Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

“Can i answer the question? No you can not!”

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

Battle won, war still ongoing.

Good lord, these people are nuts.

Take your GOP plan out of the witness protection program.

A consequence of cucumbers

The GOP couldn’t organize an orgy in a whorehouse with a fist full of 50s.

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

Do not shrug your shoulders and accept the normalization of untruths.

A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

Seems like a complicated subject, have you tried yelling at it?

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. let’s win this.

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

This blog will pay for itself.

“And when the Committee says to “report your income,” that could mean anything!

We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.

The republican caucus is already covering themselves with something, and it’s not glory.

They are lying in pursuit of an agenda.

“Squeaker” McCarthy

We are aware of all internet traditions.

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

You are here: Home / Foreign Affairs / Kim dogwalks Trump

Kim dogwalks Trump

by | 87 Comments

This post is in: , , , , ,

So, Trump just reversed his own Treasury Department’s sanctions on North Korea:

More at The Times.

To recap, you can be a top contender for the planet’s most horrifying despot, starve millions of people, feed relatives who’ve annoyed you to packs of dogs / execute them with anti-aircraft fire, develop nukes and bomb delivery systems that threaten millions of Americans and citizens of allied nations, etc. But if you compliment Trump’s absurd bouffant and write flowery letters addressing him as “Your Excellency,” it’s all good.

This sort of thing tends to flush out neocons, who will descend on news show panels to denounce the move with quavering jowls. That’ll be Trump’s cue to repeat the lie that he brought the U.S. back from the brink of all-out war with North Korea.

He’s going to get that Nobel Peace Prize, damn it, and if he has to give away U.S. leverage and force the world to accept that a lunatic can have the ability to incinerate millions of people anywhere in the world on a whim to obtain that prize, that’s okay with Trump. The fact that a guy follows Trump around with nuclear codes is a convincing argument that that particular bag is bereft of cats these days anyway.

Reader Interactions

87Comments

  4. 4.

    trollhattan

    Speaking of things that totally don’t matter!

    The U.S. posted its biggest monthly budget deficit on record last month, amid a 20 percent drop in corporate revenue and a boost in spending so far this fiscal year.

    The budget gap widened to $234 billion in February, compared with a fiscal gap of $215.2 billion a year earlier. That gap surpassed the previous monthly record of $231.7 billion set seven years ago, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

    February’s shortfall helped push the deficit for the first five months of the government’s fiscal year to $544.2 billion, up almost 40 percent from the same period the previous year, the Treasury Department said in its monthly budget report Friday. The release was delayed a week by the government shutdown earlier this year.

    Too bad Hillary was unlikable.

  7. 7.

    RepubAnon

    Only Nixon could go to China – and only Trump can surrender unconditionally to North Korea

  10. 10.

    John Revolta

    Not surprising. He refused to impose Congressional sanctions on Russia last year as well. “Nah, we won’t be doing that”. Got very little comment then, or since.

  11. 11.

    scav

    Well, we can’t have May walk off with most dysfunctional administration in a cakewalk.
    Saudi crown prince is going to be jealous though. “I though I was your favorite despot!”

  13. 13.

    gene108

    This sort of thing tends to flush out neocons, who will descend on news show panels to denounce the move with quavering jowls.

    Fuck the neocons. Naming the DPRK as part of the “Axis of Evil” is what prompted them to jump-start their nuclear program again, after they halted after they had struck a deal with the Clinton Administration.

    Bunch of pricks just want to throw their dicks around.

    Assholes

    P.S. After the clusterfuck that is the Iraq invasion, why are these asshats even treated as Very Serious People? How fucking badly does a conservative, white, male, American have to screw up to be considered unapproachable?

