After warming up by ranting about last night’s Fox News programming, Trump finally tweet-screams an account of the scrubbed Iran strike:
Jun 21, 2019 08:03:14 AM – President Obama made a desperate and terrible deal with Iran – Gave them 150 Billion Dollars plus I.8 Billion Dollars in CASH! Iran was in big trouble and he bailed them out. Gave them a free path to Nuclear Weapons, and SOON. Instead of saying thank you, Iran yelled…..
Jun 21, 2019 08:03:16 AM – ….Death to America. I terminated deal, which was not even ratified by Congress, and imposed strong sanctions. They are a much weakened nation today than at the beginning of my Presidency, when they were causing major problems throughout the Middle East. Now they are Bust!….
Jun 21, 2019 08:03:17 AM – ….On Monday they shot down an unmanned drone flying in International Waters. We were cocked & loaded to retaliate last night on 3 different sights when I asked, how many will die. 150 people, sir, was the answer from a General. 10 minutes before the strike I stopped it, not….
Jun 21, 2019 08:03:18 AM – ….proportionate to shooting down an unmanned drone. I am in no hurry, our Military is rebuilt, new, and ready to go, by far the best in the world. Sanctions are biting & more added last night. Iran can NEVER have Nuclear Weapons, not against the USA, and not against the WORLD!
Note that the outburst begins with several lies and contains multiple instances of self-aggrandizement, including the obligatory humble-brag about how generals call him “sir” — it’s pathetic how compulsively he points that out.
Anyhoo, what have we learned? Nothing. A malignant narcissist/pathological liar has weighed in with his account. I’ll believe it when someone with a shred of credibility, i.e., not Trump or a Trump minion, tells us how it went down.
Open thread!
On the Road and In Your Backyard
Gin & Tonic
Liar lies. Ho hum.
Baud
This whole Iran episode runs the risk of hijacking the first Democratic debate(s). I just hope Chuck Todd is able to keep it real.
Major Major Major Major
I don’t believe for a second that Trump worried too many Iranians might die in a strike.
bemused
Completely off his rocker. Does he have to drool, foam at the mouth and speak in gibberish tongues before even most Republicans have to agree he has to get booted out of WH? Oh wait, he’s already doing that.
john b
i know this is petty, but it’s fucking embarrassing that Trump doesn’t know the difference between “sites” and “sights”
Wapiti
@john b: Or that he’d reveal the number of targeted sites. Or sights.
Patricia Kayden
No kudos to Trump for calling off a provocative and completely unnecessary strike. Are military leaders okay with this warmongering? I would hope not. We don’t need yet another misadventure in the Middle East.
Wapiti
@Major Major Major Major: I could believe that the Pentagon explained that it would be a disproportionate attack. Pentagon lawyers (and leaders) do consider those terms.
bk
“cocked and loaded”
chopper
wait, so he called it off because he didn’t want to kill 150 iranian troops? is he really trying to come off as a humanitarian here?
CaseyL
Even if we take him at his word (Hah!), aren’t casualty estimates the sort of thing you do before ordering a strike?
No, one of his creditors told him to call it off. Putin or one of our local oligarchs.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@chopper: I’m guessing he likes the word “proportional.” He never heard it before and he thinks it’s something a president says.
MattF
I’m guessing the reason is ‘Vlad said no’.
Anonymous At Work
It’s not what “we” learned but what “Iran” learned, true or not, about Trump and his response capabilities and capacities. If they think that Trump fears a war but will compulsively bluster, then they have every incentive to escalate rhetorically in tense situations and expect Trump to back off, so that they can claim “victory”.
What Iran thinks they learned and what is actually true can be different, which is what can cause a war to happen by accident. That’s the real danger here.
Baud
@chopper:
Probably, but it’s possible he was told what a major escalation it would be and that there was no way the Iranians would let it go, and he backed off (more from fear than thought or morals, but we’ll take it).
