Trumps Presidency 2025

[romad1]

1 hour ago, gehringer_2 said:

So years ago when we in the West were just beginning to be jolted by the Islamist fundamentalist movement, Bernard Lewis was one of the leading Middle East scholars and he wrote a few books about it. One of his themes was that when a culture that was once ascendant sort of falls from grace and success, the religious in that society will argue that it was because of loss of piety in the society. So for Islam the final fall of the long decaying Ottoman empire at the end of WWI is what set things off, that led by the 70's and 80's to all kinds of crazies both on the Sunni and Shia sides trying to build pious Islamic fundamentalist states (or non-states) in the hope that Allah's resulting favor would allow them to bring back the Caliphate and vault them into a reprise of the cultural supremacy they had in the 12th century. One can only hope that the serial failures of Al Qaida, Isis, Hamas, Hezbollah, and the 'under performance' of the IROI will finally disabuse the Islamic world of the idea that the turbaned heads  are going to bring them power and glory if they'd only grow their beards and suppress their women.

Now if can break the same paradigm we are getting from the religious right in the US, we might also get somewhere ourselves.

to that narrative...the Egyptian Islamic Jihad that Zawahiri led was a direct response to the defeat in the 1973 Yom Kippur War when Egypt had all the advantages of surprise and interesting new technology from the Soviets but could not win against Israel because of a lack of...piety.   

Wrt to the bubba-jihad, i guess they just were potty trained too late or something. 

[Motown Bombers]

 

[gehringer_2]

13 minutes ago, romad1 said:

to that narrative...the Egyptian Islamic Jihad that Zawahiri led was a direct response to the defeat in the 1973 Yom Kippur War when Egypt had all the advantages of surprise and interesting new technology from the Soviets but could not win against Israel because of a lack of...piety.   

Wrt to the bubba-jihad, i guess they just were potty trained too late or something. 

Sayyid Qutb, born in 1906, was boy just old enough to sense the loss when the empire fell, started writing seriously ~1940s,  was a sort of the Karl Marx figure for all the subsequent Jihadi's. Nasser  hanged him, which just made him more the martyr.

[Motown Bombers]

 

[romad1]

1 hour ago, gehringer_2 said:

Sayyid Qutb, born in 1906, was boy just old enough to sense the loss when the empire fell, started writing seriously ~1940s,  was a sort of the Karl Marx figure for all the subsequent Jihadi's. Nasser  hanged him, which just made him more the martyr.

Nasser, Ataturk, the baathists, Non-religious, islamic nationalism...that had its moment, for a moment there. 

[Motown Bombers]

 

[gehringer_2]

17 minutes ago, romad1 said:

Nasser, Ataturk, the baathists, Non-religious, islamic nationalism...that had its moment, for a moment there. 

Oil. When the balance of power was in Egypt and Turkey, where culture was deeper and something akin to normal economic development was underway, the Arab world had a chance. But when oil wealth empowered the Wahabi Sheiks and the Persian Shia apocalyptics and shifted the regional leverage, everything started moving backward. Oil wealth has been a curse everywhere it has bubbled up out of the ground.

You could probably include Texas in that as well. 

Edited 16 hours ago by gehringer_2

[ben9753]

Is Draft Kings giving odds on how long it’ll last and who will break it? Anyone got a promo code handy?

[Tigermojo]

7 minutes ago, gehringer_2 said:

Oil. When the balance of power was in Egypt and Turkey, where culture was deeper and something akin to normal economic development was underway, the Arab world had a chance. But when oil wealth empowered the Wahabi Sheiks and the Persian Shia apocalyptics and shifted the regional leverage, everything started moving backward. Oil wealth has been a curse everywhere it has bubbled up out of the ground.

You could probably include Texas in that as well. 

Alberta.

[Tigermojo]

1 minute ago, ben9753 said:

Is Draft Kings giving odds on how long it’ll last and who will break it? Anyone got a promo code handy?

Might have to rename the 12 Day War already but Trump loves renaming things.

[gehringer_2]

2 minutes ago, Tigermojo said:

Alberta.

I almost got sent to the Tar Sands once, Fort McMurray? We had connections with the National Research Council CA and ended up working with some of the stuff in our lab -  but in the end it fell through. No tears shed.

[Deleterious]

They negotiated a cease fi...nevermind.

[mtutiger]

Weak Weak Weak

[pfife]

9 hours ago, ben9753 said:

Is Draft Kings giving odds on how long it’ll last and who will break it? Anyone got a promo code handy?

Line was .3 scaramuccis

[CMRivdogs]

It looks like the TACO cease fire is going as well as his parade

[pfife]

 

 

[Tigermojo]

Trainwreck 

[guy incognito]

Stable Genius at Work

 

[gehringer_2]

19 minutes ago, guy incognito said:

Stable Genius at Work

 

It sort of amazes me that anyone still cares to hear what he says, because it's all soon "inoperative", often within minutes. I suppose for the press it's the entertainment value, which is also a sad commentary. 

[smr-nj]

42 minutes ago, pfife said:

 

 

lol.  We all know that the only reason he’s annoyed this morning is that he’s already been clearing a space on a golden mantle somewhere to hold his Peace Prize.

[oblong]

36 minutes ago, guy incognito said:

Stable Genius at Work

 

Dammit.... don't make me say "Good point Donald"

[CMRivdogs]

Finally, something that makes perfect sense

 

[RatkoVarda]

18 minutes ago, smr-nj said:

lol.  We all know that the only reason he’s annoyed this morning is that he’s already been clearing a space on a golden mantle somewhere to hold his Peace Prize.

Nobel committee might hand out the The 2025 Chaos Prize to the scumbag who is having masked men grab non-whites off the street and sell them to dictators to fill their slave prisons.

[CMRivdogs]

I'm in favor of the Nobel Peace Prize Committee announcing that no one is worthy this year..

[ewsieg]

2 hours ago, guy incognito said:

Stable Genius at Work

 

To be honest, this was the first time I felt like he was acting 'presidentially'.  Maybe I should change that to say this is the first time I felt like he was talking honestly.   Don't get me wrong, I will acknowledge every point of what he did wrong that possibly could have been prevented us from getting into this predicament in the first place.  But, based on his response, I do think he felt he had an understanding with Israel that if the US helped, they would stop.  He's weak though and Netanyahu took advantage of us.  Ultimately this all falls on his feet. 

This is Trump's war.