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Trump Is Petrified That Pro-Weed Forces Will Roast Him:
The president and some of his team, already obsessed with the potential drop-off of various demographic groups that make up his battered coalition, have begun openly worrying that the drive to legalize or decriminalize marijuana might hurt him and fellow Republicans at the ballot box.
According to two GOP strategists who've independently discussed the topic with Trump this year, the president believes that inclusion of marijuana initiatives on state ballots could supercharge turnout for voters who lean toward Democratic candidates and causes. The president, according to one of the sources, asked for updates on critical swing-states that could see such ballot measures in the 2020 elections.
"The president is keenly aware of how presidential elections [nowadays]... can be won at the margins," one of the Republican strategists said. "The pot issue is one of many that he thinks could be a danger... He once told me it would be very 'smart' for the Democrat[ic] Party to get as many of these on the ballot as they could."
Decades ago, Trump had publicly advocated full-on legalization, arguing that "we're losing badly the war on drugs," and that "you have to legalize drugs to win that war. You have to take the profit away from these drug czars." During this iteration of his political identity, he put the blame on politicians who "don't have any guts" to tackle drug legalization.
But by his 2016 presidential campaign, Trump had come out "strongly" against legal weed. By the time he reached the Oval Office, he was enthusiastically proposing executing drug dealers by firing squad. And his first attorney general, Jeff Sessions, revoked an Obama-era guidance that discouraged the feds from prosecuting marijuana-based criminal cases in states where it was legal.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday August 26 2020, @05:01PM (8 children)
Is this serious? Is this considered plausible in the conversations you're in?
Russia has no capacity to do this. It is a shadow of what the USSR was. Also, if they committed to a conflict with a populous, modern, and mostly united Europe, they'd not only get their asses soundly and roundly kicked, they'd be eaten ass-first by Beijing, which is keen to seize all those tasty, tasty resources in mostly empty Siberia.
The only thing Putin wants is 1). 2) will never happen.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday August 26 2020, @05:15PM
There's plausible, then there's what Putin wants. Much like what Trump wants vs. some semblance of reality.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Wednesday August 26 2020, @06:29PM (6 children)
1. Just a couple of weeks ago, the US announced it was removing forces from Germany [cnn.com]. Those forces are there to assist in the defense of Europe against possible Russian attack. This move of course makes no sense from the point of view of the US allied with NATO and the EU, but makes perfect sense from the point of view of the US allied with Russia, which the current US president certainly seems to be [senate.gov].
2. Although this has largely left the headlines, Russia is still occupying territory in Ukraine and has been now for over 5 years.
3. Earlier this year, Belarus's president suggested the Russians are trying to annex them [rferl.org].
So I do think the Russians are *trying* to recover the old Warsaw Pact countries to the best of their ability. Does that mean they're succeeding easily? Not at all, and I agree that if they tried to attack the EU they'd have a fight they couldn't handle on their hands, but I'm pretty sure that's a long-term goal. It also makes Russia's big diplomatic goal the encouraging of Brexit and similar efforts to dis-unite Europe and NATO enough so if they make a grab for, say, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, that might not lead to an immediate counterattack by the EU powerhouses or the US.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Wednesday August 26 2020, @09:26PM (2 children)
As much as Russia pushing to get a friendly UK to clash with EU is totally realistic (Forsyth had made a novel about this, right?), the fact that brexit is politically a strange occurrence which was completed merely days before the covid 'pandemic' makes me think it has been planned well above the plan of national struggles.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 5, Touché) by Thexalon on Wednesday August 26 2020, @09:48PM (1 child)
That's hilarious, thinking Brexit was planned.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by gtomorrow on Thursday August 27 2020, @11:32AM
Well...technically, it was planned, but it certainly wasn't organized! I guess that's what happens when you have to transform whims into a plan. Plus there was all that high-priority boat-naming to do.
Silly Britischers.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday August 26 2020, @10:34PM (2 children)
That has nothing to do with Russia. That's a spat between Trump and Merkel, the latter of which isn't ponying up more money for NATO as it should. Germany also isn't the frontline with Russia anymore. Poland and the Baltics are all members of NATO. Belarus and Ukraine aren't. The US doesn't need ground troups in Germany to come to Europe's aid against Russian invasion, even if such a far-fetched scenario came about; military strategy has changed. But Europe absolutely doesn't need any American help to defend its member states against Russia. France and the UK, both members of NATO, have their own nuclear weapons that are plenty to end all life in Russia, and Germany could wake up early tomorrow and have a force of ICBMs built before breakfast if it wanted to. Europe's collective conventional forces and productive power alone are more than enough to do the job, too.
So Trump's withdrawing American troops from Germany has nothing to do with military considerations, because there is no risk there. It's about money, and the fact that Europe has been getting a free ride from American taxpayers for 50+ years such that they can afford fancy social benefits while Americans go without.
Ukraine should either throw them out themselves or ask their pals in the EU to help them out. Might be a fine moment for the EU, in fact, to recapture its mojo by fighting for a common purpose of liberating fellow Europeans from the shadow of Russian encroachment.
Boo-hoo. Belarus is run by autocrats. That's like Putin crying that Xi Jinping is trying to annex them. Might be true, but it's awfully hard to muster up tears for them. Maybe the Belarusans(?) Belarussians(?) ought to quit being autocratic dicks and get the Europeans to like them such that they help them out.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Thexalon on Wednesday August 26 2020, @11:28PM (1 child)
So let me get this straight: The EU has all the forces they'd need to defend themselves without US help, but at the same time the only way they can afford to have fancy social benefits is with US help?
I'm going to hazard a guess that the real reason that the bigger powers in the EU have social benefits has a lot more to do with (a) taxing their people a lot more, and (b) not having their military budgets be the giant cesspool of corruption and pork spending that the Pentagon is. (It doesn't take much digging to see what kind of money is going to waste, either: All the military contractors have shareholder reports declaring billions in profits that came right out of the US Treasury.)
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday August 27 2020, @11:36AM
The force posture of the US in Europe is a relic of the Cold War, when NATO was facing down the Warsaw Pact. The US spends 3.5% of GDP [forbes.com], which is as much as the next 10 countries combined. Germany spends 1.2% of GDP [worldbank.org]. Doesn't it strike you as odd that the US spends more to defend Germany, than Germany spends to defend Germany?
As far as Europe's own military strength goes, taken together [worldatlas.com] they have 1.43 million troops. Russia has 900K. Russia has nukes, but so does Europe. Europe can defend itself against Russia.
So, America really doesn't need to spend that kind of money "defending Europe from Russia." If the Europeans like having that American security blanket in addition to what they already have themselves (which I have argued is quite sufficient to keep the Russians at bay), then they should pony up more money to have it. That might mean they have to cut back on other kinds of spending.
I'll cede this point. The MIC is notorious. I will further observe, however, that such a sorry state of affairs is not unique to America. There was a recent scandal in Europe [theguardian.com], was there not, surrounding the Typhoon fighter?
Washington DC delenda est.