Betty Cracker
I know it’s minor in the scheme of things, but I really wish someone would publicly tell Trump that generals HAVE to call him “sir.” They don’t do it because they respect him. It’s protocol. And civilians do it either to be polite or to suck up because he telegraphs this pathetic need for validation every time he opens his gob. Maybe next time Trump is holding an insane, rambling briefing and quotes someone calling him “sir” (happens A LOT), a reporter could say, “Just to clarify, Mr. President, if the electoral college elevated an oozing syphilitic chancre to the presidency, generals would address it as ‘sir,’ and I would call it ‘Mr. President.’ It’s protocol and custom and has nothing to do with your personal qualities. Sir.”
Dave
@Anonymous At Work: It’s the problem with dealing with impulsive weak men. They will back down and Dodge and weave until they decide to act capriciously. Makes the entire situation more dangerous.
MattF
@Betty Cracker: Treason!
The Moar You Know
@bemused: He could order every puppy in America be gassed and Republicans would praise him to the skies for confronting the long overlooked socialist canine menace.
Kattails
We could use a bunch of top people from previous administrations to start calling out these numbers, daily and hourly. Even Obama. Is this not done of out politeness? Just to get a dose of reality out there, since the news media have become worthless lackeys. What is that first tweet? What orifice did he pull those numbers out of? What are my best sources for fact-checking this garbage? I’m trying to figure out how I could pay my mortgage and pet sitters if I offer to split the gas with TaMara and head out to the streets.
Immanentize
@Baud:
You know Todd is going to ask every candidate if they agree with him that we should NOT call them concentration camps.
Immanentize
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
None of that tweet rage was written by Trump. A parting effort by Sanders maybe.
Baud
@Immanentize:
I wonder if they’ll ask the same questions both nights. Are they going to keep the second night candidates in isolation booths so they don’t hear the questions?
The Moar You Know
@Kattails: It’s not done because next time we hold the office then it gets done to us.
This is why the GOP is going to fight to the death to hold the Senate. McConnell broke all the rules. There will be payback for that. They’re scared shitless of that and should be.
Immanentize
@Anonymous At Work:
Saddam thought Bush I gave him the green light to invade Kuwait.
chris
“They’re cocked and loaded too, SIR!”
“Oh shit! Oh dear!…”
I wondered at first if the “150” meant American casualties. Iran does have the capability.
Immanentize
@Baud: my expectation is that they will use any news making quote from night one as a mean girl question night two. And I predict they will try to get a fight between Warren and Sanders going. Warren will not bite, but Sanders will.
plato
Sights? Jeez.
Immanentize
@Kattails:
Indeed, we need some Top men working on it right now.
chris
Meanwhile,there are too many fucking meanwhiles!
MattF
@Immanentize: Yeah— the misspelling was probably deliberate.
germy
@Immanentize:
http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/06/sanders-and-warren-had-a-non-aggression-deal-is-it-over.html
Jeffro
Great…a CINC whose first, last, and only considerations before going to war are a) how will this impact my already-shitty poll numbers and b) what does Vlad want me to do?
We won’t be so lucky next time…
waspuppet
Absolutely right that one of his creditors called this off.
Also, notice that at no point does he say that HE authorized the strike that he called off. He wants us to think it’s something that just happened.
Citizen Alan
@Immanentize:
I would quit my job and go to work full time as a volunteer for any candidate who says something along the lines of “Chuck, they’re concentration camps. And the fact that you desperately don’t want to call them that makes you a collaborator.”
stan
According to what our then-ambassador said, we pretty much did greenlight that one.
Immanentize
@Citizen Alan:
I am right there with you, brother.
Lapassionara
Is it too early to start drinking?
OT, but we are trying to get St Louis jackals together next week, Thursday evening, when Opiejeane is in town. I have emailed Quinerly, but she has not responded. If you’re lurking, Quinerly, please check your emails. Thx.
The Moar You Know
@germy: Bernie agreed to that on the condition that Bernie would win.
@plato: It should be a little thing given the concentration camps and the encouragement of Nazism and naked corruption, but my absolute red line with this fucker, the thing that makes just want to burn shit down, is that he’s goddamn illiterate.
The President of the United States is illiterate. Fuck.
Immanentize
@stan:
Which makes it, in so many ways, the original sin of this era.
