Tag: Trump

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Accountability folly general freedom moral hazard national politics & policies

Of Course, You Know, This Means War

Afghanistan, war, Trump, foreign policy, defense, middle east, east asia

When Steve Bannon was booted out of the White House, my thoughts turned immediately to war. As I wrote in frustration on Friday,

Bannon’s departure probably means the slim chance that the US might withdraw from “our” open-​ended, never-​ending occupation of Afghanistan has been foreclosed. 

If we don’t win the war by ushering in a completely transformed, modernized and westernized Afghanistan, at least our children and grandchildren and great grandchildren, etc., etc., will each have. their turn.

Of course, if the fabled “Graveyard of Empires” continues to work its historic magic, maybe future generations won’t face that burden: the United States could fall … as a worldwide imperial presence. And, if our global military archipelago fails — for, say, want of wealth to throw overseas — do we have any reason to believe that our republic would bounce back?

There remains more than enough reason to work for foreign policy sanity.

Prior to his evening national address on the day of the eclipse, Trump explained what he intends to do in Afghanistan — send 4,000 more troops.

Meanwhile, Steve Bannon’s door-​slapped rump did not dissuade him from tweeting out what he intends to do “on Capitol Hills, in the media, and in corporate America”:

If there’s any confusion out there, let me clear it up: I’m leaving the White House and going to war for Trump against his opponents.…

Call this the Bugs Bunny Policy: “Of course, you know, this means war!”

And considering the promises made in the President’s speech, we can amend that to “of course, this means never-​ending war.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability general freedom ideological culture initiative, referendum, and recall local leaders moral hazard national politics & policies

Reactionary America

Anthony Scaramucci, reactionary, Trump, partisan, ideologue, ideology, "The Mooch", politics,

With the meteoric transit of Anthony Scaramucci — into the Trump Administration and then, in an eye-​blink, out of it — I have never been more convinced of the vital importance of state and local activism.

Yes, it’s been a chaotic week in Trumptown. The new White House Director of Communications vulgarly communicated himself into administrative excommunication. So to speak. 

Everybody’s heard the vulgarisms; we’ve all processed the insanity. It looks like Mr. Scaramucci is one of those professionals who think everybody else is an idiot, and in so thinking it, proves himself to be what he himself despises. @#$%&?!

The man nicknamed “The Mooch” screwed the pooch, as we now say, and we can all shake our heads and …

what?

What is the lesson?

We have long known the worst: our national politics is broken. It has been for a very long time. Is it possible we never recovered from the LBJ and Tricky Dick fiascos of my childhood? The parties have become more ideological and less regional, while the regions have become … less rational. The only word seems to be …

reactionary.

The press reacts to the president’s tweets, and the president tweets in response to media reaction.

Progressives hate progress; conservatives conserve nothing.

“Reactionary” is the apt word, despite all the term’s past Marxist associations, because no one seems able to think forward, independent of partisan oppositionalism.

Don’t drive yourself crazy with this. Look homeward; think locally, act locally, and let’s build on a solid foundation.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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folly general freedom local leaders moral hazard national politics & policies responsibility

Syria & Sanity

TulsiGabbard, Democrat, Syria, arms, rebels, war, Obama, Trump, Russia

President Trump has decided to end the CIA’s covert* program to arm and train moderate Syrian rebels battling the government of Bashar al-​Assad,” the Washington Post first reported last week, immediately adding that it was “a move long sought by Russia.”

This insinuation that the policy change was simply a concession to Russia belies the recent history of U.S. involvement — and failure — in Syria. 

President Barack Obama had intervened.

Very ineffectively.

“Calling” for regime change. 

In 2012, Reuters disclosed that the president had signed “a secret* order authorizing U.S. support for rebels seeking to depose Syrian President Bashar al-​Assad and his government.” In 2013, after accusing the Assad regime of using chemical weapons, Obama announced the U.S. would provide direct military aid to rebel groups. 

But Obama’s execution seemed more designed to make it look like the U.S. was trying really hard than actually toppling Mr. Assad.** 

This may have been a good thing, though, seeing that some of the best-​organized rebel groups in Syria are aligned with al-​Qaeda and ISIS. 

U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D‑Hawaii) has introduced “The Stop Arming Terrorists Act”*** to prevent American weaponry and material from being handed to terrorists. She cheered Trump’s move, explaining to Tucker Carlson on Fox News that “providing direct and indirect” aid to the “very same terrorist group that attacked us on 9/​11” made no sense.

Also lacking in sense is the Obama Administrations claim that the congressional Authorization for the Use of Military Force, which specifically authorizes action against al-​Qaeda, also covered the attack upon Assad’s regime. Surely arming rebel groups aligned with al-​Qaeda couldn’t be justified under such an AUMF.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* It was not very covert. And not secret. 

** In 2015, the Administration abandoned a separate $500 million program to put together a moderate rebel force opposed to both ISIS and the Syrian Government of Basher al-​Assad after training only 4 or 5 soldiers. The BBC suggested much of the problem was indecisiveness, observing that, “US President Barack Obama never seemed to want a train-​and-​equip programme for Syrian rebels.”

