Rand0m her0

Oh yea no I wasn't kidding when I said linking the song send someone out to buy the album. Like literally, 15 minutes later, dude headed out the door to see if he could order the album in. So B-52s. I entirely forget how it happened or why, or if there even was a why, but at one point Love Shack was something of an unofficial theme song for the alliance or some like that. Lulz were had. I think we may have got BnT to sing a drunken rendition of it?. I swear there was a recording of something like that kicking around somewhere? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SOryJvTAGs *brandishes cattleprod at lurkers*

I keep forgetting how cheesy the late 80s early 90s alt-rock scene got at times. It's good, but jfc it really puts in hindsight all the people bemoaning the existence of the spice girls and what not. Del Amitri gets a pass cause at least they got their early, but if we'd gotten another decade of "Man singing way to earnestly over a distorted guitar" *shudder* Speaking of Del Amitri, "Nothing Ever Happens" came up on an oldies station kinda recently and...no. I just refuse to accept that. 1990 was 10 years ago damn it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFUd2eXk-6U Have some motel lullaby, because it's quiet, lovely and sharing it with someone else made them spend 20 minutes hunting the internet for a physical copy of the album. Also hey, lurkers. It can't just be me and Lys posting back and forth. Get in here and tell us what we should be listening to.

Ya. Either way though, the core point is that it's good enough to mostly control for outliers, and once you start doing that, the general patterns of ownership and usage hew much closer to the rest of the world. I don't think we're gonna disagree to sharply on that. The gun control debate in the USA as generally perceived is a lot of fucking propaganda bullshit tbh. You have groups like the NRA, who've spent decades doing every thing they can to spread as much misinformation and bullshit as they can because they exist to make gun manufactures profit. This leads to all sorts of hysteria whenever the topic comes up, and so the only thing that can get any traction is dramatic bullshit, which only fuels that hysteria.It's created the sort of fucked up situation where for example, if you lay out the Swiss approach as individual points, something like 80% plus of America thinks it's a pretty good idea by and large. And then someone says the phrase "gun control" to refer to the same damn thing and it's back to the hysterics and major friggin media having people on air to tell you that they're gonna take all guns away so they can take over America without resistance. Although it is occasionally halarious to quote Regan on the topic and then watch the hysterics. There's a letter to congress he co-wrote and co-signed with Ford and Carter that's an absolute gold mine.

Without getting too much into the math, that it fits quite well with a Pareto distribution, which shows up quite consistently in similar analysis and has been shown to apply in other countries that do track. Gun ownership in the USA being a Pareto distribution would be utterly unremarkable, especially since it should correlate with other metrics that definitely do (wealth for example. Someone who owns half a dozen guns probably aint hurting for money). Counter intuitive as all fuck, but not actually surprising or unusual . Even if the 3% figure isn't dead on, I'd be shocked if it wasn't close simply because of how the Pareto distribution works. No larger than 7%owning half pretty much for sure, and probably no larger than 5% owning half. Regardless, It's definitely good enough for a first order estimate. If you've not done that much statistics, you've probably got the tl;dr version at some point in your life : Ever been told about the 80-20 rule or something like that at your job? Usually phrased as something like "80% of all issues are caused by 20% of all problems", "the top 20% of all workers produce 80% of all output," or "20% of the customers create 80% of the revenue" other such. That's bascily applying the same math, although in a more rule-of -thumb sort of way. Fair enough explanation. It is plausible based on distribution but I just don't see it. As I mentioned before I've seen way more firearm owners with a 1-2 firearms then I have seen people with a semi large collection. If I had to put a number on what I have personally seen. I would say about 70% of firearms owned are those with 1-3 firearms. While 30% of firearms owned resides with those that posses more than 5 firearms. Well yea, but that's exactly how a Pareto distribution works. Your gonna see way way more people with 1-2 firearms. I mean, even if we do some napkin math, figure on average one person in 3 owns a firearm and there's somewhere around 300 million firearms in the US and you find that the other 97 of all gun owners, own an average of about 1.8 firearms. Which is about your experience. That's not gonna be super accurate, but I also don't think the deviation from that is gonna be too huge. Probably not going to find that the average gun owner owns 5 guns or anything. ETA: Also keep in mind that's across america as a whole. Your own social group in a specific geographic region may well deviate from that, and would hardly be unexpected. If you something dramatic like restrict the analysis to just alaska, you'll probably find a very different result than for america as a whole. Wealth is the classic Pareto distribution and one we have a ton of solid data on (don't fuck with the IRS etc). The top 1% control 30%-40% percent of all wealth in the USA. How many billionaires do you know?

Without getting too much into the math, that it fits quite well with a Pareto distribution, which shows up quite consistently in similar analysis and has been shown to apply in other countries that do track. Gun ownership in the USA being a Pareto distribution would be utterly unremarkable, especially since it should correlate with other metrics that definitely do (wealth for example. Someone who owns half a dozen guns probably aint hurting for money). Counter intuitive as all fuck, but not actually surprising or unusual . Even if the 3% figure isn't dead on, I'd be shocked if it wasn't close simply because of how the Pareto distribution works. No larger than 7%owning half pretty much for sure, and probably no larger than 5% owning half. Regardless, It's definitely good enough for a first order estimate. If you've not done that much statistics, you've probably got the tl;dr version at some point in your life : Ever been told about the 80-20 rule or something like that at your job? Usually phrased as something like "80% of all issues are caused by 20% of all problems", "the top 20% of all workers produce 80% of all output," or "20% of the customers create 80% of the revenue" other such. That's bascily applying the same math, although in a more rule-of -thumb sort of way.

How can commenting on the topic of the thread be a deflection? Has anything changed in the last week that i've missed? Because all we've see is more of the same bloviating nothing. And speaking of bloviating nothing. Words Words Words, #Maga, but not one thing to actually say. You've spent all your time lambasting people who disagree with you, and but not one word in defense of your principles. Infact I don't think i've seen you even stand in defense of a single point you've made, all you do is lash out and attack others. I'm starting to think that's all you can actually do. So have a line in the sand. You think the electoral college is so great. Back that up. If we're so very wrong, putting together even a half assed argument should be really easy. Or even just referencing a single article, opinion, vlog, talk, whatever else that you think presents your position well. Really anything other than knee jerk defensive attacks because your threatened by even the slightest most meger counterpoint. Anything of substance. Any single thing that would demonstrate you've got something grounding your views and that you're not just posting here in some elaborate act of virtue signaling.

Ohhh deflection. Deflection based on pure and utter speculation even. I'll start planning on that shortly after I finalize my plans to handle defecating winged simians. But no you don't get the change the topic. Come-on lys, can you manage even one halfway researched point on the electoral college. Cause you haven't actually said one single thing to counter any point that's been made. Do you know anything at all about the topic of reform of the electoral college? Do you know what goal it was introduced for and the views of the founding fathers? Have you ever bothered to read any analysis of how and if it's managed to act in that capacity? If you'd like a historical perspective Herbert Wechsler 1949 paper on the topic is quite a good one, as is Feerick 1969 paper. And of course there's Nixon's address to congress. Perhaps you've read Haraway's "The Electoral College and the Constitution: The Case for Preserving Federalism". Care to reference anything? Or perhaps you have an opinion taken from analysis of previous removals of and changes to constitutional limitation on direct democracy. Because there's quite a lot around that was written around the time of the 14th, 17th and 19th Amendments, and it might be interesting to see how your take mirrors the arguments then. Or is all you've got just feels>reals

No, you are. Liiibrulls don't agree with me, wah wah, "kids" (by which you mean anyone under the age of 35) don't share my fanatical party line politics wah wah. You are snowflaking just so damn hard and it is *hilarious* The country doesn't need a divorce. There is not some hard line polarization dividing the country. What there is, is a generation of entitled boomers throwing a shitfit because for the first time in 20-30 years they're not mainstream america anymore. Like really, you're actually feeling threatened because someone says "oh, the electoral college has flaws because it's a compromise system designed to handle issues in a world where stagecoaches were the height of transportation technology." That bit wasn't even in response to you and you're flipping out over it. But then you probably didn't even bother to read enough to realize that because anything that disagree with #MAGA in anyway, even at third degree separation is an attack on you personally. Check yourself. The issues with the electoral college have been a topic since longer than you've been alive, and outside of the last 15 years, reform has had bipartisan support. Freaking Nixon endorsed it. But you know, Trump lost the popular vote so anyone saying that the electoral college isn't perfect actually hates you and hates america and so you gotta throw all the toys out the pram because every single thing must be about you. melt some more.

