White Supremacists Pose as Antifa Online, Call for Violence

If one were to believe Donald Trump and William Barr - who increasingly reminds me of Herman Goering - all of the violence over the last number of nights is due to fa left activists and Antifa.  The reality, as with all things with Trump, is quite different and behind the scenes are white supremacists - Trumps core base - who want to spark a race war, something Trump would likely welcome as an excuse for ordering military troops to fire on citizens who oppose his regime and the endemic police brutality directed towards minorities, particularly blacks. As CNN is reporting some white supremacists are posing as Antifa and aiding in creating the pretense that violence is flowing only from the left.  Sadly, there exists a mix of white supremacists, so-called militias, and, of extreme right "Christians" who want to take the nation back to a pre-desegregation 1950 and who would embrace a dictator if it assisted in achieving that goal.  Here are highlights from CNN:

A Twitter account that tweeted a call to violence and claimed to be representing the position of "Antifa" was in fact created by a known white supremacist group, Twitter said Monday. The company removed the account.

"This account violated our platform manipulation and spam policy, specifically the creation of fake accounts," a Twitter spokesperson said in a statement. "We took action after the account sent a Tweet inciting violence and broke the Twitter Rules." Although the account only had a few hundred followers, it is an example of white supremacists seeking to inflame tensions in the United States by posing as left-wing activists online.
 The revelation of the account comes as President Donald Trump increasingly blames left-wing activists for violence occurring at protests across America.

On Sunday, Trump tweeted he would designate Antifa a terrorist organization, despite the US government having no existing legal authority to do so. Antifa, short for anti-fascists, describes a broad, loosely-organized group of people whose political beliefs lean toward the left — often the far-left — but do not conform with the Democratic Party platform.

The fake account, @ANTIFA_US, tweeted Sunday, "ALERT Tonight's the night, Comrades Tonight we say "F**k The City" and we move into the residential areas... the white hoods.... and we take what's ours #BlacklivesMaters #F**kAmerica."
 Twitter said that the account was in fact linked to Identity Evropa, a white power fraternity.

Though Twitter referred to the group as Identity Evropa when discussing the account's removal, the Anti Defamation League (ADL) states that the group dissolved and reformed under the name the American Identitarian Movement, which it also calls a white supremacist group.
 Twitter said it had shut down other fake accounts linked to Identity Evropa, too. The phenomenon of people on the right creating fake Antifa accounts predates the current wave of protests. The takedown Monday is not the first time a fake Antifa account linked to white supremacists has been suspended by Twitter, the spokesperson confirmed.

Trump Unleashed: We Should be Deeply Afraid

The Nazi regime did not take control in Germany and turn that nation into a dictatorship overnight. Rather, there was a slow but steady destruction of the free press, including allegations of "fake news" and that the press was the enemy of the people, and the elimination of honorable individuals from government when they refused to parrot Nazi lies or throw away their sense of morality. Meanwhile, a majority of Germans were indifferent to what was happening around them or, worse yet, allowed prejudice and bigotry to convince them in the short term to ignore where Hitler and his regime were taking the country.  It is terrifying to behold, but we are seeing something similar as Donald Trump, a/k/a Der Trumpenführer, moves to make the Department of Justice his own weapon against those who do do swear total loyalty and seeks to remake America's intelligence agencies into a tool to further his personal interests over those of the nation.  Trump seemingly believes that a saying of Louis IV - L'état, c'est moi" (I am the nation) - applies to him.  A column in the Washington Post by the now retired admiral who oversaw the 2011 Navy SEAL raid in Pakistan that killed Osama bin Laden sounds the alarm.  Here are excerpts:

Edmund Burke, the Irish statesman and philosopher, once said: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” Over the course of the past three years, I have watched good men and women, friends of mine, come and go in the Trump administration — all trying to do something — all trying to do their best. Jim Mattis, John Kelly, H.R. McMaster, Sue Gordon, Dan Coats and, now, Joe Maguire, who until this week was the acting director of national intelligence.

I have known Joe for more than 40 years. There is no better officer, no better man and no greater patriot. He served for 36 years as a Navy SEAL. In 2004, he was promoted to the rank of rear admiral and was chosen to command all of Naval Special Warfare, including the SEALs. Those were dark days for the SEALs. Our combat losses from wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were the highest in our history, and Joe and his wife, Kathy, attended every SEAL funeral, providing comfort and solace to the families of the fallen.

In 2018, Joe was asked to be the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, a job he knew well from his last assignment as a vice admiral. He accepted, but within months of his arrival came the announcement of Coats’s departure as director of national intelligence. Maguire didn’t seek to fill the job; he was asked to do it by the president. At first he declined, suggesting that Sue Gordon, Coats’s deputy, would be better suited for the job.

But the president chose Maguire. And, like most of these good men and women, he came in with the intent to do his very best, to follow the rules, to follow the law and to follow what was morally right. Within a few weeks of taking the assignment, he found himself embroiled in the Ukraine whistleblower case. Joe told the White House that, if asked, he would testify, and he would tell the truth. He did. In short order, he earned the respect of the entire intelligence community. They knew a good man was at the helm. A man they could count on, a man who would back them, a man whose integrity was more important than his future employment.

