While those of us who are old enough to remember the Cold War sometimes feel a disorienting dissonance when Republicans suck up to a Russian autocrat, the explanation is pretty simple:
Note to Max Boot: they aren’t apologists as much as authoritarians who want a Putin like autocrat to lead this country. Thats what they liked about you know who and this is why they’ll continue to destroy our democratic institutions https://t.co/7prYx0JE7B pic.twitter.com/so2m63EMB0
— Look here, Jack (@realworldrj) February 24, 2022
This isn’t new. Tucker Carlson was broadcasting from Budapest last summer. From an 8/7/2021 NYT article:
The visit by Mr. Carlson, the top-rated host on the Rupert Murdoch-owned Fox News, bolsters Mr. Orban’s mission to establish Budapest as an ideological center for what he sees as an international conservative movement.
For Mr. Carlson, the Hungary trip was an opportunity to put Mr. Orban, whom he admires, on the map for his viewers back home, a conservative audience that may be open to the sort of illiberalism promoted by the Hungarian leader.
Open to it? The hard right in the U.S. have been lapping this shit up at home and abroad for decades!
The choice is authoritarianism vs. democracy, and they’ve picked a side. The question is will their fellow citizens see it.
germy
Baud
@germy:
Twitter can’t wait!
narya
Gonna again recommend Lincoln’s Bible’s podcast, The World Beneath. In addition to being a fascinating history of codebreaking, it’s also a detailed, deep dive into money laundering then and now. Very useful in the context of the current conversations.
germy
terraformer
The question is whether big press and media will help educate citizens so they can see who Republicans are and what they’re doing, or will they merely report what Republicans say and what Democrats say free of context or nuance? Given how the press and media have been operating for the past 5 years or so in particular, I’d be surprised if it’s anything but the latter option
TheOtherHank
Here’s the thing I don’t understand: from what I’ve heard, Russia’s economy is about the size of Italy’s and it’s based on extraction industries (oil, gas, mining, etc). If sanctions kick in, and the Ukrainians engage in guerilla warfare, what is the Russian plan for actually being able to conduct the war and continue to be a functioning country?
Eggbert
Just think how much better things would be if the US had followed the advice of some technocratic war monkeys and had inserted troops into Kiev!!!
germy
germy
Aziz, light!
Their fellow citizens will see only the prices of gasoline and beef.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
This really that different that Anti-Vaxxers, Flat Earthers and Q-anon. Carlson is charismaless, annoying, twat with a punchable face that the only way he gets ratings is by trolling. It’s not like Carlson going to do a comedy monolog or sing a song.
Come to think of it Tucker Carson being punched and beaten by a trained MMA fighter would be something I would pay to watch. Not that I am that upset by the man, just watching Carlson be tortured would be a guilt free experience. The guy is begging for it.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Mitt Romney is apparently taking a victory lap from that thing he said in 2012. I’ll let the Ragnarok Lobster speak for me, because I’ve got to log off and go do things
germy
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I’m sure he’ll defeat Obama next time!
dmsilev
@TheOtherHank: The only thing I can think of is that Putin has convinced himself that (a) Ukraine won’t have the stomach for guerrilla warfare and/or kicking out whatever puppet government he puts in place and (b) the West won’t do anything serious and long-term. In other words, he’s assuming he won’t have to deal with any long-term problems.
zhena gogolia
A clear essay on Putin’s historical claims by historian Victoria Smolkin:
https://meduza.io/en/feature/2022/02/24/fantasy-is-not-history
dmsilev
In case people haven’t heard yet, Biden is planning on a national address at 12:30 Eastern.
satby
Andy
@TheOtherHank:
You’re 100% right. Keeping a military in the field is EXPENSIVE. Our plan should be to lay back, help the Ukrainian guerillas and wait for Putin to be removed by his circle of oligarchs.
West of the Rockies
I’d sure love it if the 1/6 committee began its televised hearings and started putting all ugly Trumplings on the ropes already. Shut them up, make them uncomfortable, start them turning on each other, and reduce their ability to inflict further damage on this country.
