I recall, before my self-imposed exile (after losing a foolish bet with Mr. Mopdahl) in 2012, a bunch of us anti-Obama types saying much the same thing about that gentleman. We got the Manhattan real estate developer with the Queens accent because of his three immediate predecessors, with his previous two predecessors being particularly worthy of the blame. And I think his supporters are in no mood to hear any of us smart folks lecture them about the fellow sitting in the Oval Office right now.

That's not going to change anytime soon, from what I can see, short of a stinging recession or something equally bad. Like a nuclear exchange with China or Russia. ;-)

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"Politics is just show business for ugly people."

Well, that link only shows exercises up to 2014, so we really aren't giving up anything now are we.

Edit to add: I already knew the answer, and the answer is that they just occurred in March, so, saying that we are suspending them now, doesn't have any real effect.

For some people Trump's boorish behavior instantly creates pain so bad they can't stand it anymore. But for people that need actual negative consequences... well, that's looking like it could take a while.

Pissing off our allies while trying to curry favor with our enemies is not boorish, it's wreckless.

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TEAM HD
Each day is what you make of it so make it the best day possible.

Some analysts in a few national newspapers said the he "kicked a friend to scare an enemy."

Me, I don't think his analytical abilities go much past screaming aloud "Pick door number three, moron!" at the TV. ;-)

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"Politics is just show business for ugly people."

That's why you don't trust Wikipedia to answer all of your questions. But it does explain it is an annual event.

I'm sure you are more than aware this is a big deal. That Trump knows nothing about. That wasn't talked about before hand. And was sprung on our very close ally in a press conference.

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I'm beginning to think that we are much more fucked than I thought.

Yes, it's an annual event, that recently occurred, which means that we could very easily decide to hold it again next year if the situation changes.

We hold more than one single annual exercise with RoK. We hold Key Resolve in the spring and UFG in August. We also hold a whole host of other smaller exercises and training events through the year. And these big exercises require considerable planning. You can't just decide to hold them next year because we like how things look. We're planning for these exercises more than a year in advance.

There are lots of positives in conducting these exercises, including readiness, maintaining interoperability with our RoK counterparts, and ensuring our ability to live up to our treaty obligations.

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Slowguy

(insert pithy phrase here...)

i can't imagine what lecture you'd give to his supporters. but, to your point, yes, that makes sense at face value. obama took over an economy in wreckage (just a fact), and handed his successor an economy on sound footing (again, maybe coincidence, maybe the gods, nevertheless simply a fact), and there should be no good reason why trump could mess it up the way bush messed up the economy he got handed. nevertheless, i have high confidence in what our president has the capacity to do.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

You kind of live in a bit of coastal bubble, sir, that exists within your intense disdain for the fellow currently in the White House, and I think that it colors your perception of the man's relative popularity and unpopularity, which is about the same, or a bit better, at this stage in his presidency as the man's he succeeded.

I read somewhere the other day that the people in your camp -- the ones who expect that the Manhattan real estate developer is either going to fail spectacularly or that's he's going to be indicted and/or impeached -- should consider the possibility of continual disappointment on those fronts and come up with a better plan for unseating the current occupant of the Oval Office in 2020 than Republicans came up with in 2012.

I know that year many of us in the anti-Barack Obama group were certain beyond all doubt that Mitt Romney was going to win the presidency and put an end to what we thought was an intolerable situation. I get the feeling that you-all in the current iteration of such a group are thinking the same thing -- that there's NO WAY he'll win reelection (if he runs again) -- and that America will come to its senses and end the vulgarian scourge and reinstate the so-called 'arc of history', which is of course one that always naturally bends toward a progressive, enlightened state, correct?

