Illegal aliens allowed to vote in San Francisco

It seems you’re pretty worked up about this me again. So what do you plan to do about it? Anything other than rant on degreeinfo?

 

Kizmet, it's a robust discussion and that's all.

Kizmet, that's an excellent question. The first plan was to get Donald Trump elected as president and then implement the rule of law. It's in-progress now, but the courts are generally slow moving. It takes time.

 

It's wise to quit watching mainstream media entirely (MSNBC, CNN, etc.), while Fox News must be taken in small doses (cannot watch it for too long without experiencing an OD). However, the Ingram Angle and some of the other Fox commentaries are outstanding.

 

A bit of prognostication for a summer morning . . .

I predict that, in one year, DegreeInfo will be reduced to a competition between me again, Stanislav, and Steve Foerster, and that none of the messages they post will have anything to do with distance education (except for Steve puffing his homophobic doctoral program at U,C,). The few posts that you see from others will be from foreigners who do not speak or write in proper English and make irrelevant observations that have little to do with DL.

In two years, DI will, like DD and DLT, be kaput. It will have run out of colors due to me again’s recently developed proclivity toward multi-color posts.

 

A DegreeInfo tradition.

Of all the names I've seen for marijuana...

Think of it as me again flying the rainbow flag.

 

That's the first actually funny joke you've made in a long time.

 

我再次飞过的唯一彩旗是美国的红旗，白旗和蓝旗

上帝保佑美国，让美国再次伟大

大声笑

​

 

It isn't rocket-science Maniac. Trying to reignite the Cold War (as so many are trying to do in the current hysteria) isn't likely to improve US-Russia relations. Trying to find common ground and shared national interests has a much better chance. (No matter how many howls of "treason" we hear.)

I didn't watch the video either, but I'd guess that Trump meant that there are elements on both sides that want to torpedo any possible rapprochement. There are parties on both sides that see the other side as their own country's biggest threat. (Short-sighted in both cases in light of the rise of Chinese power that represents the primary longer-term threat to both the US and Russia.) And there are parties on both sides (including the US democratic party and the old-style republican "never-Trumper" establishment in the US) who hope to politically exploit those kind of atavistic knee-jerks for their own political purposes.

I'm not sure where Vladimir Putin stands on all this in the Russian context. (I have my suspicions.) But it makes sense to at least sound Russia out and indicate that there's an opening for joint action when it's in both countries' interest.

If borders and nationality are and should be meaningless in the case of the United States (the subject of this thread), then why should Ukrainian borders and nationality have any importance?

I think that if the US is ever going to have a satisfactory (for both countries) relationship with Russia, we need to recognize the importance that Ukraine has for Russia geopolitically, culturally and historically. Moving to shift Ukraine westwards by making noises about it joining NATO (seen by Russia, probably accurately, as an anti-Russian alliance) and supporting a coup in Kiev to overthrow an elected pro-Russian government through street-violence, were naturally seen in Moscow as hugely provocative acts. And Russia responded aggressively, by seizing Crimea (which is populated largely by Russians and which Russia has long had historical attachment to).

I don't see that as threatening the US or US interests in any way. It isn't something that we can possibly undo, short of war, no matter how much we bluster.

There's lots of talk in the US media about how Russia's annexation of Crimea was the first change of borders in Europe by force since World War II. Which of course isn't true. (The US and its friends ripping Kosovo out of Serbia preceeded it.)

I'm not convinced that anything the Russians are doing in the area of "cyberwarfare" rises to the level of "undermining USA national sovereignty". (Or that those who favor abolishing ICE and allowing illegals to vote in US elections have any standing to speak about US "national sovereignty".) Countless countries, even our ostensible European allies are constantly probing our computer networks. It's cheap and easy, and it allows smaller geopolitical players to play the role of major powers online, without much cost or risk.

What's more, we do it ourselves both domestically and overseas. Remember the Snowden revelations? Including how Obama's spooks were listening to Angela Merkel's phone calls? (Promptly pushed back under the rug.) Remember the CIA hacking tools?

