Too many lies are just not called on TV today. Because of the age of “alternative facts” created by Donald Trump and announced by Kellyanne Conway, people seem to think they can say anything they want as long as it seems to prove their point. Richard Stengel was making a point on Meet the Press when he was interrupted by Rich Lowry editor f the National Review. Lowry stated that the Mueller Report had proved that Trump was innocent of complicity with the Russians to obstruct the 2016 election and that therefore he was innocent of everything else. This is an out and out lie.
Trump was not proven innocent of complicity with the Russians. Mueller simply stated that he could not prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Trump was guilty but that it didn’t matter because he couldn’t indict a sitting President. Then he went on to indicate 10 places where Trump was guilty of complicity by attempting to obstruct justice and stated that he believed Trump could be impeached but not indicted as long as he was in office. This is quite a different thing than what Lowry was stating, but no one called him on it.
This is exactly how the “big lie” spreads and it’s just what the GOP and the Retrumplicans need in order to get away with the lies they continue to propagate on the American people.
Don’t think foreigners miss this. The entire concept o diplomacy is based on the acceptance of the word of any speaker. Our word is no longer good in many diplomatic circles simply because no one can believe our President, or those that follow him.
This has weakened just about every alliance that we have and Trump’s latest fiasco, the abandonment of our allies the Kurds will only make it worse.
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Bernie Sanders had a heart attack last week. His people made it seem like it was just a stent for a clogged valve but as a guy who has ten stents and is yet to have a heart attack, I can tell you that a heart attack is way more dangerous than the stents.
So what? Well, Bernie is 78. Biden and Warren are also in heir 70’s. Maybe they’re all fine but maybe they’re all too old to be running. That is not ageism. The presidency when done correctly is the hardest job in the world. Look at past presidents. They all aged 30 years in the 8 years they served. It’s just a young man’s job when done right. Sure Trump hasn’t aged. He watches TV all day and then tweets. No one would get tired doing that. Bush didn’t age much either, but Cheney sure as hell did and he deserved it.
Warren would probably be able to hold up but I don’t see Biden, Sanders or even the lazy slob Trump being able to survive.
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And just to prove what a backstabbing scum he really is, Trump, after throwing all his people to the wolves in the Ukraine phone call mess, is now going to abandon the only real ally we have in the Middle East by pulling out of Kurdish Syria and allowing the Turks to invade them. It’s obviously a case of one would be dictator bowing to the desires of a real dictator to kill those who have completely supported our presence in the Middle East.
One has to wonder when the Trump Ankara Hotel is going up. Erdogan calls Trump in the early evening and probably tells him that he’ll investigate Biden and the cowardly draft dodger, Trump pulls the plug on a brave people who have fought our battle with ISIS for us. He does it in the middle of the night so it won’t make noise until the next morning.
It is the ultimate betrayal. Not since we abandoned the Montagards to the North Vietnamese have we betrayed an ally in such a manner.
It’s such a cowardly, degenerate, move that even many Republicans have gotten the guts to stand up on their hind legs and decry it.
Moscow Mitch stepped up and declared that it would undermine national security and potentially bolster Islamic State terrorists. He went on to say it would increase the risk that ISIS and other terrorist groups would regroup.
Pat Toomey ® Pa said that: “President Trump should rethink his decision immediately,” while Lindsay Graham who has been busy the last few months industriously licking the Trump boots said “President Trump may be tired of fighting radical Islam. They are not tired of fighting us.” And Marco Rubio said, ”If reports about the US retreat in Syria are accurate, the Trump administration has made a grave mistake that will have implications far beyond Syria.”
And that, of course, is the biggest problem, unless you don’t mind stabbing your allies in the back like Trump. The real problem is, this will completely destroy what little credibility we have left after three years of Trump lying and blowing off steam that never heats the room.
Everyone in every nation already knows that Trump’s word is worth zero. Now he is busy besmirching the reliability of the United States. He has already embarked on that crusade by pulling out of the TPP, the Environmental councils, the Iran Nuclear Treaty, and abandoning Ukraine’s need for military supplies over his personal desire to get Joe Biden.
But why does he want out of Kurdish Syria so badly? It can do nothing but hurt this country in so many ways. The Kurds fought ISIS for us. Turkey was the highway on which European terrorists joined ISIS. Sure we have air force bases in Turkey, but that benefits the Turks more than it does us. Any Mediterranean, nation would welcome those bases and the income they bring with them, while still giving us the same tactical access to the area we have now.
Even more important is that Trump’s decision was made without anything like the necessary deliberation and discussion that has always identified such decisions. It was exactly this situation that prompted the resignation of Defense Secretary James Mattis
Now, Trump has no one that will argue back on any of his decisions. This is the situation he has always wanted. Now he is surrounded by “acting” government officers, which means none had to be approved by congress and all are completely beholden to Trump for their jobs.
Trump has stupidly managed to position himself exactly where he always wanted to be, as America’s dictator. Listen to him describe himself in one of his latest tweets on how he can control Turkey.
“As I have stated strongly before, and just to reiterate, if Turkey does anything that I, in my great and unmatched wisdom, consider to be off limits. I will totally destroy and obliterate the Economy of Turkey.”
In my great and unmatched wisdom? Forget dictator, this asshole thinks he’s God. And even as he works out the details of casting a new Holy Trinity, Vladimir Putin is showing the world that their real, reliable friend is Russia not the United States. It just goes to show that if you concentrate any element in the universe it can become a lethal force. Trump, having abandoned reality, truth and morals, is proving that right now as he drives our beloved country into the swamp.
But the chickens are coming home to roost. Today’s poll numbers show that 58% of the nation now wants Trump impeached as opposed to 38% that do not, at least not yet. That’s an increase of 21% of those that want him impeached just since July. And the big number; 18% of those that want him impeached are Republicans. With Republicans in the Senate speaking out against his betrayal of our staunchest ally there is now, for the first time, a hint of a chance that if impeachment goes to the Senate, there’s a possibility they will convict.
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Today the NBA showed itself for what it is, a sleazy accumulation of greedy punks whose only concept of morality is how much money they can make from it. When NBA executive Daryl Morey tweeted support for the Hong Kong citizenry in their struggle for freedom from mainline Chinese dominance, the league and its President reacted by attacking him. Why? Because they make a lot of money out of China. So according to the NBA we must all swallow our consciences and our concepts of right and wrong so the billionaires who own the teams can make a little more money. Well, fuck the NBA.
I say it’s time for a huge fan reaction to the greed and basically un-American POV of the NBA officials, in the form of a strike. No one goes to any NBA game until they walk back their craven stance on freedom of speech. What the NBA wants to do is totalitarian in nature and violates the constitution. If they want to run their league like that they should move it to Russia or North Korea.
Freedom of speech and ideas are what this country is based on. If American sports don’t support that, maybe they aren’t so American.
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And just to add a little note about the idiot in the White House and his pet project, The Wall. A guy named Rick Weber who owns a rock-climbing park in Kentucky ha built an exact replica of Trump’s “impenetrable” wall and is letting people take a shot at it. The first day a guy made it up and over the wall in 40 seconds but the real topper is, that the wall was also scaled by a nine-year-old girl.
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And just to finish up the original thought, guess who met three weeks ago to settle on how Syria was going to be divided? Putin, Erdogan and Rouhani, the leaders of Russia, Turkey and Iran. Notably missing from that meeting were Asaad, the current president of Syria and anyone at all from the Kurds. Trump wasn’t there either but he didn’t have to be. All that was needed to get him in line with the common plan of three of our bitterest enemies was a promise by Erdogan to fulfill one of Trump’s dearest wishes, be it an investigation of the Biden family in Turkey or a Trump Ankara Hotel. Just two weeks later Erdogan called Trump and the Fat Liar in the White House stabbed our Kurdish allies in the back.
We all know Trump well enough to know he didn’t do this for any strategic purpose. He doesn’t know enough about military theory and he is too much of an egomaniac to ask anyone who knows more than him, which is almost everyone, so the only way he went along with Erdogan’s request to pull out would be if he was promised something that appealed to his tiny mind.
Practically everyone in the world is against this move. Most of our allies have spoken up against it, as have all Democrats and even most Republicans. The only ones who want it are Erdogan, Putin and Rouhani so it makes some kind of twisted sense that Trump would easily be made the patsy for it.