mark esper should be launched into mexico https://t.co/XYBikMQxiC
— kilgore trout, death to putiner (@KT_So_It_Goes) May 5, 2022
And that includes Maggie Haberman, who has to be furious that she’s reduced to stenography for mere minions, when she expected to be doing her own triumphal book tour right about now…
… Mr. Esper, the last Senate-confirmed defense secretary under Mr. Trump, also had concerns about speculation that the president might misuse the military around Election Day by, for instance, having soldiers seize ballot boxes. He warned subordinates to be on alert for unusual calls from the White House in the lead-up to the election.
The book, to be published on Tuesday, offers a stunningly candid perspective from a former defense secretary, and it illuminates key episodes from the Trump presidency, including some that were unknown or underexplored…
Pressed on his view of Mr. Trump, Mr. Esper — who strained throughout the book to be fair to the man who fired him while also calling out his increasingly erratic behavior after his first impeachment trial ended in February 2020 — said carefully but bluntly, “He is an unprincipled person who, given his self-interest, should not be in the position of public service.”
A spokesman for Mr. Trump did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Mr. Esper describes an administration completely overtaken by concerns about Mr. Trump’s re-election campaign, with every decision tethered to that objective. He writes that he could have resigned, and weighed the idea several times, but that he believed the president was surrounded by so many yes-men and people whispering dangerous ideas to him that a loyalist would have been put in Mr. Esper’s place. The real act of service, he decided, was staying in his post to ensure that such things did not come to pass…
Among Mr. Trump’s desires was to put 10,000 active-duty troops on the streets of Washington on June 1, 2020, after large protests against police brutality erupted following the police killing of George Floyd. Mr. Trump asked Mr. Esper about the demonstrators, “Can’t you just shoot them?”
Mr. Esper describes one episode nearly a month earlier during which Mr. Trump, whose re-election prospects were reshaped by his repeated bungling of the response to the coronavirus pandemic, behaved so erratically at a May 9 meeting about China with the Joint Chiefs of Staff that one officer grew alarmed. The unidentified officer confided to Mr. Esper months later that the meeting led him to research the 25th Amendment, under which the vice president and members of the cabinet can remove a president from office, to see what was required and under what circumstances it might be used.
Mr. Esper writes that he never believed Mr. Trump’s conduct rose to the level of needing to invoke the 25th Amendment. He also strains to give Mr. Trump credit where he thinks he deserves it. Nonetheless, Mr. Esper paints a portrait of someone not in control of his emotions or his thought process throughout 2020…
Mr. Esper also viewed Mark Meadows, Mr. Trump’s final White House chief of staff, as a huge problem for the administration and the national security team in particular. Mr. Meadows often threw the president’s name around when barking orders, but Mr. Esper makes clear that he often was not certain whether Mr. Meadows was communicating what Mr. Trump wanted or what Mr. Meadows wanted*…
(*Expect this bit to be forefronted as the January 6th Committee further investigates Meadows’ communications around and during the coup attempt.)
"[Stephen] Miller proposed securing Mr. al-Baghdadi’s head, dipping it in pig’s blood and parading it around to warn other terrorists, Mr. Esper writes. That would be a 'war crime,' Mr. Esper shot back."
— Ankit Panda (@nktpnd) May 5, 2022
Mark @EsperDoD realizing that the candy being served to a group children is laced with rat poison: "Wow, wait until I reveal this in my book."
— FindACrimeHat (@Popehat) May 5, 2022
I'd just like to remind people that Esper's book was fully vetted by the Pentagon. Every graph in this story is jaw dropping. https://t.co/GdOj3NutS9 pic.twitter.com/38SD3h3RND
— Amanda Carpenter (@amandacarpenter) May 5, 2022
eversor
Leaving out one huge other thing from that. He wanted to pull back McRaven and McChrystal out of retirement so he could courts martial them.
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/esper-trump-wanted-to-activate-retired-four-stars-to-court-martial-them-for-disloyalty
mrmoshpotato
Mags should be catapulted into the Pacific.
