And here's where I would embed a video that I saw on Facebook. Facebook is programmed to keep you on Facebook. It doesn't give you the code to embed video that users display there. You have to go searching somewhere else, such as YouTube. I did that, couldn't find the video, and now I can't even get back to the place where I saw it on Facebook. So I'll just say that I don't think Jeb's campaign is playing the social media game too well. I would have propagated a pro-Jeb video, gratis, and I couldn't.
And here's Trump yesterday, saying, loudly, "Wouldn't you rather have Trump as President if we're attacked? We'll beat the shit out of them!"
Is that what works these days as showing strength? Is that where we are?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
35 comments:
"Shit" shows strength against political correctness, and political correctness is what prevents solving any problem, including this one.
A guy who talks like that must be strong. Remember the old Teddy Roosevelt axiom--"speak loudly and maybe some people will think you're really strong."
The ad sucks big time.
https://youtu.be/smOptl93_3U
I am afraid so.
Better than leading from our ass.
Yes, this is what the gop has become.
He-man/compromise is weakness/keyboard commando/government is the problem (except when it fixes my problem) blowhards.
Is that what works these days as showing strength? Is that where we are?
Yes. Vulgar and juvenile. Rather less alarming, "showing strength"-wise, than having a bunch of neo-con retreads as foreign policy advisers, though.
Trump is still going for the people who see that language as powerful and there are more of them every year.
The trouble with speaking softly and carrying a big stick is that the stick has disappeared with Obama.
Everyone knows it. It's OK with the left who think that law and order are the natural state of things.
The ad only sucks at the end...America is Great now.
I don't understand why so many people fall for what is pure bluster and can't see it for what it really is. Many in our country seem to be overly simplistic - either embracing Bernie's "free stuff" and "evil rich people" or Trump's "beat the shit out of them." Very sad to see, and at the risk of sounding like one of those old fretting people, I do worry for our future.
Does Trump have any understanding of the intricacies of what military operations actually entail? I certainly don't, but I do know that it is more than waving your arms around and talking loudly.
I'm GOP, but I'm firmly in the ABT category (Anybody but Trump).
Is the following racist, anti-African leadership of the type we want again for America, in the mode of Charles Napier except cutting and running asap after we tell them what they will believe and how to act?
"It will be a chance for Mr. Obama — who will visit Kenya and Ethiopia during this trip, most likely the last one to Africa during his presidency — to reshape the narrative surrounding gay rights on the continent, activists say. On his last trip to Africa in 2013, Mr. Obama was seen as wagging his finger at Africans on gay rights during a news conference with Senegal’s president, Macky Sall.
Mr. Sall swung back, saying that laws governing gay rights were Senegal’s alone to decide. The United States should respect that choice, he added, just as Senegal, which had long abolished the death penalty, respected America’s position on that matter. The comments quickly established the script for other African leaders.
“Obama should talk about it but not the way he did last time, which was too blunt, like a general speaking down to a young soldier,” said Ndeye Kebe, president of Women’s Smile, a lesbian rights group in Senegal.
“There were repercussions all over Africa,” she added, contending that she and many other African activists subsequently faced greater harassment."--http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/22/world/africa/africans-to-welcome-obama-but-not-a-scolding-on-gay-rights.html?_r=0
As income inequality skyrockets-on-steriods* in America, our president was running over to a different continent and telling them what they must think, like an imperial capitalist uglo-American. Only thoughts originating from the darkest recess' of a mind could approve of this power vacuum created by others but exploited disgustingly by Obama and for Obama.
*this idiom incorporates the understanding that the steriods are not for human consumption but alternatively serve an afterburner/turbo function.
If one is aware our military lacks the will to win given the punishment for doing so they would face at home (and abroad from international courts) one is less concerned about another 40 or 80 billion dollars for this program, or that one or the other eighty, not budgeted or spent than the fact our military is prevented from executing winning strategy.
To the extent "we will beat the shit out of them" is signaling Trump won't tie our troop's hands behind their backs while forcing them to hear children being raped (because we don't understand their pedo culture and can't criticize that which we don't understand natch) it as powerful as Reagan's "we win, they lose" strategy that degraded Communist pride for a generation.
If any are confident and able enough, image if Bin Laden were alive who he would call the Strong Horse comparing Trump to Hillary. Hillary said about the terrorists she will try to understand them and their motivations for their fanatical, maniacal need to murder us whereas Trump will "beat the shit out of them."
