Maybe Cheryl can share her nuclear expertise here, but this sounds like bullshit to me:
My first order as President was to renovate and modernize our nuclear arsenal. It is now far stronger and more powerful than ever before….
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 9, 2017
It would take more than six months and change to “renovate and modernize” the U.S. stockpile of nuclear weapons, wouldn’t it? I mean, there’s the funding to square away, then the planning and finally the execution of the plan.
I’m going to assume Trump is lying. It’s always a safe assumption, whether the statement in question is about his vacation activities or nuclear weapons. Minutes later, Trump tweeted this:
…Hopefully we will never have to use this power, but there will never be a time that we are not the most powerful nation in the world!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 9, 2017
Again, the emphasis on the “p” word, which is worrisome from a rapidly decompensating narcissist. In the wee hours, Trump was retweeting Fox & Friends stories about himself issuing threats and about U.S. Air Force bombers running training missions from Guam.
Meanwhile, Rex Tillerson, whose performance on the job so far has been the opposite of reassuring, downplayed the escalating rhetoric. Via CNN:
Tillerson defended Trump’s comments Wednesday, saying the President had sent a “strong message to North Korea in language that Kim Jong-Un would understand.”
But he also sought to reassure Americans that war was not imminent. “I have nothing that I have seen and nothing that I know of would indicate that the situation has dramatically changed in the last 24 hours,” Tillerson said on a flight from the region. “Americans should sleep well at night,” he said.
Uh huh. I’m finding the kooks and nukes combo distinctly unhelpful in addressing my insomnia. You?
Open thread.
low-tech cyclist
Only he could fix it.
Just one more canuck
@low-tech cyclist: a few cans of gold spray paint and it’s done- easy peasy
ThresherK
Hey, it’s possible. After all, we’ve got a President who’s creating 5000 coal-mining jobs a month.
low-tech cyclist
It should not be tolerable that a total and complete nutcase is Commander-in-Chief at a time like this. Needless to say, the Republican Party (and its allies like Fox News) aren’t showing the least bit of concern.
Which raises the question – and I ask this in all seriousness:
Why do they hate America?
Cheryl Rofer
Bullshit is correct, Betty. The modernization of our nuclear forces was begun by Obama and is projected to take 30 years. The US currently has about 6800 nukes, give or take a few dozen the same number it had in January.
Amir Khalid
It seems like everything Trump says is followed up a day later by a Cabinet secretary or other spokesman saying, “The President didn’t really mean that. Let’s all calm down.” It’s not exactly reassuring.
Viva BisVegas
The world certainly dodged a bullet when the war mongering Hillary Clinton was beaten by the peacenik Trump.
Americans might be sleeping well at night, the rest of us are keeping one eye open.
Spanky
His first order as President was for a well done steak and fries.
He’s full of shit, in this and in every instance.
(tl;dr version: Yes, it would take many years and billyuns of yankee dollars to “renovate and modernize” our nooks. And they don’t really need it, unless you want to get into the outmoded delivery systems, and have a neverending debate on how secure a more modern system would be.)
Cheryl Rofer
The obsession with “power” is disturbing to me too. He’s used it before with reference to nukes.
dmsilev
It’s complete and utter bullshit as Cheryl points out. Modernizing the nuclear arsenal is a very long term project that was well underway before Trump even descended that escalator to begin this nightmare. I’m sure someone tried to point that out to him during the campaign but we all know how open he is to learning new things.
danielx
I haven’t slept all that well since November 9th, and having a person who regards nuclear weapons as props in a dick waving exhibition in charge of the world’s largest nuclear arsenal is not helping.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@danielx: Ditto
David Evans
It is theoretically possible that he is, on this occasion, not lying. He didn’t say that his giving the order was the cause of our arsenal now being stronger. If we choose to give his words that meaning, and believe it, more fools us.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@Cheryl Rofer: Maybe “power” is the only way he can conceptualize nuclear deterrence, the credible threat of retaliation to forestall enemy attack. I’m not sure his understanding of this strategic concept is sophisticated in any way, shape, or form, so it’s just “power” to him.
Cheryl Rofer
To take Trump’s morning tweets seriously but not literally, he seems to be confirming that he was talking about nuclear war with his “fire and fury” last night.
Rex Tillerson said that Trump’s statement was in words “Kim Jong Un would understand.” I think he was trying to say that bullying a bully is smart international relations. [It isn’t.] But Trump’s words yesterday seem to threaten nuclear war in response to North Korean threats.
Also, too: Tillerson pronounced “Jong” as if it were “Yong.” You all are probably beginning to think I’m a pedant, but this is a small indication of how ignorant this bunch is.
MattF
@dmsilev: @Cheryl Rofer: All true. Anyone who has worked on a large US government project knows that Trump is engaged in self-stimulation.
Kay
He’s been up an hour and he’s already lying. Did you see the Trump Daily Lie Count is going up?
He’s getting worse.
The US President lies constantly and blatantly, about small things, about big things, about anything and everything. That’s the new norm. The people who work for him also lie constantly. His kids lie. The father and son crafted an elaborate lie and then the son in law endorsed the lie about that Russian meeting. Kushner is also a liar and he’s not even related to them.
I wasn’t as alarmed as other people when he threatened to nuke North Korea, because he’s a liar. His words mean nothing. It was just as likely to be bullshit as anything else he says. Who knows? Not me, and not anyone else either.
Cheryl Rofer
@Formerly disgruntled in Oregon: That’s an interesting interpretation. I’ll keep it in mind. But adding in “The devastation is very important to me” is kind of scary.
rikyrah
Trump’s claims on nuclear modernization crumble under scrutiny
08/09/17 08:40 AM
By Steve Benen
Donald Trump spent the morning tweeting away, which wouldn’t ordinarily be especially interesting, except for one online missive about nuclear weapons. Given the context of a burgeoning crisis with North Korea, this presidential message was bound to raise eyebrows:
“My first order as President was to renovate and modernize our nuclear arsenal. It is now far stronger and more powerful than ever before….”
