1.) I'm not sure it's fair to compare President Clinton's actions to President Trump's actions in regards to the State Department because it sets up a false equivalency. To be clear, the issues is NOT that Trump is putting his own people in charge. Rather, the issue is that Trump has fired nearly every leadership role in the state department MONTHS before he will be able to get conformations or replacements for them. This is a huge problem for a country seeking a leadership role in the world. Gutting the State Department is like turning the US into a sailing ship without sails. Trump can spin the helm to his hearts delight - but the ship isn't going anywhere.
And this is nothing like Bill Clinton who had his replacements lined up and ready to go BEFORE dismissing any prior appointees. Trump is just being plain reckless.
Fair point. You are correct. It’s nice to have someone on here who thinks these things through in a discussion thank you
I still feel this doesn’t concern me so much because Trump has clearly been on a mission to shrink “government”. So I think the media is presenting it as chaos, when rather it’s his move to redirect money into American problems within the country, not outside.
Another thing to consider is what has out state department become? It has become a “political” state department. From 1789 to about 9/11 that’s not what it was. Now it’s another bloated government agency spilling and crossing over into other departments. Originally the state department was about diplomacy and negotiated treaties and ended wars. Now? Hmmmm… can you or anyone tell me what the Department’s Special Representative for the Great Lakes Region of Africa does?
I don’t think he is eliminating the state department, I think he is putting it on an extreme diet. The results have yet to be seen, but I am still not sold on global apocalypse because of thrashing what has become another bureaucratic quagmire.
2.) I'm not sure why you're saying MSM is "making stories" about Kellyanne Connoway. The only persons responsible for the parade of nonsense coming out of the mouths of Trump's media team are - Trump's media team. The fact that they habitually run around peddling conspiracy theories and false narratives is deeply concerning. And, more importantly, a great many articles and air time has been spent on Scott Pruitt's scientific illiteracy.
It is possible to cover both the lies/idiocy of Kellyanne and simultaneously cover the lies/idiocy of Scott. News is not a zero-sum game.
I disagree with you on this. Not that Kellyanne says or do stupid things, but that the MSM’s inability to resist obsessing about it is a good diversion tactic if Trump wants it to be. Why play his game? A true scandal is going on, have Kellyanne say something crazy, suddenly the MSM channels are choked and jammed with nonsense because of their insatiable appetite to be entertainment (not news). Our news media has become sensational entertainment media, and the Kellyanne circus plays right into click bait headlines, and twitterable sound bites. I don’t buy it. I would not be surprised if more often than not, its calculated diversion. The media is like a dog chasing a tennis ball, throw it over there, they all run.
3.) Your comments regarding the UN remind me of when my congregation went to visit Bethel and we stopped at the UN building along the way. The brother conducting the tour went on about how, "since the UN was formed there have been over 300 wars" and how it was a total failure.
Of course, what the brother failed to mention was all the wars that the UN had STOPPED from ever happening. He failed to mention all the wars that were shortened in length because the UN intervened. He failed to mention all the treaties signed that prevented countries from using chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons on the battlefield. And he failed to mention all the cases in which the UN managed to broker a lasting peace between countries.
The value of the UN cannot be overstated. And to threaten to abandon it like Trump has is a fools gambit.
Do you have a list of great accomplishments of the U.N. in peacekeeping? Their sessions are a joke. In the 1960s Ayn Rand (I know I will catch shit for quoting her) said: "What would you expect from a crime-fighting committee whose board of directors included the leading gangsters of the community?" Here is something I cannot overstate (even typing it is such a joke). THIS IS AN ORGANIZATION THAT PUT IRAN AND SUADI ARABIA ON ITS HUMAN RIGHTS COUNCIL. If that is not the height of ironic stupidity I don't know what is.
Symbolically it may be something, but in action, I don’t know. Most of the “peacekeeping”, even when the U.N. was involved, was carried out by the U.S. military.
Since the inception of the UN, there have been hundreds of armed conflicts around the world. Your bethel brother was right about that lol. The UN authorized the use of force just TWICE to my knowledge (Korea and Gulf War I). That means if you live in a country where war breaks out, you have a 0.0083% chance that the UN will actually send troops to help you out! (as long as you don't mind that 90% of the troops who show up are American). That’s reality.
THE U.N. IS BAD VALUE FOR THE MONEY.
4.) Between January and September of last year the US Coast Guard seized over 416,000 pounds of cocaine (with an estimated value of 5.6 billion dollars). And by the end of the year it had intercepted additional 26 tons of cocaine. I'd hardly call that a "negligible impact".
This is something I happen to have some life experience with. The “War on Drugs” to me is one of the biggest wastes of money. This is a game the government chooses to play and not stop. Its all a show, that goes for the DEA as well. Occasionally catch a few bad guys (sometime a prearranged deal), make a show, keep the agency going. I don’t think the main value of our coast guard is the war on drugs. Our own CIA is so deeply involved with cartels and other shit it’s not even really a war. Just another circus to keep big government spending money on BS.
Perhaps if we had smarter drug laws (aka educating people on safe recreational use instead of felony charges) we wouldn't have to spend so much on our Coast Guard. But that's a whole separate topic.
Drug laws make no sense to me. If you want to do coke, they are not going to stop you, just punish you if you get caught. Like you said this is a whole other major topic that we probably agree on.
I respect all your opinions coded, I just think we don't agree on certain things and thats cool