Until then, Trump and Cruz and squinty Tucker and every other motherf#*%er keep babbling lies.
germy
Hildebrand
@TheOtherHank: I’m with you on this. Just how long will Putin be able to sustain any kind of war footing? Pair that with any of the sanctions biting and you’ve got a real economic disaster on the home front blowing up pretty quick.
Yes, yes – the oligarchs. Of course they will do fine. But what happens when you’ve got a serious worker problem because they have all realized that their lives can’t get much worse if they decide to rebel? Even oligarchs need the peasantry to do their work.
Beyond that – this is going to turn into a war of occupation for Putin (because I just can’t see the Ukrainians deciding to just live with new Russian control). There is no way this turns out the way Putin is fantasizing.
Spanky
Goddammit, every time they use “Mr. Carlson”, I flash back to WKRP.
Everything Tucker touches turns to shit.
The Moar You Know
@Andy: this is unlikely. He’s got more money than all the rest of them. He is not ruling Russia from a position of weakness, unlike Trump.
I suspect, regardless of what happens in Ukraine, the fucker is going to be around, causing trouble for the West for quite a while unless Xi decides he’s more trouble than he’s worth.
BruceFromOhio
No longer a matter of if.
Xavier
Peter Thiel has said he doesn’t believe in democracy. He believes that people like Peter Thiel should be running this country, not people like you and me. That’s why he’s on a crusade to elect Republicans.
TBF, I don’t think people like you and I are great shakes at running a country. But I support democracy unconditionally because I don’t believe people like Peter Thiel can be trusted with your and my interests.
trollhattan
@TheOtherHank:
Credit!
IDK, suspect Russia is run like the mafia and so long as the folks actually in charge are getting their “taste” of every single transaction they will always be rich and thus, bidnez as usual.
Raytheon must be having mixed emotions watching cruise missiles being lobbed into Ukraine and yet, they have no contracts ready to replace the expended stockpile.
WaterGirl
@dmsilev: i have a Biden speaking live post scheduled to go up at noon Eastern.
trollhattan
@Spanky:
Such a punchable face and the capacity to live on for decades, further perfecting his nasty, nasty persona. Tucker is right alongside Ted Cruz as candidates for Worst Possible American.
trollhattan
@germy: To be sure, he has nothing to Bragg about here.
Alce_e_ardillo
@Baud: We need a new half-thought through opinion to generate our hot takes!
Ohio Mom
Yeah, yeah, I understand why the Righties love Putin and Russia and why Lefties like me have discovered how deep our patriotism for the U.S. of A. really is.
But I don’t think this thought will ever make me not dizzy.
Alce_e_ardillo
@The Moar You Know: unless that money somehow makes him invulnerable to bullets, he can always be replaced.
Dan B
@Xavier: Peter Thiel is gay. He married his longtime boyfriend. He also associates with white supremacists and Federalist Society members. I don’t know how he’ll feel when the Federalist Supremes annul most same gender marriages and make it easy to remove their children, Thiel has two. The white supremacists may have fun adventures with a little off-brand gay harassment (bashing). Money can buy you a lot of protection. But it may not prevent armed nuts from living out their revenge fantasies.
Gay activists are horrified at his actions.
MisterDancer
THIS. As I noted the other day, no less than Strom Thurmond not only had a kid with a Black woman, way back in the day, he financially supported her through college, and no one said a peep about it.
Thiel thinks he’ll never have to worry about anti-gay legislation, and the power he’ll have means no one will ever target him when that stuff passes. Worst comes to worst, he’ll just move overseas while pouring more money into making America a hell hole.
MisterDancer
@WaterGirl: thanks! I’m hoping to hear it live, if I can get a break.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@MisterDancer: Anyone who thinks gay rights are secure should take a look at abortion rights. We thought they were secure too
West of the Rockies
@trollhattan:
I think Ugly Tucker is worse than Cruz. He lies to three million pinheads five days a week, causing themto believe bullshit is chocolate pudding. Cruz doesn’t have three people who genuinely care what he says. YMMV.
Kropacetic
Cklearly he knew more about the state of his party than the public did in 2012.
Chris
@Xavier:
The point of democracy isn’t to pick the people who are best at running the country in any case. There’s no political system that can guarantee that, and the world’s tried pretty much all of them. The point of democracy is to ensure that the person who is running the country can’t ignore the people he’s governing. (The point of liberal democracy, “real” democracy with universal suffrage, is that he can’t completely ignore any of them).
Eolirin
@Dan B: He’ll flee back to NZ. He’s insulated from things going to hell here.
West of the Rockies
@Ohio Mom:
Remember when Republicans adored Red Dawn (in which plucky American teens defeated the wretched Red Army)? That was 40 years ago, pre-Limbaugh and Fox News.
Rightwing enraged argutainment has destroyed the all-too-susceptible minds of tens of millions.
Dan B
@MisterDancer: New Zealand! He has citizenship and property. Pray for Jacinda.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
Better yet, make the MMA fighter a diminutive woman.
As she beats him senseless, inject that shit straight into my veins.
Chris
@Ohio Mom:
Conservatives’ patriotism is always inch-deep. They only love their country because they perceive it as keeping them at the top of the pecking order. The second that’s gone, they turn on it. See also, Southern slaveowners throwing a revolution the second they were no longer winning elections in Washington, or French aristocrats begging the Prussians, Russians, and Austrians to invade France and save them from this republic the crazy rabble had just established.
Dan B
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Griswold goes and almost every right to privacy and autonomy falls. Sodomy! It’s the new black. Birth control! It’s the new disobedience. Punish!
Cris (without an H)
I just saw the news that DougJ has a new daughter! Warm wishes and congratulations to Doug and family!
https://twitter.com/DougJBalloon/status/1496567810188849153
Brachiator
So why does Rupert Murdoch, and other conservative moguls, have such a hot desire to see authoritarian governments spread? It’s not like they will get much richer than they already are.
Tucker Carlson, Hannity and the other Fox News morons are ultimately creatures of Rupert. They would not dare squeak unless he fed them their cheese.
And the Republicans who encourage and protect idiots like Trump (and apparently the up-and-coming DeSantis and others) are fools if they believe that they can contain and control any authoritarian that they put in place. History is not on their side when it comes to this.
But around the world, we have leaders who find that a large chunk of their citizens are willing to reject democracy if it tries to include all the people. In India, the Hindu nationalists have demonized Muslims. In the UK, BREXIT succeeded on the empty promise that screwing over immigrants would bring prosperity to ordinary Brits. And in the US, the right wing promises that white supremacy with a helping of sexism and anti-gay, anti-transgender bigotry will make America great again.
VeniceRiley
I stole this comment
This morning we are watching Russia attempting to bomb Ukraine into the last century. Innocents are going to die to today. Ukrainians will be fighting for their lives and homeland.
Meanwhile, here in the States, we have a convoy of crybaby truckers headed to the Capitol because they can’t be bothered to wear a mask or get a shot and mouth-breathing troglodytes cheering Putin on in conservative media and social media.
All I can say is fuck anti-vaxxers, fuck anti-maskers, and fuck MAGATS.
VOR
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Congresswoman Sharice Davids (D) is Native American, openly gay, and was an MMA fighter. According to Google, she’s 5’3″. Would that work?
Eolirin
@Dan B: God, if Griswold goes down we better never lose control of the federal government again. They will (at least attempt to) restore anti-miscegenation laws in addition to recriminalizing being gay and banning all contraception.
Miss Bianca
@Ohio Mom:
Yeah, I’m right there with you, panting for breath as my head spins.
Dan B
@Brachiator: The folks (27%) who are rage junkies will not be happy if they get their authoritarian betters. They will need more things to rage at. There will be a good chance of mob violence and the authoritarian leaders who turn the police on the mob will find they have problems.
Miss Bianca
@VOR: I might, indeed, pay good money to watch Sharice Davids beat up Tucker Carlson.
Dan B
@Eolirin: Shhhhh!!!! Don’t tell Ginni.
trollhattan
@Dan B:
Guessing it’s like all the rich ladies in anti-abortion circles who know if their loving daughters turn into teen sluts they can still get that abortion with the minor cost of a plane ticket. Either group thinks they can buy their way out of any pickle.
(Do Log Cabin Republicans still exist?)
Similarly, Steven Miller thinks the complete chant at Charlottesville was, “Jews will not replace us, except for that Miller guy, he’s one of the good ones.”
hueyplong
@Miss Bianca: I’d also pay, and would be happy to cover your ticket as well.
Dan B
@trollhattan: Log Cabin Rpublicans are still making pronouncements. They’ve been a bit quieter lately.
The analogy of the anti-abortion ladies is apt.
trollhattan
Once you have more money than you can possibly spend, you turn to acquiring power and coincidentally, crushing anybody who has more money than you. In Murdoch’s case, he believes (probably rightly) that he’ll be on the ins with most freshly minted dictators and maybe even get the keys to their national media.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
interesting (if true, as ever)
Chris
@trollhattan:
“What you are about to witness, Miss Lin, is not so much a missile attack, but the launch of a new world order. In precisely five minutes after your countrymen have attacked the British fleet, I shall retaliate for dear old England by sending this missile into Beijing, where General Chang has just called an emergency meeting of the Chinese High Command. Unfortunately, General Chang will be delayed in traffic, arriving just after the missile has killed your leaders, and too late to stop the air force from sinking the entire British fleet. But he will be just in time to take over the government, negotiate a truce, and emerge as a world leader, with the Nobel Peace Prize.”
“… And what do you get?”
“Me? Oh, nothing. Just exclusive broadcasting rights in China for the next hundred years.”
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Brave souls
I think it was Michael McFaul who said last night that Putin will probably come to regret this, but it will take years, not months, for him to realize it was a mistake.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@West of the Rockies:
Can we talk about what an asshole the Harry Dean Stanton character is? Rather than saying “boys, keep your heads down and see if you can make your way clear out of this”, he starts screaming “AVENGE ME”, as if he weren’t a giant piece of shit.
Chris
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
It really is remarkable how much his own inner circle seems to be just as much in the dark about this as the rest of us. He’s running the whole thing alone.
Dan B
An announcer on Newsmax, Peter Stinchfield (please respect the proper spelling of his name) stated that the invasion is fake news and “Putin is running circles around weak Joe Biden.”
Cognitive dissonance any?
Miss Bianca
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I truly wonder if Putin’s got years, rather than months, at his disposal.
Then again, I’ve wondered the same thing about Trump for…well, years.
Steeplejack
Interesting look behind the curtain at far-right manipulation of Facebook (thread):
Non-Twitter version here.
Hungry Joe
Only slightly OT: Does anyone know just how close Russian is to Ukrainian? I know that they’re both Eastern Slavic, and I think they’re mutually intelligible — or at least, a Ukrainian can get the gist of what a Russian is talking about, and (of course) vice-versa. But are they as close as, say, Swedish and Norwegian? Or is it more like Spanish and Italian?
It’s hard for a native English speaker like me, who, decades ago, at my best, could barely stumble around in high-school-level Spanish and Hebrew, to get my mind around having another language so close to my own. English’s closest linguistic neighbors are German and Dutch, and we can maybe pick up a word every now and then.
Brantl
The target market for *ucker Failson can’t even spell authoritarianism, much less understand what it means, they just want Zombie Rayguns back. Who was zombie the 1st time
Eolirin
@Steeplejack: Facebook needs to be regulated out of existence.
Brachiator
@trollhattan:
Often they can. Along with authoritarianism comes a big side of hypocrisy.
I remember a friend once pointing out a property here in Southern California, formerly run by the Catholic Church. Middle class and upper class people from back East would send their daughters here to give birth to unwanted children, and then return home free of the stain of having had children out of wedlock.
