Trump’s Talks With Kim Jong-un Collapse

Two obese autocrats.

I suspect Der Trumpenführer, is in a particularly foul mood today after (i) coverage of Michael Cohen's testimony before Congress yesterday greatly eclipsed coverage of the Trump/Kim Jong-un talks, and (ii) those talks collapsed, but not until after Trump insanely said he believed that Kim had nothing to do with the the brutal mistreatment suffered by the late American student, Otto Warmbier. For those who have already forgot this young man's death, here is some background:

The 22-year-old University of Virginia student was visiting North Korea with a tour group when he was arrested and sentenced to 15 years of hard labor in March 2016 on suspicion of stealing a propaganda poster. He died the next June after he was returned to the United States in a coma.

Given the reality that  NOTHING happens in North Korea without Kim's knowledge and approval, Trump's statement defies belief. 

But back to the collapsed summit. Personally, I believe that Kim played Trump from the start and used both summits to boost his own image abroad and within the police state which is North Korea. Kim never planned to de-nuclearize, or at least not on terms that would ever be acceptable to the USA.  The New York Times looks at the failed talks.  Here are excerpts:

President Trump and Kim Jong-un, North Korea’s leader, abruptly ended their second summit meeting on Thursday when negotiations collapsed after the two sides failed to agree on even the first steps on nuclear disarmament, a peace declaration or reducing sanctions on the North.

“It was about the sanctions,” Mr. Trump said at an afternoon news conference in Hanoi, Vietnam, referring to Mr. Kim’s demand that the United States lift harsh economic sanctions imposed on North Korea with the approval of the United Nations. “Basically they wanted the sanctions lifted in their entirety, but we couldn’t do that.”

The premature end to the negotiations means the diplomacy between the United States and North Korea that has gone on for most of a year remains stalled, even as experts say North Korea continues to produce fissile material to make nuclear warheads.

It also undermines the image Mr. Trump has long cultivated of himself as a tough negotiator who can bring adversaries into a deal.

Mr. Trump said that Mr. Kim had agreed to take an important step toward dismantling a central part of his nuclear program — the Yongbyon enrichment facility — but that Mr. Kim said he would do so only if all sanctions were lifted.

The president and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the North would have to dismantle other parts of the program before all sanctions were lifted.

The collapse of the talks came in the shadow of withering congressional testimony in Washington by Michael D. Cohen, Mr. Trump’s former lawyer, who spent hours on Wednesday describing Mr. Trump’s lies and deep character flaws.

The collapse of the talks was a stark departure from the earlier mood of the two-day gathering. On Thursday morning, Mr. Trump and Mr. Kim kicked off the day by meeting one-on-one at the historic Metropole hotel, where they had had an intimate dinner the previous night.

Throughout the summit, Mr. Trump praised Mr. Kim, a ruthless dictator who oversees widespread human rights abuses. He called Mr. Kim a “great leader.”

When asked by a reporter about Otto Warmbier, the American student imprisoned in North Korea who died of brain damage after being returned home in a coma in 2017, Mr. Trump answered with a comment that echoes what he has said in relation to other autocrats: “He tells me that he didn’t know about it, and I will take him at his word.” 

Expect Twitter outbursts and lots of profanity outside of public view from Trump. Kim played him expertly. 

False Assumptions that Lead to Iraq War Are Being Recycled on Iran

Trump and war monger John Bolton who was 100% wrong on Iraq.

Two things that always strike me about America's governance are (i) a constant refusal to learn from other nations, and (ii) a refusal to learn from past catastrophic mistakes.  In many ways the Iraq disaster occurred due to a failure to have learned from what should have been the lessons of Vietnam.  Now, the same false assumptions that took America to war in Iraq based on lies are being repeated - in many cases by some of the very same players - with respect to Iran.  Among the frightening aspects of what we are seeing is that those who very so very wrong in the lead up to disaster in Iraq are seemingly not going to be challenged about their past mistakes and failures.  Mistakes and failures that cost American taxpayers over $1 trillion and lead to the deaths of thousands of American military members.  And that doesn't even consider the tens of thousands of Iraqis who lost their lives due to an unjustified and horrendously executed war.   A long piece in The Atlantic looks at the disturbing reprise of the lead up to the Iraq fiasco.  Here are highlights:

Last week, while watching Benjamin Netanyahu unveil secret information that supposedly proved that Iran is deceiving the world about its nuclear-weapons program, I had a flashback. It was to February 5, 2003, when then-Secretary of State Colin Powell unveiled secret information that supposedly proved that Iraq was deceiving the world about its nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons programs. Like Netanyahu’s, Powell’s presentation was dramatic. . . . He later presented a photo of bunkers that allegedly held “active chemical munitions” but were “clean when the inspectors get there.” Saddam, Powell insisted, wants “to give those [of] us on this Council the false impression that the inspection process was working.” Powell’s presentation was designed to prove that it was not.

The parallels between that moment and this one are uncanny. In both cases, American leaders feared that a longtime Middle Eastern adversary was breaking free of the fetters that had previously restrained it. In both cases, American leaders pursued a more confrontational policy, which they buttressed with frightening statements about the regime’s nuclear program. In both cases, international inspectors contradicted those alarmist claims. In both cases, America’s European allies defended the inspectors and warned of the chaos America’s confrontational policy might bring. In both cases, hawks in America and Israel responded by trying to discredit the inspection regime. And in both cases, two leaders of that effort were John Bolton and Benjamin Netanyahu.