*** The Senate bill is SB 532, introduced by Sen. Rand Paul (R‑Ky).

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Accountability crime and punishment government transparency moral hazard national politics & policies property rights responsibility too much government U.S. Constitution

The Police State Is in Sessions

Jeff Sessions, AG, Attorney General, asset forfeiture, civil, Trump

U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions threatens to make himself one of the biggest threats to your liberty.*

President Donald Trump’s pick for Attorney General just promised to encourage police departments to seize the personal property (cars, houses, cash) of criminal suspects.

The practice is called asset forfeiture. It comes in two forms, criminal and civil. Compelling objections have been raised against civil forfeiture, which accounts for nearly 90 percent of all forfeitures. Abuse is rampant in cities, counties and states around the country, routinely used against people who have not even been charged, much less prosecuted and convicted. (Often not really even suspected of criminality.)

“No criminal should be allowed to keep the proceeds of their crime,” he told conference attendees in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on Monday.** But how can our top federal law enforcement officer ignore the profound difference between a suspect and a criminal?

No one is a criminal, before the law, until proved in court. Taking away property to make it harder for suspects to defend themselves — which is what RICO laws and other Drug War reforms intended to do — is obviously contrary to the letter of the Fourth and Fifth Amendments as well as the spirit of the U.S. Constitution.

Sessions announced he’ll soon offer a “new directive on asset forfeiture — especially for drug traffickers.” Unless he clearly indicates that it will only be used against the property of persons legally convicted of crimes, Sessions will be merely making charges of an “American Police State” stick. 

America’s top lawman argues completely contrary to American principles of justice.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Bigger than Eric Holder was. Bigger than Loretta Lynch.

** Sessions also went on to say that “sharing with our partners” — local police departments around the nation — is a good thing. This is, systemically, the most dangerous aspect of it all, for it encourages police departments to take things for their own benefit.

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folly ideological culture media and media people meme national politics & policies

CNN, You’ve Been Trolled

CNN, Trump, meme

The Cable News Network, known popularly and un- as CNN — and satirically as the “Clinton News Network” and “Fake News” — so hysterically hates the president that it has become completely unhinged.

Well, unhinged from decency and journalistic standards, anyway.

The latest slips downward? 

First, some pseudonymous guy* on Reddit created a little gif** that placed a CNN-​logo on the head of a wrestler whom Donald Trump “took down” in some weird bit of nonsense publicity the entertainer-​entrepreneur was prone to, pre-​presidency. Trump then retweeted a version of the gif, calling CNN (once again) “fake news.” This made CNN look silly,*** so CNN tracked the originator down and pressured him to make a humiliating apology — for it and other, more tasteless contributions. He deleted most of what he had done on Reddit.

CNN looks petty: a bully. And clueless about the free-​for-​all that is the Internet. 

The Twitterverse erupted against the news outfit.

This went super-​viral on July 4, the same day that CNN tried to humiliate Mr. Trump by tweeting a quote from Abraham Lincoln: “Let the people know the facts, and the country will be safe.” 

How apt!

And yet … Lincoln did not say it. Not exactly. The “fake news” network faked a presidential quote.

CNN apparently doesn’t understand that responding to trolls feeds the trolls and makes you look bad, to boot.

I suppose you could blame Trump for all this. His ridiculous tweets and whoppers have so corrupted the culture that his enemies (CNN being the obvious media leader) have adopted his methods.

But I won’t. Not this time.

Just blame the people at CNN.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* He referred to himself as a “shitposter,” which is what satirists and trolls on the Web are called.

** A “gif” is an image file, and has been around since the beginning of the World Wide Web. Nowadays, when we talk about “gifs” we usually are referring to brief animated gifs.

*** Frankly, it made the president look silly, too.

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CNN, Trump, meme

 

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Accountability crime and punishment government transparency media and media people national politics & policies responsibility

A Handy Evasion

Susan Rice, National Security Advisor, Obama, Trump, Russia, spying, surveillance

Susan Rice, National Security Advisor in President Barack Obama’s administration (2013 – 2017), is being picked on, she speculates, for reasons pertaining to her race and gender.

Handy evasion.

At issue is not her infamous prevarication in the Benghazi affair. We are used to being lied to about foreign policy, so that was barely a shock.

What is news now? The Trump-​Russia story. 

Background: Ever since her defeat to Donald Trump, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has provided the very model of how to deflect attention from one’s own defects. She’s blamed FBI Director James Comey, the vast right wing conspiracy, and, of course, Russia.*

Amusingly, the Russia biz still boils down to how Russian hackers, apparently directed from high in the hierarchy of the Eastern warlord state, illegally liberated information from private servers. Those revealed emails showed Mrs. Clinton and her campaign in a negative light. Excuse-​makers call this “hacking the election.”**

It turns out, the biggest crimes committed during the campaign, and somewhat regarding Russia, were engaged in by the Obama Administration, perhaps especially by Rice herself. She is accused of illegally surveilling the Trump campaign and those around it by “unmasking” their identities in the course of surveillance reports, which are legally required to be anonymous … when catching in the net folks tangential to the target. 

The law requires FISA court go-​aheads for such identifications. And the Obama administration was roundly reprimanded by a FISA court for not following protocols.

In any case, the idea that only women and African-​Americans are hounded by opposition parties and the press does not hold up to scrutiny.

Nixon, anyone?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Her team has also blamed President Barack Obama

** A private server was hacked, not an election.

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