Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Lick the third rail, it tastes like chocolate!

We’re watching the self-immolation of the leading world power on a level unprecedented in human history.

One way or another, he’s a liar.

Hot air and ill-informed banter

People are weird.

If you still can’t see these things even now, maybe politics isn’t your forte and you should stop writing about it.

Baby steps, because the Republican Party is full of angry babies.

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

There is no right way to do the wrong thing.

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

Trump’s cabinet: like a magic 8 ball that only gives wrong answers.

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

If America since Jan 2025 hasn’t broken your heart, you haven’t loved her enough.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires Republicans to act in good faith.

The Giant Orange Man Baby is having a bad day.

Republican speaker of the house Mike Johnson is the bland and smiling face of evil.

You’re just a puppy masquerading as an old coot.

Wake up. Grow up. Get in the fight.

American history and black history cannot be separated.

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

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Motto for the House: Flip 5 and lose none.

The willow is too close to the house.

You are here: Home / Politics / Trumpery / Dolt 45 / A Lannister Always Pays His Debts. Trump- Not so Much

A Lannister Always Pays His Debts. Trump- Not so Much

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I think we have just discovered the most Trump thing ever:

WALLACE: Did North Korea demand money for the release of Otto Warmbier?

BOLTON: It appears that they did. This occurred before I came into the administration, but that’s my understanding.

WALLACE: Did the U.S. official who was there to get him out of the country, Joseph Yun, did he sign a document pledging the money in order to get him out.

BOLTON: That is what I am told, yes.

WALLACE: I guess the bottom line question is, did the U.S. pay any money to North Korea, however it was disguised, after Warmbier was released?

BOLTON: Absolutely not. And that’s the key point.

I’m dying here. To recap, Trump “rescued” the brain dead Warmbier who immediately died upon entry to the US, blamed his predecessor Obama for his capture and for not releasing him, then did nothing to the country who did it, then cozied up to their leader and saw his soul and is continuously being mocked by North Korea continuing to do whatever they want, and then we have the grand finale- not paying the fucking bill. All the while doing hideous amounts of damage to our allies, to our national reputation, and achieving NOTHING while declaring a great victory. And the Bolton remarks just add insult to injury, because he is now confirming that no one can trust our diplomats and negotiators, and THEY THINK THIS IS A WIN- “And that’s the key point.”

MAGA.

Reader Interactions

79Comments

  3. 3.

    MobiusKlein

    Some ad shit keeps forwarding me to unsafe sites, on my mobile.
    Somebody check the ad selection.

  4. 4.

    John Revolta

    Are we to understand that OW was still healthy when NK made this demand, and that he was beaten to death essentially after we reneged on the deal?

  6. 6.

    oatler.

    “Fuckin’ millionaires. Never pay their bills.”

    Harry Dean Stanton, “Repo Man”

  7. 7.

    Another Scott

    @John Revolta: Wikipedia:

    Pennington, Matthew (April 26, 2018). “Parents sue North Korea over death of detainee Otto Warmbier”. AP News. Archived from the original on March 2, 2019. Retrieved March 2, 2019. He was denied communication with his family by any means until in early June 2017 they were informed he was in a coma and had been in that condition for one year.”

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  8. 8.

    Mrmoshpotato

    then cozied up to their leader

    If I may, I’d like to make this more accurate and descriptive.

    “then Dump asked his Daddy Vladdy if he could stop sucking Putin’s ass for a bit to go suck Kim’s ass for a bit. All while not caring that North Korea tortured an American to the point of being brain dead”

    Addendum: Fuck the 77000 purity/misogynist assholes who foisted this reality on all of us.

  10. 10.

    James E Powell

    For the only people Trump & Co care about, Republican voters and RW press/media, it is a win. A huge win. How do they know? Because their masters told them so.

  11. 11.

    Brachiator

    WALLACE: I guess the bottom line question is, did the U.S. pay any money to North Korea, however it was disguised, after Warmbier was released?

