Originally Posted by bosboreas

Has it been resolved that Mr. Trump is the Gray Champion?

Sadly, his gray is of a more carrot-top than silver, but such is the case with fool's gold.

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

For things to get really ugly, just let the moneyed elites, a/k/a the economic royalists, get complete power over us.

Or the monkeyed elites, ha ha
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuP1e0RNF-0

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

That would seem to be a disqualification. The Gray Champion can be a prophet/nomad cusper or hybrid, evidently, or even a nomad like George Washington, but not an artist/adaptive.

But that could change I suppose, since people are living longer. Sanders would be the oldest candidate ever nominated.

Sanders reminds me of my Dad. A Silent who fit in more with Boomers. The most radical Silents were too much for their fellow Silents. The walked in the wilderness until the Boomers were old enough to give them company. Then all hell broke loose.

Originally Posted by playwrite

Here is the left brain failsafe reason that will stop Trump from occupying the WH -



And here's the right brain failsafe reason (ladies, steel yourselves before watching this) -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkSRJSUY0vs

He's losing Ann Coulter, f'n Ann Coulter, and I'm not even sure Ann is a woman!

http://thefederalist.com/2016/03/29/...ump-is-mental/

Trump can't keep any rational train of thought going. He may be in the early stages of Dementia. No joke.

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

Did you ever notice that Survivor is staged exclusively in places with warm climates? That's so that people can show more bare flesh. For good reason there is no Survivor: Edmonton, Survivor: Stockholm, Survivor:Novosibirsk... or even Survivor: San Diego (San Diego is almost tropical, but not quite).

Participants are young, and not very cerebral.

There have been Boomer contestants, even a champion, who was a science teacher in Maine, IIRC. They have had some pretty brainy types on Survivor. However, it is true that the majority of contestants are eye candy.

Originally Posted by XYMOX_4AD_84

Trump can't keep any rational train of thought going. He may be in the early stages of Dementia. No joke.

Nah, I think he was BORN demented. How much brain matter does a half-ape have to dement?



(joke )

Originally Posted by XYMOX_4AD_84

Sanders reminds me of my Dad. A Silent who fit in more with Boomers. The most radical Silents were too much for their fellow Silents. The walked in the wilderness until the Boomers were old enough to give them company. Then all hell broke loose.

That's true. The war baby silents are more properly referred to as the oldest members of "the sixties generation," which includes war babies and core boomers but not Jonesers. And that includes all those born with Pluto in Leo, and all with Neptune in Libra (plus some with Neptune in late Virgo, the war baby Silents).

Originally Posted by XYMOX_4AD_84

Trump can't keep any rational train of thought going. He may be in the early stages of Dementia. No joke.

This seems to be the GOP POTUS disease, so you may be right.

Originally Posted by playwrite

...
He's losing Ann Coulter, f'n Ann Coulter, and I'm not even sure Ann is a woman! ...

However ... you have to remember that Ann Coulter publicly said that the birthers were nuts. Even she has limits apparently.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

It is surprising how well he is doing among Democratic primary voters in conservative white states. I wonder if they are democratic socialists, or just anti-Hillary.

They are populists sick of Business as usual.

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

The Constitution is not allied with capitalism, unless you wish to consider Alexander Hamilton as one, true constitutionalist. The document was written almost entirely by the cavaliers of Virginia; it was intended to validate of the landed gentry. The capitalists came later.

The US was formed as a capitalist state. The reason why there is money for Left wingers to vote to receive is because the US has never strayed to far from its Constitutional roots.

Originally Posted by playwrite

With Trump, you mean daddy's money, right?

And while The Donald was risking his daddy's money, this is what Obama was up to -

If you're all-about-the-Benjamins, as you evidently are, then I can see you placing a much higher value on The Donald putting his daddy's money at risk. But those of us who actually give a shXt about our society see it the other way.

What did Trump do with his daddy's money? Did he loose it or waste it all on himself living large for a year? I don't have a problem with a dude who borrowed a million from his dad and turns it into a privately owned enterprise that's worth billions of dollars today. My mom borrowed me a few thousand to start my business. What have you done with your dead ancestor money other than using it live more comfortably than you would have lived otherwise. You're a chump. You don't give a shxt about society anymore than me. You care about the political group and the class that you're directly associated with. I don't care if your own groups end up destroying you.