We talked earlier about how important it is for Americans to be able to trust a leader during a crisis, and Trump’s tweet serves as a timely reminder that the president has thrown away whatever credibility he may have brought to the office.
As exercises in fact-checking go, this one’s surprisingly easy:
1. Trump’s “first order” as president dealt with health care, not the nation’s nuclear arsenal.
2. It was actually Barack Obama, not Donald Trump, who launched a massive, multi-year effort to modernize the U.S. nuclear arsenal.
3. For Trump to say, the arsenal “is now far stronger and more powerful than ever before,” suggests he believes the modernization process is done. That’s bonkers: the process has barely started and will take decades to complete.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@David Evans: “If we choose to give his words
thatany meaning, and believe it, more fools us.”A suggested change ?
Kay
He lies about being on vacation when there are photographs of him on vacation. He’s in the photographs. In the situation where he’s making money off the Presidency at his clubs he is setting up the photographs.
Then he tweets and denies he’s on vacation. He may as well be reciting a list of words. His speech has no meaning.
Frankensteinbeck
@low-tech cyclist:
I answer this in all seriousness: Because it is no longer white. There are details. Evangelicals used to get applause for saying God told them to do it. Now they get funny looks. They miss being able to sexually harass women in the workplace. But basically, they see minorities more and more around them, minorities more and more have positions of authority, and to them this is terrifying and America has gone horribly wrong and REAL America, strong and perfect, needs to be brought back. Yes, America still is wildly unequal, but like GamerGate they had the whole pie, now they have 90%, and it infuriates them.
rikyrah
In a crisis, Trump looks like the wrong leader at the wrong time
08/09/17 08:00 AM
By Steve Benen
At various times during last year’s presidential candidates, some of the nation’s highest-profile figures tried to make the case that Donald Trump was unprepared for a nuclear standoff.
In February, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) said Trump was so “erratic,” he couldn’t be trusted with the nation’s nuclear codes. In July, Hillary Clinton told voters, “Imagine him in the Oval Office facing a real crisis. A man you can bait with a tweet is not a man we can trust with nuclear weapons.” As late as October, then-President Barack Obama said at a rally, in reference to Trump, “How can you trust him with the nuclear codes? You can’t do it.”
Nearly 63 million Americans nevertheless thought it’d be wise to put Trump in the Oval Office, and now the nation’s first amateur president faces a possible nuclear crisis with North Korea. The Atlantic’s David Graham had a great piece yesterday on why Trump is so unsuited for this specific challenge.
In other words, Trump is the opposite of what Americans need under circumstances like these. The president is untrustworthy; he’s widely recognized as an international joke; he lacks anything resembling critical thinking skills and struggles to differentiate between facts and falsehoods; and he only listens to experts who tell him what he wants to hear.
MattF
@Kay: IMO, it’s some combination of constant flat-out dishonesty, delusion, and cognitive impairment.
dmsilev
@Kay: The silver lining in the cloud is that all the lying means that it’s going to be hard for him to convince the country to support whatever his war of choice ends up being. If you look at some of the recent polling, even some people who support him think he’s fundamentally dishonest (they just don’t care so long as he appoints judges from their wishlist).
Gin & Tonic
@Cheryl Rofer: I was obsessed with the power of explosives, too. When I was 11. I’m lucky I didn’t blow a hand off with the devices my friend Raoul and I made, but I grew out of that obsession by the time I figured out girls were cute.
rikyrah
THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW 8/8/17
Trump bluster divorced from any real North Korea strategy
Courtney Kube, NBC News national security and military reporter, talks with Rachel Maddow about whether Donald Trump is seriously considering privatizing the war in Afghanistan, and whether Trump’s bluster on North Korea has any basis in strategy.
SFAW
@Cheryl Rofer:
The Secretary of ExxonMobil probably thinks Kim is the head of Far East Germany.
To paraphrase Tennyson: Morons to the left of us, morons to the right, into the valley of deadly morons rode the sane hundreds (of millions).
rikyrah
THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW 8/8/17
Nunes aide behind secretive UK trip to find Trump dossier author
Julian Borger, world affairs editor for The Guardian, talks with Rachel Maddow about why a staffer to Rep. Devin Nunes sent people to London to find Christopher Steele, the author of the Trump dossier, and why he didn’t tell investigators what he was doing.
Waratah
@Cheryl Rofer: I was hoping that Trump would never talk to Hewitt after that interview with McMaster. Damage has already been done.
Kay
@rikyrah:
Argle bargle, dippity doo. He could say that and it would mean as much. He just talks. It’s random sounds.
Would you make a “deal” with him? His word is absolute garbage. It’s like making a deal with a yapping dog.
Frankensteinbeck
@Cheryl Rofer:
Ah! Obama did it! Since Obama must be erased from history, he either cancels or takes credit for it. In this case, with the Department of Energy cutbacks, I think it’s both?
rikyrah
THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW 8/8/17
Trump camp gives thousands of documents to Senate Russia probe
Rachel Maddow reports breaking news from Bloomberg News that among thousands of documents turned over to the Senate Judiciary Committee investigating Trump-Russia, roughly 20,000 of them are from the Trump campaign.
The Nameless One
Well, Glenn Thrush’s tweet has motivated me to finally pull my finger out and cancel my NYT subscription.
https://twitter.com/GlennThrush/status/895251422006181888
I know that attitude won’t be unique to the NYT but the imbalance between their reporting of Clinton’s emails and Trump’s everything during the campaign and their collective inability to accept responsibility for their reporting and editorial failures means they really cannot be trusted. Since I can’t cancel online and have to call I’m going to hammer that point home as the reason I’m cancelling and I just have to get three or four specific instances that prove it – the above-the-line front-page reporting on Huma’s laptop after the Comey letter when there was nothing there, saying there was no Russia investigation when there actually was, the initial decision by the executive editor not to report on the Steele dossier. I’ve got nearly a month before I get charged again so I’m sure I’ll come up with one or two more things that have pissed me off.
