Lurker > WastelandCowboy

darkknight109 posted...

Zeus posted...

WastelandCowboy posted...

Zeus posted...

I was wondering how this was going to be spun =p Like I said in the other topic, one battle at a time. The media is trying to put Trump into a position where he'll say something that can tank the negotiations. In reality, I fully expect that if things proceed, we'll eventually see concessions in other areas as well.

Spun? The media is trying to put Trump into a position?

The lunatic said this shit himself! There's no spin to his statement.

This is the narrative that they tried to create and run with. They put him into a no-win position where his stance could either threaten or derail the negotiations. He said nice things about an objectively horrible person, just like other politicians have in the past to keep things moving.

I'm sorry, but despite the US's lengthy history of dealing with (and occasionally installing) dictators with horrible human rights record, this is the first one I've heard verbally feted like he was the second coming of George Washington.

Seriously, can you point me even one example where a murderous dictator with a record half as bad as Kim's was referred to by a sitting US president as "very honourable" and "very talented" and "very worthy" and, oh yes, "His country really does love him. His people, you can see the fervour"?

Go ahead, I'll wait.

With such exceedingly narrow goalposts, it seems like the question is designed for a wait.

I was wondering how this was going to be spun =p Like I said in the other topic, one battle at a time. The media is trying to put Trump into a position where he'll say something that can tank the negotiations. In reality, I fully expect that if things proceed, we'll eventually see concessions in other areas as well.

President Trump is brushing aside concerns about North Korean leader Kim Jong Uns human-rights abuses as he seeks to broker a nuclear deal with the young autocrat.

Pressed by Fox New's Brett Baier in an interview about Kim's oppression of his own people, Trump said: Yeah, but so have a lot of other people have done some really bad things.
Trump downplays Kim Jung Un's totalitarian dictatorship.

BAIER: "He has done some really bad things."

TRUMP: "Yeah, but so have a lot of other people have done some really bad things. I mean, I could go through a lot of nations where a lot of bad things were done." pic.twitter.com/AZxnuXQTqi

Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) June 13, 2018
Asked about his decision to negotiate with a known killer, Trump praised the North Korean leader for being a tough guy who managed to take control of his country at a young age.

I dont care who you are, what you are, what kind of advantage you have, Trump said of Kim, whose family has controlled North Korea since its creation. If you can do that at 27 years old, you, I mean, that's one in 10,000 that can do that.

Trump went on to call Kim a very smart guy and a great negotiator in the interview, which was aired Wednesday.

I think we understand each other, he said.

Trump has faced worldwide criticism for his lavish praise of Kim, which came after a contentious Group of Seven summit during which he ripped U.S. allies.

After meeting with Kim, Trump called him a very talented man who is a funny guy and loves his people.

Human Rights Watch last year labeled North Korea one of the most repressive authoritarian states in the world. Kim is accused by the United Nations Human Rights Council and watchdog groups of carrying out public executions, arbitrary detention and forced labor, torture and persecution of those with religious affiliations.

Just last year, Kim was also accused of orchestrating the execution of his half-brother at a Malaysia airport with a banned nerve agent.

Trump said he raised the issue of human rights briefly with Kim during their nuclear summit in Singapore.

The president's comments echo his response during a Feb. 2017 Fox News interview to a question about Russian President Vladimir Putin's human-rights abuses.

Asked by then-anchor Bill O'Reilly why he respects Putin, given that he is a "killer," Trump said, "There are a lot of killers. We've got a lot of killers. What, you think our country is so innocent?"

Retired hooligan Shprygin says he's confident that there will be no repeat of the violence in France, because of the heavy police presence.

"All the soccer hooligans in Russia aren't waiting for the World Cup to start they're waiting for it to end, so they can go back to their normal lives," he said.

At least that's one thing that Russia's most violent fans and Moscow students can agree on.

The campus of Moscow State University is located in Sparrow Hills, a leafy haven overlooking Luzhniki Stadium, the main arena for this year's soccer World Cup.

Students are still cramming for final exams. But starting with the tournament's opening match between Russia and Saudi Arabia on Thursday, thousands of screaming soccer enthusiasts will pack the official fan zone in front of the university's landmark main building to watch the tournament.

Not everyone at the school is a fan of the World Cup.

"It won't just affect students, but the work of research institutes and laboratories," said Nadya, a 24-year-old biology major who belongs to a group of students that opposes the fan zone. She asked that her last name not be used for fear of repercussions from the university administration.

The 2018 World Cup is the latest large international sporting event hosted by Russian President Vladimir Putin. For the next month, hundreds of thousands of soccer fans will flock to Russia to watch 32 national teams play for the title of world champion. Nothing and no one will be allowed to disrupt the party.

