President Drumpf intiates a Fascist Dictadorship

rahu

Banned
1045
https://www.rawstory.com/2018/09/trump-murdering-country-right-front-eyes-nyt-op-ed-proof/

Trump is murdering our country right in front of our eyes — and the NYT op-ed is further proof

you want to know what being anonymous does? It protects you, and nobody else. You want proof? Have a look at the cowardly, lame-***, anonymous op-ed by a “senior official in the Trump administration” in The New York Times. A pathetic cri de coeur penned by a con artist working for a con man inside the bunker of the White House didn’t protect immigrant children from being taken from their mothers and thrown into cages during the so-called “zero tolerance” policy on the border. Anonymous hasn’t protected the nearly 500 immigrant children who are still being held apart from their families by the Department of Health and Human Services.

Anonymous didn’t do anything to protect the 2,975 Americans who lost their lives in Puerto Rico as a result of Hurricane Maria last year. That storm blasted through the island ripping apart homes, destroying the electrical grid, and killing thousands. And all they got from an out of control, ignorant, arrogant president was a few rolls of paper towels.

Anonymous didn’t protect the American people from a Republican tax bill that gave massive tax cuts to billionaires and millionaires while incredibly raising taxes on some lower-income families and people from states with high state taxes. And Anonymous isn’t protecting us from Trump and Republicans who are looking to cut Social Security and Medicare to make up for the massive hole they blew in the deficit.

Anonymous didn’t protect the American people from a Republican tax bill that gave massive tax cuts to billionaires and millionaires while incredibly raising taxes on some lower-income families and people from states with high state taxes. And Anonymous isn’t protecting us from Trump and Republicans who are looking to cut Social Security and Medicare to make up for the massive hole they blew in the deficit.

Three staff attorneys from the Civil Division of the Justice Department filed a motion to remove their names from a federal lawsuit the Trump administration has joined that is attempting to gut the Affordable Care Act, including ending coverage for pre-existing conditions. Since they aren’t “senior officials” in the Trump administration, I think we can safely assume that none of these three is the anonymous author of the craven op-ed in The New York Times, who has obviously done absolutely nothing to protect the health care of Americans from Trump.

You want to see some of the “quiet resistance” by Anonymous The New York Times tells us he or she is responsible for in its headline for the op-ed? Donald Trump has told 4,229 lies in the first 558 days he’s been in office, according to the Washington Post. That’s almost eight lies a day. An what do we get from Anonymous?

Pathetic whining about Trump’s “amorality.” “Anyone who works with him knows he is not moored to any discernible first principles that guide his decision making.”

Gee, you think so?

Heard anything from Anonymous or any of the other “quiet” resisters in the Trump White House about the firehose of Trump lies? Me neither.

Trump’s Department of Justice is engaged in a wholesale “assault” on civil rights, according to CBS News. “The Department of Justice under Jeff Sessions has gone from enforcing civil rights to attacking them,” according to Lambda Legal CEO Rachel Tiven. The attack on civil rights by the Trump administration is so bad that yet another official in the Justice Department, Diana Flynn, has resigned. So we know she’s not the “senior official” in the Trump administration who wrote the whiny op-ed in the New York Times, just like we know Anonymous hasn’t done anything to protect the Civil Rights Division from the “assault” being carried out against it by Trump and his minions.

So where’s the “quiet resistance” while the Civil Rights Division goes down? It sure ain’t coming from Anonymous, or people wouldn’t be resigning.

“It may be cold comfort in this chaotic era, but Americans should know that there are adults in the room,” we are calmly assured by Anonymous. What room would that be? The “adult day care center” the White House has become, according to Tennessee Senator Bob Corker? What are we supposed to think? Anonymous is one of the day care supervisors protecting us from Trump’s daily tantrums? You seen any reduction in Twitter tantrums by Trump lately? Me neither.

How about that sterling performance by Trump in Helsinki, when he threw his entire intelligence and law enforcement communities under the bus standing right there next to the man who ordered the attack on the presidential election of 2016 and helped him get elected. Couldn’t you just feel Anonymous in the room protecting us from his unhinged surrender to Putin? Singapore, too. I went to bed and got a great night’s sleep knowing that Anonymous was

Anonymous didn’t do anything to protect the 2,975 Americans who lost their lives in Puerto Rico as a result of Hurricane Maria last year. That storm blasted through the island ripping apart homes, destroying the electrical grid, and killing thousands. And all they got from an out of control, ignorant, arrogant president was a few rolls of paper towels.

Anonymous didn’t protect the American people from a Republican tax bill that gave massive tax cuts to billionaires and millionaires while incredibly raising taxes on some lower-income families and people from states with high state taxes. And Anonymous isn’t protecting us from Trump and Republicans who are looking to cut Social Security and Medicare to make up for the massive hole they blew in the deficit.

Anonymous didn’t protect the American people from a Republican tax bill that gave massive tax cuts to billionaires and millionaires while incredibly raising taxes on some lower-income families and people from states with high state taxes. And Anonymous isn’t protecting us from Trump and Republicans who are looking to cut Social Security and Medicare to make up for the massive hole they blew in the deficit.

Three staff attorneys from the Civil Division of the Justice Department filed a motion to remove their names from a federal lawsuit the Trump administration has joined that is attempting to gut the Affordable Care Act, including ending coverage for pre-existing conditions. Since they aren’t “senior officials” in the Trump administration, I think we can safely assume that none of these three is the anonymous author of the craven op-ed in The New York Times, who has obviously done absolutely nothing to protect the health care of Americans from Trump.

You want to see some of the “quiet resistance” by Anonymous The New York Times tells us he or she is responsible for in its headline for the op-ed? Donald Trump has told 4,229 lies in the first 558 days he’s been in office, according to the Washington Post. That’s almost eight lies a day. An what do we get from Anonymous?

Pathetic whining about Trump’s “amorality.” “Anyone who works with him knows he is not moored to any discernible first principles that guide his decision making.”

Gee, you think so?

Heard anything from Anonymous or any of the other “quiet” resisters in the Trump White House about the firehose of Trump lies? Me neither.

Trump’s Department of Justice is engaged in a wholesale “assault” on civil rights, according to CBS News. “The Department of Justice under Jeff Sessions has gone from enforcing civil rights to attacking them,” according to Lambda Legal CEO Rachel Tiven. The attack on civil rights by the Trump administration is so bad that yet another official in the Justice Department, Diana Flynn, has resigned. So we know she’s not the “senior official” in the Trump administration who wrote the whiny op-ed in the New York Times, just like we know Anonymous hasn’t done anything to protect the Civil Rights Division from the “assault” being carried out against it by Trump and his minions.

So where’s the “quiet resistance” while the Civil Rights Division goes down? It sure ain’t coming from Anonymous, or people wouldn’t be resigning.

“It may be cold comfort in this chaotic era, but Americans should know that there are adults in the room,” we are calmly assured by Anonymous. What room would that be? The “adult day care center” the White House has become, according to Tennessee Senator Bob Corker? What are we supposed to think? Anonymous is one of the day care supervisors protecting us from Trump’s daily tantrums? You seen any reduction in Twitter tantrums by Trump lately? Me neither.

How about that sterling performance by Trump in Helsinki, when he threw his entire intelligence and law enforcement communities under the bus standing right there next to the man who ordered the attack on the presidential election of 2016 and helped him get elected. Couldn’t you just feel Anonymous in the room protecting us from his unhinged surrender to Putin? Singapore, too. I went to bed and got a great night’s sleep knowing that Anonymous was there protecting us while Trump had his love-in with the thieving, insane dictator of North Korea, giving that loon and his murderous regime legitimacy no other American president has afforded North Korea.

Couldn’t you just feel Anonymous protecting us from Trump’s worst instincts after the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville last year, when he cozied up to the Nazis and white supremacists who caused the death of Heather Heyer? I could, too. The “quiet resistance” of Anonymous and all of the other “adults in the room” was palpable, wasn’t it?

Then there’s Trump’s daily assault on Robert Mueller and the “rigged witch hunt” that has led to multiple indictments and guilty pleas. And how about Trump’s near-daily attacks on his own Department of Justice and FBI. First he fires Comey, and now he’s after FBI Director Christopher Wray? I just know Anonymous and the other “quiet resisters” have that one in hand. Nothing to see here, folks. Go about your business. You can count on Anonymous to protect us.

Speculation is centering on Kellyanne Conway as the likely author of the anonymous op-ed in the Times. Makes sense to me. Her husband is a virulent never-Trumper, she’s working for Trump, and I haven’t read about any husband-wife murders in Washington’s Northwest neighborhood lately, so they seem to have come up with some way to co-exist.

Maybe they got together and penned the op-ed so when Trump goes down, they won’t be left off anyone’s Georgetown cocktail party list. Wasn’t it fascinating in the transcript of that phone call between Bob Woodward and Trump when he handed the phone to Kellyanne and Woodward reminded her that he had asked her to set up an interview with Trump during a luncheon at his house? I mean, there’s your “quiet resistance” right there. Doesn’t get much quieter – or chummier – than a cozy little lunch with Bob on the screen porch overlooking the garden of his Georgetown manse, does it? Bob was probably sitting there munching on his BLT telling Kellyanne, nothing to worry about, honey. Between the two of us, we’ve got this.

Ms. Inside and Mr. Outside trading tales about Trump over a couple of goblets of Rose. As Anonymous assured us in that lame-*** op-ed, that’s not the deep state, that’s the “steady state,” honey.