Which raises a disturbing question: How is it possible—15 years after the launch of one the greatest catastrophes in American history—that so many of the assumptions that guided America’s march to war in Iraq still dominate American foreign policy today?   

Answering that question requires remembering the history that Netanyahu, Bolton, and their political and journalistic allies would likely prefer that Americans forget. Powell’s presentation constituted a key moment in the struggle between the Bush administration and international weapons inspectors. . . . President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had taken office convinced that Saddam Hussein—who had spent most of the 1990s subjected to international sanctions and weapons inspections—was breaking free of the constraints that kept him from rebuilding his weapons programs . . . The answer, they concluded, was regime change.

Empowered by the belligerent public mood following 9/11, and America’s apparent success in toppling the Taliban in Afghanistan, the Bush administration in 2002 turned to that goal. Cheney worried that sending weapons inspectors back into Iraq would complicate the path to war. . . . Netanyahu, no longer in government after having lost his bid for reelection as Israeli prime minister, agreed. “It is not very difficult,” he testified to Congress that September, “to deceive inspectors.” In a Wall Street Journal op-ed later that month, he warned that because Saddam had constructed “centrifuges the size of washing machines … even free and unfettered inspections will not uncover these portable manufacturing sites of mass death.”

Germany and France tried to help the inspectors verify whether Saddam was pursing weapons of mass destruction. The Bush administration, eager for war, insisted they could not.

On December 21, the inspectors issued their first report. While criticizing Saddam for not being more transparent about his past activities, they claimed to be making progress. . . . . On January 9, John Bolton—a Cheney ally who before joining the Bush administration had attacked the “discredited idea that U.N. weapons inspectors can eliminate Iraq’s ability to produce weapons of mass destruction”— declared that “There’s no doubt if [the inspectors] had enough people in Iraq, if they had enough facilities, that they would find the hidden weapons of mass-destruction production facilities and dual-use items that Iraqis still possess.

On January 27, Hans Blix—the Swedish diplomat who led UNMOVIC—reported that his inspectors had visited more than 230 sites and . . . . to date found no evidence that Iraq has revived its nuclear-weapons programme,” he declared, and promised that “we should be able within the next few months to provide credible assurance that Iraq has no nuclear-weapons programme.”

In his next report, on February 14, Blix rebutted Powell’s claim that Iraq was moving its WMD before inspectors arrived. “All inspections were performed without notice,” he explained, “and access was almost always provided promptly.” ElBaradei reiterated that, “We have to date found no evidence of ongoing prohibited nuclear-related activities in Iraq.”

On March 17, in a primetime speech, he [Bush] told the American people that the inspectors had been “systematically deceived.” American intelligence, he insisted, “leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised.” Two days later, America invaded Iraq. 

There’s a postscript to this story. In late 2004, a year and a half after the Iraq War began, ElBaradei—who would soon win the Nobel Peace Prize for his work leading the IAEA—learned that the Bush administration was trying to deny him a third term as head of the Agency. In its effort to find incriminating information, the United States even tapped ElBaradei’s phone. The effort’s ringleader: John Bolton.

Fast forward 11 years. Bolton is back in government as Donald Trump’s national-security adviser. Netanyahu is again Israel’s prime minister. And they are making the same arguments about the futility of the international inspections regime in Iran that they once made about the futility of the international inspections regime in Iraq.

Their argument begins, once again, with the claim that a fearsome adversary is breaking free of the constraints that previously held it in check. In the run-up to the Iraq War, Bolton warned that because of weakening international sanctions and a feckless Clinton administration, Saddam “represents a serious and growing security threat.”

Bolton last year claimed that, “Tehran is trying to cement an arc of control from its own territory, through Baghdad-controlled Iraq and Mr. Assad’s Syria, to Hezbollah-dominated Lebanon.” The irony, which neither Netanyahu nor Bolton acknowledge, is that Iran’s growing regional strength stems in large measure from the Iraq War they championed, which turned Iraq from a bulwark against Iranian power into a close Iranian ally.  

As with Iraq, Bolton and Netanyahu want the United States to meet this supposedly growing threat with a more confrontational policy. Key to that policy shift is withdrawing from the 2015 nuclear deal, which would leave the U.S. free to reimpose sanctions, and perhaps, as Bolton has suggested, even bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities.

And, as with Iraq, it’s easier for Bolton and Netanyahu to achieve that goal if they discredit the current system of international inspections.

Netanyahu and Bolton’s problem, as with Iraq, is that the inspectors don’t think they’re being cheated. ElBaradei’s successor as director general of the IAEA, Yukiya Amano, has said his organization “now has the world’s most robust verification regime in place in Iran.” The IAEA has certified Iran’s compliance with the nuclear deal nine times. And, as in 2003, key European governments are defending the inspectors.

Just as the Bush administration could not prove that Iraq was still pursuing a nuclear-weapons program in 2003, the Netanyahu and Trump administrations cannot prove that Iran is pursuing one today. So, like the Bush administration, they keep shading the truth. . . . Bolton has repeatedly declared—despite the IAEA’s findings and without proof—that Iran is still actively seeking nuclear weapons.