"Many students are scared of participating in protests since it carries the risk of administrative consequences, even criminal charges," said Nadya, who wore a sweatshirt with the English abbreviation of her university, MSU. "There were instances when students declined to sign petitions because they could face punishment."

Moscow students' muted opposition stands in stark contrast to the boisterous, even violent, protests against the World Cup in Brazil four years ago. In Russia, the authorities have cracked down on the slightest dissent: After a World Cup sign near the MSU campus was defaced recently, two students were arrested during an exam and a third was threatened with criminal charges.

While Nadya isn't sure if she'll watch any of the games, Alexander Shprygin says his biggest dilemma is deciding what he'll do during the World Cup. A former soccer hooligan, Shprygin is the head of a fan association whose activities were suspended after a massive fight between England and Russia fans in Marseille, France, two summers ago.

After the street battle, Shprygin was kicked out of France and barred from attending the Confederations Cup in Russia last year. He hasn't even bothered applying for a World Cup fan ID, which is required to buy a ticket.

"Now the FSB, the Federal Security Service, is dealing with fans. That's because the World Cup is a personal project of our president, and a lot is at stake," Shprygin, a burly 40-year-old, said in an interview in the Brawler's Pub in Moscow.

Just as Putin personally intervened to bring the Winter Olympics to Sochi in 2014, he worked hard to bring the World Cup to Russia. When the country's bid won eight years ago, Putin thanked FIFA, soccer's international governing body, for the honor.

"You can take my word for it, the 2018 World Cup in Russia will be up to the highest standards," he said in English. "We are eager to do our best to secure the comfort and safety of our guests."

Russia's law enforcement agencies have heard their orders.

Anton Gusev, a police general in charge of World Cup security, says that the authorities have taken into consideration "all risks and threats" to the tournament, which will be held in 11 cities in western Russia.

"It's possible we'll shut an eye to minor infractions," Gusev told reporters last week. "But we're ready to take tough action against offenders at any time and any place."

Russian law enforcement has taken "preventative measures" and will work to prevent "bad ideas" from being put into action, he said.

President Trump met with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un Tuesday in Singapore. The two signed a joint statement committing to the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.

After the summit, Trump spoke to reporters about the meeting and took questions. Following is a transcript of the press conference, provided by the White House, annotated by NPR reporters.

President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un signed a statement Tuesday promoting "mutual confidence building" to "promote the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula." In the statement, the leaders outlined four commitments: establishing relations, building a "lasting a stable peace regime on the Korean Peninsula," working toward denuclearization and recovering POW/MIA remains.

Follow NPR's coverage of the Singapore summit and statement here, and read the statement below as released by the White House:

THE WHITE HOUSE

Office of the Press Secretary

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

June 12, 2018

Joint Statement of President Donald J. Trump of the United States of America and Chairman Kim Jong Un of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea at the Singapore Summit

President Donald J. Trump of the United States of America and Chairman Kim Jong Un of the State Affairs Commission of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) held a first, historic summit in Singapore on June 12, 2018.

President Trump and Chairman Kim Jong Un conducted a comprehensive, in-depth, and sincere exchange of opinions on the issues related to the establishment of new U.S.DPRK relations and the building of a lasting and robust peace regime on the Korean Peninsula. President Trump committed to provide security guarantees to the DPRK, and Chairman Kim Jong Un reaffirmed his firm and unwavering commitment to complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.

Convinced that the establishment of new U.S.DPRK relations will contribute to the peace and prosperity of the Korean Peninsula and of the world, and recognizing that mutual confidence building can promote the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, President Trump and Chairman Kim Jong Un state the following:

The United States and the DPRK commit to establish new U.S.DPRK relations in accordance with the desire of the peoples of the two countries for peace and prosperity.

The United States and the DPRK will join their efforts to build a lasting and stable peace regime on the Korean Peninsula.

Reaffirming the April 27, 2018 Panmunjom Declaration, the DPRK commits to work toward complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.

The United States and the DPRK commit to recovering POW/MIA remains, including the immediate repatriation of those already identified.

Having acknowledged that the U.S.DPRK summitthe first in historywas an epochal event of great significance in overcoming decades of tensions and hostilities between the two countries and for the opening up of a new future, President Trump and Chairman Kim Jong Un commit to implement the stipulations in this joint statement fully and expeditiously. The United States and the DPRK commit to hold follow-on negotiations, led by the U.S. Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, and a relevant high-level

DPRK official, at the earliest possible date, to implement the outcomes of the U.S.DPRK summit.