I don’t know about you, but I’m going to sleep tight tonight, because you can count on the ship of state maintaining a steady course when Bob Woodward is on the bestseller list and the dame who coined the phrase “alternative facts” is on look out. No icebergs on the horizon, folks. Full steam ahead. Trust the “quiet resistance” in the White House. They’ve got our backs. Everything is just ******* peachy keen.
 

rahu

Banned
1070
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/trump-attack-on-hague-court-seen-as-bolstering-world%e2%80%99s-despots/ar-BBNi6Ok?ocid=ientp

Trump Attack on Hague Court Seen as Bolstering World’s Despots
THE HAGUE — In a city that symbolizes international peace and justice, the ambassador from Burundi has had a lonely job. As her government faces accusations of murder, rape and torture, she has made the unpopular argument that the International Criminal Court should butt out.
The ambassador, Vestine Nahimana, says the court is a politicized, unchecked intrusion on Burundi’s sovereignty. “It’s difficult,” Ms. Nahimana said in an interview here. “In a way, we’ve been isolated.”
No longer. Her critiques echo those of warlords and despots whose arguments have long been dismissed by the West. But Burundi’s position got a powerful voice of support this week from President Trump, whose national security adviser, John R. Bolton, declared the international court “ineffective, unaccountable, and indeed, outright dangerous,” and threatened sanctions against the court’s prosecutors and judges who pursued cases against Americans.
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“We can only rejoice that another country has seen the same wrong,” Ms. Nahimana said. “Perhaps this will be a message that the sovereignty of a country must be respected, in the U.S. and in other countries. That’s also what the White House asks.”
For the Trump administration, Mr. Bolton’s speech was the latest example of disdain for global organizations and — in this case — taking the same side as strongmen and dictators. But for the International Criminal Court, a relatively young institution, the new White House policy of open hostility comes at a perilous time.
The court, which opened in 2002, was envisioned as the world’s permanent judicial body for cases of war crimes, genocide and other crimes against humanity. But a former prosecutor has faced accusations of corruption, and the court’s record has been spotty. Only eight people have been convicted and other cases have collapsed or been withdrawn. The most significant conviction, the war-crimes case against the former Congolese vice president Jean-Pierre Bemba, was overturned because of legal errors.
Nevertheless, many of America’s closest allies regard the court as a symbol of international order and justice and have invested heavily in its success. Mr. Bolton’s comments were seen here as a threat to the institution and an invitation to world leaders to ignore the court’s authority.
“This bombastic threat against an institution’s operation, no matter what the circumstances, only serves to cut our ties further with our allies,” said Patricia M. Wald, a retired American judge who served as a judge on a separate war crimes tribunal here.
The United States has always regarded the court warily, fearing that it would be used against American troops as a way to subvert Washington’s foreign policy decisions. President Bill Clinton signed the 1998 Rome treaty establishing the court, despite noting its “significant flaws.”
Congress never ratified the treaty, but former Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama at times gave the court at least tacit support. The Bush administration endorsed its investigation into atrocities in Sudan. The Obama administration provided intelligence and Mr. Obama personally encouraged other countries to cooperate with it.
While two-thirds of the world’s nations are members of the court, that coalition has been tested recently. Burundi withdrew last year — although Burundian officials still face possible prosecution for crimes committed while it was a member. And President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines announced plans this year to quit the court amid an investigation into allegations that officials committed mass murder and crimes against humanity during a narcotics crackdown.
Several African nations have at times threatened to quit. And President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, which was never a member of the court, withdrew his signature from the treaty when the court announced it would investigate Moscow’s military involvement in Ukraine and possible war crimes in Georgia.
“The court is vulnerable,” said Carsten Stahn, an international law professor at Leiden University here. “Bolton is using that vulnerability to attack.”
Mr. Bolton has fiercely opposed the court since its inception and his remarks represented a warning to the court over its apparent intention to investigate war crimes in Afghanistan, including the torture and abuse of prisoners by C.I.A. officers. Though Congress has documented many of those abuses, nobody has been prosecuted.
He said the court’s prosecutors were politically motivated and represented a threat to American sovereignty. And he said that, to many in Africa, the court has become a tool of modern day European colonialism. That argument stunned court supporters because it echoes the view of Sudan’s president, Omar Hassan al-Bashir, who is under indictment for genocide and has campaigned for African nations to withdraw from the court.
“These are talking points for the leaders of Myanmar, the leaders of North Korea, the leaders of Russia,” said David J. Scheffer, a former American ambassador who helped negotiate the Rome treaty during the Clinton administration. “I’m sure this speech was very welcome in Saudi Arabia. This was music to the ears of the Middle East.”
Mr. Bolton’s speech, and the new hard line it presages, raises fresh concerns about the endurance of the court without backing from the world’s largest countries. China and India never supported it. Russia abandoned its veneer of an endorsement. The nations of the European Union are members and represent the court’s biggest bloc of support.
Lawyers and human-rights groups were alarmed, in particular, at the threat of prosecuting international lawyers and judges. “Coming from the host country of the United Nations, it is very dangerous to an international legal order,” said William Pace, the head of the Coalition for the International Court, an organization set up to support the court. “It is undermining the fundamental pillars of an international order designed after World War II to prevent World War III.”
Mr. Bolton worked to undermine the court early in the Bush administration, before others in the administration struck a more accommodating tone. But his views align well with those of Mr. Trump, whose “America first” policies have challenged longstanding alliances and international institutions such as NATO and multilateral trade agreements.
While European nations view organizations like the International Criminal Court as an important check on dictators, Mr. Bolton and other American conservatives see it as an affront. The United States, after all, shoulders many of the West’s peacekeeping duties. Why then, Mr. Bolton and his allies argue, would the United States expose its citizens to oversight and second-guessing from nations that have benefited from a robust American military?
American leaders have noted for years that no country has done more to finance peacekeeping missions and international war crimes tribunals. They have argued, however, that stand-alone courts like the ones that prosecuted people for genocide in the former Yugoslavia are more successful and appropriate.
But Christine Van den Wyngaert, who served as a judge on the court as well as the Yugoslavia tribunal, said Mr. Bolton’s speech undermines even those efforts. She said it was troubling to see the United States “withdraw again in its position of isolation and even hostility towards international criminal justice.”
 

rahu

Banned
1151

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/%e2%80%98it-breeds-resistance%e2%80%99-even-among-conservatives-trump%e2%80%99s-use-of-presidential-power-causes-alarm/ar-BBNIyPq?li=BBnbcA1&ocid=ientp

‘It breeds resistance’: Even among conservatives, Trump’s use of presidential power causes alarm

President Trump’s exercise of his executive powers, particularly in matters of national security, is increasingly unsettling an array of legal scholars, including conservatives, who say it risks corroding the office of the presidency and has roiled relations between the White House and other agencies.
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Over the past year, Trump has — without consulting the Office of the Pardon Attorney — granted clemency to a number of individuals, including his political ally Joe Arpaio, the former Arizona county sheriff convicted of criminal contempt related to his department’s targeting of undocumented immigrants.
Last month, Trump revoked the security clearance of former CIA director John Brennan, one of his harshest critics, who has called “treasonous” Trump’s validation of Russian President Vladimir Putin at the expense of U.S. intelligence agencies that concluded Moscow sought to help Trump win the White House.
And this month, Trump ordered the declassification of law enforcement material linked to the investigation by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, a move the president eventually walked back after protests from the Justice Department and foreign allies.
Constitutionally, such actions are defensible. But the president is “eviscerating precedent and procedure,” said David Rivkin, a conservative constitutional lawyer and former attorney in the George H.W. Bush and Reagan administrations.
“As far as the mechanics of government are concerned, it is creating anger and disharmony on both the side of the political masters and the career people,” he said. “It breeds resistance. It’s negative synergy.”
Trump’s un­or­tho­dox approach — taking actions, in many cases, without consulting key advisers — may bring a much-needed shake-up to the federal bureaucracy, some conservative scholars say. But others say it not only risks eroding the norms of government, but also may lead Congress and the courts to erect guardrails that constrain the presidency, leaching it of the flexibility integral to its effectiveness.
“If Congress inserts itself into these national security processes as a reaction to the way he’s exercising the powers of his office, then the institution of the presidency will actually be left much weaker than he found it,” said Carrie Cordero, a former senior Justice Department national security lawyer in the George W. Bush and Obama administrations.
Cordero suggested that, should Democrats retake Congress after November’s elections, they may seek to put restraints on Trump by pursuing legislation that bars the president from firing a special prosecutor or requiring that the chief executive first consult the Justice Department before granting pardons.
To be sure, some national security experts defend the president’s actions as a healthy antidote to the bureaucracy, which they feel has grown too independent.
“Shouldn’t we look, every couple of administrations, at least, at the structure of the executive bureaucracy and ask ourselves, ‘Is it working the way it should work?’ ” said Charles Kesler, a government professor at Claremont McKenna College.
He cited the security clearance issue as an example.
“Security clearances are supposed to be granted to those who have a need to know in order to plan and execute foreign policy,” he said. “It’s hard to imagine that John Brennan, who is calling the president a traitor, has a need to know after he has left office. . . . I don’t think it’s irrational or unseemly to revoke his clearance.”
The president, nonetheless, has taken to the power he is afforded under Article II of the Constitution, which outlines the scope of authorities granted to the office. He has sought to ban transgender men and women from serving in the military. He fired his FBI director, James B. Comey, who had been in charge of the Russia probe, leading to Mueller’s appointment as special counsel.
“The structure of national security is one of empowering executive discretion cabined by congressional and judicial oversight,” said Paul Rosenzweig, a senior fellow at the R Street Institute, a self-described “center-right” think tank, and a former senior homeland security official in the George W. Bush administration. “When the president acts within the normal bounds of behavior, the ability of the Cabinet and Congress to look over the shoulder is enough. When he diverges from the norms, the grant of discretion creates an opportunity for mischief, if not maliciousness.”
National security experts were unnerved by Trump’s use of his pardon power. No modern president has exercised it as he has — that is, so early and frequently in a presidency and mostly without input from the Justice Department’s pardon attorney, who reviews clemency petitions and makes recommendations to the White House based on applicants’ post-conviction conduct, their character, acceptance of responsibility and remorse.
Trump pardoned Arpaio, who faced up to six months in jail for defying a court order, in August 2017 — before the former sheriff was even sentenced. The move fanned speculation that the president was signaling his willingness to look out for associates who might be charged in the Russia investigation.
“I’d be the first to say that the use of the pardon power with Sheriff Joe was obviously not within the purpose that the framers hoped,” said John Yoo, a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley and former Justice Department official in the George W. Bush administration. “It’s petty, foolish, unnecessary. But it doesn’t really harm the long-term interests of the country. If he pardoned Paul Manafort, then I would be worried.”
Manafort was Trump’s campaign chairman until August 2016 and came under investigation for past consulting work for Ukraine’s pro-Russian ruling party. In August, he was convicted of financial fraud linked to that lobbying work and has pleaded guilty to obstructing justice in Mueller’s probe. As part of his plea agreement, Manafort is cooperating with the special counsel.
Trump has declined to say whether he would pardon Manafort, though he has called the trial a “very sad day for our country” and Manafort “a very good person.”
Stripping Brennan of his security clearance was widely seen as political retaliation, a slap at a former senior intelligence official who has taken to Twitter and cable news to attack the president’s agenda and discredit him. Critics of Trump’s decision, even those who feel Brennan’s antagonism toward the president has been excessive, said Trump should have consulted the CIA, which issued the clearance.
“It’s just unseemly,” Rivkin said. “You’ve got to work through the system. You cannot just say, ‘I’m going to strip clearances on my own.’ It sets up a pernicious dynamic. He absolutely can do it, constitutionally, but it is not wise.”
Trump has threatened to revoke the clearances of others who have raised his ire, including Comey, former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe and Justice Department official Bruce Ohr. Each has played a role in the Russia probe.
Trump fired Comey in May 2017, a move his critics suggest was intended to end the investigation. The president celebrated McCabe’s firing earlier this year amid allegations he misled officials conducting a leak investigation. And Trump suggested that Ohr, who has been linked to a dossier suggesting a conspiracy between the Russian government and the Trump campaign, should be terminated as well.
“The common thread, of course, is that all of these people are associated in some way, in his mind at least, with what he refers to as the ‘witch hunt,’ that is, the investigation of his campaign, or him, and ties to the Russians,” said David Kris, a former Justice Department official in the George W. Bush and Obama administrations. “So there you see self-interest coming to the fore.”
National security experts were stunned once more when Trump ordered the declassification and public release of sensitive law enforcement documents central to the Russia probe’s origins, including the application to wiretap Carter Page, a former Trump campaign adviser.
The wiretap application was made under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which governs the surveillance of suspected spies and terrorists on U.S. soil. Until this year, no FISA application had ever been made public, on grounds that such documents contain details that could compromise espionage and terrorism investigations, expose informants and put them at risk.
“Look, there is absolutely an overclassification problem in the U.S. government,” said Susan Hennessey, a Brookings Institution fellow and former lawyer in the National Security Agency Office of General Counsel. “But there is information that is genuinely and appropriately classified, and when it’s disclosed, it has immediate consequences.”
Four days after issuing his latest declassification order, the president retreated. Instead, the Justice Department’s inspector general has been directed to conduct an expedited review of the documents. In a tweet, Trump said “key allies” expressed concerns about the documents’ release and that Justice Department officials told him that releasing the material without review could adversely affect the Russia probe.
The president undoubtedly has the legal authority to declassify and even shift the balance between secrecy and transparency, but doing so in this instance is inappropriate, as the records Trump wants released relate to a probe of which he is a subject, Kris said.
“It is very corrosive to the rule of law when it looks clear that the reason he is shifting is not because he has made some broad policy judgment about what lies in the national interest,” he added, “but to serve his own self-interest or for partisan political gain
 

