Big Mistake
by tristero
Democratic strategy, translated:
Dear Oh Great President Trump, Your Huge-ness,
Please release the transcript of your Ukraine phone calls. Or turn over the whistleblower complaint to Congress.
Please do whichever you want. We trust that you will do the right thing.
Pretty please. With sugar on top? And a cherry?
Your obediently feckless servants,
The Democrats
“Relentless Attacks Against Trump”
by tristero
This ranks as one of the more ridiculous commentaries I’ve read on the Trump presidency:
There’s a lot we still don’t know about President Trump’s phone conversation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. There is one thing we do know: This budding scandal would probably have more political impact were it not for the last three years’ worth of relentless attacks against Trump.
They’re not attacks. They’re simply reports of the multiple egregiously criminal acts this president has perpetrated. Oh, and by the way, contrary to what the commentator pretends is true, the Ukraine piece of the story is getting plenty of traction. And although what I think is the most important part of the story is being underplayed, some outlets have indeed figured out that Trump is pulling a fast one: he’s dangling the release of an edited transcript to distract from his refusal to pass the whistleblower complaint to Congress. My guess is there’s a lot more to that whistleblower complaint than a few openly criminal extortion attempts.
… Trump has been relentlessly attacked every day since his inauguration. He has been accused of treason, breaking the law with impunity, running concentration camps along our southern border and a million other things.
That’s because it’s all relentlessly true.
The past three years have consisted of little else besides leading political, social and media figures yelling that he is unfit for the office he holds.
That’s because he is manifestly unfit for office. Duh. And the Democrats are auditioning for the role of Grand High Ditherers in some demented Gilbert and Sullivan knockoff.
I’ve got an idea! You want the “relentless attacks on Trump” to stop?
Just get him to resign. I promise you, the moment he is out of office and behind bars where he belongs, I will never, ever, mention Trump’s name again.
The Larger Issue
by tristero
As bad as extorting Ukraine to help his 2020 chances is — and that’s really, really bad — I think the larger, more lasting issue is Trump’s deliberate destruction of the whistleblower program within the Federal government.
This particular whistleblower complaint just might become public (although right now, the complaint itself has been lost in the dangling of the release of phone transcripts, a different issue entirely). So what? The Democrats will slow-drag it and the Senate will never impeach him. There are no real consequences on the horizon.
Going forward, government employees wishing to alert Congress regarding additional abuses by Trump and his cronies know very well that nothing will protect them from Trump’s wrath. They would likely not only be risking their career, but their savings, if not their freedom, when they try to protect themselves from Trump’s onslaught.
In short, Trump has completely locked down the government. And you can be sure that there are far worse abuses ahead than putting children in cages and subverting elections. But we won’t be hearing about them until it is far too late to do anything about them.
Just Wait
by tristero
It’s not merely that American democracy has collapsed. It’s that the very concept of an American democracy in the ways we understood it when I was growing up is now unthinkable.
With this and this, every last delusion that moderates held about Trump has been punctured. The gloves are starting to come off. (That’s right: up until now, I think we’ve been enjoying the halcyon years of the Trump presidency. He’s now beginning to get serious.)
Meanwhile, in response, Pelosi and Schumer have offered Trump a nice, cute photo-op on guns. If we still had even the shards of a real democracy left, they would be immediately laughed at and driven out of office.
This may seem a bit much, I know, but barring some kind of intervention from the all-knowing Flying Spaghetti Monster, the next year will demonstrate even to the most “moderate” among us that I’m not hyperventilating. I hope to be proven wrong, but I don’t see how.
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NO
by tristero
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) on Sunday urged President Trump to endorse House-passed gun measures and pledged to join him for a “historic signing ceremony at the Rose Garden” if the legislation is passed.
The Democratic leaders said in a joint statement that they spoke with Trump by phone Sunday morning at their request, 200 days after the House passed H.R. 8 and H.R. 1112. The two measures, which would expand federal background checks for gun purchases and transfers, represent the first major firearm restrictions to advance in a generation. Trump has threatened to veto both measures.
First, there will not be expanded background checks for the simple reason that Trump would be handing Pelosi and Schumer a victory — and it doesn’t work that way.
Second, assuming I’m wrong (and God, I hope I am and there are expanded background checks soon), why on earth would Schumer and Pelosi want to pose with Trump in the White House? All it would do is split the Democratic base.
Third, if Trump somehow agrees to expanded background checks, he will only do so if he can tie it to a law requiring all schoolteachers be issued firearms. Or something else equally idiotic.
Fourth, if somehow this whole thing goes forward (it won’t but just saying), I guarantee that Trump will hog all the credit, claim the expanded checks were his idea, and trash Schumer and Pelosi.
And I’ll stop there. This so much wrong with this, and nothing, nothing, that is right about it. Pelosi and Schumer should be spending their time figuring out how to remove Trump, not try to reason with him.
I’ll say it again. Given his atrocious record of appeasement towards Trump and other extreme right Republicans, as a New Yorker, I will never cast a vote for Chuck Schumer again. Perhaps AOC or Letitia James can be enticed to run for Senate, or someone else with their level of awareness of what Trump is and also what he represents.