How is this possible? How is it possible that Trump—who during the presidential campaign boasted about his supposed opposition to the Iraq War—has now embraced an outlook so similar to the one that guided Bush in 2002 and 2003? How can Bolton and Netanyahu remain unrepentant about their role in promoting war with Iraq and yet be taken seriously when they make similar arguments about the supposed nuclear threat from Iran? Why can’t America learn from its recent past?

Part of the explanation is partisanship. . . . Since many Republicans won’t even admit the Iraq war was wrong, it’s hard to apply its lessons to the current debate over Iran. It’s particularly hard since doing so would mean admitting not only that Bush was wrong in waging war with Iraq but that Obama was right in striking a deal with Iran.

The second reason Bolton and Netanyahu can so easily recycle the arguments they made about Iraq in the current debate about Iran is the influence of pro-Israel sentiment in American foreign-policy debate.

The third reason for America’s inability to apply the lessons of Iraq to the current debate over Iran is the media, especially television. It’s rare to see non-Americans on political talk shows. That matters because non-Americans overwhelmingly think pulling out of the Iran deal is nuts. And non-Americans are more likely to raise fundamental questions about American nuclear policy—like why America isn’t pushing for inspections of Israel’s nuclear program, and why America keeps demanding that other nations denuclearize while building ever more nuclear weapons of its own.

Television interview shows also focus obsessively on the news of the moment. When Bolton or Netanyahu go on a Sunday show to peddle their current views on Iran, they can be confident they won’t be questioned much about their past views on Iraq. Thus, viewers hear arguments that sound reasonable in isolation without realizing that they’ve already proved disastrous in practice.

It would be comforting to believe that those arguments, which once helped lead to tragedy, are returning merely as farce. But they’re not. Withdrawing from the nuclear deal could easily put the United States or Israel, or both, on the path to war with Iran. As long as John Bolton and Benjamin Netanyahu retain their current influence, another Middle Eastern war is entirely possible. Where it might lead is anyone’s guess. The greatest current threat to American national security is not Iran, North Korea, or ISIS. It’s amnesia. And Americans need a strategy to fight it.

Be very, very afraid.

Why Trump’s Attempt to Scare North Korea May Horrifically Backfire

Throughout his real estate career, Donald Trump has used bullying - added to ignoring the law and associating with mafia figures - to accomplish his goals.  Stated another way, he thinks he can do whatever he wants and people are supposed to give in to him. It's a characteristic of many narcissist that they are so self-absorbed that they try to ride rough shod over others.  Frighteningly, this mindset now animates the White House and it could yet have truly disastrous consequences for literally millions of people. With North Korea, Trump doesn't seem to grasp that he is facing a regime headed by an individual (or individuals) even more un-tethered from reality than he is himself.  Throw in huge doses of paranoia and a near martyr complex among North Korea's leaders and it makes for an immensely dangerous mix.  My fear is that Trump is in way, way over his head and that, if he acts in his usual manner, a catastrophe could be in the offing.  Here are excerpts from New York Magazine that underscore the dangers we face with an unfit commander-in-chief in the White House:

President Trump and his advisers have taken a more and more threatening stance toward North Korea since January, and the isolated dictatorship has responded with threats of its own. Foreign-policy experts say a breaking point could be looming. Saturday marked the 105th anniversary of the birth of North Korea’s founder, Kim Il-sung, and the regime there commemorated the holiday with displays of military force — though, thankfully, not with a nuclear test, as many experts feared. Still, there is a sense of a collision course. Several days ago, the U.S. military moved a brigade of warships to the Korean Peninsula, as a show of force. Then on Friday, the North Korean government threatened to attack major American military bases in South Korea, saying it could destroy them almost instantly.

[W]e spoke with George Lopez, professor emeritus at the Krok Institute for International Peace Studies, which is based at Notre Dame University. He has advised the United Nations and various governments on North Korea and sanctions issues since 1992. Lopez also proposes a set of directions for getting out of this conflict — directions that favor diplomacy over military force. What American leaders fail to understand, he says, is that they can’t scare North Korea by threatening war.

Obama’s people told Trump’s top foreign-policy people this was their biggest worry. Obama seems to have told Trump in their one-on-one meeting that North Korea was going to be Trump’s biggest dilemma and that he needed a regional approach to it.

[T]his [past] week, the administration used what many would call a prohibited weapon in the Afghan theater, and it has also launched these strikes on Syria. . . . I think it was not without some delight in the White House that there was a secondary messaging effect to North Korea. These actions went in conjunction with the U.S. moving a small Navy brigade to the Korean Peninsula, and also with Trump’s meeting and phone calls with the Chinese president, to signal that our patience is running out.

Meanwhile, it’s unclear who is the Asia expert most influential in the White House’s national security staff, and the last time I checked the State Department chart, we still didn’t have a fully staffed Bureau of Asian Affairs. . . . .

[O]ne strategy that a group of us have advocated over the last couple weeks is to say, “Military force is so crazy to think about, the next best option is financial bankruptcy and economic strangulation.” That is, if you want to take the gloves off, take the gloves off in the trading and financial sector. Take a lesson from the tightening of the noose around Iran, and go after commodities, go after general trade sectors. You absolutely implement the top five or six recommendations of the U.N. Panel of Experts, which would hold all states in the Asian region responsible for ending corresponding banking accounts with not only North Korean banks, but with the shadow companies they’ve set up in Malaysia and China and elsewhere.