rahu

Banned
1191
In Germany there were too many such people—people who were not Nazis—who undermined the democratic system, who actively worked against it, who voted for authoritarians, and helped Hitler into power. And once he was in power and quickly worked to realize his vision of Germany, there were all too many who helped, who denounced neighbors and co-workers, Jews and political opponents, to the secret police. There were too many who didn’t speak out against the lawless violence directed at German Communists and Jews. There were too many who didn’t speak out about these and other abuses while they still had the chance.
Of course it’s true, no one knew just how little time they would have. No one knew if Hitler would be Chancellor for long. No one knew that the Reichstag would burn. No one knew all the horrors that were still to come. Nobody could know. But that’s precisely the point. No one can know what’s just beyond the horizon. But what we do know is that once that window of opportunity closes, it’s too late. That’s why the time to speak, the time to resist, is now. We’ve already had more time than the Germans did in 1933. Let’s not squander what remains in the misplaced hope that it can’t happen here.( well written rahu)


https://www.rawstory.com/2018/10/trumps-not-alone-destroying-democracy-enablers/

Trump’s not alone in destroying our democracy — he has enablers



ver the next few days, millions of Americans will be anxiously watching and waiting to see whether a few undecided Republican Senators will vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh as our next Supreme Court Justice. Their vote will help shape the Court for a generation. More importantly, their vote holds the potential to help Donald Trump further transform this country into an authoritarian, exclusionary democracy.
As I watch all this unfold, I’m reminded of one of the most important lessons that German history has to offer us. And interestingly enough, this lesson is much less about Hitler himself than about those around him, many of whom were not even Nazis.

Adolf Hitler did not seize power in a coup. There were no violent clashes between Storm Troopers and government forces, no storming of government buildings. He did not take the Chancellorship. It was given to him. On January 30, 1933, the German President and hero of the First World War, Paul von Hindenburg, appointed Hitler Chancellor in a Cabinet with just two other Nazis. The rest were nationalists of various kinds, but not National Socialists.
Why is this important for us to understand today, in Donald Trump’s America? Because, among other things, it teaches us that the would-be autocrat cannot succeed alone. He needs help, and not just at the point of coming to power. Hitler—originally the most improbable candidate to lead a country like Germany—became possible because much of the ground had already been prepared by others, many of whom were not friends of Adolf Hitler.
People attacked the democratic republic from the very beginning, before it even had a chance to prove what it could do. Its leaders, they said, had stabbed the army in the back in 1918 and signed the humiliating peace treaty that followed. They were corrupt, under the control of Jews, robbing the country of badly needed funds. They were inept, unable to manage the economy and causing the disastrous hyperinflation that wiped out middle-class Germans’ savings in 1923. They were weak, unwilling to stand up to the Allies or fight the French troops that invaded western Germany that same year. They were weak on law and order, unable to control the violent street fights between Nazis and Communists in the early 1930s. And they had no answers for the Depression that racked the country at the end of its first decade. Extreme partisan divisions made the parliament less and less effective, and with the Nazi electoral breakthrough in September 1930, it was all but paralyzed. Whatever faith there had been in the system had largely evaporated, with the defenders of democracy limited almost exclusively to the Social Democrats.
Hitler certainly played a part in this process, but until the Republic’s last few years, his was a rather minor role. In fact, it took the work of others to make it even possible for him to have the impact he ultimately had. After all, until the end of World War I, Hitler was a nobody, a failure, a man with no career and no direction in life. He needed a good deal of help.
Fortunately for him, there were people willing to provide assistance. There were those like Ernst “Putzi” von Hanfstaengel, who helped make the “Bohemian corporal” socially acceptable in elite circles. There were those like the radical nationalist media mogul Alfred Hugenberg, who legitimized Hitler by including him in a major nationalist campaign. There were those who wore down Hindenburg’s resistance and convinced him to appoint Hitler. And there were those in parliament—all but the Social Democrats—who voted for the Enabling Act in March 1933 that gave him dictatorial powers.
What we see in America, unfortunately, is something rather similar. As was the case in Germany, there’ve been all too many people ready and willing to provide the necessary assistance to make Donald Trump—not long ago one of the most improbable candidates to lead a country like America—President of the United States.
There were those who helped make Trump’s job of destroying liberal democracy that much easier before he’d even entered the political arena. Following Senate leader Mitch McConnell’s determination to make Barack Obama a one-term president, congressional Republicans committed themselves to pure and unadulterated opposition, working to block every single initiative he put forward. This involved the use of the filibuster with unprecedented frequency and the blocking of judicial appointments up to and including the theft of a Supreme Court nomination that was rightfully Obama’s to make.
That level of obstruction—to the point where government looks increasingly ineffective, unable to deliver on its promises—helps break down people’s faith in institutions, makes people willing to consider alternatives, including perhaps a strong leader who can break through the impediments, who can get things moving again even if it’s at the expense of democracy.
Then there was the undermining of the opposition party and in particular, its leader, Barack Obama. There was the extreme rhetoric used to attack him, including of course, the whole Birther movement—cultivated within the Republican Party—that claimed America’s first black President was not born in the United States and was therefore an illegitimate ruler. And related to that was the question of his faith. Was Obama really a Christian? Or was he, as many on the right suspected, actually a Muslim? Republicans questioned his patriotism, wondering aloud whether he really loved America. They said he was weak on (“radical Islamic”) terrorism. Maybe he sympathized with the terrorists? There were the posters depicting him in African garb, as an ape, and other racist imagery. Republican disrespect for the President was broadcast on national TV in September 2009, when Congressman Joe Walsh yelled out, “You lie!” as Obama delivered his State of the Union address.
Then there were the attacks on his policies—attacks so over the top they smacked of pure hysteria, describing nearly apocalyptic dangers. The Affordable Care Act, they warned, would make America socialist, or communist, or Nazi. It established “death panels” that would decide who would get care and who would not. Presidential candidate Ben Carson called it the worst thing to happen in the United States since slavery and also compared the United States under Obama to Nazi Germany. Numerous Republicans compared the president’s plan to provide health insurance to more Americans to the Holocaust.
Unfortunately there’s more than just the rhetoric and actions that have made Trump’s presidency a real possibility. There’s the astonishing lack of any serious criticism of him by members of his own party. They have expressed tepid disapproval at best, more often working to stall or block efforts to investigate and reveal the true dangers Trump poses.
Where is the Republicans’ outrage, the disgust, at his racism, his misogyny, his attacks on the free press? Where are their demands to see his tax returns and reveal the corruption of his policies and his business relations? Where is their outrage over the fact that a hostile power intervened in our democratic process to help get Donald Trump elected? Where are their demands to know just what his relationship with Russia really is?
Yes, Arizona Senator Jeff Flake has taken to the Senate floor to issue a relatively strong critique of the President from time to time, but the words were matched by the precise opposite of action. After his first such speech, he announced that his next move would be to retire! And the actions he did take—voting 85% of the time with Trump—rather weakened the force of his criticism. Right now he appears on the verge of once again saying one thing and then going right ahead and doing the opposite. Will he really vote against Donald Trump’s Supreme Court Nominee? His track record is not encouraging. And who else has there been within the Republican Party to state the situation even more strongly and to back up his or her words with action?
Those who assist in the undermining of liberal democratic norms, who assist in the rise and success of the autocrat through acts of commission or omission, and those who fail to condemn him, especially those in positions of responsibility, who have influence, people who should know—all these people must be held to account. In Germany there were too many such people—people who were not Nazis—who undermined the democratic system, who actively worked against it, who voted for authoritarians, and helped Hitler into power.
And once he was in power and quickly worked to realize his vision of Germany, there were all too many who helped, who denounced neighbors and co-workers, Jews and political opponents, to the secret police. There were too many who didn’t speak out against the lawless violence directed at German Communists and Jews. There were too many who didn’t speak out about these and other abuses while they still had the chance.
Of course it’s true, no one knew just how little time they would have. No one knew if Hitler would be Chancellor for long. No one knew that the Reichstag would burn. No one knew all the horrors that were still to come. Nobody could know. But that’s precisely the point. No one can know what’s just beyond the horizon. But what we do know is that once that window of opportunity closes, it’s too late. That’s why the time to speak, the time to resist, is now. We’ve already had more time than the Germans did in 1933. Let’s not squander what remains in the misplaced hope that it can’t happen here.
 
