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What has Trump done right so far?

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Re: What has Trump done right so far?
Post by Daryl   » Fri Apr 07, 2017 6:37 am

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Time will tell if Trump's attack on Syria was something he did right, or the start of something with unintended consequences. At this moment I'll be charitable and say it has to date been the right thing to do.
The problem with people like Obama is that they are highly intelligent and measured, knowing that if they exercise their great power it may come back to bite them. A Trump or a Regan is not necessarily as sensible or predictable, and thus the bad guys aren't game to push as hard.
Most US foreign adventures seem to come unstuck over time, so I do hope that this doesn't escalate. Boots on the ground isn't a good idea when the only local good guys are the unarmed civilians, and everyone else are different flavours of bad guys.
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Re: What has Trump done right so far?
Post by Tenshinai   » Fri Apr 07, 2017 6:53 am

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Daryl wrote:Time will tell if Trump's attack on Syria was something he did right, or the start of something with unintended consequences. At this moment I'll be charitable and say it has to date been the right thing to do.
The problem with people like Obama is that they are highly intelligent and measured, knowing that if they exercise their great power it may come back to bite them. A Trump or a Regan is not necessarily as sensible or predictable, and thus the bad guys aren't game to push as hard.
Most US foreign adventures seem to come unstuck over time, so I do hope that this doesn't escalate. Boots on the ground isn't a good idea when the only local good guys are the unarmed civilians, and everyone else are different flavours of bad guys.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pS6Oa_aDS6E
"Ex-UK Ambassador: Assad wasn't behind the chemical attack"
"Peter Ford says he believes it is "highly unlikely" that Russia or the Assad regime was behind the attack in Idlib."

http://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2 ... ebels.html


Anyway, at the moment the most likely cause appears to have been a bombstrike that hit a "rebel" storage which happened to include chemical weapons.
That actually fits known facts, unlike the mass claims pointing at Syria and Russia(FFS, only a complete moron would believe the latter was even remotely likely).

I might also add that Syrian chemical weapons have historically existed in the form of artillery shells, not airdropped bombs.
Why would they change this after 50 years jsut to create a propaganda disaster with near zero usefulness for them?

Yeah, not bloody likely.
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Re: What has Trump done right so far?
Post by Daryl   » Sat Apr 08, 2017 7:04 am

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Tenshinai, just a brief commiseration on the atrocity in Sweden, dreadful for the victims and their families, but could have been much worse.
To be expected, the uber right here are trying to spin it into a nation crippling strike, after all you already have 50 no go zones according to Breitbart (not to Snopes or Google though).
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Re: What has Trump done right so far?
Post by Eyal   » Sat Apr 08, 2017 10:06 am

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Tenshinai wrote:
Daryl wrote:Time will tell if Trump's attack on Syria was something he did right, or the start of something with unintended consequences. At this moment I'll be charitable and say it has to date been the right thing to do.
The problem with people like Obama is that they are highly intelligent and measured, knowing that if they exercise their great power it may come back to bite them. A Trump or a Regan is not necessarily as sensible or predictable, and thus the bad guys aren't game to push as hard.
Most US foreign adventures seem to come unstuck over time, so I do hope that this doesn't escalate. Boots on the ground isn't a good idea when the only local good guys are the unarmed civilians, and everyone else are different flavours of bad guys.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pS6Oa_aDS6E
"Ex-UK Ambassador: Assad wasn't behind the chemical attack"
"Peter Ford says he believes it is "highly unlikely" that Russia or the Assad regime was behind the attack in Idlib."

http://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2 ... ebels.html


Anyway, at the moment the most likely cause appears to have been a bombstrike that hit a "rebel" storage which happened to include chemical weapons.
That actually fits known facts, unlike the mass claims pointing at Syria and Russia(FFS, only a complete moron would believe the latter was even remotely likely).

I might also add that Syrian chemical weapons have historically existed in the form of artillery shells, not airdropped bombs.
Why would they change this after 50 years jsut to create a propaganda disaster with near zero usefulness for them?

Yeah, not bloody likely.


