Sgt.Squarehead

You know that saying about how Waterloo was won on the fields of Eton?  Subtly implying that everyone making decisions during the battle had been rubbing elbows since around the time their balls dropped? US politics are like that too, at least at a national level. It's mega-incest.
 
Barack Obama went to Harvard. George W. Bush went to Yale *and* Harvard.  Bill Clinton went to Yale. George H. W. Bush went to Yale. Trump went to the University of Pennsylvania, which is still an Ivy, but it's a clue that Trump maybe doesn't see himself as quite the same tribe as the rest of these people. 
 
Then there is the way he talks. I think you Brits have entire four year degree programs devoted to the study of the relationship between social class and regional accent. In the US it's a little simpler. Any sort of regional accent is gauche. Anyone who is anyone will usually try to mask their regional accent, or at the very least speak in a certain *way* about certain *things.*
 
This may seem stupid to seize upon, but it's very informative. People imitate the accents of their friends, that's how the things reproduce, after all. So if Trump still speaks with a low to middle class New York accent and with low to middle class New York mannerisms, that is a clue as to whom he considers his friends. Trump is not trying to fit in to Washington and make friends there.
 
Trump is an outsider, and previously you had two sorts of outsiders in US Federal politics.  You had the sellouts, who compromised in order to get traction, and ended up the same as anyone else.  Joe Scarborough wrote a pretty good book on the massive bureaucracy that has perfected the art of breaking and taming politicians, but there are many other accounts. That's basically the plot of Yes Minister. Every once in a while there would be a politician who proved insoluble to this process. They would be the Ron Pauls and suchlike. They stuck to their principles, and thus never achieved anything. Admirable, perhaps, but totally harmless to the machine. 
 
Trump is anything but harmless. It was recently announced that the Federal government slashed 24,000 jobs under Trump. That is simultaneously tiny and huge. For the president to win *at all* against the bureaucracy is a reversal of one hundred and thirty years of legal and informal precedent. Even if the material effects are small, people will notice. 
 
It's like the Japanese smashing the tsarist fleet at Tsiushima.  The actual immediate implications of Japan beating Russia in a war were modest, in a global sense. But all around the world people under the rule of European colonial administration suddenly realized that white men bleed too. 

Video's gone. 
 
Found this:
 
 
& this:
 
 
Both seem to be partial remnants?

Our local iron age hill-fort (British Camp, Malvern):
 
I can see my house from here! 

 
Nice plan view:

 


 
I'm trying to find some pictures looking straight up at the ramparts from the plain below, but no luck so far.....Trust me, it's fekkin steep! 

I... I like this sentence. It strikes me as very foreign and exotic. Therefore I am quoting it for posterity. 
 

Since Franklin Delano Roosevelt, virtually every single Federal elected office of any importance has been held by people within or cushy with a good ol' boys club known to some as "the Establishment". Certain board members might call it "the Cathedral". Described, this group is descended from the white anglo-saxon protestant ruling class, although for various reasons they may not be white, anglo-saxon, or protestant, these days. All hold roughly similar views and are in broad terms chummy with each other. They also fiercely defend their seat of power against the "wrong people".

Trump was one of the "wrong people". The people who voted for him, virtually to a man, were "wrong people", and worse they did not put on hair shirts as penance for it. Instead, they stood tall and proud of their deplorableness, and fucking elected the man that the Establishment least wanted to take the reins of power.
 
Prior to this, I did not think the Cathedral could be defeated. I felt that it was impossible for real changes to happen in my country because the coalition of powerful interests would simply block it from happening, while sending up plausible-seeming justifications. But that isn't so, apparently, in the Billionaire Age. Azathoth is too old and weak, and still a blind idiot while increasingly no longer a god. Trump, despite how much Azathoth hated him and did not want him to win, took power anyway.

From November 2016 to February 2017, I saw a 240 year old, rusted, abandoned machine sputter to life and elect someone that powerful people did not want elected. Before then, I really did think our Constitution was functionally dead. It's not, Trump proved that.

The Spanish government just imploded:  https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-44328463

Our local iron age hill-fort (British Camp, Malvern):
 
I can see my house from here! 

 
Nice plan view:

 


 
I'm trying to find some pictures looking straight up at the ramparts from the plain below, but no luck so far.....Trust me, it's fekkin steep! 

Tricky at the minute, but I would be glad to once I get sorted out.....The only ones I have pictures of right now are the Airfix kit I posted earlier in this thread and a bunch of WIPs:
 
Unimodel 1/72 M4A1s (with a lot of extras)
 
Strongly recommend the modellers here check out Britmodeller (& Missing Lynx if you don't already), invaluable source of information and there are some serious experten there who are always glad to help out with advice & tips.

Any Israeli airstrikes in Syria are legal as of 1948. That includes the use of Lebanese airspace for that purpose as well. 
Military actions by and against warring factions are permissible.