PST
I don’t want to shill for Mark Esper, but there is a difference between a public official, who is expected to maintain confidentiality and must allow his memoirs to be reviewed, and a reporter, who is expected to report, keeping back the juicy stuff for a book.
trollhattan
@mrmoshpotato: Turns out access is a hellova drug. Not known: the length of time withdrawals linger.
germy
Old Man Shadow
I’m deeply concerned that there is a lunatic running the United States suggesting we start a war with Mexico. I can’t wait to write a book about it in three years.
Roger Moore
@PST:
I also have a certain amount of sympathy for anyone who felt they needed to stay in their position to try to rein in Trump’s worst impulses. Not unlimited sympathy, though; by the time Esper was nominated he had to have known just what Trump was. “Look at this crazy shit I was able to stop” sounds good, but it shouldn’t make us overlook the crazy shit he was unable to stop or even facilitated.
Ken
You ever notice that every former Trump official characterizes all the others in exactly the same way? It make me think that in addition to being yes-men and evil counselors*, they all lack any ability for self-reflection.
* Inferno, eighth circle, eighth bolgia.
Starfish
@germy: We should really have a nationwide no-surprise-billing law.
Bill Arnold
@PST:
Also, Esper is correct when asserting that Trump would have replaced him with a loyalist, even a autocoup-friendly loyalist.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Starfish:
I thought we did? That something like it was recently passed?
Roger Moore
@Ken:
I don’t think they’re literally categorizing all the others that way. My impression is that each of them had a small circle of others who they saw as helping them keep Trump under control. But I think the basic point is correct. Each of them excuses all the times they helped Trump do something terrible, or at least didn’t effectively stand in his way, as necessary to stay close to him so they can rein in his worst impulses. But they don’t see that makes the people who aren’t in their little circle to hear their rationalizations classify them as yes men.
That said, I think the quality of Trump’s people declined over the course of his presidency. He really did try to get rid of the people who didn’t do whatever he wanted. Anyone who tried to keep him from following his worst impulses was suspect, and if they showed any consistency in standing up to him they wound up on his shit list. As bad as these people were, they were almost universally correct that their replacements would be worse.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Starfish:
Here it is:
No Surprises: Understand your rights against surprise medical bills
I knew that there was a law. I remembered reading about it a few months ago
Starfish
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Did we? We have a state one here in Colorado. We still got nearly $3k in bills for the other day when my son ate a cookie he was allergic to. That was with insurance.
Kay
Ha! And they still lost. Good job, low quality hires.
LAO
This is an open thread, right?
This is horrifying:
Kay
@LAO:
Great! Happy to lavish still more money on them. What if they worked on their abysmally low clearance rate instead of paying for white supremacy classes? Could they maybe solve some crimes?
FelonyGovt
@LAO: Just wanted to say it’s really nice to see you commenting here again.
eversor
@LAO:
This is sort of old hat. One of the things about the wars we had is the majority of actual combat arms troops (infantry, special operations) are very right wing. A lot of the more extreme ones came back and set up training academies where they train law enforcement, military, federal types, and civilians. Then you have militia groups that do the same.
It’s mostly a massive grift. But it’s also right wing nutters and operator culture gone wild.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Kay:
Well, in Marxist circles, the job of police isn’t to solve crimes in the sense you speak of (in a productive manner that benefits society as a whole) but to protect the interests of the rich and powerful
But yeah, it would be nice for “To Serve and Protect” to have actual substance
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Trump wanted to shoot a Patriot missile at Mexico to blow up drug labs. ….Jesus Christ is that man an idiot, and apparently blame,.. California for it?
LAO
@FelonyGovt: ***waving hello
Mike in NC
@Kay: The Fat Orange Clown and his henchmen spent all of 2018-2020 doing nothing but scheming to steal the election any way they could. Putin had his own hands full dealing with an out of control pandemic. Sad!
NotMax
(Repeating because it was OT downstairs)
Losing loser’s losing streak lengthens.