Amir Khalid
@germy:
Knowing just how Wilmer fights, I wouldn’t entirely trust him to honour a nonaggression agreement, especially one made without a neutral witness present.
rikyrah
Hicks transcript provides window on 2016 dual Trump tape crises
Rachel Maddow reports on the evasiveness and obstruction of testimony by former Donald Trump aide Hope Hicks before the House Judiciary Committee, but finds insight in a passage about how the Trump campaign handled the Access Hollywood tape while a rumored lewd tape of Trump with Russian prostitutes was assigned to Michael Cohen to handle.
rikyrah
Trump has chosen lobbyists to run EPA, HHS, DOD, and Interior
Rachel Maddow reports on the industry lobbyists running federal agencies in the Donald Trump administration and notes the irony of Trump boasting at a Florida rally of staring down lobbyists just hours after tapping former Raytheon lobbyist Mark Esper to run the Department of Defense (replacing former Boeing executive Patrick Shanahan).
rikyrah
BREAKING: US Supreme Court has reversed the conviction of a Mississippi death row inmate who said the state prosecutor repeatedly kicked black people off the jury each time he was tried for the same murders. https://t.co/BbCgdc6Qb3
— NBC News (@NBCNews) June 21, 2019
Betty Cracker
Another petty observation: If the US recovers from the Trump debacle, part of the attempt to restore the dignity of the office should be discontinuing the Presidential Medal of Freedom since Trump has made them ridiculous by handing them out willy-nilly to sycophants and crackpots. I realize they were always kind of a bullshit perk, but there were at least minimal standards before, and now there are none. Most recently, Trump awarded one to the Laffer guy, whose thoroughly discredited theory is a joke to anyone capable of doing simple sums. During the ceremony, Trump allegedly claimed he’d studied the Laffer Curve theory “at Wharton,” even though Trump “graduated” in the 1960s and Laffer didn’t come up with his bullshit theory until a decade later. While we’re at it, maybe rebrand Wharton too. It has also been smeared with shit by association.
rikyrah
Pressure, new union thwarts moves to politicize USDA under Trump
Rachel Maddow reports on Trump agriculture secretary Sonny Perdue’s effort to sideline career USDA scientists whose research doesn’t agree with Trump’s agenda, and how political pressure and a new employee union played a role in reversing some of those decisions.
The Moar You Know
@Betty Cracker: Pull their accreditation for handing out degrees to people who obviously could not have ever done the work for one.
Fred probably put the stooge who did all of Donnie’s college writing under an apartment building in Queens somewhere, but if said stooge is still alive I’d sure like them to pipe up.
bemused
@The Moar You Know:
No doubt about that!
I just read “The Belief That Trump Is a Messiah Is Rampant and Dangerous” by cognitive psychology researcher, Bobby Azarian. Not really news to most of us here that for trump evangelicals, it’s not just fear that keeps them in line, it’s faith that trump has been sent by God to protect a Christian nation.
I think other diehard trump fans love him because he frees them up to let all their hate flags fly right out in the open.
rikyrah
Scientists push back against apparent purge at USDA under Trump
Kevin Hunt, a geographer at the USDA’s Economic Research Service, talks with Rachel Maddow about the Trump administration’s effort to push scientists out of the USDA, and the newly formed employee union in his division of the department of which he is the acting-vice president.
bemused
@chris:
I thought I heard on tv Sater was going to answer every question. I guess he failed to mention he wasn’t going to show up to do that.
Hoodie
His narrative makes you wonder if he ever called for a strike to begin with. It’s consistent with him asking for a contingency plan after the drone was shot down, and the DoD telling him that a minimum response would kill 150 Iranians. There would have been no actual order to proceed. It’s another example of Trump creating a drama where none exists so he can make himself look decisive, like the bullshit he conjured up about the Mexican tariffs. Iranians have shot down drones before, they just happened to get an expensive one this time, probably because someone was fucking around too close to Iranian airspace near the Strait of Hormuz. What should bother the DoD is that the Iranians can apparently take down their $130M toys, and how that compromises our war plans.
Gin & Tonic
@rikyrah: And Uncle Clarence wrote the dissenting opinion.