China needs to get tighter with the financial actors within its country who continue to sustain unabated channels to illicit financing for North Korea. There are a series of draconian financial measures that then get the attention of the great young dictator, and you can say, “The next move is yours. Do we talk or not?” But what this administration has done is put us in an all-or-nothing bind. Either he blinks or we blink.

[T]he issuing of the threat against South Korea [by North Korea] is a smart approach that says, “Well, let’s talk militarily. You could knock out our nuclear sites, but you can’t knock out the 175 major artillery batteries we have, poised to shoot at the minute we detect that we’re being attacked — and those can knock out 80 percent of Seoul. So the blood will be on your hands if you choose to initiate an attack against our nuclear sites.” In other words, “You’re not the only people who can issue ultimatums, and you’re not the only people who have military deliverables that are supposed to make us quake and fear that we must change our behavior.”

This regime has had an ideology, through three generations, that the war of liberation of South Korea will come when the United States oversteps its boundaries. And remember, they don’t have a peace treaty with the United States. If they were interested in peace, they would be proactive in coming back to the bargaining table and finishing off the armistice agreement from 1953.

This isn’t Syria. This isn’t Afghanistan. This is the point at which, if a U.S. missile crosses into North Korean territory, all bets on everything are off. It fits their worldview, that sooner or later, they will have to fire everything they have. That’s the only way the North could potentially survive an exchange.

[W]e need a U.S. policy that doesn’t put them in a position where their trigger fingers get nervous. You have to deal with the nuclear weapons and the missiles on their own terms, and you can’t use the potential for war against them as leverage. . . . They’re ready for war.

[W]e have to end their access to money — in all forms. We have to end the access of Korean diplomats marching off with big duffle bags, pretending they’re off to go play golf in Poland, when what they’re really doing is carrying gold bars and loads of cash, which ultimately goes to fund the various services that run the missiles. And you do need China’s help for that. Right now, China is looking the other way.

We’ve got to make sure our president doesn’t approach the microphone and says, “That’s the last straw. I’m taking actions in the next 48 hours, and they’ll never know what I’m going to do until I do it.” You can’t have that. In other words, someone needs to lasso him, quite frankly, and make sure we have a clearly articulated dynamic.

We think we can intimidate the North Korean leadership into keeping their powder dry. What we’re doing, more than anything else, is playing into their ongoing scenario of a likely, if not inevitable, confrontation with the West. . . . If you’re going to use as your calculus of success or failure, of an unarticulated policy, who blinks first, you’re on really, really shaky ground.

Be very, very afraid,   Would that Trump voters had even considered this scenario rather falling for appeals to racism and resentment over lost white privilege and extremist religious beliefs. Elections have consequences as the world could soon find out. 

Will Trump Trigger a New Major Korean War?

Shooting off one's mouth and being aggressive may work in reality TV, but Der Trumpenführer doesn't seem to realize that in diplomatic circles and dealing with literally insane and paranoid leaders of foreign countries it can have a very serious negative consequence.  Indeed, it may trigger the exact actions that one seeks to stop.  Driving home and listening to a retired intelligence officer on satellite radio, the situation is critical and Trump's loud mouthed braggart routine could be the fuse that lights the fuse for a new nightmare on the Korean peninsula and beyond.  What am I talking about?  Talk being reported on NBC News that Der Trumpenführer may launch a preemptive strike against North Korea if it continues its nuclear development.  This action would play right into the ingrained paranoia of mentally un-tethered leadership of that nation and lead to major assaults on South Korea (including American service members) and perhaps even Japan and beyond.  One of the main problems is that America lacks adequate conventional weapons to significantly knock out North Korea's military capabilities.  Here are highlights from the NBC News report:

The U.S. is prepared to launch a preemptive strike with conventional weapons against North Korea should officials become convinced that North Korea is about to follow through with a nuclear weapons test, multiple senior U.S. intelligence officials told NBC News.

North Korea has warned that a "big event" is near, and U.S. officials say signs point to a nuclear test that could come as early as this weekend.

The intelligence officials told NBC News that the U.S. has positioned two destroyers capable of shooting Tomahawk cruise missiles in the region, one just 300 miles from the North Korean nuclear test site.

American heavy bombers are also positioned in Guam to attack North Korea should it be necessary, and earlier this week, the Pentagon announced that the USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier strike group was being diverted to the area.

The U.S. strike could include missiles and bombs, cyber and special operations on the ground.

The danger of such an attack by the U.S. is that it could provoke the volatile and unpredictable North Korean regime to launch its own blistering attack on its southern neighbor.

"The leadership in North Korea has shown absolutely no sign or interest in diplomacy or dialogue with any of the countries involved in this issue," Victor Cha, the Korea Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies told NBC News Thursday.

On Wednesday, North Korea said it would "hit the U.S. first" with a nuclear weapon should there be any signs of U.S. strikes.

On Thursday, North Korea warned of a "merciless retaliatory strike" should the U.S. take any action.

"By relentlessly bringing in a number of strategic nuclear assets to the Korean peninsula, the U.S. is gravely threatening the peace and safety and driving the situation to the brink of a nuclear war," said North Korea's statement.

North Korea is not believed to have a deliverable long-range nuclear weapon, according to U.S. experts, nor does it yet possess an intercontinental missile.