But, of course, in this administration, good men and women don’t last long. Joe was dismissed for doing his job: overseeing the dissemination of intelligence to elected officials who needed that information to do their jobs.

As Americans, we should be frightened — deeply afraid for the future of the nation. When good men and women can’t speak the truth, when facts are inconvenient, when integrity and character no longer matter, when presidential ego and self-preservation are more important than national security — then there is nothing left to stop the triumph of evil.

This frightening situation is where America finds itself.  Trump is unleashed, he is threatening John Bolton if he speaks the truth in his new book, and is poised to silence anyone who speaks the truth or puts the nation first. 

White Nationalist Terror - Is the Worst Is Yet to Come?

With messaging coming out of the White House indicating that racism and white nationalism involves "fine people" and social media websites failing to ban racists and misogynistic messaging, it is hard to not believe that things are going to get far worse in America - two countries advised citizens to avoid travel to the USA - before, hopefully, Trump and the GOP lose power and the pendulum will begin to swing back towards normalcy.  A piece at The Atlantic that interviews a former white nationalist adds to concerns that things may well get worse in the near term. That being the case, all that most of us can do is be sure to vote Republicans - especially Trump in 2020 - out of office and demand that social media sites take action to block hate motivated white nationalist propaganda.  Here are highlights from The Atlantic piece: 

It’s going to get worse. That’s the warning of a former violent extremist, Christian Picciolini, who joined a neo-Nazi movement 30 years ago and now tries to get people out of them. White-supremacist terrorists—the ones who have left dozens dead in attacks in Pittsburgh, New Zealand, and El Paso, Texas, in recent months—aren’t just trying to outdo one another, he told us. They’re trying to outdo Timothy McVeigh, the anti-government terrorist who blew up an Oklahoma City federal building and killed more than 100 people in 1995—the worst terrorist attack in the United States before September 11, 2001.

On Saturday morning in El Paso, a gunman shot and killed 22 people, including children, at a Walmart. The store was crowded for back-to-school-shopping season. The victims included a high-school student, an elementary-school teacher, and a couple carrying their infant son, who survived. And the shooter, according to an online manifesto [that quoted Trump] authorities attributed to the suspect, saw himself fighting a “Hispanic invasion” as he gunned them down.

That shooting, along with another one hours later, in which an attacker killed nine people over 30 seconds in Dayton, Ohio, renewed the clamor for gun-control laws that has become a grim ritual after such events. But Picciolini said that even if the U.S. could get a handle on its gun problem, terrorists can always find other ways.

“I have to ask myself, Do we have white-nationalist airline pilots?” Picciolini said. “There have to be. I knew people in powerful positions, in politics, in law enforcement, who were secretly white nationalists. I think we’d be stupid and selfish to think that we don’t have those in the truck-driving industry.” Picciolini . . . . spoke with us yesterday morning about the mainstreaming of white nationalism, what it takes to de-radicalize far-right extremists, and why the problem is metastasizing.   . .  . this whole idea of the “Great Replacement,” of “white genocide,” the belief that immigrants are going to overwhelm the white race. That, frankly, is a crock of shit. But we see things in the news that seem to kind of stand behind these notions—that border facilities are overwhelmed. Even though it’s not really a threat to anyone’s race. Migration has been happening for centuries, and we’re still here. Nations change over centuries, borders have been different. But that’s all the language white supremacists have been using for decades. It’s no longer a lone-wolf-type situation, which is something we were pushing in the ’80s and ’90s. The ideology then was that there were no leaders, there was no centralized movement, individuals were empowered to act on their own. But the internet has really solidified this movement globally through all these forums online; they’re connected in the virtual world in ways that we often can’t be in the real world. I would say that the threat of a transnational, global white-supremacist terrorist movement is spreading.

Mattis Replacement: No Military, Government or Foreign Policy Experience

In what is the norm for many Trump/Pence appointees, the replacement for James Mattis as Secretary of Defense has no military experience, no previous government experience and little experience with foreign policy.  Patrick Shanahan, will become acting defense secretary on January 1, 2019, after Trump's temper tantrum  that is forcing Mattis out two months ahead of schedule. The frightening reality is that we have a madman in charge of the nuclear codes who is just as likely to make decisions based on the needs of his malignant narcissism as on sound advice from rational, senior military advisers. Be very, very afraid.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at the growing unease among the military.  Here are highlights:

An unspoken mantra has guided how senior military officials have navigated the Trump era: “Keep your head down.”

Faced with an impulsive [Trump]  president who has upended bedrock alliances and delivered policy bombshells by tweet, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and other Pentagon leaders have responded by confining themselves to executing orders, rebuilding military strength and trying to shelter their institution from the upheaval and drama.

For nearly two years, the approach produced dividends. . . . Last week, much of that came crumbling down, opening a period of uncertainty about how and when Trump will choose to employ force.

Against the advice of his generals, the president ordered an immediate withdrawal from ­Syria.

In the same meeting during which Trump issued his order on Syria, he decided to remove nearly half of the American troops in Afghanistan. Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr. — chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the president’s top military adviser — wasn’t even there, according to people familiar with the situation.

