My biggest fear this year

[Maeve]

Is that the media and the GOP will not seriously try to rein Drumpf in until someone gets killed. And the way he is shooting off his mouth, someone is going to try. I expect the security team is professional enough to protect Hillary, but....you can't anticipate crazy. And we're dealing with crazy here.

I was scared in 2008 for Obama, but even then we didin't have the top of the ticket stirring up the hatred. Feel free to talk me down.

[Chemisse]

1. I think someone has explained to Donald that death threats are a 'no-no'.

So I am hoping he will avoid them in the future.

[happydaze]

2. Her events are pretty tightly monitored and much smaller than Obama events

When he drew huge crowds in outdoor areas, that's what had me worried for him. And had a lot of us worried after the June comments we are all supposed to forget about now...

I remember when so many had hope for change... Looking back now, it was unlikely someone wouldn't be on top of things to keep him protected. He has been a bit too in love with some of the very elements many of us hoped would be reigned in. In a few other places, it's been good that he has been there to say no to the MIC in regards to escalating war. But the drone program is abhorrent! What happens when other countries begin flying these terror beasts? What happens if someone figures out how to hack them (unless they have a self-destruct under those circumstances and it has happened)?

I worry that the choices by the two parties create issues of involvement in voting. Hopefully, Trumps actions keep the regular die yards from coming out to vote at all. Low numbers are bad for Dems.

[Fla Dem]

4. I'm no fan of war or killing, but fail to see why drones are any more abhorrent than conventional

armed attacks, Firing Tomahawk missiles from battle ships, or dropping bombs from airplanes, or Hellfire missiles from an Apache helicopters. For the most part drones can be highly accurate in their attacks. Yes there have been several horrendous mistakes, but there have also been thousands of successful attacks by the drones on ISIL.

We have an enemy in the mid-east which has been spawned by the stupid blunders of the GW Bush administration and his henchman Cheney. They unleashed a monster that had been contained by militant dictators for decades. Now that it's loose, we have some responsibility to try and defeat them, or at least give the governments over there a chance to stabilize and develop their defenses so they can again contain them.

You raise some good questions regarding use of drones by our enemies. But I would rather drones than sending scores of our young people to the middle east to fight them on the ground.

[happydaze]

5. First, I believe we need to "Green Deal" it up and remove

the need to be involved in wars for oil in the first place. Integrate education, jobs, ability to deal with climate change within the region (and quite frankly, the whole world).

The reality is that we are facing issues that will create much more instability and we are not harnessing the very solutions that we have in our back pockets. We are allowing some pseudo capitalistic nightmare of endless greed to annhilate this planet.

I don't like the idea of bombing from the air in any accord. I don't like the idea of military warfare in this century! There is very little need to kill one another. Much of what is occurring is due to our involvement in the first place in these locations. It's not going to get better by continuing to act with impunity against innocent people. Those survivors end up becoming fighters a few years later.

Perhaps, a novel idea, we should stop supplying weapons into the region. Maybe create sanctions against Saudi Arabia. I sure as shit know one thing, if families in America had to worry everyday they stepped out of their homes to go to the grocery store or send their kids to school and had to fear that would be the day a bomb dropped from the sky and blew them up because they might be in the wrong place at the wrong time or a target of a enemy was near to their location, they would be howling like mad, spitting mad, and ready to take any counter action they felt was righteous retribution. I remember the fervor after 9/11. We aimed at 1 country because they had a terrorist hiding inside (killed dead in Pakistan). And then moved to Iraq that had nothing to do with harming anyone in America. Then we indiscriminently bomb places like Yemen, Syria, Libya, etc because we can. AND no one thinks that anyone isn't going to feel as we would feel if we were under constant attack? Our being their is flaming the fan. And now, we are slowly building back troops into Iraq again; essentially making permanent bases in the country.

