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Post by casualplayerpaul on Aug 11, 2017 10:57:43 GMT -5
Obama, and any other person ever to occupy the Oval Office would talk like a damn statesman instead of a drunk at the end of the bar that everybody wants to move away from. Right. A nicely passive aggressive and thoroughly useless statesman who'd spend his time apologizing for America's fault in everything. As opposed to a loose canon provoking international anxiety with unprecedented statements about being "locked and loaded" without even bothering to consult the military? That's pretty useful adult and statesmanlike behavior right there, is it? I'll take Obama- or any of the other previous 43, or their ghosts. Comparing Trump to a mosquito on meth, would be unfair to to both mosquitoes and meth-heads.
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Post by casualplayerpaul on Aug 11, 2017 9:22:45 GMT -5
Great tip. Just started reading Mr. Webb's autobiography, "The Cake and the Rain."
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Post by casualplayerpaul on Aug 11, 2017 9:16:01 GMT -5
This escalation isn't because of something new we did. What do you suppose a President Obama would do right now? Tell me it's my fault. Obama, and any other person ever to occupy the Oval Office would talk like a damn statesman instead of a drunk at the end of the bar that everybody wants to move away from.
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Post by casualplayerpaul on Aug 10, 2017 15:11:14 GMT -5
Odd. I thought deGrasse was supposed to be smarter than that. I saw that one too. Tell you what, NGT: Astronomers can predict the eclipse with (literally) nanosecond-level accuracy. Show me a climate model that is (lets be generous) within 10 orders of magnitude of that level of accuracy, and we'll talk.
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Post by casualplayerpaul on Aug 10, 2017 14:49:55 GMT -5
Gee, I wonder what's happening on the REALLY important shit like climate change? Funny you should ask, Neil deGrasse Tyson made an interesting observation on that, just today! "Odd. No one is in denial of America’s Aug 21 total solar eclipse. Like Climate Change, methods & tools of science predict it."
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Post by casualplayerpaul on Aug 10, 2017 14:44:32 GMT -5
The claims were thin. People much smarter and better informed than I disagree on whether it was the real reason or a pretext.
Intelligence about this sort of thing tends to be murky. So nobody is entitled to an opinion?
Administration's have a mind set. In foreign affairs, Bush's was aggressive and thought talking and acting tough was worth putting that thumbs on the scale if need be. This is not an opinion. We know this to be true. Remember those WMD's that were not there?
My point was that progress was made with NK during Clinton's administration. That progress, for whatever reason, was lost during Bush. Obama more or less punted. And here we are.
Trump has now doubled down, claiming maybe his rant the other day was not tough enough.
How is not learning from history working out for us on this one?
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Post by casualplayerpaul on Aug 10, 2017 14:30:47 GMT -5
That is an open question. Possibly. Seems as though the answer to it would be absolutely central to, and necessary for forming an opinion as to whether or not the Bush administration handled the situation properly. If one doesn't know the answer, how can one's opinion be informed? Prejudice?
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Post by casualplayerpaul on Aug 10, 2017 14:00:37 GMT -5
and that the North Koreans were cheating on the agreement. Were they? That is an open question. Possibly. But maybe just a pretext. What we do know is that the Bush hardliners didn’t like the agreement and wanted to get out of it. The cheating allegation, which may have been true, is how they justified doing so.
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Post by casualplayerpaul on Aug 10, 2017 10:50:20 GMT -5
During the late 90s the US negotiated a series of agreements called the Agreed Framework. It shut down the North Koreans nuclear weapons program in exchange for a combination of commitments and aid.
Bush's neocon team claimed that the Agreed Framework was ‘appeasement’ and that the North Koreans were cheating on the agreement.
So that was pretty much that.
Obama's strategic patience policy refused to offer incentives to North Korea to return to negotiations.
And now we have Trump trying to rerun "High Noon" to bolster his poll numbers.
Moral: the only thing worse than negotiating arguably questionable deals with bad operators is not negotiating at all.
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Post by casualplayerpaul on Aug 9, 2017 10:18:00 GMT -5
"He loved Don and Phil, Bill Medley and Bobby Hatfield, Flatt and Scruggs. This was the one great lesson that I learned from him as a kid: Musically speaking nothing is out of bounds."- Mr. Webb How about covering a Paul Westerberg song on one of his last studio albums? This is pretty awesome. And the sets are right out of the Goodtime Hour. (The Replacements' Mr. Westerberg makes a cameo): www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7kw5zXVFVQBTW: "See You There," 2013, is a wonderful CD. Stripped down versions of his early hits.
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Post by casualplayerpaul on Aug 4, 2017 16:29:40 GMT -5
Only the very best people.
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Post by casualplayerpaul on Aug 4, 2017 11:04:14 GMT -5
I'm just recommending you bring some tissues to the party in case it doesn't turn out your way.As someone who dislikes the entire GOP agenda as well as the party's standard bearer, it's working out about as well as it can. Given that my team got kicked around like the Vikings in a Super Bowl last fall, things could definitely be worse. All but a small minority of the country are seeing through Trump's act and Congress can't seem to successfully float ice-cream in a root beer. Impeachment might lead to competence, at least in the Executive branch. So liberals like me have to be careful what we wish for.
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Post by casualplayerpaul on Aug 4, 2017 11:03:25 GMT -5
I'm just recommending you bring some tissues to the party in case it doesn't turn out your way. As someone who dislikes the entire GOP agenda as well as the party's standard bearer, it's working out about as well as it can. Given that my team got kicked around like the Vikings in a Super Bowl last fall, things could definitely be worse. All but a small minority of the country are seeing through Trump's act and Congress can't seem to successfully float ice-cream in a root beer. Impeachment might lead to competence, at least in the Executive branch. So liberals like me have to be careful what we wish for.
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Post by casualplayerpaul on Aug 4, 2017 9:43:16 GMT -5
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Post by casualplayerpaul on Jul 31, 2017 14:38:03 GMT -5
What's Doug Stamper up to these days?
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Post by casualplayerpaul on Jul 28, 2017 9:30:44 GMT -5
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Post by casualplayerpaul on Jul 28, 2017 9:29:02 GMT -5
I have to wonder if Murkowski's vote could have been gettable had Trump not blackmailed Alaska in his cloddish effort to muscle her.
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Post by casualplayerpaul on Jul 27, 2017 10:19:51 GMT -5
If there's a guitar heaven... Oh man, Paul, that is a tearjerker -- where was it taken? I don't know, Bill. I went looking on Google images for a different picture and found this. It's sometime after 2004, as Lon has his Goodall (with his trusty Martin, I'm pretty sure, on the stand behind him). The one I was looking for was one Lon had on his website many years ago of he and MJ playing at the Leinie Bandshell at the State Fair. Lonnie had played with two images of them standing and playing, so it looked as if they were moving. The caption was "sometimes we dance." (Trust me, it was funny.) That one, sadly, is probably gone with the wind...
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Post by casualplayerpaul on Jul 27, 2017 9:52:49 GMT -5
If there's a guitar heaven...
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Post by casualplayerpaul on Jul 27, 2017 8:10:33 GMT -5
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