I know you're just trolling Bob, but here's some really basic questions.

Do you count it a 'bad' thing that nations have been asking to join NATO, and allowed into it?

Do you count it a "bad" thing that Russia has absolutely destroyed itself attempting to invade Ukraine, and exposed to the world that the level of corruption internally has left it's military capacity at a state vastly lower than even our most pessimistic pre-invasion estimates?

Ukraine was a UN member nation, do you count it OK for Russia to invade Ukraine as another sovereign UN nation on the basis of alliances it might choose to join?

lol….”creep”! Love it. 😂

Putin’s “Leftist talking points”! LOL!!! Not according to Russia. They gave their reasons for invasion at the time, NATO expanding was not among them. 😂

Bwaaahahaha!!! Putin was turned down by NATO?!? Citation please!
Russia walked from even negotiations with NATO in 2015. When do you say Putin asked to join…please provide a video of his speech requesting admission. Doesn’t exist because it didn’t happen. You bought and repeated ANOTHER stupid lie.

NATO was created to protect Western European countries from the Soviet Union expanding into their territories, not to fight communism but USSR expansionism. Russian expansionism is still a threat, and you don’t start a “No Homers” club then admit Homer because he changed his hairstyle…meaning you don’t form an alliance to protect against Russia then admit Russia as a lead member.
Btw- Putin has expressed interest in returning to communist socialist Russia and retaking all satellite nations.

PS- your broken English once again betrays your foreign nationality, “Guess America need an enemy for feed the military industrial complex.” is not a fractured English sentence fragment an American would say and denotes an alien sentence structure in your native tongue. 😂

PS- to debunk your Russian propaganda that NATO agreed to not expand…. https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/115204.htm#:~:text=NATO%20promised%20Russia%20it%20would%20not%20expand%20after%20the%20Cold%20War&text=Such%20an%2
0agreement%20was%20never,included%20provisions%20on%20NATO%20membership.

And what I can find about Putin wanting in NATO is according to him he once floated the idea offhand to Clinton but only if Russia was admitted immediately without waiting in line, meeting basic requirements, paying, or having an acceptance vote, and only if Russia gets the same full power as America without contributing the same amount…not a true, serious, or in any way official application to join. He was not “turned down”, in fact Clinton publicly said he wouldn’t object to Russia entering NATO, but they never applied. It’s propaganda for ignorami, Sucker.

This stuff you spout is simple to debunk in seconds, and is mostly pure Russian propaganda straight from Sputnik. You should really look into your nonsense before spewing it into the ether like a drunk puppet in Team America. If only you cared that you look like an idiotic knownothing anti democracy anti American nutjob cultist, but clearly that doesn’t bother you.

Here’s a nightcap for you…Trump’s “security” rushing righty media away from his event when protesters start chanting “LOCK HIM UP! LOCK HIM UP! LOCK HIM UP!” 😂

Ponder this….how long will it take to post them all???

25 more high powered Republican sex offenders…just gotta love #30!

26 Republican legislative aide *Howard L. Brooks** was charged with molesting a 12-year old boy and possession of child pornography.
27 Republican Senate candidate John Hathaway was accused of having sex with his 12-year old babysitter and withdrew his candidacy after the allegations were reported in the media.

28 Republican preacher *Stephen White**, who demanded a return to traditional values, was sentenced to jail after offering $20 to a 14-year-old boy for permission to perform oral sex on him.

29 Republican talk show host Jon Matthews pleaded guilty to exposing his genitals to an 11 year old girl.

30 Republican anti-gay activist Earl "Butch" Kimmerling was sentenced to 40 years in prison for molesting an 8-year old girl after he attempted to stop a gay couple from adopting her.

31 Republican Party leader Paul Ingram pleaded guilty to six counts of raping his daughters and served 14 years in federal prison.

32 Republican election board official Kevin Coan was sentenced to two years probation for soliciting sex over the internet from a 14-year old girl.

33 Republican politician *Andrew Buhr** was charged with two counts of first degree sodomy with a 13-year old boy.

34 Republican politician Keith Westmoreland was arrested on seven felony counts of lewd and lascivious exhibition to girls under the age of 16. He committed suicide

35 Republican anti-abortion activist John Allen Burt was charged with sexual misconduct involving a 15-year old girl.

36 Republican County Councilman *Keola Childs** pleaded guilty to molesting a male child.

37 Republican activist, McCain office manager Jeffrey Claude Bartleson, was arrested for molesting the child of a campaign volunteer.

