The loss of life is always tragic! As for the treasure, we were spending about a billion dollars per year arming what our news media declared as "moderate rebels." These groups were always linked to al-Qaeda by way of the biggest rebel group, al-Nusra (a.k.a al-Qaeda of Syria). You have to wonder what schools or roads could have been built with that billion dollar per year!
Simply put, America wanted to do a "regime change" in Syria. So, we entered the country in violation of International Law and funded terrorists. The American public was told we were supporting democracy, and we stupidly never understood that democracy was never an option. It was either Assad or a Fundamentalist Islamic State and the people of Syria knew it.
Thankfully, we lost! And we should have! We were the terrorists in this situation! Assad and Russia won!
So, America has moved on - on to Yemen. With our aid, Saudi Arabia has turned the country into a humanitarian disaster.
I could go on about Yemen, but a bigger point! This board is filled with non-issues like, did Russia mess would our election, and other posts implying the Putin is another Satan.
Frankly, all of this discussion is driven by America's Main Stream Media, because the powers that run this country and control the media do not want you talking about the issues that might end their perpetual war and their unending looting of the US Treasury.
"Just days before Republicans adopted a new, more Russia-friendly plank into their party platform, one of Donald Trump's top advisers visited Moscow in July to deliver speeches criticizing decades of U.S. foreign policy."
When Sen Jeanne Shaheen was asked why the illegal immigrants were protesting Democrats, her first answer was, "DREAMers and young people across the country are frustrated, and they want to go to college and join the military and get jobs and be Americans, which is what they are. This is the only country most of them have ever known." Now, one may argue with her claim that these people are Americans as they are not citizens, but that's beside the point. She avoided the question as is usual. But she was further pressed on the issue.
"You'll have to ask them. Who knows what stirred up this kind of animosity. What we know we know about the Russians and their interference in the 2016 elections is that they tried to increase divisions within this country," Shaheen said.
"We saw it again in Charlottesville. We don't know what's behind this, but what we do know is we need to take action to protect the DREAMers to allow them to stay in America."
We spend $3.2 trillion per year — literally twice as much as the OECD average as a share of the economy. We pay enough in health-care taxes alone — that is, the government revenue that goes to Medicare, Medicaid, the VA, and a few other things — to cover a Canada-style Medicare-for-all system for the whole U.S., and then that much again in private money. In other words, if we could simply copy-paste Canada's universal health-care system into America, taxes would actually go down.
(End quote)
Well, either taxes could go down or the government would cover everything. Canada spends $4600 per person on health care. The US spends $9450 per person (2015). Of that about $4600 per person is government expenditure and the remainder is private costs.
Bob R/CAObamacare hasn't "failed." It just hasn't solved all of the problems. The good isn't the enemy of the perfect. And the GOP's "solutions" they seem bent on one more vote on, once again catapult us back in the "worse."
And again, about those unemployed, we should have never allowed this economic distortion, but once such distortions happen people will suffer during the correction. In a broader sense, these healthcare workers are not alone. The financialization and the destruction of wealth production in our economy will have a day of reckoning, and it will not be pretty. Yet, we are in so deep, there is no avoiding the price we must pay.
An example: During the housing bubble, large numbers of people entered the industry in one form or another. After the bubble burst, those jobs disappeared, and the people suffered. It would have been better if the Fed would have stopped the bubble early on, and they could have - but they didn't!
*******
Regarding Bob's post, when you are spending double what the rest of the world is spending for healthcare, and the new and improved system saves you little to nothing in total costs, your new system is a failure.
Look at the graph below, Obamacare is unsustainable. It is pointless to argue that "good isn't the enemy of perfect" when that good leads to the same end as the previous system - albeit as few years later.
But more, aside from the failure to rein in costs, Obamacare has still left millions of Americans uninsured, and still pushes people into bankruptcy from health care cost. If anyone thinks this is "good" or good enough, they must have checked their empathy at the door.