South Korea's top diplomat said today that the U.S. would consult with Seoul before taking any serious measures. "U.S. officials, mindful of such concerns here, repeatedly reaffirmed that (the U.S.) will closely discuss with South Korea its North Korea-related measures," Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se told a special parliamentary meeting. "In fact, the U.S. is working to reassure us that it will not, just in case that we might hold such concerns."

Multiple government officials familiar with the situation say President Trump has talked to Chinese president Xi twice about North Korea since their Florida summit.

China has since sent its top nuclear negotiators to Pyongyang to communicate the gravity of the situation to the North, officials say. On Wednesday, President Xi called for a peaceful resolution to the escalating tensions.

Moscow has weighed in as well: "We are gravely concerned about Washington's plans regarding North Korea, considering hints about the unilateral use of a military scenario" the Putin government said in a press release issued on Tuesday.

The Trump administration, emboldened by their punishing strike on Syria, and by a successful meeting with the Chinese leader, hopes that the Chinese will use their considerable leverage to dissuade Kim Jong UN and his government from moving ahead with their nuclear program. The president also made clear that if the Chinese were unable to defuse the situation, the U.S. would go to alone. On Thursday, he tweeted: "I have great confidence that China will properly deal with North Korea. If they are unable to do so, the U.S., and its allies will!"

The fools who voted for Der Trumpenführer may be about to reap the consequences of their irresponsible, bigotry motivated vote.  The problem is that countless others could end up suffering and even dying.  

Trump Has Released a Malevolent Spirit Upon America

I truly do not remember a year end where I have had such a sense of dread and foreboding as the new year approaches as I am now feeling.  In 23 days a dangerous demagogue with fascist leanings will be sworn in as president after which havoc will be wreaked on the federal judicial system and many other institutions and programs.  Of course, as a gay man, I have much to fear, especially if Trump keeps his promise to the Christofascists and signs the disingenuously named "First Amendment Protection Act" into  law.  A law that will give Christian extremist total freedom to ignore non-discrimination laws and ordinances if they infringe on Christofascists "religious beliefs."  As written, the law opens the door to bullying and worse.  In short, it is hard to thing of 2017 with anything other than dread.  Kathleen Parker picks up on this foreboding in a column.  Here are excerpts:

As usual, the year’s end brings reflections and ruminations on what was and what is to be. This time around, however, it feels as though an era is coming to an end.

That gentle frisson between past and future about which columnists customarily write feels vaguely apocalyptic as we approach the new year.

The usual regrets — too much ice cream, not enough exercise, too quick with a retort, not enough thank-you notes — all feel quaintly irrelevant juxtaposed against a collection of very real fears about the future. During a year of bitter political infighting — sister against sister, neighbor against neighbor — we’ve lost a better part of ourselves and unleashed armies of vengeful strangers.

To put a fine point on it, Donald Trump’s election has released a malevolent spirit upon the land. He invoked the magic message — essentially them vs. us — and the demons disembarked from their dark hiding places. He raided the lost ark and lifted the lid, and the whirlwind of humankind’s worst impulses escaped.

[W]hen the next leader of the free world casually comments that we need to build up our nuclear arsenal — and seems to welcome a return of the Cold War — alarm expressed in the strongest terms possible is required. When such alarm did find expression around the nation and the world, the president-elect huddled in his “fake news” bunker and claimed that his remarks were quoted incompletely. 

My guess is the rest of the world is thinking the exact same thing: This president-elect is not in his senses — and he makes no sense.

And, really, again. What’s with making such war-mongering threats when you’re not in the White House yet? Tweeting on matters of such import is unpresidential, not to mention unmanly. Also, it’s insane !

I could pause here and write verbatim the emails and social-media comments certain to follow these observations. They’re as predictable as a 3 a.m. tweet from Trump Tower. This, too, is part of what’s frightening as we take our leave of 2016. People who voted for Trump refuse to critique his behavior through any lens but that of having won a contest.

“We won, you lost — get over it” is what now passes for a serious dialogue about matters of immense importance.

The notion that people who still express concerns — including three professors of psychiatry who’ve signed a letter suggesting the man isn’t well — are just sore losers is nonsense. When the president-elect of the United States so cavalierly threatens to unravel the fragile threads that hold civilization together, there are no winners. He or she who is not worried is not paying attention.

These are also not simple partisan fears. Many Republicans I know are “slightly terrified,” as one Trump voter recently put it to me. That most, if not all, Democrats are, too, doesn’t have to mean they’re all excessively disappointed, though many surely are. And when it comes to abusing logic, Trump wins hands down.

With three children of my own and five young grandchildren I am truly terrified what their future may be given that we are about to have a narcissistic sociopath sworn in as president.  #NotMyPresident. 

 

Why Donald Trump Should Not Be President

Yesterday the New York Times made the case for electing Hillary Clinton as president on November 8, 2016.  Today, as promised the Times makes the case of why Donald Trump should never be elected to the presidency.  It is a strong piece, but, in my view 100% on the money.  Indeed, it is less scathing than it ought to be given the ugliness of Trump's personality and supposed policies. Trump simply is unfit for office - any elected office, in fact.  Here are excerpts from the editorial:

When Donald Trump began his improbable run for president 15 months ago, he offered his wealth and television celebrity as credentials, then slyly added a twist of fear mongering about Mexican “rapists” flooding across the Southern border.

