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99% chance it's another idiot Democrat/Republican. They both shine like turd down a toilet. :coffee:
I don't blame you looking at those candidates... :P
I think it will be between Bush and Clinton. I see a lot anti-Clinton propaganda online though, most of the time a photo of Clinton and Laden. Elections are fun everywhere lol
 
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South Asia not on Trump’s foreign policy agenda, says expert
By Irfan Ghauri
Published: November 16, 2016
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ISLAMABAD: Dr Marvin G Weinbaum, an expert on Afghanistan and Pakistan, believes that South Asian region will not be on the priority list of the new US administration after president-elect Donald Trump takes office in January next year.

“It might be the second or third priority unless something blows up,” Dr Weinbaum said on Tuesday during a roundtable discussion at the US embassy.

Unpredictable’ Trump foreign policy leaves world guessing

A professor emeritus of political science at the University of Illinois, Dr Weinbaum served as an analyst for Pakistan and Afghanistan in the US Department of State’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research from 1999 to 2003. He is currently a scholar-in-residence at the Middle East Institute in Washington DC.

Dr Weinbaum disclosed that Pakistan’s premier intelligence agency, Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), was not taken on board when Pakistan’s former interior minister Gen (retd) Naseerullah Babar first ‘adopted’ Taliban during Benazir Bhutto’s second term as prime minister in mid-90s.

“He told me we can control them,” he quoted Gen Babar. When he later asked the former interior minister why he could not do so, he said because the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) was ousted from power soon after.

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Soon after taking office Afghan President Ashraf Ghani signed an MoU with Pakistan for intelligence sharing between the two countries which was a very significant move. It could have changed the situation had it been materialised but Ghani could not muster political support for it domestically.

Dr Weinbaum said Taliban could not be reconciled as they do not believe in western democratic system. Signing of a peace deal between Afghan government and Gulbuddin Hikmatyar has complicated the matter. Animosity between Afghanistan’s former president Hamid Karzai and incumbent Ghani is further exacerbating the situation in the war-ravaged country.

“There is a lot of bad blood between Karzai and Ghani. Normally they [the Afghan government] convene Loya Jirga but they could not, fearing Karzai would take over. He (Karzai) never intended to be far from power,” he said, while describing complexities of Afghan situation.

List of things Trump has pledged to do on first day as president

He claimed Afghan Taliban also eye Pakistan with suspicion and the country does not have enough influence to force Taliban to accept something. “Pakistan does not have that influence on Taliban. Bringing them to the negotiating table and hammering a deal are two different things,” he said.

“Given its waning influence, Pakistan also wants a peace agreement in Afghanistan provided it doesn’t conflict its national interest,” he said. Dr Weinbaum claimed any support to strong Pashtoon bloc in Afghanistan would be ultimately harmful to Pakistan. It might instigate feelings for Pashtoonistan.

According to the US analyst, there is a strong perception in the US military that they could not defeat insurgency in Afghanistan since Taliban have sanctuaries on Pakistani side of the border.

“At the same time, the Afghan government has also failed in delivering to the masses who have continued providing support to Taliban, who now control around 30 per cent area in Afghanistan,” he added.

“There was tremendous support from international community when Karzai came to power and then to Ashraf Ghani. Had their governance been better things would have been different. Failure in Afghanistan is mainly due to failure of Afghan government,” he said.

He also does not see any significant changes in the US policy on Afghanistan under the new administration rather there can be a surge of US troops in the war-torn country.

“It depends who he (Trump) listens to. Zalmay Khalilzad might be the one. I don’t think withdrawal will happen. I Won’t be surprised if US sends 5,000 more troops” he said.

Publicly regional countries like Russia and Iran demand US troops should leave Afghanistan but privately they convey the US authorities that it should not be a hasty withdrawal.

“If the US abandons Afghanistan it will become epicentre of terrorism. Similarly, a destabilised Pakistan will also be a nightmare for United States,” he added.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 16th, 2016.
 
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I don't think we should pull out like Obama would do, but I don't think we should get involved anymore than we already are. Let Pakistan build a wall and gradually hand over power to Pakistan. :agree:
 
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Thank God. Trump will be too busy deporting Mexicans and sending the USN to surrender to Putin to care much about our region.
 
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Thank God. Trump will be too busy deporting Mexicans and sending the USN to surrender to Putin to care much about our region.
lives of US soldiers in afghanistan depends on trump attitude towards pakistan. you isolate us you lose influence. you lose influence you lose afghanistan.
 