MagdaInBlack
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Putin gave him that idea. Bomb something, deny and blame it on the folks you bombed.
NotMax
@eversor
Slackening induction strictures during Dubya’s Non-excellent Adventure when it came to gang members in order to boost troop numbers not the best of plans, also too.
NotMax
@MagdaInBlack
Taking Nixonian doctrine to the extreme.
“It’s not a war crime if the president does it.”
//
debbie
Huh. Listening to a local reporters round table, and apparently there’s talk of putting an amendment on the November ballot about protecting Roe v Wade.
eversor
@NotMax:
I’m not fully sure that’s the same issue. I was in the military under Clinton and W and saw the changes. The combat arms troops, the ones who actually do the fighting, overwhelmingly white, right wing, southern/rural, Christian. The diversity was all in the support staff for the most part. When we had gang activity it was the support staff, when we had Nazi’s and White Nationalists it was combat arms.
That’s also why “who would the military support if it came to a civil war” is a dangerous game to play cause it might not turn out the way a lot of us seem to think it would.
sab
@debbie: Really? Do we think it has a chance? Doesn’t our AG have to approve the laanguage?
sab
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Trying to wrap my head around Goku travelling in Marxist circles. I actually did. Freshman year at Antioch where I took Marxist Thought. Transferred the next year. It wasn’t for me.
Kay
@Mike in NC:
It gives me so much pleasure because I know how much the low quality hires wanted to stay in those jobs- they will never get better ones- and I know how devasted they were that they all got fired. Remember the low quality hire who refused to do any work and also refused to leave, for months?
They were POSITIVE they would win. 100% sure. But they lost.
They still haven’t grappled with it. We’ve been hand-holding these people for two years while they “come to terms” with getting fired.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@MagdaInBlack: Putin, or Micheal Bay, hard to tell. Maybe Trump had just watched Sicario.
But I do have a mental image of an unexploded missile on a street in Juarez, Mexico with “California Air Force, NOT United States” painted on the side.
Villago Delenda Est
“Can’t we just shoot them?” This is from the totally military mind of a guy whose military experience consists entirely of a cosplay high school. He doesn’t understand how bullets work, he doesn’t understand “center of mass”, he only sees ni*CLANGS* as escaped slaves who need to be punished for escaping.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@sab:
Hah! You give me too much credit. It’s just something I’ve read about online and seen repeated
Kay
@Mike in NC:
Someone with a spine should have Esper on a show to sell his book and when he opens his mouth say “you know what? Too late. Next time report it to an authority and the public in a timely manner”
LAO
Still an open thread? I’ve got to get off twitter:
I mean these fucking people.
ETA: edited
WaterGirl
@Kay: I would pay good money to see that.
sab
@Kay: People with spines don’t get talk shows.
Thinking about Ms Brunner. As a spiny lawyer yourself, what does a lawyer do when the US Supreme Court decides something like reversing Roe v Wade on the flimsy basis that Alito trotted out?
LAO
@LAO: Old news. sorry people.
cain
@Villago Delenda Est:
h
Please.. nobody knows more about bullets than he does. He was a crack shot in school. His teachers said they never seen something like his skills!
indycat32
Deleted.
Gin & Tonic
So having turned 5 last week, my grandson got his first Covid vaccine shot today. His parents are delighted. He took it with no fuss, like a big boy.
Kay
@sab:
Oh, God I don’t know. I’m a small town lawyer. I think the most interesting legal takes I have read have to do with what will be constant legal battles between states. Missouri tries to extradite some poor women who fled to Connecticut, Connecticut’s not turning her over. Like that. Full faith and credit. Those issues.
This decision was extremely poorly thought out. Reap the whirlwind. I think of new hypotheticals every day.
sab
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Is there going to be an Ohio jackal meet-up this summer? I want one so much.
debbie
@sab:
I’m sure there would be a tussle, but other amendments managed to get on the ballot.
debbie
@Gin & Tonic:
Brave little man!
Brachiator
Why does she even still have a job? She is yesterday’s news.