From that moment of combustion, it became clear that Mr. Trump’s views were matters of dangerous impulse and cynical pandering rather than thoughtful politics.  . . . he has demonstrated in a freewheeling campaign marked by bursts of false and outrageous allegations, personal insults, xenophobic nationalism, unapologetic sexism and positions that shift according to his audience and his whims.

Here’s how Mr. Trump is selling himself and why he can’t be believed.

Despite his towering properties, Mr. Trump has a record rife with bankruptcies and sketchy ventures like Trump University, which authorities are investigating after numerous complaints of fraud. His name has been chiseled off his failed casinos in Atlantic City.

Mr. Trump’s brazen refusal to disclose his tax returns — as Mrs. Clinton and other nominees for decades have done — should sharpen voter wariness of his business and charitable operations. Disclosure would undoubtedly raise numerous red flags; the public record already indicates that in at least some years he made full use of available loopholes and paid no taxes.

Mr. Trump has been opaque about his questionable global investments in Russia and elsewhere, which could present conflicts of interest as president . . . 

Mr. Trump, who has no experience in national security, declares that he has a plan to soundly defeat the Islamic State militants in Syria, but won’t reveal it, bobbing and weaving about whether he would commit ground troops. Voters cannot judge whether he has any idea what he’s talking about without an outline of his plan, yet Mr. Trump ludicrously insists he must not tip off the enemy.

Whatever his gyrations, Mr. Trump always does make clear where his heart lies — with the anti-immigrant, nativist and racist signals that he scurrilously employed to build his base.

Since his campaign began, NBC News has tabulated that Mr. Trump has made 117 distinct policy shifts on 20 major issues, . . . . He said he would “loosen” libel laws to make it easier to sue news organizations that displease him.

His plan for cutting the national debt was far from a confidence builder: He said he might try to persuade creditors to accept less than the government owed. This fanciful notion, imported from Mr. Trump’s debt-steeped real estate world, would undermine faith in the government and the stability of global financial markets.

Numerous experts on national defense and international affairs have recoiled at the thought of his commanding the nuclear arsenal. Former Secretary of State Colin Powell privately called Mr. Trump “an international pariah.” Mr. Trump has repeatedly denounced global warming as a “hoax,” although a golf course he owns in Ireland is citing global warming in seeking to build a protective wall against a rising sea.

In expressing admiration for the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, Mr. Trump implies acceptance of Mr. Putin’s dictatorial abuse of critics and dissenters, some of whom have turned up murdered, and Mr. Putin’s vicious crackdown on the press. Even worse was Mr. Trump’s urging Russia to meddle in the presidential campaign by hacking the email of former Secretary of State Clinton. Voters should consider what sort of deals Mr. Putin might obtain if Mr. Trump, his admirer, wins the White House.

[V]voters should be asking themselves if Mr. Trump will deliver the kind of change they want. Starting a series of trade wars is a recipe for recession, not for new American jobs. Blowing a hole in the deficit by cutting taxes for the wealthy will not secure Americans’ financial future, and alienating our allies won’t protect our security. . . . . The list goes on . . .

In all these areas, Mrs. Clinton has offered constructive proposals. He has offered bluster, or nothing. The most specific domestic policy he has put forward, on tax breaks for child care, would tilt toward the wealthy.

Voters attracted by the force of the Trump personality should pause and take note of the precise qualities he exudes as an audaciously different politician: bluster, savage mockery of those who challenge him, degrading comments about women, mendacity, crude generalizations about nations and religions. Our presidents are role models for generations of our children. Is this the example we want for them?

Should Trump win on November 8, 2016, it will be proof to me that America is utterly morally bankrupt and that it might indeed be time to consider emigrating before America slides into fascism or worse.. 

Pieces of Silver - How Senior Republicans Have Sold Their Souls

Politics is often dirty and can make for strange bedfellows, if you will.  But in general, most senior members of both major political parties have overall tried to retain some level of decency and eschewed aligning themselves with vulgar and reprehensible people. That pattern has not proved true in the current presidential election cycle where most senior Republicans continue to embrace Trump no matter what he says or does.  Honor, integrity, and decency have been thrown out the window.   Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman has a piece in the New York Times that lays bare the moral bankruptcy of the top levels of the GOP.  Here are highlights:

By now, it’s obvious to everyone with open eyes that Donald Trump is an ignorant, wildly dishonest, erratic, immature, bullying egomaniac. On the other hand, he’s a terrible person. But despite some high-profile defections, most senior figures in the Republican Party — very much including Paul Ryan, the speaker of the House, and Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader — are still supporting him, threats of violence and all. Why?

One answer is that these were never men and women of principle. I know that many in the news media are still determined to portray Mr. Ryan, in particular, as an honest man serious about policy, but his actual policy proposals have always been transparent con jobs.

Another answer is that in an era of intense partisanship, the greatest risk facing many Republican politicians isn’t that of losing in the general election, it’s that of losing to an extremist primary challenger. This makes them afraid to cross Mr. Trump, whose ugliness channels the true feelings of the party’s base.

But there’s a third answer, which can be summarized in one number: 34.

What’s that? It’s the Congressional Budget Office’s estimate of the average federal tax rate for the top 1 percent in 2013, the latest year available. And it’s up from just 28.2 in 2008, because President Obama allowed the high-end Bush tax cuts to expire and imposed new taxes to pay for a dramatic expansion of health coverage under the Affordable Care Act. Taxes on the really, really rich have gone up even more.