Last edited:

rahu

Banned
1210

https://www.rawstory.com/2018/10/donald-trump-becomes-dictator/

Here is how Donald Trump becomes a dictator





over the next few days, millions of Americans will be anxiously watching and waiting to see whether a few undecided Republican Senators will vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh as our next Supreme Court Justice. Their vote will help shape the Court for a generation. More importantly, their vote holds the potential to help Donald Trump further transform this country into an authoritarian, exclusionary democracy.
As I watch all this unfold, I’m reminded of one of the most important lessons that German history has to offer us. And interestingly enough, this lesson is much less about Hitler himself than about those around him, many of whom were not even Nazis.



Adolf Hitler did not seize power in a coup. There were no violent clashes between Storm Troopers and government forces, no storming of government buildings. He did not take the Chancellorship. It was given to him. On January 30, 1933, the German President and hero of the First World War, Paul von Hindenburg, appointed Hitler Chancellor in a Cabinet with just two other Nazis. The rest were nationalists of various kinds, but not National Socialists.

Why is this important for us to understand today, in Donald Trump’s America? Because, among other things, it teaches us that the would-be autocrat cannot succeed alone. He needs help, and not just at the point of coming to power. Hitler—originally the most improbable candidate to lead a country like Germany—became possible because much of the ground had already been prepared by others, many of whom were not friends of Adolf Hitler.

People attacked the democratic republic from the very beginning, before it even had a chance to prove what it could do. Its leaders, they said, had stabbed the army in the back in 1918 and signed the humiliating peace treaty that followed. They were corrupt, under the control of Jews, robbing the country of badly needed funds. They were inept, unable to manage the economy and causing the disastrous hyperinflation that wiped out middle-class Germans’ savings in 1923. They were weak, unwilling to stand up to the Allies or fight the French troops that invaded western Germany that same year. They were weak on law and order, unable to control the violent street fights between Nazis and Communists in the early 1930s. And they had no answers for the Depression that racked the country at the end of its first decade. Extreme partisan divisions made the parliament less and less effective, and with the Nazi electoral breakthrough in September 1930, it was all but paralyzed. Whatever faith there had been in the system had largely evaporated, with the defenders of democracy limited almost exclusively to the Social Democrats.

Hitler certainly played a part in this process, but until the Republic’s last few years, his was a rather minor role. In fact, it took the work of others to make it even possible for him to have the impact he ultimately had. After all, until the end of World War I, Hitler was a nobody, a failure, a man with no career and no direction in life. He needed a good deal of help.

Fortunately for him, there were people willing to provide assistance. There were those like Ernst “Putzi” von Hanfstaengel, who helped make the “Bohemian corporal” socially acceptable in elite circles. There were those like the radical nationalist media mogul Alfred Hugenberg, who legitimized Hitler by including him in a major nationalist campaign. There were those who wore down Hindenburg’s resistance and convinced him to appoint Hitler. And there were those in parliament—all but the Social Democrats—who voted for the Enabling Act in March 1933 that gave him dictatorial powers.

What we see in America, unfortunately, is something rather similar. As was the case in Germany, there’ve been all too many people ready and willing to provide the necessary assistance to make Donald Trump—not long ago one of the most improbable candidates to lead a country like America—President of the United States.

There were those who helped make Trump’s job of destroying liberal democracy that much easier before he’d even entered the political arena. Following Senate leader Mitch McConnell’s determination to make Barack Obama a one-term president, congressional Republicans committed themselves to pure and unadulterated opposition, working to block every single initiative he put forward. This involved the use of the filibuster with unprecedented frequency and the blocking of judicial appointments up to and including the theft of a Supreme Court nomination that was rightfully Obama’s to make.

That level of obstruction—to the point where government looks increasingly ineffective, unable to deliver on its promises—helps break down people’s faith in institutions, makes people willing to consider alternatives, including perhaps a strong leader who can break through the impediments, who can get things moving again even if it’s at the expense of democracy.

Then there was the undermining of the opposition party and in particular, its leader, Barack Obama. There was the extreme rhetoric used to attack him, including of course, the whole Birther movement—cultivated within the Republican Party—that claimed America’s first black President was not born in the United States and was therefore an illegitimate ruler. And related to that was the question of his faith. Was Obama really a Christian? Or was he, as many on the right suspected, actually a Muslim? Republicans questioned his patriotism, wondering aloud whether he really loved America. They said he was weak on (“radical Islamic”) terrorism. Maybe he sympathized with the terrorists? There were the posters depicting him in African garb, as an ape, and other racist imagery. Republican disrespect for the President was broadcast on national TV in September 2009, when Congressman Joe Walsh yelled out, “You lie!” as Obama delivered his State of the Union address.

Then there were the attacks on his policies—attacks so over the top they smacked of pure hysteria, describing nearly apocalyptic dangers. The Affordable Care Act, they warned, would make America socialist, or communist, or Nazi. It established “death panels” that would decide who would get care and who would not. Presidential candidate Ben Carson called it the worst thing to happen in the United States since slavery and also compared the United States under Obama to Nazi Germany. Numerous Republicans compared the president’s plan to provide health insurance to more Americans to the Holocaust.

Unfortunately there’s more than just the rhetoric and actions that have made Trump’s presidency a real possibility. There’s the astonishing lack of any serious criticism of him by members of his own party. They have expressed tepid disapproval at best, more often working to stall or block efforts to investigate and reveal the true dangers Trump poses.

Where is the Republicans’ outrage, the disgust, at his racism, his misogyny, his attacks on the free press? Where are their demands to see his tax returns and reveal the corruption of his policies and his business relations? Where is their outrage over the fact that a hostile power intervened in our democratic process to help get Donald Trump elected? Where are their demands to know just what his relationship with Russia really is?

Yes, Arizona Senator Jeff Flake has taken to the Senate floor to issue a relatively strong critique of the President from time to time, but the words were matched by the precise opposite of action. After his first such speech, he announced that his next move would be to retire! And the actions he did take—voting 85% of the time with Trump—rather weakened the force of his criticism. Right now he appears on the verge of once again saying one thing and then going right ahead and doing the opposite. Will he really vote against Donald Trump’s Supreme Court Nominee? His track record is not encouraging. And who else has there been within the Republican Party to state the situation even more strongly and to back up his or her words with action?

Those who assist in the undermining of liberal democratic norms, who assist in the rise and success of the autocrat through acts of commission or omission, and those who fail to condemn him, especially those in positions of responsibility, who have influence, people who should know—all these people must be held to account. In Germany there were too many such people—people who were not Nazis—who undermined the democratic system, who actively worked against it, who voted for authoritarians, and helped Hitler into power.

And once he was in power and quickly worked to realize his vision of Germany, there were all too many who helped, who denounced neighbors and co-workers, Jews and political opponents, to the secret police. There were too many who didn’t speak out against the lawless violence directed at German Communists and Jews. There were too many who didn’t speak out about these and other abuses while they still had the chance.

Of course it’s true, no one knew just how little time they would have. No one knew if Hitler would be Chancellor for long. No one knew that the Reichstag would burn. No one knew all the horrors that were still to come. Nobody could know. But that’s precisely the point. No one can know what’s just beyond the horizon. But what we do know is that once that window of opportunity closes, it’s too late. That’s why the time to speak, the time to resist, is now. We’ve already had more time than the Germans did in 1933. Let’s not squander what remains in the misplaced hope that it can’t happen here.

Richard E. Frankel is an Associate Professor of history at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.
 

rahu

Banned
https://www.rawstory.com/2018/10/sc...tments-inspector-general-political-appointee/

Scandal-plagued Trump cabinet member just replaced his department’s inspector general with a political appointee

nterior Secretary Ryan Zinke is plagued by scandals — facing about a dozen different investigations of his conduct — but he may have found a solution to his oversight woes: replacing the person investigating him with a political stooge.

The Hill reported first Wednesday morning that the Interior Department Acting Inspector General Mary Kendall will be replaced by Suzanne Israel Tufts, who has been serving in the Department of Housing and Urban Development. As an assistant HUD secretary, Tufts has already been confirmed by the Senate — meaning she can be installed in Kendall’s place without another vote.



The report notes that President Barack Obama had tried to confirm Kendall officially as the department IG in 2015 — which would have removed “acting” from her title. But at that time, GOP Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was leading an intransigent opposition to Obama appointments, and she was blocked.


Now, Zinke and the Trump administration will have the ability to replace a career official with a political appointee who could potentially wipe the slate clean of the investigations against the Interior Secretary if she so chooses.

Even if Tufts doesn’t take such a brazen approach, any outcomes of her investigations of the sitting secretary will likely be tainted by the dubious manner of her appointment.

“This is a very big deal,” said Michael Bromwich, a former Justice Department inspector general. “Politicizing the oversight function is dangerous, especially in the absence of any Congressional oversight. Changing IGs in the midst of multiple serious investigations of the agency’s head should raise alarm bells everywhere.”

NBC News reported that Kendall appeared to have no knowledge of the change when The Hill‘s report was published, which cited a department-wide email from HUD Secretary Ben Carson announcing the move.
 

rahu

Banned
1286

https://www.rawstory.com/2018/10/tr...-naked-attempts-suppress-voters-modern-times/



Trump attacks democracy with ‘one of the most naked attempts’ to suppress voters in modern times

fter President Donald Trump fired off a hysterical tweet this weekend warning of mass “voter fraud”—a right-wing bogeyman for which there is virtually zero evidence—and threatening violators with severe punishment, the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law condemned the president for deploying Jim Crow-era scare tactics to suppress minority voter turnout just two weeks before the midterm elections.

“President Trump’s statement regarding vote fraud is one of the most naked attempts to promote voter suppression that we have seen in modern time,” Kristen Clarke, president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee, said in a statement following Trump’s tweet, in which he declared that “all levels of government and law enforcement are watching carefully” for violations.


Clarke argued that the president’s tweet is clearly part of an ongoing right-wing effortto “promote fear and incite law enforcement to action in ways that could chill voter participation this midterm election cycle.”

“Meanwhile this administration and the Justice Department’s silence regarding widespread voter suppression has been deafening. To date, this Justice Department has failed to file a single case to enforce the Voting Rights Act and has failed to take any action to protect the rights of minority voters,” Clarke said. “Instead, we see the president using his platform to promote unsubstantiated and false claims about vote fraud.”

“What is most dangerous about the president’s statement is the suggestion that government and law enforcement across the country are activating to prosecute voters,” Clarke concluded. “This is nothing more than an open and brazen attempt to use the threat of criminal prosecution to intimidate minority voters, an old and familiar tactic that dates back to the Jim Crow era.”

Clarke’s strong denunciation of Trump’s latest effort to suppress minority voter turnout was echoed by civil rights groups and progressive lawmakers.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who is currently on a get-out-the-vote tour spanning nine states, wrote on Twitter that Trump and the GOP “know that they have to lie about voter fraud” in order to win elections.
“Don’t let them get away with it!” Sanders wrote.
Trump’s fearmongering tweet comes as the GOP is waging an aggressive war on voting rights throughout the U.S. ahead of the crucial Nov. 6 midterms.