    BOLTON: Absolutely not. And that’s the key point.

    I wonder whether Bolton might be lying about this. Certainly, North Korea could shit all over the US if this was really how things went down.

    Either way, idiot Trump supporters will get a laugh out of this and see it as proof that Trump knows how to beat any foreign adversary.

    Also, racist Trump supporters know that you only have to keep your word when dealing with white people.

  13. 13.

    Ruckus

    @John Revolta:
    No one will probably ever know.
    Certainly no one in the current occupation of the WH is going to do anything or ask any questions. Truth has taken a 4 yr holiday. The president of the US is incapable of telling the truth. He may stumble upon it accidentally but he never will speak the truth consciously, he is incapable, lying is like breathing to him, it’s become an autonomous function.
    We all know and many understand that the president has to not say things, diplomacy and world politics sometimes require it. But lying outright continuously, especially to his fellow citizens to feed their stupidity and racism?

  16. 16.

    Aleta

    Saved taxpayers two million dollars.
    Easily won another great victory.
    “Achieving nothing is an art. You’re either born with it or you’re not.”

  17. 17.

    Patricia Kayden

    WALLACE: I guess the bottom line question is, did the U.S. pay any money to North Korea, however it was disguised, after Warmbier was released?

    BOLTON: Absolutely not. And that’s the key point.

    Well, I suppose it can be argued that it’s good that Trump officials lie to dictators. **shrugs**
    The bad thing is that they lie to us too. **sigh**

  18. 18.

    Another Scott

    OpenThread?

    ICYMI – Reveal – America’s Drug War. Even if you lived through GHWB ramping up the war on crack, it’s a good review.

    […]

    Krissy Clark: But there was a problem with the bigger point Bush was trying to make here, because by the time he gave his speech in September of 1989, it was becoming clear that the crack problem was not that widespread, and it was not growing.

    Craig R.: The idea that it’s a plague that’s sweeping all sectors of society, this was never true.

    Krissy Clark: Craig Reinarman is a Professor Emeritus of Sociology and Legal Studies at the University of California Santa Cruz, and one of the editors of the book Crack in America. He told me in the 80s there was very little evidence to suggest crack addiction was spreading to every corner of America. By 1989, crack use had already peaked and was on the decline. The percentage of household survey respondents who reported using crack in the past year was just half of one percent. For context, in 2016 the percentage who reported abusing opioids in the past year was almost ten times that rate, 4.4 percent. Craig says, compared to that, half of one percent reporting they used crack, that was tiny.

    Craig R.: Very small. Vanishingly small percentage of the population. The myths that were spread about it being instantly and inevitably addicting, I mean, even at the time they knew that 80 plus percent, closer to 90 percent of people who’d ever tried it hadn’t continued to use it.

    Krissy Clark: And the people using crack weren’t really everywhere. People who smoked crack were more likely to be poor, unemployed, less educated. The rate of crack use among black Americans was three times the rate among whites. That’s who crack was hurting the most.

    Craig R.: Not to say that there couldn’t be some random kid from a picket fence family who gets caught up in all this, that happens, certainly. But it didn’t spread to Westchester County, as the New York Times continently predicted it was doing, it just didn’t happen. It’s a drug and a high that appeals to those who have virtually nothing left to lose, and not too many other people. If you look at the aggregate statistics, overwhelmingly it’s the most impoverished and vulnerable parts of the population.

    Krissy Clark: All this information was available by the time Bush gave his baggie of crack speech. In fact, I looked through the Bush archives, and I found many of these statistics on crack use and how it was overall on the decline in the briefing memos that the National Institute on Drug Abuse gave the White House. So the White House had those memos as the President’s speech writers were working on the speech where the President held up a baggie full of drugs and told Americans that crack was a growing menace and a danger to everyone.

