I have seen in the past, not just with Syria, where some leftists are so against US policy, especially interventions, that they end up defending ruthless dictators. Many ideologues want to see the world in only black and white and end up with what seems to me to be curious and dubious positions. Unfortunately the world is a messy place and right and wrong are rarely clearly delineated.. I always am reminded of what the journalist/author Robert Fisk once wrote about the Middle East: there is no right and wrong, only different degrees of wrong (I may have the quote a little off, but you get the idea). Or, to put it another way, there are no clean hands in the region. Assad has shown clearly in the past that he will stoop to any depths to hold on to power. At the very beginning he may have been able to work out a peaceful solution that left him in in charge but sharing power, but he chose to meet peaceful demonstrations with gunfire and bloodshed and things have degenerated from there.
Yugoslavia was an artificial country held together by Tito. Once he died, the country's instability was pretty much assured. Syria is less riven by factions/ethnicities than Yugoslavia was, but under the Asads it has been run by the Alawites who are a minority in the country. The mismanagement by the Assads, especially during the Arab Spring, is responsible for their troubles, not "outside agitators."
Watching Bill Maher last night, he had on Geraldo Rivera. Rivera, while he opposes most Trump policies, was defending Trump, basically because Trump was nice to Rivera over the years. Maher was trying to get Rivera to see that how Trump charms you as an individual should be divorced from his policies and actions as President, a point Rivera wasn't able to accept. I am astounded at this type of moral blindness. Trump shows once again how he is a psychopath and should be condemned by anyone with an ounce of moral fiber. Hurry up Robert Mueller.
What does it say about US policy that a totally ignorant and moronic president has actually got a better approach in off the cuff remarks than his supposed expert advisers? Of course, if Bolton is the last person to talk to Trump about this issue, then Trump will ignore what he said previously and double down in Syria.
I thought Larry's reply was good, but, on further thought, decided that this requires additional detail. Some extreme leftists have this exaggerated sense of false equivalency. Ask yourself and answer the following questions. Would Clinton have appointed the most incompetent and corrupt cabinet in history? Would she have appointed close advisors like racist Steve Bannon and xenophobic John Kelly and others of similar ilk? Would Clinton have tried to eliminate Obamacare with no substitute, taking away healthcare from tens of millions of Americans? Would Clinton have shrunk the national monuments created by Obama? Would she have tried to seriously damage the environment and taken us out of the Paris Accord? Would she appoint a person openly hostile to consumers to head the CFPB? Would Clinton have pushed through a tax cut to benefit the corporations and top 1% more than any other group? Would Clinton have sought to seriously reduce regulations on all businesses, no matter what the need? Would Clinton have approved of the racists in Charlottesville and sought a Muslim ban? Or try to build a wall? Or done the bidding of the NRA? Or take away protections for DACA recipients? On every major issue, from a liberal or leftist perspective, Clinton was so much better than Trump, that to conflate them is not based in realistic thinking. And while Trump is so awful that he re-election now looks unlikely, so, too, did his election look unlikely. Then there is the question of how much damage will he do before he leaves office and how long will it take to repair that damage.
Are you aware of Malcolm Nance? Having been in military intelligence for a while myself, I appreciate his approach. In intelligence you don't need prosecutorial level of proof to arrive at sensible and very likely conclusions. It was obvious to people like him (and me) almost 2 years ago that Trump was clearly compromised. The evidence was all around and has only been constantly confirmed by numerous revelations ever since. There were so many meetings between Trump campaign people and Russian connected people, that there has to have been some level of cooperation. What other plausible explanation exists for such meetings at those times? Now we have further revelations about Cambridge Analytics, who, you must think, had to have provided the targets and ideas for social media posts to Russian trolls. How else did the Russian trolls know what to write and whom to target and who else was using social media for that purpose? From what we know of Trump's IT program, it was pretty barebones personnel wise. All the constituent parts point to one conclusion and that is collusion. Just because Mueller hasn't yet presented solid evidence doesn't mean he doesn't have it or that it doesn't exist.
Just because this is a convenient place to post, not aimed specifically at you, but I wish people would stop using this term deep state, which has been coined by the alt-right to foster their paranoid fear of government. What they call the deep state is the bureaucracy, which as the great sociologist Max Weber maintained, is one of man's greatest inventions. Like any large organization, there are factions and different interests. In fact, the founders did not want a unitary government, but one that was filled with checks and balances so as to reduce the chances of tyranny. The bureaucracy, for whatever its failings, serves as an important check on possible tyrants. And, unlike officials in the current administration, civil servants not only take an oath to the Constitution, they take that oath seriously and the vast majority put their national service way above any interest in party. And I agree with you about Kushner. Today it has come out that he met with an investment banker talking about a possible job in the administration and lo and behold, not long thereafter the organization that banker worked for extended $184 million in loans to the Kushner company which is having cash flow problems.
Oh, please spare us from what sounds like a defense of Kushner. Just because you don't like the people you assume are his accusers (and he seems to have little support outside of Trump and Ivanka), that doesn't mean the charges are without merit. This is the same guy who met with the Russian Ambassador Kislyak to try and set up a back channel communication with the Kremlin. That alone should disqualify him from having anything to do with government, especially foreign policy. And a minority owner of the company? The company is basically him and his father, who, you may have forgotten, has already spent time in prison for illegal campaign contributions, tax evasion, and witness tampering. Kushner only has his job because he's married to Ivanka; he is totally unqualified as well as being a walking influence and blackmail target.
The pedantic historian in me requires me to correct what you say about killing of civilians. Wars fought in Europe after the 30 Years War generally avoided civilians, almost completely. Battles during the age of knighthood were relatively small affairs, even compared to the times of Rome and even Greece. Even during WWI, civilian deaths were relatively small (beware of estimates that include things like the Armenian genocide and deaths from flu and disease, which probably would have occurred nevertheless) even while the armies were huge. In WWI, civilians, with a few exceptions, were not targeted. In WWII, civilians were often targeted and even used as a strategic target to inhibit the war effort.
Those who apparently are trying to whitewash Assad should read a New Yorker article from several years ago. http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/04/18/bashar-al-assads-war-crimes-exposed Activists, including at least one man who worked for the government and with important documents, have been able to smuggle out thousands of incriminating documents. Also, international organizations like Human Rights Watch have had observers on the ground who have documented numerous cases of war crimes by the regime. As for the failure of the UN, one needs to realize its limitations. There have been many instances where the UN has failed to act and right now there seems to be little that will be done about the massacres of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar. There must be international consensus for action, and any time two of the 5 members of the Security Council are in disagreement or even one is unwilling to see action taken, the organization is powerless. One can only hope that Assad, who has managed to outdo his father in horrible crimes, will eventually see justice.
What a god awful mess. As predicted, Syria has become a wonderful place to avoid. The US is in a position where it may be working with Assad forces or allies to fight against a NATO ally. And why would a Secretary of State go into a meeting with a top foreign leader and not bring his own translator, especially when having contentious talks? That is incredibly stupid.
The KGB has a long history of trying to affect elections and insert propaganda into a national dialog. They have done this often in the past by doing things like bribing reporters to write false narratives or emphasize pro-Soviet viewpoints. They had done things like having coordinated letter writing on subjects that benefit them. Their approaches could be effective in Third World countries because of limited or lax controls and poor internal communication infrastructure. Those methods rarely would work in a developed country when newspapers and major networks were the main reporters of news. Journalism in this country relies on fact checking and editors insist on this and almost always require more than one source for any story, especially those involving any scandal. The rise of social media has been a game changer. Now anyone or any entity can create a "news" site or news outlet. Speculation can be presented as fact. Propaganda can abound because there are no editors and no filters for misinformation. False information that would have been discounted and never seen the light of day in the past now can be copied and shared with hundreds of thousands in the blink of an eye. Facebook plays a role by feeding people information that their algorithms show is consistent with their beliefs as revealed by their prior interest. This different environment has made Russian interference possible and much more powerful in developed countries than was possible before. So, it is incorrect to say that this is the same thing that has happened in the past. It is different both in volume and in kind.
When you read American history, I think the political intelligence of the typical American voter has declined severely. Political rallies in the past were often big events and I think there was more public discourse. The ignorance of the American public, which Professor Cole does not mention here, seems to me to be an important component of Trump's victory. The success of Russian efforts is due largely to the fact that hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of voters accepted ridiculous claims without bothering to check their accuracy. It is ironic and even seems counter factual, that while we now have limitless information available almost instantly via the internet, many people seem less informed because they only want to reaffirm their already held beliefs and don't want to be bothered with basic research. I have run into very few Trump supporters who are really informed and knowledgeable.
I have been saying for at least 2, maybe 3 years, that nothing good can come out of getting involved in Syria. For those new to this site, I will repeat myself. We have no vital interest in Syria. Syria is not important to us. Syria is a total mess and provides no value to a foreign intervenor and will cost probably hundreds of billions to reconstruct over a decade or two. Finally, the situation is untenable, Assad is sure to remain in power, we have no legal justification for being there, and there are so many competing factions that everyone involved has some blood on their hands. As longtime correspondent Robert Fisk once said about the Middle East in general, there is no right and wrong, only different degrees of wrong. While the Kurds will suffer, it is impossible for them to have their own state without causing great disruption to Syria, Turkey, Iraq, and Iran, and at least two of those are our putative allies. None of those states will agree to carving out a separate Kurdistan. The Kurds are not always pure, either, having been involved in morally dodgy activities in the past (see the Armenian genocide). The only smart course for the US is to withdraw from Syria.
Giving more money to the top one tenth of 1%, when they don't need it (when do they need it?) results in speculation. How many homes and cars can they buy? So, since it's money they don't need, it's like Monopoly money for them and they play with it via speculation. The result is boom, followed by a bust. The size of the crash can be reduced by regulators putting checks on the economy. Ooops, guess who is busy doing away with all those checks. Unless we get a new President who has a different philosophy, that means we could be headed toward another big crash.
I was out of town most of the day , so I've only had a chance to see dissections of the memo and not yet read it myself. However, based on sections I have seen quoted, it is a total farce. I suspected as much as it dealt with a FISA warrant on Carter Page that had nothing to do with the Mueller investigation. Nunes and his minions at Fox News have tried to make out that the warrant was somehow biased, ignoring the fact that Page had actually dealt with Russian spies in the past, at least one of whom was arrested and sent to prison. They were heard on tape talking about using Page (no relation). There are so many things wrong with the memo and the whole right wing attack, it will take a long article to go into all of them. Here is just one vignette. The source material, on which the memo is supposedly based, wasn't even read by Nunes and his staff wrote the memo. Only one Republican representative, Trey Gowdy, actually read the source material. Gowdy is the committee chairman who led the interminable Benghazi investigation, showing himself to be very partisan. And yet, the Nunes memo was apparently too much for him. The day the committee voted to release the memo, Gowdy announced his retirement (he's only in his mid-50's and comes from a safe district) and today he apparently tweeted that he supported the FBI and its agents and completely backed the Mueller investigation. I think that is rather telling when your own guy sabotages your effort.
I don't know what campaigns you were watching, but I don't think I have seen any experienced veteran of campaigns say that Trump ran a more energetic and strategic campaign. Like his administration, his campaign was very chaotic with people coming and going and little coordination, poor ground game, etc. He changed campaign managers in the middle of the campaign and then brought in Kellyanne Conway and Steve Bannon the last couple of months. There is no way to tell what effect collusion had, but one particular fake news story, that the Pope endorsed Trump, had over 800,000 shares, half of all the shares in the last couple of weeks of the campaign were fake news, and social media posts by Russian trolls and bots were supposedly viewed by approximately 40 million people. As for finances, taxes, etc., one of the first people hired by Mueller was an expert from the Treasury Dept. who specializes in money laundering and other financial crimes. In the Book Fire and Fury, the author quotes Bannon saying that the key to investigating Trump lies through Manafort and Trump's financial dealings.
There is a good book called Rise of the Vulcans, as I remember. It goes into the background and interrelationships between people like Wolfowitz, Condi Rice, and others. Remember that a lot of these people were the founders and most important members of the Project for the New American Century which began pushing for the Iraq War in the mid-90's. They just needed a justification/opportunity. They wrote a position paper for Netanyahu that was so right wing that even he refused to use it.
To clarify, they were warned about Curveball by the Germans. Curveball was actually in Germany, talking to German intelligence, but refused to talk to US intelligence. German intelligence thought he was fishy. It later turned out that he was working for Chalabi who wanted to become the next Iraqi leader after the US threw out Hussain. State was skeptical most all of the time. Powell had his doubts, but was given the job of presenting the case to the UN by Cheney's chief of staff. When he looked at the supposed evidence, Powell asked Cheney's staff, Is this all? Remember that Powell had been a top general and head of NSC so he was very familiar with intelligence and probably smelled a rat, but being a retired soldier, did his duty as he saw it.
This is all happening because Trump and his supporters are in full panic mode. They know they are in serious trouble, but I doubt they know how extensive that trouble is. What we know about Mueller's investigation is probably equivalent to the tip of an iceberg. Mueller has had experts and time enough to trace all the money aspects and has more than enough to nail Trump on obstruction. Trump is gone and may take a lot of Congressional Republicans with him. Something like 32 Republican representatives have decided to retire, including several committee chairmen. They have seen the writing on the wall.There will be fits and starts, last gasps of resistance by Trump, but eventually all the truth will come out, even if he, Trump, fires Mueller. The only question is when. Will it be before the midterms, or after? I am hoping that the big bombshell lands about mid September and Democrats take back both houses of Congress so impeachment can succeed. With this timeline, Ryan will no longer be in line of secession since a Democrat will probably be Speaker of the House. I think there will be enough evidence to show that Pence is also complicit and he may have to go, too. This whole Administration is rotten to the core (especially at the core) like nothing we have seen before in US history.
I have read that most advisers to Trump reach pretty much the same conclusion. He IS a moron. Further on display here. Worse, he is an ignorant moron. Have we ever had a more ignorant President? Certainly not in the last 130 years, at least.
Historically, damage from air strikes is almost always vastly over stated. One instructive example comes from the
Battle of Britain. RAF commanders carefully interviewed pilots after air battles and asked their own pilots, for their own intelligence purposes, how many German fighters they could confirm were shot down. They told their pilots they wanted them to count only the ones they actually saw crash. When they compared those numbers with actual numbers from German records obtained after the war, they found that they had over estimated their kills by a factor of 3. In Vietnam, when body count was used as a measure of progress by the US, naturally, they got vastly inflated numbers and they considered anyone killed near a combat area to be a hostile, even if they were women and children. In short, the 150 cited here, is probably a wild guess based on what they figured sounded good. If it were accurate, what are the chances that it would be such a perfectly round number? It would more likely be a number like 143 or 162 or something like that.
I think you've nailed it. The Presidency has become the ultimate reality show. Trump had 100% name recognition at the start of the campaign, unheard of for a challenger. Oprah makes an impassioned speech at an awards show and there is a boomlet for her to run. Previous research has shown that much of voting is on the basis of likeability. When people don't know the candidates well, then name recognition becomes crucial. Policy hardly matters anymore. It's enough to make a policy wonk, such as myself, be driven to despair.
You list these events in isolation when they need to be put in a time line and within context. For example, at the beginning of the insurrection Assad looked very vulnerable as units of his own army turned against him. Thus a policy that made sense then made no sense later when Assad had Russian backing. As Professor Cole noted at the time, Russian backing with bases and air power completely changed the situation. Also, the power of the Kurds and ISIS waxed and waned over time. The complexities and differing forces will make for a good case study for future foreign policy historians.One thing is certain, getting involved in Syria was a loser from the beginning for the US, especially since it is nowhere near a vital interest. You would think that after Vietnam we would have learned that getting in the middle of a civil war is a bad idea.
This is probably a first--we have put ourselves into a position where we may end up being attacked by a NATO ally. US Middle East policy has become as entangled as the famed Gordian Knot. US involvement in Syria has turned into everything I feared and more. There is no way for the US to get out of this without some damage. We can leave and alienate the Kurds, or stay and alienate the Turks and the Russians and put our troops at risk for what? What a mess.
I read an article about a year after the Crimean annexation and even native Russians there were disappointed with the aftermath. If you think that annexation of the Crimea to Russia was an organic operation, you need to read more broadly. While it was widely supported because most Crimeans are native Russians, it happened only because of Russian expansionism favored by Putin. Annexation of Crimea was an illegal act, as is US operations in Syria.
As I have maintained for some time, Syria has no strategic value to the US and we should not get involved in Syria at all. Unfortunately, interventionist ideology is transcendent in large areas of the foreign policy and defense policy establishments. Add to that a totally ignorant and incompetent administration and you have the recipe for disaster. And some people here before the election worried that Clinton was too hawkish in the Middle East. She was, but Trump is a total disaster.
The thing that convinced me that Trump is a fascist was his nomination acceptance speech. In it he listed a number of alleged serious problems in the country and concluded by saying that only he could fix it. He said something similar in his inauguration speech. This is central to fascism--the idea that one man expresses the will of the nation . One man, and only that man, is capable of expressing that will and getting done what needs to be done. One of the revelations of Michael Wolf's book reported today is that one of his aides said that Trump thinks he is the smartest guy in the room and has the right answer, no matter how little he knows about the subject. And this is despite the facts that he rarely reads anything except favorable press clippings, can't handle briefings of any complexity and one person called him semi-literate. I was watching some journalists trying to address the issue of his tweet about the nuclear button and North Korea and they carefully danced around the issue. Somebody needs to come out and say what is obvious--our President is a nut case.
The biggest challenge for the US is getting over the incredibly foolish idea that has gripped our policy makers for decades--that our intervention can achieve an outcome that is favorable to us in a region that isn't important to us.
If Putin wants to have Syria within the Russian sphere of influence, let him have it. As I have been maintaining for years, the Middle East is not a vital national interest of the US, especially with the decline in the importance of oil. We should be withdrawing from the area.
Oh, dear, so much to choose from for our dear leader. War with Iran or war with North Korea? Maybe he will pick North Korea instead of war with Iran. Trump is such a horrible disaster, it is not out of the realm of possibility that we could end up in war with both.
Saw tis the other day where someone actually figured it out. If all the wealth in the country were divided equally, every family would have about $660,000 in wealth. The problem is not lack of wealth, but mal-distribution.
From an artistic standpoint, there are something like only 19 DaVinci oil paintings known for sure and several more which might be his. So, this is probably a good investment and likely to go up in value.
Thanks so much for this article, Professor Cole. And the neocons and just plan cons (conservatives) still don't get it. I caught John Podhoretz on MSNBC yesterday and he was touting what he said was the remaking of the Middle East because of Trump-'s action and the Israeli--Saudi alliance. Unfortunately, most media in the US are uninformed or misinformed about ME politics and just parrot pro-Israeli claptrap that they probably get from AIPAC talking points. I have also noticed an increasing dearth of academic experts on the various news shows and it is fortunate that we have outlets such as Informed Comment where we can get truly informed and knowledgeable opinion.
This decision is so stupid, beyond belief really, that I wonder if Trump is deliberately creating a provocation to foment a "clash of civilizations". In this way he can then seize upon Muslim reaction as a justification for his anti-Muslim bias and actions. This will solidify his support among his racist and xenophobic base and so what, he figures, if it leads to violent unrest and more Americans killed.
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I think the more imminent danger is the thawing of the permafrost. Hydrates are mostly in deep water where rising temperatures are less of a problem. A thawing permafrost has already begun and could release enormous amounts of both methane and CO2 and once started, would be pretty much impossible to stop.
Notice how many times Trump used the word "will" in his speech. Is it just a coincidence that maybe the most famous propaganda film of all time which extolled Hitler, by Leni Riefenstahl, was called Triumph of the Will? While Trump probably doesn't know enough to realize the significance, I'm sure Bannon does.
You are being unfair to the Volt. While its range is limited to 53 miles this year in battery only, because of its gasoline powered generator, it can go 420 miles on combined battery and a tank of gasoline. For 90% of a person's travel, you will need only the battery power and then it is basically unlimited for long trips, albeit at a lesser mpg. That gives it much more flexibility than the Bolt, Tesla, or other battery only cars. Hydrogen power may supplant modern day batteries anyway.
I'd just like to remind readers that before WWII, some of the greatest scientists in all of history such as Einstein and Szilard, came to the US to escape dictatorships and had outstanding schools like Princeton provide them with succor and research facilities. Imagine what might have been if these men had stayed in Europe and been forced to work on atomic weapons for the Nazis instead of being in the US. The US has so benefited from foreigners coming here to study and then staying and providing invaluable contributions in the sciences. Most every major university has professors who fit this bill. A former roommate of my wife was like that and went on to get a Phd. in microbiology. Who will want to do this as long as this insane clown and his ignorant minions are in the White House?
After I wrote this I realized that the phrase "our values of freedom and democracy" is not valid anymore. I'm not ;sure we have either in our own country right now. What i meant was our traditional foreign policy values of promoting freedom and democracy, which of course often gave way to power politics and supporting anti-communist dictatorships.
Republicans and especially neocons are incredibly short sighted. They still think that the US can dominate the world and enforce a Pax Americana. That is foolish nonsense. What the US should be doing is preparing for the day when we are no longer the world's top super power. We should be working to set up an international regime that supports and encourages our values of freedom and democracy. This means fostering alliances and working with and through the UN with like minded powers, the exact opposite of what Trump and the neocons prefer. In such an international system, a positive view of US leadership is crucial for success. Go it alone nationalism is doomed to fail given our current and future international environment.
I'm not sure which gas attack you are referring to, but the original one was extensively investigated and Human Rights Watch had people there on the ground within a day or two. Here's a report that summarizes the UN report.http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-24130181
Further information. Thanks to renewables, California has faced an energy glut during daytime hours. There have been days when the state power authority actually paid Arizona to take excess power from California. Yes, that seems crazy, but under certain circumstances it makes a sort of sense. A big article in today's (6/25) LA Times goes into detail.
You don't need to go to France to find a hospitable place for alternative energy scientists and engineers. The state of California is doing a fine job on its own and there are 40 million people in the state, almost as many as in Spain (46 million).
Your comments reminded me of a major incident before WWII between Japan and the Soviet Union. They engaged in major military actions near Mongolia. A recent book, Nomonhan, 1939, gives the details. What is salient is that an out of control major in the Japanese army in that area basically almost precipitated a war between the two countries because of the failure of the Japanese government to exercise any restraint on the local army forces in the area. I found it astounding how one mid level officer was allowed to act unchecked. Now, do we have a situation in the Middle East where a local commander, even if a general, is in the position to cause a war for the US? A truly frightening thought.
This is what happens when you outsource foreign policy to the military. Clemenceau was correct when he said that war is too important to be left to the generals. War is politics by violent means and you need politicians to make the strategic decisions. Who you are going to be fighting is one of the most important decisions. The Trump Administration is like the proverbial bull in the china shop. We need to get out of Syria, not get in deeper.
The idea that Putin's policy aspirations are noble is laughable at best. Autocratic policies are almost never noble, whatever the country. As for Russia, perhaps the last policy that may have been noble probably was the czar's decision to support Serbia in 1914.
There have been some good histories of the KGB written. You should read one. Russia/the USSR meddling in elections and trying to disrupt the politics of other nations goes back many decades (read about the Comintern). Putin's job in the KGB was to recruit spies and suborn foreigners into working for them. Yes, the US in the past has done similar, but the Russians are masters of the game. What happened in 2016 is the continuation of a long tradition and the US is not the only country to recently suffer from Russian medddling.You come across as rather naive. Because you aren't privy to evidence of their meddling, that doesn't mean it isn't there. US intelligence estimates that the Russians employed 1000 trolls to plant fake news on social media. A poster here reported that he ran into it on his website and I personally found evidence of posts from Facebook users whose Facebook pages were empty shells.
Anyone who supports US intervention in Syria needs to address the question, how is the outcome in Syria a vital national interest of the United States?. Foreign policy is very selfish and a nation's security interest must be in the forefront. Even if a certain outcome is preferable, we must ask if it is worth the cost. Syria is not a vital national interest of the US and any intervention there by the US that would be significant enough to make a difference would cost more than it is worth. Any other measure is superfluous. Neocons are terribly unrealistic. You would think they would have learned something from Iraq, but most haven't.
Just a reminder about this whole concept of running government like a business. There have been 3 presidents who were mainly businessmen before becoming president. Hoover, who had no clue when the Depression hit, George W. Bush who wasn't even a good businessman, and Trump. They have all been spectacular failures. Government can't be run like a business because they are two completely different types of organizations.
Great Britain is our strongest and closest ally. NATO is the longest lasting peace time alliance in history and, one could argue, the most effective. Trump seems determined to destroy our relationship with both. Only Russia benefits from this. Either he is a raving lunatic (possible) or this is payback by Trump to Russia.
A lot of good comments here. Herbert Hoover, of all people, said that the problem with capitalism is that capitalists are too damn greedy. As another pointed out, this is the natural evolution of capitalism. Greed leads to monopoly and encourages participants to not play by the rules in order to get a competitive advantage. There is no "invisible hand" in the marketplace and the markets cannot be amoral because of individual greed. Also, decisions are not always rational in the marketplace. Thus, the main underpinnings of the capitalist system are doomed to failure without government intervention. FDR, when greeted with howls from the capitalists over regulations and government programs, observed that he was their best friend because he was saving capitalism from itself. The New Deal economy worked well. It was done in because the US Chamber of Commerce, in the early 70's set about destroying it (the Powell memo, see http://billmoyers.com/content/the-powell-memo-a-call-to-arms-for-corporations/)
When Trump first announced his run for the presidency , coming down the escalator at the Trump Tower, there were people there applauding him. Much later we found out that he had hired people to do that. When he went to the CIA and spoke in front of their memory wall shortly after the Inauguration, he got a warm response. We found out later that he had "salted" the crowd with staffers from the White House to provide applause and support. Most CIA employees found his speech to be repugnant, according to sources with internal contacts. Does that answer your question?
The pioneering sociobiologist E.O. Wilson, through his long study of ants and other social insects, has found that evolution favors cooperative societies over competitive ones. But, that involves science, so we can't expect Trump to understand it.
You would think people would have learned from Bush #43 that the Republicans bring only failure and disaster, but memories are short. Even as Trump flames out, don't expect a rush of enlightenment to the approximately 40% who support him.
Glad you mentioned that point. Solar power is more efficient since it can be generated at the point of use. There is an estimated loss of about 8 to 14% due to transmission. And, of course, centralized power requires infrastructure and more maintenance, especially in areas with extreme weather.
One thing I do know is that the intercepted communication would have been done by NSA (see books by James Bamford). Such intercepts are closely guarded so that outside of NSA, only top officials would have had access to that information. Thus, the average CIA analyst might not have had any knowledge of this. Thus, the leak must have come from either inside of NSA, or from top officials in other intelligence agencies. Since it happened in December, then it would have been either a career NSA employee or someone who was in the Obama administration who was the leaker.
This happened and was reported to WaPo before
Trump became President. That makes a big difference. Secondly, there is extensive research which shows that racism, anti-immigration and xenophobia were the major components of support for Trump. His foreign policy positions were quite unimportant in garnering votes.
A good summary to which I would like to add one thing. Trump said that Hizbullah was created by Iran, which is ridiculous. They were created by Lebanese in response to the Israeli invasion. Robert Fisk's book Pity the Nation is a great account of that time.
The Trump Administration continues to provide us with amazing revelations. Health care is complicated. The job of President isn't easy. And now we learn that a Russian dictatorship is dishonest, which Trump can identify with. Maybe next he'll tell us that Middle East peace isn't easy after all.
Spot on analysis. So many people equate killing civilians with strength when it is actually a sign of weakness. Good information on the Muslim population in France, of which I was not aware. I am going to bookmark this to share with all the right wingers who have no understanding of the situation. Thanks.
I like Hansen's comparisons as they put things in stark relief. A year or two ago he calculated the chances of having so many months in a row of average monthly temperatures being above the average for the century. The chance of that happening randomly was something like one out of 3 times 10 to the 99th power, or a bigger number than all the grains of sand on our planet. I have read some people say that humans couldn't possibly affect the atmosphere because it's so large. 60,000 A bombs per day certainly illustrates the point.
I read some years back that The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells was actually a metaphor about western countries colonizing poor countries in the 18th and 19th centuries. Many people have argued that naked imperialism was just replaced by more subtle economic imperialism.With the election of Trump, scientists have moved the Doomsday Clock forward so that it is now the closest to midnight it has been since 1953.
I'm afraid we have passed the point of no return on climate change and Trump's policies are rapidly hastening the Day of Reckoning. Things will get bad; the only question is how bad and how soon.
This is not just the gang that can't shoot straight, but the gang that keeps shooting itself in the foot. Maybe the most incompetent group of executive branch officials in history.
As one old enough to live through the Civil Rights era, albeit at a distance, it's hard to forget how marchers were treated in that state, the church bombing and the dead children, Sheriff Bull Conner, Governor Wallace, et al, and the hatred shown toward African Americans.
Ask anyone who has been to the 2 states which they would prefer to live in. The first time I went through Alabama was in the late 60's and I was amazed to drive on a US highway that was a gravel road. Alabama was for many years like a 3rd world country in the US. And it also had the distinction of being one of the most racist states in the country. Perhaps the fact that in Hawaii many different racial groups are able to live in harmony and prosper is why Sessions felt the need to dis the state. Trump just welcomed Ted Nugent and Sarah Palin to the White House and picked Sessions for his AG. Our country is being run by the ignorant and the classless.
Although this doesn't directly relate to this article, I wanted to pass this along to Informed Comment readers. Yesterday I heard some remarks by the head of Homeland Security Kelley. One sentence stood out. He said that "We have to change the way that people in the Middle East think." The idea that we can and should do this is just so amazingly arrogant and ignorant that it practically took my breath away. And Kelley supposedly isn't as bad as many of Trump's advisors and cabinet heads.
One of my favorite quotes is from DeGaulle who said that grave yards are filled with the bodies of "indispensable men." Erdogan has decided that he is one of those and his country can't survive without him. There is almost never a good outcome when a country is headed by someone with that view.
You could have added Guatemala to the list of genocidal actions overlooked by the US. Also, the US Army School of the Americas did a good job of turning out officers from Latin American countries into coup leaders and dictators who oppressed their people. Finally, I read this a number of decades ago and I think it was in one of the volumes of S.E. Morrison's history of the US Navy during WWII. This account showed that the US did have poison gas to use in case the Nazis used it. My recollection is that during one of the invasions of Italy, maybe Anzio, Morrison mentioned that a US supply ship carrying poison gas was hit by fire and poison gas was released as a result.
The worst thing that can happen is if this strike doesn't produce serious negative feedback. Then Trump will think that this whole thing is easy and be encouraged to do it again and more, until it leads to disaster. The man truly has no clue but acts on impulse.
The disposal of the chemical weapons was done by the implementing organization for the Chemical Weapons Convention, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons(OPCW). This was done at the direction of the UN after a unanimous vote in the UN Security Council.
Before the election Trump's ghost writer on Art of the Deal warned that electing Trump would lead to the end of civilization. That remains to be seen. Nevertheless, it is definite that the chances are much higher with Trump in the White House. I like the title of Matt Taibbi's book, Insane Clown President. I think that pretty much describes it.
Ideological regimes eventually come to realize that they have to have at least a modicum of public support and be able to put food on the table and a bearable life for their citizens. North Korea being an exception. Thus, this is a natural evolution for Iran. However, the neo-cons and just plain cons are bereft of knowledge or insight and many seem hell bent on trying to overthrow the Iranian regime. Let's hope that the Trumpian scandals so discredit his regime that they are unable to get support for such idiocy.
