Mecon - 2018-12-21 10:00 AM

No one of quality will work for this odious human being, to the utter detriment of our beautiful country.

jake16 - 2018-12-20 10:36 AM


 I thought you didn't like posting about politics.

jake16 - 2018-12-21 9:36 AM


 I thought you didn't like posting about politics.

Mecon - 2018-12-21 9:00 AM No one of quality will work for this odious human being, to the utter detriment of our beautiful country.

Frodo - 2018-12-21 10:25 AM

These gentlemen didn't agree on many things and General Mattis just decided it was time to throw in the towel.  People do that.  You watch too much liberal 24/7 Trump hating media.  

...and do not call our President odious.  Have some respect for this man.  







 

1DSoon - 2018-12-21 10:50 AM

 The General lasted longer than I would have suspected. 

War fighters don't typically make good politicians. 


 

KKCOWGIRL - 2018-12-21 10:30 AM  I love my President.  He's making America GREAT again

daisycake123 - 2018-12-21 12:38 PM how long is long enough. when this first started we used to have a man that barrel race with us that worked on one of the bases out this way. he kept saying this would never end if we went in nd i thought to myself go in and pound them and come home its really more to this then we know. how much of the world do we protect and for what price. i guess i see it both ways now.

jd&ez - 2018-12-21 12:52 PM America was great long before trump. And will still be after trump.



America's greatness is what allows a trump to even exist. 

Bear - 2018-12-21 1:34 PM

I’m a conservative, but not a Republican anymore. I left the GOP after Romney lost to Obama in 2012. Back then I was of the opinion that Romney was the most highly qualified candidate for POTUS in my lifetime, when it came to intelligence, accomplishments in both private and public sectors, agenda, temperament, honesty and integrity. He ran against the most extreme liberal progressive candidate in history who was in a weakened position. He had Obama on the ropes over Benghazi, and other matters, but he let him off the hook. He was soundly defeated by Obama. I got to thinking about what is a “conservative” and whether “Republican” is synonymous with conservative. In my opinion, it isn’t. When it comes to the national scene, all Democrats are liberal. At the end of the day, they all get in line and vote monolithically. Yes you get the occasional Democrat who will cross the line, like Manchin, but only when it doesn’t matter. They will cross that line to give the mere appearance of being moderate, but only when it really doesn’t hurt the Democrat agenda.
To me, one vitally important aspect of conservatism is FISCAL conservatism. I’m sorry to admit, the facts demonstrate that so-called “conservatives” are no more fiscally conservative than liberal Democrats. That’s why we have this $21 TRILLION debt as the elephant in the room, and it’s growing almost exponentially.

Along came Trump, personal foibles and all. He’s been labeled a Democrat, a conservative, a liberal, and a Republican.....depending on the issue or the stage of his life. I set aside all the labels, and carefully considered his agenda. As it turned out, I liked his agenda.
I realized that he doesn’t fit any political “label”. He is a pragmatist.
For over three decades he’d been talking about a great many aspects of his agenda. He saw problems and articulated his position. He enthusiastically backed Romney. When he saw Romney lose in 2012, I think he decided he had to get in the game. Over the past 2 years, he has delivered on much of his agenda.
This decision to exit Syria made me cringe, but I thought long and hard about this, and I’m going to support it. For one thing, he has pointed out for 3 years now that he wants to get out of the Middle East. He cites 4,000 dead Americans and $4-6 TRILLION in spending over the last 17 years. What do we have to show for it? NADA, zip, zilch, zed. Trump has also repeatedly said the nations and people in the Middle East have to step up and take charge. He’s right. He doesn’t want to make the same mistakes over there over and over again with proxy wars and horrific spending.....with nothing to show for it. This used to be what Democrats used to say for years, but now that Trump is saying it, all of a sudden they have become hawks.

We have given the people of Iran and Afghanistan their freedom to create their own governments. It’s been 17 years. It has cost US trillions and trillions. They need to take control.....and it may continue to be an endless bloody conflict forever. That’s their problem. I have a very hard time believing the stability of the Middle East depends on 2000 US troops. We’ve shed the blood of our very finest. We have been “advising and training” their troops and police for 17 years. We’ve done enough.
We can still keep a watchful eye on what is going on over there, and at any point, we can decimate anyone we want within a few weeks and turn any region into a parking lot.
Look, we have some 800 military bases in foreign countries around the globe. The next four largest military powers in the world don’t even have 50 combined. With the exception of Vietnam, everywhere we have fought and won a war we have left military bases.....Germany, Japan, Korea, the Middle East, and even Great Britain. At some point we have to ask ourselves, how many of those 800 bases are necessary? We spend over $700 billion on defense spending. The next FOUR largest military powers COMBINED spend half of that. Yes, Trump has boasted about increased defense spending, but I don’t think that spending was so we can increase our military presence around the globe. I think he feels we are foolish to continue to squander our money on protecting everyone else around the world, with nothing in return or nothing to show for it.
I don’t want my son to go over and fight and die to save some Middle Eastern country who hates us. We can improve and modernize our military and increase its lethality while lessening our role as protector of nations that hate us. We can still be the most powerful force on the planet without spending ourselves into oblivion.
Bad actors will always fear us.....that doesn’t mean we need military bases in Madagascar and Sierra Leone.

In 1961, Dwight Eisenhower gave his farewell address to the nation
In that address he issued a forewarning that proved to be prophetic. He urged us to be wary of an uncontrolled “military-industrial complex”. That military-industrial complex is extremely powerful today, fiscally and politically.

Hence....that $21 Trillion elephant in the room.