA.
There is no proof Putin was behind the DNC leaks. It's far more likely Obama was the one playing politics here to fuck with the incoming Trump administration rather than that Trump's administration was playing politics to fuck with Obama.
And if telling a foreign nation to hang on because you're going to do nice things for them once you take office, here's your smokingguns.
That would only be a reasonable narrative if he had a pattern of it. A few bad apples out of the tens of thousands of people Trump has hired does not indicate Trump is a poor judge of people.
There's also a school of business in which it's not the hiring of people that matters, but the firing of them. You can't be right about everyone all the time, but if you continuously fire all the people who suck you're eventually left with nothing but winners. See Jack Welch's management strategy.
In the meantime, ICE is raiding illegal Mexican rapists left and right and booting them across the border. TPP is dead, renegotiating NAFTA, Supreme Court pick looks good, wall is on the way...kick back all you like. Trump is doing the shit we want him to do.
The Kremlin has only ever viewed alliances as short term affairs to be sustained for so long as it sees value in it.
Which is a good policy. "Nations do not have permanent alliances, only permanent interests." As a corollary, there's no point in having permanent enemies, either.
Right now my immediate enemy is ISIS, my strategic enemy is the export of Wahhabi extremism mainly from Saudi Arabia, and my permanent vexation is American interventionism and meddling in everyone else's affairs for the financial interest of the elite. So it seems to me right now a temporary alliance with Russia to smash ISIS is in my interest, but we are instead vexed with American meddling in Russian and Russian neighbors' affairs for the banking and oil interests under the guise of "but Putin bad man he maybe kill journalists and hates fags!" Of course we have no problem doing business with China with their slave laborers and political prisoners and human rights abuses far worse than anything Putin is accused of, and no problem selling weapons to or buying oil from Saudi Arabia where they're chopping off fags' heads in the public square. Gee, it's almost as the corporate media's shrill screaming over PUTIN BAD MAN has little to do with him being a bad man, and everything to do with the oil and the banks?
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Background - my family is Catholic. All of us have a pretty good sense of humor. Sooo on facebook I posted a picture of a pomeranian dog dressed in a Pope outfit. My relatives all thought it was both cute as all gitout, and funny as well. And it was.
Well, an old GF posted how she found it really offensive.
Also depends on whether the joke about a group is made by 1) someone who is part of the group and 2) is good natured rather than mean spirited.
Similar to the Seinfeld episode where he is accused of being an "anti-dentite" because he makes dentist jokes without being a dentist after becoming upset that his dentist who recently converted to Judaism is already making Jew jokes. Although this offends Jerry as a comedian, not as a Jew because it's not fair you get to convert for jokes.
I'm Catholic and thought Kevin Smith's movie "Dogma" was funny. Smith grew up Catholic and while he is no longer practicing it was obvious from the movie he didn't hate Catholics, he was just poking fun at things like declining attendence and a funny attempt to "rebrand" the Church with the "Buddy Christ." That was funny. But then you've got Sarah Silverman screaming about how she's glad the Jews killed Jesus and she'd do it again. That's not good natured, or even a joke. That's just spewing hate. Gets to keep her job, though.
Same thing with Jews who are openly hateful of whites, like Lena Dunham saying we need to "eliminate white males." I don't see the difference between that and PewDiePie's "kill all jews," except I think Lena's serious. And that's dangerous because if people don't realize she's Jewish (and therefore is not just poking fun at her own race, but is instead stirring up hate against another) then it passes the criterion of embarrassment and people think she knows what she's talking about. There's a reason Dave Chappelle had a crisis of conscience about whether people were laughing with his characterizations of blacks or at them, or why Chris Rock stopped telling the "well there's black folk, and then there's n*****s!" joke, because when you say shit about your own race, racists say "oh look, see, I'm right, they even say it about themselves!" No Jew says "kill all the Jews," no white person says "kill all the whites," and people should be very careful talking about other races that way. It's very difficult to maintain a civil society when members of one race are openly talking about killing members of another, and I kind of like civil society.
Consider for instance the idea that the pope can make no mistakes
Only when speaking Ex Cathedra, which they rarely do, and has nothing to do with the Pope's personal behavior or Church management. The Pope is just a man, and just a priest (though first among equals). You are not required to agree with the Pope and everything he does, and arguing with him is not verboten. Many Catholics, myself included, have deep disagreements with the way Pope Francis has been conducting himself, for example. But I am in no danger of excommunication.
