Mr. Nice! posted:

And? Dude's just mouthing the words of the song.

facialimpediment posted:

https://twitter.com/BreakingF24/status/869213284649418752

Mr. Nice! posted:

And? Dude's just mouthing the words of the song.

MazelTovCocktail posted:

Can France even carry out a strike like that without US assistance? I'm not even saying that in the rear end in a top hat way, just in the can French logistics and deployments independently support that?

Reverand maynard posted:

probably just not sustained.

Missionary Positron posted:

Brexit might've been a blessing in disguise for the EU.

MazelTovCocktail posted:

Can France even carry out a strike like that without US assistance? I'm not even saying that in the rear end in a top hat way, just in the can French logistics and deployments independently support that?

Stellar Curiosity posted:

Trolling à la française
https://twitter.com/BernardZuel/status/869075596545896448

Reverand maynard posted:

and? It looks hilariously childish. Imagine any other president just bobbing along to the song and mouthing the words.

Reverand maynard posted:

and? It looks hilariously childish. Imagine any other president just bobbing along to the song and mouthing the words.

Flikken posted:

What is the Charles De Gaulle up to these days?

Suicide Watch posted:

Are they actually going to go through with their 2nd carrier now?

Stultus Maximus posted:

Suicide Watch posted:

Are they actually going to go through with their 2nd carrier now?

Waroduce posted:

A strike? Yes

A sustained bombing campaing with strategic implications ? Mmm no

M_Gargantua posted:

Who needs a sustained bombing campaign if the strike is a few PGM into Assad and his cronies?

M_Gargantua posted:

Who needs a sustained bombing campaign if the strike is a few PGM into Assad and his cronies?

MazelTovCocktail posted:

The problem is being able to shrug off to these few PGMs obviously emboldens Assad or at least strengthens his position ironically.

Kurtofan posted:

i'm afraid of reverse ww2

quote:

When Donald Trump won the American presidency last November, the European establishment slipped from deep funk (over Brexit, terrorism, euro troubles, migration, populism) into full depression.

Six months later, the dark jokes about political suicide watches still resonate. They’re just not directed at Continental Europeans.

This week, on his first trip abroad, the U.S. President is meeting a changed Continent. The mood has swung — wildly, some might say manically — to confidence veering toward giddiness.

Is it Brussels or Washington that today resembles a “hellhole” (in the bon mot from Trump’s campaign that so many have gleefully recalled)?

In contrast to its Anglo-Saxon interlocutors — Trump and Britain’s Prime Minister Theresa May who, to be generous, both look a lot more politically wobbly than a few short weeks ago — Europe’s famously dysfunctional leadership is positively chipper.

Mood swings, like political swings, happen quickly. This one could sweep back just as rapidly. But for now, to the pleasant surprise of the fervent defenders of the post-war “European project,” the Continent’s Cassandras have been muted by the events of this spring.
...
Germany’s humming economy, which created 4.5 million jobs in the past six years and is near full employment, is the primary engine driving the city’s transformation. Now comes Brexit. As it threatens — to London’s dawning dismay — to send many well-paid jobs out of the City, Frankfurt is the destination at the top of the list.

To businesspeople here, Prime Minister May’s Brexit-means-hard-Brexit is an act of sheer insanity, “an amputation,” as one puts it. And not because it is a rejection of “European values” and liberalism — such airy notions hold little currency for the practical Germans — but because of what it’ll cost the U.K. in lost trade and income.
...
“Brexit may end up being a blessing in disguise,” Dastis says. “It may end up giving unity that was missing. In part, it was the same with the Soviet Union, which was an external [unifying threat] … Maybe Brexit is the way for us to find a new will and sense of common purpose.”
...
Here’s a real news flash: Brussels is having a good year. European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, whom Trump met on Thursday, is on a bit of a political winning streak. The Dutch and French voters did their part by rejecting populists. The EU economy is doing better, at least by its relatively modest standards.

And Juncker, along with Council President Donald Tusk, have pulled off their own trick: to give the appearance that the 27 EU members who will remain after Britain leaves are united and committed to the “project” to build Europe free and whole. And that Brexit and Trump, which in their minds seemed ready to combine into a possibly fatal threat to the Western liberal order, may in different ways actually reinforce it.
Hubris has, of course, undone Europe many times before. But that’s not in the air, not yet. The feeling is of relief and guarded not-pessimism.

For sure, the EU’s structural problems are all there. The latest and still inconclusive wrestling match over Greece’s eternal bailout this week was another reminder that the eurozone is a vulnerable place. Italy is a mess; politics in Hungary and Poland continue to cause Euro-grandees headaches; and the democratic deficit in Brussels, the north-south tensions, and the demographic time bomb are lying in wait, as always.

Most of the improved spirits might be chalked up to one big thing: the problem cases in the West aren’t, for a change, on this side of the Atlantic (or Channel).

We’re talking about moods and appearances. Then again, that’s political reality, especially these days. Trump and May look a bit smaller, so they must be. And Europe is up — a sentence anyone who has followed the Continent for years would be shocked to commit to ink or pixels.

shyduck posted:

https://twitter.com/CapMalcolm/status/869216012553469952

shyduck posted:

https://twitter.com/CapMalcolm/status/869216012553469952

shyduck posted:

https://twitter.com/CapMalcolm/status/869216012553469952

Missionary Positron posted:

What the hell prompted that from Trump?

TBeats posted:

Missionary Positron posted:

What the hell prompted that from Trump?

Kazinsal posted:

Hubris and idiocy.

I try to keep my opinions on Trump off public internet forums because I don't want to get turned around at the border one of these days, but by god as my witness that man is a danger to the human race.

Waroduce posted: