So once again, as the noose begins to tighten, Donald Trump begins to throw his backers under the bus. This rat will abandon any ally if it suits his criminal purposes. This week he suddenly didn’t know Gordon Sondland and Rudy Giuliani; can Mick Mulvaney be far behind?
The abandonment of Sondland after he changed his testimony to implicate Trump is not surprising, not after Trump walked away from from the likes of Michael Cohen and Paul Manafort. But Sondland was, a million dollar donor to the Trump campaign, a man who Trump consequently made our Ambassador to the EU and still Trump says he hardly knew him.
The problem this generates for Trump is that this kind of denial shoves him between two posts, both of which are bad for him. He can be revealed as lying scum for denying his association with a man who gave him a million bucks or he can claim Sondland is a liar and that he has flipped to the Democrats, which makes Trump look like a fool because it is so unimaginable.
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Trump keeps complaining about our military presence in various places around the world. He used it as an excuse to stab the Kurds in the back and pull out of Syria. But at the same time he tells us that he wants to end all wars and that our presence in these foreign fields is costing a lot of money, which we could be used to drill for oil in our national forests.
Trump is just not smart enough to realize that there will always be small wars and sometimes even big ones, because our species is naturally greedy and acquisitive and men will always want what the next guy already has.
But almost by accident we have stumbled on what, at least for now, seems to be the only workable formula for keeping wars at a minimum level and controllable.
That is exactly what we were doing with the Kurds in Syria and to some extent what we are doing in Afghanistan and various hot spots around the world. The plan was to use minimal American Special Forces groups to assist local military in keeping a lid on explosive situations that could expand into full-scale warfare.
US Special Forces, assisting and instructing the Kurds, were what destroyed ISIS in Syria and Iraq, but as soon as we leave these posts ISIS will be back. The same thing has been going on in Afghanistan for two decades. We had about 1500 troops in Syria and about 3000 in Afghanistan and we were holding the line. We didn’t do that in Iraq so we ended up sending over 100,000 men, at a cost of over $3 Trillion because we hadn’t learned our lesson.
So we have two choices now. Either we continue on the current path or we pull out and let the bad guys, everyone from ISIS to al Qaeda and the Taliban, take over and that will lead to full-scale wars. Trump says he doesn’t want these constant wars but his policy will lead to just that. We will end up spending trillions more and lose many more of our kids because this fat blowhard is too stupid to recognize what thus far has been a successful tactic.
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Rand Paul continued his history of lying to confuse issues on Meet the Press when he equated what Trump did to extort the President of Ukraine with what Joe Biden did as VP when he threatened Ukraine with losing aid if they didn’t get rid of a criminal official in their own government. There is a difference, even if Rand isn’t bright enough to see it. But of course he does see it and that’s why he is proving himself to be just another useless liar.
The difference is, Trump’s extortion was aimed at helping him defeat a political opponent, an act that violates the Constitution, a document that Trump has obviously never read and wouldn’t understand if he had, while Biden’s action was an effort, with full support of the EU, to remove corruption from a foreign government before we sent them aid that might fall into the dishonest hands of the official he wanted removed.
Paul has, as usual, gotten the whole picture ass backwards and maybe he wants us to think he did it inadvertently, but he didn’t. It was an attempt to shield a dishonest President, from just retribution. As I’ve stated before, it’s unfortunate that Paul’s neighbor didn’t give him a far more serious beating.
But, no sooner had I finished writing this than Congressman Jim Himes of CT, explained exactly the points I have made above in an even stronger and more evidentiary way.
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Every time we hear a Republican pundit speak, it becomes clear that they have no position that is defendable without lying. Listen to Hugh Hewitt lying about the phone call to Zelensky: “
There is nothing illegal. It’s a policy dispute.”
That’s how he sees Trump’s attempt to extort the Ukrainian President. But it isn’t a policy dispute. Policy doesn’t even enter into it. It’s a clear and very obvious classic example of extortion, which is a criminal act on any level and when set at the level of the Presidency, it also becomes a violation of the constitution and an impeachable offense.
But Hewitt’s not satisfied to just lie. He then makes the statement that this is the first partisan impeachment since 1868. Yes, it’s another clear and obvious lie. Clinton was impeached by a partisan House, for getting a blowjob from a willing and eager participant. How that is supposed to measure up to the criminal behavior that Trump is accused of, is more than any honest intelligent being should be asked to accept.