An AP article published today in my local paper detailed the growing number of US troops deployed in the Middle
East and Somalia and the fact that the Trump Administration is basically letting the Pentagon set a lot of military and even foreign policy. Now we have a top general declaring that Yemen is a vital US interest?? This is truly scary. Fasten your seatbelts; it could be a bumpy ride as we amp up intervention in more and more countries.
We know that Flynn was being paid by the Turkish government and failed to register as required by law. Was he also being paid by the Russians? Was his appearance at the RT event a way for him to be paid for his other work for them during the campaign? Did he report these payments on his taxes? This Russian connection could end up being bigger than Watergate.
Here's some interesting political history, In 1973 President Nixon proposed a national health care plan that was simple. It had basically two parts. All employers, as in all, not just some, would be required to provide health care insurance for all their employees. Second, anyone who was not working would get health care provided for by the government. He left it to Congress to fill in the blanks. Senator Ted Kennedy did not support it, but held out for a government run single payer system as is common in Europe. The Nixon plan went nowhere. Fast forward 20 years later when the Clinton proposed health care plan couldn't even get a vote in the Congress. Senator Ted Kennedy admitted he made a terrible mistake by not accepting Nixon's plan. About 10 years ago there was a Harvard study that found that for every 1 million uninsured, about 950 of them will die needlessly every year. During the height of the recession, before the ACA, there were about 47 or 48 million uninsured. That translates to about 45,000 unnecessary deaths per year. Imagine how many people's lives could have been saved since 1973 if the Nixon plan had been approved. Probably close to a million. I was a legislative assistant to a councilman in a large city for about two and a half years. Two things I learned quickly. 1. Politics is the art of the possible. 2. Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. I had a lot of good ideas that went nowhere because of rule #1. Ideologues, whether left or right, expect, even demand purity of policy. That's not how it works, nor is it possible. Too many Bernie supporters don't realize this. While Clinton and Obama have been derided for their outlook, the fact is that major change, with a few exceptions, only comes incrementally, and slowly.
Even when you keep up with all the degradations and calumnies, you hardly have time to digest one when another comes along. Because he keeps pumping them out, one gets hit with a kind of sensory overload. Also, you tend to forget what has happened before because there has been so much. Chris Hayes had a list of 10 outrages from Trump during the campaign that he would update periodically. You really need a scorecard to keep track of everything. He combines that with continuous distractions and feints so that people will focus on something less important. Worried about Russian involvement in the election? Well, Devin Nunes does ridiculous things violating all sorts of protocols so that the attention is focused on him rather than the actual investigation. Trump and his minions do this constantly. I think eventually it will catch up with them and they are just digging their grave deeper.
The bill of particulars against this administration just keeps getting longer. Eventually you figure, the chickens will come home to roost.
It sounds like the Iraqi government, with its seeming insensitivity towards Sunnis is continuing to make the same mistakes that led to the previous uprisings and some support for ISIS. They just don't get it and the US president certainly doesn't. There have been hundreds of books and voluminous research done on counter insurgency. There is even a journal devoted to it. I wish these people would read some of it. Secondly, fighter bombers, even with smart bombs, are not the right tool for urban warfare. If there is a sniper on a roof, a mortar would be much better, or even a small drone. You don't need 500 pound bombs. Maybe you recall that Trump's approach is to bomb the sh*t out of them. That attitude must have affected our ground and air commanders. We are back to creating two terrorists for every one we kill.
Here in California, because of solar power, there is an excess of power during the day. They have more than they can use. So, whereas in the past you were urged to use your appliances during night time hours, now we are being urged to use them during the middle of the day. And solar installations keep growing in number installed every year.
One of the first things Trump did after winning was create an imbroglio over Taiwan and China. He appointed an ambassador to Israel who favors Israeli settlements in the West Bank and is very pro-Netanyahu, he has increased US involvement in Syria, he has shown his disdain for NATO, has never once criticized Putin, had the Republican platform changed to remove language opposing Russian annexation of Crimea, and you think he just doesn't pay attention to Russian internal politics?
As a realist, then I know you must want to put things in perspective as you try to do here. While I agree with many of the criticisms of Clinton and Obama, their foreign policies need to be highlighted in contrast to that of Republicans. Under Clinton the only real intervention was in Bosnia, which was to aid Muslims, and cost not one American life to combat and had very few civilian casualties. While drone strikes have been heavily criticized, they basically stopped the last year of the Obama presidency. Additionally, the last report of civilian casualties due to drone strikes, as I recall, was around 700 by several NGO's such as Amnesty International. Compare that with over 100,000 Iraqis under Bush.
I think it was the night of the 2008 election and a panel at CNN was discussing the results. Some conservative said some nonsense about the Democrats using class warfare. David Gergen, hardly a radical and actually a moderate conservative, said something which you almost never hear on TV. A close paraphrase is that he said, That war is over and the rich won. People who criticise Obama from the left will almost certainly agree that we live in an oligarchy. Yet they seem to think that a progressive can assume office and completely turn around a system that has developed over 30 to 40 years. The ACA is basically a Republican plan. The reason the Republicans hated it is not because, as they said, that it wouldn't work, but because they knew it would since it already had in Massachusetts. The ACA wasn't just about providing health care, it was also about changing the paradigm established by Reagan that the government is the enemy and the free market is the solution. That belief is the cornerstone of the power of the elite and it's one reason the ACA is so important.
The use of terrorism by a political movement is a sign of weakness, not power. And lack of success inevitably leads to adherents falling away. Because Daesh/ISIS/ISIL is led by delusional radical ideologues, they have made fatal mistakes. Grabbing large swaths of territory without popular support was one of them. As you say, their best hope is foolish policies by their opponents. Unfortunately, many are ready to provide those foolish policies. In a way, it comes down to who is stupider and who is stupid more often.
Thanks for this additional info. One thing I think you implied, but could have added explicitly. Deripaska couldn't have achieved his dominance not only without nefarious means, but also it would have required the approval and probable collusion of the Putin government. I suspect Putin and cronies got big kickbacks for helping him and he also feels beholden to Putin and would act as Putin's agent whenever asked.
Something which I think is often overlooked is the possibility of widespread famine. Climate change is likely to disrupt deep ocean currents which will radically change weather patterns that have been the basis for much of world agriculture over centuries and longer. For example, if the monsoons are disrupted in India, that could have catastrophic effects on their agriculture. Similarly, most major Indian rivers are fed by Himalayan glacier melt and monsoon rains. What happens if the monsoons are disrupted and the glaciers disappear? What happens if the US Middle West become too hot for grain crops? One of the main reasons for mass famine in Africa is the desertification of areas south of the Sahara. Same with the Gobi Desert in China. In both areas, the desert is increasing up to a half mile per year because of climate change. Combine that with rising sea levels making many coastal areas uninhabitable and we could see mass die offs of hundreds of millions of people and mass extinction events among flora and fauna. The dire effects cannot be overstated since there will be likely additional unpleasant effects that cannot be foreseen.
Maybe you didn't see this, but it came out that Clinton actually discussed this with Powell before she took office and he did not counsel her against it. In fact, he sent her an email giving her advice on how best to use her private PDA. See http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2016/09/07/powell-email-advising-clinton-personal-email-released/89984698/
Also, the whole email issue came out only because of the Benghazi hearings. Even Republicans admitted that the whole purpose of the Benghazi hearings was to try and stop Clinton from winning the presidency since she seemed to have it locked up at that time.
I have some expertise in this area. I was the head of the City of San Diego's records management program, which was modeled on the Federal program, and I had a top secret clearance while I was in military intelligence. I agree with Professor Cole. No laws were broken and what Clinton did was only slightly different from what Colin Powell did in that she had her own server. We have since found out that many government officials have used unsecured communications for possibly classified materials. The charge that she had classified materials stored on that server is technically accurate, but not a chargeable offense as Comey concluded. All but 3 of the classified materials were classified AFTER she received them. Those that were classified were improperly marked and the violation would be by the person(s) who sent the improperly marked classification, not on the recipient. I dealt with top secret materials on a daily basis and would not have recognized that the improper marking was, in fact, a classification mark. You cannot convict someone of mishandling classified materials if they weren't classified when you were using them. In fact, I think that would fall under the Constitutional ban of an ex post facto law. I use the analogy of someone driving through an intersection which has no controlling sign, having a stop sign put up the next week and then being charged with running through a stop sign for the previous week before the sign was up. Finally, the shelf life of most intelligence is very short, sometimes weeks, rarely more than months. What is important is if the intelligence reveals sources and methods, which none of the materials on Clinton's server did, to my knowledge. I think Clinton made a political mistake by having her lawyers go through her server and remove non-record materials, which, by the way, is different from non-governmental materials. Many government records need not be kept or may be discarded after 2 years. Instead, she should have had officials from the National Archives do it. However, I find it unlikely that the attorneys who did it would have intentionally violated the law as it would have put them at great risk professionally and they must have been well versed in the law before they acted.
Trump and his minions have been done in by their own stupidity. Trump said the second version was the "lite" version and he and his administration officials keep talking about the Muslim ban. If they had any sense they might have been able to get away with it, but now the well is completely poisoned.
Russia seen as a problem solver? By whom? Only by Assad, it seems to me. Your anti-Clintonism has blinded you. This whole article seems like much ado about nothing. This is one disputed report about 22 commandos. Calm down. The aid to the Libyan rebels was a NATO operation and the non-sectarians would be looking more toward NATO for further help rather than Russia. Logistically, NATO is also a much better source for aid to the non-sectarian forces.
Some of this smacks of mindless anti-Americanism. The US was responsible for nation building in South Sudan? And let's not forget that South Sudan got its independence because of the genocidal like policies of the Sudanese government. We were hardly the only country to support its independence. Did we direct the Saudis to attack Yemen? We shouldn't be helping, but to say we're responsible is a leap of logic. And the Syrian calamity is mostly the fault of Assad. Other intervenors include Iran, Hezbollah, Russia, the Kurds, the Saudis and god knows who else in addition to the US and Turkey. Syria was a mess and going to be a mess even if we never intervened. I think the US needs to withdraw from the Middle East but the region has had problems for decades and will continue to do so for decades, regardless of our involvement.
Considering that I have been preaching for the US to stay out of Syria since the idea was first broached, obviously I think this is a terrible idea. As for what is Trump's plan? It's probably whatever Putin tells him to do.
While all of the points in this article are valid and the facts do not support the contentions behind this EO, because it is for a limited duration and exempts green card and visa holders, it just may pass muster with the courts.
I think one of the hallmarks of the time we are now living in is how readily people will latch onto delusionary thinking and live in a comfortable bubble rather than have to face a hard truth. The situation with Israel and the Palestinians is one of the most notable examples. As has been noted by others before, without a meaningful two state solution, Israel can be Jewish or it can be a democracy, but eventually it will have to choose because it will not be possible to be both.
Good analogy with the video store employees. I have used an analogy of Trump being like someone in 1910 vowing to maintain employment in the horse drawn carriage industry. BTW, before automobiles, horse manure was becoming a major problem in large cities so that cars were actually better for public health at that time. What is amazing is that anybody buys Trump's snake oil.
I can't remember who it was who has been pushing this, but one commentator on MSNBC, has said that the major news outlets should send just interns to the press conferences by the administration. I think that would be a good response. They can work with regular staff to prepare some decent questions while this frees up regular reporters to be doing more substantial work while giving the administration the lack of respect it deserves.
Mossadegh was overthrown while Eisenhower was president. Intervention in Lebanon in 1958 while Eisenhower was president. US working with both parties during the Iraq-Iran War while Reagan was president. That included selling arms to Iran, giving intelligence to Saddam Hussein, looking the other way when he gassed 10,000 to death, and shooting down an Iranian airliner. Also while Reagan was president the US battleship New Jersey shelled targets in Lebanon in support of the Israeli incursion. The Gulf War happened while the first Bush was president. The Iraq War begun by the second Bush. Clinton did send cruise missiles against al Qaeda and enforced the no-fly zone over Iraq begun by Bush, but other than that I don't see any Democrats in this list. The two major peace initiatives that had any success were the Camp David Accords peace agreement done under the aegis of Carter and the Oslo Accords while Clinton was president. Yours is a false equivalency.
A couple of days ago I saw two psychologists discussing Trump and the role of psychologists. Present guidelines say that they should not diagnose anyone they haven't actually interviewed. They pointed out that this was adopted after some psychologists publicly questioned the sanity of Barry Goldwater in 1964. One pointed out that since then the profession has developed a comprehensive guideline on what behaviors signify different mental conditions and that this wasn't available at the time the stricture against diagnosis of public figures without interviews was developed. And, in an important point, they both agreed that it would be immoral to not speak out if a top leader exhibited behaviors that clearly indicated mental instability. They said that Trump fits that bill and that psychologists should not remain quiet about it. In fact, they have a moral duty to speak out. If someone is a professional with decades of experience in a relevant area such as politics and/or history, then I think that he or she also has a duty to speak out against someone who the professional perceives as being an existential threat to our democracy. If I may interpret Professor Cole's position, I think he, as well as many others of similar pedigree, believe this to be true of Trump. Even George Will, a long time noted conservative and Republican, changed his designation on his voter registration from Republican to Independent after Trump won the nomination. Many professional Republicans hold this view of Trump, not just liberal Democrats.
The United States was considerably different in 1787 than it is now. You need to view history in context. The Constitution was revolutionary at the time of its passage, but times change. The original Constitution also required the election of senators by state legislatures and after about 100 years it had become obvious that was not a good idea. The election of 1876 also made clear the problems of the electoral college. When the constitution was amended to have the direct election of senators, they also should have done away with the electoral college. The longer it remains, however, the more difficult it is to change. Jefferson thought the Constitution would require major revision every 20 years or so to adjust to changing times. The founders recognized it was an imperfect document and would require frequent change in the future. I think the problem was that future generations were too timid.
My favorite is how often conservatives blamed the Community Reinvestment Act. Not only was that passed 30 years before the crash, making it the slowest acting legislation in history, it didn't cover refinancing, loans by other than banks and had little teeth. I calculated that it only applied to no more than 10% of all loans made. And, of course, it had no relationship to credit default swaps.Yet they continued with that meme long after it was shown to be ridiculous.
The most amazing thing to me in this poll is that 40% of the people actually think he is honest. He lies practically every time he opens his mouth. How could anyone think he's honest? And 44% think he cares about average Americans. I doubt he has done a single altruistic thing in his life and is a billionaire who has appointed Wall St. executives and other billionaires to key positions. Boy, what planet have these people been living on? The con game still works on 40+% of the American people.
According to what I have read, Bannon's initial appointment does not require Senate confirmation. However, if he becomes a member of the NSC board, the membership which is spelled out in law, he should be required to get Senate confirmation. Since the Republicans control the Senate, the question then becomes if they bow to Trump or insist on their institutional right.
My own opinion is that the die hard Trump supporters number maybe one third of the electorate. He has another 8 to 10-% that can swing his way depending on the situation. He got 46% of the vote and that was inflated by about 2.5% points because of the Comey letter.For example, he got almost all Republican votes, many holding their nose because they couldn't stand the idea of Clinton winning and appointing a liberal to the Supreme Court. There are a lot of independents who lean right and with things like the email propaganda and the Comey letter, voted for Trump because they ignored the warning signs and figured he was the lesser of two evils. Trump's favorability rating is now 38%. Bush got down to the mid to upper 20's by the time he left office, so i think Trump could get down as low as the low 30's within this year, depending on developments. On the effect of the Comey letter, see http://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2017/1/11/14215930/comey-email-election-clinton-campaign
I you call the Electoral College democratic. Losing by 2.8 million votes and winning the office doesn't seem very democratic to me. Is there any other office in the US where you can get more votes and lose? I don't know of any.
Thanks so much for this information, which I will gladly share. BTW, on Huffington Post today is a story about this which also includes the favorability rating of Trump in other countries. 92% of Swedes had an unfavorable opinion of him even before this. Trump's best rating was 40% unfavorable, 22% favorable (I think that was Hungary) with his unapproval way up there in most countries (96% unfavorable in Canada). Showing once again how most other publics are smarter than the American public. As H.L. Mencken once said, no one ever went broke by underestimating the intelligence of the American public.
Well, you can share articles like this on Facebook if you have any right wing Facebook friends. You can also bookmark this story and then copy and paste the URL in replies to right wingers who comment elsewhere. It is not a panacea, but constant refutation of lies cannot hurt.
Trump's press conference was the most incredible thing I have ever seen from a US president. I give you the words of John Dean who was asked to give his views of Trump vis a vis Watergate, etc. Dean has first hand knowledge of what an unstable and corrupt president looks like. A close paraphrase is that he said, "I went to my first presidential news conference in 1957. I have never seen such a classless president." Trump is clearly the most dangerous man to ever occupy the White House and it amazes me that some still can't see that and make false equivalencies.
Just some added details that people might find interesting. A good book on the situation from the birth of the Zionist movement to the 1967 War is The Arab-Israeli Dilemma by Khouri. It has a lot of useful statistics, summary of UN actions, etc. At the end of WWI, the number of Jews in the area was about 8% of the total population. There were more Arab Christians than Jews. The first terrorist attacks in the area were conducted by Jews by Irgun and the Stern Gang. Irgun, headed by future Israeli PM Menachem Begin, was responsible for the bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem in 1946, which killed 91 people. It was one of the largest terrorist attacks anywhere up to that time. The Arabs mostly rioted. As per Robert Fisk, the first use of a car bomb was likely done by Israeli intelligence (Mossad or Shin Bet) as he found Hebrew letters on parts of the bomb that exploded.
The 2002 Arab League resolution has been almost totally ignored in the US, too. Outside of people like the readers here, hardly anyone in the US even knows it exists. Everybody else still believes that old shibboleth that failure to recognize Israel is a major sticking point. This resolution should be mentioned in just about every article about the Israel-Palestine problem, but it almost never is.
I was thinking about this today and talking with a friend about it. Trump is not stupid, but his major personality defects drive him to do really stupid things. Like obsessing over the size of his inauguration crowd and alleging millions of illegal votes because he can't accept the idea that Clinton got more votes, etc. Hitler analogies can be dangerous, but here's one that I think works. Prior to WWII and in the early days, Hitler took many risks and did things that his top generals were against and/or considered foolish and dangerous. But, he was successful. The result was that he had complete confidence in himself and thought the generals were stodgy and foolish. So, when the war began to turn against him, he acted on his instincts and ordered the army to do many stupid things, like eschewing orderly withdrawals and fighting to the end when losing. Because of his megalomania and stubbornness, he hastened the defeat of the German Army, thank goodness. Trump is similar in that he ran a very unorthodox campaign and all the political professionals thought he was a joke. They gave him no chance to win the nomination. Then they gave him no chance to win the election. So, now he figures he knows much better than the professionals and can get away with whatever he wants, as he mostly did during his campaign. As with Hitler, his sense of invincibility and stubbornness will hasten his downfall.
In 2008, Trump Jr. said that they get millions from Russian business interests. Chris Matthews on his show today had a nice collection of statements over the years from Trump and his son about Russia and Putin.
Just like to add to what super390 has said by pointing out that Putin was a KGB agent for 17 years. The KGB during that time, and in all of its history, has been marked by its ruthlessness and lack of scruples. I think it would be very difficult to be in the KGB for that long and be either a nice or a reasonable person. Read also about how Russia dealt with the Chechens, the Afghans and many others. I have read that the Poles, who have been divided between the Germans and the Russians multiple times, have a saying that with the Germans they lose their freedom, and with the Russians they lose their soul. While individual Russians are generally known for their generosity, they have a bad habit historically of putting up with awful leaders. And Putin is pretty awful, despite what Trump may say.
I liken the competence of this administration to that of Grouch Marx as Rufus T. Firefly, President of Freedonia in the movie Duck Soup, one of the all time funniest and most absurd movies of all time.
Since I have predicted/written about most all of this before, the news doesn't surprise me. What does surprise me is how quickly it has come out. This shows that if you are about to assume an important office and have any skeletons in your closet, you should not trash the intelligence community, as Trump did. The chickens are coming home to roost. This may sabotage the lifting of sanctions, which I have forecast. There is news out today about the Russians deploying cruise missiles in violation of the START treaty. There was also some saber rattling back in December. I think the plan was to create a phony missile scare and then reach a "grand bargain" where the US lifted sanctions in return for not having a missile race. I don't think Trump can get away with this now.
Flynn may be gone, but this administration is still filled with inexperienced and incompetent advisers and staff. This is certainly the worst cabinet in my memory. The train wreck continues.
I thought you were being too harsh on Miller until I saw the video you included. He is so obviously an authoritarian personality he might as well be wearing a sign. His statements on alleged voter fraud are especially egregious. The sad thing is that millions of Americans actually fall for this stuff. If nothing else, the fact that fake news got shared more on social media in the last week of the campaign than real news should be disturbing to all concerned Americans. The big lie works with a major segment of our population.
Since there has never been a successful prosecution of the Logan Act, it is highly unlikely that anything will come of this. However, this is just another nail in the coffin of Trump and his minions. When elected he was the most unpopular person to ever assume the office and it has only gotten worse. We are seeing spontaneous demonstrations, angry crowds at town halls (even in Chaffetz's Republican district in Utah, for example), and other wide spread anti-Trump demonstrations. I have never seen anything like this in my 71 years and can't think of anything comparable in US history. Only thing close might be the unhappiness toward Hoover after 3 years of Depression, but that was at the end of his disastrous term, not the beginning. What could be the crusher would be if it is established that Flynn, acting for the Trump campaign, was in consultation with the Russians during the campaign and discussed hackks and strategy. I think it is likely that it occurred, but uncovering it will be very difficult. One heartening thing is that the recent Washington Post expose on flynn claimed it had information from 9 different sources. That makes it obvious to me that the intelligence community is very unhappy with this administration and ready to leak to sabotage it. I think the question is two fold. Eventually there will certainly be enough to justify an impeachment (emoluments clause, for example). Will it be enough for the Republicans to act against Trump? I think the answer is only if their re-elections are in danger. If the Republicans lose badly in 2018, then we could see real danger to the administration. Otherwise, Trump could tough it out and survive his first term as I doubt the Republicans have the political courage to do anything to check him. Direct action is having some effect, however, as the repeal of Obamacare seems to have receded in importance among Congressional Republicans as they meet widespread public resistance.
Just an addition on the effects of air pollution. As more and more research is done, scientists are finding out that small particulate matter (soot, especially from diesel engines) has been largely overlooked in the past and is very harmful. In addition to COPD, asthma, and other respiratory problems, a recent study found that 21% of Alzheimer's cases could be due to this type of pollution. And, of course, to all this you could add how under reported has been the danger of climate change. And now we have a President who seems determined to adopt policies that will exacerbate most of the major causes of death on your list.
We are learning now that the effect of this order is more widespread than originally believed. For example, the State Department says that the ban resulted in 70,000 invalidated visas. Included in this total are parents or children where one part of the family has citizenship and the other not and the order resulted in families being kept apart. I think this makes the State's case much easier in showing harm to its citizens. The dumbbells who conceived and wrote this EO did little to consider the consequences of their actions. Since most Trump supporters support this ban, when writing about it I have emphasized the administration's incompetence which is obvious and harder to defend. The Trump Administration is like government by the Marx Brothers. In the movie Duck Soup where Groucho is the leader of the mythical Fredonia, at least Groucho is good for some laughs. Trump is as incompetent but doesn't even provide comic relief.
Karl Rove once told a reporter that "we create our own reality." And, as Conway has said, they fill it with "alternative facts." And their uninformed base falls for it.
This "missile incident" reminds me of the run up to the Iraq War. During that time all sorts of fake claims were made about Iraq of course. Among them was a claim about Iraq possessing a dangerous missile that was in violation of a restriction imposed after the Gulf War. We later found out that this "dangerous" missile had a range of about 100 miles and didn't violate anything. War mongers just keep using the same lies over and over again since they can get away with it. As many predicted, Obama's failure to prosecute war criminals has opened the door for future folly and criminality.
While I agree that immigration strengthens our country, not weakens it, we really should welcome declining populations. The planet currently has over 7 billion and is on track to reach 10 billion. How many humans can the planet sustain? At 7 billion we see vast amounts of environmental degradation and loss of species habitat. Human kind as a whole should be seeking to reduce populations on the whole. Taking in refugees into a developed country should aid in that as large families are less needed in developed countries and those going from a third world country to a developed country will likely produce fewer children than if they had stayed in their rural areas.
To emphasize how important framing is, George Lakoff has been preaching this for some time. This is based on solid social science research. Especially with conservatives, many voters respond to issues emotionally, not logically and rationally. Thus, you need to reach them on an emotional level. Sound bites work. the following is a bit long and overwritten, but still important: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/a-minority-president_us_5834526be4b030997bc136f7 In the case of Trump, I think the best approach is to emphasize the Russian connection and that Putin was a communist and KGB officer, leader. I think most conservatives are very uneasy with this. I have taken to calling him Comrade Trump, the Moscow Candidate. I saw a sign at the Women's March that said Trump is Putin's Apprentice. I think this is the best way to undermine him among those who voted for him.
I saw a post on Facebook last night from a history professor which reminded me of an important book I had forgotten about. The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein, which I recommend highly, shows how capitalists and dictators use crises, often manufactured, to get radical things done against the will of the people. What we are seeing from the Trump Administration is a perfect example of the Shock Doctrine at work.
It was said approvingly that Mussolini made the trains run on time. Thus, I think that Trump should not be lauded even when he manages to achieve a positive result. Even a blind squirrel finds an occasional acorn. Also, that approach works to normalize him. As a tactical political move for the safety of the country, he must be opposed consistently when wrong, and ignored when right.
According to what I heard on the news earlier this morning, Customs wasn't even forewarned and had no advance word that this was coming and were caught unprepared, too. And, they have initially continued with detentions even after a Federal judge put a stay on that. This is may be without precedence in US history, to initiate such a far reaching order without any preparations or thought to the consequences. The Palmer Raids and Japanese internment were done with more forethought and preparation.
Trump really needs to borrow Mr. Khan's Constitution, since he obviously has never read the document before. For those who haven't checked lately, the Bill of Rights only uses the term person or people, never citizen when enumerating civil rights. In the body of the main Constitution, almost the only time the word citizen is used is when specifying the qualifications for office. Then it appears again in the 14th and 15th Amendments in extending citizenship. I think that instead of calling it the Trump Administration we should call it the Trump Abomination.
International law would not have required the United States to act. The Genocide Convention states that any signatory may go to the UN and request that body to take action to suppress genocider. Then it would be up to the UN to decide what action to take and by whom. The genocide began April 7, 1994 and, "On April 9, UN observers witnessed the massacre of children at a Polish church in Gikondo. The same day, 1,000 heavily armed and trained European troops arrived to escort European civilian personnel out of the country. The troops did not stay to assist UNAMIR. Media coverage picked up on the 9th, as the Washington Post reported the execution of Rwandan employees of relief agencies in front of their expatriate colleagues." This is from Wikipedia. So, the UN knew very early on what was going on. Elsewhere in this article, "On 23 June, around 2,500 soldiers entered southwestern Rwanda as part of the French-led United Nations Operation Turquoise.[132] This was intended as a humanitarian mission, but the soldiers were not able to save significant numbers of lives.[133] The genocidal authorities were overtly welcoming of the French, displaying the French flag on their own vehicles, but slaughtering Tutsi who came out of hiding seeking protection.[133]" So, it was over two and one half months before any UN force, which was more of a farce, tried to do anything, and by then 99% of the killing was over. One of the leaders of the genocide gort a 20 year sentence. As I said originally, the genocide was over before the UN could act. The ethnic cleansing in Bosnia was stopped because of NATO action, not UN action. I think the victims and their families care little about the procedural niceties. Only ideologues thousands of miles away who are unaffected seem to.
According to articles in the Huffington Post, this ban even applies to people who hold dual citizenship and American green cards. Not being an attorney, but having a wife who was an immigrant, I don't see how this is legal. And yet it is happening. One wonders how many times he will break the law with impunity before Congress reacts. I think that if anything, Trump is worse than many of us had feared before the election.
Would intervention in Rwanda to stop the massacre of 800,000 innocents have been illegal under international law? Yes, because that massacre was carried out by the sitting, legitimate government. And it was over before any international body could meet and rule on it. And yet a couple of battalions of Marines airlifted in probably could have saved hundreds of thousands of lives. There are times when international law is not moral. Stepping in to stop or mitigate ethnic cleansing, genocide or wholesale massacre of civilians (which Gaddafi threatened) would be a morally justified violation of international law. Someone once wrote that sometimes the law is an ass. Read Plato's The Republic.
Let's not overlook the fact that Trump is all in with Netanyahu and backs him completely and wants to move the US embassy to Jerusalem. There's a good chance that the US standing in the Arab world will be even lower under Trump than under Bush. And where are those people who said Clinton was worse? Will you believe me now?
Having had a top secret code word clearance myself, I think the short answer is no. His business dealings make him suspect and too vulnerable. Throw in his questionable personal behavior as well and we have a loser.
I was proud and excited to be among the marchers today. It was heartening to see so many people from so many different stratas walking together, united in favor of civil rights, dignity, and progress. One caveat to this article. With two appointees to SCOTUS, Roe vs. Wade could be overturned. Les we forget, Citizens United was about just one section of the McCain Feingold Act which regulated campaign financing. Yet, the Court basically threw out the whole law, which wasn't even being contested, and overturned 100 years of precedence in just about eliminating the possibility for any limitations on campaign financing. Today's conservatives don't care much about the rule of law when it conflicts with their beliefs and it would be very possible, if not likely, that they could overturn Roe vs. Wade.
Just a reminder--Clinton won 2.86 million more votes than Trump, or 2.1%. Several studies have shown that the fallacious Comey letter of October 28 cost Clinton over 2% of the vote. One estimate is an average of 2.4% For one example, in early voting in Florida, Clinton beat Trump 52% to 48%, but in election day voting it was 56% to 44% for Trump. If it wasn't for the Comey letter, which was unprecedented in US history, Clinton would have won the 3 closely contested states, plus Florida, North Carolina, and Arizona and gotten around 350 electoral votes and a bigger win in the popular vote than Obama got in 2012. In a way, ;this was a coup by extreme rightists in the FBI. For voting data analysis, see this article: http://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2017/1/11/14215930/comey-email-election-clinton-campaign
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I have seen in the past, not just with Syria, where some leftists are so against US policy, especially interventions, that they end up defending ruthless dictators. Many ideologues want to see the world in only black and white and end up with what seems to me to be curious and dubious positions. Unfortunately the world is a messy place and right and wrong are rarely clearly delineated.. I always am reminded of what the journalist/author Robert Fisk once wrote about the Middle East: there is no right and wrong, only different degrees of wrong (I may have the quote a little off, but you get the idea). Or, to put it another way, there are no clean hands in the region. Assad has shown clearly in the past that he will stoop to any depths to hold on to power. At the very beginning he may have been able to work out a peaceful solution that left him in in charge but sharing power, but he chose to meet peaceful demonstrations with gunfire and bloodshed and things have degenerated from there.
Yugoslavia was an artificial country held together by Tito. Once he died, the country's instability was pretty much assured. Syria is less riven by factions/ethnicities than Yugoslavia was, but under the Asads it has been run by the Alawites who are a minority in the country. The mismanagement by the Assads, especially during the Arab Spring, is responsible for their troubles, not "outside agitators."