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There is no 'India' in the whole OP. Does the region here means Pakistan and Afghanistan?
 
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Immigration hardliner says Trump plans for wall, Muslim registry
REUTERS — PUBLISHED 11 minutes ago
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An architect of anti-immigration efforts who says he is advising President-elect Donald Trump said the new administration could push ahead rapidly on construction of a US-Mexico border wall without seeking immediate congressional approval.

Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who helped write tough immigration laws in Arizona and elsewhere, said in an interview that Trump's policy advisers had also discussed drafting a proposal for his consideration to reinstate a registry for immigrants from Muslim countries.

Kobach, who media reports say is a key member of Trump's transition team, said he had participated in regular conference calls with about a dozen Trump immigration advisers for the past two to three months.

Trump's transition team did not respond to requests for confirmation of Kobach's role. The president-elect has not committed to following any specific recommendations from advisory groups.

Trump, who scored an upset victory last week over Democrat Hillary Clinton, made building a wall on the US-Mexico border a central issue of his campaign and has pledged to step up immigration enforcement against the country's 11 million undocumented immigrants.

He has also said he supports “extreme vetting” of Muslims entering the United States as a national security measure.

Kobach told Reuters last Friday that the immigration group had discussed drafting executive orders for the president-elect's review “so that Trump and the Department of Homeland Security hit the ground running”.

To implement Trump's call for “extreme vetting” of some Muslim immigrants, Kobach said the immigration policy group could recommend the reinstatement of a national registry of immigrants and visitors who enter the United States on visas from countries where extremist organisations are active.

Kobach helped design the program, known as the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System, while serving in Republican President George W Bush's Department of Justice after the Sept 11, 2001, attacks on the United States by al Qaeda militants.

Under NSEERS, people from countries deemed “higher risk” were required to undergo interrogations and fingerprinting on entering the United States.

Some non-citizen male US residents over the age of 16 from countries with active militant threats were required to register in person at government offices and periodically check in.

NSEERS was abandoned in 2011 after it was deemed redundant by the Department of Homeland Security and criticised by civil rights groups for unfairly targeting immigrants from Muslim- majority nations.

Kobach said the immigration advisers were also looking at how the Homeland Security Department could move rapidly on border wall construction without approval from Congress by reappropriating existing funds in the current budget.

He acknowledged “that future fiscal years will require additional appropriations.”

Congress, which is controlled by Trump's fellow Republicans, could object to redirecting DHS funds designated for other purposes.

Kobach has worked with allies across the United States on drafting laws and pursuing legal actions to crack down on illegal immigration.

In 2010, he helped draft an Arizona law that required state and local officials to check the immigration status of individuals stopped by police.

Parts of the law, which was fiercely opposed by Hispanic and civil rights groups, were struck down by the US Supreme Court in 2011.

Kobach was also the architect of a 2013 Kansas law requiring voters to provide proof-of-citizenship documents, such as birth certificates or U.S. passports, when registering for the first time.

A US appeals court blocked that law after challenges from civil rights groups.

Kobach said in the interview he believed that illegal immigrants in some cases should be deported before a conviction if they have been charged with a violent crime.

Trump said in an interview on that aired on Sunday that once he took office, he would remove immigrants with criminal records who are in the country illegally.

Kobach said the immigration group had also discussed ways of overturning President Barack Obama's 2012 executive action that has granted temporary deportation relief and work permits to more than 700,000 undocumented people or “dreamers” who came to the United States as children of illegal immigrants.
 
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Steve ‘Turn On the Hate’ Bannon, in the White House
By THE EDITORIAL BOARDNOV. 15, 2016

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    Stephen Bannon at a rally for Donald Trump in New Hampshire in October. CreditStephen Crowley/The New York Times
Anyone holding out hope that Donald Trump would govern as a uniter — that the racism, sexism, anti-Semitism and nativism of his campaign were just poses to pick up votes — should think again.

In an ominous sign of what the Trump presidency will actually look like, the president-elect on Sunday appointed Stephen Bannon as his chief White House strategist and senior counselor, an enormously influential post.

Many if not most Americans had never heard of Mr. Bannon before this weekend, and for good reason: He has kept a low profile, even after taking over Mr. Trump’s campaign in August. Before that, he worked as the executive chairman of the Breitbart News Network, parent company of the far-right website Breitbart News, which under Mr. Bannon became what the Southern Poverty Law Center has called a “white ethno-nationalist propaganda mill.”