    Al Letson: In the end, congress gave President Bush what he wanted and then some. His administrations went on to spend more on anti-drug efforts than Nixon, Ford, Carter and Reagan combined. Over two-thirds of that money went to law enforcement. But what ever happened to that teenager who sold crack across the street from the White House?

    […]

    And HW was the good Republican… :-/

    Check out the show if you can.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  19. 19.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Suzanne: That GQ article contains this quote from Otto’s father Fred: “It looked like someone had taken a pair of pliers and re-arranged his bottom teeth,”

  20. 20.

    Brachiator

    OT, Spanish election results in the Age of Trump. From the BBC

    Spain’s ruling Socialists are on course to be the biggest party in the third election in four years, but have fallen short of a majority.

    PM Pedro Sánchez’s party is set to win under 29% and would need the support of left-wing Podemos and possibly Catalan nationalists to form a government.

    For the first time since military rule ended in the 1970s, a far-right party is set to enter parliament.

    Vox opposes multiculturalism, feminism and unrestricted migration.

    With most of the results in, the party was on more than 10% of the vote, which would give it 24 seats in the 350-seat parliament.

    The Socialist prime minister has presented himself as a bulwark against the far right’s advance.

  21. 21.

    Patricia Kayden

    Also, racist Trump supporters know that you only have to keep your word when dealing with white people.

    Not really. It depends on which White people. If they’re White Evangelical leaders and billionaires, then yes. If it’s just a low class deplorable, then naw. Not really.

  22. 22.

    jl

    Depraved liars and cheats. But we knew that.
    I guess they think they are very clever, making a backroom deal with a ‘bad guy;, lying about it and then not keeping the dirty bargain they negotiated. What that means for potentially important deals in the future with the good bad and ugly leaders of the world, who cares? Where the malice ends and the incompetence and stupidity starts is really hard to figure out.

    Edit: I was talking with a guy earlier today who wondered why Trump never even tried to appeal to anyone beyond his crazy base. My best guess was that Trump is a dumb con-person who is incapable of running cons that appeal to any but the dimmest bulbs.

  23. 23.

    Quaker in a Basement

    And on top of it all, he forced Bolton to go out and lie about it for him.

  25. 25.

    opiejeanne

    @Brachiator: He’s lying. I read somewhere that the payment has been authorized, and I wish I could locate the article. Or maybe the article was wrong. I dunno, but I figure Bolton is lying.

  26. 26.

    Another Scott

    @opiejeanne: Reuters:

    WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump approved payment of a $2 million bill presented by North Korea to cover its care of comatose American Otto Warmbier, a college student who died shortly after being returned home from 17 months in a North Korean prison, the Washington Post reported on Thursday.

    FILE PHOTO – Otto Frederick Warmbier, a University of Virginia student who has been detained in North Korea since early January, attends a news conference in Pyongyang, North Korea, in this photo released by Kyodo February 29, 2016. Mandatory credit REUTERS/Kyodo/File Photo

    The Post said an invoice was handed to State Department envoy Joseph Yun hours before Warmbier, 22, was flown out of Pyongyang in a coma on June 13, 2017. Warmbier died six days later.

    The U.S. envoy, who was sent to retrieve Warmbier, signed an agreement to pay the medical bill on instructions passed down from Trump, the Post reported, citing two unidentified people familiar with the situation.

    […]

    HTH.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  27. 27.

    Redshift

    @Brachiator: Yeah, but Vox actually did worse than many people expected, and according to earlier BBC coverage, the Francoists have existed for decades, they’ve just stayed inside the mainstream conservative parties. So the fact that they gained seats as a standalone party is maybe not quite as significant as it appears.

    At least that’s my optimistic take, since the socialists did win.

  28. 28.

    noncarborundum

    @MobiusKlein: I second, or third, or fourth the motion. (FWIW it’s not just BJ. I’m having the same trouble at Patheos. It started this morning at both sites.)

  32. 32.

    noncarborundum

    Also, what’s with the autoplay ads that wait until long after you’ve loaded the page (and usually after you’ve moved on to another tab or two or three) before firing up the audio?