Kay
@sab:
I can’t find it but a Michigan newspaper asked a selection of county prosecutors what they take up if Michigan’s 1800’s law goes in. A variety of responses. It will be chaos. If you’re in Wayne county you’re good, if you’re in one of the western counties and get a Right wing prosecutor you’re just screwed.
Can she shelter in Wayne County? Or do they have to turn her over?
Jeffro
Just picture those press conferences!
Especially the ones where trumpov shows up and just simply has to do the idiotic wink-and-a-nod thing.
It would have followed the same pattern as all the other trumpov offenses/crimes:
Gin & Tonic
Boy, the Sixers are a different team with Embiid on the floor.
brendancalling
This isn’t nice to say, but I hope Maggie gets so angry she has a REAL rage stroke and spends the rest of her life unable to write or communicate. She is awful. Just a horrible person. I can’t imagine being her partner—in fact I hope she doesn’t have one and is lonely all the time except for her cat. Who hates her.
ETA: this week fucked me up. I’m so angry I can’t even have normal conversations without talking about Roe.
Villago Delenda Est
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: A Patriot is a very poor choice for surface to surface use. Now if the drug labs had been on board say DC-8s loitering over Monterrey, then you might have something there.
SiubhanDuinne
Just a random O/T NYT style guide note: I know the FTFNYT insists on “Mr.,” “Dr.,” “Ms.,” or “Miss/Mrs.” in their news articles (I believe opinion pieces are exempt). I get it. Respect. But all those titles and honourifics just get in the way. Simply say “Esper,” “Trump,” “Meadows” after the first cite. I promise, we won’t think any the less of them for want of a title!
SiubhanDuinne
@Brachiator:
FMH
Villago Delenda Est
@Kay: “States’ Rights” never seemed to matter with the Fugitive Slave Act, which this entire nonsensical situation is devolving rapidly to.
brendancalling
Also we need to set up an Underground Railroad for women. And we need to be ready to fight back, by all means necessary.
japa21
@SiubhanDuinne:
Questionable if it would be possible to think anything less of them.
Jay
https://gregolear.substack.com/p/leo-the-cancer?s=w
Another Scott
In other news, … BlueVirginia.US:
Luria is on the January 6 committee. I expect she’ll get lots of visibility in the public hearings and that will enhance her chances even more.
Forward!!
Cheers,
Scott.
Peale
@Starfish: in the multiverse you can pass laws all you want. But all that does is create millions of variant worlds with laws from no-surprise Billings, to only surprise Billings, to only having hospitals in Billings Montana
Villago Delenda Est
@Jay: They’re trying to undo The Enlightenment, which demonstrated there is no need for any supernatural affirmation of temporal rule. This drives these medievalist reactionaries batshit.
Brachiator
@Roger Moore:
I don’t think that the quality of Trump’s people was ever very high. It started bad and got worse.
From the jump, people insisted on applying conventional political wisdom to Trump. Pundits would predict when Trump would inevitably pivot to the middle. Even commenters here would talk about some new advisors as the adults in the room, as though they were certain that Trump would heed the advice of old wise staffers and appointees. But Trump was unsurprisingly rigid. You would see him bristle at having to speak with any pretense of diplomacy. You would watch him run to a rally, vent his frustration and unleash his resentments and come back and reiterate his nastiest ideas.
And The adults in the room would resign and complain about how Trump never paid attention, never listened to them.
And then the next seasoned advisor would sign on and babble about how this time it would be different. Rinse and repeat.
Bill Arnold
@Villago Delenda Est:
A few years ago I talked for a while with a guy who went to that high school (NY Military Academy) with D.J. Trump and occasionally hung out with DJT. He made me promise not to tell the details because he was afraid of retribution, so it will have to suffice to say that Mr. Trump was very aware of how to manipulate people even in those days, and was always observing what motivated/demotivated/angered people.
The guy was a huge fan of the (then) current DJT, even though he was afraid of retribution. His main complaint was about another student, a psychopath (my words, from the description) who became the CEO of a big insurance company (AIG perhaps? don’t recall for sure.)