We also have political discourse in which snark is mistaken for an argument.
You're delusional if you think Trump support is "fringe." It's only "fringe" on TV, because all the news networks are in deep blue cities. It never occurs to them that the man on the street outside the city might have a different opinion than the man on the city sidewalk.
You know exactly jack about our military capability, eh? Roughly three days of US Air Superiority would guarantee that it wouldn't be much of a fucking fight, let me tell you.
Just park a couple of destroyers in the Gulf of Oman, blow up anything going to or from Iran and wait a few weeks.
The prequels were all the argument anyone needs to show Lucas was turning Star Wars to shit.
At least they were memorable. The Disney ones will be entirely forgotten in 5 years. No memes...no quotable lines. They're entertaining to watch, sure, but whatever made Star Wars "Star Wars" is gone. It's just a corporate product by committee now.
USA has no institutions that oppress whites in favour of blacks
What about universities that preferentially accept blacks with lower test scores than whites?
Well your German comparison is rediculous. While hate speech is indeed illegal there (personally I prefer US style more open free speech) no one has ever been killed by the government over it.
I'm saying the entire "muh 1st amendment" argument is worthless, because the only people in the entire world who have a cultural value of free speech/press are American libertarian/conservatives. There is no free speech in China, there is no free speech in Europe, there is no free speech in Russia, there is no free speech in Saudi Arabia or the rest of the Islamic world, there is no free speech in Canada, and the only reason "free speech" half exists in the US is because of the pesky 1st amendment. The American left resorts to shouting down any dissenters, deplatforming, or just straight up putting on masks and beating with flagpoles people who want to hear a gay conservative make fun of fat feminists. If they could get away with passing "hate speech" laws in the US (with "hate speech" being defined as anything to the right of the love child of Joseph Stalin and Jane Fonda, natch) they would do it in a heartbeat. So let's not pretend there's any moral arguments going on here. If I'm supposed to hate everyone who doesn't support free speech then I need to hate everyone who isn't on the American right.
Come to think of it....
The problem is with Russia's policy of disupting or outright invading any country in their claimed sphere of influence that threatens to go pro West (in other words line them selves up with us and the rest of the West).
Ukraine had a democratically elected government that was pro-Russian. This is not a shocking development as Ukraine has been in a polity with Russia off and on for a thousand years now. Is it so shocking Canadian governments tend to be pro-American? But because Ukraine is letting Russia ship oil via the black sea and western bankers and EU technocrats aren't going to get a taste of that sweet cheddar State/CIA and western NGOs like Open Society stage a coup to install a pro-NATO puppet in Russia's primary buffer state.
So here we have Russia backing the democratically elected government of his next door neighbor, while you're backing the unelected coup sponsored by foreigners on the other side of the world and you have the audacity to lecture Putin about throwing his weight around and undermining us? I mean, the only good moral and just thing for Putin to do is enjoy getting fucked in the ass by the US in his backyard and how dare he not say "thank you sir may I have another?"
This is all about money. This is about oil, and money. Syria is not about "democratic freedom fighters!" Assad picked the Russian-backed Iran->Iraq->Syria->Med pipeline instead of the Qatar->KSA->Syria->Turkey->Europe pipeline so Hillary and Obama said "oh no le human rights violations these fuckers need some democracy!" just like Saddam did and they funded and armed the moderate beheaders and we've got 400k+ Syrians dead, ISIS, the refugee crisis that threatens to destabilize all of Europe. But Putin, throwing his weight around and meddling in his own fucking backyard, trying to stop the bloodshed we fucking started for Saudi money for American politicians, for shame for shame. How stupid are Americans? Are we never going to stop falling for this same stupid excuse for war and geopolitical meddling?
So what do you recommend we do about Crimea, anyway? You've got a peninsula full of ethnic Russians (not Ukrainians) who speak Russian (not Ukrainian) and were only attached to Ukraine by Soviet social engineers for a few decades. You may not agree with the way the referendum were held, but the results hardly seem unreasonable. Crimea is a tourist spot for wealthy Russians, and they were sending all their money to Kiev to be squandered while their infrastructure went to shit (which would eventually end their tourist industry). If you were a Crimean, would you want t
only Republicans that like Putin are "real".