Geminid
The various responses to this conflict, both on the left and the right, interest me so I’ve been checking out leftie rag Common Dreems. Most comments to their Ukraine articles run along the lines of, “sleepy Joe is letting the Defense companies have their war, the CIA trains the Azov batttalion.” etc. A minority, maybe 20%, were forthright supporters of Ukraine’s side, and a few were emphatic about the site being infested with Russian propaganda.
On the other side, I happened to tune in ultra-conservative Mark Levin’s evening show yesterday. The perpetually angry Levin was hollering about Putin the way he hollers about H. Clinton. I was interested to hear him line up so adamantly on the side of Ukraine and NATO.
A little bit of Mark Levin goes a long way, though, so I moved on to 740AM out of Toronto. They come in after sunset and play oldies, 60’s music in the 6 o’clock hour. I got to hear “Like a Rolling Stone” for the first time in a while.
Mallard Filmore
@Eolirin:
Does Polish-Italian count as miscegenation? How about English-Irish?
God put the different peoples on their different continents. If He wanted them to mix, He would have created invading armies and slave traders.
trollhattan
@Hungry Joe:
More prosaically, when I hear Russians chatting at Costco I constantly wonder, “Russian, or Ukrainian?” Now, I’ll be watching for fistfights in the flat screen teevee aisles.
Mike in NC
@Geminid: I read somewhere that of all the scumbags at FOX News, the one who influenced Trump the most was Levin.
Brantl
@Geminid: Mark Levin has the most grating voice in radio, and it’s truth in advertising. That SOB could get lightning-struck by St. Valentine.
trollhattan
O/T after a promising and soggy December, it simply stopped raining and we have had nary a drop, since. So this isn’t a huge surprise.
Marmot
@Miss Bianca: With respect, this is a classic of information warfare, this speculation about the health of one’s enemies.
With TFG, it was always clear he is a narcissist—at least, to everyone who’s tangled with one. It’s not dementia, but I can’t blame anyone for thinking that—the simplistic, overriding motivations of a true narcissist are very hard for sane people to understand.
Gin & Tonic
@Hungry Joe: They are fairly close, but I’m not familiar enough with the other examples you provided to put it on a spectrum. Ukrainian seems to have more in common with Polish and Slovakian than with Russian, though. The “mutual intelligibility” is more in one direction – a Ukrainian is more likely to be comfortable in Russian than the other way around. Part of that is due to the fact that anyone old enough to have been in school before 1990 was likely taught in Russian. But much of the country is bi-lingual. If you watch Ukrainian TV, talk shows like MTP, it’s at first a little jarring to hear, say, a host ask a question in Russian and a guest to respond in Ukrainian, but it happens all the time and everyone is used to it.
Citizen Alan
@Eolirin: I’ve said for years that if the issue ever came before him, Clarence Thomas would vote to overturn Loving v Virginia, secure in the knowledge that he and Traitor Ginni lived in D.C. which would never pass an anti miscegenation law. This is the guy who smugly described Georgia’s law sending gays to prison for ten years over anal sex was “silly” but within the state’s power to criminalize.
Kattails
@Eolirin: and that would leave Ginny and Clarence where? Re: anti-miscegenation laws. Hummm. Edit, Citizen Alan beat me to it.
I will not write the Ukrainian people out of this equation. We can talk about the Russian populace revolting on Putin but Ukraine already did it and have had a solid taste of what their counterparts never have. I refuse to doom talk on them.
cain
@Eolirin: Don’t forget white washing history, burning books, and going after education.
Citizen Alan
@Chris: Rupert Murdoch: The only living person to have been the inspiration for a Bond villain.
Hungry Joe
@trollhattan: I have a good friend who is Bulgarian. He is, shall we say, not fond of Russia. He has a hilarious story about how, as a conscript in the Bulgarian army, he was assigned to guard a gigantic ammo dump and got so angry when the Russians jammed the BBC World Service on Punk Metal Night (or something like that) that he almost (or at least, he considered) setting off the ammo dump and starting WWIII.