Raven
@NotMax: Think Project 100,000 or McNamara’s Moron Corps.
schrodingers_cat
Has Burns been around? I had a question for him.
Peale
@LAO: honestly, I kind of wish they’d let their freak fly and try to pass miscegenation bans and sundown laws right away. Maybe deem that only natural born citizens can vote. Go after all of us all at once. Maybe pass laws that immigrants can’t own property. Save time with the intersectionality issues. We can all be equally horrified together.
Dangerman
There could be video of Trump committing every sin in The Book…
…if Roe goes down, he’s the nominee in 202 if he runs.
I’d laugh to peeing myself if Clarence Thomas Nelson Rockeffer’d in celebrating his achievement with Gino before the final vote.
Villago Delenda Est
@Peale: This guy has actually said that Brown v Board of Education is on the list of precedents to trash by the current reactionary/Opus Dei USSC.
SiubhanDuinne
@japa21:
My point exactly!
sab
@Peale: Jeez. Misceganation laws would impact a huge chunk of America. Do these home schooled suburbanites know nothing about our country?
sab
@brendancalling: Underground railroad? Is Canada more friendly? They weren’t exactly welcoming to blacks.
HumboldtBlue
@Gin & Tonic:
It’s always been that way, the record without Embiid is something like 16-30 and points per game is a difference of like 25.
Love to hear the little guy got vaxxed. Hope Pop-pop got him a lollipop.
dexwood
@brendancalling: Hate to hit and run, but I disagree. Above ground resistance with arrests and nightly news stories, internet burning up over it. Use what has been learned from Civil Rights protests and demonstrations, use current media in all its forms to get the word out, to fight.
Outa here.
Peale
@sab: hell, they won’t even need any pseudo scientific racist stuff to put a veneer of rationality on it. Just ban it because they say so and said so in Lord Heevers book of Common Law in 1640.
Anne Laurie
Maggie’s dad was a NYTimes lifer. Give them due credit, they’re loyal to Their Own.
(Besides, the Sulzbergers still dream of Trump coming back to the WH in 2024… )
zhena gogolia
@Gin & Tonic: Oh, good.
zhena gogolia
@Bill Arnold: Mary Trump’s book is very convincing about DJT’s early training in sadistic manipulation, learned from his dad.
mali muso
@sab: It would appear so. Canada will ensure border officials know Americans can travel for abortion
Brachiator
@Anne Laurie:
That’s not loyalty. That’s just a reflexive nepotism that is common in journalism.
ETA. Full disclosure. My first job at a formerly great West Coast newspaper came about because a respected cousin who worked there made sure that my application was on top of the pile with a gold star. Relatives of employees always got preferment. This mostly worked out, but I did not see the same degree of nepotism in other industries.
stinger
@SiubhanDuinne: I know — they can’t make room for a simple comma, but they’ll somehow squeeze in the honorifics.
Gin & Tonic
@Anne Laurie: Clyde was a really good writer.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
So apparently the “Good” Dr. Oz was booed by the MAGAts at a Trump rally tonight lol
SiubhanDuinne
@Gin & Tonic:
Oh, I was hoping to see you in a thread. Just about every morning, I wake up with some random piece of (usually classical) music in my head, always completely unplanned and unsought. Today, it was the Hopak from Mussorgsky’s Sorochinsky Fair. I believe — correct me if I’m misinformed — that the hopak is the national dance of Ukraine. Anyhow, it’s a cheerful tune, and it made me feel quite optimistic. Just wanted to tell you that.
Splitting Image
@sab:
As long as Trudeau stays in charge, yes. The Liberal party used to have a pro-life wing, same as the Democrats. When JT became leader, he wrote support for abortion directly into the party platform. And good on him for doing so.
That said, Trudeau won a minority government with just about the barest minimum of votes it was possible to get and still win. There are enough fascist votes in Canada to win a majority but they are currently split between three parties. If Erin O’Toole had won the last election, he would have been quick to issue a statement in support of U.S. law and close the border to lawbreakers. The beady-eyed weasel Stephen Harper would have done the same.