But fuck the fucking New York Times.
I think I’ll start paying the Gruaniard instead. They seem nice.
sherparick
As I said every morning since November 8, 2016, we are so fucked. How fucked we are will just be revealed as time goes on, but we basically living on the capital and prosperity Obama left behind.
SFAW
@rikyrah:
But “Doctor” Jill Stein says war-mongerer Hitlary would be worse! And I trust her as far as I can throw Highly Placed Russian Agent Lying Littledick, a/k/a “that obese fuck.”
Ohio Mom
@Frankensteinbeck: Those who are upset that America is “no longer white” are correct in a way. They are right that their share of the metaphorical pie is shrinking but they are looking in the wrong direction. The culprits are the one-percent of the one-percent.
I don’t have much hope of them catching on to this however.
germy
I wonder if he thinks this is true, though?
I have no doubt the first time he sat with the generals he said something like “I want stronger and more nukes!” and they all nodded. So now he thinks it’s an accomplishment he can point to.
Another Scott
‘morning everyone.
Andy Slavitt is back from his Twitter haitus (he told McCain he’d take a week off if St. John voted against Trumpcare):
You mean Donnie is either lying or doesn’t remember what he did?!?!
(this-is-my-shocked-shocked-face.gif)
Cheers,
Scott.
Cheryl Rofer
@Gin & Tonic: Yeah. I knew some kids like that. Although I loved chemistry, the explosive part never appealed to me. When I worked with explosives guys, they were like “Come see! We’re going to blow something up!” So I’d go see. But we had a bunker to watch from.
I’ve been thinking about Trump’s second tweet this morning:
It’s possible that he thinks that bluster in this area works like threatening creditors with lawsuits. Or he may just feel a need to proclaim a big, er, nuclear arsenal.
rikyrah
THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW 8/8/17
Trump bellicosity is frightening new variable in N Korea standoff
Rachel Maddow reviews what is known about North Korean military capability and its history of overblown threats and notes that the Donald Trump administration’s inconsistency on policy and equally overblown threats are the new, frightening variable in .
THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW 8/8/17
With stakes high, Trump loses cool in face of North Korea threats
Joe Cirincione, president of The Ploughshares Fund, talks with Rachel Maddow about why Donald Trump is taking the exact wrong approach to North Korea with his empty threats and bellicosity.
Yoda Dog
jfc somebody please make it stop.
also, good morning.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@Cheryl Rofer: Yes, that’s pretty scary. My only consolation is that he lives in a fantasy world, and says and tweets whatever BS is in his head at the time – and when he tries to get things done, and usually hits a roadblock of one kind or another. Where he’s been the most successful (things like ICE’s human rights abuses on our immigrant neighbors), he’s had sufficient assistance from fellow-travelers with some actual competency (like Kelly). I think he’ll find more roadblocks between his NK fantasy (as scary as that is to type) and our reality. Tao I hope so.
Cheryl Rofer
World leaders appeal for calm as tensions flare
The list is pretty much all major powers.
NorthLeft12
It appears that a lot of Americans feel that incinerating a large portion of the twenty-five million inhabitants of North Korea is perfectly okay. Their leader did threaten the US btw.
I guess this is consistent with their feelings towards the over eighty million people who live in Iran too.
Its been six months, and I am feeling exhausted putting up with the constant stream of shyte from Deadbeat Donald and his posse of ignorant bigots.
Cheryl Rofer
@Formerly disgruntled in Oregon: Under standard procedures, there is nothing between him and that suitcase. Nothing, nada, not the Secretary of Defense. I keep hoping that somebody is very quietly arranging otherwise.
Cermet
Who the flying fuck cares that this fart cloud is lying about the nuclear weapons – this insane fuck head is threatening to drag us into a war that will results in many tens of thousands deaths and the destruction of South Korea (yes, South – the North is a given.) THis pile of shit is about to get a war going and that is the only issue we should be making!
MomSense
@low-tech cyclist:
It’s a good thing, too. Otherwise we’d have to count on Rick Perry who would definitely need a glasses upgrade for that job.
MomSense
@danielx: @Formerly disgruntled in Oregon:
Trumpsomnia.
rikyrah
These Sugar Barons Built an $8 Billion Fortune With Washington’s Help
By Justin Villamil
August 9, 2017, 4:00 AM CDT
As Cuban refugees, the Fanjuls have a familiar story to tell. They fled the revolution. Fidel Castro’s forces seized everything they owned on the island, business interests, homes, a fortune in fine art.
But they didn’t arrive in Florida in 1960 empty handed. Patriarch Alfonso Fanjul Sr., one of the world’s most prosperous sugar barons before Castro came onto the scene, had piled up assets in the U.S. Within two years, he’d acquired new refining plants and begun to recreate the Fanjul empire in exile.
Now his two oldest sons are barons themselves, and among the most effective political donors in America. They have the Trump administration’s ear as it aims to rewrite Nafta — with protections for U.S. sugar growers and millers firmly baked in.
While the brothers and their three siblings share a fortune that the Bloomberg Billionaires Index values at $8.2 billion, the exact split among them is unknown. But, Alfonso, 80, known as Alfy, and Jose, 73, nicknamed Pepe, control the industry giant Florida Crystal Corp., and according to a Bloomberg analysis also control the family’s wealth. They didn’t respond to requests for comment for this story.
The pair have shared so much of their money with politicians over the years that it could be that “sugar, dollar for dollar, is the most influential commodity in the U.S.,” said Gary Hufbauer, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and former deputy assistant secretary in the Treasury Department. As long as the brothers are around, “I would fall out of my chair at any approach that leads to a free market in sugar.”