  16. 16.

    gene108

    @trollhattan:

    Can’t wait for Republicans to lose some elections, like they did in 2006 and 2008, and brashly strut in front of the media and say “well we learned our lesson, voters do not want run away deficits. We will now be what were: The Party of Fiscal Responsibility” and the media will bend over backwards and wag their tails, like a happy puppy, to hear these wonderful words of “contrition” and they will never question a Republican’s intentions again.

  17. 17.

    germy

    Stephen Moore is widely quoted as having said

    “Social Security is the soft underbelly of the welfare state […] if you can jab your spear through that,
    you can undermine the whole welfare state.”

  18. 18.

    jc

    The most dangerous part of Trump’s presidency: that he’s taken seriously. Reporters ask him serious questions and expect serious answers on numerous important issues. A president like Obama would make a good faith effort, every time, to sound genuinely … presidential. Trump can’t help sounding like a buffoonish asshole most of the time.

    The mainstream media inadvertently give Trump far more authority and legitimacy than he deserves. He thrives on an unearned take-me-seriously attitude. Anyone who asks him a question like he’s an expert, on anything, is playing a fool’s game. That’s what scares me the most about the thought of him weaseling his way to a 2nd term.

  19. 19.

    SFAW

    @gene108:

    How fucking badly does a conservative, white, male, American have to screw up to be considered unapproachable?

    Just saying that they think “blacks and browns deserve better treatment” oughta do it.

  20. 20.

    SRW1

    It’s also what governments who operate in the ‘on a whim of the leaderer’ style do. Always works out great!

  21. 21.

    randy khan

    I guess he didn’t read the briefing on the sanctions before they were imposed and only heard about them while watching Fox.

    Shocking, I know.

  22. 22.

    SFAW

    @gene108:

    just want to throw their dicks around

    I’m OK with that.
    Because they’d have to cut them off in order to do so.

  24. 24.

    Brachiator

    So, Trump just reversed his own Treasury Department’s sanctions on North Korea

    His spokesman says the president canceled his own government’s sanctions on North Korea because “President Trump likes Chairman Kim, and he doesn’t think these sanctions will be necessary.”

    Let’s see. Trump is forgiving of N Korea, which has nukes, but hard as nails on Iran, which does not have nukes.

    Despite all this insanity and incoherence, a couple of weeks ago I heard a talk radio host who is not a super right wing nut job conclude that he felt that he could trust Trump on foreign policy. He’s got the rubes totally suckered.

  25. 25.

    Brachiator

    @jc:

    The mainstream media inadvertently give Trump far more authority and legitimacy than he deserves.

    Trump is the president, unfortunately. You can argue his legitimacy all day and all night, but he is still president. He gets to sign or veto legislation, make appointments and do all that other presidential stuff. Doesn’t matter what the press says or does.

    That”s why we have work to do to elect someone better.

  28. 28.

    trollhattan

    @gene108:
    I think you’re dead on. That’s precisely what they’ve laid out.

    They had eight years of pounding Obama for his “anemic recovery” blithely sidestepping the fact that Obama and congress’ moves yanked us out of the Bush freefall and dragged us out of the ditch, more or less continuously the entire time.

    Had they approved the entire amount sought for the stimulus and followed up with his jobs bill, the recovery likely would have been swifter and stronger. But it was more important to fight, fight, fight that man in the White House.

  31. 31.

    Kelly

    If I’m to be executed then being shot to hamburger in a few seconds sounds like a quick and certain death.

  32. 32.

    Mike in NC

    The dotard is in love and just knows they’ll get to share that Nobel Putz Prize.

  34. 34.

    chris

    JFC

    After announcing he's reversing new North Korea sanctions because he likes Kim Jong Un, Trump's spokesperson issues a statement announcing his new sanctions on Venezuela, saying he won't allow Maduro to steal his country's wealth for personal gain while his people go hungry. pic.twitter.com/oLmvD4hlZY— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) 22 March 2019

  35. 35.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??