Two days later, Mattis had tendered his resignation, citing irreconcilable differences between Trump’s worldview and his own. Making his resignation letter public, the retired Marine general made clear that his departure was driven by principle — a moment of defiance for an official whose tenure was marked by his studied silence on a growing list of policy disagreements.

The fallout from the resignation continued Sunday. With coverage of Mattis’s departure painting Trump in a bad light, [Trump] the president moved up the Pentagon chief’s departure by two months and tapped his deputy, Patrick Shanahan, to become acting defense secretary on Jan. 1. Most worrisome for some military leaders, however, is the fear that their tradition of partisan neutrality — fundamental to maintaining public support — could be under threat.

“[Trump] The president is rapidly corroding the norms of civil-military relations that create the public respect for our military,” Schake said.

Kori Schake, deputy director general of the International Institute of Strategic Studies and co-editor of a book with Mattis, said research shows that, despite such efforts, public attitudes about the military are growing more politicized.

For his part, Mattis has sought to isolate the Pentagon from the political maelstrom by eschewing the spotlight and rarely appearing on camera. Given his disagreements with Trump on a host of issues, a crucial part of his strategy was to avoid conflict with his boss.

His [Trump’s] selection of Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley, an outspoken, connected officer, nearly a year before Dunford was scheduled to retire defied the recommendation of Mattis and raised the possibility that Dunford will not serve his entire term.

In addition to Milley, Trump will have the chance to appoint three chiefs of the military branches.

Retired Army Lt. Gen. David Barno, who was head of Combined Forces Command-Afghanistan from 2003 to 2005, said the current crop of military leaders had successfully steered the Trump administration toward a “middle ground” on key alliances, conflicts and more.

“Next year is where the real adventure starts,” he said. The period ahead “is going to be very challenging for the military at the Pentagon.”

With Bolton's Appointment, It’s Time to Panic

Unhinged war monger John Bolton.

Donald Trump and his base of support centered on Christian extremists, white supremacists and general misogynists all live in an alternate, objective fact free universe.  Their world view which is full of  hate and paranoia is fanned by Fox News and other right wing "news" outlets that  present a daily dose of propaganda that would have made Joseph Goebbels proud.  Now, Trump has appointed John Bolton to be National Security Advisor.  Bolton is just as unhinged as the ugliest elements of Trump's base and, more frighteningly, is trigger happy and sees military action rather than diplomacy as a solution for  every foreign dispute.  He was a strong advocate of the Iraq War and seems to have learned nothing from that debacle.  A piece in Slate looks at why sane Americans and members of the military should be very, very afraid of where Trump/Pence may take the country.  Another piece in New York Magazine voices similar concerns.  First, here are highlights from Slate:

It’s time to push the panic button.

John Bolton’s appointment as national security adviser—a post that requires no Senate confirmation—puts the United States on a path to war. And it’s fair to say President Donald Trump wants us on that path.

After all, Trump gave Bolton the job after the two held several conversations (despite White House chief of staff John Kelly’s orders barring Bolton from the building). And there was this remark that Trump made after firing Rex Tillerson and nominating the more hawkish Mike Pompeo to take his place: “We’re getting very close to having the Cabinet and other things I want.”

Bolton has repeatedly called for launching a first strike on North Korea, scuttling the nuclear arms deal with Iran, and then bombing that country too. He says and writes these things not as part of some clever “madman theory” to bring Kim Jong-un and the mullahs of Tehran to the bargaining table, but rather because he simply wants to destroy them and America’s other enemies too.

His agenda is not “peace through strength,” the motto of more conventional Republican hawks that Trump included in a tweet on Wednesday, but rather regime change through war. He is a neocon without the moral fervor of some who wear that label—i.e., he is keen to topple oppressive regimes not in order to spread democracy but rather to expand American power.

In the early days of the George W. Bush administration, Vice President Dick Cheney finagled Bolton a job as undersecretary of state for arms control—an inside joke, since Bolton has never read an arms-control treaty that he liked. But his real assignment was to serve as Cheney’s spy in Foggy Bottom, monitoring and, when possible, obstructing any attempts at peaceful diplomacy mounted by Secretary of State Colin Powell.

When Powell got the boot, Cheney wanted to make Bolton deputy secretary of state, replacing Richard Armitage, who resigned along with his best friend Powell. But Powell’s replacement, Condoleezza Rice, who had been Bush’s national security adviser, blocked the move, fully aware of Bolton’s obstructionist ideology.

As a compromise, Bush nominated Bolton to be United Nations ambassador, but that move proved unbearable to even the Republican-controlled Senate at the time. . . . . he was hostile to the idea of international law, having once declared, “It is a big mistake for us to grant any validity to international law even when it may seem in our short-term interest to do so—because over the long term, the goal of those who think that international law really means anything are those who want to constrain the United States.”

These might be quaint notions for some eccentric midlevel aide to espouse, but the United Nations is founded on international law, Security Council resolutions are drafted to enforce international law, and . . . some of those resolutions were proving useful for expressing, and sometimes enforcing, U.S. national security interests. How could someone with these views serve as the U.S. ambassador to the U.N.?

In his confirmation hearings before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Bolton put on a dreadful show, grumbling and scowling through his walrus mustache.

[A]t least McMaster assembled—and often listened to—a professional staff at the National Security Council and insisted on ousting amateur ideologues, several of them acolytes of Flynn.