History, it seems, taught the family some lessons. “One of the reasons why we get involved in American politics is because of what happened to us in Cuba,” Alfy Fanjul told Vanity Fair in 2011 in a rare interview. “We do not want what happened in Cuba to happen to us again.”
Another Scott
@Spanky: There are many challenges in keeping nuclear warheads “safe and reliable” for decades on end. E.g. APS from 2007:
I have no idea whether additional money is needed to address these issues, but the point is that nuclear weapons aren’t inert things that just sit on the shelf like a lump of lead. They are complex systems, they degrade, and that degradation needs to be understood and addressed to be reasonably confident that they will work as designed when needed, and be safe when not.
Cheers,
Scott.
Cheryl Rofer
Here’s a short thread I did last night. I’m gonna get some breakfast now.
donnah
@sherparick:
“…basically living on the capital and prosperity Obama left behind.”
So true, and so heartbreaking. Trump’s legacy, unlike Obama’s, will be a travesty of lies, misdeeds, and destruction.
Frankensteinbeck
@Ohio Mom:
The pie they’re thinking of is social power, not economic success. The power to decide whether minorities receive charity or abuse. The power to be tte definition of ‘normal.’ The power to look at the government, at all positions of authority, and to see only themselves. And even the power to walk down the street and see nobody different. The rich did not take these things from them.
FlipYrWhig
@Cheryl Rofer: The military could just show him some grainy footage and tell him, “Sir, a lot of stuff blew up and only bad guys died, it was a glorious victory, in fact so decisive that any news you hear about North Korea from here on is a hoax by the Fake News.”
PaulWartenberg
Given how understaffed our Department of Defense is, I doubt any upgrades to our nuclear launch system has happened. Last I heard – which was in 2016! – we were still using FLOPPY DISKS to manage the launch computers.
The Dangerman
When I think of trump, I think of the “p word” alright; too bad, since this is basically a dick measuring contest, that I have so little faith in Little Donny.
Yutsano
@Cheryl Rofer:
Oh FFS. Rexxon literally has zero interest in anything in the world that isn’t a petrostate. The old fuck should just resign since he failed in his one mission: getting the Russian sanctions lifted so he could be a hugely rich fuck in retirement.
And both Jong and Yong are valid phonemes in Korean. But the difference is huge, and yes Koreans will notice.
Tenar Arha
@Cheryl Rofer: That last sentence in the interview is very disturbing.
ETA clarity
Kryptik
@Cermet:
Possibly because both his bullshit lie about our nuclear modernization and his latest attempt to goad NK into a hot war is consistent with all earlier proof of his obsession with nuclear weaponry and using said weaponry for any reason? It’s worth pointing out even if the NK thing deescalates, because it underscores how we absolutely cannot trust Trump with any sort of responsibility, He’s upending years of standing policy of keeping nukes as a deterrent first and foremost and wants to shoot them off like they were fucking M-80s on July 4th.
MattF
@PaulWartenberg: Big upgrade over punched tape. Floppies are trailing edge technology, but one could do worse.
Spanky
@PaulWartenberg: Feature, not a bug. Something I obliquely brought up in my post at #8:
Betty Cracker
@Cheryl Rofer: As I understand it, the only obstacle would be if the people who are duty-bound to follow Trump’s orders on a strike refuse to do so. Maybe they would, but the prospect is not reassuring, and it shouldn’t be left to one person’s discretion — even non-crazy people shouldn’t have that kind of power, IMO. Some Democrats in congress are introducing a bill to require the president to gain congressional approval for a nuclear strike. Will probably fail on along party lines.
rikyrah
The Unconscious Bias of Sanders and Some of His Supporters
by Nancy LeTourneau
August 8, 2017
I’m arriving late to the whole discussion about Ryan Cooper’s takedown of three African American potential Democratic presidential candidates. That is partly because I like to give myself some time to let these kinds of thing simmer. But it’s also because I think Martin did a good job of pointing out that people like Cooper dismiss the entirety of these candidate’s history by simply suggesting that they are corrupted by corporate connections. To get an idea of what was left out of his portrayal of Sen. Kamala Harris, check out this twitter thread:
What Cooper did to Harris, Booker and Patrick is the same thing Sanders did to Clinton and the Democrats during the 2016 primary: shut down all discussion about issues by claiming the disagreements are based on corruption. That is one of the main reasons why these differences have been so difficult to resolve.
But in defending his position, Cooper also took to twitter with something that brings racism/sexism back into the discussion.
Do you see what he did there? He preemptively robbed those “minority candidates” of any agency by suggesting that the so-called “elite” would simply stand them up as a way to cast any disagreement as a form of bigotry. Is it impossible for him to imagine that a person of color might simply disagree with him? Are they only hollow vessels to be manipulated by the elite? Since he isn’t even referring to a particular individual on which a statement like that might be judged, I can find no other explanation than the fact that it emanates from a form of unconscious bias.
Last November, I pointed out that Sanders himself did something similar when he assumed that a young woman who identified herself as Latina would run for office on a platform of simply saying, “I’m a Latina, vote for me.” He went on to suggest that unless she was willing to embrace his issues, that wasn’t good enough.
When I called that out as a form of white supremacy, a lot of people pushed back and said that was too extreme. Personally, I’m not that interested in what we call it. Robbing a woman and/or person of color of their own agency and, in doing so, attempting to shut down any conversation with them about where we might disagree is a problem. To give people like Sanders and Cooper the benefit of the doubt, I don’t believe that is their intention. Rather, it springs from a form of white privilege that produces what some people call unconscious bias.
Frankensteinbeck
@Betty Cracker:
I would be sure it fails, except congress gave him the middle finger on sanctions. Now I give it 50/50. They may not want him impeached, but that’s different from liking him or caring what he wants.