    @gene108:
    I’ve always felt that White American conservatives are the worst people on the face of the planet. But honestly, are they that unique or awful? I think any Great Power is going to produce similar kinds of arrogant, jingoistic authoritarians as American cons. They just have to act like hypocrites because of the circumstances of our founding (freedom, liberal democracy, constitutionalism) when deep down, none of them believe in any of America’s founding values.

  40. 40.

    danielx

    @gene108:

    How fucking badly does a conservative, white, male, American have to screw up to be considered unapproachable?

    That particular depth has yet to be plumbed – just ask Eliot Abrams.

  42. 42.

    hells littlest angel

    Before making the announcement, Trump met with his closest adviser, who told him, “Why don’t you pass the time by playing a little solitaire?”

  43. 43.

    Ruckus

    @gene108:

    How fucking badly does a conservative, white, male, American have to screw up to be considered unapproachable?

    That may be the question they are trying to get an answer to. So far the answer is that they can be absolutely, completely, total fuck ups and still get by.

  44. 44.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:

    are they that unique or awful?

    No, but the racial power balance in other countries isn’t at such a balancing point that half their population has gone completely bugfuck insane. A dangerous proportion is angry and stupid, but only for very few countries is the tension at the level it is in the US.

    @gene108:

    why are these asshats even treated as Very Serious People?

    Because the media people who decide who is a Very Serious Person agree with neocons on almost all points. They think blowing up foreigners is awesome and cool, brown people are scary, and the poor deserve to suffer. They also are totally protected from the consequences of Republican mistakes, so never have to take those mistakes seriously.

  45. 45.

    Bill Arnold

    @trollhattan:

    The U.S. posted its biggest monthly budget deficit on record last month

    Too bad Hillary was unlikable.

    There are revenue-neutral tax cuts for the rich, which simply take money from today’s non-rich and give to today’s rich, then there are deficit-financed tax cuts, which take money from future non-rich[1] and give to today’s rich.
    Then there are tax cuts financed by taking money from both today’s non-rich and future non rich and giving to today’s rich.
    And there are no doubt some among them working on time-travel so that they can take from past non-rich and give to today’s rich.
    [1] The rich/non-rich threshold is variable, depending on how rich one is. Added fun. (On a tourist trip to India a 15 years ago, the guide informed me that I was rich. He was correct in context.)

  48. 48.

    opiejeanne

    @raven: My gosh! They did it. Our Middle Child is an Anteater. Graduated in 2001, said it would have been nice if they were good during her years there. I told her they were pretty good then, just not this good.

  49. 49.

    Ruckus

    @jc:
    Trump ALWAYS sounds like a buffoonish ass because he is a buffoonish ass.

    The MSM is not inadvertent when they give the buffoonish ass far more authority and legitimacy than he deserves. They do this consciously and actively.

  50. 50.

    Raoul

    @RepubAnon: When Nebraska/plains states crop failures start to cause food shortages, our new N.K. overlords have lots of handy tips on surviving!

  51. 51.

    Martin

    @Ruckus: You undersell it. White men can absolutely, completely, be total fuck ups and get promoted. Fucking up is just a willingness to take risks. See the entire Trump administration for evidence. Who wants to bet that when Muilenburg gets bounced from Boeing that he becomes the next FAA head?

  54. 54.

    Raoul

    @gene108: “How fucking badly does a conservative, white, male, American have to screw up to be considered unapproachable?”

    Only Chuck Todd knows!

  55. 55.

    Raoul

    @Bill Arnold: Yeah, I realized that after posting (which is why it got deleted/replaced with different snark).

    ETA: Oops, I’m creating a vanishing point. Sorry!

  60. 60.

    Ruckus

    @Martin:
    Well he must know from airplanes, he worked at Boeing! Just because he had one small issue doesn’t make him a bad choice! What was that idiots name who ran HP into the ground and then ran for senator from CA? Carly something?
    So you are right, it’s white men. So why aren’t you or I president? We’re white men…. Maybe it’s white men fuck ups, ones who never, ever do anything right so their records are unblemished by success and certainly never by actual get your hands dirty work.

