Anyone else remember those assholes back during the elections who insisted that if Bernie or Stein couldn't win, that the best thing for the nation was for Trump to win? Something about "you have to burn it all down before you can build anew?"

Yeah, fuck those guys.

Look, do you want Barter Town to be come true or not?

Fuck. Back to "yellow-cake uranium", "smoking gun mushroom cloud", WMD bullshit again from the US.

I said several times here when the approval hits the low 30's they will invent a reason to bomb someone and start a war, and was hoping I was wrong about that.

Same fucking bullshit, different decade.

It's worked before.

Yeah - and a lot of people in the defense contracting and infrastructure business made a LOT of money on that "mistake" by the Bush/Cheney admin.

I always say that when a mistake gets made that makes a lot of people money, expect that mistake to be made again, and again, and again, and again....

If only Trump had a hotel on Guam....

GWBush started his war against poll numbers in September of his first term, ramping up during summer heat, giving voters TV to watch during the winter. It was the highlight of Bush's reign, bumping him from 51% to 90% followed by an eight year drop.

Around NOV09 2016, I figured we had until about September 2017 before life begun its end, soon after Trump reached 37%, which happened today.

Ask an American why Pearl Harbor was attacked and they will tell you that Japan was a war monger determined to take over the world and America did nothing wrong.

Ask someone from Japan, why Pearl Harbor was attacked and they will tell you that America's actions in the Pacific threatened their livelihood. America cut off commodity trade routes to Japan, which included coal, steal, and oil.

When you back someone into the corner and then continue to provoke them, be careful. They may attack you out of desperation. You left them no other choice.

How would Japan's near neighbors describe those years?

Interesting question. Japan has had imperial ambitions for a long time. I mean going back to the seventeen hundreds and before. When Perry sailed his fleet into Yokahama harbor to force the Japanese to open up trade in around 1850, it had a big impact. They went from being a fuedal agrarian society with cottage industry, to being an industrial power. To the point that by 1909, they occupied Korea, by 1911, whipped Russia's ass, and occupied parts of Manchuria. They have some coal, but no oil. In the twenties and thirtys they started occupying other countries for resources, but for the most part they had already been occupied and were colonies of European countries. Berma- England, Vietnam-France, and some other country with oil colonized by the Dutch. Then later the Philipines which was a US colony. Now you ask any of those people that were there, and they did not like the Japanese. They were brutal, and worked the people like slaves. Pretty sure they did not care much for the European and US colonizers either, though they tended to work with local oligarchs so some wealth got spread.

The Chinese remember the British for burning down the Summer Palace in Beijing in the 19th Century. They remember the Japanese for massacring hundreds of thousands of civillians in Nanjing.

In most situations, the phrase "worked the people like slaves" would be hyperbole, not understatement. The Japanese are not popular with their neighbours.

Fun fact, they built their military by supplying cheap silk. Those factories were staffed by young females whose families signed them up for contracts. There was an interesting movie about it. I think it was called the Silk Road or something like that.

Manchuria... Korea, etc...

"they will tell you that America's actions in the Pacific threatened their livelihood. America cut off commodity trade routes to Japan, which included coal, steal, and oil. "

Today we call them sanctions for bad behavior. We might have both been in contest for the AP, but Japan didn't do themselves any favors there. In contrast to the U.S. they were indeed the bad guys.

Was about to say... at the time we definitely held the moral high ground against Japan. Not being embroiled in massive campaigns of conquest.

Apt, but were Japanese ambitions in Asia a reason for the US and Japan going to war?

Japanese leadership seemed to think so. Their alignment with Hitler probably played a part.
It would be interesting to see how events of the twentieth century are described in history text books currently being taught in various countries. I know I was taught a lot of bullshit history as a kid, I assume everyone gets their own custom-made bullshit.

There's a great book called "Hirohito". Basically Japan and Germany were surrounded by powers and lacked land and resources to build an army. Germany was specifically cut off from the water and surrounded on all sides.

Japan realized it could no longer be isolationist (Perry) and was being forced to sign unfavorable trade contracts under threat of warships and had basically enslaved its population to produce high quality silk to undercut international market prices.

They used that money to upgrade their military. But the military required oil coal and steel and all those sources around Iapan were claimed by other spheres of influence. So basically when the IS cut them off, they had to get it from other sources.

That would create a hostile situation.

Japan figures that since America had a history of settling vs going to war (pre ww2) they could knock out the IS presence in the pacific and sue for peace later.

They... misjudged.

Japan fully understood they could never win a war against the US but their intentions were increasing their sphere of influence within Asia and the pacific.

And the US ended up keeping the old Japanese government and business collectives together because they intended to use Japan as a bulkward against Russia/China.

But the German philosophy that they needed more land for Germans was the same as the Japanese one.

Mostly (as I understand it) Japan was interested in Russian and maybe Chinese land- and Germany needed help against Russia- so those interests aligned and served to split Russian fronts.

And to be fair it worked out pretty well for Japan until Germany folded.

The numing was more about sending Russia a message and preventing them from getting Japanese land (that we needed as a buffer- like what china is doing with North Korea) and given that the US actually went through Korea and into china and Macky A wanted to use bikes on china, I can see why China feels like it needs North Korea as a buffer.

Man, spell-check is fucking with you. Or maybe you're just high. Or maybe I'm just high.

Spellcheck. Japan. Nukes. CHAIYANA. Macky A is Macky A. I was speed typing on my phone on the toilet. You're welcome!

It's funny because Japan did it was the justification that they were kicking white people out of asia with a kind of "Asia for Asians" thing. The idea being that they needed more land for their people. That's very similar to Germany. Mostly they had their eyes on China.

Until then most of the farm laborers in the US were actually Japanese. (That's where San Jose, California Japan town has its roots)

That's also were a lot of Latin Americans with Japanese roots get their Japanese roots from.

That said, the reason Japan's neighbors hate them is because that's who they went to war with.

The reason so many distant countries hate the US is because that's who we went to war with. (Korea, middle east, maybe Vietnam although there's been a lot of healing)

i miss San Jose's japanese district. It's one of 3 remaining Japan Towns in the US and hardly a block long these days.

Are they maintaining it for tourists, like Old Town?

There's a small community there that has its roots in Pre ww2 fruit picking/farm hands. A lot of it is tacky and mixed with korean and Chinese stuff but part of that is because it's kind of spread out through the Bay Area. But the SJ Japan town is like a direct link to the pre ww2 japanese American community, so it's historically significant (and there's a museum there too)

How did it survive the internment? I'm surprised it wasn't gutted and repurposed.

I'm not sure, since I haven't been to the museum. But I do think it got a lot smaller for it.

There's a new ramen shop there called maruten and it's fabulous and I'm dead picky about ramen.

Yeah... That moment in time today made me do a double take and just shake my head in wonderment as the president probably undid any attempts at back door diplomacy that we or the rest of the world were working on... Either that or it is a brilliant strategy to make Little Kim realize he is mouthing off to someone with a bigger mouth, bigger ego, older deteriorating brain, and a give two shits attitude about where the fuck NK even is on the map.

Seriously. Both aspects of it are probably right.

With Nixon, the Madman Theory was mostly a bluff, with Trump, it's probably closer to reality.

The madman theory only works if he is not mad.

... and if the other side is not also mad.

There has been a lot of debate about that today. Is Kim as crazy as the rhetoric? I'm sure there is some spook assessment somewhere at Langley but there were a lot of regular folks looking quite concerned that he is and surprisingly some saying he is not.

My vote when in doubt bet on crazy and that goes for both of them.

"When in doubt, bet on crazy," is a good rule of thumb for countless situations.