I would never deny any adult American Citizen the right to vote. It was a smartass comeback to Random's desire to prohibit the vote from anyone over 65. The fact you still can't tell when your being made fun of is just great. Remember this: Cause you said that. "the country needs to separate because people don't agree with me, whine whine", while all the same while all the same projecting like you show movies for a living Oh dear. so, one, if you control for the cities, you're ignoring 70 odd percent of the population. As well, favouring rural areas is not what the electoral college is for. It A exists to give smaller states some abbitly to stand next to larger states and B as a way to conduct elections across a continent in times when it took months of travel to get anywhere, with B being the primary motivation. Prior to the modern era, getting votes into washington from far flung states was not reasonable, and so you sent a representative incase the person you're voting for dropped dead or murdered someone or whatever. It's questionable if it even favours smaller states anyways. Flyover country remain flyover country. All it does it create dead dog states, where a party needs to put in next to no effort to win, and the other has no chance. Which I why you get shit like literally nazis running under major party banners and other such fuckwitery. If you do wish to apply such a geographic region bias, there are many ways to do so, far better than the electoral college. the electoral college is such a broken system in general that 23% of the population is enough to get you victory, and i think we can all agree that 23% of the population deciding against the choice the other 77% would be fucked up. No, the left wants just about any working model of gun control in lieu of the completely broken and useless hunk of shit america currently has. There are plenty of them that would in no way abridge the 2nd amendment, all of which work quite well, and all of which are adaptable. If you control for a handful of "super collectors" (the 3 percent of american who own half of all guns in america),, the USA falls pretty well within the norm for western nations. Per capita, Canada owns more guns than the US does, and the canadian model could pretty much be exported to the USA with minimal effort or disruption. Most of the effort would be unfucking the bullshit holes in the US's background check system, which would be a good idea all around. Unfortunately, the US gun lobby is utterly opposed to this because they would make fractionally less money, and when coupled with the useless fuckwits in media, the only thing that can get any traction is shit from lunatics that would go nowhere. Oh and lies. Lots of lies. Someone says "We should consider reforming the system background checks" and despite that shit having something like a 97% approval rate, the media spins it to the point people panic buy so much ammunition to literally cause a freaking ammunition shortage. Also that in general is just nonsense, the needs of urban and rural regions have never been more entwined than today. Is goes especially for any policy set at the federal level. The divide is most strongly about cultural/moral issues, rooted in the rhetoric that "small town christian values are under attack". A significant amount of this is rooted Nixon's Southern Strategy and the continuation around that. Even then, the division is primarily along party lines with republican and democrat voters in rural areas showing the same major divisions as anywhere else. It's just the rural regions where that rethoic found a foothold.

Now why would we want to do that lys. The under 30 group is currently the *least* politically polarized group. Infact if you control for "social issues", they're by a wide margin the least decisive, and what division their is, is mainly the issues that the religious right continue to push. It's a positively centrist demographic. It's the silent generation and the boomers incapable of meeting in the middle. I For that matter, not only are they the least polarized group they're the one with the greatest distaste for the sixth party system. Something like half of that age group register as independents, because one of the issues they most strongly meet in the middle on is "fuck all this bullshit". Turns out a decade or two of bullshit from both parties engender no strong love for either, who'd of thunk it. And I mean, the boomers expect us to pay for their pensions and medicare (under 65 takes on something like 85%of the tax burden, and paying that out is something like 2/3 of the total tax burden in general), the least they could do is get the hell out of the way of the people paying their way. You say a lot about *your* precious tax dollars going to stuff like "lazy kids" or other nonsense, but you know what, I've done the math: about 40 cents of every dollar I pay in taxes goes to supporting the boomers and up, a full third of which doens't even *pay* taxes. And i don't really begrudge that. I'd hate for someone to end up dead because cancer or something took a dunk on their life savings and they couldn't afford treatment. But there is just something special about a generation of voters who, for example, least support single payer healthcare but flip their collective shit with something like 96% consensus whenever anyone even looks at their precious medicare. No if you want drastic solutions to the political divide, raising the voting age would only further exacerbate it by excluding the least divided demographic in America. A maximum voting age would reduce it quite nicely.