Mr. Bannon himself seems fine with that description, telling Mother Jones last summer that Breitbart was now “the platform for the alt-right,” a loosely organized group of mostly young men who believe in white supremacy; oppose immigration, feminism and multiculturalism; and delight in harassing Jews, Muslims and other vulnerable groups by spewing shocking insults on social media.

To scroll through Breitbart headlines is to come upon a parallel universe where black people do nothing but commit crimes, immigrants rape native-born daughters, and feminists want to castrate all men. Here’s a sample:

“Hoist It High and Proud: The Confederate Flag Proclaims a Glorious Heritage” (This headline ran two weeks after a white supremacist massacred nine black churchgoers in Charleston, S.C.)

“Birth Control Makes Women Unattractive and Crazy”

“Gabby Giffords: The Gun Control Movement’s Human Shield”

If you don’t find the headlines alarming, check the reader comments. Or take a look at who’s rejoicing over Mr. Bannon’s selection. The white nationalist Richard Spencer said on Twitter that Mr. Bannon was in “the best possible position” to influence policy, since he would “not get lost in the weeds” of establishment Washington. The chairman of the American Nazi Party said the pick showed that Mr. Trump might be “for ‘real.’” David Duke, former imperial wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, called the choice “excellent” and said Mr. Bannon was “basically creating the ideological aspects of where we’re going.”

Mr. Bannon is in some ways a perplexing figure: a far-right ideologue who made his millions investing in “Seinfeld”; a former Goldman Sachs banker who has reportedly called himself a “Leninist” with a goal “to destroy the state” and “bring everything crashing down.” He has also called progressive women “a bunch of dykes” and, in a 2014 email to one of his editors, wrote of the Republican leadership, “Let the grassroots turn on the hate because that’s the ONLY thing that will make them do their duty.”

A few conservatives have spoken out against Mr. Bannon. Ben Shapiro, a former Breitbart News editor who resigned in protest last spring, said Mr. Bannon was a “vindictive, nasty figure.” Glenn Beck called him a “nightmare” and a “terrifying man.”

But most Republican officeholders have so far remained silent. Some have dismissed fears about Mr. Bannon. Other Republicans have praised him, like Reince Priebus, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, whom Mr. Trump announced as his chief of staff on Sunday, and who said Mr. Bannon could not be such a bad guy because he served in the Navy and went to Harvard Business School. Some saw the pick of Mr. Priebus as evidence that Mr. Trump would not be leaning so much on Mr. Bannon. But don’t be fooled by Mr. Priebus’s elevated title; in the press release announcing both hires, Mr. Bannon’s name appeared above Mr. Priebus’s. In a little more than two months Mr. Bannon, and his toxic ideology, will be sitting down the hall from the Oval Office.

Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook and Twitter (@NYTOpinion), and sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter.
 
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The article mention's anti semitism but Trump's new order is crawling with Zionists and neo cons
 
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The article mention's anti semitism but Trump's new order is crawling with Zionists and neo cons
Please note that as commonly used in D.C. a "neocon" is a Democrat turned G.W. Bush-style moderate Republican and an advocate of democratizing the Muslim Middle East. (I used to count myself as one, but failure is its own demonstration...)

The tone has been set with people like Bannon.

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SPENGLER
Why the Big Lie About Steve Bannon?
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BY DAVID P. GOLDMAN NOVEMBER 15, 2016

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All the existential rage of the defeated and humiliated elites is now focused against Steve Bannon -- the architect of Trump's victory, the media genius who won the battle with less than a fifth of the financial resources at Hillary Clinton's disposal.

I know Steve Bannon, and have had several long discussions with him about politics. Steve is fervently pro-Israel, and it is utterly ridiculous to suggest that he is anti-Semitic.

Other observant Jews who know Bannon -- for example, Joel Pollak -- attest to his support for Israel and his friendship for the Jewish people.

We have learned from the sewage-storm directed at Bannon that the Establishment plays dirty, and that the formerly Republican #NeverTrumpers aren't just misguided ideologues, but also yellow-bellied, gutter-crawling, backstabbing, bushwhacking liars. Hell hath no fury like a self-designated elite scorned.

They hate Steve Bannon because he beat them, fair and square, on the battlefield of social media. He is the president-elect's most effective general. Trump's enemies can't reverse the results of a national election, but they can try to cut the incoming president off from his popular base.

The charges against Steve Bannon are a tissue of lies without a modicum of merit.

Anyone can search the Breitbart Media archive for posts on Israel, Jews, and related topics, as I have, and determine that Steve Bannon's hugely successful media platform is 100% pro-Israel.