Watching Bill Maher last night, he had on Geraldo Rivera. Rivera, while he opposes most Trump policies, was defending Trump, basically because Trump was nice to Rivera over the years. Maher was trying to get Rivera to see that how Trump charms you as an individual should be divorced from his policies and actions as President, a point Rivera wasn't able to accept. I am astounded at this type of moral blindness. Trump shows once again how he is a psychopath and should be condemned by anyone with an ounce of moral fiber. Hurry up Robert Mueller.
What does it say about US policy that a totally ignorant and moronic president has actually got a better approach in off the cuff remarks than his supposed expert advisers? Of course, if Bolton is the last person to talk to Trump about this issue, then Trump will ignore what he said previously and double down in Syria.
I thought Larry's reply was good, but, on further thought, decided that this requires additional detail. Some extreme leftists have this exaggerated sense of false equivalency. Ask yourself and answer the following questions. Would Clinton have appointed the most incompetent and corrupt cabinet in history? Would she have appointed close advisors like racist Steve Bannon and xenophobic John Kelly and others of similar ilk? Would Clinton have tried to eliminate Obamacare with no substitute, taking away healthcare from tens of millions of Americans? Would Clinton have shrunk the national monuments created by Obama? Would she have tried to seriously damage the environment and taken us out of the Paris Accord? Would she appoint a person openly hostile to consumers to head the CFPB? Would Clinton have pushed through a tax cut to benefit the corporations and top 1% more than any other group? Would Clinton have sought to seriously reduce regulations on all businesses, no matter what the need? Would Clinton have approved of the racists in Charlottesville and sought a Muslim ban? Or try to build a wall? Or done the bidding of the NRA? Or take away protections for DACA recipients? On every major issue, from a liberal or leftist perspective, Clinton was so much better than Trump, that to conflate them is not based in realistic thinking. And while Trump is so awful that he re-election now looks unlikely, so, too, did his election look unlikely. Then there is the question of how much damage will he do before he leaves office and how long will it take to repair that damage.
Are you aware of Malcolm Nance? Having been in military intelligence for a while myself, I appreciate his approach. In intelligence you don't need prosecutorial level of proof to arrive at sensible and very likely conclusions. It was obvious to people like him (and me) almost 2 years ago that Trump was clearly compromised. The evidence was all around and has only been constantly confirmed by numerous revelations ever since. There were so many meetings between Trump campaign people and Russian connected people, that there has to have been some level of cooperation. What other plausible explanation exists for such meetings at those times? Now we have further revelations about Cambridge Analytics, who, you must think, had to have provided the targets and ideas for social media posts to Russian trolls. How else did the Russian trolls know what to write and whom to target and who else was using social media for that purpose? From what we know of Trump's IT program, it was pretty barebones personnel wise. All the constituent parts point to one conclusion and that is collusion. Just because Mueller hasn't yet presented solid evidence doesn't mean he doesn't have it or that it doesn't exist.
Just because this is a convenient place to post, not aimed specifically at you, but I wish people would stop using this term deep state, which has been coined by the alt-right to foster their paranoid fear of government. What they call the deep state is the bureaucracy, which as the great sociologist Max Weber maintained, is one of man's greatest inventions. Like any large organization, there are factions and different interests. In fact, the founders did not want a unitary government, but one that was filled with checks and balances so as to reduce the chances of tyranny. The bureaucracy, for whatever its failings, serves as an important check on possible tyrants. And, unlike officials in the current administration, civil servants not only take an oath to the Constitution, they take that oath seriously and the vast majority put their national service way above any interest in party. And I agree with you about Kushner. Today it has come out that he met with an investment banker talking about a possible job in the administration and lo and behold, not long thereafter the organization that banker worked for extended $184 million in loans to the Kushner company which is having cash flow problems.
Oh, please spare us from what sounds like a defense of Kushner. Just because you don't like the people you assume are his accusers (and he seems to have little support outside of Trump and Ivanka), that doesn't mean the charges are without merit. This is the same guy who met with the Russian Ambassador Kislyak to try and set up a back channel communication with the Kremlin. That alone should disqualify him from having anything to do with government, especially foreign policy. And a minority owner of the company? The company is basically him and his father, who, you may have forgotten, has already spent time in prison for illegal campaign contributions, tax evasion, and witness tampering. Kushner only has his job because he's married to Ivanka; he is totally unqualified as well as being a walking influence and blackmail target.
The pedantic historian in me requires me to correct what you say about killing of civilians. Wars fought in Europe after the 30 Years War generally avoided civilians, almost completely. Battles during the age of knighthood were relatively small affairs, even compared to the times of Rome and even Greece. Even during WWI, civilian deaths were relatively small (beware of estimates that include things like the Armenian genocide and deaths from flu and disease, which probably would have occurred nevertheless) even while the armies were huge. In WWI, civilians, with a few exceptions, were not targeted. In WWII, civilians were often targeted and even used as a strategic target to inhibit the war effort.
Those who apparently are trying to whitewash Assad should read a New Yorker article from several years ago. http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/04/18/bashar-al-assads-war-crimes-exposed Activists, including at least one man who worked for the government and with important documents, have been able to smuggle out thousands of incriminating documents. Also, international organizations like Human Rights Watch have had observers on the ground who have documented numerous cases of war crimes by the regime. As for the failure of the UN, one needs to realize its limitations. There have been many instances where the UN has failed to act and right now there seems to be little that will be done about the massacres of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar. There must be international consensus for action, and any time two of the 5 members of the Security Council are in disagreement or even one is unwilling to see action taken, the organization is powerless. One can only hope that Assad, who has managed to outdo his father in horrible crimes, will eventually see justice.
What a god awful mess. As predicted, Syria has become a wonderful place to avoid. The US is in a position where it may be working with Assad forces or allies to fight against a NATO ally. And why would a Secretary of State go into a meeting with a top foreign leader and not bring his own translator, especially when having contentious talks? That is incredibly stupid.
The KGB has a long history of trying to affect elections and insert propaganda into a national dialog. They have done this often in the past by doing things like bribing reporters to write false narratives or emphasize pro-Soviet viewpoints. They had done things like having coordinated letter writing on subjects that benefit them. Their approaches could be effective in Third World countries because of limited or lax controls and poor internal communication infrastructure. Those methods rarely would work in a developed country when newspapers and major networks were the main reporters of news. Journalism in this country relies on fact checking and editors insist on this and almost always require more than one source for any story, especially those involving any scandal. The rise of social media has been a game changer. Now anyone or any entity can create a "news" site or news outlet. Speculation can be presented as fact. Propaganda can abound because there are no editors and no filters for misinformation. False information that would have been discounted and never seen the light of day in the past now can be copied and shared with hundreds of thousands in the blink of an eye. Facebook plays a role by feeding people information that their algorithms show is consistent with their beliefs as revealed by their prior interest. This different environment has made Russian interference possible and much more powerful in developed countries than was possible before. So, it is incorrect to say that this is the same thing that has happened in the past. It is different both in volume and in kind.
When you read American history, I think the political intelligence of the typical American voter has declined severely. Political rallies in the past were often big events and I think there was more public discourse. The ignorance of the American public, which Professor Cole does not mention here, seems to me to be an important component of Trump's victory. The success of Russian efforts is due largely to the fact that hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of voters accepted ridiculous claims without bothering to check their accuracy. It is ironic and even seems counter factual, that while we now have limitless information available almost instantly via the internet, many people seem less informed because they only want to reaffirm their already held beliefs and don't want to be bothered with basic research. I have run into very few Trump supporters who are really informed and knowledgeable.
I have been saying for at least 2, maybe 3 years, that nothing good can come out of getting involved in Syria. For those new to this site, I will repeat myself. We have no vital interest in Syria. Syria is not important to us. Syria is a total mess and provides no value to a foreign intervenor and will cost probably hundreds of billions to reconstruct over a decade or two. Finally, the situation is untenable, Assad is sure to remain in power, we have no legal justification for being there, and there are so many competing factions that everyone involved has some blood on their hands. As longtime correspondent Robert Fisk once said about the Middle East in general, there is no right and wrong, only different degrees of wrong. While the Kurds will suffer, it is impossible for them to have their own state without causing great disruption to Syria, Turkey, Iraq, and Iran, and at least two of those are our putative allies. None of those states will agree to carving out a separate Kurdistan. The Kurds are not always pure, either, having been involved in morally dodgy activities in the past (see the Armenian genocide). The only smart course for the US is to withdraw from Syria.
Giving more money to the top one tenth of 1%, when they don't need it (when do they need it?) results in speculation. How many homes and cars can they buy? So, since it's money they don't need, it's like Monopoly money for them and they play with it via speculation. The result is boom, followed by a bust. The size of the crash can be reduced by regulators putting checks on the economy. Ooops, guess who is busy doing away with all those checks. Unless we get a new President who has a different philosophy, that means we could be headed toward another big crash.
I was out of town most of the day , so I've only had a chance to see dissections of the memo and not yet read it myself. However, based on sections I have seen quoted, it is a total farce. I suspected as much as it dealt with a FISA warrant on Carter Page that had nothing to do with the Mueller investigation. Nunes and his minions at Fox News have tried to make out that the warrant was somehow biased, ignoring the fact that Page had actually dealt with Russian spies in the past, at least one of whom was arrested and sent to prison. They were heard on tape talking about using Page (no relation). There are so many things wrong with the memo and the whole right wing attack, it will take a long article to go into all of them. Here is just one vignette. The source material, on which the memo is supposedly based, wasn't even read by Nunes and his staff wrote the memo. Only one Republican representative, Trey Gowdy, actually read the source material. Gowdy is the committee chairman who led the interminable Benghazi investigation, showing himself to be very partisan. And yet, the Nunes memo was apparently too much for him. The day the committee voted to release the memo, Gowdy announced his retirement (he's only in his mid-50's and comes from a safe district) and today he apparently tweeted that he supported the FBI and its agents and completely backed the Mueller investigation. I think that is rather telling when your own guy sabotages your effort.
I don't know what campaigns you were watching, but I don't think I have seen any experienced veteran of campaigns say that Trump ran a more energetic and strategic campaign. Like his administration, his campaign was very chaotic with people coming and going and little coordination, poor ground game, etc. He changed campaign managers in the middle of the campaign and then brought in Kellyanne Conway and Steve Bannon the last couple of months. There is no way to tell what effect collusion had, but one particular fake news story, that the Pope endorsed Trump, had over 800,000 shares, half of all the shares in the last couple of weeks of the campaign were fake news, and social media posts by Russian trolls and bots were supposedly viewed by approximately 40 million people. As for finances, taxes, etc., one of the first people hired by Mueller was an expert from the Treasury Dept. who specializes in money laundering and other financial crimes. In the Book Fire and Fury, the author quotes Bannon saying that the key to investigating Trump lies through Manafort and Trump's financial dealings.
There is a good book called Rise of the Vulcans, as I remember. It goes into the background and interrelationships between people like Wolfowitz, Condi Rice, and others. Remember that a lot of these people were the founders and most important members of the Project for the New American Century which began pushing for the Iraq War in the mid-90's. They just needed a justification/opportunity. They wrote a position paper for Netanyahu that was so right wing that even he refused to use it.
To clarify, they were warned about Curveball by the Germans. Curveball was actually in Germany, talking to German intelligence, but refused to talk to US intelligence. German intelligence thought he was fishy. It later turned out that he was working for Chalabi who wanted to become the next Iraqi leader after the US threw out Hussain. State was skeptical most all of the time. Powell had his doubts, but was given the job of presenting the case to the UN by Cheney's chief of staff. When he looked at the supposed evidence, Powell asked Cheney's staff, Is this all? Remember that Powell had been a top general and head of NSC so he was very familiar with intelligence and probably smelled a rat, but being a retired soldier, did his duty as he saw it.
This is all happening because Trump and his supporters are in full panic mode. They know they are in serious trouble, but I doubt they know how extensive that trouble is. What we know about Mueller's investigation is probably equivalent to the tip of an iceberg. Mueller has had experts and time enough to trace all the money aspects and has more than enough to nail Trump on obstruction. Trump is gone and may take a lot of Congressional Republicans with him. Something like 32 Republican representatives have decided to retire, including several committee chairmen. They have seen the writing on the wall.There will be fits and starts, last gasps of resistance by Trump, but eventually all the truth will come out, even if he, Trump, fires Mueller. The only question is when. Will it be before the midterms, or after? I am hoping that the big bombshell lands about mid September and Democrats take back both houses of Congress so impeachment can succeed. With this timeline, Ryan will no longer be in line of secession since a Democrat will probably be Speaker of the House. I think there will be enough evidence to show that Pence is also complicit and he may have to go, too. This whole Administration is rotten to the core (especially at the core) like nothing we have seen before in US history.
I have read that most advisers to Trump reach pretty much the same conclusion. He IS a moron. Further on display here. Worse, he is an ignorant moron. Have we ever had a more ignorant President? Certainly not in the last 130 years, at least.
Historically, damage from air strikes is almost always vastly over stated. One instructive example comes from the
Battle of Britain. RAF commanders carefully interviewed pilots after air battles and asked their own pilots, for their own intelligence purposes, how many German fighters they could confirm were shot down. They told their pilots they wanted them to count only the ones they actually saw crash. When they compared those numbers with actual numbers from German records obtained after the war, they found that they had over estimated their kills by a factor of 3. In Vietnam, when body count was used as a measure of progress by the US, naturally, they got vastly inflated numbers and they considered anyone killed near a combat area to be a hostile, even if they were women and children. In short, the 150 cited here, is probably a wild guess based on what they figured sounded good. If it were accurate, what are the chances that it would be such a perfectly round number? It would more likely be a number like 143 or 162 or something like that.
I think you've nailed it. The Presidency has become the ultimate reality show. Trump had 100% name recognition at the start of the campaign, unheard of for a challenger. Oprah makes an impassioned speech at an awards show and there is a boomlet for her to run. Previous research has shown that much of voting is on the basis of likeability. When people don't know the candidates well, then name recognition becomes crucial. Policy hardly matters anymore. It's enough to make a policy wonk, such as myself, be driven to despair.
You list these events in isolation when they need to be put in a time line and within context. For example, at the beginning of the insurrection Assad looked very vulnerable as units of his own army turned against him. Thus a policy that made sense then made no sense later when Assad had Russian backing. As Professor Cole noted at the time, Russian backing with bases and air power completely changed the situation. Also, the power of the Kurds and ISIS waxed and waned over time. The complexities and differing forces will make for a good case study for future foreign policy historians.One thing is certain, getting involved in Syria was a loser from the beginning for the US, especially since it is nowhere near a vital interest. You would think that after Vietnam we would have learned that getting in the middle of a civil war is a bad idea.
This is probably a first--we have put ourselves into a position where we may end up being attacked by a NATO ally. US Middle East policy has become as entangled as the famed Gordian Knot. US involvement in Syria has turned into everything I feared and more. There is no way for the US to get out of this without some damage. We can leave and alienate the Kurds, or stay and alienate the Turks and the Russians and put our troops at risk for what? What a mess.
I read an article about a year after the Crimean annexation and even native Russians there were disappointed with the aftermath. If you think that annexation of the Crimea to Russia was an organic operation, you need to read more broadly. While it was widely supported because most Crimeans are native Russians, it happened only because of Russian expansionism favored by Putin. Annexation of Crimea was an illegal act, as is US operations in Syria.
As I have maintained for some time, Syria has no strategic value to the US and we should not get involved in Syria at all. Unfortunately, interventionist ideology is transcendent in large areas of the foreign policy and defense policy establishments. Add to that a totally ignorant and incompetent administration and you have the recipe for disaster. And some people here before the election worried that Clinton was too hawkish in the Middle East. She was, but Trump is a total disaster.
The thing that convinced me that Trump is a fascist was his nomination acceptance speech. In it he listed a number of alleged serious problems in the country and concluded by saying that only he could fix it. He said something similar in his inauguration speech. This is central to fascism--the idea that one man expresses the will of the nation . One man, and only that man, is capable of expressing that will and getting done what needs to be done. One of the revelations of Michael Wolf's book reported today is that one of his aides said that Trump thinks he is the smartest guy in the room and has the right answer, no matter how little he knows about the subject. And this is despite the facts that he rarely reads anything except favorable press clippings, can't handle briefings of any complexity and one person called him semi-literate. I was watching some journalists trying to address the issue of his tweet about the nuclear button and North Korea and they carefully danced around the issue. Somebody needs to come out and say what is obvious--our President is a nut case.
The biggest challenge for the US is getting over the incredibly foolish idea that has gripped our policy makers for decades--that our intervention can achieve an outcome that is favorable to us in a region that isn't important to us.
If Putin wants to have Syria within the Russian sphere of influence, let him have it. As I have been maintaining for years, the Middle East is not a vital national interest of the US, especially with the decline in the importance of oil. We should be withdrawing from the area.
Oh, dear, so much to choose from for our dear leader. War with Iran or war with North Korea? Maybe he will pick North Korea instead of war with Iran. Trump is such a horrible disaster, it is not out of the realm of possibility that we could end up in war with both.
Saw tis the other day where someone actually figured it out. If all the wealth in the country were divided equally, every family would have about $660,000 in wealth. The problem is not lack of wealth, but mal-distribution.
From an artistic standpoint, there are something like only 19 DaVinci oil paintings known for sure and several more which might be his. So, this is probably a good investment and likely to go up in value.
So, a major painting by DaVinci
Thanks so much for this article, Professor Cole. And the neocons and just plan cons (conservatives) still don't get it. I caught John Podhoretz on MSNBC yesterday and he was touting what he said was the remaking of the Middle East because of Trump-'s action and the Israeli--Saudi alliance. Unfortunately, most media in the US are uninformed or misinformed about ME politics and just parrot pro-Israeli claptrap that they probably get from AIPAC talking points. I have also noticed an increasing dearth of academic experts on the various news shows and it is fortunate that we have outlets such as Informed Comment where we can get truly informed and knowledgeable opinion.
This decision is so stupid, beyond belief really, that I wonder if Trump is deliberately creating a provocation to foment a "clash of civilizations". In this way he can then seize upon Muslim reaction as a justification for his anti-Muslim bias and actions. This will solidify his support among his racist and xenophobic base and so what, he figures, if it leads to violent unrest and more Americans killed.
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I think the more imminent danger is the thawing of the permafrost. Hydrates are mostly in deep water where rising temperatures are less of a problem. A thawing permafrost has already begun and could release enormous amounts of both methane and CO2 and once started, would be pretty much impossible to stop.
Notice how many times Trump used the word "will" in his speech. Is it just a coincidence that maybe the most famous propaganda film of all time which extolled Hitler, by Leni Riefenstahl, was called Triumph of the Will? While Trump probably doesn't know enough to realize the significance, I'm sure Bannon does.
You are being unfair to the Volt. While its range is limited to 53 miles this year in battery only, because of its gasoline powered generator, it can go 420 miles on combined battery and a tank of gasoline. For 90% of a person's travel, you will need only the battery power and then it is basically unlimited for long trips, albeit at a lesser mpg. That gives it much more flexibility than the Bolt, Tesla, or other battery only cars. Hydrogen power may supplant modern day batteries anyway.
I'd just like to remind readers that before WWII, some of the greatest scientists in all of history such as Einstein and Szilard, came to the US to escape dictatorships and had outstanding schools like Princeton provide them with succor and research facilities. Imagine what might have been if these men had stayed in Europe and been forced to work on atomic weapons for the Nazis instead of being in the US. The US has so benefited from foreigners coming here to study and then staying and providing invaluable contributions in the sciences. Most every major university has professors who fit this bill. A former roommate of my wife was like that and went on to get a Phd. in microbiology. Who will want to do this as long as this insane clown and his ignorant minions are in the White House?
After I wrote this I realized that the phrase "our values of freedom and democracy" is not valid anymore. I'm not ;sure we have either in our own country right now. What i meant was our traditional foreign policy values of promoting freedom and democracy, which of course often gave way to power politics and supporting anti-communist dictatorships.
Republicans and especially neocons are incredibly short sighted. They still think that the US can dominate the world and enforce a Pax Americana. That is foolish nonsense. What the US should be doing is preparing for the day when we are no longer the world's top super power. We should be working to set up an international regime that supports and encourages our values of freedom and democracy. This means fostering alliances and working with and through the UN with like minded powers, the exact opposite of what Trump and the neocons prefer. In such an international system, a positive view of US leadership is crucial for success. Go it alone nationalism is doomed to fail given our current and future international environment.
I'm not sure which gas attack you are referring to, but the original one was extensively investigated and Human Rights Watch had people there on the ground within a day or two. Here's a report that summarizes the UN report.http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-24130181
Further information. Thanks to renewables, California has faced an energy glut during daytime hours. There have been days when the state power authority actually paid Arizona to take excess power from California. Yes, that seems crazy, but under certain circumstances it makes a sort of sense. A big article in today's (6/25) LA Times goes into detail.
You don't need to go to France to find a hospitable place for alternative energy scientists and engineers. The state of California is doing a fine job on its own and there are 40 million people in the state, almost as many as in Spain (46 million).
Your comments reminded me of a major incident before WWII between Japan and the Soviet Union. They engaged in major military actions near Mongolia. A recent book, Nomonhan, 1939, gives the details. What is salient is that an out of control major in the Japanese army in that area basically almost precipitated a war between the two countries because of the failure of the Japanese government to exercise any restraint on the local army forces in the area. I found it astounding how one mid level officer was allowed to act unchecked. Now, do we have a situation in the Middle East where a local commander, even if a general, is in the position to cause a war for the US? A truly frightening thought.
This is what happens when you outsource foreign policy to the military. Clemenceau was correct when he said that war is too important to be left to the generals. War is politics by violent means and you need politicians to make the strategic decisions. Who you are going to be fighting is one of the most important decisions. The Trump Administration is like the proverbial bull in the china shop. We need to get out of Syria, not get in deeper.
The idea that Putin's policy aspirations are noble is laughable at best. Autocratic policies are almost never noble, whatever the country. As for Russia, perhaps the last policy that may have been noble probably was the czar's decision to support Serbia in 1914.
There have been some good histories of the KGB written. You should read one. Russia/the USSR meddling in elections and trying to disrupt the politics of other nations goes back many decades (read about the Comintern). Putin's job in the KGB was to recruit spies and suborn foreigners into working for them. Yes, the US in the past has done similar, but the Russians are masters of the game. What happened in 2016 is the continuation of a long tradition and the US is not the only country to recently suffer from Russian medddling.You come across as rather naive. Because you aren't privy to evidence of their meddling, that doesn't mean it isn't there. US intelligence estimates that the Russians employed 1000 trolls to plant fake news on social media. A poster here reported that he ran into it on his website and I personally found evidence of posts from Facebook users whose Facebook pages were empty shells.
Anyone who supports US intervention in Syria needs to address the question, how is the outcome in Syria a vital national interest of the United States?. Foreign policy is very selfish and a nation's security interest must be in the forefront. Even if a certain outcome is preferable, we must ask if it is worth the cost. Syria is not a vital national interest of the US and any intervention there by the US that would be significant enough to make a difference would cost more than it is worth. Any other measure is superfluous. Neocons are terribly unrealistic. You would think they would have learned something from Iraq, but most haven't.
Just a reminder about this whole concept of running government like a business. There have been 3 presidents who were mainly businessmen before becoming president. Hoover, who had no clue when the Depression hit, George W. Bush who wasn't even a good businessman, and Trump. They have all been spectacular failures. Government can't be run like a business because they are two completely different types of organizations.
Great Britain is our strongest and closest ally. NATO is the longest lasting peace time alliance in history and, one could argue, the most effective. Trump seems determined to destroy our relationship with both. Only Russia benefits from this. Either he is a raving lunatic (possible) or this is payback by Trump to Russia.
Donald Trump is a wonderful example showing that money doesn't buy class.
A lot of good comments here. Herbert Hoover, of all people, said that the problem with capitalism is that capitalists are too damn greedy. As another pointed out, this is the natural evolution of capitalism. Greed leads to monopoly and encourages participants to not play by the rules in order to get a competitive advantage. There is no "invisible hand" in the marketplace and the markets cannot be amoral because of individual greed. Also, decisions are not always rational in the marketplace. Thus, the main underpinnings of the capitalist system are doomed to failure without government intervention. FDR, when greeted with howls from the capitalists over regulations and government programs, observed that he was their best friend because he was saving capitalism from itself. The New Deal economy worked well. It was done in because the US Chamber of Commerce, in the early 70's set about destroying it (the Powell memo, see http://billmoyers.com/content/the-powell-memo-a-call-to-arms-for-corporations/)
When Trump first announced his run for the presidency , coming down the escalator at the Trump Tower, there were people there applauding him. Much later we found out that he had hired people to do that. When he went to the CIA and spoke in front of their memory wall shortly after the Inauguration, he got a warm response. We found out later that he had "salted" the crowd with staffers from the White House to provide applause and support. Most CIA employees found his speech to be repugnant, according to sources with internal contacts. Does that answer your question?
The pioneering sociobiologist E.O. Wilson, through his long study of ants and other social insects, has found that evolution favors cooperative societies over competitive ones. But, that involves science, so we can't expect Trump to understand it.
He will provide leadership on any issue that leads to enriching the Trump family.
You would think people would have learned from Bush #43 that the Republicans bring only failure and disaster, but memories are short. Even as Trump flames out, don't expect a rush of enlightenment to the approximately 40% who support him.
Glad you mentioned that point. Solar power is more efficient since it can be generated at the point of use. There is an estimated loss of about 8 to 14% due to transmission. And, of course, centralized power requires infrastructure and more maintenance, especially in areas with extreme weather.
Donald Trump = the most dangerous man in the world.
One thing I do know is that the intercepted communication would have been done by NSA (see books by James Bamford). Such intercepts are closely guarded so that outside of NSA, only top officials would have had access to that information. Thus, the average CIA analyst might not have had any knowledge of this. Thus, the leak must have come from either inside of NSA, or from top officials in other intelligence agencies. Since it happened in December, then it would have been either a career NSA employee or someone who was in the Obama administration who was the leaker.
This happened and was reported to WaPo before
Trump became President. That makes a big difference. Secondly, there is extensive research which shows that racism, anti-immigration and xenophobia were the major components of support for Trump. His foreign policy positions were quite unimportant in garnering votes.
A good summary to which I would like to add one thing. Trump said that Hizbullah was created by Iran, which is ridiculous. They were created by Lebanese in response to the Israeli invasion. Robert Fisk's book Pity the Nation is a great account of that time.
The Trump Administration continues to provide us with amazing revelations. Health care is complicated. The job of President isn't easy. And now we learn that a Russian dictatorship is dishonest, which Trump can identify with. Maybe next he'll tell us that Middle East peace isn't easy after all.
Spot on analysis. So many people equate killing civilians with strength when it is actually a sign of weakness. Good information on the Muslim population in France, of which I was not aware. I am going to bookmark this to share with all the right wingers who have no understanding of the situation. Thanks.
I like Hansen's comparisons as they put things in stark relief. A year or two ago he calculated the chances of having so many months in a row of average monthly temperatures being above the average for the century. The chance of that happening randomly was something like one out of 3 times 10 to the 99th power, or a bigger number than all the grains of sand on our planet. I have read some people say that humans couldn't possibly affect the atmosphere because it's so large. 60,000 A bombs per day certainly illustrates the point.
I read some years back that The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells was actually a metaphor about western countries colonizing poor countries in the 18th and 19th centuries. Many people have argued that naked imperialism was just replaced by more subtle economic imperialism.With the election of Trump, scientists have moved the Doomsday Clock forward so that it is now the closest to midnight it has been since 1953.
I'm afraid we have passed the point of no return on climate change and Trump's policies are rapidly hastening the Day of Reckoning. Things will get bad; the only question is how bad and how soon.
This is not just the gang that can't shoot straight, but the gang that keeps shooting itself in the foot. Maybe the most incompetent group of executive branch officials in history.
As one old enough to live through the Civil Rights era, albeit at a distance, it's hard to forget how marchers were treated in that state, the church bombing and the dead children, Sheriff Bull Conner, Governor Wallace, et al, and the hatred shown toward African Americans.
Ask anyone who has been to the 2 states which they would prefer to live in. The first time I went through Alabama was in the late 60's and I was amazed to drive on a US highway that was a gravel road. Alabama was for many years like a 3rd world country in the US. And it also had the distinction of being one of the most racist states in the country. Perhaps the fact that in Hawaii many different racial groups are able to live in harmony and prosper is why Sessions felt the need to dis the state. Trump just welcomed Ted Nugent and Sarah Palin to the White House and picked Sessions for his AG. Our country is being run by the ignorant and the classless.
Although this doesn't directly relate to this article, I wanted to pass this along to Informed Comment readers. Yesterday I heard some remarks by the head of Homeland Security Kelley. One sentence stood out. He said that "We have to change the way that people in the Middle East think." The idea that we can and should do this is just so amazingly arrogant and ignorant that it practically took my breath away. And Kelley supposedly isn't as bad as many of Trump's advisors and cabinet heads.
One of my favorite quotes is from DeGaulle who said that grave yards are filled with the bodies of "indispensable men." Erdogan has decided that he is one of those and his country can't survive without him. There is almost never a good outcome when a country is headed by someone with that view.
You could have added Guatemala to the list of genocidal actions overlooked by the US. Also, the US Army School of the Americas did a good job of turning out officers from Latin American countries into coup leaders and dictators who oppressed their people. Finally, I read this a number of decades ago and I think it was in one of the volumes of S.E. Morrison's history of the US Navy during WWII. This account showed that the US did have poison gas to use in case the Nazis used it. My recollection is that during one of the invasions of Italy, maybe Anzio, Morrison mentioned that a US supply ship carrying poison gas was hit by fire and poison gas was released as a result.
The worst thing that can happen is if this strike doesn't produce serious negative feedback. Then Trump will think that this whole thing is easy and be encouraged to do it again and more, until it leads to disaster. The man truly has no clue but acts on impulse.
The disposal of the chemical weapons was done by the implementing organization for the Chemical Weapons Convention, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons(OPCW). This was done at the direction of the UN after a unanimous vote in the UN Security Council.
Before the election Trump's ghost writer on Art of the Deal warned that electing Trump would lead to the end of civilization. That remains to be seen. Nevertheless, it is definite that the chances are much higher with Trump in the White House. I like the title of Matt Taibbi's book, Insane Clown President. I think that pretty much describes it.
Ideological regimes eventually come to realize that they have to have at least a modicum of public support and be able to put food on the table and a bearable life for their citizens. North Korea being an exception. Thus, this is a natural evolution for Iran. However, the neo-cons and just plain cons are bereft of knowledge or insight and many seem hell bent on trying to overthrow the Iranian regime. Let's hope that the Trumpian scandals so discredit his regime that they are unable to get support for such idiocy.
An AP article published today in my local paper detailed the growing number of US troops deployed in the Middle
East and Somalia and the fact that the Trump Administration is basically letting the Pentagon set a lot of military and even foreign policy. Now we have a top general declaring that Yemen is a vital US interest?? This is truly scary. Fasten your seatbelts; it could be a bumpy ride as we amp up intervention in more and more countries.
As for Clinton's loss, see http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/russian-trolls-fake-news_us_58dde6bae4b08194e3b8d5c4?ncid=inblnkushpmg00000009 You might also check http://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2017/1/11/14215930/comey-email-election-clinton-campaign
The Comey letter alone cost her 2% points. Add that 2% to her vote total and she would have won by a bigger margin than Obama did in 2012 vs. Romney. Don't let your biases get in the way of facts.