Originally Posted by playwrite

The point was that it was completely ludicrous of you to state the GOP is about preserving the Constitution when they treat women as second class citizens. You have made clear you disagree with the GOP on this point, and I applaud you for that. But you are suffering from cognitive dissonance if you hold that opinion and still put forth the GOP is about preserving the Constitution. Comprende?

Women's issues don't matter as much to me or them. The Democrats are the pandering fools who want to be the ones who are viewed as being in charge of woman's issues and the ones making the decisions for them. Do you think I'd be interested in assuming the responsibility for women who aren't capable of supporting themselves, using the freedoms that they have and making decisions for themselves? No thanks, I ain't that stupid.

Originally Posted by bosboreas

Has it been resolved that Mr. Trump is the Gray Champion?

I don't see him as being the Gray Champion.

Originally Posted by Classic-X'er

I don't see him as being the Gray Champion.

Not when he refuses to let his hair go gray.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

That's true. The war baby silents are more properly referred to as the oldest members of "the sixties generation," which includes war babies and core boomers but not Jonesers. And that includes all those born with Pluto in Leo, and all with Neptune in Libra (plus some with Neptune in late Virgo, the war baby Silents).

It makes sense. War Babies may have spent the first four years of their lives at most in a 4T. Their memories are all of the 1T postwar world. S&H starts the Boom Generation in 1943. Sweet 16 in 1961 for war babies born in 1945.
War babies were the Freedom Riders, the southern voting registration people who risked their lives to challenge Jim Crow in Freedom Summer 1964. And the Berkeley Free Speech Movement. When war babies protested the Vietnam War they generally were not draft eligible.
Some of them were the younger Merry Pranksters and went to the 1967 Summer of Love. Rothman & Lichter, in their study Young Radicals speaks of them as being the UN-authoritarian Left, often Jewish who started SDS, only to see it taken over by more authoritarian Boomers later in the 60s.

[QUOTE=Eric the Green;554017]

I don't know why you insist on misSpelling DOESN'T. Misspellings just make things harder to read, that's all. I think XYMOX was speculating that this is an Austrailian spelling. It still makes no sense. DOESN'T is a contraction of DOES NOT; not DOSE NOT. So, are you dosing off when you misspell doesn't? And in any case, the word does not have a quote mark, but an apostrophe.

Sorry.

The Palestinian Authority has already agreed to that. The problem is that Israel keeps grabbing Palestinian land, all the time.

The PA keeps getting hung up on the idea of recognising Israel as a Jewish State. That was what negotiations got stuck on the last time. It appears to be a small point but it is an important test of whether the PA can agree to anything more than a temporary truce without it's members getting assassinated. Never mind the hard part. Renouncing the Right of Return for descendants of Palestinians, many of whom have intermarried with local Jordanians or Syrians and expecting those descendants to be satisfied with cash compensation and possible resettlement elsewhere in the world.
Then there is the fact that there are now two "Palestinian States", Gaza and the West Bank not one. Gazans are ethnically quite different from West Bank Palestinians. Gazans (including former residents of Ashdod, Askelon and Jaffa) are descendants of Egyptian settlers brought in by the Mamluks in the 14th Century while West Bank Palestinians seem to be descendants of Jews who converted to Islam. http://www.jewishpress.com/indepth/a...ws/2015/01/06/. Probably as a result of the collapse of Shabatai Sevi's false messianic movement in the 17th Century.
And by the way, Israelis don't "grab" land in the West Bank and Jerusalem. If it isn't legally public land, they buy it from landowners who take the money and generally move to South America. A truly viable "two state solution" probably involves offering West Bank Palestinians Israeli citizenship--and requring those who will not take it to move to Gaza or elsewhere. Most probably will take Israeli citizenship if they don't have to worry about being murdered by Palestinians who see them as traitors. "Autonomous cantons" that function the same way as Native American reservations are not a viable option--which many Israelis will not like. An easy pathway for Israeli Arabs and new Israeli Arabs to return to Judaism should be part of the mix too.
Gaza alone is a viable Palestinian State--appropriately in what used to be Philistia. . Gaza is twice the size of Singapore, on the sea and has offshore gas reserves. Gaza can be another Dubai once it's inhabitants make peace with a Jewish State. A Palestinian state in two discontiguous regions with two very different peoples, one of which would have to dominate the other is not a viable state and can only be held together with the hope of Israel's destruction and a lot of oppression and policing.
It DOES have it's limitations too.