Betty Cracker
@chris: He’s a scumbag, but let’s hope he doesn’t turn up dead.
chris
@rikyrah: Reminds me of this, sad that it’s necessary in Canada.
Cacti
I agree that it’s kind of terrifying that we have a malicious idiot as commander in chief of the armed forces.
But at least we can all agree that the real enemy is Joe Biden.
chris
@bemused: @Betty Cracker: That was my first thought. Seems like only yesterday he said he would answer all the questions.
rikyrah
This is the link to the video of them in court, arguing this demon azz shyt??
The looks on the judges’ faces ??
Govt says doesn’t owe detainees children soap, toothbrushes
https://www.msnbc.com/all-in/watch/govt-says-doesn-t-owe-detainees-children-soap-toothbrushes-62376517707 via @msnbc
Amir Khalid
@Cacti:
Joe Biden is not your enemy. At worst, he is your enemy’s naive dupe.
MattF
@chris: Nerve gas makes it hard to testify.
rikyrah
@Gin & Tonic:
Of course he did.
Lips pursed.
germy
@Betty Cracker:
Chyron HR
@germy:
Question: If B-wad debates Senator Warren, how many times will he accidentally call her “Hillary”?
Followup question: How many times will he do it on purpose?
A Ghost To Most
Doofus doesn’t even know the common usage is “locked and loaded”. I suspect too many pron movies.
Everybody is lying.
mrmoshpotato
@Baud:
Oh Baud. Are you always this funny in the morning?
Chuckles: The Republicans want to bomb the shit out of Iran. How would you bomb the shit out of Iran?
Dem candidate: Well I(Chuckles interrupts)SEE? BOTH SIDES ARE EQUALLY AS BAD!
@Immanentize:
This probably will actually be asked. Fuck Chuck Todd.
I’d love to see Harris or Warren ask him about his admission to Lewis Black about not asking tough questions.
“Chuck, why are you too chickenshit to ask Republicans questions about the atrocities they’re committing? What the hell is wrong with you, you collaborating fuck?”
bemused
@rikyrah:
Utter monsters. Everyone facilitating this from the top down to those working in jails for kids are empty souls.
Betty Cracker
Okay, now the Iranians have weighed in on what happened with the scrubbed strike. Via Reuters:
So basically, Trump tried a bluff, and the Iranians called his bluff, and Trump backed off. That makes more sense than Trump’s account, which is that he wasn’t informed of casualty estimates until fighter jets were already in the air. Even if, like me, your only source of information about how this shit works is West Wing reruns, Trump’s story sounded hinky…
MattF
@Chyron HR: I gather that Sanders objects to Warren being female.
James E Powell
Additional depressing thought: consider how many Americans accept everything in those tweets as fact.
A Ghost To Most
@MattF:
Cacti
@Amir Khalid:
I know. If only he was as savvy as every internet rando who’s never held office.
VOR
@Betty Cracker: It’s Trump’s Razor: the stupidest reason consistent with the facts is most likely correct. Of course the Pentagon would have casualty estimates for any strikes. Trump may not have asked for them or may not have listened to them, but no way was that information not available. And the Pentagon probably offered alternatives with even lower, possibly zero, casualties. Of course the alternative, that Trump made an impulsive, ill-informed decision to attack, and then impulsively changed his mind, makes sense too. He’s not exactly playing chess here, looking 5 moves ahead. As noted before, it’s Hungry Hungry Hippos with Trump
mrmoshpotato
@Chyron HR: How many times will he respond to a question by yelling out, “THE REAL PROBLEM IS INCOME INEQUALITY!”?
rikyrah
@James E Powell:
The same group of rubes that still support him. They have never depressed me. They only anger me.
trollhattan
@Wapiti:
But the view is terrific!
@MattF:
Yuppers. Goverin’s complicated, isn’t it Donny?
rikyrah
@Betty Cracker:
I’ll say it again:
Mess with the Persians if you want to.
They are not playing with us.
Iran IS NOT
IS NOT
IS NOT
Iraq
Cacti
@MattF:
He objects to anyone who isn’t Bernie, but he seems to have a particular hostility towards women. I guess Marxists do the egalitarian thing better in theory than in practice.
