Trump's Dangerous Foreign Policy Games

Thankfully, my son-in-law is no longer in the military given the dangerous and reckless games that the delusional Der Fuhrer is playing.  That said, living in Hampton Roads with its huge military presence, we know many men and women who may find themselves in harm's way because of the mentally ill commander-in-chief occupying the White House. Indeed, for the first time in many years some residents of the region are once again conscious that the area would be a first strike target if Trump were to trigger a nuclear war. Obama's steady hand is gone and madness now reigns in the White House.   Much of the world now worries what this foul individual might unleash either deliberately or through his own delusions.  A column in the New York Times looks at Trump's dangerous games which are likely to continue to distract his cretinous base from the reality that coal jobs and others promised by Der Fuhrer are never coming back.  Indeed, the strategy mirrors that of Putin who seeks to distract the average Russian from the reality of the economic disaster over which he presides.  Here are article excerpts:

For the past couple of months, thoughtful people have been quietly worrying that the Trump administration might get us into a foreign policy crisis, maybe even a war.

Partly this worry reflected Donald Trump’s addiction to bombast and swagger, which plays fine in Breitbart and on Fox News but doesn’t go down well with foreign governments. But it also reflected a cold view of the incentives the new administration would face: as working-class voters began to realize that candidate Trump’s promises about jobs and health care were insincere, foreign distractions would look increasingly attractive.

The most likely flash point seemed to be China, the subject of much Trumpist tough talk, where disputes over islands in the South China Sea could easily turn into shooting incidents.

But the war with China will, it seems, have to wait. First comes Australia. And Mexico. And Iran. And the European Union. (But never Russia.)

And while there may be an element of cynical calculation in some of the administration’s crisismongering, this is looking less and less like a political strategy and more and more like a psychological syndrome.

The Australian confrontation has gotten the most press, probably because it’s so weirdly gratuitous. Australia is, after all, arguably America’s most faithful friend in the whole world, a nation that has fought by our side again and again. . . . . But this is the age of Trump: In a call with Malcolm Turnbull, Australia’s prime minister, the U.S. president boasted about his election victory and complained about an existing agreement to take some of the refugees Australia has been holding, accusing Mr. Turnbull of sending us the “next Boston bombers.”

[A]t least Mr. Trump didn’t threaten to invade Australia. In his conversation with President Enrique Peña Nieto of Mexico, however, he did just that.

The blowups with Mexico and Australia have overshadowed a more conventional war of words with Iran, which tested a missile on Sunday. This was definitely a provocation. But the White House warning that it was “putting Iran on notice” raises the question, notice of what? Given the way the administration has been alienating our allies, tighter sanctions aren’t going to happen. Are we ready for a war?

There was also a curious contrast between the response to Iran and the response to another, more serious provocation: Russia’s escalation of its proxy war in Ukraine. Senator John McCain called on the president to help Ukraine. Strangely, however, the White House said nothing at all about Russia’s actions until Nikki Haley, the United Nations ambassador, issued a condemnation late Thursday night to the Security Council. This is getting a bit obvious, isn’t it?

Oh, and one more thing: Peter Navarro, head of Mr. Trump’s new National Trade Council, accused Germany of exploiting the United States with an undervalued currency.

[W]hat we’re hearing sounds like a man who is out of his depth and out of control, who can’t even pretend to master his feelings of personal insecurity. His first two weeks in office have been utter chaos, and things just keep getting worse — perhaps because he responds to each debacle with a desperate attempt to change the subject that only leads to a fresh debacle.

America and the world can’t take much more of this. Think about it: If you had an employee behaving this way, you’d immediately remove him from any position of responsibility and strongly suggest that he seek counseling. And this guy is commander in chief of the world’s most powerful military.