Well i mean, it's *less* drastic than trying to partition the country into two separate countries based on the geographic urban/rural split. I mean, you're the one who wants drastic action to deal with the political divide, and a large part of it boils down to the oldest generation voting against the future of the nation. When 65 and older votes 80/20 and then 55 and under votes 20/80 on the same issue. That's a large part of what kept Jim Crow around for so long. And then the people supporting got out of the way (ie, died) and we're all better for it. If you want drastic and dramatic action yea, your buddy isn't going to be around for the consequences of his choices in all likelihood, no real reason for him to not step aside. It's certainly preferable to conducted a mass expulsion from geographic regions like you effectively proposed. hooooooie, so guess you're real sore about the popular vote thing. you do know there are tons of systems that aren't the electoral college and all it's bullshit that still enable geographic preference. And i mean, how dare you not even further discount the votes of a population group that makes up 10% of the US population. I mean, since you *loooove* the electoral college so much, take the simplest change; abandon the pretense of 1 man 1 vote, since it's bullshit as far as presidential elections go, and then use the current electoral college to weight the results from each state, and then use that weighted popular vote to pick the winner. For exmaple since Californa's very existance offends you so: Cali's got 55 of 538 votes, and works out to about 0.102 as a weight factor. Trump got 31.62%, which works out to about 3.23% after normalizing it, and clinton got 61.73% , which works out to about 6.31%. Repeat for say texas, 38 electoral votes and works out to about 0.07063197026 Trump got 52.23% and Clinton 43.24% which works out to 3.69% and 3.05% respectively. Continue that on for all 50 states and DC, and the weighted percentages will total up to 100% across all candidates assuming you carry enough digits in your calculation. Keeps your precious geographic weighting, gets rid of the winner takes all nonsense. It's even better at ensuring each state gets represented, since there's now no such thing as a red or blue state, forcing candidates to actually spend time on each state to try and carry as much as possible. Extra points for using IRV.

Well if you want to deal with the political divide by way of controversial opion Step 1: Improve access to education. A huge chunk of the divide is by education attainment. Technically reducing access to education would also work, but i think that's a bad plan. Step 2: making 65 the mandatory *maximum* voting age, since above that is the demographic that most drives the divide. Step 3: Burn the electoral college to the ground and ditch FPTP in general for IRV, allowing for bipartisan or more centrist candidates to gain support over extreme ones Give it a generation and it'll be much less of an issue. I mean, failing that we could partition america like you suggest. but in that case the geographic divide is urban/rural which will be interesting.

http://www.newshub.co.nz/home/world/2018/05/alex-jones-gives-3000-to-grown-man-who-won-t-leave-home.html *eye roll*

huh. Wonder how well balanced it ends up. Also obligatory Kaiserreich plug as far as HOI4 goes.

Yeah, but then again, the Russian Government is never really involved in anything, are they... The soldiers in Ukraine were just "vacationing" there with all the heavy military hardware. All the cyber attacks are just carried out by "patriotic hackers" with no clue from the Russian Government. Nerve agents being deployed in foreign countries, without a clue of their origin (certainly not Russia!) suicidal journalists jumping out their windows just when they are about the break open a big story. All coincidences, misunderstandings, unfortunate events.We should know the drill by now, frankly it was obvious from the beginning. Either way, I'm happy the "mercenaries" got what they deserved. eh it probably really was. Like i'm certain russia has *zero* problem with the wagner group being in syria or taking the oil fields in general or whatever, but this sounds a lot more like something that was organized by syrian forces or the mercs looking to make a buck. the only possible reason i could think of for the russian military to organize this kind of attack, especially after the US military makes it clear what they're response would be, is if russia decided to get the folks they sent on the attack killed. Seriously, they had everything from drones to AC-130s to freaking B-52s dropping shit on them, not to mention marines and green berets ready to roll out. I find it hard to believe that russia would decide to go up against that with the creme of the syrian army and the best military gear of the 1970s. On the other hand, we've seen mercenary groups do similar stupid shit in the past, and Assad has little reason to not piss off the americans. At the very least russia does enough jackass shit that there's no need to reach for more, and there;s enough other jackasses involved here and they're all much closer to hand. If the military ever does release the final report publicly, I'd be willing to bet money the conclusion is that this was syrian backed.