D wise
@john b: well what do you expect from a man who met the Prince of Whales.
plato
There won’t be another Obama to rebuild usa, usa brand after this cretin’ pathetic regime.
PPCLI
@Immanentize:
No doubt. But anyone who has had decades in politics knows enough to answer that question with something like: “The Republicans love to distract you with questions about words. But what matters are the ACTIONS. What matters is the shameful, horrifying treatment of helpless children, ripped from their parents and neglected. Just yesterday the Trump Administration lawyers were defending their practice of not giving soap or toothbrushes to children. This is not some unconfirmed rumor: THAT IS WHAT PRESIDENT TRUMP’s LAWYERS WERE ARGUING. HIS LAWYERS. [ PPCLI comment: of course it isn’t strictly speaking HIS lawyers but rather the administration. But in politics you win no votes by making such fine distinctions] President Trump won’t even let the children bathe for weeks. Is this what America stands for? Ripping children from their parents and denying them even the most basic cleanliness? And why? No reason except to let the President and the people around them strut about and pretend they are tough guys, mistreating children this way. And don’t let anyone tell you this was a one-time problem due to human error. The president’s lawyers are arguing that denying soap to a parentless an eight year old should be permitted as a matter of policy … ” Etc.
Take control of the exchange. Make any question in this neighborhood immediately a springboard to this attack. If a politician can’t get mileage out of an administration that is going to court for the right to deny soap and toothbrushes to 6 year olds, that politician should find another line of work.
And if there is a follow-up question, repeat “If the Republicans think we should debate words instead of looking directly at the mistreatment of these children — according to the administration’s own lawyers, arguing in court — then that tells you all you need to know about them. I am concerned about the horrifying treatment of little children…”
I’m no politician, and so no doubt I miss a lot, but this seems like it ought to be for politics what “Keep your head up and keep your stick on the ice” is for kids learning hockey. Basic stuff.
plato
For a Russian, he is very articulate in English.
Villago Delenda Est
“Our military is rebuilt”
Oh, FOAD, you draft dodging coward.
Karen
There is NO way the US could have purposely flew their drones into Iranian airspace knowing the Iranians would shoot them down and they could claim they wanted a war, right?
Brachiator
Apparently, we didn’t have a military before Trump, or it was just 3 guys and some rusty rifles.
Trump’s lies and bullshit will be buffed and polished by Fox News. It doesn’t much matter what the real story might be. And we are still poised to do something incredibly stupid for no good reason.
Villago Delenda Est
@Karen: CENTCOM says the drone was over international waters the entire flight. Iran says no, it violated our airspace.
I’ll take the word of the Iranians over any stooges for Donald.
plato
Villago Delenda Est
@bemused: They are committing crimes against humanity. Punish them accordingly for their crimes.
Brachiator
@PPCLI:
I think you pretty much nailed it.
Well said.
patrick II
@VOR:
I often want to change that to the most venal reason consistent with the facts is most likely correct. Of course, they are often the same thing.
A Ghost To Most
@rikyrah:
Gin & Tonic
@plato:
I’m sorry, what is the point of this comment? People (other than Americans, of course) know multiple languages. It is common for a world traveler such as Kasparov to be “articulate” in several. Even some of the commenters here are “articulate” in more than one.
Chyron HR
@MattF:
You’ll note that while he claims to have been a leader of the civil rights movement AND the gay rights movement, he doesn’t even bother to lie about being a feminist champion.
Damned_at_Random
I took “cocked and loaded” to mean there were no women in the situation room
Aleta
You can hear the projector running in his head.
Every day. All scenes written, directed and starring POS US.
MisterForkbeard
The key admission here is that he didn’t even ask what kind of casualties they expected before authorizing strikes. He had to ask while they were in the air and about to bomb a bunch of people.
And this is in HIS telling.
Amir Khalid
@Cacti:
Excuse me? I am not just any internet rando, I am a foreign internet rando.