If Hillary Clinton wins, taxes on the elite will at minimum stay at this level, and may even go up significantly if Democrats do well enough in congressional races to enable her to pass new legislation. The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center estimates that her tax plan would raise the average tax rate for the top 1 percent by another 3.4 percentage points, and the rate for the top 0.1 percent by five points.

But if “populist” Donald Trump wins, taxes on the wealthy will go way down. . . . So if you’re wealthy, or you’re someone who has built a career by reliably serving the interests of the wealthy, the choice is clear — as long as you don’t care too much about stuff like shunning racism, preserving democracy and freedom of religion, or for that matter avoiding nuclear war, Mr. Trump is your guy.

And that’s pretty much how the Republican establishment still sees it. Getting rid of the estate tax is “the linchpin of the conservative movement,” one major donor told Bloomberg’s Sahil Kapur. Gotta get those priorities straight.

Should we be shocked at the willingness of leading Republicans to make this bargain? Well, we should be shocked — we should never, ever start accepting this sort of thing as normal politics. But we shouldn’t be surprised, because it’s just an extension of the devil’s bargain the economic right has been making for decades, going all the way back to Nixon’s “Southern strategy.”

I’m not saying that top Republicans were or are personally bigoted — but that doesn’t matter. What does matter is that they were willing to curry favor with bigots in the service of tax cuts for the rich and financial deregulation.

All that has happened this year is a move of those white nationalists from part of the supporting cast to a starring role. So when Republicans who went along with the earlier strategy draw the line at Mr. Trump, they’re not really taking a stand on principle; they’re just complaining about the price. And the party’s top leadership isn’t even willing to do that.

[W]hatever doubts they may be feeling don’t excuse their actions, and in fact make them even less forgivable. For the fact is that right now, when it matters, they have decided that lower tax rates on the rich are sufficient payment for betraying American ideals and putting the republic as we know it in danger.

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. 

Fact Checking GOP Lies on the Iran Deal

Whether it was out of a desire to play to the open racism of the GOP base as embodied in opposition to everything Obama, to delight the Christofascists who see war with Iran with near orgasms at the thought of killing Muslims, or pandering to the defense industry and companies like Halliburton who are profiteers in wartime, the GOP carnival barkers candidates could not say enough bad things about the Iran nuclear deal last night.  Whether or not what they said was true or in touch with reality, of course, did not matter given the primary voter audience that was the real target of last night circus.  A piece in Slate fact checks the GOP claims - something that will never happen on Fox News, a/k/a Faux News.  Here are article excerpts:

Not surprisingly, the recently negotiated nuclear agreement with Iran was a major topic of conversation at Wednesday’s GOP debates, but a lot of specifics appeared to get lost in the back-and-forth among the candidates. So who was stretching the truth, getting things right, and making stuff up? Here’s some context for the claims made on the stage at the Reagan Library.

Ted Cruz:

This deal will spend $100 billion, making the Obama administration the world’s leading financier of radical Islamic terrorism.

The U.S. isn’t spending $100 billion on anything. According to the Treasury Department, Iran will recover roughly $100 billion of its own money that has been piling up in international banks due to sanctions. Once the International Atomic Energy Agency verifies Iran is complying with the deal, it will be able to access that money.

Claims that the deal will accelerate or slow Iran’s nuclear program are unprovable, but for what it’s worth, quite a few prominent scientists and former military officers think it’s the best way to prevent an Iranian bomb. 

John Kasich:

If they cheat, we slap the sanctions back on. If they help Hamas, we slap sanctions on, and if we find out they may be developing a nuclear weapon, the option is on the table.

Kasich suggested in his answer that while he believes in the utility of negotiating with hostile foreign governments and would keep the deal, he doesn’t like it, though it’s not entirely clear why. Kasich’s pledges to reimpose sanctions if necessary sound a bit like the “snapback” mechanism included in the deal, which would allow U.N. sanctions to be reapplied, without a vote by the Security Council, if Iran is found to be cheating. The reference to Hamas is misleading, as the deal doesn’t lift sanctions on Iran related to its support for terrorist groups and, as GOP critics have frequently pointed out, doesn’t require Iran to cease that support.

Scott Walker:

This president allowed Iran to get closer and closer. I would love to play cards with this guy because Barack Obama folds with everything on Iran.

If Walker means that Iran is getting “closer and closer” to acquiring a nuclear weapon, that contradicts the IAEA, which has stated that Iran is complying with the interim deal negotiated in 2013 and has halted much of its enrichment activity.

Jeb Bush:

We need to re-establish our commitment to Israel, which is tattered and we make sure they have the most sophisticated weapons to send a signal to Iran that we have Israel's back.

The government-to-government political relationship has undoubtedly gotten rockier under Barack Obama and Benjamin Netanyahu, but U.S. aid to Israel has continued to increase and will amount to $3.1 billion this year.

Mike Huckabee:

To give them this agreement, that the president treats like the Magna Carta but Iranians treat like toilet paper and we must simply make it very clear that the next president, one of us on this stage, will absolutely not honor that agreement and will destroy it and will be tough with Iran because otherwise, we put every person in this world in a very dangerous place. 

This is mostly a matter of opinion, but it’s hard to see how tearing up a deal would make Iran less likely to try to develop a nuclear weapon.