President Donald J. Trump of the United States of America and Chairman Kim Jong Un of the State Affairs Commission of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea have committed to cooperate for the development of new U.S.DPRK relations and for the promotion of peace, prosperity, and security of the Korean Peninsula and of the world.

Yeah....

...yeah :(

Never thought I'd say this but there was too much Sm4.5h in the Direct

I think one of the hallmarks of liberals is their tendency to censor anything that goes against the grain of their beliefs, or they make false accusations towards this end.

WastelandCowboy posted...

shadowsword87 posted...

You know it's not a real place, right?

Ogurisama posted...

Well in lore its a few days walk between Windhelm and Whiterun, but ingame what its a few minutes?

It's a damn videogame.
You don't want that.

I want that. If you dont want to walk, you can rise a horse or hitch a spot in a wagon.

Play the game entirely over encumbered, that will take an hour or so getting from one place to another.
Then do a couple of laps between the location you want to go.

You know it's not a real place, right?

Ogurisama posted...

Well in lore its a few days walk between Windhelm and Whiterun, but ingame what its a few minutes?

It's a damn videogame.
You don't want that.

Ogurisama posted...

Go to the most expensive restaurant in your city if your rents are paying

Lol! My dad doesnt care.

WastelandCowboy posted...

Any dietary restrictions?

No but I stay healthy so it cant be like McDonalds or super hadnt places

Whats your go toooo??!

This don't look half bad. I skipped the last one though

no one excited for cyberpunk 2077? first time in a long time that a trailer has actually got me really looking forward to a game.

By a 5-4 margin, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a controversial Ohio voter-purge law.

It's known as the "use-it-or-lose-it" law, and it's the most aggressive voter-purge system in the country. The state currently strikes voters from the registration rolls if they fail to vote in two consecutive elections and if they fail to return a mailed address confirmation form.

Those challenging the law said it violated the National Voting Rights Act, which says that a state cannot strike someone from the rolls for failure to vote. The emphasis is to get more people to vote and not have them purged.

The lead plaintiff in the case, Larry Harmon, is a software engineer from the Akron area, who normally votes in presidential election years, but not the midterms. In 2012, neither Barack Obama nor Mitt Romney excited him, so he decided not to vote.

When he did decide to vote a couple of years later, he found he was no longer registered. He had been purged from the voter rolls, because he hadn't voted in the previous two elections.

Failure to vote is not unusual in this country. In 2016, 29 percent of the registered voters in Ohio failed to vote. Nationwide, the number was even higher, more than a third, according to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission.

https://apps.npr.org/documents/document.html?id=4501192-Husted-v-A-Philip-Randolph-Institute

David Douglas Duncan went everywhere and took extraordinary pictures at every stop.

Duncan, who died Thursday in the south of France at age 102, was one of the greatest photojournalists of the 20th century.

He worked in so many places, over so many years, that his personal archive amounts to a remarkable one-man global history tour from the brutal realities of the Korean and Vietnam wars, to a playful Pablo Picasso in his studio, to Bedouin tribes crossing the Saudi Arabian desert on camels as the first oil wells rise, irrevocably changing their lives.

Duncan, who was born in Kansas City, Mo., on Jan. 23, 1916, became a Marine officer and combat photographer in World War II, covering the U.S. forces as they advanced across the Pacific. He was aboard the USS Missouri in 1945 as the Japanese surrendered to Gen. Douglas MacArthur in Tokyo Bay.

This set the tone for his career.

Duncan was best known as a war photographer whose work was prominently featured in Life magazine.

He also produced some two dozen books. This Is War!, a 1951 book on the Korean conflict, was one of his defining works. His photos of exhausted and numbed soldiers perfectly captured "the 1,000-yard stare" of the infantryman who had seen too much combat.

As he told The New York Times in a 2003 interview:

"I felt no sense of mission as a combat photographer. I just felt maybe the guys out there deserved being photographed just the way they are, whether they are running scared, or showing courage, or diving into a hole, or talking and laughing. And I think I did bring a sense of dignity to the battlefield."

Duncan was wounded several times covering wars, but kept going back for more in Greece, Turkey, India, Egypt, Morocco and elsewhere.

In contrast to his work in Korea, Duncan was sharply critical of U.S. involvement in Vietnam, calling his 1968 book I Protest!

His work was wide ranging, including art and politics.

He showed up at Picasso's home in France in 1956 and was greeted at the door by Picasso's girlfriend (and later his wife) Jacqueline Roque. As The Washington Post reported:

"Without a word she took me by the hand," Duncan said. "We went past a goat called Esmeralda on the stairs, through a sitting room with a couple of sketches on the wall, through a dark corridor and there was Picasso, just sitting there in a bathtub."