Frankensteinbeck
So, for the hundredth time, Trump is a chickenshit who loves to threaten war but is too scared to go through with it. This is why I haven’t been afraid of this Iran confrontation. Absolutely, Pompeo and Bolton want a war with Iran, but it has to go through Trump and he’s too much a coward.
@The Moar You Know:
While giving each other high fives, because it has pissed them off their entire life that they would get in trouble for kicking dogs.
@germy:
I’m noticing that it’s increasingly important to racists that everyone know they’re racist – while of course getting furious at anyone who would suggest that their actions are racism.
@PPCLI:
I expect answers that start with “Yes, they’re concentration camps.” Whoever is most direct and angry about it will win the nomination.
chris
LOL. Just more redneck shit… Oh, wait… (Via Reddit.)
Plato
@Gin & Tonic:
It was a compliment, especially given the free world leader’s pathetic command of English. So, i don’t see what’s your beef with that factual observation.
J R in WV
@Karen:
Unpossible to fly a drone into Iranian airspace, they won’t do that, they have AI and know where they can’t go…//s
Just like GPS navigation systems didn’t sent the contractor trying to find our house up a creek in the next county… you can’t just drive even a 4×4 truck thru the woods…
chopper
@Betty Cracker:
exactly. and of course iran was all ‘new phone who dis’, knowing that their patron russia has trump by the short n’ curlies. iran is many things but it aint stupid.
this dumbass move is trump all over. it was his idea cause he thought this stupid shit would work, cause it’s the same sort of idea (minus the bombers, lol) he thinks works in real estate negotiations.
Obdurodon
Note how the original order was “we” and the retraction was “I” because he can’t admit that *his own* initial order was so dumb that others had to talk him down.
MisterForkbeard
@mrmoshpotato: I hope Chuck Todd DOES ask about concentration camps. Because a candidate will tell him “They aren’t death camps. They ARE concentration camps. Legally, factually, historically. They’re even built on old WWII concentration camps. Just because that makes YOU and the Republicans uncomfortable doesn’t meant our country isn’t doing this to young children for no reason, and it’s a sign of just how far the moral rot from Trump has travelled that you’re even asking this.”
And that candidate will get a standing ovation. And probably a few points in the polls.
…okay, that last bit about moral rot is just wishful thinking. The rest of it, though… someone would say it.
J R in WV
@Amir Khalid:
No, no, you are our pet pedant pundit person… in multiple languages. ;-)
Gin & Tonic
@Plato: It sounded condescending. To non-native speakers of English, “gee, your English is very good” often comes across that way, especially since the median American can’t even master one language.
Amir Khalid
@Plato:
It’s condescending to phrase a compliment this way: “For a [something], he’s very good at …” It also implies you hold a prejudice that people of that group are not good at that thing.
opiejeanne
@Immanentize: Sanders is not on the same night as Warren. Night 2 is the three Bs plus Kamala Harris. Bernie, Biden, and Buttig… Mayor Pet.
Gin & Tonic
And naturally, Amir Khalid (whose English is actually very good, for a Malaysian) phrased it better than I could.
Plato
@Gin & Tonic: @Amir Khalid:
As I said, it was a compliment, like saying to native English speaker, ‘your French /German/whatever is good’. You can read whatever you want into it.
Kattails
@Immanentize: Thank you, I needed a laugh. I After last night’s posts from Cheryl and Adam I want to either scream or cry and neither is particularly helpful. @The Moar You Know: They absolutely should be scared shitless of that, because all we have to do is tell the truth about them. Over and over. And the next time we hold office–they’re going to do what they do anyway, which is to tear us down with lies; so us tearing them down with by hosing them with their own sh*t don’t bother me one bit.
Damn, somebody remind me to bring the frickin’ timer along when I put the pasta on & sneak upstairs for a quick look at BJ, so I can hear it and not get overcooked pasta… you wouldn’t believe how often this happens, why can’t I learn? Just so eager to study the learned opinions/snark that everything else goes by the wayside. Oh well it’s only 3 minutes overdone.
bemused
@Villago Delenda Est:
Definitely.
Villago Delenda Est
@MisterForkbeard: The first Nazi KZ (Konzentrationslager) was established in 1933, eight years before the KZ model was used for the Vernichtungslager, the death camps.