  33. 33.

    Mike in NC

    So Kim gets to pocket $2M approved by our Fat Bastard. No wonder he calls Trump “Your Excellency”. He really knows how to con the world’s biggest con artist with a few words of flattery.

  34. 34.

    hells littlest angel

    I expect we’ll eventually find out that Trump offered North Korea ten cents on the dollar. “You did a lousy job.”

  37. 37.

    Another Scott

    @opiejeanne: It says that Donnie signed off on the payment, but it doesn’t say that the Treasury actually cut the check and delivered it. Uncle Sam can be pretty slow about paying his bills even under the best of circumstances, as I understand it.

    I have no doubt that Donnie approved the payment, myself.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  38. 38.

    J R in WV

    @Mike in NC:

    So Kim gets to pocket $2M approved by our Fat Bastard. No wonder he calls Trump “Your Excellency”.

    I would call Trump “Your Excellency” for $2,000,000.00 — but only once. More would cost more, a lot more!

  39. 39.

    Brachiator

    @Another Scott:

    From the article

    Peter Reuter is an economist and a Professor of Criminology at the University of Maryland, and he explained to me, law enforcement has basically two main goals when it comes to drugs. One is about morality, punishing people for doing things that we as a society see as bad. But the other goal of law enforcement, Peter says, is much more practical and economic. And it all comes back to thinking about markets for drugs like any other kind of market. That is, ruled by the forces of supply and demand…

    If the probability of getting arrested and going to prison goes up, then in the standard economic model there’ll be some people who will decide not to sell drugs at the current price because the compensation they get is not worth that additional risk. That may lead to an increase in price….

    And in fact, there’s some very striking evidence against this model that drug policy researchers have been banging their heads against for the last few years, namely that if you look at the 80s and 90s when the War on Drugs was ramping up and dealers were more likely to get locked up, the price of crack was falling. More intense law enforcement did not seem to deter people from selling or using drugs.

    This guy Reuters is a poor economist. Crime follows the rules of markets. Even Adam Smith knew this, and wrote about it.

    The crack market was so lucrative that new players rapidly entered the market to replace people who had been arrested. And of course, some criminals still ran their operations while in prison.

    More important, arrests did little to disrupt supply. I recall reading about record drug seizures, and millions of dollars worth of product being seized. And yet the street price barely fluctuated.

    Still, I agree with the idea that it is better to focus on treatment. But I also think you have to come up with new and alternative ways to reduce demand, since dealers will be trying to cultivate new users to replace the ones they lose.

  40. 40.

    Jay

    @John Revolta:

    The US is in the wrong either way.

    1# Nobody is supposed to be paying the NORKs for anything under US Sanctions, so agreeing to pay, even if you didn’t pay, is wrong,

    2# Having agreed to pay, with a Nation you are supposedly trying to reach a Nuclear Agreement with, and not paying, or claiming to have not paid, shows everyone, that under no conditions can the US be trusted,

    And I’m going to guess that their are a crapload of FOIA’s landing at Treasury, to try to find out if the US paid or not.

  41. 41.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??

    So Haaretz interviewed Dean Baquet:

    With the surge in digital subscribers in 2018, revenues from advertising in the internet editions rose at a record rate of 23 percent in the last quarter of the year. The improvement in the paper’s balance sheet, contrary to the dominant trend in the traditional print press, allowed the Times last year to hire the particularly large number of 120 new newsroom staff, thereby increasing the number of journalists at the paper to no fewer than 1,600, the highest number since its founding, in 1851.

    “Short-term, he did help us,” Baquet says about Trump’s effect on the paper. “Long-term I fear he hurt us.” He attributes the sharp rise in readership since 2016 to the fact that people “are just more interested in politics and care more about the news, either because they love him or they don’t like him. And lots of people started to subscribe, partly to support us, because he was attacking independent journalists, and partly because they wanted us to get him.”