OTOH, my understanding is that Sarin is usually stored as two seperate chemicals and mixed only immediately before use (or in the bomb as it's dropped). Unitary Sarin exists but typically (at least that's what I get from most sources, a few disagree, although it seems to depend on the manufacturing quality) has a very short shelf life. In additionan, at least one of the precoursers is flammable. In that case bombing a storehouse should not have released any significant amount of actual Sarin. Also, do the rebels even have Sarin? I though they were mainly using mustard gas and chlorine.
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Re: What has Trump done right so far?
Post by Tenshinai   » Sat Apr 08, 2017 1:20 pm

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Daryl wrote:Tenshinai, just a brief commiseration on the atrocity in Sweden, dreadful for the victims and their families, but could have been much worse.


Yeah, overall though it´s a weird event.

Using a hi-jacked lorry that there was no guarantee if the perp would be able to take over or not ( those delivery lorries usually just has the driver, but far from always depending on the load for the day ), and as an act of terrorism, it´s frankly very very lame, even outright stupid.

4 dead and 15 injured is 19 too many, but it could have been zero just as well as twice that.

The primary suspect in custody is an Uzbeki with potential leanings towards IS. And that just makes it more weird, as coming up with any sort of reasonable connection for an attack in Stockholm based on that, well that´s difficult to say the least.


Daryl wrote:To be expected, the uber right here are trying to spin it into a nation crippling strike, after all you already have 50 no go zones according to Breitbart (not to Snopes or Google though).


:lol:

Political vultures twisting reality into a pretzel, what a surprise.
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Re: What has Trump done right so far?
Post by Tenshinai   » Sat Apr 08, 2017 1:35 pm

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Eyal wrote:
OTOH, my understanding is that Sarin is usually stored as two seperate chemicals and mixed only immediately before use (or in the bomb as it's dropped). Unitary Sarin exists but typically (at least that's what I get from most sources, a few disagree, although it seems to depend on the manufacturing quality) has a very short shelf life. In additionan, at least one of the precoursers is flammable. In that case bombing a storehouse should not have released any significant amount of actual Sarin. Also, do the rebels even have Sarin? I though they were mainly using mustard gas and chlorine.


My apologies, i was not trying to connect the two articles linked. My mistake in being unclear, while researching the possible attack i stumbled onto the other and found at least one maybe confirmation for it, which is why i wanted to include it.

If you go through the ex-ambassador interview, you will find that he stresses the fact that we actually do not even know if there was an attack at all.

Similar to the purported "Aleppo massacre" which in retrospect apparently never happened and the reports we got were just more or less fake.

I´m still researching, but so far i have found no independent and reliable confirmation, so chances are, especially combined with USAs knee-jerk cruisemissile carnival that it was pure propaganda warfare purely to set up justification for that attack and further try to make it "obvious" that Assad is playing with WMDs and/or killing civillians undiscriminately.
Just like was done with Iraq, Yugoslavia, Libya, Iran etc.. It´s one of USAs favorite modus operandi after all.
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Re: What has Trump done right so far?
Post by CRC   » Mon Apr 10, 2017 12:40 pm

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[quote="Daryl I'm sure that there will be plenty of assault rifles in the US regardless. For what it is worth I'm a gun owner, but see no need for civilians in suburbia to own assault rifles, and I've shot many, and previously owned a couple. [/quote]

I'm not that willing to go that far. I'm not willing to abridge rights because of where people live.

[quote="Daryl]

As to the renumeration, I agree that private corporations have the legal right to pay their CEOs whatever they decide to. I do disagree that most are worth what they are paid, and to the ethics of some people getting millions while others battle to survive. Particularly when some CEOs get big bonuses after having presided over disasters. You'll say I'm a communist but a proposal in the EU a few years back of a 100% income tax on salaries over a couple of millions would have my support, but all developed countries would have to agree. Incidentally it's not sour grapes, because I'm in a good financial position.[/quote]

Once again the situation is too far complex for the 100% tax, and of course, impose a 100% tax and within a few years you will become a 3rd world country.

