For a long time, much of the political appeal of President Donald Trump has come from his professed opposition to “forever wars.” One of his many explicit statements to this effect dates from his State of the Union address in 2019. He said, “Great nations do not fight endless wars.” If you need a link for that: behold. Given his goal to make America “great again,” this language clearly amounts to a commitment to use his position as commander-in-chief to keep the United States out of endless wars. Yet here we are, with Trump once again the commander-in-chief and with his commitment to war with Iran open-ended. He began the attack on Iran at the end of February and throughout March he has put his renunciation of his earlier view front-and-center. He has used his own proprietary social-media platform, “Truth Social,” to explain to us that “Wars can be fought ‘forever,’ and very successfully, using just these supplies (which are better than other countries fin...
Posts
There has been some talk that former President Donald Trump will be arrested today. If he is, talk of Guo Wengui's arrest will fade into the background. Before it does, though: The Trumper fire who was our last President was quite sparing about which of his grifter buddies he pardoned. If, God forbid, he ever gets another crack at it he will presumably extend pardons far and wide but, last time around, he kept the circle narrow, perhaps to generate incentives for all the grifters in the galaxy o work hard to see that there would be a next time. Against that background, federal prosecutors in New York recently arrested exiled Chinese billionaire Guo Wengui. On the Trump scorecard, he is a friend-of-a-friend. Steve Bannon, on the other hand, is a friend. Full stop. Trump, you may remember, signed Bannon's pardon, freeing him from responsibility for the We-Fatten-the-Wall-it-oddly-looks-like-Bannon's-wallet scam: he signed this document in his final hours in office...
In another one of his proliferating head scratchers, President Trump riffed on the alleged wonderfulness of the "concept" of a choke hold, before regretfully acknowledging that the actual practice is a bad thing. https://www.vox.com/2020/6/12/21289495/trump-fox-news-chokehold-lincoln The concept of a choke hold, Trump tells us, sounds innocent and perfect. One wishes one had the opportunity to subject him to such perfection, without the presence of his secret service agents. One wishes that hypothetically, of course, because one is not an idiot. I am aware of the context. Yes, one can construe the totality of what POTUS has said about chokeholds as non-controversial. Where a police office is reasonably in fear of his life, etc. Of course the killers of George Floyd were not in fear of their lives. They were sadists. Yet acknowledging that POTUS only seems to want to say that it is not the case that every chokehold administered by a police officer on a civilian...
... doesn't exist. It is the Big Lie. https://twitter.com/ccfaille/status/1269985796234379265 Trump regularly tweets, as if to cheer himself up, that some recent poll showed he has 96% approval rating among Republicans. Even after recent high-profile defections from the cause of trumpetry, including George F. Will, Senator Murkowski, Senator Collins, General Mattis, Ann Coulter -- Trump keeps tweeting this 96% figure. It comes from nowhere except the fantasy inside the Orange Dynast's head. It isn't a shock that he lies, but it is a kind of strange lie to tell. The number seems to have been stuck in his head for some time. He trots it out to prove that he must be doing a good job: https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1252556676818968576?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1252556676818968576&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.vox.com%2F2020%2F4%2F21%2F21229411%2Ftrump-tweets-coronavirus-pandemic-msnbc You're ready for your close-up, M...
https://www.rawstory.com/2019/10/trump-trade-adviser-busted-for-making-up-whimsical-pen-name-to-quote-himself-in-his-books-for-years/ The only scholarly supporter of Trump's trade policies that Trump has been able to cite over the last three years ... turns out to have been writing fiction. Who'd a thunk?
This is from the blog of the philosopher Robert Paul Wolff: "John Bolton : Bolton is a genuinely dangerous man, and I am delighted to see him gone. His summary dismissal highlights the odd but welcome fact that Trump is a dove. A belligerent dove, a bullying dove, a bombastic dove, an ignorant dove, a feckless dictator-loving suck up of a dove, but a dove nonetheless. This is a dangerous world. We must take our comfort where we can find it." No comment.