38 NYC councilman, Republican-Queens, Dennis Gallagher - rape

39 Republican Mayoral Candidate and pastor - Rambler was accused of having sex with an underage boy and was convicted of soliciting explicit photos from a swingers' group & using the pics to extort money

40 Republican City Councilman Fred C. Smeltzer, Jr. pleaded no contest to raping a 15-year-old girl and served 6-months in prison.

41 Republican activist Parker J. Bena pleaded guilty to possession of child pornography on his home computer and was sentenced to 30 months in federal prison and fined $18,000.

42 GOP Sen aide Ryan Loskarn committed suicide after child porn arrest

43 Republican parole board officer and former Colorado state representative, Larry Jack Schwarz, was fired after child pornography was found in his possession.

44 Faith and Family Alliance director, Republican strategist, and lobbyist Robin Vanderwall was convicted in of five counts of soliciting sex from boys and girls over the internet. It's at the end or article, after all his illegal lobbying schemes https://t.co/gVbGFfAtZe

45 Republican businessman Jon Grunseth withdrew his candidacy for Minnesota governor after allegations surfaced that he went swimming in the nude with four underage girls, including his daughter

46 Republican director of the "Young Republican Federation" Nicholas Elizondo molested his 6-year old daughter and was sentenced to six years in prison

47 Republican benefactor of conservative Christian groups, Richard A. Dasen Sr. rape. Dasen has allegedly told police that over the past decade he paid more than $1 million to have sex with a large number of young women

48 Republican Judge and campaign official Tim Nolan for President Donald Trump indicted for human trafficking and forcing a minors (9) to engage in sexual activity

49 Republican County Board Candidate Brent Schepp was charged with molesting a 14-year old girl.

50: Randall Casseday, HR Director for right-wing Washington Times - caught in an underage sex sting - "The Washington Times is the only newspaper where the moral issues of family and faith are proudly reported on the front page on a regular basis"

dude.

how well are her kids doing?

removal? 'cause you find her 'wacko'? you are here?

if you take dares - go on some of these international sites and try to explain to Europeans why pledging alliance to a flag is okay.

bet they have more compelling reasons not to.

would agree w/you IF you said people shouldn't post every f'n thing on the 'web. hard to understand putting personal/private thoughts w/one's face attached to it (no that's not me, it's an avatar - not even my cat). like they're celebrities or have no friends to share goofy thoughts with (don't start).

RATHER tell the woman advice similar to this: shut off the phones. don't post private shat. do who we do. grouse w/folks you don't personally know, or where they live, or could fire y'all.

X-COM & its sequels are THE strategy PC series I played & replayed the most ever, on both PC & Android on my tablet.

No other copycats I played like Jagged Alliance came close to my love of X-COM.

I always picked my team members that's high on Psych att/def. I prefer mind control the aliens to recon & go on suicide missions than using firepower.

Clearly you cannot read. The article is clear. The objective of the bipartisan group was not to win votes for either side, only to ensure a free and fair election in the face of the Trump administration's efforts to interfere and illegally sway results through lies, lawsuits, disinformation, voter suppression, and simple denial of reality and fact.

"There was a conspiracy unfolding behind the scenes, one that both curtailed the protests and coordinated the resistance from CEOs. Both surprises were the result of an informal alliance between left-wing activists and business titans. The pact was formalized in a terse, little-noticed joint statement of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and AFL-CIO published on Election Day. Both sides would come to see it as a sort of implicit bargain–inspired by the summer’s massive, sometimes destructive racial-justice protests–in which the forces of labor came together with the forces of capital to keep the peace and oppose Trump’s assault on democracy.

The handshake between business and labor was just one component of a vast, cross-partisan campaign to protect the election–an extraordinary shadow effort dedicated not to winning the vote but to ensuring it would be free and fair, credible and uncorrupted. "


You are both dumb to try this lie, and a bold faced liar. You actually pointed us to your source that clearly says the exact opposite of what you claim. I'm pretty certain you didn't read it, because it's clear, and it calls you a liar too.