There you go again. If I don't hate Putin it means I like Putin.
And I don't even know what to tell you about McCain. I am hardly the first to call out McCain for being a D in R's clothing. Go read any Tea Party-type blog, read the comments to pretty much any article about McCain, Pat Buchanan calls him and his cohorts "the War Party," etc. This is not exactly a fringe opinion. McCain wins reelection because primarying out a long established incumbent with his kind of financial backing is next to impossible, but he's not popular with Republican voters. You'll notice Trump shit on McCain's war record and Trump's numbers went up. Doesn't that maybe indicate lots of people have seen things wrong with McCain?
It would make Trump an accomplice in the crime.
But there literally is no crime. Flynn could have said "tell my very best friend Vlad that the sanctions will be lifted as soon as Trump's in office" and that's not a crime. To what crime would Trump be an accomplice?
Perhaps a different metaphor would help then. Think of Trump as an escort. At any given moment he is doing whatever he is doing to please whoever is currently paying him. He doesn't have just one client, he doesn't even have just one regular.
I saw a list made up the other day by anti-Semites of "proof" that Trump is a puppet of the Jews. Married his kids off to Jews, says nice things about Israel, Israel says nice things about him, tweets stuff like this pair (say, isn't that an even bigger smoking gun for "telling foreign nations you'll do stuff for them after inauguration" than the Flynn calls?), why even today he's meeting with the Chief Jew. So do you also agree Trump is a puppet of the Jews?
Can we get the shorter list? Is there anyone Trump is not a puppet of?
Alternative hypothesis...and bear with me...this sounds crazy...maybe Trump is not a puppet, his platform is genuinely what he and American conservative voters want and think is best for the country, and he's been carrying out said agenda (killed TPP, restructuring H1-Bs, building wall, ICE is rounding up illegal Mexican rapists and booting them over the border, appointing originalist Supreme Court justice, etc)? Do you think there's any chance of that, or is that just too far out in left field?
Do you write for Saturday Night Live?
No, I'm actually funny.
Is it okay to call a vegan chowing down on a steak "not a real vegan?"
Are you five? Do you only have the settings of hyperactive and asleep?
That was my exact point about your argument, that since I don't hate Putin then I'm "good Party Komrades."
That would take much longer.
If you remove Assad, what kind of government do you think you'll get in Syria? Are you thinking Iraq-level success, or Libya-level success?
A great, big, beautiful wall. We spend $110 billion each year on services for illegal immigrants. We should take the savings over 9-10 years and build a trillion dollar wall, made of gold, with flamethrowers and machine gun nests, and casinos and ferris wheels (for Americans only) and safaris where you can catch your own illegal Mexicans. What do you think?
Isn't that entirely dependent on the media filter, though? Every president I can remember has had at least one cabinet member or appointee resign or be dropped because of some kind of impropriety. It's only a "laughingstock" because of the media and your perceptions. In reality it's business as usual.
In the meantime, ICE is rounding up illegal Mexican rapists and dropkicking them over the border, TPP is dead, our arming of the moderate beheaders in Syria is over, Canada and Mexico have agreed to renegotiate NAFTA, Trump's Supreme Court pick looks great, planning for the wall is underway...what exactly do I need to be desperate about? Trump is checking his campaign promises off at lightening speed.
Your mistake is that you think I'm like you, concerned only for myself, and I'm not. I know the chance I'm going to be killed by terrorists is nil, but the chance some of my countrymen will be killed by terrorists is 100%, and I care about them, while you do not give a fuck, or actively hate your countrymen and want them dead. I'm outraged that my countrymen are betrayed by their government. The most basic function of government is "keep out hostile foreigners." The first government was two cavemen saying "okay, if someone tries to come in the cave who isn't one of us, hit him with this rock." And the government is failing in that duty by letting in foreigners who adhere to an ideology that is expressly xenocidal to everything that is not it.
I'm not a xenophobe, I don't hate the ragheads, I just want them to stay over in their desert shitholes away from my countrymen that I do care about. The problem is you're an oikophobe...you hate your neighbors. You will freak the fuck out about the possibility someone might be an evil, evil racist who maybe doesn't like black people and will nitpick every turn of phrase looking for "dog whistles" for evidence of this horrid thought crime. But Ahmed expressly says "death to the west, kill all the infidels, and we will conquer your lands and Islam will rule the world" and you say "come right on in friend!" and will rain scorn on anyone who dares criticize your best buddy Ahmed. Your entire worldview is backwards.