But it supports Israel's right to exist,

That is a very recent and very unofficial development. Jews are still not allowed on Saudi soil.

and supports moderate rebels in Syria.

And non-moderate rebels. Saudi Arabia supports Al Nusra, which is hardly moderate. I think it is Qatar that has supported Islamic State.

It has not supported the IS in the past. I'm not sure about supporting Wahabi mosques in The West.

See http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontl...wahhabism.html and https://moneyjihad.wordpress.com/tag/wahhabi/ . The Saudi State has to do this. In doing this they keep the support of fundamentalist Wahabi elements in their society such as the original Ikkhwan who might otherwise overthrow them. The Saudis have been playing this balancing act between the West and a public that would have had Saudi Arabia become an ISIS state from years ago.

See, there's the difference. The spikes in the trees not only will not kill the lumberjacks, but the lumberjacks are doing harm to the cause that Earth First is fighting for. [/QUOTE
When a group starts engaging in major property damage and risking bodily harm or death it crosses a line under US law and ceases to be considered peaceful protest. We saw this issue come up repeatedly in the history of the labor movement from the 1880s to the 1930s. Unionists were constantly having to engage in sabotage to have any impact at all on companies. And when they did, they were suppressed for it and treated as terrorists. That's part of what the National Labor Relations Act was all about, establishing rules for strikes that defined what a peaceful protest and a peaceful picket line was (and which kept getting moved back under laws such as Taft-Hartley). Those were the rules of engagement that the Civil Rights Movement lived by. Protesters sat in at lunch counters. They did not trash the lunch counter. When riots that DID damage property began to happen, that was something that white supremacists could use to fuel the backlash. And later in the 60s, the FBI DID start to provoke violence first as CONTELPRO provocateurs and later as outright stings. It's how bombs that went off in restrooms after business hours and killed nobody could become equivalent to the kind of terror attacks we see now according to the law.

]Not the same as the Muslim terrorists at all. And you are correct about bombing, but at least the bombs are aimed at the IS and the Taliban and other radical jihadists; civilian deaths in that case is collateral damage.

If that is the case, then bombs aimed by Israel at Hamas in Gaza that kill civilians are collateral damage too. Not that either IS or Hamas see it that way. Both deliberately put their military targets in the midst of schools and hospitals and residences and then point to civilian deaths to radicalise their public.

The people killed in Paris and Brussells or in Pakistan this week were not collateral damage; they were the target. But they were not the enemies ofthe Islamists who attacked them.

Not by our lights. But in much of the world, the distinction between combatant and civilian is not as clearcut as it evolved to be in Europe and the Americas. In much of the rest of the world, all enemy nationals are legitimate military targets. (Remember how in Vietnam the Viet Cong attacked civilians too?) The West and the UN have been trying to enforce Western rules of engagement on the rest of the world--with varying degrees of success.

So how do we apply that kind of remedy to the 21st century scourge of Islamic terrorism?