  63. 63.

    gene108

    @trollhattan:

    Had they approved the entire amount sought for the stimulus and followed up with his jobs bill, the recovery likely would have been swifter and stronger. But it was more important to fight, fight, fight that man in the White House.

    Congress were not the only ones obstructing Obama. Gov. Christie (NJ) turned down billions in federal aid for another train tunnel connecting NJ and NYC.

    After the 2010 elections, pretty much every damn GOP governor turned down federal stimulus money for projects already approved and planned out, like local light rail.

    Plus, the GOP at the state level, in 2011, cut taxes and laid of something like 1 million state employees – administrators, teachers, etc; – between 2011 and 2012, which just slowed down the recovery and dampened net employment numbers. Private sector was hiring, public sector was laying of at a high rate, therefor net jobs added to the economy wasn’t as high as it should’ve been.

    Obstructing Obama was not just Mitch McConnell and John Boehner, it was Chris Christie, Snyder (MI), Rick Scott, Scott Walker, etc.

    They were willing to destroy the country and their respective states, if they could wrest control of the government from Obama.

  69. 69.

    Tazj

    @gene108: This was all conveniently forgotten by the media when they were doing stories about people left behind by the recovery. It was very important to do those stories, but to forget the obstruction of the Republicans and to portray Trump as the potential savior with his history was unforgivable.

  70. 70.

    gene108

    @??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:

    I’ve always felt that White American conservatives are the worst people on the face of the planet. But honestly, are they that unique or awful? I think any Great Power is going to produce similar kinds of arrogant, jingoistic authoritarians as American cons.

    I think the difference, between say the USA and Europe, with regards to the passing of jingoistic stuff, is Europe lost its swagger after WW2. Their colonial holdings were fighting for independence, and after WW2, they didn’t have the ability to stop independence movements, though they did try.

    Europe was humbled, in a way the USA has never really been.

    The last time a foreign army set foot on U.S. soil was the War of 1812. We’ve been invasion free for 207 years, but so many people are all wound up about us being under constant threat of “attack” from somewhere “out there”.

    I think this is what makes the U.S. arrogance different. We really haven’t been punched in the mouth, in over 200 years and have never really had to confront ourselves about what we are as a nation, in the face of overwhelming defeat, but we think we have been hit around pretty good.

  71. 71.

    ruemara

    @Martin: This.
    I could give more personal examples including this latest one, but I’m mentally and emotionally exhausted from this struggle.

  74. 74.

    Suzanne

    Apparently Barr has the report.

    New thread?

    I’m not having a good day with my anxiety.

  78. 78.

    tobie

    Damn — so unless there are sealed indictments against Trump Jr, Jarvanka, Eric Prince, Parscale et. al., this criminal conspiracy got away scot free.

  80. 80.

    John Revolta

    @Raoul: Well, we got 99 problems but that ain’t one. Most of what we grow out here is soybeans & corn. The soy beans we mostly sell overseas and we grow way more corn than we need, so that they’re always lobbying to allow more of it in the gasoline. Most of the crops we actually eat come from California, or other countries.

  81. 81.

    A Ghost To Most

    Don’t forget that there are ~17 sealed indictments in DC Federal Court, from late August.

  82. 82.

    zzyzx

    We’ve massively overstated the impact of the report. It’ll lay out some malfeasance in the Trump campaign and we’ll be onto something else by next weekend. We’ll be mad, Trump will feel vindicated. That will be it.

  84. 84.

    patroclus

    @gene108: Japan took two Alaskan islands as part of their feint to fool us into thinking they weren’t attacking Midway, Guam and the Philippines were taken by Japan and Pancho Villa went across the southwest border. In each case, however, we responded aggressively and prevailed over the aggressors. Your larger point remains, but those are a few quibbles over the details.

Comments are closed.