Of course Hewitt can never keep his lying mouth shut so he had to jump in again to point out that this impeachment would set a bad precedent. Maybe if we didn’t have such a bad President we wouldn’t have to worry about precedents at all.
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As if the Democratic Party doesn’t have enough candidates in an already overcrowded field, two new wannabes are now talking about getting into the fray. Mike Bloomberg and Deval Patrick both intimated that they are seriously considering running, and the question that immediately comes to mind is, what will either contribute to the discussion?
Both may be too late to the fair, as we’ve already passed the Alabama registration date and others are looming, but more important is the question; what do they have to offer that isn’t already on the table? I’m not at all sure that either can convincingly offer an answer to that question.
The Democrats are divided on ideological grounds into progressive or moderate but when you dig into it they are all talking about the same stuff and they all came in on the same train. It’s beat Trump, fix healthcare, deal with the environment, fix the infrastructure, regulate guns, fix immigration and restructure our foreign policy. The ends are the same; the only real argument is over tactics. The only real contention is about who is best set up to beat Trump because all agree that the only way to achieve any of the aforementioned goals is get the fat liar out of the White House.
It seems pretty clear that all the front-runners and even a couple of runners-up are equipped to do that. This may only be the case because Trump is so busy trying to commit ego driven political suicide that he no longer appears to be a viable candidate. But to get back to the original thought, what would Bloomberg and Patrick add to the attack against Trump?
Not much it would appear. Their ideological positions are duplicated by at least a couple of the present candidates. Corey Booker has already said everything that Patrick has to say and both are black men who will attract and then divide the same demographic. That will cause it to lose what little clout it has brought to Booker’s campaign.
Bloomberg will peal off support from Biden and Buttigieg and any other middle of the road candidates, even as he steals some of the Jewish vote from Sanders, but he will be blessed by his wealth in terms of production even as he is cursed by it among progressives, so all he appears to do is muddy the choices. Maybe both should stay home and Bloomberg should continue to spend his substantial wealth, as he is already doing, to back more viable candidates,
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Ever since Trump betrayed our allies the Kurds in Syria, there has been serious conjecture on why. Now with the revelation of the son-in-law network we may be seeing a real reason and as usual it has nothing to do with any benefit to our nation but only to the Trump personal bottom line.
How many times in the last three years have we seen some bizarre move by this administration that seemed unfathomable as to its benefit to this country or its people, only to discover it had some real financial benefit to the family Trump?
Think back. Remember how Trump couldn’t stop talking about the oil in Northern Syria after he betrayed the Kurds to the Turks? Remember that as we wind our way through the rest of this tale.
It begins with a trio of son-in-laws of rich and powerful men who despite their official political titles are all into one thing, acquired wealth. Those three men are Donald Trump, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the President of Turkey and Mehmet Ali Yalcindag, a Turkish billionaire and national finance minister, all of whom have a promotable sons-in-law. In Trump’s case it’s Jared Kushner, in Erdogan’s it’s Berat Albayrak and then there is Yalcindag’s. These three young men coalesced and became a back channel for moving ideas and information to their fathers-in-law.
This is what led to further agreements between Trump and Erdogan, especially when Yalcindag began his own operations as front man and lobbyist for Erdogan and Turkey. It was Yalcindag in cooperation with Kushner and Albayrak who managed to eliminate the payment of the sanctions we had ostensibly imposed on Turkey for buying Russian arms and it was because of cooperation within this group that Trump was eager to allow the Turks to invade Kurdish territory in Northern Syria.
Where did this buddy/buddy stuff come from? Well, Erdogan got it started way back in 2012 when Trump lent his name, at a significant royalty number, to twin Towers in Istanbul. It was nurtured along by Trump’s affection for all dictators. I guess it’s like penis envy. Trump wants to have the unfettered power of the dictators he sees and he’s doing everything he can to get it. It’s just taking a little while longer than he thought because a small document called The Constitution keeps getting in his way.
Erdogan has never been a friend of the US. During the Iraq and ISIS wars he interfered with our use of our air bases in Turkey. We should have pulled out all our people and equipment and let him see how good his economy would do without all the spending we did to support that base.
John Bolton claims that Trump’s relationship with Erdogan is based on the business dealings addressed above, which added substantially to the Trump bank
accounts.
Now Erdogan has reacted to European and American pressure and sanctions by threatening to release ISIS prisoners he is holding into Europe where they will create a serious terrorist threat to each and every nation into which they immigrate. There is only one solution to Erdogan. Think Kaddafi and Saddam