As Common Dreams reported, Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State and gubernatorial candidate Brian Kemp—who Trump has enthusiastically endorsed—has purged hundreds of thousands of voters from the rolls in the weeks leading up to next month’s election.

“It’s clear they’re going to try to steal the midterms to whatever extent they can,” writer David Klion argued in a tweet on Sunday. “If it works I’m not sure what can legally be done about it. SCOTUS killed the Voting Rights Act five years ago, pre-Gorsuch, pre-Kav[anaugh
 

rahu

Banned
https://www.rawstory.com/2018/10/he...alls-trump-kept-book-hitler-speeches-bedside/



He’s speaking from the heart’: Biographer recalls Trump kept a book of Hitler speeches at his bedside




Adolf-Hitler-and-Donald-Trump-800x430.jpg
Composite image, Adolph Hitler via Wikimedia Commons and Donald Trump photo by Gage Skidmore.
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Donald Trump is losing control of the GOP’s message in the midterm elections, with less than one week before election day, MSNBC’s “Deadline: White House” explained on Wednesday.
“This is not the conversation Donald Trump wants the country to be having in the final days,” host Nicolle Wallace noted.




“No, because it’s not a campaign strategy on his part,” replied Trump Nation biographer Tim O’Brien.
“This is who Donald Trump is — he has been a bigot and a white nationalist for a long time,” he reported.
“This is a guy who kept a book of hitler’s speeches on the nightstand by his bed,” he continued.
“Wow — wow,” an off-camera guest gasped.
“This is a guy who, in tweets over the last week, has invoked Stalinist and Nazi rhetoric to criticized the media,” O’Brien continued. “He revels in it.”
“So it’s not just a short-term, you know, policy or political move by him to appeal to his base,” he explained. “He’s speaking from the heart and American voters are seeing him for who he is.”
Watch:
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rahu

Banned
https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-refuse-asylum-rights-those-164047482.html

Trump says stone-throwing migrants could be shot by US military as he seeks to limit rights to apply for asylum



( i've said along we are all nothing but Palestinians to hi and netanyahu rahu)




Donald Trump has suggested stone-throwing migrants might be shot by the US military, as he unveiled a proposal to limit the right to apply for asylum.
In a speech at the White House that contained several falsehoods, the president said he seeking to limit asylum claims only to those who applied at legal entry points. He claimed the move was necessary because a succession of migrant caravans - their location still 1,000 miles from the border – was considered by some people to be “an invasion”.
“Asylum is not a programme for those living in poverty. There are billions of people in the world living at the poverty level. The United States cannot possibly absorb them all,” he said.
“Asylum is a very specific protection based on those fleeing persecution.”
The migrants making their way northwards have come largely from El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala, all of which suffer from grinding poverty and high levels of violence.
He said some had thrown stones at, and attacked Mexican police and troops – a reference to clashes between Mexican security forces and up to 1,500 migrants at the Guatemala-Mexico border, that left one migrant dead. Meanwhile, even as the number of migrants attached to the original caravan continues to dwindle, a third group of around 500 migrants from El Salvador entered Guatemala last weekend.
Mr Trump said he had told military commanders at the southern US border, that if migrants try to throw rocks at them, the troops should act as though the rocks were “rifles”.
“I hope there won’t be that. But I will tell you this, anybody throwing stones, rocks like they did to Mexico…- where they badly hurt police and soldiers of Mexico – we will consider that a firearm,” the president said.
“Because there’s not much difference when you get hit in the face with a rock.”
Mr Trump did not release details on the asylum proposal or how it would be implemented. CNN said that according to one White House aide, the administration will seek to require migrants to request asylum at legal points of entry, and prevent them from claiming asylum if they are caught crossing the border illegally.
The president said he would sign an immigration-related executive order next week, but was not specific as to what it would address.
“Migrants seeking asylum will have to present themselves lawfully at a port of entry,” Mr Trump told reporters.
“Those who choose to break our laws and enter illegally will no longer be able to use meritless claims to gain automatic admission into our country.”
Mr Trump’s harsh language was the latest broadside from the US president as he seeks to hammer and issue he knows that many of his supporters care deeply about. “These illegal caravans will not be allowed into the United States and they should turn back now,“ he said. “We are stopping people at the border. This is an invasion.”
Some in his own party have accused Mr Trump of playing politics with the issue of the caravan.
Republican Bob Corker, the returning senator from Tennessee, said Mr Trump’s words were wrong and described the caravan as a “political football”.
 

rahu

Banned
https://www.veteranstoday.com/2018/11/03/trump-nukes/

Trump nukes Honduran military base in retaliation for “invasion”

“It was our base? Oops!”
Dissociated Press
Obeying an order issued by Commander-in-Chief Donald J. Trump, the United States Air Force has used a nuclear weapon to destroy Honduras’ biggest military installation.
At 7:31:06 this morning, Base Aerea Soto Cano in Comayagua, Honduras was instantly incinerated by a B83 thermonuclear weapon set to its maximum yield of 1.2 megatons dropped by a USAF B1A Lancer as ordered by President Trump in his first official act of the day.
Trump then called a press conference and explained: “A short time ago, an American aeroplane dropped one bomb on Comayagua and destroyed its usefulness to the enemy. That bomb has more power than one million tons of TNT.
“The Hondurans began this war with their attempt to invade our country. They have been repaid many fold and the end is not yet.”
Trump added that he has placed all US nuclear forces on hair-trigger alert and is prepared to use more nuclear weapons at the border if Honduran invaders throw rocks: “Anybody throwing rocks at our border will be considered to be using a nuclear weapon, and we will respond with much, much bigger nuclear weapons,” Trump explained, adding: “Our nuclear weapons are much, much, much bigger and harder than anybody’s, and ours don’t need all that much viagra to work.”
Trump said the nuclear bomb craters along the border would be filled with radioactive water and mutant crocodiles and used as a moat, alongside his planned Wall, to discourage illegal immigration.
Asked which Air Force Base supplied the BIA Lancer used to destroy Base Aerea Soto Cano, Trump deferred to National Security Advisor John Bolton. Bolton, after googling on his smart phone, explained that the nuclear armed bomber had been stationed at Base Aerea Soto Cano in Comayagua, Honduras.
Informed by reporters that he had just blown up an American military base, Trump blamed the media for the mistake, calling reporters “enemies of the people” before hastily exiting the press conference.
The newly-vaporized US Commander at Soto Cano, US Army Col. Winifred “Ashes” Ashton, could not be reached for comment .

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rahu

Banned
1459
https://www.rawstory.com/2018/11/tr...boss-gone-mad-using-presidency-money-revenge/

Trump proves he’s little more than a mob boss gone mad — and is using the presidency for money and revenge



Last week, the Federalist Society grand poobah Leonard Leo, widely credited as the mastermind behind Trump’s extremist court-packing
scheme, got into a bit of spat with another high powered conservative legal luminary. That would be George Conway, the prominent Trump critic who is also the husband of Trump senior adviser Kellyanne Conway. Leo was upset because Conway had started a legal organization called Checks and Balances, which is dedicated to opposing Trump’s abuse of presidential power and degradation of the rule of law.This article was originally published at SalonLeo said he found the whole concept outrageous. Just because the president spouts off day and night wondering why the Department of Justice isn’t jailing his political rivals and demanding that its top officials pledge fealty to him as he imagines Joe McCarthy’s lawyer (and Trump mentor) Roy Cohn would have done — well, isn’t an abuse of power unless he takes action.


This was fatuous in all respects but particularly so since Trump has just fired Jeff Sessions because he followed the ethical guidelines of the department and recused himself from the Russia investigations, thus failing to protect Trump. That is taking action. The same goes for firing James Comey for failing to quash the Russia investigation.
Needless to say, every time Trump tweets or comments about what he thinks should be done it conveys a very clear message. The fact that career officials have not completely carried out his wishes does not mean they haven’t had an influence. Trump apparently learned that lesson and has put Matt Whitaker, a shameless lackey, in place as acting AG to keep him apprised and follow his orders when he gives them.
One of Trump’s longstanding desires, going all the way back to the 2016 campaign, was to see his opponent Hillary Clinton imprisoned. His crowds still gleefully chant “Lock her up!” which likely has led Trump to believe that prosecuting Clinton (for something) would be a very popular decision. I’ve been sure that he was serious about that for some time, largely because he keeps saying it. Contra Leonard Leo, he has actually succeeded in having the DOJ take action.
Recall that under pressure from Trump, Fox News and GOP henchmen in the House, Sessions assigned a Trump-friendly U.S. attorney in Utah to investigate Clinton’s alleged Russia connection, a bogus charge on which she’d already been investigated and cleared. None other than the reformed maverick and born-again Trumper, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who will take the gavel as chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee in January, has said he is eager to investigate Hillary Clinton.
On Tuesday, the New York Times validated my assumptions about Trump’s seriousness. The paper reported that former White House counsel Don McGahn had to talk Trump out of ordering the Justice Department to prosecute Clinton and former FBI director James Comey, explaining that it could lead to his impeachment for abuse of power. The Times report isn’t specific about when this happened, only saying it was last spring. But that’s also when Sessions assigned the imaginary Clinton case to the Utah U.S. attorney’s office, so it’s likely this was all happening at the same time. (Sessions said at the time that this would obviate the need for a special counsel, for which Fox and the House henchmen had been agitating.)
Today, McGahn and Sessions are gone. FBI director Christopher Wray, Comey’s successor, has not been mentioned as one of the senior Trump appointees on the chopping block. But the Times reports that Trump is unhappy with Wray because he’s “weak” for failing to go after Clinton, so who knows? The article says Trump frequently brings up the notion of prosecuting Clinton, suggesting he hasn’t given up on it.
If that grotesque illustration of Trump’s authoritarian instincts wasn’t bad enough, I’m afraid Tuesday brought an even worse example. The world has been waiting for our government to offer some kind of official conclusion about the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, the Washington Post journalist and U.S. resident who was killed inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul last month. It got one in the form of a White House statement written as if it had originally been a series of presidential tweets, replete with exclamation points.
Basically, the president declared that despite the high confidence of his own intelligence community, we can never know for sure if Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered Khashoggi’s murder. Even if he did, it doesn’t matter, because he also promised to buy a lot of weapons from the U.S. and that’s what really matters. In other words, the world’s most powerful superpower can be bought off. (The arms sales Trump endlessly references are only theoretical so far — Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says they’re still being “negotiated.”)
Autocrats and dictators must be very relieved to know that all they have to do is hand over the envelope and the American capo di tutti capi will look the other way when you “take care of business” — if you know what I mean.
Axios reported last week that Trump had never really cared whether or not the crown prince had ordered this grotesque assassination because “other countries do bad things too.” This is consistent with his general amoral attitude toward world affairs. He consistently attacks the leaders of Western democracies for failing to pay proper tribute and makes excuses for tyrants and dictators. As the president wrote in his tweet-style official statement, “the world is a very dangerous place!” Apparently this means we can’t even afford to pay lip service to such niceties as international law or common human decency; certainly not when there’s money on the table.
Just in case everyone didn’t get the message, Trump added that “some say” Khashoggi was an “enemy of the state,” echoing his own frequent complaints about the press here at home. (Can you hear me, Jim Acosta?)
Happy Thanksgiving, America. Your president has just proved beyond a reasonable doubt that he is operating as a reckless, lawless mob boss who seeks to use the power of his office for money and revenge. (And he’s personally making more than a little scratch for himself in the process.) If that sounds like the work of an organized crime family running a shakedown, that’s because it is. “Nice little democracy you have here — be a shame if anything happened to it.”
 