Because nothing about this seems to have involved the russian government. Wagner group was hired by Assad to take back oil fields and they get paid a share of the production proceed from the ones they seize. They're roughly equlviant to wahtever the shitstain that is Blackwater is calling themselves these days. It'll have been a bunch of jackass mercs who decided booting america off that oil field would be a quick way to make a buck. Instead they spent 4 hours on the angry end of AC-130s and B-52s. Also if you're take away from those headlines is AMERICA BAD, then you're just looking for reasons to be offended. I mean lets go with the fox news headline, since you think they've got the hottest shit http://video.foxnews.com/v/5733119224001/?#sp=show-clips More than 100 Russians killed US airstrikes in Syria By your standard, fox news is now pushing the narrative that the US was bombing poor innocent russians in their beds.

I'm quite certain you implied that the federal government and the ED were the root of that. Imying it's the governments fault, that more local control would be better, that the issue started with the ED being "created" by LBJ, and so on . I felt that was worth addressing in detail. Also I'm just going to completly ignore the "stupid kids" bit because *honestly*. That's old and trite enough to be a trope when Socrates whined about kids these days.

Edit: double post cause awful wifi

no i'm pretty sure what you said was. the role of the ED is not what you seem to think it is, control is highly local, spending is almost entirely local, the USA does not spend much more in the way of public funds than most other western nations, and spends about as much as it ever did over the last century. % GDP is kinda an important metric for historical comparison. inflation and etc is a thing as i'm sure you know. America spends more total dollars than they did back in the days of 20 cent cheese burgers, but that's cause these are no longer the days of 20 cent cheese burgers.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2018/05/24/trump-cancels-summit-kim/640452002/ oh geeze. So if that's accurate he did so unilaterally and without bothered to tell anyone else first. It's like he wants to piss america's allies off.

USA spending on education has been pretty much flat relative to the US's GDP since the 60s, and almost none of it is federal or even state expenses. Infact if we ignore the effects of the GI bill and the states increasing spending on tertiary education in the 60s and the collapse on spending during ww2, it's been close to flat as a percentage of GDP since some time around the late 30s. federal expenses at their peak were something like 1% of the GDP, and that was at the height of the GI bill, money beyond well spent. It currently accounts for about 5% of all government expenses on education. Almost all of that small fraction of spending is dedicated towards providing funding for poor areas of the USA that wouldn't be able to adequately funding schooling. Think places like bug fuck nowhere kentucky. State governments account for something a bit over a quarter, however almost all of that is on tertiary education.The remaining spending is funded and directed at the local level. And yes I'm aware that the US actually spending on 7% of it's GDP, however that extra funding is private money, not public and mostly a product of the shit show that is student loans in the USA. As well, part of the extra spending is because the education system in the US is so very decentralized. While we could get into a debate about that, the decentralization means there's a lot of duplicate spending and other issues that economies of scale would solve. The ED has almost no say in educational policy. It rarely has anything to do about setting curriculum, and when it does it's mostly about establishing clear but broad guideline. For example they'll set guidelines to the rough effect of "by grade 5, your students should know how fractions work", and leave how to go about that to the local authorities. Even then it only does that as part of it's administrative role granted by congress, and that happened under bush junior. the EDs job is mostly to collect statistical and other data about education in teh USA for the federal government and make that information for state and local authorities. Prior to it being implemented (and for the record, that was in 1867, it's just been combined and split with/from other parts of the cabinet over the last 150 years), education was something of a blackhole for tax payers. They might know what they were doing locally, but little information about how well they were doing compared to others was available. The best, or at least most example of it's use in that role occurred during the space race. America found itself playing catchup and wanted to up it's game as far as STEM education went. the ED is why that could happen. Past that, it's role in enforcement has to do with various federal laws around access to education and student privacy. No you can not sell students private data, yes you do need to let black kids attend your school, no you can not have web cams and mics in school issued laptops and then use them to spy on the kids at home, no you can't cut this schools funding down to 10% of the rest of your school board, no you can't close down this school and bus all the students there to another one four hours away, etc. America has proven time and again why it needs a federal department in that role. They're also the organization congress has empowered to do shit like step on Corinthian Colleges. Every single one of those is a real thing that happened in the last couple of years by the way, with the bonus of the web cam one resulting in the school board accidentally making child porn because of course it did. The US has an extremely decentralized education system (far more so than any other western nation). And whatever the benefits of local control, i'm certain you've seen examples of how spectacularly dumb local governments can get either out of standard stupid or basic corruption. Given the kind of damage that can do when we're talking about someones education , having a structure that can step in and clue bat people has proven invaluable to the USA. And the states have historically been quite happy to have the federal government handle that, since it means they don't need to do that work themselves (minus some of the states getting really pissy about desegregation, but nuts to that lot)