We know that Flynn was being paid by the Turkish government and failed to register as required by law. Was he also being paid by the Russians? Was his appearance at the RT event a way for him to be paid for his other work for them during the campaign? Did he report these payments on his taxes? This Russian connection could end up being bigger than Watergate.
Here's some interesting political history, In 1973 President Nixon proposed a national health care plan that was simple. It had basically two parts. All employers, as in all, not just some, would be required to provide health care insurance for all their employees. Second, anyone who was not working would get health care provided for by the government. He left it to Congress to fill in the blanks. Senator Ted Kennedy did not support it, but held out for a government run single payer system as is common in Europe. The Nixon plan went nowhere. Fast forward 20 years later when the Clinton proposed health care plan couldn't even get a vote in the Congress. Senator Ted Kennedy admitted he made a terrible mistake by not accepting Nixon's plan. About 10 years ago there was a Harvard study that found that for every 1 million uninsured, about 950 of them will die needlessly every year. During the height of the recession, before the ACA, there were about 47 or 48 million uninsured. That translates to about 45,000 unnecessary deaths per year. Imagine how many people's lives could have been saved since 1973 if the Nixon plan had been approved. Probably close to a million. I was a legislative assistant to a councilman in a large city for about two and a half years. Two things I learned quickly. 1. Politics is the art of the possible. 2. Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. I had a lot of good ideas that went nowhere because of rule #1. Ideologues, whether left or right, expect, even demand purity of policy. That's not how it works, nor is it possible. Too many Bernie supporters don't realize this. While Clinton and Obama have been derided for their outlook, the fact is that major change, with a few exceptions, only comes incrementally, and slowly.
Even when you keep up with all the degradations and calumnies, you hardly have time to digest one when another comes along. Because he keeps pumping them out, one gets hit with a kind of sensory overload. Also, you tend to forget what has happened before because there has been so much. Chris Hayes had a list of 10 outrages from Trump during the campaign that he would update periodically. You really need a scorecard to keep track of everything. He combines that with continuous distractions and feints so that people will focus on something less important. Worried about Russian involvement in the election? Well, Devin Nunes does ridiculous things violating all sorts of protocols so that the attention is focused on him rather than the actual investigation. Trump and his minions do this constantly. I think eventually it will catch up with them and they are just digging their grave deeper.
The bill of particulars against this administration just keeps getting longer. Eventually you figure, the chickens will come home to roost.
It sounds like the Iraqi government, with its seeming insensitivity towards Sunnis is continuing to make the same mistakes that led to the previous uprisings and some support for ISIS. They just don't get it and the US president certainly doesn't. There have been hundreds of books and voluminous research done on counter insurgency. There is even a journal devoted to it. I wish these people would read some of it. Secondly, fighter bombers, even with smart bombs, are not the right tool for urban warfare. If there is a sniper on a roof, a mortar would be much better, or even a small drone. You don't need 500 pound bombs. Maybe you recall that Trump's approach is to bomb the sh*t out of them. That attitude must have affected our ground and air commanders. We are back to creating two terrorists for every one we kill.
Here in California, because of solar power, there is an excess of power during the day. They have more than they can use. So, whereas in the past you were urged to use your appliances during night time hours, now we are being urged to use them during the middle of the day. And solar installations keep growing in number installed every year.
One of the first things Trump did after winning was create an imbroglio over Taiwan and China. He appointed an ambassador to Israel who favors Israeli settlements in the West Bank and is very pro-Netanyahu, he has increased US involvement in Syria, he has shown his disdain for NATO, has never once criticized Putin, had the Republican platform changed to remove language opposing Russian annexation of Crimea, and you think he just doesn't pay attention to Russian internal politics?
As a realist, then I know you must want to put things in perspective as you try to do here. While I agree with many of the criticisms of Clinton and Obama, their foreign policies need to be highlighted in contrast to that of Republicans. Under Clinton the only real intervention was in Bosnia, which was to aid Muslims, and cost not one American life to combat and had very few civilian casualties. While drone strikes have been heavily criticized, they basically stopped the last year of the Obama presidency. Additionally, the last report of civilian casualties due to drone strikes, as I recall, was around 700 by several NGO's such as Amnesty International. Compare that with over 100,000 Iraqis under Bush.
I think it was the night of the 2008 election and a panel at CNN was discussing the results. Some conservative said some nonsense about the Democrats using class warfare. David Gergen, hardly a radical and actually a moderate conservative, said something which you almost never hear on TV. A close paraphrase is that he said, That war is over and the rich won. People who criticise Obama from the left will almost certainly agree that we live in an oligarchy. Yet they seem to think that a progressive can assume office and completely turn around a system that has developed over 30 to 40 years. The ACA is basically a Republican plan. The reason the Republicans hated it is not because, as they said, that it wouldn't work, but because they knew it would since it already had in Massachusetts. The ACA wasn't just about providing health care, it was also about changing the paradigm established by Reagan that the government is the enemy and the free market is the solution. That belief is the cornerstone of the power of the elite and it's one reason the ACA is so important.
The use of terrorism by a political movement is a sign of weakness, not power. And lack of success inevitably leads to adherents falling away. Because Daesh/ISIS/ISIL is led by delusional radical ideologues, they have made fatal mistakes. Grabbing large swaths of territory without popular support was one of them. As you say, their best hope is foolish policies by their opponents. Unfortunately, many are ready to provide those foolish policies. In a way, it comes down to who is stupider and who is stupid more often.
Thanks for this additional info. One thing I think you implied, but could have added explicitly. Deripaska couldn't have achieved his dominance not only without nefarious means, but also it would have required the approval and probable collusion of the Putin government. I suspect Putin and cronies got big kickbacks for helping him and he also feels beholden to Putin and would act as Putin's agent whenever asked.
Something which I think is often overlooked is the possibility of widespread famine. Climate change is likely to disrupt deep ocean currents which will radically change weather patterns that have been the basis for much of world agriculture over centuries and longer. For example, if the monsoons are disrupted in India, that could have catastrophic effects on their agriculture. Similarly, most major Indian rivers are fed by Himalayan glacier melt and monsoon rains. What happens if the monsoons are disrupted and the glaciers disappear? What happens if the US Middle West become too hot for grain crops? One of the main reasons for mass famine in Africa is the desertification of areas south of the Sahara. Same with the Gobi Desert in China. In both areas, the desert is increasing up to a half mile per year because of climate change. Combine that with rising sea levels making many coastal areas uninhabitable and we could see mass die offs of hundreds of millions of people and mass extinction events among flora and fauna. The dire effects cannot be overstated since there will be likely additional unpleasant effects that cannot be foreseen.
Maybe you didn't see this, but it came out that Clinton actually discussed this with Powell before she took office and he did not counsel her against it. In fact, he sent her an email giving her advice on how best to use her private PDA. See http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2016/09/07/powell-email-advising-clinton-personal-email-released/89984698/
Also, the whole email issue came out only because of the Benghazi hearings. Even Republicans admitted that the whole purpose of the Benghazi hearings was to try and stop Clinton from winning the presidency since she seemed to have it locked up at that time.
I have some expertise in this area. I was the head of the City of San Diego's records management program, which was modeled on the Federal program, and I had a top secret clearance while I was in military intelligence. I agree with Professor Cole. No laws were broken and what Clinton did was only slightly different from what Colin Powell did in that she had her own server. We have since found out that many government officials have used unsecured communications for possibly classified materials. The charge that she had classified materials stored on that server is technically accurate, but not a chargeable offense as Comey concluded. All but 3 of the classified materials were classified AFTER she received them. Those that were classified were improperly marked and the violation would be by the person(s) who sent the improperly marked classification, not on the recipient. I dealt with top secret materials on a daily basis and would not have recognized that the improper marking was, in fact, a classification mark. You cannot convict someone of mishandling classified materials if they weren't classified when you were using them. In fact, I think that would fall under the Constitutional ban of an ex post facto law. I use the analogy of someone driving through an intersection which has no controlling sign, having a stop sign put up the next week and then being charged with running through a stop sign for the previous week before the sign was up. Finally, the shelf life of most intelligence is very short, sometimes weeks, rarely more than months. What is important is if the intelligence reveals sources and methods, which none of the materials on Clinton's server did, to my knowledge. I think Clinton made a political mistake by having her lawyers go through her server and remove non-record materials, which, by the way, is different from non-governmental materials. Many government records need not be kept or may be discarded after 2 years. Instead, she should have had officials from the National Archives do it. However, I find it unlikely that the attorneys who did it would have intentionally violated the law as it would have put them at great risk professionally and they must have been well versed in the law before they acted.
Several things. Comey was deputy counsel to the Senate Whitewater Committee in 1996. I have seen it speculated that he grew to dislike the Clintons and felt that they were getting away with wrongdoing. That is mere speculation, of course. The other thing is that Rudy Giuliani seemed to know ahead of time that the FBI was going to announce the finding of Clinton emails on Weiner's computer. Many believe that Giuliani, who used to be US Attorney for New York, has extensive ties to FBI agents in New York and that a cabal of right wing agents in New York were forcing Comey's hand and keeping Giuliani informed. Here are some pertinent links. http://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2017/1/11/14215930/comey-email-election-clinton-campaign and http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/new-washington-post-report-on-comey-letter-raises-startling_us_585c5f22e4b014e7c72edb64 then http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_5850bb12e4b0b662c2fddebc/amp
http://www.gallup.com/poll/201617/gallup-daily-trump-job-approval.aspx
This shows his approval/disapproval over recent time. Currently about 10% points more oppose him than approve him. At no point does this chart show his approval rising above his disapproval.
Trump and his minions have been done in by their own stupidity. Trump said the second version was the "lite" version and he and his administration officials keep talking about the Muslim ban. If they had any sense they might have been able to get away with it, but now the well is completely poisoned.
Russia seen as a problem solver? By whom? Only by Assad, it seems to me. Your anti-Clintonism has blinded you. This whole article seems like much ado about nothing. This is one disputed report about 22 commandos. Calm down. The aid to the Libyan rebels was a NATO operation and the non-sectarians would be looking more toward NATO for further help rather than Russia. Logistically, NATO is also a much better source for aid to the non-sectarian forces.
Some of this smacks of mindless anti-Americanism. The US was responsible for nation building in South Sudan? And let's not forget that South Sudan got its independence because of the genocidal like policies of the Sudanese government. We were hardly the only country to support its independence. Did we direct the Saudis to attack Yemen? We shouldn't be helping, but to say we're responsible is a leap of logic. And the Syrian calamity is mostly the fault of Assad. Other intervenors include Iran, Hezbollah, Russia, the Kurds, the Saudis and god knows who else in addition to the US and Turkey. Syria was a mess and going to be a mess even if we never intervened. I think the US needs to withdraw from the Middle East but the region has had problems for decades and will continue to do so for decades, regardless of our involvement.
Considering that I have been preaching for the US to stay out of Syria since the idea was first broached, obviously I think this is a terrible idea. As for what is Trump's plan? It's probably whatever Putin tells him to do.
While all of the points in this article are valid and the facts do not support the contentions behind this EO, because it is for a limited duration and exempts green card and visa holders, it just may pass muster with the courts.
I think one of the hallmarks of the time we are now living in is how readily people will latch onto delusionary thinking and live in a comfortable bubble rather than have to face a hard truth. The situation with Israel and the Palestinians is one of the most notable examples. As has been noted by others before, without a meaningful two state solution, Israel can be Jewish or it can be a democracy, but eventually it will have to choose because it will not be possible to be both.
Good analogy with the video store employees. I have used an analogy of Trump being like someone in 1910 vowing to maintain employment in the horse drawn carriage industry. BTW, before automobiles, horse manure was becoming a major problem in large cities so that cars were actually better for public health at that time. What is amazing is that anybody buys Trump's snake oil.
Here's a disturbing story on the Russian--Trump connection from Rachel Maddow. http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/new-commerce-secretary-at-nexus-of-lucrative-trump-russian-deal-886220355575 It is stuff like this why people are so up in arms about this president.
I can't remember who it was who has been pushing this, but one commentator on MSNBC, has said that the major news outlets should send just interns to the press conferences by the administration. I think that would be a good response. They can work with regular staff to prepare some decent questions while this frees up regular reporters to be doing more substantial work while giving the administration the lack of respect it deserves.
Thought I should also add that Clinton intervened in the Bosnian ethnic cleansing and probably saved thousands of Muslim lives there.
Mossadegh was overthrown while Eisenhower was president. Intervention in Lebanon in 1958 while Eisenhower was president. US working with both parties during the Iraq-Iran War while Reagan was president. That included selling arms to Iran, giving intelligence to Saddam Hussein, looking the other way when he gassed 10,000 to death, and shooting down an Iranian airliner. Also while Reagan was president the US battleship New Jersey shelled targets in Lebanon in support of the Israeli incursion. The Gulf War happened while the first Bush was president. The Iraq War begun by the second Bush. Clinton did send cruise missiles against al Qaeda and enforced the no-fly zone over Iraq begun by Bush, but other than that I don't see any Democrats in this list. The two major peace initiatives that had any success were the Camp David Accords peace agreement done under the aegis of Carter and the Oslo Accords while Clinton was president. Yours is a false equivalency.
A couple of days ago I saw two psychologists discussing Trump and the role of psychologists. Present guidelines say that they should not diagnose anyone they haven't actually interviewed. They pointed out that this was adopted after some psychologists publicly questioned the sanity of Barry Goldwater in 1964. One pointed out that since then the profession has developed a comprehensive guideline on what behaviors signify different mental conditions and that this wasn't available at the time the stricture against diagnosis of public figures without interviews was developed. And, in an important point, they both agreed that it would be immoral to not speak out if a top leader exhibited behaviors that clearly indicated mental instability. They said that Trump fits that bill and that psychologists should not remain quiet about it. In fact, they have a moral duty to speak out. If someone is a professional with decades of experience in a relevant area such as politics and/or history, then I think that he or she also has a duty to speak out against someone who the professional perceives as being an existential threat to our democracy. If I may interpret Professor Cole's position, I think he, as well as many others of similar pedigree, believe this to be true of Trump. Even George Will, a long time noted conservative and Republican, changed his designation on his voter registration from Republican to Independent after Trump won the nomination. Many professional Republicans hold this view of Trump, not just liberal Democrats.
The United States was considerably different in 1787 than it is now. You need to view history in context. The Constitution was revolutionary at the time of its passage, but times change. The original Constitution also required the election of senators by state legislatures and after about 100 years it had become obvious that was not a good idea. The election of 1876 also made clear the problems of the electoral college. When the constitution was amended to have the direct election of senators, they also should have done away with the electoral college. The longer it remains, however, the more difficult it is to change. Jefferson thought the Constitution would require major revision every 20 years or so to adjust to changing times. The founders recognized it was an imperfect document and would require frequent change in the future. I think the problem was that future generations were too timid.
My favorite is how often conservatives blamed the Community Reinvestment Act. Not only was that passed 30 years before the crash, making it the slowest acting legislation in history, it didn't cover refinancing, loans by other than banks and had little teeth. I calculated that it only applied to no more than 10% of all loans made. And, of course, it had no relationship to credit default swaps.Yet they continued with that meme long after it was shown to be ridiculous.
The most amazing thing to me in this poll is that 40% of the people actually think he is honest. He lies practically every time he opens his mouth. How could anyone think he's honest? And 44% think he cares about average Americans. I doubt he has done a single altruistic thing in his life and is a billionaire who has appointed Wall St. executives and other billionaires to key positions. Boy, what planet have these people been living on? The con game still works on 40+% of the American people.