Bolton is not likely to put up with a professional staff, and the flood of White House exiles will soon intensify. One subject of discussion at Bolton’s Senate hearings, back in 2005, was his intolerance of any views that differed from his own. He displayed this trait most harshly when, as undersecretary of state, he tried to fire two intelligence analysts who challenged his (erroneous) view that Cuba was developing biological weapons and supplying the weapons to rogue regimes.

Nor is Bolton at all suited to perform one of a national security adviser’s main responsibilities—assembling the Cabinet secretaries to debate various options in foreign and military policy, mediating their differences, and either hammering out a compromise or presenting the choices to the president.

Then again, there may now no longer be many differences to mediate in this administration. The last of the grown-ups is Secretary of Defense James Mattis . . . . [Trump] didn’t know that Mattis regularly consulted a personal library of some 7,000 volumes on history and strategy, that (like most generals) he’s not too keen to go to war unless he really has to, and that (also like most generals) he takes the Geneva Conventions seriously and opposes torture.

With Tillerson out, Bolton in, and Pompeo waiting in the wings for confirmation, Trump is feeling his oats, coming into his own, like Trump is free to be Trump. Finding out just who that is may make the rest of us duck and cover.

The New York Magazine piece contains this:

From the outset of his presidency, to which he was elevated with barely any preparation, Donald Trump was surrounded by a protective cordon of advisers, as a child monarch might. In return for absorbing his tantrums, they would educate their unsteady charge, who would wind up, after pratfalls and drama, inflicting no more ruin on the country than a normal modern Republican president might. . . . Somehow it seemed we might muddle through.

Now Trump is breaking through the protective cordon. The people who joined the government to save Donald Trump from himself, or to save the world from Trump, are leaving. Gary Cohn and Rex Tillerson are gone. Trump is reorganizing his legal team, mobilizing for war against the special counsel. And now he has finally cast off his most important minder, National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster, and replaced him with John Bolton.

Bolton . . . is a true believing ideologue firmly encamped on his party’s right flank, who appears regularly on Fox News to propound ultra-simplistic solutions to the world’s problems, which Trump can easily grasp on his sofa.

Bolton’s foreign policy notions can be quickly operationalized, given the near-total command the executive branch has over foreign policy. What’s more, those ideas have the potential to kill large numbers of people.

Bolton has long been estranged from a substantial segment of his own party, which regards him as dangerous. . . . . while many of his colleagues came away at least somewhat chastened by their errors, Bolton did not. “I still think the decision to overthrow Saddam was correct,” he said in 2015.

Bolton is considered so dangerous, even by many Republican hawks, because he is a true believer, deeply in the grips of black and white notions of simple morality that are difficult to reconcile with the messy reality that is the world. There is a long history of ideologues joining a presidential administration and terrifying the establishment, only to be assimilated into its bureaucratic routines. But Bolton’s character and history seem to defy any such domestication.

The combination of Bolton and Trump poses an especially potent danger. Trump once declared “I love war, in a certain way.” Both men think in terms of zero-sum conflict and harbor an obsession with dominating their adversaries. They are temperamental twins. In North Korea or elsewhere, Bolton could goad Trump into dangerous reaction.

It has been the tail risks – any number of low-probability, high impact events that are far more likely to occur with an authoritarian buffoon in the White House than under a normal president. Trump has spent his presidency surrounded by people who were at least attempting to contain these risks – say, a Constitutional crisis, or a meltdown of the international order. As awful and comically surreal as the first year and a quarter of his term has been, after Trump has taken full command of his administration, we may see it as a golden age.

Be very afraid.  Those of us who live in an area like Hampton Roads, Virginia, with a huge military personnel do not want to see the lives of friends and neighbors thrown away yet again.  Just as importantly, we should not want to see Trump by either mistake or design authorize the use of nuclear weapons.  

Retired General: Trump’s Judgment is Fundamentally Flawed

Trump and Emperor Nero - two of a kind?

Some likely think my comparisons of Donald Trump to mentally deranged Roman emperors of the past are off target, but this past week and stories coming out of the White House suggest that the comparisons are all to appropriate.  Worse yet, they suggest that dangerous actions could come from an emotionally and - in my view and that of others - mentally ill occupant of the White House.  A piece in the Washington Post based on interviews with 22 White House officials, friends and advisers to the president and other administration allies suggests that thinking Americans - which excludes Fox News viewers and evangelical Christians - should be very worried if not truly frightened.  Here are story excerpts:

Inside the White House, aides over the past week have described an air of anxiety and volatility — with an uncontrollable commander in chief at its center. . . . As one official put it: “We haven’t bottomed out.”

Trump is now a president in transition, at times angry and increasingly isolated. He fumes in private that just about every time he looks up at a television screen, the cable news headlines are trumpeting yet another scandal. He voices frustration that son-in-law Jared Kushner has few on-air defenders. He revives old grudges. 

Still, Trump’s friends are increasingly concerned about his well-being, worried that the president’s obsession with cable commentary and perceived slights is taking a toll on the 71-year-old. “Pure madness,” lamented one exasperated ally.

Retired four-star Army general Barry McCaffrey said the American people — and Congress especially — should be alarmed.