I hear you brave young Jaybles, you are hungry for the rock
But to learn the ancient method, sacred doors you must unlock
Escape your father's clutches and this oppressive neighborhood
On a journey you must go to find the land of Hollywood

In The City of Fallen Angels where the ocean meets the sand
You will form a strong alliance and the world's most awesome band
To find your fame and fortune, through the valley you must walk
You will face your inner demons, now go my son and rock

Wow, Bob. Your head is deep in that hole to think that. I hope you wiped first.

We have two secret illegal payoffs for porn/playboy stars he cheated on his wife with (campaign finance abuses, and admissions that he slept with them and they might have proof, and indicators of his fidelity), "grab them by the pussy"...(and 14 people who say he did)....bragging about cheating on his wife with his friend's wives, multiple personal guilty pleas to frauds, tax evasion/fraud, charity fraud, 100 contacts with the hostile foreign power that helped defeat Clinton during the campaign (and a clear statement that he would love to collude with them again), 10+ cases of obstruction, uncountable illegal policies shot down in court (today he lost another, the census question designed to hurt Democrats and help Republicans, and now he wants to delay the census), a pattern of racism, a pattern of misogyny, a pattern of infantile whining, bullying, threatening, constant never-ending lies, denying science, ignoring legal precedents, destroying our international standing and reputation, multiple trade wars, .....and golf, never ending golf, far more than twice as often as Obama (who he called irresponsible for wasting time playing golf) at a cost to us of well over $100000000 so far (much of that paid to Trump's properties) and he still sucks so badly and cheats so blatantly that he has to hide from cameras every time....I just don't have all day to explain how much there is wrong with him beyond "grab them by the pussy"

Edit: Let's not forget the exponential rise in illegal immigration under his watch too....and his insistence he's building hundreds of miles of new wall that, in reality, is just mending existing fences he claims don't work.
Also, the increased division in America can't be ignored.

People are already swayed against him. Never reached 50% approval, losing to the top 10 Democrats in all polls, even his own. He won't get the angry Bernie Bro votes, or the undecided anti politician, or the old school republican vote, or a lot of farmer votes, or factory worker votes this round.

The country can't afford to have him win, Democrats gained power under him. Duh. Expect to lose the senate, and lose ground in the house, not to mention local governments.

Everyone not in your cult believes it's likely worse than is reported, because he's bullied news organizations so much they're terrified to make a mistake or even report the whole truth or he will label them enemies of America and your ilk will threaten their lives, and their children's lives, and actually try to kill them. Dozens if not hundreds of cases since his election....none before...or he might even directly threaten to have them arrested like he did last week.

Wages aren't rising (except for at the top), and absolutely weren't stagnant under Obama. In states where minimum wage has risen, it's despite Trump denouncing a raise in minimum wages. Massive inflation caused directly by his policies....trade wars, ruined trade agreements, etc., mean purchase power is falling, not growing. No infrastructure repairs, no repeal and replace, only attempts to ruin and leave Obama care, tax cuts for himself (despite his denials before they passed) and tax raises on the middle class (despite the fact he lied and called them temporary tax cuts before they passed), the biggest growth in the debt and deficit ever......that enough for now?

Totally fucking up the China and Iran issues, both are exponentially worse thanks to him. Jebus! It's ignorant insanity to imply they were ignored, you just didn't like Obama's agreements, agreements that were working to our benefit until Trump abandoned them, now we have trade wars with one, driving them into an alliance with Russia, and nearing actual war with the other.

Really...name the charges Obama had to defend in court. Derp. I can name DOZENS that Trump has, and is defending in court, and hundreds more he'll have to defend as soon as his shield of being president is gone.

Another post 100% wrong, Bob. I'm impressed, but not in a good way.

It doesn't work because there is an intrinsic group think personality in the Nordic region. Most people in that region that were born and raised there are very sensitive to profit making and ostentatious displays.

Which means that people are glad to simply 'get by'. There is not a mass drive to be better than your neighbor or own more toys than them. Of course there are outliers, but the bulk of Scandinavians are very used to the accepted norm. They are more willing to accept massive tax rates because they know they will be taken care of by the government. They aren't necessarily concerned about 'getting rich'.