As for North Korea, my reassurance is Trump’s clear history of speaking loudly and carrying no stick. He does jack squat about his threats. He blusters, then often turns around and capitulates immediately. Even the Syrian air strike proved to be purely symbolic and approved by Russia.
rikyrah
Sessions’s Justice Department Supports Voter Purge
This poses a grave threat to our democracy.
by Nancy LeTourneau
August 9, 2017
Civil rights groups are challenging Ohio in the courts for an attempt to purge their voter rolls.
Obama’s Justice Department previously filed an amicus brief siding with the civil rights groups. That has now been reversed.
………………………………………
I’d also remind you that the previous Acting Director of the Civil Rights Division at DOJ, Vanita Gupta, recently warned that the purge of voter rolls is coming.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@PaulWartenberg:
I’m actually OK with this. Means no bugs or hacks.
rikyrah
The Party of George W. and Jeb Bush Is Dying
by Nancy LeTourneau
August 8, 2017
I have often said that Republicans faced a difficult choice after the 2008 election. Their economic policies had given us the Great Recession, while their militaristic foreign policy had given us torture, Guantanamo, and two seemingly endless wars in the Middle East. That led to massive electoral defeats in both the 2006 midterms and the 2008 general election.
The question facing Republican leaders was whether or not to double down on policies that had failed so miserably or go back to the drawing board and re-think their position. They did neither. Instead, they chose to simply obstruct everything Obama and the Democrats attempted to do. In order to justify that position, they inflamed their extremist base—leading to the development of the Tea Party and the Freedom Caucus. When Republicans regained majorities in Congress, it became clear that they couldn’t govern and eventually their leader in the House, Speaker John Boehner, was ejected.
During the 2016 Republican primary, Jeb Bush was the candidate who most clearly embraced the idea of doubling down on the failed policies of the past. He ran on what his father once called “voodoo economics” combined with a militaristic foreign policy and lost spectacularly. Instead, the inflamed extremist base helped nominate Donald Trump. It has often been said that he is non-ideological. Jelani Cobb coined the phrase “resentment agenda” to describe his platform. It appealed to what Robert Jones described as “nostalgia voters.”
Spanky
@Betty Cracker:
I don’t know. I’m hoping the recurrance of the looming dread of instant incineration that they haven’t felt in over 30 years would have a clarifying effect on some of the more moderate Rs.
rikyrah
Trump hopes to shift blame to Obama for opioid crisis
08/09/17 09:20 AM
By Steve Benen
Donald Trump interrupted his vacation yesterday to host an event on the opioid crisis at one of his golf resorts, delivering brief remarks on the deadly national emergency. The president reflected, for example, on preventing addiction by stopping the problem before it starts.
“If they do start, it’s awfully tough to get off,” Trump said. “So we can keep them from going on, and maybe by talking to youth and telling them, ‘No good; really bad for you’ in every way.”
I’m going to hope there’s more to the White House plan.
But there was another message in the president’s remarks that struck me as notable:
In context, it seems “they” referred to Obama administration officials.
There are a couple of core problems with the argument, aside from Trump’s creepy preoccupation with trying to blame his predecessor for everything. The first is Barack Obama and his team didn’t “let” the opioid crisis “go by”; they pleaded with Congress to make serious investments in the emergency, and by large, lawmakers balked.
The second is the subtle assumption Trump is making: he apparently sees the opioid crisis as a problem that can be solved through “prosecutions.” In other words, this White House doesn’t see a public-health emergency; it sees a test for law enforcement.
This does not bode well for the near future.
Postscript: Though this angle was largely overlooked yesterday, this entire subject is one Trump World should approach with some trepidation. The White House enthusiastically supported Republican health care legislation that would have made the opioid crisis vastly worse, and then endorsed deep Medicaid cuts, which would have had a brutal effect on substance-abuse treatments if implemented.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Cheryl Rofer: “the devastation is very important to me”
If Jesus heard that, he might really weep. Just sucks the snark right out of me.
tamiasmin
So thought Croesus before he crossed the Halys, Xerxes before Plataea, Athens before Syracuse, Rome before Alaric, and dozens of other ”great powers” that had more weaponry than good sense.
chopper
@Cheryl Rofer:
it’s the word all right, but also remember this guy has a 200 word vocabulary. he couldn’t think up another word for it if his life depended on it.
Jeffro
It’s Trumpov, of course it’s bullshit. Not even worth thinking twice about.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
or those too stupid to know they’re being manipulated by the corrupt
JPL
Manafort’s house was raided in the pre-dawn hours of july 26th. hmmm Why is this being leaked now?
FlipYrWhig
@rikyrah: Ryan Cooper is terrible. One of the worst. But he’s far from alone. This is what SO MUCH of the Sandersite class-not-race cohort believes: that politicians who are people-of-color are the patsies of “neoliberals,” who use them as human shields. The only high-profile POC politician they _don’t_ appear to grumble that about (yet?) is Keith Ellison, presumably because Bernie Sanders blessed him personally.
Elizabelle
WaPost breaking news:
Jim, Foolish Literalist
OT, because Meuller may be our only slim hope:
as the (I think) Libertarian Julian Sanchez points out, the fact that they had a warrant is a big deal (NAL, so I needed this pointed out to me, and it’s how I found the story
Sab
@rikyrah: Who is Ryan Cooper and why are we paying attention to him? Working for The Week should alone be disqualifying.
rikyrah
@Frankensteinbeck:
You tell no lies.
schrodingers_cat
@FlipYrWhig: How is this different from the plantation BS that one hears from Rs?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
which happened because Ellison had passed the ultimate test of political purity: He endorsed Wilmer in the primary
because he and/or people like him convinced enough people in WI, MI and PA to vote for Jill Stein, or stay home, or leave it blank, to put trump in the Oval Office, and they’re loudly signaling they’ll do it again
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Betty Cracker:
There’s a few “halt” points, and it would be a good idea to start having public conversations about the fate of the OKW for the war crimes against civilian populations perpetrated in the course of waging aggressive war.