“I think the president is starting to wobble in his emotional stability and this is not going to end well,” McCaffrey said. “Trump’s judgment is fundamentally flawed, and the more pressure put on him and the more isolated he becomes, I think, his ability to do harm is going to increase.”

This portrait of Trump at a moment of crisis just over a year after taking office is based on interviews with 22 White House officials, friends and advisers to the president and other administration allies, most of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to candidly discuss Trump’s state of mind.

The tumult comes as special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation of Russia’s 2016 election interference and the president’s possible obstruction of justice has intensified. Meanwhile, Kushner, a White House senior adviser, was stripped last week of his access to the nation’s top secrets amid increasing public scrutiny of his foreign contacts and of his mixing of business and government work.
 Trump seethed with anger last Wednesday night over cable news coverage of a photo, obtained by Axios, showing Sessions at dinner with Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein, who oversees the Russia investigation, and another top Justice Department prosecutor. The outing was described in news reports as amounting to an act of solidarity after Trump had attacked Sessions in a tweet that morning.

The next morning, Trump was still raging about the photo, venting to friends and allies about a dinner he viewed as an intentional show of disloyalty.

“Trump’s fundamentally distorted personality — which at its core is chaotic, volatile and transgressive — when combined with the powers of the presidency had to end poorly,” said Peter Wehner, a veteran of the three previous Republican administrations and a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. “What we’re now seeing is the radiating effects of that, and it’s enveloped him, his White House, his family and his friends.”
 Trump is testing the patience of his own staff, some of whom think he is not listening to their advice. White House counsel Donald McGahn and national economic council director Gary Cohn have been especially frustrated, according to other advisers.
 “Morale is the worst it’s ever been,” said a Republican strategist in frequent contact with White House staff. “Nobody knows what to expect.”

 I definitely do not sleep well know that we have in essence a mad man in the White House.

Corker: Trump’s Recklessness Threatens ‘World War III’

While the core of Donald Trump supporters - Christofascists and racists - continue to applaud the misdeeds, misogyny and general batshitery of the occupant of the White House, more and more sane Republicans are coming to belatedly realize that Der Trumpenführer is a clear and present danger to both America and the world.  The same applies to Mike Pence after his pre-planned walk out from an NFL game seemingly aimed at thrilling the Trump base and further inflaming racial animosity.  The only saving factor for Pence is that were he to replace Trump, the chances of World War III being incited would likely diminish.  Telling, yesterday GOP Senator on Sunday morning news said that the White House has become an "adult day care center" and that he fears Trump will cause World War III.   Of course, anyone who ever seriously scrutinized Trump's personality and history should have known this and refused to support him.  Like other Republicans, Cocker failed to put morality and country ahead of party last year when it truly mattered.  A piece in the New York Times looks at Corker's belated awakening to the danger Trump poses.  Here are article highlights:

Senator Bob Corker, the Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, charged in an interview on Sunday that President Trump was treating his office like “a reality show,” with reckless threats toward other countries that could set the nation “on the path to World War III.”

In an extraordinary rebuke of a president of his own party, Mr. Corker said he was alarmed about a president who acts “like he’s doing ‘The Apprentice’ or something.”  “He concerns me,” Mr. Corker added. “He would have to concern anyone who cares about our nation.”

Mr. Corker’s comments capped a remarkable day of sulfurous insults between the president and the Tennessee senator — a powerful, if lame-duck, lawmaker, whose support will be critical to the president on tax reform and the fate of the Iran nuclear deal.

It began on Sunday morning when Mr. Trump, posting on Twitter, accused Mr. Corker of deciding not to run for re-election because he “didn’t have the guts.” Mr. Corker shot back in his own tweet: “It’s a shame the White House has become an adult day care center. Someone obviously missed their shift this morning.”

The senator views Mr. Trump as given to irresponsible outbursts — a political novice who has failed to make the transition from show business.  Mr. Trump poses such an acute risk, the senator said, that a coterie of senior administration officials must protect him from his own instincts. “I know for a fact that every single day at the White House, it’s a situation of trying to contain him,” Mr. Corker said in a telephone interview.

Mr. Trump’s feud with Mr. Corker is particularly perilous given that the president has little margin for error as he tries to pass a landmark overhaul of the tax code — his best, and perhaps last, hope of producing a major legislative achievement this year.

If Senate Democrats end up unified in opposition to the promised tax bill, Mr. Trump could lose the support of only two of the Senate’s 52 Republicans to pass it. That is the same challenging math that Mr. Trump and Senate Republican leaders faced in their failed effort to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act.

Beyond the Iran deal, Mr. Corker’s committee holds confirmation hearings on Mr. Trump’s ambassadorial appointments. If the president were to oust Rex W. Tillerson as secretary of state, as some expect, Mr. Corker would lead the hearings on Mr. Trump’s nominee for the post.

In a 25-minute conversation, Mr. Corker, speaking carefully and purposefully, seemed to almost find cathartic satisfaction by portraying Mr. Trump in terms that most senior Republicans use only in private.