Now, compare Blood and Guts "we'll tear their guts out and grease our tank tracks with 'em" Patton to the pansies in charge today, and you can start understanding why WWII took under 6 years and the War on Terror will be never ending, just like the economic boom of the Military Industrial Complex around MD/VA/D.C.
Why kill the threat if you can profit forever from its existence? From this point of view, "beat the shit out of" is troubling by the lack of death/extinction vowed.
Amy: I don't understand why so many people fall for what is pure bluster and can't see it for what it really is. Many in our country seem to be overly simplistic...
If we substitute "pure bluster" with a selection from the large number of pejorative nouns describing political bullshit, we can apply that question, and observation about the citizenry, to every candidate and voter, in every election. I doubt the percentage of Trump supporters "falling for" the bluster in itself is any higher (or lower) than the percentage of other candidates' supporters "falling for" their choice's style of presentation in itself.
As our commenter buwaya puti puts it, people merely differ in how they prefer to be flim-flammed.
3 heads were chopped off in the middle east yesterday, gays being flung off buildings, and people are most worried about tone.
This is our damn problem. Think with logic, not feelings. They need the shit beat out of them. Does that offend anyone? Too bad. Oversensitivity created this crisis. Trump is destroying the tyranny of forced tolerance and niceness.
This NEEDS to be done. We have went too far one way. The snap back is naturally going to be a bit shocking.
The next 11 months might be among the most dangerous in American history. A foreign adversary watching Trump might well conclude that now's the time to do something in the South China Sea or Latvia. Because they can get away with it because Obama will let them.
Incidentally, did you know that Latvia is a NATO member?
Here's an interesting article in which the chairman of a NATO committee says Russia could conquer NATO members Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania in three days, and because NATO's military/political command structure is so tangled, NATO might not even be able to respond. If it wanted to.
It's a good thing Obama has that bust of Churchill in the Oval Office. Oh, wait...
Also, "If the Baltic states are successfully attacked or undermined (for example, through coercive but non-military regime change), the damage already done to the European security order by Russia’s successful seizure of Ukrainian territory will become irretrievable. The central message of this report is that if the region’s security is not improved, NATO, the world’s most successful military alliance, could be revealed as powerless, perhaps without even a shot being fired. America’s role as the ultimate guarantor of European security would be over in a matter of hours." From this cheerful scholarly article.
It's the Republican equivalent of "How will I make ordinary people successful? I'll take away the money that the rich don't deserve?"
I bet The Donald inserts the many gratuitous "hells" and now the biggest one of all, "shit," as his parting message to the phony Christiany Taipans of Iowa.
Althouse: And here's where I would embed a video that I saw on Facebook. Facebook is programmed to keep you on Facebook. It doesn't give you the code to embed video that users display there.
It depends on the video server site. If it's actually a YouTube video, just hover your mouse over the video on Facebook so that the little menu options come up. The "YouTube" logo near the lower right corner is a link that will take you to that specific video on YouTube itself, then you can just copy-and-paste from your browser address bar.
Project weakness seems to be where we are. Share all our secrets through unsecured e-mail servers. This we call "smart diplomacy." If we share our intel, our enemies will not fear us, seems to be the thinking. Announce the absence of a strategy to defeat ISIS. "It will take a long time," he says. Defer to Putin. This will weakness him, "wrong side of history" he says. Ignore Chinese hacking, what can we do about it? Congratulate Iranian catch and release as a diplomatic success. Pretend that Islamic terrorists are not Muslims. In fact, go to a terrorist related mosque to troll America. "The future MUST not belong to those who slander the Prophet of Islam," he says. Embrace the Castro bros.
Yep, pretty sure, pussified is where we are!
Is that what works these days as showing strength? Is that where we are?
After 8 years of Obama “showing” weakness? In fact Obama not only did not show strength Obama actually advertised weakness, gloried in weakness, promoted weakness as a virtue – even going so far as to actually claim weakness as strength – as every terrorist in the middle east laughed and licked their chops.
Question: Have the other GOP candidates tried to show strength? Yes, each and every one has in some, perhaps less bluntly effective way, tried to show strength. But for some reason Trump showing strength is found to be, ominously … “where we are.” Not the others – just Trump. Interesting.