LAO
@The Nameless One: The replies to his tweet are priceless though.
JPL
I assume the Manafort leak came today, in order to dimension the president. A search warrant means probable cause, and the news mentions that Trump was tweeting that day about Sessions.
LAO
@JPL: I’m sure it wasn’t “leaked,” pre-dawn raids tend to be noticeable — lots of unmarked vehicles, men and women in FBI vests. Hard to be discrete.
JPL
@LAO: Tell us what you think about the pre-dawn raid by the FBI on Manafort’s house.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@The Nameless One: FWIW, I think Thrush was still hanging his hipster pork pie (he used to wear it for TV appearances) at Politico in the summer of 2015
@JPL: “dimension”? a legal term?
LAO
@Cheryl Rofer: I’m sure that will work.
rikyrah
@LAO:
For real?
Pre-dawn raid?
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@rikyrah:
“Just Say No” worked really well the last time it was tried, and requires nothing in the way of resources or commitment.
Couldn’t come up with a lazier way to not give a shit if I tried, so it is the perfect expression of conservative governance in practice.
SFAW
@Spanky:
And I’m hoping to wake up tomorrow with a full head of hair, but I’m not getting my hopes up.
However, I have no doubt that, were Lying Littledick to move much closer to a first strike, Lindsey Graham’s brow will furrow more deeply, and he would tell us all how “troubled” he is by that. And Marco Rubio will show the same steel backbone that he exhibited regarding immigration. Susan Collins, fresh off her “look how I stood up to that guy! See, I told you I’m a moderate” tour, will also express her concern.
And Jill Stein will spout more insane bullshit, although she will remember not to say it по русски
LAO
@JPL: I’d enjoy it more, if not for the impending nuclear apocalypse. But seriously, I’m surprised. I guess the government didn’t trust that Manaforte would comply with any subpoenas.
rikyrah
White House remains silent following Minnesota mosque bombing
08/09/17 10:18 AM
By Steve Benen
Earlier today, a vehicle plowed into a group of French soldiers as they left their barracks in a town near Paris. While it appears none of the targets were killed, the local mayor described it as a “terrorist” incident, and the suspected was apprehended soon after.
Soon after U.S. media took note of what happened, there was Donald Trump, retweeting a Fox News report on the apparent attack. That’s not especially surprising, of course, since the American president routinely makes note of suspected terrorist incidents.
This does, however, make it all the more curious that Trump has had literally nothing to say about a makeshift bomb that was detonated early Saturday morning at a Minnesota mosque. Fortunately, no one was injured, but local officials suspect this was an anti-Muslim terrorist incident.
So, why has Trump said nothing about a bombing targeting Americans on American soil? Sebastian Gorka, one of the president’s more controversial national security advisers, appeared on MSNBC yesterday, and shed some light on the White House’s thinking.
…………………………………………….
But let’s not play games. When Trump learns of a suspected terrorist incident, and he believes the attacker is Muslim, he pounces without a whole lot of thought or information. In June, in the immediate aftermath of a deadly attack in London, Trump not only exploited the incident to advance his political agenda, his public reaction drew conclusions before British officials had provided details to the public.
Trump’s rhetoric in response to suspected terrorism has been so profoundly irresponsible that the Associated Press published a fact-checking piece in June that said the president “can’t be counted on to give accurate information to Americans when violent acts are unfolding abroad.”
It’s against this backdrop that Sebastian Gorka wants us to believe Trump is simply being cautious, taking his time before saying anything about the Minnesota bombing. It’s far easier to believe there’s something pernicious about the president’s attitudes.
FlipYrWhig
@Sab: Cooper used to be the wannabe-left-radical guy who ruined the Washington Monthly Political Animal blog on the weekend, an “honor” that has since passed to Execrable David Atkins.
SiubhanDuinne
@tamiasmin:
Ozymandias!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@LAO: I wonder if some Comey ally in the FBI, or near it, pointed out that it happened, rather than leaking, as an “Oh fuck you” to the trump team’s weird assertion that they’ve been having a cordial “back and forth” with Meuller
dmsilev
@LAO: Then why did it take two weeks to get reported on?
LAO
@rikyrah: I fixed my comment — I’m sure it WASN’T leaked.
Yeah — but raids by the feds (on houses) are always pre-dawn, so there is nothing particularly shocking about the time of the raid.
rikyrah
Iowa Democrat Phil Miller wins by 10 points in special election in House District 82 that Trump carried by 22 https://t.co/aOzEwc6aht
— Ari Berman (@AriBerman) August 9, 2017
Sab
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I still think voter suppression had more to do with election results than persuasion. Hundreds of thousands kicked off the rolls in states they won by less than 80,000.
JPL
@LAO: Why not leak it on July 26th then?
FlipYrWhig
@schrodingers_cat: I’m thinking it’s not. The “left” has been borrowing the right’s anti-elite discourses, only instead of the elite meaning “Jews, college professors and other effeminates” it means “multinational corporate financial something something deep state.”
JPL
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: lol I’m not sure what I was thinking.. diminish…
Mike in NC
Every day this fucking lunatic stays in office, the further from reality he strays. Sad!
LAO
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I really don’t think anyone leaked it. It’s really hard to hide a “pre-dawn raid.” Dozens of vehicles and 50 agents in FBI windbreakers. I’m sure Mantaforte’s neighbors noticed and called the press.
SFAW
@JPL:
They didn’t want to step on Fidel’s moment? [Granted, it’s 60-odd years late, but still.]
LAO
I don’t know why it took 2 weeks to report. Maybe it was leaked. Having been present at several pre-dawn raids, I find it hard to believe it went unnoticed. I could easily be wrong.
But her emails!!!
@FlipYrWhig:
“Elite” means the same thing to the alt left as “neoliberal”. Exactly what they say it means at that particular time and place. It has nothing to do with the actual dictionary definition.