Good luck with all those things, because I think you underestimate 'normal' Americans' capacity for pain. ;-)

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"Politics is just show business for ugly people."

let's just talk about this first line of your reply to me. this is the conversation killer, here, where you decide, in advance, that my opinion is disqualified because of where i live and what that must mean. if you're going to discuss on a discussion board, you should resist the temptation to "win" your argument by making sure the other guy's argument is disqualified by its geography rather than by its (de)merits.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

These exercises (the big ones) take about a year to plan out. i guess you could pull one together in about 90 days if it really mattered but they are complex endeavors. I've been the planning officer for two major multi-national exercises (on the US side). You plan these things out in JTIMS based on what major muscle movements you want to exercise off of the JMETL. When i was responsible for Talisman Sabre at USPACOM (combined exercise with Australia) we had three major planning conferences that i can recall. Loved going to Newcastle and RAAF Williamtown. You've players there from all the services of all the Nations involved. When you look at the Joint Training Model you start with where you've capability shortcomings and program training events into JTIMS that will allow you to mitigate those through exercises. So, for example, one of your weaknesses might be ship to ship underway replenishment. You program that task off the JMETL into JTIMS. When you're all done---bam, Bob's You're Uncle--you've got the whole exercise programed out in terms of major muscle movements. Then the exercise scripters come in and "write" a scenario that encompasses all your training objectives. From the POV of the individual Soldier, Sailor, Marine, etc it can be incredibly boring---'why are we doing underway replenishment with some Indian FFG that reeks of curry?" From the perspective of a combatant commander, exercising these major muscle moves are priceless in the event you're called upon to do them when shit goes hot.

The second exercise i personally worked on again involved Aussie. This time their Commando forces. I can't be too specific about it but i will say that i loved going to Townsville, and the Aussies kicked some serious ass in Afghan. nazi flags aside.

/r

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Steve

At the risk of derailing this thread...

The forces that caused the 2008 debacle were aided and abetted by multiple admins, not just Bush. Did it happen on Bush's watch, you bet, but to blame Bush for messing up the economy single handedly just isn't accurate. If you want to really lay the blame on a single person, blame Alan Greenspan.

Secondly, the heavy lifting to save the economy were all passed by Bush before he left office, most notably TARP and the beginnings of the auto bailout. About the only things Obama really did in terms of helping the economy in 2009 was continuing the auto bailout (which was a good thing), and the Stimulus Act, which is really debatable how much it helped, given that much of was spent on things that weren't going to have much impact (especially the cash for clunkers program).

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Taco cat spelled backwards is....taco cat.

no doubt. some of the dismantling of bank regs was done in the 90s. and, yeah, greenspan got it fantastically wrong. nevertheless, when was the last time a president was handed a SURPLUS? when the very first thing you do is give it all back in a tax break, and then you spend another trillion on a speculative war on false evidence, and then you sit back and watch the train wreck happen, at some point you just have to own it, don't you?

certainly, yes, we've been over this, it's been stipulated to, the bailout was largely the work of the outgoing admin. during desperation time, when the chips were down and the shit got brown. thank god we actually had a govt that chose, at the very last minute, to function (against an awful lot of republican opposition! which wanted to let the house burn down so that it could itself rebuild according to market forces).

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

Let's just say, then, that it's easy to become captured by a type of confirmation bias whenever you live in an area as deep blue as California in general is, just as it's easy for someone living in, say, West Virginia or Texas to be captured by the same confirmation bias, just slanted to those of the deep-red persuasion (as opposed to crystal blue persuasion, right? ;-).

Honestly, after covering a few political races back in 2014 for a conservative/libertarian media company, I see the faults that appertain to both sides (and they're manifest, believe me), though I freely concede my affinity leans far more towards (fiscal) conservatism/libertarianism than it does towards leftism. I'm fine with that. What are you fine with?

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"Politics is just show business for ugly people."

There's no doubt that Bush ran up the deficit with his tax and foreign policy; you'll get no argument from me there. For sure, he should have figured out a way to pay for the wars rather then put them on the credit card. But the deficit wasn't the cause of the meltdown in 2008; those are really two separate matters.