Historically, Cirincione argues, negotiations have brought about deals that have been more or less respected by Pyongyang. The most important agreement, in 1994, succeeded in freezing North Korea's programs relatively effectively until the administration of George W. Bush overturned it.
But there are problems. This kind of negotiation requires deft diplomacy, good judgment and discipline. The World asked Cirincione if President Donald Trump's administration is up to the task.
"God, I hope so," he replied. "But it's really problematic. This is a president that is basically home alone. They haven't appointed any of the kind of personnel that would know what they're doing, that have experience. For example, we don't have an ambassador to South Korea right now. We don't have an assistant secretary for nonproliferation at the State Department or an assistant secretary for East Asia at the State Department or at the Department of Defense."
"One of the things this crisis reveals is that when you take a close look at the foreign policy, the national security policy of the Trump administration, there is nothing there. There is no plan. There is no doctrine. There is no strategy. There's a set of impulses and tweets." [end quoted text
"God, I hope so," he replied. "But it's really problematic. This is a president that is basically home alone. They haven't appointed any of the kind of personnel that would know what they're doing, that have experience. For example, we don't have an ambassador to South Korea right now. We don't have an assistant secretary for nonproliferation at the State Department or an assistant secretary for East Asia at the State Department or at the Department of Defense."
"One of the things this crisis reveals is that when you take a close look at the foreign policy, the national security policy of the Trump administration, there is nothing there. There is no plan. There is no doctrine. There is no strategy. There's a set of impulses and tweets."
*** Doubtful that this situation will be resolved peacefully. Especially since diplomacy is way down the list of priorities of this administration as was evidenced by Trump's "rocket man" tweet this morning.
Bob R/CATrump the toddler president. All his "strategies" have done is escalate the situation, and a nuclear war is entirely foreseeable. The article is right, the last time we had a successful approach to NK was under Clinton, which Bush destroyed in a matter of weeks.
"Multibillionaire Donald Trump has a moral obligation to pay the mounting legal bills of his advisers who are facing four-, five- and six-figure costs just for doing their jobs," said a former Trump adviser who had to pay thousands of dollars of his own money for legal representation.
"After all, the reason Trump advisers have any legal bills at all is because Trump and key spokespersons like Hope Hicks and Kellyanne Conway repeatedly misled the public over Russia contacts, no matter how benign," the former adviser told the Washington Examiner. "Such lies gave congressional and federal investigators, let alone the media, probable cause to destroy our lives at will. Some reward for loyal service to President Trump."
Rep. Rohrabacher has his drawers in a bunch because someone leaked his call to the White House trying to work out a deal for Julian Assange -- Wiki*leaks*.
For example, the first guest is Scott Rickard former American intelligence linguist. Yet, because he is on RT, Chalky and others probably consider him a traitor. I suggest you listen to Mr. Rickard's comments beginning at 23:30. However, I fear Chalky and others like him would, without any other information, call him a liar.
In the end, the tragedy here is Chalky and those like him do not have a clue what "freedom of speech" is. "Freedom of Speech" means anyone and everyone is allowed to have whatever strange opinion they want. The founding fathers felt that people are smart enough to sort out the truth. Chalky et al. think the American public is not that smart. So "they" must protect the American public from speech that "they" think is propaganda!
Legal experts say the revelation has enormous implications for the trajectory of Mueller's investigation into Russia's election interference, and whether Moscow had any help from President Donald Trump's campaign team.
"This is big news — and potentially bad news for the Russian election interference 'deniers,'" said Asha Rangappa, a former FBI counterintelligence agent.
Rangappa, now an associate dean at Yale Law School, explained that to obtain a search warrant a prosecutor needs to prove to a judge that there is reason to believe a crime has been committed. The prosecutor then has to show that the information being sought will provide evidence of that crime.
Mueller would not have sought a warrant targeting Facebook as a company, Rangappa noted. Rather, he would have been interested in learning more about specific accounts. "
"Just days before Republicans adopted a new, more Russia-friendly plank into their party platform, one of Donald Trump's top advisers visited Moscow in July to deliver speeches criticizing ...See More