Trump's America

Sure feels like we're the bad guys:

There are other suspect details in the U.S. version of events. In the days after the raid, the Pentagon claimed that the women killed were armed and fought the incoming U.S. special operations forces from pre-established positions. Yet all of the witnesses to the attack interviewed by The Intercept in al Ghayil strongly challenged this accusation, citing a culture that views the prospect of women fighting, as Nesma al Ameri put it, as eib shameful and dishonorable and pointing out the practical implausibility of women clutching babies while also firing rifles. A CENTCOM spokesperson refused to provide any details about female fighters to support its assertion.
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And to be clear, I think we have been for some time. I struggle to comprehend how any of this makes us safer.

It's worthy to note that The Intercept draws a notable contrast between Trump and Obama administration policy:

A defense official speaking to the Washington Post stated that the military has been granted temporary authority to regard selected areas of Yemen as areas of active hostility. That change, while shortening the approval process for military action, effectively puts the U.S. on a war footing in any area of Yemen designated, but unlikely to be disclosed, by the military, noted Cori Crider, a lawyer at the international human rights organization Reprieve who has represented Yemeni drone strike victims. This authority has a lower bar: Civilian deaths have to be proportionate rather than avoided with a near certainty, as set out by the previous administration for the use of lethal force outside areas of active hostilities.

This means that all of those much-vaunted standards the Obama administration said they were using to minimize civilian casualties in drone strikes in Yemen have been chucked right out the window, said Crider.
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Many a warmonger arises from a desire for expediency.

 
zoogs said:
Sure feels like we're the bad guys:
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I'm not the bad guy. You're not the bad guy. Even the person with which you disagree with the absolute most on HuskerBoard, that person you'd spend your last erg of energy typing a rebuttal to, that person is not the bad guy.

America is not the bad guy here.

But that doesn't mean the good guy doesn't sometimes do bad things. Because, really, nobody is truly good or truly bad. We're just shades of gray.

 
knapplc said:
zoogs said:
Sure feels like we're the bad guys:
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I'm not the bad guy. You're not the bad guy. Even the person with which you disagree with the absolute most on HuskerBoard, that person you'd spend your last erg of energy typing a rebuttal to, that person is not the bad guy.

America is not the bad guy here.

But that doesn't mean the good guy doesn't sometimes do bad things. Because, really, nobody is truly good or truly bad. We're just shades of gray.
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Completely agree with this.

I am not naive enough to think we haven't done special ops missions in every administration going back to before I can remember. It's just part of what happens and, for the most part, I've always believed these things are carried out with knowledge way above I or you can even imagine.

So, I have always been very slow to be judgmental on the missions. I also firmly believe that our military today takes civilian casualties very very seriously. Look back over other wars we have fought and our attitude towards civilians are completely different.

That doesn't mean we don't make mistakes and those are very regrettable.

I also hesitate to believe fully the eye witness accounts the Intercept quotes. Someone who lives in that village is also likely to sympathize with whomever we were going after and has motivation to say things that make us look bad.

 
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I took some comfort in the fact that Spicey laughed really hard when he said it. Proved him to be a real person for me, and is a glimmer (I think) of some of the things he deals with.

 
I just saw this on FB and it got me thinking about when people ask others to "give Trump a chance." I gave him a chance for a few days after he was sworn in and learned everything I needed to know. But the problem with that is he never deserved those few days from me. This happened and the country gave him a chance, and it's f'd up.

58c2fd1a1d000037037cdc10.png


f#*k this guy. He deserves to have his every breath and his every fart scrutinized for the rest of his a-hole life.

 
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Now we've stooped so low as to accuse the Bureau of Labor Statistics of fudging the numbers. This sets the precedent for lying about any negative numbers they release, or firing any employees (if possible) who find anything negative.

FYI the commissioner of the BLS from 2013-2017 was unanimously sworn in by the senate. I wonder if the next person will even know what a statistic is.

President Trump's budget director claims the Obama administration was "manipulating" jobs data.

Mick Mulvaney told CNN's Jake Tapper on Sunday that he has long thought the previous administration framed data to make the unemployment rate "look smaller than it actually was."

"What you should really look at is the number of jobs created," Mulvaney said on "State of the Union." "We've thought for a long time, I did, that the Obama administration was manipulating the numbers, in terms of the number of people in the workforce, to make the unemployment rate -- that percentage rate -- look smaller than it actually was."
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http://money.cnn.com/2017/03/12/news/economy/mick-mulvaney-obama-jobs-data/index.html

This puts people in the position of either believing everything the Trump admin says is true or everything they say is a lie. Convincing people that all of the different organizations have become politicized is a great step to take if you plan on taking over the government permanently. It forces your supporters to get all of their information from you and you alone. They're creating their own version of reality.

 
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Moiraine said:
Now we've stooped so low as to accuse the Bureau of Labor Statistics of fudging the numbers. This sets the precedent for lying about any negative numbers they release, or firing any employees (if possible) who find anything negative.

FYI the commissioner of the BLS from 2013-2017 was unanimously sworn in by the senate. I wonder if the next person will even know what a statistic is.

President Trump's budget director claims the Obama administration was "manipulating" jobs data.

Mick Mulvaney told CNN's Jake Tapper on Sunday that he has long thought the previous administration framed data to make the unemployment rate "look smaller than it actually was."