The other reason I don't want muslims (or generally cultures not compatible with our own) is because that's always the excuse used to expand the police and surveillance state. Import incompatible people, and when violence inevitably occurs, "Oops, like we need to take more of your civil rights to keep you safe!" It is the most basic divide and conquer tactics, and is one of the many ways the elite control the populace.
I also think long term, in the hundreds or thousands of years, instead of just what's convenient right now. I know that given enough time, with their mass migrations and high birthrates that eventually our people will come into conflict with them. It happens every damn time, and I know this because I study history. When they are few they say "we are a religion of peace." When they are more they say "we should live under our own laws." When they are many they say "convert or die." The only consolation is that people like you are the first ones they kill. When the Lebanese civil war started the muslims would come to the liberals who would say "but we are your friends, we welcomed you, we opposed the Christians who didn't want you to come!" and they said "you are very stupid!" and sawed off their heads. Cold comfort. I'd rather avoid conflict entirely, but we can't do that when you insist on bringing conflict to us, and actively oppose those who would avoid it. Islam is cancer, but leftism is AIDS.
So as you can see, my opposition to Islamification has nothing to do with fear for my own safety.
Except for every administration, during the transition, appointees involved in foreign policy speak to lots of foreigners about lots of things, particularly about how relations might change with them under the new administration. Even if he said "tell my best friend Vlad to hold on, those sanctions will be lifted soon" that's not a crime.
Here you go, here's a smoking gun of Trump telling a foreign nation he's going to do them favors after he takes office. Impeachment when?!
He literally promised them favors by the President, if they stay cool about sanctions they were given for attacking USA.
No he didn't, unless saying they can review it later = "literally promised favors."
A reward for attacking USA.
There is no proof Putin was behind the DNC leaks. It's far more likely Obama was the one playing politics here to fuck with the incoming Trump administration rather than that Trump's administration was playing politics to fuck with Obama.
And if telling a foreign nation to hang on because you're going to do nice things for them once you take office, here's your smoking guns.
That would only be a reasonable narrative if he had a pattern of it. A few bad apples out of the tens of thousands of people Trump has hired does not indicate Trump is a poor judge of people.
There's also a school of business in which it's not the hiring of people that matters, but the firing of them. You can't be right about everyone all the time, but if you continuously fire all the people who suck you're eventually left with nothing but winners. See Jack Welch's management strategy.
Do you think intelligence people who leaked all this to the press have a political agenda, or not? They're just patriots, then?
In the meantime, ICE is raiding illegal Mexican rapists left and right and booting them across the border. TPP is dead, renegotiating NAFTA, Supreme Court pick looks good, wall is on the way...kick back all you like. Trump is doing the shit we want him to do.
The Kremlin has only ever viewed alliances as short term affairs to be sustained for so long as it sees value in it.
Which is a good policy. "Nations do not have permanent alliances, only permanent interests." As a corollary, there's no point in having permanent enemies, either.
Right now my immediate enemy is ISIS, my strategic enemy is the export of Wahhabi extremism mainly from Saudi Arabia, and my permanent vexation is American interventionism and meddling in everyone else's affairs for the financial interest of the elite. So it seems to me right now a temporary alliance with Russia to smash ISIS is in my interest, but we are instead vexed with American meddling in Russian and Russian neighbors' affairs for the banking and oil interests under the guise of "but Putin bad man he maybe kill journalists and hates fags!" Of course we have no problem doing business with China with their slave laborers and political prisoners and human rights abuses far worse than anything Putin is accused of, and no problem selling weapons to or buying oil from Saudi Arabia where they're chopping off fags' heads in the public square. Gee, it's almost as the corporate media's shrill screaming over PUTIN BAD MAN has little to do with him being a bad man, and everything to do with the oil and the banks?
Then why was it only enacted by Truman, during the Cold War? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
The Truman Doctrine was an American foreign policy created to counter Soviet geopolitical spread during the Cold War.
You're making some bizarre revisionist history that the US was always enemies with Russia, when in fact we were only enemies with Soviet communism.
In fact the Russians helped preserve the Union during the civil war by using their fleet to deter the UK or France from entering on the side of the Confederacy.