rahu

Banned
1529
https://www.veteranstoday.com/2018/12/04/american-demagogues-admit-wanting-to-take-over-the-world/

American “Nutters” Plan World Conquest

Pompeo had the gall to threaten US allies who have themselves been targeted by US Deep State aggression. This was never mentioned in their domestic political campaigns, but emerged after they take the reigns of power where once they have served the Deep State in office, they have a home for the rest of their lives serving their interests. John Bolton is a prime example.

– First published … December 04, 2018 –
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has targeted Russia, China and Iran for opposing Washington’s “leadership role”.
Pompeo said on Tuesday during a visit to Brussels ahead of a NATO foreign ministers meeting thatPresident Donald Trump aimed to take the helm of a new world order, but certain “bad actors” were opposing him.

“President Trump … is returning the United States to its traditional central leadership role in the world,” he said.
Pompeo urged US allies to help Trump to succeed.

“We are rallying the noble nations of the world to build a new liberal order” led by Trump, Pompeo said ahead of the meeting with NATO foreign ministers.
(a slight misprint......netanyahu,trumps puppetter, will lead the new world order. rahu)

Pompeo claimed Russia, China and Iran had undermined the global leadership of the United States.

He said the Trump administration would no longer tolerate opposing influences willing to stop it from reaching its objectives. The former CIA chief warned international organization to follow suit with US foreign policy.

Pompeo hinted that international organizations had to either work in line with US foreign policy, or face change.

Organizations such as the United Nations, European Union, African Union, the International Monetary Fund and World Bank have become corroded are in dire need of change, he suggested.

“The first two years of the Trump administration demonstrate that President Trump is not undermining these institutions nor is he abandoning American leadership. Quite the opposite,” Pompeo said, adding, “Bad actors have exploited our lack of leadership for their own gain.”

Pompeo told the gathering that it was to duty of every nation to “honestly acknowledge its responsibility to its citizens and ask if the current order serves the interests of its people as well as it could — and if not, we must ask how we can right it,”

Pompeo’s comments came as NATO foreign ministers are scheduled to meet to discuss recent escalating tensions with Russia.
 
Last edited:

rahu

Banned

1550
“We are rallying the noble nations of the world to build a new liberal order” led by Trump, Pompeo said ahead of the meeting with NATO foreign ministers.
(a slight misprint......netanyahu,trumps puppetter, will lead the new world order. rahu)


(right on queue, Netanyahu jumps on the war wagon after trump has broken the ice rahu )

https://www.veteranstoday.com/2018/...-forces-rescue-civilians-in-euphrates-valley/


Netanyahu Threatens Lebanon With Invasion. Syrian, Russian Forces Rescue Civilians In Euphrates Valley
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that there is a “reasonable possibility” that the Israeli military may have to conduct operations inside Lebanon territory. This move will go in the framework of the ongoing Operation Northern Shield, which is aimed at discovering and neutralizing Hezbollah cross-border tunnels.
Netanyahu also revealed that Israel will call for a U.N. Security Council meeting soon to demand a condemnation of the alleged Hezbollah actions.

“Israel expects an unequivocal condemnation of Hezbollah, the imposition of additional sanctions on Iran, a condemnation from the Lebanese government and a demand that it stops giving its approval for the use of its territory for these attacks against Israel,” Netanyahu said.

So far, Operation Northern Shield has been carried out on the Israeli side of the contact line only. However, Hezbollah already put its forces on high alert and warned Israel that it’s ready to respond to any aggression.
Meanwhile, in Syria, the Syrian-Iranian-Russian alliance continued its efforts to restore stability in the government-held part of the country.
In the region of Western Ghouta, government troops discovered a large number of weapons and equipment abandoned by militants. The weapons included a Soviet-made RPG-29 anti-tank weapon, several rounds of the US-made SMAW shoulder-launched rocket weapon, a Yugoslav-made M79 Osa anti-tank weapon with several rounds, assault rifles, heavy machine guns and loads of ammunition of different calibers.
In the province of Quneitra, local reconciliation committees handed over a number of US and Israeli-supplied medical equipment and other supplies to government forces. Most of these supplies had been provided by Tel Aviv and Washington to the White Helmets organization, members of which fled the area after its liberation from terrorists.
In the Euphrates Valley, Syrian and Russian forces evacuated hundreds of civilians, mostly women and children, from the ISIS-held pocket of Hajin where US-backed forces are conducting their own operation against ISIS. The humanitarian operation was reportedly carried out through the al-Salihiyah crossing on the Euphrates River.


1529
https://www.veteranstoday.com/2018/12/04/american-demagogues-admit-wanting-to-take-over-the-world/

American “Nutters” Plan World Conquest

Pompeo had the gall to threaten US allies who have themselves been targeted by US Deep State aggression. This was never mentioned in their domestic political campaigns, but emerged after they take the reigns of power where once they have served the Deep State in office, they have a home for the rest of their lives serving their interests. John Bolton is a prime example.

– First published … December 04, 2018 –
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has targeted Russia, China and Iran for opposing Washington’s “leadership role”.
Pompeo said on Tuesday during a visit to Brussels ahead of a NATO foreign ministers meeting thatPresident Donald Trump aimed to take the helm of a new world order, but certain “bad actors” were opposing him.

“President Trump … is returning the United States to its traditional central leadership role in the world,” he said.
Pompeo urged US allies to help Trump to succeed.

“We are rallying the noble nations of the world to build a new liberal order” led by Trump, Pompeo said ahead of the meeting with NATO foreign ministers.
(a slight misprint......netanyahu,trumps puppetter, will lead the new world order. rahu)

Pompeo claimed Russia, China and Iran had undermined the global leadership of the United States.

He said the Trump administration would no longer tolerate opposing influences willing to stop it from reaching its objectives. The former CIA chief warned international organization to follow suit with US foreign policy.

Pompeo hinted that international organizations had to either work in line with US foreign policy, or face change.

Organizations such as the United Nations, European Union, African Union, the International Monetary Fund and World Bank have become corroded are in dire need of change, he suggested.

“The first two years of the Trump administration demonstrate that President Trump is not undermining these institutions nor is he abandoning American leadership. Quite the opposite,” Pompeo said, adding, “Bad actors have exploited our lack of leadership for their own gain.”

Pompeo told the gathering that it was to duty of every nation to “honestly acknowledge its responsibility to its citizens and ask if the current order serves the interests of its people as well as it could — and if not, we must ask how we can right it,”

Pompeo’s comments came as NATO foreign ministers are scheduled to meet to discuss recent escalating tensions with Russia.
 

rahu

Banned
1628
https://www.rawstory.com/2018/12/ou...stunning-farewell-address-rebuking-trump-era/
Outgoing Republican warns of a ‘Hitler-like’ figure in stunning farewell address rebuking the Trump era

In his farewell address, Rep. Mark Sanford (R-SC) warned of a Hitler-esque figure in the age of President Donald Trump, the South Carolina Post and Courier first reported.
Sanford summarized the 4,000 word missive. “One, thank you for your part in allowing my time in the arena of politics. It’s been an honor, and I am most appreciative,” he wrote.
“Two, we are headed for a shipwreck if we don’t change course,” Sanford continued.
Sanford goes on to praise civility as well as confirm his commitment to limited government. He cites the work of economic philosopher Friedrich Hayek, particularly his work, “The Road to Serfdom,” which warns of the government’s abuse of power—and how they can lead to the rise of strongmen dictators.
“Because as open political systems become cumbersome and inefficient, inevitably a strong man comes along and offers easy promises,” Sanford observes.
“He says that he can take care of it for us. People desperate for a change accept his offer. They have to give up a few freedoms in the equation to get more security. It doesn’t work out so well, as Hayek’s book in this instance is about the rise of Hitler in post-WWI German history,” Sanford says.
“I want to be clear and explicit that I am not likening Trump to Hitler, but the forces at play could lead to a future Hitler-like character if we don’t watch out,” Sanford warned.
“It must be remembered that another thing that Benjamin Franklin said was that he who trades his freedom for security, deserves neither. Indeed, how true.”
 

rahu

Banned
1701
https://www.rawstory.com/2019/01/tr...bbing-dictatorial-power-authoritarian-expert/

Trump speech was a ‘shakedown’ aimed at grabbing dictatorial power: authoritarianism expert

resident Donald Trump’s first Oval Office address was meant to further consolidate his power, according to an authoritarianism expert.

Sarah Kendzior, a journalist and researcher who has studied autocratic regimes in Central Asia, compared Tuesday’s speech to a “hostage video,” with Americans as his “captive audience,” in a new essay published by The Globe and Mail.

“We watched because the stakes felt too high to turn away,” Kendzior wrote. “We watched because Mr. Trump has taunted us with talk of declaring a ‘national emergency’ – an act which gives him the power to do things like kill the internet, freeze bank accounts, and turn military troops into a domestic police force. We watched because Mr. Trump has long applauded death through his praise of dictators and criminals. We watched because the path to American autocracy was laid out upon his election, and we wanted to know which victims were next.”

Kendzior said the president was attempting to “pad a power-grab as a policy proposal” by hyping misleading statistics that radically overstate the threat from Central American immigrants, which he grotesquely twisted into a humanitarian framework.

She said the only threat Trump truly cares about comes from Democrats, who might have enough legislative power to stop his autocratic consolidation of power.