Not only that: Breitbart consistently reports on the dangers of anti-Semitism around the world.

Not a single article appeared in Breitbart.com during the past two years that could not have appeared in Israel Hayom, the leading Israeli daily.

But that is not what one hears from Ian Tuttle at National Review, who complains that "in May, Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol was labeled a 'Renegade Jew.'"

He was, indeed -- but by another Jew, David Horowitz. Horowitz argued that Kristol had betrayed Jewish interests by trying to torpedo Trump -- a point Horowitz emphasizes here.

Tuttle knows this. But Tuttle chose to twist Horowitz's headline into its opposite.

Tuttle's colleague Jonah Goldberg also now inveighs against Bannon, but his post is too silly to quote.

Generously, Tuttle allows that Bannon is not Goebbels.

He isn't. But the Establishment (including the conservative Establishment) media drumbeat against Bannon takes its cue from Goebbels' doctrine of the Big Lie: repeat it often enough, and people will believe it -- no matter how absurd it is.

NeverTrumper John Podhoretz penned an underhanded attack on Steve Bannon on the Commentary website yesterday. One has to read Podhoretz's attack a couple of times to appreciate how sleazy it is:

The key moral problem with Steve Bannon is that as the CEO of Andrew Breitbart’s namesake organization, he is an aider and abetter of foul extremist views, including anti-Semitic ones. He used the site to promote the alt-right, which has retailed anti-Semitism as well as general outright racism and white nationalism. The distinction may seem like a minor one, but it isn’t; the hatred Breitbart has channeled is too general for it to be singled out for its anti-Semitic content.
Note the construction of Podhoretz' sentence: Breitbart isn't anti-Semitic, but in some vague, unnamed way, Breitbart has facilitated anti-Semitism from the alt-Right (whatever that is).

The man is an embarrassment to the venerable Jewish monthly. It's time for Commentary to find a new editor.

These are facts about Breitbart's content: indisputable, accessible, and easy to verify. Anyone can enter the terms "Jews" or "Israel" and "site:www.breitbart.com" into the Google search engine and obtain everything that Breitbart has published on the subjects.

I just looked through roughly a thousand articles and found nothing but pro-Israel, pro-Jewish content that might well have appeared in Israel Hayom.

There is not a shred of evidence -- not a single article -- that supports Podhoretz's allegation that Bannon and Breitbart aid and abet anti-Semitic views.

In lieu of that evidence, the supposedly anti-Semitic David Horowitz piece has been cited dozens of times in the past 24 hours (including by the Times of Israel!).

Of course, one expects the Establishment media to lie at two hundred decibels. Yesterday's email blast from the usually staid Financial Times began:

Donald Trump has chosen Reince Priebus, the establishment head of the Republican National Committee, as his chief of staff, while naming Steve Bannon -- his campaign chair who ran Breitbart News, a website associated with the alt-right and white supremacists -- as his chief strategist and counsellor.​

To claim that Breitbart is associated with white supremacists is a despicable lie. But the FT feels compelled to say such things, because polite opinion requires ritual anathemas of Trump.

The liberal Jewish website The Forward wrote:

Will Steve Bannon bring anti-Semitism into Trump's inner circle?

The reaction was quick and furious from Jews and anti-hate groups. The Anti-Defamation League, which stays out of partisan politics and vowed to seek to work with Trump after his election, denounced Bannon as "hostile to American values."​

It is shameful that Jewish organizations would "cry wolf" on such an important topic, leveling unsupportable charges of anti-Semitism in pursuit of a patently political agenda.

"A world is collapsing before our eyes," tweeted France's ambassador to the United States as the returns came in early in the morning of Nov. 9. Yes, the "liberal world order" of elitist social engineering has come to an end. The Weekly Standard and Commentary have no more reason to publish than do the New York Times or The New Republic.

The world simply has moved away from them. And symbolizing their humiliation is one man who took on their vast media machine with seemingly insignificant resources, and won. They will stop at nothing to destroy him.
 
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Significant portions of the Jewish lobby in the US will put up with some of the antisemitism in exchange for the complete loyalty the Trump administration will show towards the Israeli govt. As we speak, the Israeli Parliament is working through a bill that will legalize thousands of illegal settlement homes in the occupied territories.

Obama pretended to be neutral by saying 'these steps aren't helpful'.

Trump and his people will go ahead and praise them.

I also admire the effort to normalize Bannon :lol:
 
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