Contrast that to other areas, especially the USA, and you will find out that it would never work here because we are an individualistic nation. Even the bluest liberal wants to be rich here. It's more cutthroat, more selfish, than you will find in a Scandi nation.

Another huge reason it would never work is that they do not spend anywhere near the percentage of their budget on defense that we do. Denmark spends about 20 billion per year on defense. Norway, an oil rich Scandi nation that is considered one of our most important NATO allies, spends about 6 billion. Less than 1.2% of their GDP. This is one thing that Trump was actually right about. We spend around 700 Billion, roughly 3.5% of our current GDP.

"Half the alliance — 16 of the 29 countries — don’t even spend 1.5 percent (of gross domestic product) let alone 2 percent that we all agreed on four years ago (at a NATO summit) in Wales,” Michael Fallon, who served as secretary of state for defense from 2014 to 2017, said. In 2017, only the U.K., Greece, Poland and Estonia reached the 2 percent target.

Whether that level of spending is needed is another argument altogether. I personally think we overspend way too much on defense, but regardless it is a huge factor as to why we can't offer the same level of 'socialism' that the Nordic nations do. If we spent the same percentage as Norway, we would be saving close to 460 billion dollars a year that could be applied to other programs. Such as paying for college for qualified students or trade school for ones that are not college minded. Or providing benefits to new mothers that we currently don't.

The lizard people, in conjunction with the gay frog alliance, have, under the supervision of the Rand corporation, kidnapped millions of children to sell to the reverse vampires, paving the way for an invasion of the saucer people in a fiendish plot to eliminate the meal of dinner.

We're through the looking glass, people.
Beware the derp state.

FYI...#walkaway is a right wing campaign where they had republican actors (and stock photos) claim they were Democrats who were sick of the liberal nonsense and they, and millions like them, were walking away from the Democrats. It was for right wingers, not left, false verification that they are correct and lefties are finally coming around to their truth, and a counterpoint to the "blue wave" campaign. They were caught on day one, and it never caught on outside right wing websites, mostly because it was a horrible, stupid, poorly implemented, transparent ploy. No surprise that, even though he knows that, Bob still puts it out there hoping to convince someone.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/walkaway-campaign-stock-photos/

Looking into it, I've found that it's reportedly become a Russian ploy.....
#WalkAway has also now been connected to Kremlin-linked Russian bots, and it is now the seventh most popular Russia-influenced hashtag as of this writing (July 17), according to the website Hamilton 68, which tracks Russian influence on Twitter as part of the Alliance for Securing Democracy, an initiative of the nonpartisan German Marshall Fund. The purpose of this now-astroturf campaign is to manipulate public opinion by creating the illusion that this is a popular movement. In reality, #WalkAway has become pure propaganda, a psychological operation.

https://www-m.cnn.com/2018/07/17/opinions/russian-bots-2018-midterm-elections-opinion-love/index.html?r=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F

Just one more time Bob is spreading Russian propaganda.

Heh I can understand why you think so. No I was talking Truman. Granted he wasn't as completely unaware as Trump was when he was elected. But he'd only served in the senate for two years before he was pushed in as VP. Note that the VP selection process was really different even though it was only ~70 years ago.

Once he got selected he became president that same year. Instead of working along Roosevelt's post-war plan and he refused to be a part of the grand alliance (meetings between the leaders of the big 3 powers that came out of that war).

Instead he started threatening the USSR with nuclear war if they worked toward developing nuclear weapons or expanded their territory... the so called Truman Doctrine.

He also played a fairly big roll in starting the whole middle eastern mess we're still dealing with to this day. Though that obviously goes back to the political failures after the Great War.

Guy was a dumb-ass who by reports of those around him didn't know WTF he was doing half the time.

*doublepromote

Mark's been on the money since about the time he wrote "Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea", but there have been two significant developments in Europe that he seemingly didn't see coming: Portugal and the UK.

The Left Alliance in Portugal has basically been giving Schäuble the finger for two years now, with their unilateral end to austerity. How dare they defy the master of coin?! If Schäuble says you need another round of austerity, by God, you better tighten your belts, even if they are already around your neck.