That will take a somewhat different toolbox. And the key may be in stopping terrorism at the source--in the family. Stop adults from terrorizing and abusing and thereby violentizing (to use Lonnie Athens's term) their children. Which European nations are starting to do by ending the enclavism (which JK Rowling's Harry Potter series was a commentary on, ironically) by enforcing child and woman protection. By prosecuting whole families for honour killings. By stopping chain arranged marriages (or any forced marriage). By making it quite clear that if a family abuses a child that child will be removed from the home and fostered out to non-Muslims if necessary. If this is done--and it is made clear to incoming migrants, including refugees that assimilation to local mores will be insisted upon and that a father just may see a daughter marry a Frenchman or an Englishman or a German and maybe even convert to Christianity--AND BE EXPECTED UNDER PAIN OF LAW TO DO NOTHING ABOUT IT--he may think long and hard about attempting to settle in the West unless he is disgusted by the mores of the Islamic world himself--as many Muslims are. And it is possible to guard against deception by interviewing applicants using p-300 evoked potential electroencepholgraphy, which detects the activation of parts of the brain needed to engage in deception and is far more reliable than a polygraph.


Maybe, I doubt it. Republicans don't have very good ears, and Trump is lousy on details. And I doubt that Trump's America First ideas imply your questions. Trump is just using his ideas to arouse the people to vote for him. He has little idea how to implement his proposals. He is offering his superior "deal-making" ability, but I doubt his "deals" would be much better than what we've got. But I do think Hillary is going to continue to shift her positions on trade, though not on alliances or on restraining Putin. I doubt if she would try to re-negotiate NAFTA though. It was a horrible mistake her husband made. But now it's too entrenched, probably. We'll see.

I'm not so sure. While I can certainly see that Trump's inexperience in public life shows, and while I think he behaves like a complete tyro when it comes to the idea of diplomacy (and damn few international relations professionals seem willing to take Trump seriously or help him) he is asking questions that need to be ask and which have been previously unthinkable to ask. Questions like how far the US should go to force it's allies to pick up more of the slack in defence. Questions like whether Russia is better forging an alliance with (and allowed into Europe) than kept an enemy. I hope Bernie is thinking about these questions.
Hillary for damn sure is not asking these questions if she is having Robert Kagan for an advisor. And they are questions that need to be asked by somebody. Today's Russia is not the Soviet Union and is less authoritarian than many nations the US has warm relations with and treats as an ally--like Saudi Arabia and Pakistan and even Thailand, for instance. And there is equivalence between the US support for Kosovo, an autonomous region of Serbia going independent and what Russia has done in Crimea and eastern Ukraine--which does contain a preponderance of ethnic Russians. Maybe America's need for a truly strong ally should outweigh other considerations--as America's need for an exit from Vietnam that contained Russia in the 1970s finally outweighed Cold War considerations and commitments to Asian allies when it came to Nixon recognising China. Today's Russia is probably a lot less authoritarian or autocratic than the Russia Great Britian and France allied with in the Triple Entente to contain Germany pre 1917. If Europeans are upset by such a prospect then let them match the US in terms of percentage of GDP and manpower devoted to their armed forces. I give Trump credit for at least thinking transactionally about this instead of treating our alliances as quasi-feudal obligations with the US playing the same role that Austria did in the Holy Roman Empire. I hope Bernie can think along these lines--and discuss this with the American People.

Trump vs. Sanders debate!!



Enjoy it now, we might not get to see it for real!

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

Trump vs. Sanders debate!!



Enjoy it now, we might not get to see it for real!

Boy they are great actors. On point. Trump has that perfect orange and duck face down too.

[QUOTE=MordecaiK;554137]

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

Sorry.

Ah, thank you.