While you may like that logic, that's not Bolton's logic. To use an analogy, your logic is like having a friend who's having problems with their neighbor, and so you "have a word with them". We could debate the efficacy of that, but whatever not the point. Bolton's logic would be to show up and threaten to napalm the entire neighbor hood, including your friend's house. Bolton is an excuse yes. As said before, this is not new behavior. The point is that the excuse in this case has also pissed off SK, Japan, and helps ensure China will back NK as well. NK being NK is one thing. Providing NK the excuse while simultaneously flipping off your allies takes something special. Also even if Bolton is just an excuse, the point is that his actions would have scuttled the talks even if NK was playing in good faith. So NK being NK here doesn't even matter since he managed to undermine US creditably regardless.

I think you could be right about that, but the fact remains that it hasn't happened again. The government has to do something to keep murder out of schools. If someone gets killed, it should never be on government property, while they are in government care. Blaming guns is a deflection. Too much money is made off the education system, and there is high motivation to not change that.9/11 and airport retrofits did nothing to stop anything. 9/11 happened because very few securities factors took hijackings seriously as a threat. Something to be prevented sure, but the goal of hijackings in the past was to take hostages and try some sort of extortion. As such the response at the time was to let the hijackers have their way and then get the plane on the ground. Almost all hijackers fail at that point, and no point provoking them into killing people. 9/11 style attacks and hijackings in general are almost entirely prevented by changing that response. Other attacks are pretty much uniformly prevented by soft measures. post 9/11 the FBI and the various security organizations have stepped their game way the hell up and have managed to step on something like 80% of all known planned attacks before they were close to getting off the ground. Finally 9/11 triggered a monumental shift in culture, in how everyone in America views potential terrorism. Despite media prattling about America under attack or whatever, there is essentially no support amongst any group the USA, and there is a large push to bringing potential threats to light. In almost every successful attack, the threat was known, but the government had insufficient information to act. The TSA has played little role in this, and what role they do play has little to do with the continual and absurd expansion of their powers. infact the TSA and it's failings are one of the better current examples of how defensive and reactive strategies don't work. gun culture in the USA is broken. Regardless of individuals, the net culture both lacks responsibility and glorifies violence. Until people want to confront this, one way or another, we will keep seeing this narrative play out. "Young disaffected male who probably should never have had unsupervised access to guns kills people because violence is a way to assert his identity and/or take revenge for perceived wrongs." sums up damn near every one of these cases. The attacks aren't random, the problem doesn't exist on this scale anywhere else western world and the issue is systematic. It's also relativity new Festung Amerika is not an answer. If schools aren't a target, malls will be. if those aren't libraries will be. if those aren't, gyms will be. And lys, yes you've made this into a discussion of education. You're blithely suggesting something that would result in the utter demolition of the American education system. It is what American excellence is built on, and for all it's numerous faults remains one of the best such systems in the world. It is, quite literally what the American golden age was built on. What your proposing is sacrificing something that has had close to 2 centuries of continual success to "solve" a problem that only exists in the last 30 years. LBJ, both Roosevelts, Eisenhower, along with a whole history of some of the greatest people in America going back to the 13 colonies who established the foundation of what exists today have all supported public education for a reason. lets take a personal example from you. You've mentioned your experience in a military school and how it benefited you. Do you think you'd have gotten that if you'd been stuffed into a room and gotten math lessons or whatever of a screen? I guarantee one of the first thing they emphasized to you was the importance of being part of something larger than yourself. There's no room for that in what your proposing, and that's the least of what you want to do away with.

unfortunately as long as bolton is the national security advisor, america will find itself isolated from it's allies. Infact Bolton will result in SK looking away from America. With his past and continuing advocacy for US military intervention in NK, something damn near no one in SK wants anything to do with. Almost no one on the world stage wants anything to with the guy. While NK summits were almost certainly going to fail, the way this failed while simultaneously pissing off every ally in the region is a pretty solid example on why he keeps getting thrown to the wolves. Dude thinks he's Kissinger but doens't even have the benefit of being halfway competent.

Nah we've seen that. Not "dynamic" enough. Ok now there's a michael bay/ dynamic gameplay smooshup joke in here, and i want to find it but i'm also lazy. someone tag in, help me out here.