Donald Trump:

I've never seen anything like it. One of the worst contracts I've seen.

Really? Worse than Trump University?

Not surprisingly, none of the GOP candidates said a word about the largest financier of Islamic terrorism: Saudi Arabia. 

Why Republican Claims that Iran Deal is "Another Munich" Are All Wrong

Facts and objective reality mean nothing to the base of the Republican Party, especially the deranged Christofascist and Tea Party elements.  Now, they don't mean anything to a frightening number of GOP elected officials in Congress.  Nor does any form of knowledge of actual history.  Had Bush and Cheney and their neo-con advisers done even a small amount of historical review, they would have known that the Iraq War as they envisioned it was a fantasy.  Now, similar ignorance fuels the GOP claim that the Iran nuclear deal is another Munich, referring to the betrayal of Czechoslovakia in 1938 when Germany was ceded parts of that country with no demands or concessions in return.  A piece in Huffington Post looks at the false comparisons being made by Republican demagogues.  Here are highlights:

[T]he rhetorical matching of the Iran accord with the 1938 Munich conference doesn't withstand scrutiny. That Iran is not analogous to Munich is clear from the following:

First, Munich was about altering Europe's map. Vienna isn't about geographical changes; its focus is arms control, a subject not on the Munich agenda.

Second, at Munich, Hitler gave up nothing - no territory, no weapons. He successfully procured Czechoslovakia's dismemberment because the conferees agreed to force that nation to cede the Sudetenland to the Nazis. Czechoslovakia wasn't even a conference participant.

Third, the Munich conference didn't address the accelerating buildup of Germany's vast military machine whereas the Iran accord significantly reduces that country's capability to produce a nuclear weapon by requiring that it cease pursuing a plutonium bomb; that it redesign and rebuild the Arak reactor so it will not produce weapons-grade plutonium; that the original core of the reactor, which would enable the production of weapons-grade plutonium, be rendered inoperable. Furthermore, its spent fuel is to be shipped out of the country.

Finally, unlike Munich, which placed no international inspectors in Nazi-occupied territories, this agreement relies on an unprecedented level of intrusive international inspection, not on unverified trust that critics falsely assert is inherent in the deal. Iran agreed to international inspectors having access "to the entire supply chain that supports Iran's nuclear program" according to a presidential statement released in April. Tehran's acceding to this degree of foreign inspectors on its territory is neither a partial nor "a total cave" by our administration, as Kirk has foolishly said. Clearly, Wendy Sherman got a lot more from Iran's negotiators than Chamberlain got from Hitler!

It's been made clear that Washington's holding out for increased sanctions and/or requirements not tied to the nuclear weapons issue - which is what so many hardliners here were demanding -- would have cost us the support of our negotiating partners and likely doomed this diplomatic effort. Such a development would have isolated us from our partners, much as failure to join the League in 1920 isolated us from Europe, and it would have increased tensions in the Middle East much as our withdrawal 95 years ago helped direct the world toward another war. Iran would have resumed its nuclear ambitions unhindered by international law and the strong international alliance formed against it. 

July's Iran nuclear deal stands as one of the most significant foreign policy achievements of this or any recent administration. It rejects a Munich replication and builds on the lessons of Versailles while eliminating many of its pitfalls.

I suspect - or at least hope - that most Republicans know what actually happened at Munich and, like their Christofascist allies, are simply lying and hope that many Americans are simply too stupid to realize that they have been played for fools. 

"Wrong Then, Wrong Now" - White House Video Rips Cheney

There are few American politicians who reach the threshold of being truly evil.  Most simply put self-advancement over the interests of their constituents and others.  However, Dick Cheney, in my opinion, meets the criteria to be deemed truly evil.  He advocated lying to the American public to take the nation to war in Iraq, he convinced his idiot superior, George W. Bush, to authorize the use of torture in violation of the Geneva Conventions, and now he wants to take America to war against Iran.  The man is both evil and delusional.  Thousands of wasted American lives in Iraq and trillions of wasted dollars wasn't enough for Cheney.  Thankfully, in advance of Cheney's lying and disinformation speech against the Iran nuclear agreement, the White House has gone on the offensive against one of the foulest individuals in American history.  Talking Points Memo looks at the White House attack.  Here are highlights:

Timed to a speech given by former Vice President Dick Cheney slamming President Obama's Iran deal, the White House released a video highlighting Cheney's continual defense of the Iraq war.

The two-and-a-half-minute video titled "Former Vice President Dick Cheney: Wrong Then, Wrong Now" -- which was featured prominently on the White House homepage Tuesday -- spares no punches.

It begins with a Fox News host asking Cheney last week why anyone who believes Cheney was wrong on Iraq should listen to him about the Iran deal.

"Because I was right about Iraq," Cheney said.

It then segues into the abundant news clips from the run-up to Iraq War in which Cheney offers scores of claims first urging then defending military action -- from touting the presence of weapons of mass destruction to predicting that Iraqis would great American troops "as liberators."

No one benefited from the Iraq War except perhaps Halliburton.  Oh, and did I mention that Cheney has lots of Halliburton stock?  I guess he wants to make another fortune off the squandered lives of our military personnel and wasted taxpayer dollars.  The man is a war criminal and needs to be tried as such.  Would the death penalty be too much?  Not in my opinion.