Matt McIrvin
@Chris:
They “love America” in this odd abstract sense that, as many have observed, allows hating most of the people in it, or waving US and Confederate flags at the same time. Whatever they favor at the moment gets redefined as the true America.
Matt McIrvin
@Citizen Alan: I recall the character as being an odd cross between Murdoch and Bill Gates.
RaflW
BTW, it appears the mopheaded UK P.M. is looking to get the G7 to block Russia from SWIFT. Apparently Putin’s threat that blocking the global financial clearing mechanism would be a ‘provocation of war’ loses it’s sting after launching a massive war in Ukraine.
Citizen Alan
@Matt McIrvin: This is why I am filled with such contempt for filth who protest mask mandates by pinning homemade yellow stars to their clothes and comparing themselves to Anne Frank. As if every single one of these swine wouldn’t proudly turn in their neighbors for a pogram if they lived under the fascist regime they long for.
Matt McIrvin
@Citizen Alan: Members of marginalized groups who support tyranny always think the “one of the good ones” exception will keep them safe.
Sometimes they’re right.
ian
@Hungry Joe:
If you ever have time, look into Frisian. It is a not very widely spoken language in the Netherlands. It is a half-way Dutch, half English. I can understand it passably, and I don’t speak Dutch
Geminid
@VOR: Representative Davis has a real fight on her hands this coming election. Republicans gerrymandered her Kansas 3rd District so it’s close to 50-50, a true battleground.
Sharice Davids is one of the talented House Class of ’18. That year she knocked out Republican incumbent Kevin Yoder and became the first Democratic member of Congress from Kansas in many years. Davids hasn’t made much of a splash on the national stage, and hasn’t tried to. But she is a smart, hardworking, personable woman with a promising future, especially if she can hold the Kansas 3rd in November.
Chris
@Citizen Alan:
Technically, not the only… There’s also Francois Duvalier (Live And Let Die), Julian Assange (Skyfall), and the bad guy from Licence To Kill seems to be a mishmash of Pablo Escobar, Carlos Ledher, and Manuel Noriega.
But definitely one of the proud and the few!
@Matt McIrvin:
Supposedly, the writers were also aiming at Robert Maxwell (hence the shady death at sea), but most people didn’t get the reference and zeroed in on the Rupert Murdoch and Bill Gates similarities instead.
Chris
@Matt McIrvin:
Hard to get more symbolic than the assholes tearing the American flag off of the Capitol so they could put up the Trump flag instead.
JanieM
@Dorothy A. Winsor: I had a dream in the nineties, when we were having one of a long series of gay-related referenda in Maine, that I was in a line with all the other gay people, waiting to be loaded onto boxcars.
I have never thought our progress was irreversible. There is nothing some people would like more than to, in effect, erase us.
Matt McIrvin
@ian: I think the thing that keeps it from being too close is the legacy of the Norman Conquest and the amount of French vocabulary that got imported into English. Some linguists consider Middle English an Anglo-Saxon/French creole, though that classification is disputed.
Geminid
@Mike in NC: I wonder. Trump certainly would have liked what he heard from Levin. Hannitty and Carlson may have had more influence, though.
Wapiti
@Brachiator: In an Oligarchy, the Oligarchs are the nobility. Murdoch could buy his way in and might not have to pay tribute to more than a few people above himself.
lowtechcyclist
@germy:
This is one of those legal things I’ve never understood, going back to when Dubya did it.
If it’s a treaty, with our participation agreed to by 2/3 majorities of Congress, the United States of America is a party to it, not the President himself. Where the fuck does the Constitution allow the President to withdraw us from a treaty all by himself?
Miss Bianca
@Marmot: Uh…okay.
Miss Bianca
@RaflW:
This.
Chris
@Wapiti:
There’s also the fact that…
I read the book “McMafia” about modern organized crime about a decade ago, and one of the parts that really stayed with me was describing how during the Balkans wars of the 1990s, gangsters and oligarchs in Serbia, Bosnia, and Croatia alike were all working together to make money hand over fist from the war and its fallout, at the same time that they were also working closely with the genocidal political elites in all three countries that were trying to wipe each other out.