The PA keeps getting hung up on the idea of recognising Israel as a Jewish State. That was what negotiations got stuck on the last time. It appears to be a small point but it is an important test of whether the PA can agree to anything more than a temporary truce without it's members getting assassinated. Never mind the hard part. Renouncing the Right of Return for descendants of Palestinians, many of whom have intermarried with local Jordanians or Syrians and expecting those descendants to be satisfied with cash compensation and possible resettlement elsewhere in the world.
Then there is the fact that there are now two "Palestinian States", Gaza and the West Bank not one. Gazans are ethnically quite different from West Bank Palestinians. Gazans (including former residents of Ashdod, Askelon and Jaffa) are descendants of Egyptian settlers brought in by the Mamluks in the 14th Century while West Bank Palestinians seem to be descendants of Jews who converted to Islam. http://www.jewishpress.com/indepth/a...ws/2015/01/06/. Probably as a result of the collapse of Shabatai Sevi's false messianic movement in the 17th Century.
And by the way, Israelis don't "grab" land in the West Bank and Jerusalem. If it isn't legally public land, they buy it from landowners who take the money and generally move to South America. A truly viable "two state solution" probably involves offering West Bank Palestinians Israeli citizenship--and requring those who will not take it to move to Gaza or elsewhere. Most probably will take Israeli citizenship if they don't have to worry about being murdered by Palestinians who see them as traitors. "Autonomous cantons" that function the same way as Native American reservations are not a viable option--which many Israelis will not like. An easy pathway for Israeli Arabs and new Israeli Arabs to return to Judaism should be part of the mix too.
Gaza alone is a viable Palestinian State--appropriately in what used to be Philistia. . Gaza is twice the size of Singapore, on the sea and has offshore gas reserves. Gaza can be another Dubai once it's inhabitants make peace with a Jewish State. A Palestinian state in two discontiguous regions with two very different peoples, one of which would have to dominate the other is not a viable state and can only be held together with the hope of Israel's destruction and a lot of oppression and policing.
It DOES have it's limitations too.

I doubt that history; I think those two places are just places that Jews huddled Palestinians into when they took their land, or that they escaped into when Israel won the 1948 war. I think the two divisions are working out their differences and they can be a state. I don't think the two peoples can share a state now, because the Jews want a Jewish state, and the Palestinians are not being treated fairly. I'm sure that Israel is just appropriating their land for settlements. The right of return for Palestinians is impossible.

A settlement between Israel and Palestine can be worked out fairly easily as soon as the two people want to do it. The only problem is that they don't want to; especially Israel since it has the upper hand and an apparently blank check of support from the USA, the other Jewish homeland of today (especially electoral vote rich Florida and New York). They can, if they want, just agree to tear down the wall and rebuild it on the true border, give up right of return, make old Jerusalem an international city under the UN, and Israelis either give back settlements, or live there under the Palestinian state just as some Palestinians live in Israel; giving both the right to buy land in either country, and Jews can have towns and hire police for protection.

See http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontl...wahhabism.html and https://moneyjihad.wordpress.com/tag/wahhabi/ . The Saudi State has to do this. In doing this they keep the support of fundamentalist Wahabi elements in their society such as the original Ikkhwan who might otherwise overthrow them. The Saudis have been playing this balancing act between the West and a public that would have had Saudi Arabia become an ISIS state from years ago.

I know some reform is going on there, but it has a long ways to go. I know what wahabis are, but I don't know if the Wahabis threaten to overthrow the Saudi royal family or not, or what the family owes to them.

I'm not so sure. While I can certainly see that Trump's inexperience in public life shows, and while I think he behaves like a complete tyro when it comes to the idea of diplomacy (and damn few international relations professionals seem willing to take Trump seriously or help him) he is asking questions that need to be asked and which have been previously unthinkable to ask. Questions like how far the US should go to force it's allies to pick up more of the slack in defense. Questions like whether Russia is better forging an alliance with (and allowed into Europe) than kept an enemy. I hope Bernie is thinking about these questions.

I think US policy on Russia is about right, right now; no need for Bernie or anyone but wacko Trump to ask that question. Allies picking up more of the tab has its plus and minus points, but yes that's a good question to ask.

Hillary for damn sure is not asking these questions if she is having Robert Kagan for an advisor. And they are questions that need to be asked by somebody. Today's Russia is not the Soviet Union and is less authoritarian than many nations the US has warm relations with and treats as an ally--like Saudi Arabia and Pakistan and even Thailand, for instance. And there is equivalence between the US support for Kosovo, an autonomous region of Serbia going independent and what Russia has done in Crimea and eastern Ukraine--which does contain a preponderance of ethnic Russians. Maybe America's need for a truly strong ally should outweigh other considerations--as America's need for an exit from Vietnam that contained Russia in the 1970s finally outweighed Cold War considerations and commitments to Asian allies when it came to Nixon recognising China. Today's Russia is probably a lot less authoritarian or autocratic than the Russia Great Britian and France allied with in the Triple Entente to contain Germany pre 1917. If Europeans are upset by such a prospect then let them match the US in terms of percentage of GDP and manpower devoted to their armed forces. I give Trump credit for at least thinking transactionally about this instead of treating our alliances as quasi-feudal obligations with the US playing the same role that Austria did in the Holy Roman Empire. I hope Bernie can think along these lines--and discuss this with the American People.