SFAW
@rikyrah:
Ah, more bullshit from the Fascist. Dates and places, you lying motherfucker?
rikyrah
If You Weren’t Worried Yet, You Can Start Now
By JOSH MARSHALL
Published AUGUST 8, 2017 3:43 PM
In response to a new round of threats from North Korea, themselves spurred by new US sanctions led by the US, President Trump has now, rather casually, threatened North Korea with a nuclear holocaust. At a meeting on the opioid crisis a short time ago Trump just said: “They will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen,” Trump said. “He has been very threatening, beyond a normal state, and as I said they will be met with fire and fury and, frankly, power the likes of which this world has never seen before.”
The deteriorating situation on the Korean Peninsula and between the US and North Korea is neither new nor entirely of President Trump’s making. His volley of threats over recent months appears to have spurred the North Koreans to quicken the pace of their ICBM tests. There are reports today of US intelligence findings that the North Koreans are much further along than the US realized in miniaturizing a nuclear weapons to make them transportable on an ICBM. Given the administration’s credibility on this issue and generally, I think a good deal of skepticism is warranted on that front. But the pace of advance on building an ICBM is public and from what I can tell not really in dispute.
………………………………..
This is a really bad and dangerous situation to start with. It was bad when President Obama left office. It’s gotten much worse since – through some mix of US threats and North Korean testing out the new administration. The worst possible thing is a President who is stupid, impulsively emotional and has something to prove, which is exactly what we have. (You think his litany of failures as President so doesn’t make him eager for a breakout, transformative moment?) At the risk of stating the obvious, threats like this from a country that has the ability to kill everyone in North Korea at close to a moment’s notice can set off a highly unpredictable chain of events. What if North Korea issues more threats? Presumably Trump fails to respond with a nuclear attack and reveals his threats as empty or – truly, truly unimaginably – he launches a nuclear attack. These are not good choices to face.
The situation with North Korea would be an extreme challenge for a leader with ability and judgment. President Trump is simply too erratic, unstable and dangerous to be in charge in a situation like this.
smintheus
@Sab: That wouldn’t explain some of Clinton’s losses in e.g. Pennsylvania.
Sab
@rikyrah: Woot! woot! Weren’t there similar wins in Oklahoma a month or so ago?
SFAW
@LAO:
As the raid-er or the raid-ee?
And they do that in Bayside? Who knew? (Or wherever in Queens you are.)
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I love this guy
Jado
@Ohio Mom:
Yeah but the whiter than white top tenth of one percent are diligent in pointing out that the Blahs and the Gheys are stealing the last cookie from the poor whites, even as they abscond with the rest of the cookie jar. White racists are being successfully baited yet again in order to distract from the theft. But really, why mess with a proven winner?
Point at the Blahs and the Gheys while stealing everything. It’s the Sex Panther of politics – 60% of the time, it works every time.
rikyrah
Report: US Diplomats Instructed To Sidestep Questions On Paris Accord
By ESME CRIBB
Published AUGUST 8, 2017 6:22 PM
U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson sent a cable telling diplomats to give vague answers to questions about what it would take to convince President Donald Trump’s administration to re-enter the Paris Agreement on climate change, Reuters reported on Tuesday.
Reuters reported, citing a diplomatic cable Tillerson sent to embassies on Friday, that U.S. diplomats were told to answer questions like “What is the process for consideration of re-engagement in the Paris Agreement?” with “We are considering a number of factors. I do not have any information to share on the nature or timing of the process.”
According to text Reuters published purportedly of the cable, Trump’s administration “is considering options for potential re-engagement in the Paris Agreement under different terms” but presently has “no plans to do so.”
“The Department recognizes that questions about the Paris Agreement and other climate policy issues will continue to arise,” the text reads.
rikyrah
@Sab:
yep..
Oklahoma.
smintheus
@JPL: The Trumplings were trying to undermine Mueller’s reputation for toughness by leaking reports implying that Trump was schmoozing with him. This is probably somebody’s response to that.
tobie
@The Nameless One: Glenn Thrush really does seem to be a regime apologist. Last night on TV he was spouting two lines regarding North Korea: (1) The Trump administration has a strategy and Trump is playing bad cop to Tillerson’s good cop and (2) Trump’s upping the pressure so China will intercede in ways it has never done before. The second argument was a double whammy since it not only amounted to praise for Trump but a dig at Obama.
smintheus
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Even Manafort’s daughter knew that the millions he was making in Ukraine was “blood money”.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I don’t like Kelly, but it never for a moment occurred to me that he had put the “fire and fury’ in trump’s clam-like ear. Someone on twitter pointed out the phrasing comes from the Book of Isaiah, so it was most likely from would-be scholar of religion Steve Bannon
smintheus
@tobie: The bad cop role doesn’t typically involve making yourself look weak by issuing threats you don’t back up when pushed.
Barbara
@rikyrah: Biggest distraction ever. Trump is all about bombast. A normal politician would have extolled the benefits of the Paris accord and then done whatever he wanted to undermine or slow walk it (denying all the way that’s what he was doing). Now, even though there were no mandatory steps involved, wherever diplomats go it gets in the way of whatever else it is we need from other countries in the way of cooperation.
Barbara
@smintheus: Maybe he can emulate other desperate people engaged in a hopelessly futile task of influencing completely deaf power mongers by engaging in a hunger strike.
Barbara
@rikyrah: Cool beans. (Does anyone still say that?) Iowa is one of the states that really does stand to lose from any kind of amplification of a trade or tariff war. There have also been numerous articles by how much Iowa has been transformed by immigrant labor, and how hard it is for many industries to thrive without it. The culture war fever is likely to break in Iowa before it does in West Virginia or Kentucky.
trollhattan
Trump overhaul of nuclear arsenal: Every missile and warhead now emblazoned “TRUMP!” in gold leaf.