Really, If I were doing the same, my core offering would be a M4 line, the RAM I and II and a smattering of U.S lights, before anything else.
And then I'd offer a Matilda II or BT-7 before any fucking German tank. 
Because fuck fascist box tanks.
Just because.
 
Oh I forget my first, but I remember the M48 because I bought it at a "Toms" in Traverse City, Michigan with money I earned mowing lawns.  Then painted it with house paint.
Yes, it probably looked like shit, but compared to the stuff the other kids had, it was badass.

Meh, not like the U.S. hasn't fucked with a few elections..
 
This last one, we had a choice between a "Circus Peanut", and "The Wicked Witch of the West".
No amount of foreign chicanery was going to really change the direction this country was/is heading.

What have they done to you???
 

 
Shhh... It will all be over soon.

Nothing good comes from the death of a child.....The press circle this whole affair like a flock of vultures.
 
I've had similar experiences on the DNR front, but from the other side, my father was allowed to pass peacefully at home when he'd just about had enough.....We could probably have kept him alive in hospital for a month or more, with tubes in every orifice, but where is the 'quality' in that?  Instead he came home and stayed with us just long enough to say goodbye.  Then he left.
 
Maybe something like that would be better for Alfie?  Who knows?  Who really wants to know?
 

I love how some judge in the tin-horn, Third World shithole of Great Britain thought that he could disappear a British subject and then force the media to not report the fact that he was personally ordering a British subject to be disappeared. I guess he forgot he didn't live in East Germany. Yet. 
 
I love how the British legal system is more concerned about the "rights" of 49 Islamic fundamentalists who are being tried for grooming and raping 700 women and children than the freedom of the press. 
 
And in any FREE country, you have the right to stand in a public street and film what is going on outside of a court house. And if that includes filming 49 accused rapists who are walking on a public street to that court house, then so be it. 

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-05-26/tommy-robinson-arrested-outside-uk-court-jailed-13-months-judge-orders-orwellian
 
@Sturgeon

I've got to say, an American and an Israeli both trying to claim the moral high ground in a thread about Syria...

I can appreciate that, everyone has their own reasons for coming to the conclusions they do.
 
The whole Israeli Palestinian thing is a complex issue with a metric shit ton of propaganda disinformation and et cetera constantly being spread by several dozen different interested parties
 
Because of this it's inevitable that people's opinions will wildly vary. And a good portion of us are bound to have very good reasons to support what we believe even though we may all believe different things!
 
I absolutely believe that you have very good reasons for feeling as you do, just like I have very good reasons for believing as I do.
 
It's very possible for both of those things to be objectively true even if our views are in opposition.

I'd like to be enlightened too since I'm actually 99% sure your view and mine are diametrically opposed on this issue LOL.
 
He is so incredibly arrogant though that he apparently believes that any criticism of him is a criticism of Israel...
 
The reality though is all I was ever saying was that he comes across as so immensely smarmy and unlikable that even people like me who fully support Israel want to knee jerk react and rescind that support because of the way people like him condescend, patronize, and otherwise just plain serve as absolutely horrible spokespeople for their cause.
 
But I guess we're on the same side or something, don't worry it shocked me too.

I really don't have the energy to deal with you right now so go and try provoke someone else. And yes, I do consider it perfectly legal, legitimate, and even in Syria's fault because I know it pisses you off so much.
 
I know you and @roguetechie have an agenda. I don't mind. I just expect you to act like an adult. 
Have a nice day.

Dude, your nation's troops have just whacked 60+ unarmed protestors, kneecapped another couple of thousand.....All this while the protestors are on the tiny sliver of land that your government permit them, and for having the audacity to approach a border that your nation has imposed on their land!
 
But apparently you still feel the need to preach at us on behalf of this monstrosity?  Insecure much?  
 
Maybe stick to the Merkavas?

Wow, really!
 
Well thank God we have you here to tell us what to think.
 

You're right I really don't have to be rude about it, but it's almost a guarantee that when I see something as asinine as what you just said I will be.
 
The truly sad thing is you almost certainly don't see that your choosing to respond that way will sour people to actions that they'd otherwise see as legitimate. Me for example, I actually don't see anything wrong with the things going on now but because of the arrogance, dishonesty, and overall disgustingly patronizing way you "made your case".... It's a fight for me not to knee jerk WANT to find some reason I can condemn it!
 
Bluntly, every time you speak up for your cause and your nation you do it damage by being so monumentally easy to hate.

In past few weeks isreali snipers managed to shot number of Palestinian protestors. Well, they are reaching new levels.
 
Also that tweet was deleted after videos appeared of bullets landing into protestors

I rememeber how loud was outcry when this happened in Kiev.

Hey.....At least your pizzas will be delivered on time.