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Taco cat spelled backwards is....taco cat.

Housing market collapse was a huge input factor, which was bound to occur once economic activity began to slow -- as it always did in the past -- and all those people sitting in higher-interest mortgages could no longer afford to make such payments and millions upon millions of mortgages went into foreclosure. Many of those people ended up with the Triple Crown of credit calamity (bankruptcy, repossession of vehicles, and foreclosure), even. No way the economy was going to be able to ride that out, no matter the degree of quantitative easing employed.

I give the U.S. economy credit, though, too. It took a blow that would have killed most other nations, economically speaking, and eventually recovered, however slowly it did so.

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"Politics is just show business for ugly people."

i'm fine with the processes and institutions that underpin america. i'm fine with the american experiment. all my local elected officials are republicans, because of the nature of, as you put it, deep blue california, along with my fellow californian lefies kevin mccarthy, devin nunes, dana rohrbacher, duncan hunter and darrell issa. and i'm fine with my conservative republican neighbors, because they see and interact with me personally, and me them, and so we each understand that what binds us is greater than what separates us. and, i saw them all earlier this month, at our polling precinct, where we all still believe in the american experiment.

you and i probably don't differ that much, topic by topic. i saw a poll yesterday that showed that americans predominantly favor the right of a woman to have an abortion, but that this poll also shows a steep decline in the granting of that right as the woman moves into her 3rd trimester. to me, this is just common sense. most people, of any persuasion, are ruled by common sense. but instead we're made to run to our corners by the outrage industry, which forces you to take a side and to decide, in advance, what my side is and that i must be resisted because i live in california.

and i must say that if you're not a willing ally of that outrage industry with your daily threads, then i don't know what is. in another, parallel, universe you and i could agree on 95 percent of immigration policy over 1 beer and in 45 minutes (okay, 2 beers).

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

there were 2 things that caused the magnitude of the shit show obama inherited: 1) the deficit. that bush handed obama. that would have been there meltdown or no meltdown. 2) our ponzi economy, which exists because both sides allowed it.

that said, why the vitriol from the right against barney frank and elizabeth warren? because, if you don't like some of their policies, okay, but in each case their message is dominated by their exhortations about wall street: that we love us some wall street, but if you let them manage themselves it will end badly. and, it did. and, we're setting up for a repeat. and, it's lefty v righty again. and, when it happens again, righties are going to say, "well, it wasn't all righty's fault."

look, this isn't that hard. i remember when i got my first liar loan, in 2002. and i thought then, "this isn't going to end well." and i also realized, then, the solution. insurance agents are paid on retention. pay mortgage brokers on retention. pay a mortgage broker 25 percent of his commission up front, and the rest over 5 years, meaning if that loan goes bad he forfeits the balance of his commission. that wouldn't have solved the ratings agency scam, but it would've put the brakes on the wholesale gifting of bad loans.

what we have now, with trumpism, is a wholesale rollback of any and all regulations they can find. of any sort. and a rollback of govt, in general, everywhere. in science, in public lands, in education, in oversight, in clean air and water. and maybe that's okay if you simply feel that these are states issues. however, in today's world these are not only very often not simply states issues, they're national security issues. in eisenhower's, nixon's, even to a degree in reagan's republicanism govt was not evil. in bush's republicanism govt got pretty righteous in the last 90 days. republicans just need to stop being on the wrong side of this.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

So, don't really disagree with much of this. I personally think we have far too much government, but I also believe that some government is absolutely necessary. As for left vs right on Wall Street...I don't think you can lay that all at the feet of the right. Certainly they have some, maybe most of the blame when it comes to trying to let wall street firms go back to essentially gambling with bizarre financial instruments. But there is a fair number of Democrats (maybe not lefties) who are fully in bed with wall street as well. A certain Hillary Clinton comes to mind...

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Taco cat spelled backwards is....taco cat.