All but inviting his colleagues to join him in speaking out about the president, Mr. Corker said his concerns about Mr. Trump were shared by nearly every Senate Republican. “I don’t know why the president tweets out things that are not true,” he said. “You know he does it, everyone knows he does it, but he does.” After a report last week that Mr. Tillerson had once referred to Mr. Trump as a “moron,” Mr. Corker told reporters that Mr. Tillerson was one of three officials helping to “separate our country from chaos.” Those remarks were repeated on “Fox News Sunday,” which may have prompted Mr. Trump’s outburst.

In August, after Mr. Trump’s equivocal response to the deadly clashes in Charlottesville, Va., Mr. Corker told reporters that the president “has not yet been able to demonstrate the stability nor some of the competence that he needs to demonstrate in order to be successful.”

Mr. Corker would not directly answer when asked whether he thought Mr. Trump was fit for the presidency. But he did say that the commander in chief was not fully aware of the power of his office.

“I don’t think he appreciates that when the president of the United States speaks and says the things that he does, the impact that it has around the world, especially in the region that he’s addressing,” he said. “And so, yeah, it’s concerning to me.” 

I guess Corker finally speaking out is a case of better late than never, but had he and other Republicans who place country ahead of party - admittedly a vanishing species - perhaps America could have avoided the ongoing nightmare that seems to have no end.  

Will Trump Push North Korea to War?

Personally, I view the leadership of North Korea to be basically insane and frighteningly inclined to provoke a war.  Sadly, my view of the current regime in the White House falls pretty much into the same category as that in North Korea.  Watching the British news coverage, my assessment would seem to coincide with that of the man/women on the street in London.  North Korean leader Kim Jong Un belongs in a mental war.  So does Der Trumpenführer.  And, I hate to say it, but after the debacle over the false claims of the U.S. military over WMD's in Iraq before George W. Bush launched an unnecessary war, I cannot feel all that comfortable with the new claims that North Korea has successfully produced a miniaturized nuclear warhead that can fit inside its missiles.  The Washington Post looks at these troubling claims:

North Korea has successfully produced a miniaturized nuclear warhead that can fit inside its missiles, crossing a key threshold on the path to becoming a full-fledged nuclear power, U.S. intelligence officials have concluded in a confidential assessment.

The analysis, completed last month by the Defense Intelligence Agency, comes on the heels of another intelligence assessment that sharply raises the official estimate for the total number of bombs in the communist country’s atomic arsenal. The United States calculated last month that up to 60 nuclear weapons are now controlled by North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. Some independent experts think the number of bombs is much smaller.

The findings are likely to deepen concerns about an evolving North Korean military threat that appears to be advancing far more rapidly than many experts had predicted. U.S. officials concluded last month that Pyongyang is also outpacing expectations in its effort to build an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of striking the American mainland.

President Trump, speaking Tuesday at an event at his golf course in Bedminster, N.J., said North Korea will face a devastating response if its threats continue.

“They will be met with the fire and fury and frankly power, the likes of which this world has never seen before,” he said.

The DIA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined to comment.
An assessment this week by the Japanese Ministry of Defense also concludes that there is evidence to suggest that North Korea has achieved miniaturization.

Kim is becoming increasingly confident in the reliability of his nuclear arsenal, analysts have concluded, explaining perhaps the dictator’s willingness to engage in defiant behavior, including missile tests that have drawn criticism even from North Korea’s closest ally, China. On Saturday, China and Russia joined other members of the U.N. Security Council in approving punishing new economic sanctions, including a ban on exports that supply up to a third of North Korea’s annual $3 billion in earnings. 

“What initially looked like a slow-motion Cuban missile crisis is now looking more like the Manhattan Project, just barreling along,” said Robert Litwak, a nonproliferation expert at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and the author of “Preventing North Korea’s Nuclear Breakout,” published by the center this year. “There’s a sense of urgency behind the program that is new to the Kim Jong Un era.”

Although few discount North Korea’s progress, some prominent U.S. experts warned against the danger of overestimating the threat.

“Overselling is particularly dangerous,” said Hecker, who visited North Korea seven times between 2004 and 2010, and met with key leaders of the country’s weapons programs. “Some like to depict Kim as being crazy — a madman — and that makes the public believe that the guy is undeterrable. He’s not crazy and he’s not suicidal. And he’s not even unpredictable.” “The real threat,” Hecker said, “is we’re going to stumble into a nuclear war on the Korean Peninsula.”

During the Cuban Missile Crisis, America had a sane occupant in the White House.  That is not true today.  Be very afraid. 

Trump’s "Religious Freedom" Order Reveals Sweeping Plans to Legalize Discrimination

A post yesterday suggested that folks should not be tricked by Donald Trump, a/k/a Der Fuhrer's, purported decision to leave President Obama's LGBT supportive executive orders in place.  Based n a leaked draft of Der Fuhrer's proposed "religious freedom" executive order, any rights left in place by virtue of Obama's executive orders will be wiped out.  Thus, Trump can claim he maintained LGBT protections even as he issue a plan to legalize massive anti-LGBT discrimination.  The man is a foul douche bag - and that description is far too kind.  A leaked draft executive order titled “Establishing a Government-Wide Initiative to Respect Religious Freedom,” reveals frightening and sweeping plans by the Trump administration to legalize discrimination.  Such has always been the goal of the Christofascists who backed Trump and extracted promises from him in return.  The Nation looks at the details of this foul plan.  Here are article highlights:

A leaked copy of a draft executive order titled “Establishing a Government-Wide Initiative to Respect Religious Freedom,” obtained by The Investigative Fund and The Nation, reveals sweeping plans by the Trump administration to legalize discrimination. 