    If things are so good, why he is worried? “If the president keeps saying we are fake news, we are enemies of the people, I fear that’s going to hurt us in the long run among other readers.” Most of the paper’s readers are liberals, notes Baquet, “but I don’t want to be read by just one segment of the population. If we’re not read widely, I think that that’s not a healthy place for a newspaper to be. I want people to read us, otherwise you can’t have impact.”

    He was also asked: Do you see anything positive in Trump’s term in office so far?

    “I think he has forced America to pay attention to people who felt disenfranchised. There are people in the center of the country who feel like they have been left behind, who feel like the people in positions of power don’t want to listen to them. Some of those people voted for Bernie Sanders, too. Many people in America thought that after the last financial crisis, everything was fine, but now people are telling us, ‘Stop, no, that’s not the case, pay attention to us.’ And I think Donald Trump has helped send the signal that we need to pay attention to those people. And I think that has been important.”

    If you want to know why the NYT ran so many Cleatus Safari pieces and has covered Trump the way it has, this is it.

  42. 42.

    schrodingers_cat

    OT: I finished watching all the episodes of Amazon Prime’s Made in Heaven, great show. I don’t remember the last time I enjoyed myself this much. If you have Prime watch it. More than 50% of the dialog is in English. If you liked Monsoon wedding, you will like this. Incidentally, Zoya Akhtar who is one of the writers and has directed two episodes of this show was Mira Nair’s assistant directors for that movie.

  45. 45.

    Ruckus

    @John Revolta:
    Knowing what is right or is passable world power actions is way above the standards of this maladministration. Should we have paid? Probably tough to say. In some cases probably yes, some probably no. But I’d bet it depends on what you want and what you expect out of the other country. And let’s face it 2 million is less than a rounding error in the US budget. 50 yrs ago I was told the total budget for the destroyer I was stationed on was 5 million a year. That’s all the repairs/maintance, munitions, payroll, fuel, food, everything. That was a nuclear weapon capable, guided missile equipped 300+ person crew, capable of 40 mph warship. There were over 500 vessels in the US Navy at the time, some much less costly, some far more.

  46. 46.

    Brachiator

    @Redshift:
    The socialists won, but they still have to be able to form a government.

    In Catalonia, which has its own language, voters turned out beyond expectations.

    The Catalan Republican Left (ERC), headed by Oriol Junqueras – who is facing trial on charges of sedition, rebellion and embezzlement of public funds over a 2017 referendum on Catalan independence – is projected to win 13 or 14 seats.

    That number is unprecedented for the Catalan nationalist party. If ERC agrees to a coalition with PSOE and UP, a government could likely be formed.

    However, PSOE leader Pedro Sanchez has taken a tough stance against Catalan independence, saying there would be “no referendum and no independence” during a rally in Barcelona on Friday.

    This is why the rise of the far right as its own party is dangerous. They can still have an impact despite small numbers if there is a hung parliament.

  48. 48.

    Brachiator

    @schrodingers_cat:

    I finished watching all the episodes of Amazon Prime’s Made in Heaven, great show. I don’t remember the last time I enjoyed myself this much.

    Noted. Thanks for the tip.

  49. 49.

    Steve in the ATL

    @Brachiator:

    More important, arrests did little to disrupt supply. I recall reading about record drug seizures, and millions of dollars worth of product being seized. And yet the street price barely fluctuated.

    That stuff is all built into the supply chain and profit models, so it will never have an impact.

    @Brachiator:

    But I also think you have to come up with new and alternative ways to reduce demand, since dealers will be trying to cultivate new users to replace the ones they lose.

    Reducing demand is the only to slow the drug trade. Interdiction at a meaningful level is impossible, and the governments of Mexico, Central America, and South America are utterly captured by the drug trade. “Plata o plomo” is a very real question in those places, a question with existential effect for the person being asked.

  51. 51.