Duncan took a picture, and ultimately produced eight books on the artist based on thousands of intimate photos from the final two decades of Picasso's life.

Richard Nixon granted Duncan insider access during his 1968 presidential campaign. The result was a memorable photo of Nixon, alone in his hotel room amid a pile of papers, working on his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention.

The restless, adventurous Duncan called himself a "photo nomad" and was forever setting off for remote places to document the everyday lives of obscure communities whose lives were in flux.

His work was critically acclaimed at the time, and much of it feels even more haunting today.

His Korean War photos are all the more poignant given the current dramas playing out on the peninsula.

A striking 1946 photo from Jerusalem shows a shaft of light descending on a narrow stone street as people go about their daily routine. Just a year later, war would erupt, and the city remains bitterly contested until this day.

A 1955 picture shows Afghan troops in a guard post made of mud, looking across a river that marks the border with the Soviet Union. That photo presaged a Soviet invasion that ultimately came in 1979, unleashing years of war in Afghanistan that still grind on.

I own an iPhone.

And that's the end of how I feel.

WastelandCowboy posted...

And he won't.

Once a topic spins out of his control and his feelings are hurt, he flees and closes the topic later.

He also blocks you. It wouldn't surprise me if 99% of this topic is blank posts to him.

He also hasn't explained why he needs to be awake during the day.

Students have been a prominent voice in the gun discussion following the high profile shootings in Parkland and in Santa Fe, Texas last month. And this was the first time the public had an opportunity to offer suggestions to the commission on how to make schools safer.

Michael Yin, another Montgomery Country student said that school shootings are "not unthinkable, they're expected."

"We students feel and we know that something is very, very wrong in our schools," Yin said.

He urged the panel to listen to the voices in the school, not those calling for more guns in school.

"Politicians have come up with some good ideas, but if we really want to end these tragedies, we need to listen to the people closest to the school system. One idea that is a little worrying though is arming school staff," Yin said.

Amanda Fitzgerald the Director of Public Policy at the American School Counselor Association agrees.

"We strongly oppose any effort to arm educators in our schools or any proposal that would offer financial incentives for educators to carry firearms," Fitzgerald said.

Pamela Champion, who lost her son, Robert Champion, a drum major at Florida A&M University, to hazing incident on a band bus said she is "all too aware about the safety and the impact of violence within our schools."

She said the commission should not only focus on the role of guns but the environment within schools, too.

"We should expand and clarify what is deemed as school safety. What does school safety look like for various communities?" Champion asked.

She said that school safety should not be measured just by the absence of violence but how well schools can build emotional and social tolerance.

The commission has held a number of closed-door sessions in recent weeks, including one with survivors of the Parkland and the Columbine High School shooting in 1999. And Last week it held a field hearing in Hanover, Maryland.

The Federal Commission on School Safety is expected to issue its recommendations by the end of the year.

The Trump administration's school safety commission held its first public listening session Wednesday, a day after the panel's chair, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, told lawmakers on Capitol Hill that the commission wouldn't focus on guns.

Alessia Modjarrad, a graduating high school senior from Montgomery County, Md., spoke at the day-long event at the Education Department in D.C. She said the few solutions being offered by the administration were "misguided and insufficient."

"I would ask to please consider the possibilities that guns are the most important aspect of the purview of this commission," Modjarrad said.

Then she issued a challenge.

"I would ask Secretary DeVos and the federal commission to take on the burden of positive, ever-lasting change from school children and heavily reconsider the current complicit stance on the role of guns in school safety."

That challenge will have to be relayed to DeVos at a later time. DeVos didn't attend the listening session. She was in Switzerland where she's set to deliver a keynote address at forum exploring apprenticeship programs and primary and vocational school education in the Netherlands, according to a press release by the Education Department.

On Tuesday, DeVos was asked by Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., during a Senate subcommittee hearing: "So, you are studying gun violence, but not considering the role of guns?"

DeVos responded: "That is not part of the commission's charge, per se."

President Trump established the school safety commission in response to the mass shooting in February at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, where 17 students and faculty were killed.

When established in March, one of the stated goals in the White House release was a focus on "age restrictions for certain firearms purchases."

During Wednesday's listening session, Deputy Education Secretary Mick Zais tried to clarify how the commission would handle guns.

After citing a Congressional Research Service report that found there are approximately 300 million firearms in the U.S., he said the commission would be exploring "narrow aspects of gun ownership."

"The commission will not be looking at ways to confiscate those weapons or abrogate the second amendment, but what we will be doing is looking at specific age limits for the purchase of specific kinds of weapons," Zais said.

"And we will be examining legal procedures for the confiscation of weapons from people with identified mental health issues."