Another question: Have the two Democrats running for POTUS tried to show strength? I do not keep up with every utterance by Bernie and Hillary but I do not remember much showing of strength from either of them. Will they be like Obama if they gain the office – back to advertising weakness?
So this brings to mind a third question: Which is preferable for the USA, a POTUS who shows strength or a POTUS who shows weakness?
Obama promised to intervene in Syria if they started using chemical weapons.
They did; he didn't.
That was his "beat the shit out of them" moment. He failed, and we've been paying the price ever since.
Trump's speech is also a great tactic, too. If they think you're crazy, they're going to be much more careful around you.
Cleavon Little showed us that in "Blazing Saddles" when he threatened to shoot himself if they didn't let him go.
For his actions at Bastogne, McAuliffe was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross by General Patton on December 30, 1944, followed later by the Distinguished Service Medal.
But, he's best known today for his reply to the German demand for surrender:
To the German Commander.
NUTS!
The American Commander
Crude comments should be restricted to the privacy of an abortion clinic or Planned Parenthood office.
Trumps campaign was built on magic: attitude, image, bluster, iconoclasm. And with one Iowan pinprick, the magic bubble has burst. Well, at least for me, anyway. But I imagine I'm pretty representative. He is now just another mortal. All those magic things -- the bluster, for example -- seem different now that the spell is broken.
I fear Trump's tale ends and ends soon. I think he'll rue the day he got in.
Well beating the shit out of someone is a sign of strength. Just ask those that took on Mike Tyson in his prime. And if we took on ISIS and beat the shit out of them, it would be a sign of strength, yes. It might not be the only sign of strength, but it would certainly be a display of it. ISIS is strong because they are beating the shit out of other people.
You know what's not? taking military operations off the table when negotiating with Iran. Putting down a red line and then not honoring when Syria uses chemical weapons.
Who here thinks being afraid to use your military is a sign of "strength"? Only liberals. Those who are strong though would say you are pushovers. And paper tigers.
Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho.
I don't have a problem with having a leader who's on record about massive retaliation if someone attacks this country. I wouldn't have problem with our national motto being "Don't Mess With Us!" either.
I just am not sure if Trump understands how the world really works. Other nations, such as Russia, have their own interests which may not coincide with our own. It's not a matter of "not getting along with Russia," it's that they may have a vested interest in chaos in the Middle East, so they may not be willing to bomb ISIS (or whichever band of Muslim terrorists is the flavor of the month), although they may be willing to bomb our so-called allies to protect their own interests (Assad).
1984 by Orwell was not meant to be used by the left as a political operations manual, but it is.
Idiocracy the movie was not meant to be used by the right as a political operations manual, but it is.
I, for one, await the moment politics returns to the ethics of the last scene in Old Yeller.
machine,
Could you please cite an example of government solving a problem?
nothing wrong with signaling that you'll retaliate if attacked.
in fact, it's suicidal to signal anything else.
now, in reality you may sometimes forgive or judge yourself to not have been attacked. that's how we got through the cold war without that unhealthy global thermonuclear glow.
perhaps some cultures' strong men will feel politically compelled to escalate if everyone else is posturing like this. yet, diplomacy exists. we deal with leaders who say one thing to their own people (death to america) and another in secret, where treaties are made. what member of the worldwide elite is not familiar with the concept of empty posturing for home politics?
this is just exactly "don't tread on me" and it should play very well. if you don't understand the appeal, you might just be an elitist.
"As income inequality skyrockets-on-steriods*"
Bad form, yet.
If per Solichzenheniz , Alexander, fuck I got to look it up.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
One only, but not the, along certain lines lies the distinctions:
I would hope Max wouldn't Schumer that.
But what do I know?
"Desiderata
Go placidly amid the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence.
As far as possible without surrender be on good terms with all persons.
Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even the dull and ignorant; they too have their story.
Avoid loud and aggressive persons, they are vexations to the spirit.
If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain and bitter;
for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.
Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.
Keep interested in your career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.
Exercise caution in your business affairs; for the world is full of trickery.
But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals;
and everywhere life is full of heroism.
Be yourself.
Especially, do not feign affection.
Neither be critical about love; for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment it is as perennial as the grass.
Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth.
Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with imaginings.
Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness. Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself.
You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.
Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be,
and whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul.
With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be careful. Strive to be happy.
© Max Ehrmann 1927
Post a Comment