"What you should really look at is the number of jobs created," Mulvaney said on "State of the Union." "We've thought for a long time, I did, that the Obama administration was manipulating the numbers, in terms of the number of people in the workforce, to make the unemployment rate -- that percentage rate -- look smaller than it actually was."
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http://money.cnn.com/2017/03/12/news/economy/mick-mulvaney-obama-jobs-data/index.html

This puts people in the position of either believing everything the Trump admin says is true or everything they say is a lie. Convincing people that all of the different organizations have become politicized is a great step to take if you plan on taking over the government permanently. It forces your supporters to get all of their information from you and you alone. They're creating their own version of reality.
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While I agree with your intent, measuring unemployment and the politics associated with that measure have a long history: https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-08-10/what-s-really-wrong-with-the-unemployment-rate

 
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RedDenver said:
Moiraine said:
Now we've stooped so low as to accuse the Bureau of Labor Statistics of fudging the numbers. This sets the precedent for lying about any negative numbers they release, or firing any employees (if possible) who find anything negative.

FYI the commissioner of the BLS from 2013-2017 was unanimously sworn in by the senate. I wonder if the next person will even know what a statistic is.

President Trump's budget director claims the Obama administration was "manipulating" jobs data.

Mick Mulvaney told CNN's Jake Tapper on Sunday that he has long thought the previous administration framed data to make the unemployment rate "look smaller than it actually was."

"What you should really look at is the number of jobs created," Mulvaney said on "State of the Union." "We've thought for a long time, I did, that the Obama administration was manipulating the numbers, in terms of the number of people in the workforce, to make the unemployment rate -- that percentage rate -- look smaller than it actually was."
Click to expand...
http://money.cnn.com/2017/03/12/news/economy/mick-mulvaney-obama-jobs-data/index.html

This puts people in the position of either believing everything the Trump admin says is true or everything they say is a lie. Convincing people that all of the different organizations have become politicized is a great step to take if you plan on taking over the government permanently. It forces your supporters to get all of their information from you and you alone. They're creating their own version of reality.
Click to expand...
While I agree with your intent, measuring unemployment and the politics associated with that measure have a long history: https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-08-10/what-s-really-wrong-with-the-unemployment-rate
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None of what I read in that article is remotely close to saying the BLS is lying about the numbers. Tweaking survey methodology to consider people who are looking for jobs or not is not similar to an accusation that the previous president/party lied and changed the numbers. You downplayed something similar before (I don't recall the topic - maybe $ in politics, or corporations in politics) and while I hate to use over-used phrases/words, it's just another way of normalizing what is happening now to try to feel better about it, imo. This is not normal. This is not just like how it's always been. This is/should be concerning.

Here is an article I read this morning after I posted, on the same topic. It is essentially about how the BLS has always been considered neutral/independent.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bna.com/trump-upend-agency-n73014447788/%3Famp%3Dtrue

 
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Moiraine said:
RedDenver said:
Moiraine said:
Now we've stooped so low as to accuse the Bureau of Labor Statistics of fudging the numbers. This sets the precedent for lying about any negative numbers they release, or firing any employees (if possible) who find anything negative.

FYI the commissioner of the BLS from 2013-2017 was unanimously sworn in by the senate. I wonder if the next person will even know what a statistic is.

President Trump's budget director claims the Obama administration was "manipulating" jobs data.

Mick Mulvaney told CNN's Jake Tapper on Sunday that he has long thought the previous administration framed data to make the unemployment rate "look smaller than it actually was."

"What you should really look at is the number of jobs created," Mulvaney said on "State of the Union." "We've thought for a long time, I did, that the Obama administration was manipulating the numbers, in terms of the number of people in the workforce, to make the unemployment rate -- that percentage rate -- look smaller than it actually was."
Click to expand...
http://money.cnn.com/2017/03/12/news/economy/mick-mulvaney-obama-jobs-data/index.html

This puts people in the position of either believing everything the Trump admin says is true or everything they say is a lie. Convincing people that all of the different organizations have become politicized is a great step to take if you plan on taking over the government permanently. It forces your supporters to get all of their information from you and you alone. They're creating their own version of reality.
Click to expand...
While I agree with your intent, measuring unemployment and the politics associated with that measure have a long history: https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-08-10/what-s-really-wrong-with-the-unemployment-rate
Click to expand...
None of what I read in that article is remotely close to saying the BLS is lying about the numbers. Tweaking survey methodology to consider people who are looking for jobs or not is not similar to an accusation that the previous president/party lied and changed the numbers. You downplayed something similar before (I don't recall the topic - maybe $ in politics, or corporations in politics) and while I hate to use over-used phrases/words, it's just another way of normalizing what is happening now to try to feel better about it, imo. This is not normal. This is not just like how it's always been. This is/should be concerning.

Here is an article I read this morning after I posted, on the same topic. It is essentially about how the BLS has always been considered neutral/independent.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bna.com/trump-upend-agency-n73014447788/%3Famp%3Dtrue
Click to expand...
Claiming the numbers have been manipulated has happened before, from the article I linked: "that didn’t stop Reader’s Digest from alleging in 1961 that the government was including discouraged workers to boost the unemployment rate". Turns out it wasn't true. The article clearly makes the distinction between the numbers being a "big lie" and taking them with a grain of salt.

I'm trying to give some historical context for your remarks. In order to claim that what's happening now is not normal, you have to set a baseline of what "normal" is for a given context. There are a lot of links in that article for people to look into the issue themselves.

 
If the administration wants even an iota of credibility on this issue their statement would be...."while we are encouraged by the numbers that came out about jobs and unemployment, we are still concerned that it is not an accurate account of all unemployed people in America and will work to improve the statistic".

 
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