Russia is an oligarchy under one man rule, and has a long way to go. But I think Hillary has a realistic view and does not confuse Russia with the Soviet Union. It's just a matter of how Russia behaves, not who they are or were. I don't see the equivalence of Crimea and Kosovo; maybe a vague analogy, but Crimea was not being ethnically cleansed and slaughtered by Ukraine like Kosovo was by the Serbs. There should be an honest election held there.

Originally Posted by Classic-X'er

The US was formed as a capitalist state.

Prove it...

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

That's true. The war baby silents are more properly referred to as the oldest members of "the sixties generation," which includes war babies and core boomers but not Jonesers. And that includes all those born with Pluto in Leo, and all with Neptune in Libra (plus some with Neptune in late Virgo, the war baby Silents).

I am a late silent who would find it easier to support Sanders over Clinton. Sander appears to be totally honest.

Originally Posted by MordecaiK

...The PA keeps getting hung up on the idea of recognising Israel as a Jewish State. That was what negotiations got stuck on the last time. It appears to be a small point but it is an important test of whether the PA can agree to anything more than a temporary truce without it's members getting assassinated. Never mind the hard part. Renouncing the Right of Return for descendants of Palestinians, many of whom have intermarried with local Jordanians or Syrians and expecting those descendants to be satisfied with cash compensation and possible resettlement elsewhere in the world.
Then there is the fact that there are now two "Palestinian States", Gaza and the West Bank not one. Gazans are ethnically quite different from West Bank Palestinians. Gazans (including former residents of Ashdod, Askelon and Jaffa) are descendants of Egyptian settlers brought in by the Mamluks in the 14th Century while West Bank Palestinians seem to be descendants of Jews who converted to Islam. http://www.jewishpress.com/indepth/a...ws/2015/01/06/. Probably as a result of the collapse of Shabatai Sevi's false messianic movement in the 17th Century.
And by the way, Israelis don't "grab" land in the West Bank and Jerusalem. If it isn't legally public land, they buy it from landowners who take the money and generally move to South America. A truly viable "two state solution" probably involves offering West Bank Palestinians Israeli citizenship--and requring those who will not take it to move to Gaza or elsewhere. Most probably will take Israeli citizenship if they don't have to worry about being murdered by Palestinians who see them as traitors. "Autonomous cantons" that function the same way as Native American reservations are not a viable option--which many Israelis will not like. An easy pathway for Israeli Arabs and new Israeli Arabs to return to Judaism should be part of the mix too.
Gaza alone is a viable Palestinian State--appropriately in what used to be Philistia. . Gaza is twice the size of Singapore, on the sea and has offshore gas reserves. Gaza can be another Dubai once it's inhabitants make peace with a Jewish State. A Palestinian state in two discontiguous regions with two very different peoples, one of which would have to dominate the other is not a viable state and can only be held together with the hope of Israel's destruction and a lot of oppression and policing.
It DOES have it's limitations too.

That is a very recent and very unofficial development. Jews are still not allowed on Saudi soil.


And non-moderate rebels. Saudi Arabia supports Al Nusra, which is hardly moderate. I think it is Qatar that has supported Islamic State.

See http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontl...wahhabism.html and https://moneyjihad.wordpress.com/tag/wahhabi/ . The Saudi State has to do this. In doing this they keep the support of fundamentalist Wahabi elements in their society such as the original Ikkhwan who might otherwise overthrow them. The Saudis have been playing this balancing act between the West and a public that would have had Saudi Arabia become an ISIS state from years ago.