Alberta and Saskatchewan are not any more safe for women right now than Texas and Missouri.
Kent
@Roger Moore: Yes.
I don’t have a great deal of respect for Esper or anyone else who chose to serve in the Trump Administration. But the actual reality is that they all took an oath to the CONSTITUTION when the took office and not some sort of personal loyalty oath to Trump.
The very MINIMUM we should expect of them is to fulfill that oath. Esper was probably entirely accurate in his assessment that if he resigned or just went public with the horror that was Trump he would only have gotten himself fired faster and replaced with someone worse.
It isn’t like we needed any new information in 2019 about how bad Trump was. He was impeached for fuck’s sake. Everyone knew what Trump was all about. And then when Covid happened we all saw his insanity on a daily basis. By 2019 the only things that really mattered were (1) defeating Trump in November 2020, and (2) keeping the country in one piece until then. Nothing else really mattered.
sab
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Ohioans are much more docile. I could have told them that. My spouse is Ohio born but from Pennsylvanians. Argues about everything.
oldgold
Today at a judicial conference in Atlanta Clarence Thomas made this astounding observation:
“As a society, we are becoming addicted to wanting particular outcomes, not living with the outcomes we don’t like.”
Kent
@Splitting Image: That’s ridiculous.
Abortion is a federally guaranteed right all across Canada. And Alberta doesn’t do bounties on anyone assisting an abortion like Texas. They are night and day different. Alberta’s laws are more or less identical to British Columbia.
The problem in Canada is that they just don’t really do all that many abortions because they have good family planning and sex education. So not a lot of abortion clinics and they are mostly done through the national health system at regional hospitals. So Canada probably isn’t well set up, either administratively, or structurally, for large numbers of Americans to be coming across the border.
I would guess that the likely long-term future if abortion rights in northern border states decline, is that abortion clinics devoted primarily to serving American women would crop up in border cities in Canada and in major cities with easy air access from the US. And they would largely be separate from the existing abortion system in Canada.
Gin & Tonic
@SiubhanDuinne: Thanks. I’m not sure I’d go so far as to say “national dance” – but it is definitely associated with Ukraine. It originated among the Cossacks of the Zaporizhzhian Sich in the 17th Century, so traditionally men-only, and very show-off-y (there is even a martial arts version.) Each guy has to top the one who went before. The classic image is of a male dancer in a split leap with the baggy pants (sharavary) and red leather boots.
Here’s a pretty traditional performance by the Virsky National Dance Company. It is a dance for young men with good quads.
sab
@sab: My Ohio relatives were dairy farmers. Farmer 200 lbs. Cow 1700 lbs. You only argue with the cow if it really matters.
mvr
When damning with belated condemnation is less potent than damning with faint praise, or what would have been appropriate, loud protests and warnings.
citizen dave
@LAO: mlike braun, that’s my waste of a senator. Retrograde a hole.
Citizen Alan
@Villago Delenda Est: Dred Scott was an explicitly anti state’s right opinion. No one in the South was on the side of state’s rights until Brown versus board of education.
Sanjeevs
@Kay: I think you are correct that the SC decision will lead to a raft of litigation with unforeseen consequences.
The introduction of a Constitutional right to life in Ireland in 1983 led to the X case , Y case C case etc etc plus additional constitutional amendments.
Eventually people voted to ditch the ban on abortion.
There will be far more cases in the US with sixty times the population and fifty states
dww44
@eversor:
The thing that has so dismayed me from the time of Trump’s election through to the present day is how abundantly clear it was from the first day of his Presidency that he believed himself to be king and that all should bow and scrape to him. Yet none of the friends and relatives around me in this now purple former red state, never kenned to that and were lap dogs until today. They were and are so blinded by their sheer partisanship that they will not own up to what’s in front of their very eyes. The most I ever get from any of them is a reluctance to even bring up the man’s name. Same as it was during the Bush years. They just all go quiet and still vote for the candidate with the “R” after his/her name.