According to what I have read, Bannon's initial appointment does not require Senate confirmation. However, if he becomes a member of the NSC board, the membership which is spelled out in law, he should be required to get Senate confirmation. Since the Republicans control the Senate, the question then becomes if they bow to Trump or insist on their institutional right.
http://www.vox.com/2016/9/19/12933072/far-right-white-riot-trump-brexit and then you can also check http://www.vox.com/identities/2017/1/4/14160956/trump-racism-sexism-economy-study and, finally, http://www.vox.com/identities/2016/12/12/13894546/obama-race-black-white-house-cornell-belcher-racism
My own opinion is that the die hard Trump supporters number maybe one third of the electorate. He has another 8 to 10-% that can swing his way depending on the situation. He got 46% of the vote and that was inflated by about 2.5% points because of the Comey letter.For example, he got almost all Republican votes, many holding their nose because they couldn't stand the idea of Clinton winning and appointing a liberal to the Supreme Court. There are a lot of independents who lean right and with things like the email propaganda and the Comey letter, voted for Trump because they ignored the warning signs and figured he was the lesser of two evils. Trump's favorability rating is now 38%. Bush got down to the mid to upper 20's by the time he left office, so i think Trump could get down as low as the low 30's within this year, depending on developments. On the effect of the Comey letter, see http://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2017/1/11/14215930/comey-email-election-clinton-campaign
Fox News supported Clinton to the hilt? Those are alternative facts.
I you call the Electoral College democratic. Losing by 2.8 million votes and winning the office doesn't seem very democratic to me. Is there any other office in the US where you can get more votes and lose? I don't know of any.
Thanks so much for this information, which I will gladly share. BTW, on Huffington Post today is a story about this which also includes the favorability rating of Trump in other countries. 92% of Swedes had an unfavorable opinion of him even before this. Trump's best rating was 40% unfavorable, 22% favorable (I think that was Hungary) with his unapproval way up there in most countries (96% unfavorable in Canada). Showing once again how most other publics are smarter than the American public. As H.L. Mencken once said, no one ever went broke by underestimating the intelligence of the American public.
Well, you can share articles like this on Facebook if you have any right wing Facebook friends. You can also bookmark this story and then copy and paste the URL in replies to right wingers who comment elsewhere. It is not a panacea, but constant refutation of lies cannot hurt.
Trump's press conference was the most incredible thing I have ever seen from a US president. I give you the words of John Dean who was asked to give his views of Trump vis a vis Watergate, etc. Dean has first hand knowledge of what an unstable and corrupt president looks like. A close paraphrase is that he said, "I went to my first presidential news conference in 1957. I have never seen such a classless president." Trump is clearly the most dangerous man to ever occupy the White House and it amazes me that some still can't see that and make false equivalencies.
Just some added details that people might find interesting. A good book on the situation from the birth of the Zionist movement to the 1967 War is The Arab-Israeli Dilemma by Khouri. It has a lot of useful statistics, summary of UN actions, etc. At the end of WWI, the number of Jews in the area was about 8% of the total population. There were more Arab Christians than Jews. The first terrorist attacks in the area were conducted by Jews by Irgun and the Stern Gang. Irgun, headed by future Israeli PM Menachem Begin, was responsible for the bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem in 1946, which killed 91 people. It was one of the largest terrorist attacks anywhere up to that time. The Arabs mostly rioted. As per Robert Fisk, the first use of a car bomb was likely done by Israeli intelligence (Mossad or Shin Bet) as he found Hebrew letters on parts of the bomb that exploded.
The 2002 Arab League resolution has been almost totally ignored in the US, too. Outside of people like the readers here, hardly anyone in the US even knows it exists. Everybody else still believes that old shibboleth that failure to recognize Israel is a major sticking point. This resolution should be mentioned in just about every article about the Israel-Palestine problem, but it almost never is.
I was thinking about this today and talking with a friend about it. Trump is not stupid, but his major personality defects drive him to do really stupid things. Like obsessing over the size of his inauguration crowd and alleging millions of illegal votes because he can't accept the idea that Clinton got more votes, etc. Hitler analogies can be dangerous, but here's one that I think works. Prior to WWII and in the early days, Hitler took many risks and did things that his top generals were against and/or considered foolish and dangerous. But, he was successful. The result was that he had complete confidence in himself and thought the generals were stodgy and foolish. So, when the war began to turn against him, he acted on his instincts and ordered the army to do many stupid things, like eschewing orderly withdrawals and fighting to the end when losing. Because of his megalomania and stubbornness, he hastened the defeat of the German Army, thank goodness. Trump is similar in that he ran a very unorthodox campaign and all the political professionals thought he was a joke. They gave him no chance to win the nomination. Then they gave him no chance to win the election. So, now he figures he knows much better than the professionals and can get away with whatever he wants, as he mostly did during his campaign. As with Hitler, his sense of invincibility and stubbornness will hasten his downfall.
In 2008, Trump Jr. said that they get millions from Russian business interests. Chris Matthews on his show today had a nice collection of statements over the years from Trump and his son about Russia and Putin.
Just like to add to what super390 has said by pointing out that Putin was a KGB agent for 17 years. The KGB during that time, and in all of its history, has been marked by its ruthlessness and lack of scruples. I think it would be very difficult to be in the KGB for that long and be either a nice or a reasonable person. Read also about how Russia dealt with the Chechens, the Afghans and many others. I have read that the Poles, who have been divided between the Germans and the Russians multiple times, have a saying that with the Germans they lose their freedom, and with the Russians they lose their soul. While individual Russians are generally known for their generosity, they have a bad habit historically of putting up with awful leaders. And Putin is pretty awful, despite what Trump may say.
I liken the competence of this administration to that of Grouch Marx as Rufus T. Firefly, President of Freedonia in the movie Duck Soup, one of the all time funniest and most absurd movies of all time.
Since I have predicted/written about most all of this before, the news doesn't surprise me. What does surprise me is how quickly it has come out. This shows that if you are about to assume an important office and have any skeletons in your closet, you should not trash the intelligence community, as Trump did. The chickens are coming home to roost. This may sabotage the lifting of sanctions, which I have forecast. There is news out today about the Russians deploying cruise missiles in violation of the START treaty. There was also some saber rattling back in December. I think the plan was to create a phony missile scare and then reach a "grand bargain" where the US lifted sanctions in return for not having a missile race. I don't think Trump can get away with this now.
Flynn may be gone, but this administration is still filled with inexperienced and incompetent advisers and staff. This is certainly the worst cabinet in my memory. The train wreck continues.
I thought you were being too harsh on Miller until I saw the video you included. He is so obviously an authoritarian personality he might as well be wearing a sign. His statements on alleged voter fraud are especially egregious. The sad thing is that millions of Americans actually fall for this stuff. If nothing else, the fact that fake news got shared more on social media in the last week of the campaign than real news should be disturbing to all concerned Americans. The big lie works with a major segment of our population.
Since there has never been a successful prosecution of the Logan Act, it is highly unlikely that anything will come of this. However, this is just another nail in the coffin of Trump and his minions. When elected he was the most unpopular person to ever assume the office and it has only gotten worse. We are seeing spontaneous demonstrations, angry crowds at town halls (even in Chaffetz's Republican district in Utah, for example), and other wide spread anti-Trump demonstrations. I have never seen anything like this in my 71 years and can't think of anything comparable in US history. Only thing close might be the unhappiness toward Hoover after 3 years of Depression, but that was at the end of his disastrous term, not the beginning. What could be the crusher would be if it is established that Flynn, acting for the Trump campaign, was in consultation with the Russians during the campaign and discussed hackks and strategy. I think it is likely that it occurred, but uncovering it will be very difficult. One heartening thing is that the recent Washington Post expose on flynn claimed it had information from 9 different sources. That makes it obvious to me that the intelligence community is very unhappy with this administration and ready to leak to sabotage it. I think the question is two fold. Eventually there will certainly be enough to justify an impeachment (emoluments clause, for example). Will it be enough for the Republicans to act against Trump? I think the answer is only if their re-elections are in danger. If the Republicans lose badly in 2018, then we could see real danger to the administration. Otherwise, Trump could tough it out and survive his first term as I doubt the Republicans have the political courage to do anything to check him. Direct action is having some effect, however, as the repeal of Obamacare seems to have receded in importance among Congressional Republicans as they meet widespread public resistance.
Just an addition on the effects of air pollution. As more and more research is done, scientists are finding out that small particulate matter (soot, especially from diesel engines) has been largely overlooked in the past and is very harmful. In addition to COPD, asthma, and other respiratory problems, a recent study found that 21% of Alzheimer's cases could be due to this type of pollution. And, of course, to all this you could add how under reported has been the danger of climate change. And now we have a President who seems determined to adopt policies that will exacerbate most of the major causes of death on your list.
We are learning now that the effect of this order is more widespread than originally believed. For example, the State Department says that the ban resulted in 70,000 invalidated visas. Included in this total are parents or children where one part of the family has citizenship and the other not and the order resulted in families being kept apart. I think this makes the State's case much easier in showing harm to its citizens. The dumbbells who conceived and wrote this EO did little to consider the consequences of their actions. Since most Trump supporters support this ban, when writing about it I have emphasized the administration's incompetence which is obvious and harder to defend. The Trump Administration is like government by the Marx Brothers. In the movie Duck Soup where Groucho is the leader of the mythical Fredonia, at least Groucho is good for some laughs. Trump is as incompetent but doesn't even provide comic relief.
Karl Rove once told a reporter that "we create our own reality." And, as Conway has said, they fill it with "alternative facts." And their uninformed base falls for it.
This "missile incident" reminds me of the run up to the Iraq War. During that time all sorts of fake claims were made about Iraq of course. Among them was a claim about Iraq possessing a dangerous missile that was in violation of a restriction imposed after the Gulf War. We later found out that this "dangerous" missile had a range of about 100 miles and didn't violate anything. War mongers just keep using the same lies over and over again since they can get away with it. As many predicted, Obama's failure to prosecute war criminals has opened the door for future folly and criminality.
While I agree that immigration strengthens our country, not weakens it, we really should welcome declining populations. The planet currently has over 7 billion and is on track to reach 10 billion. How many humans can the planet sustain? At 7 billion we see vast amounts of environmental degradation and loss of species habitat. Human kind as a whole should be seeking to reduce populations on the whole. Taking in refugees into a developed country should aid in that as large families are less needed in developed countries and those going from a third world country to a developed country will likely produce fewer children than if they had stayed in their rural areas.
To emphasize how important framing is, George Lakoff has been preaching this for some time. This is based on solid social science research. Especially with conservatives, many voters respond to issues emotionally, not logically and rationally. Thus, you need to reach them on an emotional level. Sound bites work. the following is a bit long and overwritten, but still important: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/a-minority-president_us_5834526be4b030997bc136f7 In the case of Trump, I think the best approach is to emphasize the Russian connection and that Putin was a communist and KGB officer, leader. I think most conservatives are very uneasy with this. I have taken to calling him Comrade Trump, the Moscow Candidate. I saw a sign at the Women's March that said Trump is Putin's Apprentice. I think this is the best way to undermine him among those who voted for him.
I saw a post on Facebook last night from a history professor which reminded me of an important book I had forgotten about. The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein, which I recommend highly, shows how capitalists and dictators use crises, often manufactured, to get radical things done against the will of the people. What we are seeing from the Trump Administration is a perfect example of the Shock Doctrine at work.
It was said approvingly that Mussolini made the trains run on time. Thus, I think that Trump should not be lauded even when he manages to achieve a positive result. Even a blind squirrel finds an occasional acorn. Also, that approach works to normalize him. As a tactical political move for the safety of the country, he must be opposed consistently when wrong, and ignored when right.
According to what I heard on the news earlier this morning, Customs wasn't even forewarned and had no advance word that this was coming and were caught unprepared, too. And, they have initially continued with detentions even after a Federal judge put a stay on that. This is may be without precedence in US history, to initiate such a far reaching order without any preparations or thought to the consequences. The Palmer Raids and Japanese internment were done with more forethought and preparation.
Trump really needs to borrow Mr. Khan's Constitution, since he obviously has never read the document before. For those who haven't checked lately, the Bill of Rights only uses the term person or people, never citizen when enumerating civil rights. In the body of the main Constitution, almost the only time the word citizen is used is when specifying the qualifications for office. Then it appears again in the 14th and 15th Amendments in extending citizenship. I think that instead of calling it the Trump Administration we should call it the Trump Abomination.
International law would not have required the United States to act. The Genocide Convention states that any signatory may go to the UN and request that body to take action to suppress genocider. Then it would be up to the UN to decide what action to take and by whom. The genocide began April 7, 1994 and, "On April 9, UN observers witnessed the massacre of children at a Polish church in Gikondo. The same day, 1,000 heavily armed and trained European troops arrived to escort European civilian personnel out of the country. The troops did not stay to assist UNAMIR. Media coverage picked up on the 9th, as the Washington Post reported the execution of Rwandan employees of relief agencies in front of their expatriate colleagues." This is from Wikipedia. So, the UN knew very early on what was going on. Elsewhere in this article, "On 23 June, around 2,500 soldiers entered southwestern Rwanda as part of the French-led United Nations Operation Turquoise.[132] This was intended as a humanitarian mission, but the soldiers were not able to save significant numbers of lives.[133] The genocidal authorities were overtly welcoming of the French, displaying the French flag on their own vehicles, but slaughtering Tutsi who came out of hiding seeking protection.[133]" So, it was over two and one half months before any UN force, which was more of a farce, tried to do anything, and by then 99% of the killing was over. One of the leaders of the genocide gort a 20 year sentence. As I said originally, the genocide was over before the UN could act. The ethnic cleansing in Bosnia was stopped because of NATO action, not UN action. I think the victims and their families care little about the procedural niceties. Only ideologues thousands of miles away who are unaffected seem to.
According to articles in the Huffington Post, this ban even applies to people who hold dual citizenship and American green cards. Not being an attorney, but having a wife who was an immigrant, I don't see how this is legal. And yet it is happening. One wonders how many times he will break the law with impunity before Congress reacts. I think that if anything, Trump is worse than many of us had feared before the election.
Would intervention in Rwanda to stop the massacre of 800,000 innocents have been illegal under international law? Yes, because that massacre was carried out by the sitting, legitimate government. And it was over before any international body could meet and rule on it. And yet a couple of battalions of Marines airlifted in probably could have saved hundreds of thousands of lives. There are times when international law is not moral. Stepping in to stop or mitigate ethnic cleansing, genocide or wholesale massacre of civilians (which Gaddafi threatened) would be a morally justified violation of international law. Someone once wrote that sometimes the law is an ass. Read Plato's The Republic.
Let's not overlook the fact that Trump is all in with Netanyahu and backs him completely and wants to move the US embassy to Jerusalem. There's a good chance that the US standing in the Arab world will be even lower under Trump than under Bush. And where are those people who said Clinton was worse? Will you believe me now?
Having had a top secret code word clearance myself, I think the short answer is no. His business dealings make him suspect and too vulnerable. Throw in his questionable personal behavior as well and we have a loser.
I was proud and excited to be among the marchers today. It was heartening to see so many people from so many different stratas walking together, united in favor of civil rights, dignity, and progress. One caveat to this article. With two appointees to SCOTUS, Roe vs. Wade could be overturned. Les we forget, Citizens United was about just one section of the McCain Feingold Act which regulated campaign financing. Yet, the Court basically threw out the whole law, which wasn't even being contested, and overturned 100 years of precedence in just about eliminating the possibility for any limitations on campaign financing. Today's conservatives don't care much about the rule of law when it conflicts with their beliefs and it would be very possible, if not likely, that they could overturn Roe vs. Wade.
Just a reminder--Clinton won 2.86 million more votes than Trump, or 2.1%. Several studies have shown that the fallacious Comey letter of October 28 cost Clinton over 2% of the vote. One estimate is an average of 2.4% For one example, in early voting in Florida, Clinton beat Trump 52% to 48%, but in election day voting it was 56% to 44% for Trump. If it wasn't for the Comey letter, which was unprecedented in US history, Clinton would have won the 3 closely contested states, plus Florida, North Carolina, and Arizona and gotten around 350 electoral votes and a bigger win in the popular vote than Obama got in 2012. In a way, ;this was a coup by extreme rightists in the FBI. For voting data analysis, see this article: http://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2017/1/11/14215930/comey-email-election-clinton-campaign