As noted in past posts, America could not prevail in Iraq yet Trump seems to want war with Iran - a far larger and more advanced country than Iraq ever was.  Yes, it would make the white supremacists and Christofascists happy and distract the bubba's in the hinterland, but how many American lives would be thrown away and how many billions of dollars squandered?  And that doesn't even factor in the countless innocent civilians that would likely be killed.  Oops, I forgot.  With Trump's base, if you aren't a white, heterosexual right wing Christian, you're not really human, so your death doesn't matter.  Trump needs to be removed from office NOW!

Why Corruption Matters

With Donald Trump the presumptive president elect - he will not actually be the president elect until the Electoral College votes and confirms hie election - we as a nation are about to enter into a level of corruption unparalleled in the nation's history and the history of the presidency.   Trump supporters, not surprisingly, are ignoring the soon to be unleashed conflicts and likely violations of Constitutional restrictions.   Frighteningly, much of the mainstream media is little better as anchors and supposed reporters merely parrot whatever lie or deliberate misinformation that comes from Trump's lips or his enablers and propaganda shrills.  But, corruption on this level does matter - it matters immensely.  An op-ed in the New York Times underscores why this is so.  Here are highlights:

Remember all the news reports suggesting, without evidence, that the Clinton Foundation’s fund-raising created conflicts of interest? Well, now the man who benefited from all that innuendo is on his way to the White House. And he’s already giving us an object lesson in what real conflicts of interest look like, as authoritarian governments around the world shower favors on his business empire.

Of course, Donald Trump could be rejecting these favors and separating himself and his family from his hotels and so on. But he isn’t. In fact, he’s openly using his position to drum up business. And his early appointments suggest that he won’t be the only player using political power to build personal wealth. Self-dealing will be the norm throughout this administration. America has just entered an era of unprecedented corruption at the top.

The question you need to ask is why this matters. Hint: It’s not the money, it’s the incentives.

True, we could be talking about a lot of money — think billions, not millions, to Mr. Trump alone (which is why his promise not to take his salary is a sick joke). But America is a very rich country, whose government spends more than $4 trillion a year, so even large-scale looting amounts to rounding error. What’s important is not the money that sticks to the fingers of the inner circle, but what they do to get that money, and the bad policy that results.

Normally, policy reflects some combination of practicality — what works? — and ideology — what fits my preconceptions? And our usual complaint is that ideology all too often overrules the evidence.

But now we’re going to see a third factor powerfully at work: What policies can officials, very much including the man at the top, personally monetize? And the effect will be disastrous.

Let’s start relatively small, with the choice of Betsy DeVos as education secretary. Ms. DeVos has some obvious affinities with Mr. Trump: Her husband is an heir to the fortune created by Amway, a company that has been accused of being a fraudulent scheme and, in 2011, paid $150 million to settle a class-action suit. But what’s really striking is her signature issue, school vouchers, in which parents are given money rather than having their children receive a public education.

At this point there’s a lot of evidence on how well school vouchers actually work, and it’s basically damning. For example, Louisiana’s extensive voucher plan unambiguously reduced student achievement.

And the track record of for-profit education is truly terrible; the Obama administration has been cracking down on the scams that infest the industry. But things will be different now: For-profit education stocks soared after the election. Two, three, many Trump Universities!

Moving on, I’ve already written about the Trump infrastructure plan, which for no obvious reason involves widespread privatization of public assets. No obvious reason, that is, except the huge opportunities for cronyism and profiteering that would be opened up.

But what’s truly scary is the potential impact of corruption on foreign policy. Again, foreign governments are already trying to buy influence by adding to Mr. Trump’s personal wealth, and he is welcoming their efforts.

In case you’re wondering, yes, this is illegal, in fact unconstitutional, a clear violation of the emoluments clause. But who’s going to enforce the Constitution? Republicans in Congress? Don’t be silly.

Destruction of democratic norms aside, however, think about the tilt this de facto bribery will give to U.S. policy. What kind of regime can buy influence by enriching the president and his friends? The answer is, only a government that doesn’t adhere to the rule of law. . . . . someplace like Vladimir Putin’s Russia can easily funnel vast sums to the man at the top in return for, say, the withdrawal of security guarantees for the Baltic States.