“The only security Mr. Trump is concerned with is his own,” Kendzior wrote. “With the government shut down, he can capitalize on chaos and operate with greater impunity. His speech was not a public address: it was a shakedown proclamation built on venom and vengeance. It will not be his last.”
 

rahu

Banned
1720
( when hitler was appointed chancellor of Germany, he was given the option of taking on dictatorial powers. which he did not do until the start of ww11 rahu)



https://www.rawstory.com/2019/01/cn...eclaration-happens-authoritarian-governments/

CNN’s Toobin warns Trump can pull off his emergency declaration: ‘This is what happens in authoritarian governments’
Addressing Donald Trump’s apparent plan to declare a national emergency in order to get his border wall built, CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin warned that the president likely would be able to get the courts to agree with him.

Appearing on CNN’s New Day, Toobin said that the ability for a president to declare national emergencies is easier than many are led to believe but at the same time said, Trump’s use of the declaration was what one might expect from an authoritarian leader.


“I think it is unlikely to be stopped by the courts, let’s put it that way,” Toobin told hosts John Berman and Alisyn Camerota.

“For a couple of reasons,” he continued. “One is that the president’s emergency powers are phrased in a very broad way. And second, as a purely legal matter, it is — it is hard for me to imagine the courts finding a plaintiff with standing, that says a plaintiff with the legal right to sue to stop this at an early point in the process.”

“You know, the president’s emergency powers have been invoked more than you think, often on issues that are not terribly high profile — issues involving the Congo,” Toobin elaborated. “There are 31 current emergencies, most of them not controversial at all, but, you know, they indicate the breadth of the president’s power here, and at least in the short-term, I think if President Trump wanted to do this, the courts would let him.”

Following a discussion on Trump of diverting $2.5 billion in Pentagon funds toward building his wall, Toobin accused the president of acting like an authoritarian.

“I do think just on the substance we need to pause and consider, you know, this is what happens in authoritarian countries,” the legal analyst explained. “When leaders don’t get their way they declare emergencies and go around the usual legal processes.”

You can watch the video below via CNN:
 

rahu

Banned
1733
https://www.rawstory.com/2019/01/pr...verthrow-democracy-yale-historian-tim-snyder/

It’s pretty much inevitable’ that Trump will try to stage a coup and overthrow democracy: Yale historian Tim Snyder

American democracy is in crisis. The election of Donald Trump feels like a state of emergency made normal.

Trump has threatened violence against his political enemies. He has made clear he does not believe in the norms and traditions of American democracy — unless they serve his interests. Trump and his advisers consider a free press to be enemies of his regime. Trump repeatedly lies and has a profoundly estranged relationship with empirical reality. He uses obvious and naked racism, nativism and bigotry to mobilize his voters and to disparage entire groups of people such as Latinos and Muslims.


SPONSORED
This story first ran at Salon in May, 2017.

Trump is threatening to eliminate an independent judiciary and wants to punish judges who dare to stand against his illegal and unconstitutional mandates. In what appears to be a violation of the emoluments clause of the Constitution, Trump is using the office of the presidency to enrich himself, his family and his inner circle by peddling influence and access to corporations, foreign countries and wealthy individuals. Trump and his representatives also believe that he is above the law and cannot be prosecuted for any crimes while in office.

What can the American people do to resist Donald Trump? What lessons can history teach about the rise of authoritarianism and fascism and how democracies collapse? Are there ways that individuals can fight back on a daily basis and in their own personal lives against the political and cultural forces that gave rise to Trump’s movement? How long does American democracy have before the poison that Donald Trump and the Republican Party injected into the country’s body politic becomes lethal?

In an effort to answer these questions, I recently spoke with Timothy Snyder, a professor of history at Yale University. He is the award-winning author of numerous books including the recent “Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning” and “Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin.” Snyder’s new book, “On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century,” explores how the American people can fight back against Donald Trump’s incipient authoritarian regime.

Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity. A longer version can be heard on my podcast, available on Salon’s Featured Audio page.

The election of Donald Trump is a crisis for American democracy. How did this happen?

We asked for it by saying that history was over in 1989 [with the end of the Cold War]. By saying that nothing bad could [ever] happen again, we were basically inviting something bad to happen.

Our story about how nothing could [ever] go wrong was a story about how human nature is the free market and the free market brings democracy, so everything is hunky-dory — and of course every part of that story is nonsense. The Greeks understood that democracy is likely to produce oligarchy because if you don’t have some mechanism to get inequality under control then people with the most money will likely take full control.

With Trump, one sees the new variant of this where a candidate can run by saying, “Look, we all know — wink, wink, nudge, nudge — that this isn’t really a democracy anymore.” He doesn’t use the words but basically says, “We all know this is really an oligarchy, so let me be your oligarch.” Although it’s nonsense and of course he’s a con man and will betray everyone, it makes sense only in this climate of inequality.

In my writing and interviews, I have consistently referred to Donald Trump as a fascist. I have received a great deal of resistance to that claim. Do you think this description is correct? If not, then what language should we use to describe Donald Trump?

One of the problems with American discourse is that we just assume everybody is a friendly democratic parliamentarian pluralist until proven otherwise. And then even when it’s proven otherwise we don’t have any vocabulary for it. He’s a “dictator.” He’s an “authoritarian.” He’s “Hitler.” We just toss these words around.

The pushback that you are talking about is 95 percent bad. Americans do not want to think that there is an alternative to what we have. Therefore, as soon as you say “fascism” or whatever it might be, then the American response is to say “no” because we lack the categories that allow us to think outside of the box that we are no longer in.

Is this a function of American exceptionalism?

Yes, it is. We made a move towards intellectual isolationism in a world where no kind of isolationism is possible. The fact that democracies usually fail is a rule which can’t apply to us. If you examine American society, there are high points and low points. But there is certainly nothing which puts us in a different category than other people who have failed, whether it’s historically or whether it’s now.

I don’t want to dodge your question about whether Trump is a fascist or not. As I see it, there are certainly elements of his approach which are fascistic. The straight-on confrontation with the truth is at the center of the fascist worldview. The attempt to undo the Enlightenment as a way to undo institutions, that is fascism.

Whether he realizes it or not is a different question, but that’s what fascists did. They said, “Don’t worry about the facts; don’t worry about logic. Think instead in terms of mystical unities and direct connections between the mystical leader and the people.” That’s fascism. Whether we see it or not, whether we like it or not, whether we forget, that is fascism.

Another thing that’s clearly fascist about Trump were the rallies. The way that he used the language, the blunt repetitions, the naming of the enemies, the physical removal of opponents from rallies, that was really, without exaggeration, just like the 1920s and the 1930s.

And Mr. [Steve] Bannon’s preoccupation with the 1930s and his kind of wishful reclamation of Italian and other fascists speaks for itself.

How did the news media and others get this so wrong? Why did they underestimate the threat posed by Donald Trump and his movement?

What we ended up with, from Bill Clinton onward, is a status quo party and an “undo the system” party, where the Democrats became the status quo party and the Republicans became the “undo the system” party. In that constellation it’s very hard to think of change because one party is in favor of things being the way they are, just slightly better, and the other party has this big idea of undoing everything, although it’s unclear what that really means in practice. So no one is actually articulating how you address the problems of the day, the greatest of which would be inequality. When neither party is creative, then it’s hard for scholars to get their ideas into meaningful circulation.

Why is Trump not being held accountable for all of his failures, scandals and incompetence?

Mr. Trump is primarily a television personality. As such, he is judged by that standard. This means that a scandal does not call forth a response; it calls forth the desire for a bigger scandal. It just whets the appetite for a bigger scandal because a television serial has to work on that logic. It’s almost as though he has to produce these outrageous things because what else would he be doing?

I think another part of it has to do with attention span. It’s not so much a lack of outrage; people are in fact outraged. But in order for a scandal to have political logic, the outrage has to be followed by the research. It has to be followed by the investigation. It has to be followed by an official finding.

In your book you discuss the idea that Donald Trump will have his own version of Hitler’s Reichstag fire to expand his power and take full control of the government by declaring a state of emergency. How do you think that would play out?

Let me make just two points. The first is that I think it’s pretty much inevitable that they will try. The reason I think that is that the conventional ways of being popular are not working out for them. The conventional way to be popular or to be legitimate in this country is to have some policies, to grow your popularity ratings and to win some elections. I don’t think 2018 is looking very good for the Republicans along those conventional lines — not just because the president is historically unpopular. It’s also because neither the White House nor Congress have any policies which the majority of the public like.

This means they could be seduced by the notion of getting into a new rhythm of politics, one that does not depend upon popular policies and electoral cycles.

Whether it works or not depends upon whether when something terrible happens to this country, we are aware that the main significance of it is whether or not we are going to be more or less free citizens in the future.

My gut feeling is that Trump and his administration will try and that it won’t work. Not so much because we are so great but because we have a little bit of time to prepare. I also think that there are enough people and enough agencies of the government who have also thought about this and would not necessarily go along.

What can citizens do? What would your call to action be?

The whole point of my new book, “On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century,” is that we have a century of wisdom and very smart people who confronted situations like our own — but usually more demanding — and that wisdom can be condensed.

What my book does is it goes across the arc of regime change, from the beginning to the end, and it provides things ranging from simpler to harder that people can literally do every day.

The thing that matters the most is to realize that in moments like this your actions really do matter. It is ironic but in an authoritarian regime-change situation, the individual matters more than [in] a democracy. In an authoritarian regime change, at the beginning the individual has a special kind of power because the authoritarian regime depends on a certain kind of consent. Which means that if you are conscious of the moment that you are in, you can find the ways not to express your consent and you can also find the little ways to be a barrier. If enough people do that, it really can make a difference — but again only at the beginning.

What are some of the more difficult and challenging things that people can do?

The last lesson in “On Tyranny” is to be as courageous as you can. Do you actually care enough about freedom that you would take risks? Do individuals actually care about freedom? Think that through. I think if enough of us take the little risks at the beginning, which aren’t really that significant, this will prevent us from having to take bigger risks down the line.

We are still at a stage where protest is not illegal. We’re still at a stage where protest is not lethal. Those are the two big thresholds. We are still on the good side of both of those thresholds and so now is the time you want to pack in as much as you can because you could actually divert things. Once you get into a world where protest is illegal, then the things that I recommend like corporeal politics, getting out on the streets — they have to happen but they are much riskier. It’s a much different kind of decision.

How much time does American democracy have left before this poison becomes lethal and there is no path of return?

You have to accept there is a time frame. Nobody can be sure how long this particular regime change with Trump will take, but there is a clock, and the clock really is ticking. It’s three years on the outside, but in more likelihood something like a year. In January 2018 we will probably have a pretty good idea which way this thing is going. It’s going to depend more on us than on them in the meantime. Once you get past a certain threshold, it starts to depend more on them than on us, and then things are much, much worse. It makes me sad to think how Americans would behave at that point.