I'm not so sure. While I can certainly see that Trump's inexperience in public life shows, and while I think he behaves like a complete tyro when it comes to the idea of diplomacy (and damn few international relations professionals seem willing to take Trump seriously or help him) he is asking questions that need to be ask and which have been previously unthinkable to ask. Questions like how far the US should go to force it's allies to pick up more of the slack in defence. Questions like whether Russia is better forging an alliance with (and allowed into Europe) than kept an enemy. I hope Bernie is thinking about these questions.
Hillary for damn sure is not asking these questions if she is having Robert Kagan for an advisor. And they are questions that need to be asked by somebody. Today's Russia is not the Soviet Union and is less authoritarian than many nations the US has warm relations with and treats as an ally--like Saudi Arabia and Pakistan and even Thailand, for instance. And there is equivalence between the US support for Kosovo, an autonomous region of Serbia going independent and what Russia has done in Crimea and eastern Ukraine--which does contain a preponderance of ethnic Russians. Maybe America's need for a truly strong ally should outweigh other considerations--as America's need for an exit from Vietnam that contained Russia in the 1970s finally outweighed Cold War considerations and commitments to Asian allies when it came to Nixon recognising China. Today's Russia is probably a lot less authoritarian or autocratic than the Russia Great Britian and France allied with in the Triple Entente to contain Germany pre 1917. If Europeans are upset by such a prospect then let them match the US in terms of percentage of GDP and manpower devoted to their armed forces. I give Trump credit for at least thinking transactionally about this instead of treating our alliances as quasi-feudal obligations with the US playing the same role that Austria did in the Holy Roman Empire. I hope Bernie can think along these lines--and discuss this with the American People.

I haven't followed this history as closely as you have, but I tend to agree with the overall sense of your post. I see Israel in position of self defense surrounded by enemies that continue with acts of terrorism. Some of these enemies have not relented in desire to eliminate the state of Israel.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

...A settlement between Israel and Palestine can be worked out fairly easily as soon as the two people want to do it. The only problem is that they don't want to; especially Israel since it has the upper hand and an apparently blank check of support from the USA,

It is true that the two sides could work out a deal . This would be extremely difficult, but in my opinion this is impossible primarily due to the enemies of Israel not wanting a deal that recognizes Israel's right to exist.
We could debate fair vs. unfair , but until there is a commitment to the right to exist( big boulder) there is no way to make a deal.

Originally Posted by Classic-X'er

The US was formed as a capitalist state.

From where did you get this (in what I can only regard as a bizarre) notion? The consensus among American historians at least since the First World War has been that "free market capitalism", which is what I think you mean, only came to dominate the American economy in the "Gilded Age" after the Civil War, and, even then, much of the American economy was still based on subsistence agriculture into the 1920s and the '30s. Presidents such as Jefferson and, even more so, Jackson could hardly have been more anti-capitalist.

Pax,

David Krein '42

Originally Posted by David Krein

From where did you get this (in what I can only regard as a bizarre) notion? The consensus among American historians at least since the First World War has been that "free market capitalism", which is what I think you mean, only came to dominate the American economy in the "Gilded Age" after the Civil War, and, even then, much of the American economy was still based on subsistence agriculture into the 1920s and the '30s. Presidents such as Jefferson and, even more so, Jackson could hardly have been more anti-capitalist.

Pax,

David Krein '42

I don't get the feeling he is an academic historian or economist, thus he'll be using his own system of classification and labeling. I'm confident he'll be able to invent a definition by which he is correct. Any system of classification that looks at things from a perspective other than his own will be perceived as wrong or irrelevant.

I'm coming at it from a values perspective and might use yet another scale. Looking at the founding documents, I see a lot more of Rousseau than of Adam Smith. A lot of the founders associated with the initial troubles in Boston were concerned with free trade as opposed to colonial imperialism's closed port system that rerouted the profits back to the mother country. I wouldn't say there was no economic motivation involved in the Revolution. That would simply not be true. As usual, though, the economic motivations of the elite are masked behind the idealistic values and/or propaganda the elite spread freely in order to recruit the working classes.

But more than usual the Revolutionary Era elites in their struggle against noble privilege seem to have truly bought into their Enlightenment politics and values. I feel confident in judging the American Revolution as being centered far more on democracy and human rights than economics.