Probably the biggest cyber-threat that the US faces right now comes from China. They are stealing every piece of intellectual property we have and in so doing eliminating that last competitive advantage we have over them (superior technological innovation). Now that's something that really effects the future of our country and its place in the world.

I think (and I believe that Trump agrees) that Russia can play a constructive role in places like Syria. Obama and Hillary's supporting the "Syrian rebels" was just stupid, based on some idealistic vision of them as freedom fighters all in tune with democratic party values on women's rights and gay-liberation. (Nothing could be further from the truth. Most of them were extreme salafists.) All that we accomplished in Syria was spreading anarchy and all-against-all civil war. As we should have learned in Iraq, Libya, Yemen and the overthrow of Mubarak in Egypt, creating anarchy and power-vacuums in that part of the world seldom ends well. We can't just keep creating havoc (however idealistic our motives) and then washing our hands and walking away when the results start to look like a Mad Max movie.

Sometimes thuggish dictators aren't the worst thing that can happen in some of these countries, if those despots are keeping a lid on far uglier things. That's why Russia's surprisingly effective support for Assad in Syria might have been the best thing that could realistically have happened to that country at that point. The US (and the Kurds) and Russia (and Assad) cooperated quite effectively in crushing ISIS' caliphate. Now we need further cooperation to keep Assad and the Kurds from fighting each other (drawing in increasingly bizarre and dangerous ostensible NATO ally Turkey). It would be very helpful to wider US interests if we can encourage the Russians to convince Assad to rely more on the Russians (even if that results in Syria becoming a Russian client) rather than the Iranians. Assad might go for that if he fears that the Iranians are becoming a state-within-a-state in Syria that threatens his authority.

On the bigger geopolitical stage, Russia occupies the whole northern portion of Eurasia. I think that it's more in our interest to have Russia linked (by common interest, by trade...) with Europe and the West than with China. Historically, Russia's always been a bit ambivalent about whether it's a European or an Asian country. We should be encouraging the former over the latter. Trade sanctions are just self-defeating in that regard, since they work against our own longer-term interests. Pushing Russia away just provides support for Moscow's own atavistic Cold-Warriors and it pushes Russia into the arms of a resurgent China. At some point Russia will inevitably come to the realization that their growing relationship with China is a tremendously assymetrical relationship where Russia serves as a source of raw materials for China and gradually becomes a Chinese client state, one of the ring of weaker clients surrounding the 'middle kingdom'.

Russia will eventually realize that it needs stronger independent allies with which it can make common cause, so as to maintain its independence as a big-power in the world, free from foreign domination. Those are the sweet sounds that the Europeans and the Americans should be singing now into Russian ears. The Cold War is over. Given how the world is likely to evolve in the next 50 years, cooperation between the Russians and the West is increasingly likely to be in both countries' interest.

 

Listing everything wrong and offensive in what you said would take too much space. Also, "Kyiv".

Well, theoretically, you can start by providing Ukraine with nuclear arsenal equivalent to the one it gave up in exchange of assurances that precisely this would not happen. But more importantly, no one asked "you" to "undo" this, so pretending otherwise is something only a dishonest weasel would do. Implication intended.

Again, since there is virtually no one even semi-seriously suggesting illegals should be allowed to vote in US federal elections, only a dishonest weasel would suggest it. Also, someone who expresses a desire to silence a fellow human over political disagreement (trivial one, I might add: there is nothing sacred in ICE, a relatively new subdivision of a relatively new DHS) is a totalitarian, have no standing to tout American patriotism and should just immigrate to Russia.

Yep, I bet Trump does. It takes profound ignorance to imagine that crappy regime can play a constructive role anywhere at all. Trump surely has that.

 

"I'm turning into Ted, I think I'm turning into Ted, I really think so
Turning into Ted, I think I'm turning into Ted, I really think so
I'm turning into Ted, I think I'm turning into Ted, I really think so..."

Aplologies to The Vapors - "I'm turning Japanese," 1980

https://genius.com/The-vapors-turning-japanese-lyrics