Which is why I was doubly disillusioned to read in the previous thread that the generic ballots favor Republicans because voters believe that the GOP is better on defense and security. Face it. voters are some combination of stupid or willfully uninformed. Our democracy is at risk and they’re gonna vote on the basis of this?
It is way past time for the media, up and down the line, to treat Republicans as the threat to our democracy that they are. This is not politics as usual. We need this message shouted from now til November, with no waffling, no wish-washy measly words.
We need a singularly clear, concise, compelling message and the right voices to deliver it. Jamie Raskin ought to be one of them. Howard Dean should be another. Obama a third. Rachel’s a good one as well. Some of those never Trumper’s ought to be part of the mix. Steve Schmidt annoys some, but impresses me. He gets the gravity of where we are now.
Brachiator
@Sanjeevs:
Eventually? The law fully permitting abortion in Ireland did not take effect until December 20, 2018.
Sanjeevs
@Brachiator: 1. There will be many more such cases in the US
2 The 1983 amendment passed by 2:1 margin. The US starts with a 2:1 margin on the other side
Ramona Rosario
@Sanjeevs: But not before women lost their lives.
James E Powell
@Brachiator:
Hard to find any industry with more nepotism than there is in politics. Especially at the local level.
George W Bush would never have been elected anything if his father hadn’t been president. In fact, the idea of running for office probably would never have occurred to him.
Captain C
@James E Powell: I would guess if HW had remained in the oil industry, W would have followed a similar trajectory to his actual life up until Arbusto, and from there it would have just been a continuing series of business failures, or possibly an early retirement to a life of sybaritic indolence (and possibly painting people on the pot).
Gretchen
@Brachiator: the vote to allow abortion in Ireland didn’t happen until a very sympathetic, married, educated woman who had already decorated a nursery died a high-profile and unnecessary death when her water broke at 18 weeks but the fetal heartbeat didn’t stop and labor didn’t start. Doctors wouldn’t induce until the heart stopped, by which time she was dying of sepsis. Her name, Savita Halappanavar, and photo were rallying cries in the campaign to repeal the ban on abortion. I hope we don’t need to lose a beautiful young woman to serve as the impetus for abortion rights here.
satby
@Gretchen: Expect it. It took losing a lot of beautiful, average, and plain women for abortion rights to be passed here fifty years ago. I remember it vividly. If course, we’ve normalized losing beautiful children every year to massacres in schools, so no bets.
trnc
@PST:
Agreed. It’s possible that even if he had left and been replaced by a flunkie that other people down the line would have resisted some of the bad requests, but who knows? Plus, Esper is now an excellent first person witness.
trnc
@germy: That’s funny, but didn’t the dems pass a law against that a few months ago?
AM in NC
@brendancalling: I hear you. Come sit by me and we can rage and plot together.
MinuteMan
@Old Man Shadow: It wouldn’t have been a “war” but merely a “special operation”.
Ella in New Mexico
@Bill Arnold:
I don’t think anyone who essentialy had a normal career in the military or Nat Sec world and were moved up the ranks to places of leadership under Trump’s administration had any idea they’d have to deal with a man so fucking monstrously insane, ruthless and unafraid as he was to propose crazy shit that he’d totally have done if someone hadn’t talked him out of.
On top of being limited by law to remain silent during their tenure.
MinuteMan
@NotMax: The Shrub doctrine has it go “it’s not a crime if the Americans do it; we’ve got in-house legal memos saying so”.
Ella in New Mexico
@Brachiator:
She gots some new, giant pointy cat’s eye glasses to pay for, she’ll take anything right now
MinuteMan
@mali muso: I wonder if the Candians will offer political asylum to folks fleeing prosecution in the US for having an abortion (or miscarriage).
Jack the Cold Warrior
@Villago Delenda Est: You are the first who mentions that the Patriot is an anti-aircraft /anti missile weapon, not designed to take out ground targets…