Skeert now, bad people?
clay
@rikyrah:
Furthermore, a quick Google search reveals that exactly zero of Trump’s executives orders have dealt with, or even mentioned, nuclear weapons. This took me all of 15 seconds to find out. That’s how little he respects the truth — he can’t even make up a plausible lie.
LAO
@SFAW: present at tail end on 3 occasions as defense counsel. 2 in Brooklyn and 1 in queens. So far, my home hasn’t been raided. ?
Central Planning
@Cheryl Rofer: Did you see the video of his comments? His arms were crossed the entire time (at least in the clip I saw). Almost like he was doing that on purpose. I’ve never seen him say anything without waving his hands around and making the stupid circles or pointing his fingers.
Maybe he thinks people are analyzing his body language?
JPL
From everyone’s favorite reporter Glenn Thrush
germy
@clay:
He reminds me of every boss and business owner I’ve ever worked for who lied.
Lied reflexively, comfortably, even purposelessly. Nine times out of ten I knew I was being lied to, but there was nothing I could do about it, other than resign. The times I DIDN’T know I was being lied to, I found out soon enough.
Cheryl Rofer
@Central Planning: I did see the video. There’s a still from it here that looks like all he lacks is the straitjacket. I read it as frightened and defensive. A commenter last night suggested maybe he needs a thundershirt. Adam thought it looked like angry and frustrated.
I suspect it’s instinctive rather than planned. I have a hard time reading Trump’s body language, can’t for the life of me think of why he does those little finger circles or purses his lips the way he does. I’ve tried to do that thing with my lips, and it’s really hard.
father pussbucket
@Kay:
In part, it’s a loyalty and conditioning thing, like Winston’s interrogator demanding that he not only say but believe he sees five fingers in 1984.
J R in WV
Hey, Kay…
Anywhere I can look to understand the Ohio pharma changes on this fall’s ballot? We’re seeing a ton of TV ads aimed at Ohio voters that seem to be somewhat out there.
Thanks,
JR
SFAW
@LAO:
That you know of.
father pussbucket
@Cheryl Rofer:
I kept hoping people would leap up from the table and put one on him.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Oh, the thunder shirt! It’s good to laugh. I’m not scared shitless, but I’m on edge these days
as to his frustration and anger: the fact of the failure of his bluster and “toughness”, that he tthought would make the world tremble, and here’s this crazy little thirty year old untermensch more or less laughing at him. The fact of his inadequacy and mediocrity colliding with the delusions he has spent a lifetime building in his own mind, and on TV, the only reality that should matter.
gene108
@Ohio Mom:
You are looking at this wrong. It’s not about jobs or money. Even in the good old days, they weren’t rich and the rich took advantage of the system.
What they no longer have, as Frankenstienbeck points out is when they say “God told them to do ‘x'”, they are not greeted with applause. Their views on homosexuals, interracial marriage, etc. is scorned upon by a majority of the public and is ignored or ridiculed in popular culture. They used to be able to confine society to reflect their bigotries, but that has nearly totally broken down.
Interracial couples are all over the place in T.V. ads. “Modern Family” has an openly gay married couple, with and adopted daughter, and people keep watching the show.
They lost the Culture Wars, which they started and they are flailing about looking do whatever damage they can, while they still have a bit of power on such issues.
Bill Arnold
@Cheryl Rofer:
[haven’t fully read the thread yet] My first-order guess has been that that was his takeaway from one or more serious-person briefings given to him on the subject. No evidence, but it fits with personal interpersonal observations about Americans’ general knowledge about nuclear weapons.
I think he needs some more such briefings, personally, from people who won’t accept Presidential ignorance about such matters.
The “fire and fury” thing was clearly (from the video) fed to him by someone, as various people have speculated . Guessing it was not one of the military men. Bannon, perhaps (e.g. @Jim, Foolish Literalist: ); he might be eager to try out insult-trading with KJu, as a tactic; to what ends it is not clear. What appear to be transparent and clumsy attempts to gin up a sense of war-urgency need to be called out aggressively, and fought.
NorthLeft12
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/aug/09/north-korea-canada-pastor-released-life-sentence
Well I guess the DPRK is playing good cop, bad cop.
sam
@Cheryl Rofer:
id just like to add that we stopped producing weapons grade uranium and plutonium about 1987 because we have too much of the stuff – hundreds of tons available for weapons. Russian situation is very similar, which to me is why the uranium one canard is so incredibly dumb. Neither country needs any more uranium for weapons, forever. its not like it goes bad, half life of megayears.
Cheryl Rofer
@sam: Yup. In fact, there’s an issue of how to deal with all that plutonium, but that’s a post for another day.
ETA: We’ve been burning Russian enriched uranium in our civilian reactors for a decade or so now. Provided as much as 10% of the country’s electricity.
Cheryl Rofer
Trump didn’t check with anyone, just said it.
Jeffro
@Cheryl Rofer: Jesus, the improvisation is only the third scariest thing in that article:
Way to go, Mr. “Hire The Best People” – your staff are in open warfare with each other at a time of great crisis.
catclub
@rikyrah: It seems to me the problem is people not voting for 6 years – or more.
The threat to Democracy is turnout as low as it is – registration purges are a rounding error on that.
LAO
@SFAW: ?
TenguPhule
Well the shit is truly fucked then.
Bill Arnold
@Cheryl Rofer:
This part, I do not believe. That did not seem like D. Trump’s language. (e.g. somebody said it, and Trump remembered it.)
TenguPhule
@Spanky:
And you would be wrong.
The problem with nuclear weapons is that the nuclear material decays over time.
TenguPhule
@Kay:
The problem is that other nations around the world can’t simply assume that. They have to take his words seriously.
And that is going to cause a problem, the question is how bad its going to be.
TenguPhule
@sherparick:
Our last best hope for peace left office on 1/20/17.
SgrAstar
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Thrush started at the NYT in 2017. Per wikipedia, before that he worked at Politico. Good catch, JFL.