The four-page draft order, a copy of which is currently circulating among federal staff and advocacy organizations, construes religious organizations so broadly that it covers “any organization, including closely held for-profit corporations,” and protects “religious freedom” in every walk of life: “when providing social services, education, or healthcare; earning a living, seeking a job, or employing others; receiving government grants or contracts; or otherwise participating in the marketplace, the public square, or interfacing with Federal, State or local governments.”

The draft order seeks to create wholesale exemptions for people and organizations who claim religious or moral objections to same-sex marriage, premarital sex, abortion, and trans identity, and it seeks to curtail women’s access to contraception and abortion through the Affordable Care Act. 

Language in the draft document specifically protects the tax-exempt status of any organization that “believes, speaks, or acts (or declines to act) in accordance with the belief that marriage is or should be recognized as the union of one man and one woman, sexual relations are properly reserved for such a marriage, male and female and their equivalents refer to an individual’s immutable biological sex as objectively determined by anatomy, physiology, or genetics at or before birth, and that human life begins at conception and merits protection at all stages of life.”

The breadth of the draft order, which legal experts described as “sweeping” and “staggering,” may exceed the authority of the executive branch if enacted. It also, by extending some of its protections to one particular set of religious beliefs, would risk violating the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the Constitution.

“This executive order would appear to require agencies to provide extensive exemptions from a staggering number of federal laws—without regard to whether such laws substantially burden religious exercise,” said Marty Lederman, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center and an expert on church-state separation and religious freedom.

The exemptions, Lederman said, could themselves violate federal law or license individuals and private parties to violate federal law. 

The leaked draft maintains that, as a matter of policy, “Americans and their religious organizations will not be coerced by the Federal Government into participating in activities that violate their conscience.”

It sets forth an exceptionally expansive definition of “religious exercise” that extends to “any act or refusal to act that is motivated by a sincerely held religious belief, whether or not the act is required or compelled by, or central to, a system of religious belief.” “It’s very sweeping,” said Ira Lupu, a professor emeritus at the George Washington University Law School and an expert on the Constitution’s religion clauses and on the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA). “It raises a big question about whether the Constitution or the RFRA authorizes the president to grant religious freedom in such a broad way.”

In particular, said Lupu, the draft order “privileges” a certain set of beliefs about sexual orientation and gender identity—beliefs identified most closely with conservative Catholics and evangelical Christians—over others. That, he said, goes beyond “what RFRA might authorize” and may violate the Establishment Clause.

[T]he new draft order codifies a laundry list of claims advanced by the Christian right in recent years as indicating that the advance of LGBT rights has put the religious freedom of conservative Christians at risk. “They would say this is a nondiscrimination order,” said Lambda Legal’s Pizer. “We disagree. We would say being denied the ability to discriminate against others is not discrimination against you.”

Images of the draft executive order are here: 

Russian Hackers Attack Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee

While Putin loving Donald Trump tries to walk back his invitation to Russian government hackers to attack Hillary Clinton and Democrat organizations - one of Trump's stooges tied to say Trump's statements were a "joke" - word comes that Russian Hackers have attacked the computer systems of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.  To me, the fact that Russian dictator Vladimir Putin seemingly desperately wants to see Trump elected ought to send shivers down the backs of every American.  The Washington Post looks at this latest hacking which is being investigated by the FBI.  Here are article highlights:

Russian government hackers have breached the computers of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, according to individuals familiar with the matter.

The intrusion appeared to be carried out by the same Russian intelligence service that hacked the Democratic National Committee earlier this year, the individuals said.

The FBI is investigating this breach as part of a broader probe into hacking of political organizations.

The revelation, first reported by Reuters, comes on the same evening that Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton was making her acceptance speech at the party’s national convention in Philadelphia.

“It’s definitely part of a much, much broader campaign that is yet to fully be publicly revealed,” said one of the sources, a cybersecurity expert familiar with the matter.

Hackers working for Russia’s military intelligence service, the GRU, were traced to the DCCC intrusion, the sources said. Also known as APT 28 or Fancy Bear, they are the group the FBI believes took a cache of DNC emails. The bureau is trying to determine whether those emails are the ones that appeared on the website of the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks on Friday, setting off a firestorm that roiled the party in the lead-up to the convention.

The FBI also will try to determine whether APT 28 or an affiliated group passed those emails to WikiLeaks, law enforcement sources said.

The concern is that Moscow may be attempting to meddle in the U.S. election, which would be an unprecedented and highly troubling turn of events. . . . The DCCC intrusion apparently is part of a much broader campaign of political espionage by the Russians. The FBI is also investigating targeting and potential compromises of the Clinton campaign, . . .

The full scope of the intrusions has yet to be revealed. News of the latest hack is sure to add to the already significant level of concern in the White House about potential Russian interference in the U.S. electoral process.