Then Trump and his forces have the momentum because again we the American people are up against the clock.

I hate to sound like a self-help person but I’m going to. Every day you don’t do something, it makes it less likely that you will ever do something. So you’ve got to get started right away. “On Tyranny” is a suggestion of things that everyone can do. There are plenty of other great ideas from people coming from other traditions, but the basic thing is you have to change your protocol of daily behavior now.

Don’t obey in advance because you have to start by orienting yourself against the general drift of things. If you can manage that, then the other lessons — such as supporting existing political and social institutions, supporting the truth and so on — those things will then come relatively easily if you can follow the first one, which is to get out of the drift, to recognize that this is the moment where you have to not behave as you did in October 2016. You have to set your own habits now.
 

rahu

Banned
1816

https://www.rawstory.com/2019/02/trumps-state-union-address-put-full-wannabe-dictator-form-display/


Trump’s State of the Union address put his full wannabe-dictator form on display



n the 2019 State of the Union address, Donald Trump revealed yet again that his administration is based on reality television practices, not the faithful execution of duties assigned by our Congress. This article first appeared at DCreport.org.
His speech was also bad with numbers—very bad, especially for anyone concerned about winning the war on cancer.
That said, to those who believe that Trump is their self-proclaimed economic and white-skin-privilege savior, a demi-god rather than a demagogue, this was a powerful speech, rich with dog whistles to those who favor authoritarianism over the messy business of democratic self-governance.
The text was written largely by Stephen Miller, a white supremacist Trump adviser. Interestingly, you won’t find the text of the speech at WhiteHouse.gov, at least not the morning after, only the video.
Trump began behaving in his wannabe-dictator style and with the social graces of a modern Philistine. He was late.

Trump was there as a guest of Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who opened the House chamber doors to him only after she marshaled the political power to force him to reopen the government. Pelosi could have just told Trump to write a letter, as many presidents have done, instead of giving him the platform he wanted so badly that he caved on his shutdown.
In polite or merely civil society the host introduces guests both in private gatherings and State of the Union speeches. But while Trump tepidly took her hand, he did not wait for Pelosi to introduce her guest before launching into a speech whose main goal was to call for everyone to do as Trump says.
His rude action was from the same vein as when he shoved Duško Marković, the prime minister of tiny Montenegro, out of the way at a May 2017 NATO meeting so the news cameras would focus on Trump.
Marković, like all people who understand a bully they cannot defeat, meekly said later that he did not mind. That’s how it goes now that America has the third-generation head of a white-collar crime family in the White House. And that fearful reaction was also on display as Republican lawmakers praised Trump the way in and out even though much of what he had to say is a contradiction of Republican party platforms, principles being too strong a word for these views given their current convertibility into ideological mush.
Trump called for everyone to get behind whatever he wants, regardless of their differences. In doing so he revealed that he slept through history classes from grammar school through college.
As part of his call for everyone to get behind what Trump wants and ignore their differences he declared “if there is going to be peace and legislation, there cannot be war and investigation. It just doesn’t work that way.”

Actually, that is exactly the way it has always worked, even when our union was rent asunder by civil war.
Just before the inevitable entry of America into World War II, which military planners expected would last well into the 1950s with no certain defeat of Berlin and Tokyo, debate on the policies of President Franklin D. Roosevelt ran at full throttle.
And who led the investigations into the FDR administration’s military preparedness and then prosecution of the war? That was a member of Roosevelt’s own party, Missouri Democrat Harry S. Truman who became FDR’s 1944 running mate. Contrast that with the craven refusal to investigate by Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan and the rest of the Republican leadership to oversee the Trump administration during the just-finished 115th Congress.
Much of the speech was closer to reality television than reality.
Trump called for national unity, not to defeat actual threats to America such as the Putin regime, but against invading women and children fleeing the brutal streets of Guatemala and Honduras, where violence traces back to decades of American foreign-policy mistakes including the endless war on drugs.
Seeking to rebut Pelosi’s description of the Mexico border wall as immoral, Trump said: “This is a moral issue.”
To prove this, he introduced some guests who deserve our sympathy having lost a loved one to violence from a criminal illegally in the United States.
But anecdotes are not a sound basis for policy, especially when both data and logic tell us that most of the people who live in the United States without official permission try to avoid any activity that would bring them into contact with police. The data show they are much less likely to commit crimes than native-born. Smart reform of our immigration laws would do more to deal with the crimes that Trump exploits to advance his desires than the wall with Mexico that is never going to be built.
Trump then plunged right into promoting class divisions in a way that revealed his shallow thinking and inability to speak without making stuff up.
“No issue better illustrates the divide between America’s working class and America’s political class than illegal immigration. Wealthy politicians and donors push for open borders while living their lives behind walls and gates and guards,” Trump declared.
There are no signs that Americans are about to turn to pitchforks and knives to address their grievances, but if they ever do it is likely that plutocrats, or in the case of Trump people who claim to have great wealth, will be the ones who get the points from the mob.
There is, of course, no national politician calling for open borders. Rather the call is for comprehensive immigration reform that avoids making America a pariah among the nations of Earth, which is what Trumpian walls and Muslim country travel bans foster.
Trump did try to make himself a champion in the war on cancer. He introduced a 10-year-old cancer survivor and then pledged to propose in his next budget $500 million of funding over 10 years.
That’s just $50 million annually, which is less than 1% of the money spent by our government currently on cancer research. Given that inflation is running north of 2% annually, this vague pledge could be reasonably seen as a plan to cut cancer research funding. It certainly is when examined as a share of the economy, which Trump insisted is growing because of an “economic miracle.”
Of course, we should not forget that Trump’s first budget proposed massive cuts in cancer research funding, as even the rightwing Washington Examiner reported.
What we saw in SOTU 2019 was not the faithful execution of the laws that Congress passes, but a star from the faux reality of “Celebrity Apprentice” dividing America because he has no idea how to govern so he must cling like a barnacle to his political base.
 

rahu

Banned
1886



https://www.rawstory.com/2019/02/de...m-gop-letting-trump-seize-dictatorial-powers/
‘We are in deep trouble’: Morning Joe guest sounds the alarm on GOP letting Trump seize dictatorial powers

SNBC analyst and professor of Religion and African American Studies at Princeton University Eddie Glaude Jr. told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Monday that the United States faces grave peril from President Donald Trump’s national emergency declaration.

While discussing the Republican Party’s acquiescence to Trump after he invoked a national emergency to build his long-promised border wall without congressional approval, Glaude said the GOP’s elites have shown they’re willing to shred the Constitution in the name of acquiring more power.

“You’ve interviewed on this show the authors of ‘How Democracies Die,’ and one of the claims of that book isn’t simply about the autocrat or the figure who emerges who comes and undermines norms,” Glaude said. “It’s about the complicity of elites allowing for those norms and institutions to be eroded.”

Glaude went on to say that the executive branch has spent the past several decades acquiring more power, and that power will now be stretched even further with someone like Trump in the White House.

“What we’re seeing here is the imperial presidency run amok,” he said. “Many of us have been complaining over the years about the expansion of executive power. We wondered and we worried that if you had a person in the Oval Office who had no ethical backbone, who wasn’t committed to constitutional principles, what they would do if they had access to that kind of power — and now we’re here.”

The bottom line, Glaude said, is “we are in deep trouble.”






https://www.rawstory.com/2019/02/tr...ional-order-falling-apart-msnbc-conservative/



Trump’s national emergency declaration shows America’s constitutional order is ‘falling apart’: MSNBC conservati








Flipbore7



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Donald Trump speaks from Oval Office at the White House (Fox News/screen grab)
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Conservative Noah Rothman on Monday minced no words when it came to analyzing the dire state of American democracy in the wake of President Donald Trump’s national emergency declaration.
During a discussion on Trump’s decision to bypass Congress by declaring a national emergency to build his border wall, MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough asked Rothman to imagine how a future Democratic president could use the precedents being set by Trump to enact their own policies that Congress refuses to fund.
Rothman, however, didn’t want to distract from the threat posed by Trump’s actual emergency declaration.
“The worst-case scenario is now,” he said. “It is incredibly dire. What this president has done has been [to] invoke the military to affect domestic policy. He is using the statute that was designed to be invoked when Congress cannot be consulted, to express contempt for Congress’s verdict on this matter.”
Rothman then explained that this situation was made even more dangerous by Republican lawmakers meekly following along with the president’s seizure of congressional power.
“Republicans… don’t want to have to check this presidency,” he said. “The Madisonian scheme here is falling apart. Nobody actually wants to be stewards of their constitutional prerogatives, they want somebody else to take the blame. That’s incredibly disturbing!”
 
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rahu

Banned
https://www.rawstory.com/2019/02/ny...tors-tyrants-blistering-response-new-attacks/
YT publisher compares Trump to ‘dictators and tyrants’ in blistering response to new attacks
20 Feb 2019 at 12:24 ET




Trump-Justin-Follett-2-800x430.jpg
President Donald Trump responds to a question about Jussie Smollett (Screen cap).
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New York Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger on Wednesday unleashed a blistering response to President Donald Trump’s declaration that his newspaper is the “enemy of the people.”
Hours after the president accused the Times of fabricating its reporting and not bothering to reach out to the White House for comment — a claim that Times report Maggie Haberman shot down as “a lie” — Sulzberger compared the president to foreign tyrants who don’t just complain about negative coverage, but try to portray the role of the free press as illegitimate.
“But in demonizing the free press as the enemy, simply for performing its role of asking difficult questions and bringing uncomfortable information to light, President Trump is retreating from a distinctly American principle,” he said. “It’s a principle that previous occupants of the Oval Office fiercely defended regardless of their politics, party affiliation, or complaints about how they were covered.”
Sulzberger then went on to discuss the historical implications of calling journalists “enemies of the people,” which Trump has continued to say even after some of his supporters have physically attacked journalists.



The phrase “enemy of the people” is not just false, it’s dangerous. It has an ugly history of being wielded by dictators and tyrants who sought to control public information. And it is particularly reckless coming from someone whose office gives him broad powers to fight or imprison the nation’s enemies. As I have repeatedly told President Trump face to face, there are mounting signs that this incendiary rhetoric is encouraging threats and violence against journalists at home and abroad.
Through 33 presidential administrations, across 167 years, The New York Times has worked to serve the public by fulfilling the fundamental role of the free press. To help people, regardless of their backgrounds or politics, understand their country and the world. To report independently, fairly and accurately. To ask hard questions. To pursue the truth wherever it leads. That will not change.



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