    Ruckus

    @Brachiator:
    Yep.
    Supply and demand. Production and delivery ramped up, pricing goes down. There is always a minimum price for any product but once supply meets demand the price will become much more stable and if supply exceeds demand price will drop.

  53. 53.

    Brachiator

    @Jay:

    Very familiar with the stories about CIA involvement in the drug trade. I think it helped smooth the way, but was not essential. I look forward to revelations about the government and opioid trade.

  55. 55.

    Ruckus

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

    people who felt disenfranchised

    FELT disenfranchised.
    What a nice way of saying racist fucks.
    One could assume from Dean’s reply that he likes racists, if he’s trying this hard to capture their reading habits.

  56. 56.

    James E Powell

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

    That is one mofo I’d really like to punch in the face. What should happen is that the entire world of left & center left should turn on him and the NYT. But for reasons I’ve never understood, our side never does anything like that.

  57. 57.

    eemom

    That young man was a classmate of my daughter’s at UVA, and it breaks my heart what happened to him.

    For that horrific murder at the hands of that monstrous regime, and the agony of his family, to be made even WORSE by the thing in the white house, is just unspeakable.

    And for God’s sake STOP with the obscene speculation about “what really happened.” That article Suzanne cited above presented the best researched and best sourced account. You folks are not going to improve on it.

  58. 58.

    Steve in the ATL

    @James E Powell: because the book reviews, recipes, and crossword puzzle are so good that we ignore the fact that it’s helping destroy our country!

  59. 59.

    Brachiator

    @Steve in the ATL:

    That stuff is all built into the supply chain and profit models, so it will never have an impact.

    Yep.

    “Plata o plomo” is a very real question in those places, a question with existential effect for the person being asked.

    I don’t know how some of these governments will avoid being swallowed up by drug cartels.

  60. 60.

    polyorchnid octopunch

    @Brachiator: It was more than essential. The key here is that not only was any interdiction impossible, but the importation was guaranteed protected by an arm of the US government. This makes it trivial to ramp up supply to meet demand. From the point of view of the CIA (which is that they were basically buying the coke so the Contras would have money to buy arms from Iran, as part of the whole Iran/Contra fiasco), the coke was being processed and sent into black neighbourhoods (and therefore the human costs didn’t really matter from the POV of the USA), and just so long as they were able to pay the wholesale price of the coke it was a win win. This is a large part of the reason crack remained so cheap while powdered cocaine, smuggled by non-gov interests and sold into primarily white markets was so much more expensive.

    At one point, it was possible to make a LOT of money by buying crack and grinding it up, cutting it, and selling it into the more traditional white upper/middle class markets. That’s how huge the supply cost and quantity disparity was.

  61. 61.

    Steve in the ATL

    @polyorchnid octopunch:

    At one point, it was possible to make a LOT of money by buying crack and grinding it up, cutting it, and selling it into the more traditional white upper/middle class markets.

    And you tell your friends at the club that you are in “arbitrage” and they assume you work on Wall Street. Like your customers.

  62. 62.

    Chetan Murthy

    Either way this Warmbier ransom story plays out, it’s bad for America. Either (a) he did stiff them, in which case our word in negotiations with adversaries (and, heck, friends) is tarnished, or (b) he paid ’em, in which case now Li’l Kim has something else to hold over his head as blackmail.

    Ugh.

  63. 63.

    matt

    I bet they did pay and they’re lying about it to get a completely boneheaded ‘win’ scored to them in the media.

  65. 65.

    J R in WV

    @eemom:

    That young man was a classmate of my daughter’s at UVA, and it breaks my heart what happened to him.

    For that horrific murder at the hands of that monstrous regime, and the agony of his family, to be made even WORSE by the thing in the white house, is just unspeakable.

    And for God’s sake STOP with the obscene speculation about “what really happened.” That article Suzanne cited above presented the best researched and best sourced account. You folks are not going to improve on it.

    eemom, the article, towards the end, posits that the DPRK didn’t physically harm Otto Warmbier, that he may have had an allergic reaction, or attempted suicide, after some admittedly rough psychological treatment. Did you read the whole thing?