Daniel Pipes: Why I Just Quit the Republican Party

I would be lying if I did not admit that I awoke with a sense of foreboding after Donald Trump's acceptance speech last night wherein the narcissist echoed the self-love and egomania that motivated the likes of Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini and other despots and dictators throughout history.  The most frightening thing, however, was seeing the convention crowd revel in it utterly oblivious of the path down which Trump seeks to that America.  Our European allies and others must be frightened and dismayed.  Yes, there are some Americans who belatedly are finally saying "enough" and "I am done" but far more need to wake up and do so.   One who has just done so is Daniel Pipes, who has served in five (5) presidential administrations, who has just left the GOP.  The following are excerpts from a piece in the Philadelphia Inquirer:  

The Republican Party nominated Donald Trump as its candidate for president of the United States - and I responded by ending my 44-year GOP membership.

Here's why I bailed, quit, and jumped ship:

First, Trump's boorish, selfish, puerile, and repulsive character, combined with his prideful ignorance, his off-the-cuff policy making, and his neo-fascistic tendencies make him the most divisive and scary of any serious presidential candidate in American history. He is precisely "the man the founders feared," in Peter Wehner's memorable phrase. I want to be no part of this.

Second, his flip-flopping on the issues ("everything is negotiable") means that, as president, he has the mandate to do any damn thing he wants. This unprecedented and terrifying prospect could mean suing unfriendly reporters or bulldozing a recalcitrant Congress. It could also mean martial law. Count me out.

Third, with honorable exceptions, I wish to distance myself from a Republican Party establishment that made its peace with Trump to the point that it unfairly repressed elements at the national convention in Cleveland that still tried to resist his nomination. Yes, politicians and donors must focus on immediate issues (Supreme Court justice appointments) but party leaders like GOP committee chairman Reince Priebus, House Speaker Paul Ryan, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell wrongly acquiesced to Trump. . . . Republican leaders are lining up to surrender to him - like low-energy, cowering weaklings."

Fourth, the conservative movement, to which I belong, has developed since the 1950s into a major intellectual force. It did so by building on several key ideas (limited government, a moral order, and a foreign policy reflecting American interests and values). But the cultural abyss and constitutional nightmare of a Trump presidency will likely destroy this delicate creation. Ironically, although a Hillary Clinton presidency threatens bad Supreme Court justices, it would leave the conservative movement intact.

Finally, Trump is "an ignorant, amoral, dishonest and manipulative, misogynistic, philandering, hyper-litigious, isolationist, protectionist blowhard" in the words of Republican donor Michael K. Vlock. That charming list of qualities means supporting Trump translates into never again being able to criticize a Democrat on the basis of character. Or, in personal terms: How can one look at oneself in the mirror?

And so, with Trump's formal nomination, I bailed.

America's failure to teach history in its schools is catching up with us.  Nightmares from 85-90 yeas ago seem about to repeat themselves, but this time in America.

 

Leaked Trump Speech - Lies and False Statistics

A look a like with our dog give Trump his due

The Fuhrer Donald Trump is about to speak at the GOP convention and a leaked copy of his speech suggests that true to form we will hear lies and false statistics.  Its a trait the is now the norm in the Republican Party and, in my view, traces back to when the Christofascists hijacked the party base. No one lies more than the "godly folk" other than perhaps Trump himself and his children - I am feeling in need of a vomit bag as I listen to Ivanka (seemingly an Eva Peron want to be) blather claims about her father that do not tract with reality.  The Daily Beast looks at what we can expect.  Here are highlights:

A draft of Donald Trump’s Republican National Convention speech was leaked on Thursday, hours before he was set to deliver what is the most important speech of his life and accept his party’s presidential nomination.

Like many of the speeches at this year’s GOP convention, Trump’s will feature themes of law and order as the party’s nominee attempts to capitalize on recent tragedies and terror attacks around the world.
 According to the prepared remarks—which matched up with excerpts released earlier by the campaign—Trump addresses crime and safety issues early on in the speech, accusing President Obama and Hillary Clinton of leaving the country and the world less safe.
 But the bleak picture he paints often does not line up with the facts, using over-inflated statistics and questionable generalizations when discussing matters of crime, justice, immigration, and national security.
 Trump will say that homicides increased by 17 percent from last year in the country’s 50 largest cities. He will not say, however, that the national homicide rate hit a four-decade low last year, according to the FBI. 
 Trump’s dubious contentions are not limited to law and order issues. The billionaire businessman claims 14 million people “left the workplace entirely.” For context, the current workforce has 4.6 million more people than in 2009. He will criticize Obama on the national debt, claiming it doubled. It has actually increased from $11.1 trillion to $19.2 trillion.
 Trump also suggests that Clinton is responsible for the creation of ISIS in the Middle East—even though the group did not formally split from al Qaeda until after she left office. He suggests that sanctions on Iran decreased during her tenure in government; in fact, they increased.
 Additionally, he incorrectly states that Egypt was “turned over” to the Muslim Brotherhood, “forcing the military to retake control.” In 2012, Mohammed Morsi, the former leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, was democratically elected and subsequently ousted from power by the military one year later.

The speech was leaked on Thursday to a super PAC supporting Hillary Clinton. The PAC, Correct the Record, says it received a copy of the speech from a “Republican source who had access to it.” David Brock, the group’s founder, said the leak is evidence that the Trump campaign is “loose and disorganized.”