This is the future people like Putin and Murdoch want: a world balkanized into hyper-aggressive nationalist regimes that are at each other’s throats and don’t cooperate on anything, and a small transnational elite of oligarchs who’re on good terms with all of them, safe in the knowledge that they have friends on every side and that the international cooperation that would be needed to hold them accountable to any law will never happen.
lowtechcyclist
@Brachiator:
Now I’ve got Tom Lehrer’s “National Brotherhood Week” running through my head.
artem1s
IMO it’s always been a choice between a fascist serfdom ruled by oligarchs vs. democracy (or even a republic as they are so fond of screeching about). The GOP was never idealistically opposed to the actual Soviet Union style government. Their opposition was to labor unions who were inspired by communist and socialist ideas. And fair labor and civil rights laws that would undermine the dominance of capitalism as a driving force for all policy decisions. Long story short, they want us to shut up and be serfs for them. Almost all the Soviet Union states are still thinly veiled serfdoms with a monarchy of oligarchs instead of the Romanov’s holding all the power money. They admire Putin for laying out the roadmap to their wetdream future for the USA.
Geminid
@lowtechcyclist: The treaty might have an op-out clause. Some treaties do, with a provision for giving notice. That could within the authority of the President.
But this is just a guess. There probably are articles from when we left the treaty that treat this subject. At the time the story did not get as much attention as it deserved, but it was well reported.
UncleEbeneezer
Former United States Attorney and Co-Chair of the Terrorism and National Security Subcommittee of the AG’s Advisory Committee in the Obama Administration, Barb McQuade has written a long, detailed Prosecution Memo arguing that Trump’s attempt to push Pence to subvert the 2020 election, does qualify as a crime that should be prosecuted by DoJ:
J R in WV
@germy:
I am left to wonder how much it cost Trump to get DA Bragg to doubt the case? If many people around DA Bragg all told him the case was weak, would that get Bragg to doubt the case?
If I was a LEO in NYC I would be looking at banking records, property records, travel records of everyone remotely connected to Alvin Bragg, who must not plan to run for election again in NY.
Maybe I’m just paranoid and suspicious when a DA changes course 180 degrees like this… A shame indictments weren’t handed up before the office changed hands. How much would that cost?
trollhattan
@Hungry Joe: The renowned Bulgarian sense of humor. :-)
Poor Bulgaria, whipping child of both Russia and Turkey, who as best as I know both treat it as a less-than.
Once worked with a Turk who had a sackfull of Bulgarian jokes.
leeleeFL
I am sitting in my house, grateful that my Parents aren’t here to see this. Trump being President would have devastated them on it’s own. Seeing a former US President, and many of his Party, cheer on the bastards they hated for decades because they knew what Authoritarianism was and why we fought against it, would have killed them. They knew Stalin was like Hitler, and vice versa. Power at any cost, control above all, the lives of millions in their hands, like toys. Trump and his shitty minions need to be tried and convicted and sent to prison. Simple.
Tazj
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Mitt Romney can go take a seat. I appreciate his yes vote for impeachment but other than that I don’t care what he has to say, especially something from 2012. But I know like you I’m hearing about how right he was all over the place.
The biggest threat to the US at the time was terrorism. No one was ignoring Russia, just because Obama didn’t agree that was the biggest threat at the time. HRC was the SOS at the time but whenever she said something tough about Putin she was a war monger.
Brachiator
@lowtechcyclist:
“And Everybody hates the Jews….”
The MAGA crowd are right on form.
Hungry Joe
@trollhattan: If something, anything, went askew — we’d miss a green light, one of us would spill some coffee, whatever — my Bulgarian friend would say, “Goddam Turks!”
Soprano2
@Miss Bianca: Me too, I know why they love Russia and Putin and I still can’t get my head around Republicans praising Russia as it invades one of our allies.
Leumas
Local news station in Tulsa, where I live, has announced that
Senator James Inhofe will resign. KJRH, Channel 2