One would like to hope that national security officials are explaining to Mr. Trump just how destructive it would be to let business considerations drive foreign policy. But reports say that Mr. Trump has barely met with those officials, refusing to get the briefings that are normal for a president-elect.

So how bad will the effects of Trump-era corruption be? The best guess is, worse than you can possibly imagine.

Hillary Goes Nuclear on Trump

I will admit that it's to the point that I want to vomit every time I hear Donald Trump bloviate and hurl insults at Hillary Clinton and anyone who doesn't share his hate and bigotry based agenda.  The man is beyond disgusting and the thought of him in the White House ought to send chills down the back of sane and rational people.  Yesterday, Hillary Clinton let loose on Trump and made the case that the man is too unstable - not to mention ignorant - to occupy the office of the presidency.  Politico looks at Clinton's attack on Trump.  Here are highlights:

Hillary Clinton threw a barrage of stinging one-liners at Donald Trump on Thursday. But at the heart of her speech was one powerful question for voters: “Do we want his finger anywhere near the button?”

In an address that slammed Trump on everything from what Clinton called his bigotry toward Muslims and Mexicans to his talk of torturing terrorists and executing their family members, nothing was so grave as Clinton's implication that a Trump presidency might end the 70-year global taboo against the use of nuclear weapons.

“This is not someone who should ever have the nuclear codes,” Clinton said. “It’s not hard to imagine Donald Trump leading us into a war just because somebody got under his very thin skin.” 

At a time when Clinton is road-testing lines of attack against the businessman who sometimes seems immune to traditional political rhetoric, Democrats say the nuclear issue could be especially potent, touching on some of the deepest fears voters have about their own security.

Clinton is not the first to raise the question, however, and it remains to be seen whether she will succeed where Trump’s GOP rivals failed.

In Clinton’s telling, Trump isn't just temperamental and prone to impulsive fights—he's dangerously cavalier about nuclear weapons and their potential for death and destruction on a mind-warping scale.

"This is a man who said that more countries should have nuclear weapons, including Saudi Arabia," Clinton said.

Clinton also recalled Trump’s quip about a potential conflict between Japan and North Korea: “If they do, they do. Good luck, enjoy yourself, folks.”  “I wonder if he even realized he’s talking about nuclear war,” she marveled.

Clinton also reminded listeners that Trump “refused to rule out using nuclear weapons against ISIS, which would mean mass civilian casualties.”

[T]he nuclear question is still among the simplest and most powerful ways to focus voter attention on a candidate’s fitness to be president. “It’s an effective card,” Rosner said. “If you go back to 1964 and the Daisy ad, it’s a well-established idea that if someone is extreme the most dangerous manifestation of that is what they would do as commander in chief.”

There is some evidence to suggest that Clinton already has the better part of the argument. When Fox News asked voters in mid-May whom they trust more with “decisions about nuclear weapons,” the former first lady and secretary of state came out ahead of Trump by 11 points, 49-38.

Clinton is hardly the first to fret in public about Trump's potential proximity to the nuclear "football," the briefcase carried by a military aide who travels with the president containing communications equipment that allows him to authorize a nuclear launch. Marco Rubio warned against handing “the nuclear codes of the United States to an erratic individual.” Jeb Bush said that he had “grave doubts” about entrusting Trump with America's atomic arsenal. And Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal fretted against entrusting "such a hothead with the nuclear codes."

Rosner added that the question of foreign conflict has more salience since the Iraq War, which has left swing voters "expressing a lot of worry about a Republican tendency to 'shoot from the hip' and not think through the use of force. That obviously goes far beyond nukes, and gets to fears of getting involved in another foreign war without clear purpose or outcome."

That fear has dogged Republicans for decades.

Donald Trump - and his supporters - live in a fantasy world and see life as one never ending reality TV show.  Those of us in touch with objective reality  need to do all in our power to keep Trump out of the White House.