Concentration camp were prisons used without regard to accepted norms of arrest and detention. They were an essential part of Nazi systematic oppression.
TenguPhule
Every last word a lie. Including am and to.
Anonymous At Work
@mrmoshpotato: I’ll take that action against him saying his solution is the “coming political revolution” that electing him will bring.
TenguPhule
@Baud:
Then we’re obviously screwed.
Kattails
@rikyrah: thanks for the link, watched in abject horror, but enjoyed Hayes’ little parting shot “…nothing short of (slight pause) deplorable.”
Off to work .
TenguPhule
@Betty Cracker:
Military Officers and reporters should abandon that as a lost cause. Trump and the GOP already have.
TenguPhule
@PPCLI:
I think we’ve found our primary winnower.
burnspbesq
It’s odd that Trump understands the concept and importance of proportionality far better than Netanyahu
burnspbesq
@rikyrah:
That’s so clearly the right answer that in a sane world it wouldn’t have made it to the supreme court.
MisterForkbeard
@Villago Delenda Est: I think we’re in agreement here.
Omnes Omnibus
@Betty Cracker: @TenguPhule: FWIW, any halfway decent soldier can make the word “sir” sound insolent as fuck.
burnspbesq
@mrmoshpotato:
Income inequality is a very serious problem. About that, Wilmer is correct.
If only he had a fucking clue about how to fix it.
mrmoshpotato
@MisterForkbeard: I agree, and that kind of response would be great.
My problem is that I could see Chuck Todd asking something loaded like ” Isn’t it disrespectful to the victims of the Holocaust to call these migrant detention camps ‘concentration camps’?” and regardless of the candidate’s response, I would still want to punch Chuckles in both sides of his bothsiderist bullshit head.
Michael Allen
@Gin & Tonic: And with the usual lack of literacy: “3 different sights”
mrmoshpotato
@burnspbesq:
Agreed, but Wilmer 1. Sees it as really the only problem, and 2. Has no clue about fixing it as you said.
Barbara
@mrmoshpotato: And the answer is, the greatest respect we can show is to ensure it doesn’t happen again. If someone had been willing to stand up for them, maybe we would be remembering the way they lived and not the way they died. What does he think “never again” means? Fuckwit.
Hob
@Plato: If several different people, both Americans and not, are telling you that what you said sounds iffy for specific reasons, maybe consider that they might not all be reading too much into it? Or do you really think it’s impossible for you to say something inadvisable if you didn’t mean it in a bad way?
You didn’t say his English was good, you said it was good for a Russian. There’s no way to interpret that other than “it’s unusual for a Russian to speak English well.” And that’s not true. It is unusual for Americans to speak any other language well, so “your French is good for an American” really is a compliment to that individual American – even though it still doesn’t reflect well on our country.
Procopius
@Patricia Kayden:
Doesn’t matter if they like it or not, if Trump gives the order they must obey. Unless top generals are going to say, “That’s an illegal order and I won’t do it,” which I don’t believe is ever going to happen. Right now the Department of Defense is in a leadership vacuum, apparently brought about by Bolton’s extraordinary skills. What we need is for the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs to come out publicly and say that a war with Iran will break our armed forces, require a re-institution of the draft, and probably last at least twenty years. Even if we use nukes, which is so dangerous I don’t even want to think about the possibility, but I’m sure glad I’m so old because I don’t have much longer to live anyway.
Procopius
@waspuppet:
This is important. I don’t trust the New York Fishwrap when they say the strike was ordered after a full-scale conference at the White House. I want to hear a credible source (probably the Newest Acting Secretary of Defense) say that the strike was ordered by the President, not that it was ordered by the National Security Council and cancelled when the President learned about it from Tucker Carlson. There may have been a full-scale conference, and the strike may have been ordered afterward, but this is not a law-abiding administration* and the NSC staff has been playing fast and loose with the chain of command for decades.
ETA: Actually, I’ll believe it if Adam L. Silverman says so here or TTG says so over at Sic Semper Tyrannis.
Tehanu
@PPCLI:
Damn straight! Thank you!