Unsurprisingly, everyone going along with austerity without having a completely export-dependent economy is in deep doo-doo. Meanwhile, those pesky Portuguese actually managed to massively reduce unemployment, despite running a deficit that is entirely too small for their current situation. But that's a different story.

And then there's the UK. There's Corbyn. Tribune of the Plebs. Managed to get the youth voting by offering actual left-wing policies (the "radical youth", as the NYT likes to call them, while claiming that the warmongering, Constitution-shredding, wage-depressing, ecosphere-destroying "centrists" are not the real radicals). Managed to turn quite a lot of UKIP voters around as well. Within striking distance of the Tories, despite the media running 24h a day of drivel like "Jezza's Jihadi Comrades" -- Goebbels would be ashamed of the crudeness of the propaganda campaign by the Sun/Daily Mirror/etc.

The populist left is back, bitches. Corbyn and Sanders are the first steps past the neoliberal warmongers of the Third Way. The Obama experience of a corporatist disguised as a left populist may have given us The Orange One, but it also put another nail into the coffin of neoliberalism.

Antonio Gramsci, founding member of the Italian communist party, who was killed by the fascist regime of Mussolini, gave us the appropriate description of our time:
"The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear."

That's your Trump. That's your opioid epidemic. That's the EU's austerity program in Greece, doing twice as much damage as the German occupation in WW2.

The question of obstruction was taken out of his hands by Trump, it's improper for him to give his, now, uninformed opinion which might contradict the continuing investigation.

Improper maybe but still relevant.

All those emails on an illegal server that went missing and he gave her a pass?

The investigation of Clinton was completed by the guy in question and whose alliances are questionable to say the least.

I'm not a Trump fan nor a fan of giving "any" crooks a pass.

The outcome was astonishing, even i couldn't believe it and i've been campaigning for it since 2015. All of this might be out of date 3 hours after i post it, because things are happening fast.

Theresa May has decided to go into government with the DUP propping her up. If you have kept up in the last 6 weeks or so with all the smears about Corbyn/IRA/Sinn Fein and terrorism, then you should understand that the DUP is basically the *other* side of the irish conflict. They are socially conservative and many of their beliefs fall in line with sharia laws; abortion illegal (including for sexual assault or incest cases), homophobia wrong and harmful to society, creationist beliefs, climate change deniers. That list might have less impact to some in the US but in British politics, it's out there on the fringe, quite extreme.

In a month from tomorrow there will be the July marches in Northern Ireland (and elsewhere in UK), and we already saw a march yesterday where unionists (~DUP supporters) trashed a nationalist pub (~Sinn Fein supporters).

So now consider. Nationalists have been dragged through the dirt by Conservative MPs and in the press; accused of being terrorists in order to smear Corbyn to stop him getting power. Whereas unionists are being courted by the Conservative government, and the press turning a blind eye to the DUP and their connections to domestic terrorism.

The northern irish peace process was a great achievement and still stands despite bad feeling on both sides. Part of the good friday agreement that ensures this peace says that the UK and Irish governments must act as neutral mediators in times of disagreement between factions in NI.

So now it becomes clear why Jeremy Corbyn refused to criticise either the unionists or the nationalists in particular - as a true leader with a fucking brain in his head, he understood that to take sides or score points would be to risk Britain's safety and the safety of communities in NI. The reason people were able to smear him as a terrorist sympathiser and danger to this country is *because* he refused to say or do anything that endangered this country.

And it becomes rather worrying that the tories have risked all of that hard work and all of our safety in order to keep power for just a little bit longer. There are already talks of a legal challenge from nationalists.

The good side to this is that it seems doomed to failure. May's credibility is broken, in the UK and in Europe. The alliance with the DUP almost certainly can't happen or last very long. The only alternative leaders to May would make the Conservatives less popular. Polls that saw this surge coming are predicting now that Labour would do even better if another election happened right now. The last time this happened was Ted Heath, whose minority government did not last long, and Labour took over after a few days, and won an election a few months later.

Austerity is well and truly broken as an ideology.

Oh, and all the talk of "the death of social democracy" in europe was actually the death of triangulating centrists who have become completely alienated from ordinary people. Socialism lives.