This has been a costly distraction. By no means are we getting the full picture of what is actually occurring. The media and govt are useless in actually giving out any proper info. AND we continue to spend over half our budget on MIC. Congress is out of the loop on authorizing any of this or conducting oversight (unless Benghazi is involved). The executive branch is opporating with essentially no oversight and no challenge. At the damn DNC convention we had a rah, rah military cheering day and it felt like I was watching Republicans go all USA . USA . USA...

I'd like to have a military that is only necessary for actually defending "home turf". I don't enjoy seeing this country act like a tyrannical empire, policing the world.

[Fla Dem]

6. Have no idea what "green deal it up" means.

Like the Pottery Barn's "You Break it, You've bought it" policy, we played a major role in breaking the Middle East. So it's on us to fix it. Obama has done a pretty good job in getting most of our fighting forces out of there, thus removing some of the anti-American irritation. On the other hand, by removing our forces before the home grown defenses were ready to take over, that allowed ISIL/ISIS to take over a lot of territory, killing and enslaving civilians, destroying cities, etc. We have an obligation to the people of Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya to contain and defeat ISIL/ISIS and allow these governments to get back on their feet.

There is no easy answer and if drone strikes are instrumental in bringing an end to ISIL/ISIS. Then so be it. Right now the current strategy appears to be working.

U.S. Boosting Troops in Iraq to Help Retake Mosul and Raqqa
Mark Thompson @MarkThompson_DC July 11, 2016

"The Pentagon crossed a critical threshold Monday when Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said he was ordering 560 more U.S. troops to Iraq for the express purpose of taking back the two major cities held by ISIS. It’s an important moment, because only when Mosul, ISIS’s biggest prize in Iraq, and Raqqa, the capital of its self-declared caliphate in Syria, are retaken will the world view the two-year-old Islamic State as being finally on the ropes."

More....
http://time.com/4401915/islamic-state-isis-mosul-raqqa-us-troops/

Syrians celebrate defeat of ISIS in Manbij, recount horrors of executions
City near Turkish border served as conduit for ISIS supplies
http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/isis-syria-manbij-sdf-1.3719783

Jubilation in Syria's Manbij as ISIS loses control of key city
By Angela Dewan and Hamdi Alkhshali, CNN
Updated 5:36 AM ET, Sun August 14, 2016

http://www.cnn.com/2016/08/13/middleeast/syria-isis-manbij/

Incredible pictures show Syrians celebrate freedom from ISIS by burning niqabs, cutting beards and smoking cigarettes
21:43, 12 AUG 2016 UPDATED 21:43, 12 AUG 2016
BY SCOTT CAMPBELL

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/incredible-pictures-show-syrians-celebrate-8620033

I would love to live in a world where there is no need for warfare, no need to kill one another. But as long as there is religious fanaticism, leaders with a thirst for power (Putin, Kim Jong-un for example) competition for natural resources (fresh water will be a big one in the foreseeable future, fossil fuels, food, etc,) and tyrannical rulers there will be conflicts.

I'm hoping our current strategy in the ME will bring some stability back to that part of the world, at least until the next 2 bit ruler brutalizes his country or fundamentalist religious leader declares a holy war on another country.

[onecaliberal]

3. I'm worried not only for her but her family. I damn sure hope they took dump at his word and

They are watching the Clintons very closely.

[Johnny2X2X]

7. It's not the media's job to reign him in

The media is just reporting what he says. His party has a responsibility to put a stop to it, but they won't because they need his voters.

[Maeve]

8. The media has encouraged him and enabled him

They let him phone it in and refused to call him on the lies way too often. Now we're finally seeing more challenges to his 'pants-on-fire' repeated crap.
Tape recorders can 'just report what he says'; I want reality-based context in a journalistic piece. The only way a free press really works is if the readers are educated and that sometimes requires the 'reporters' do some actual work beyond taking dictation.

[BigDemVoter]

9. I wish I could talk you down, but it worries me too.

I have been worried about Obama his entire presidency, as it seems his wins in 2008 and 2012 seemed to ignite the REALLY crazy Republicans.

I think they hate HRC even more than Obama.