100% tax on what? Salaries? Gross income? Net income? Gross receipts? Net receipts? Dividends? Interest? Everything? And look where that money would go. Into the hands of politicians who would then redistribute it as they see fit - basically to buy votes. Thus elevating the political class to rule over us all...not a very appealing scenario - hence the stockpiling of weapons...
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Re: What has Trump done right so far?
Post by noblehunter   » Mon Apr 10, 2017 12:55 pm

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CRC wrote:
Daryl wrote: I'm sure that there will be plenty of assault rifles in the US regardless. For what it is worth I'm a gun owner, but see no need for civilians in suburbia to own assault rifles, and I've shot many, and previously owned a couple.


I'm not that willing to go that far. I'm not willing to abridge rights because of where people live.

Daryl wrote:
As to the renumeration, I agree that private corporations have the legal right to pay their CEOs whatever they decide to. I do disagree that most are worth what they are paid, and to the ethics of some people getting millions while others battle to survive. Particularly when some CEOs get big bonuses after having presided over disasters. You'll say I'm a communist but a proposal in the EU a few years back of a 100% income tax on salaries over a couple of millions would have my support, but all developed countries would have to agree. Incidentally it's not sour grapes, because I'm in a good financial position.

Once again the situation is too far complex for the 100% tax, and of course, impose a 100% tax and within a few years you will become a 3rd world country.

100% tax on what? Salaries? Gross income? Net income? Gross receipts? Net receipts? Dividends? Interest? Everything? And look where that money would go. Into the hands of politicians who would then redistribute it as they see fit - basically to buy votes. Thus elevating the political class to rule over us all...not a very appealing scenario - hence the stockpiling of weapons...

The 100% tax would have to apply to income from activities you want to severely curtail or eliminate outright. If the activity is at all optional, people would rapidly put their effort and money somewhere it would make a return. If it was on all income over X amount, companies would find alternative means of compensation or people would find ways to keep their taxable income below X. Which might be good if it meant investing money into useful things rather than simple accumulation of more and more wealth. It might also be bad if the solution is to employ ever more arcane financial products to dodge taxes.

What it almost certainly wouldn't do is put a lot more money into government coffers. The biggest mistake would be expecting these taxes to be a long term source of revenue. There might be a windfall but it would rapidly trend towards zero.
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Re: What has Trump done right so far?
Post by CRC   » Mon Apr 10, 2017 1:11 pm

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noblehunter wrote: The 100% tax would have to apply to income from activities you want to severely curtail or eliminate outright. If the activity is at all optional, people would rapidly put their effort and money somewhere it would make a return. If it was on all income over X amount, companies would find alternative means of compensation or people would find ways to keep their taxable income below X. Which might be good if it meant investing money into useful things rather than simple accumulation of more and more wealth. It might also be bad if the solution is to employ ever more arcane financial products to dodge taxes.

What it almost certainly wouldn't do is put a lot more money into government coffers. The biggest mistake would be expecting these taxes to be a long term source of revenue. There might be a windfall but it would rapidly trend towards zero.


Which is why the definition of "salary" or "income" would be so important/variable depending on politicians. If one source dries up, they always find another source - always...

Keeping in mind the primary objective of taxation nowadays is NOT 'income redistribution' or 'fairness' - its a power redistribution game.

And keeping the trend to zero in mind, I would prefer to tax ALL political contributions at 50%.
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Re: What has Trump done right so far?
Post by noblehunter   » Mon Apr 10, 2017 1:41 pm

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CRC wrote:Which is why the definition of "salary" or "income" would be so important/variable depending on politicians. If one source dries up, they always find another source - always...

Keeping in mind the primary objective of taxation nowadays is NOT 'income redistribution' or 'fairness' - its a power redistribution game.

And keeping the trend to zero in mind, I would prefer to tax ALL political contributions at 50%.
That's why you tax non-optional activities for revenue like payroll or gross income. Generally at the lowest rate possible
rate since these activities are usually either necessary or desirable. The trick is to revenue taxes separate from behavior taxes. The former should be constant and not subject to wild deviations and the latter allowed to trend to zero, since the point of behavior taxes are to prevent the behavior.
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