    Not to defend the DPRK here, but still, all the evidence says they don’t torture white Americans, because they want to use them as bargaining chips. Which makes sense. I wouldn’t go there on a bet.

    I would love to visit historic Persia, now known as Iran, but won’t go until things are considerably less stressful between Iran and the US…

  67. 67.

    Ruckus

    @J R in WV:
    Had a real nice young fellow working for me from Iran in the 80s. His dad had owned a mfg business when the shah was overthrown and they had to flee the country. Lost track of him a few years ago but some of the stories he told made me think the country was not bad at all and that someday it would probably be nice to visit. Not sure that will be in my lifetime, especially after the 2000-2008 and 2016-2020. maladministrations.

  68. 68.

    Jay

    @J R in WV:
    @Ruckus:

    Anthony Bourdain did a segment on Iran, a bunch of others have as well. As long as you are a simple Western Tourist and abide by their laws, it’s about as dangerous as Cuba and way less dangerous than Vietnam.

  71. 71.

    Ruckus

    @Gin & Tonic:
    Yeah that makes no sense whatsoever.
    Lots of folks have gone back and visited. People who went there during a war, as in military people, people who had friends who died there. To look around and see what it’s like without people shooting at you. Have yet to hear a story of problems. I’m sure that there have been some, it’s almost inevitable. But still haven’t heard anything, not a whisper. And most of the people who have gone have come back with glowing reports of Vietnam. I call bullshit.

  72. 72.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Ruckus: I had a wonderful time when visiting. Absolutely no issues anywhere.

    Still jonesing for that iced coffee I had in Hanoi.

  74. 74.

    Jay

    @Gin & Tonic:
    @Ruckus:

    There’s several million tons of UXO and agents White, Orange, Purple and the rest of the rainbow skittles chemical defoliants sprayed are in the food chain and some of the water.

    Iran doesn’t have that, therefore, much less dangerous, but still, not as dangerous as many areas of the USA.

  75. 75.

    Ruckus

    @Jay:
    I served in the US military during the Vietnam war. I suspect that I made contact with a lot of chemicals that didn’t do me any good, because the military was not all that careful with that sort of stuff. I’ve already had cancer that is often associated with industrial chemicals that were everywhere around any military equipment at the time, and in industries such as rocket motor production. I’ve had to help paint a ship and lived aboard when the ship was in drydock getting the bottom sandblasted and repainted, which is all lead/copper based paint. And it’s been almost 50 yrs since we stopped defoliating their country. So I’m not really worried about the chemicals. I’m far more worried about the citizens. From all outward appearances, I’m not dangerous, black, brown, I stand up to pee, am an atheist, so I’m not likely to be in a place that shitheads in this country shoot up or target. Cross fire, misaimed rounds sure, but a likely target? Nope. Of course I have a young acquaintance who was the Las Vegas shooting at the show where 58 people died, the fellow standing next to him was shot. So one never actually knows.

  76. 76.

    Jay

    @Ruckus:

    My friend Bob, was crew on the Herc’s that sprayed the chems. His health has been crap for 45 years, with no shortage of strange diseases.

    There is a wing at YVR’s Childrens Hospital, sponored by BC’s Vietnam Community, that’s dedicated to Vietnamese children with birth defects and strange diseases.

    Still on a scale of 0-10, Iran is a 0, Vietnam is a 1, and a US Mosque, Synagogue, Minority Church, Gay Nightclub, Confederate Monument protest, High School is about a 4 or more.

  78. 78.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    Few points

    1) why is anyone thinking Bolton is telling the truth here. He is another with a history of being a lying sack of shit.

    2) Going by the Mueller report – if Bolton is anywere near what happened, it would mostly be Trump promised the payment and Trump’s own staff ignored him.

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