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The Reason I Can Never Enjoy a Good Night’s Sleep Until He’s Removed From Office
by tristero
President Donald Trump’s acting national security adviser, former Reagan administration official Charles Kupperman, made an extraordinary and controversial claim in the early 1980s: nuclear conflict with the USSR was winnable and that “nuclear war is a destructive thing but still in large part a physics problem.”
Kupperman’s suggestion that the U.S. could triumph in a nuclear war went against dominant theories of mutually assured destruction and ignored the long-term destabilizing effects that such hostilities would have on the planet’s health and global politics.
Kupperman, appointed to his new post on Tuesday after Trump fired his John Bolton from the job, argued it was possible to win a nuclear war “in the classical sense,” and that the notion of total destruction stemming from such a superpower conflict was inaccurate. He said that in a scenario in which 20 million people died in the U.S. as opposed to 150 million, the nation could then emerge as the stronger side and prevail in its objectives.
His argument was that with enough planning and civil defense measures, such as “a certain layer of dirt and some reinforced construction materials,” the effects of a nuclear war could be limited and that U.S. would be able to fairly quickly rebuild itself after an all-out conflict with the then-Soviet Union.
“It may take 15 years, but geez, look how long it took Europe to recover after the Second World War,” Kupperman said. Referring to the Japanese city on which the U.S. dropped the first atomic bomb in 1945, he also claimed that “Hiroshima, after it was bombed, was back and operating three days later.”
It is genuinely difficult for me to read things like this without hyperventilating. This is sheer madness. That someone this nuts should be so close to the nuclear chain of command… frankly, it’s only a matter of time.
And of course, Kupperman’s views are congruent with his boss’s:
Donald Trump asked a foreign policy expert advising him why the U.S. can’t use nuclear weapons, MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough said on the air Wednesday, citing an unnamed source who claimed he had spoken with the GOP presidential nominee.
“Several months ago, a foreign policy expert on the international level went to advise Donald Trump. And three times [Trump] asked about the use of nuclear weapons. Three times he asked at one point if we had them why can’t we use them,” Scarborough said on his “Morning Joe” program.
We are living in the single most dangerous moment in all of human history, far more dangerous than the Cuban Missile Crisis or the other terrifying nuclear crises. During those horrific moments, the president of the United States and his advisers were, for the most part, rational actors who fully grasped what nuclear bombs were. Trump and his advisers cannot be trusted to act rationally in a crisis.
And that’s the main reason why Trump has to be removed. And until he is, only the delusional or the clueless can sleep well. The situation is profoundly dangerous.
PS For those arguing that there are enough checks and balances to forestall a dangerously disturbed official like Trump or Kupperman from initiating a nuclear strike, please read Ellsberg’s The Doomsday Machine.
Goodnight.
My Hopes Dashed
by tristero
Dang! It sounded so perfect.
Fresh water, a clean atmosphere, an incredible view. And the best part? A nice little house on this distant planet would be a whopping110 light years away from Donald Trump and Boris Johnson.
Unfortunately:
Humans would not fare well on the planet. If it has a hard surface, it would be impossible to stand. With gravity eight times stronger than on Earth, the average human would weigh half a tonne. Added to that are intense UV rays that would drive cancer-causing mutations.
Dang!
For Many Americans, Trump Is the Only Standard For Truth
by tristero
I believe Cilizza is mistaken re: Sharpiegate:
Trump is so obsessed with being right (or at least being perceived as being right by his supporters) that he blocks out any and all other responsibilities or duties as President to pursue that goal.
Oh, he made a simple slip of the tongue, and he knows it and his advisers know it. He’s not obsessing about this because he needs to be right. He (and his cronies) are not letting this go because it enables them to test how powerful his ability is to manufacture truth is to his base. They’re asking: how many people actually believe Alabama was at risk simply because Trump said it was and don’t believe the debunking?
I’m sure they’re trying to find out. That is the reason the Sharpie-altered map was created. Learning how many people continue to believe Trump no matter documentary evidence to the contrary will provide the GOP a good idea of how much they can capitalize on Trump’s lies in the upcoming campaign. A lot of people actually believe that whatever he says has to be true simply because he said it. If that number is high enough, it doesn’t matter whether Trump actually loses the election. He will simply declare himself the winner and they will never, ever accept the Democrat as the legitimate president.
As I see it, this is not a joke, this is not mental illness, and this is not “having to be right.” This is deliberately capitalizing on a simple mistake in order to quantify Trump’s capacity to set the truth terms of the public discourse even in the most absurd circumstances. It is very, very ominous.
How To Win Friends and Influence People
by tristero
Now there’s some Christ-level empathy for ya:
Peppered with complaints from farmers fed up with President Trump’s trade war, Sonny Perdue found his patience wearing thin. Mr. Perdue, the agriculture secretary and the guest of honor at the annual Farmfest gathering in southern Minnesota this month, tried to break the ice with a joke.
“What do you call two farmers in a basement?” Mr. Perdue asked near the end of a testy hourlong town-hall-style event. “A whine cellar.”
A cascade of boos ricocheted around the room.
He sure knows how to work a crowd. Keep this up and it won’t matter that the Federal Election Commission has been neutered.
All the News That’s Bats to Print
by tristero
Hey, there are two sides to every issue. Even if one side is completely nuts.
PS If you want to debate, or even explain, why buying Greenland is nuts, you’ve already lost.