Trump Timeline ... Trumpocalypse

[Michael Scally MD]

The truth still matters somewhere.

In November 2016, after Donald Trump had issued his feeble lie that millions of illegal ballots cost him the popular vote, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach came to the aid of the president-elect’s damaged pride. Trump, http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/article117943363.html (said) Kobach, was “absolutely correct” about the existence of these phantom voters.

Kobach made his remark to reporters. He wasn’t under oath, or cross-examined. No one demanded that he produce evidence.

Until last week.

Kobach, who led Trump’s seedy, now-defunct commission on voter “integrity,” has been performing voter-fraud shtick in public for years. But the Yale Law School graduate proved spectacularly out of his depths in a federal courtroom, where evidence is the currency of the realm.

“The Kobach trial shows that talk is cheap, and when incendiary claims are actually put on trial, oftentimes they can fall apart,” emailed election law expert Richard Hasen, author of “The Voting Wars” and a law professor at the University of California, Irvine. “It is hard to think of a worse development for those who make false and exaggerated claims of voter fraud than the Kobach trial, which was really an ‘emperor has no clothes’ moment.”

...

Yet Kobach’s humiliation last week in Kansas, before a federal judge appointed by President George W. Bush, suggests that, for some tenets of the Trump creed, the shadowy gulf between the assertion and the evidence is unbridgeable.

The U.S. attorney general has vastly more legal firepower at his command than the Kansas secretary of state. And Sessions may not be foolish enough to attempt to prove the administration’s bogus claims in court.

If he does, another round of evidence-based humiliation awaits.

 

[Jeremiahflex]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

[What’s happening in the nuclear war betting markets?]

WASHINGTON — Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster, the battle-tested Army officer tapped as President Trump’s national security adviser last year to stabilize a turbulent foreign policy operation, will resign and be replaced by John R. Bolton, a hard-line former United States ambassador to the United Nations, White House officials said Thursday.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

On Thursday, Donald Trump replaced a man who built the case for war with North Korea as a last resort with a man who just made the case for war with North Korea as more of a first resort. Trump announced that National-Security Adviser H.R. McMaster will be succeeded by John Bolton, the George W. Bush-era United Nations ambassador who has advocated for U.S. military action to prevent Saddam Hussein, Ayatollah Khamenei, and most recently Kim Jong Un from amassing weapons of mass destruction.

North Korea is an “imminent threat” to America because it is only months away from achieving the capacity to deliver nuclear warheads to the U.S. mainland, Bolton wrote in late February in The Wall Street Journal. Therefore “it is perfectly legitimate” for the U.S. to defend itself “by striking [North Korea] first.”

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

Hyperbole ... Yes ... No ...

Is there a spot in the world where one can survive the coming apocalypse?

 

[Michael Scally MD]

Incoming White House national security adviser John Bolton recorded a video used by the Russian gun rights group The Right to Bear Arms in 2013 to encourage the Russian government to loosen gun laws.

The episode, which has not been previously reported, illustrates the common cause that Russian and American gun rights groups were forming in the years leading up to the 2016 election through former National Rifle Association president David Keene. Keene appointed Bolton to the NRA's international affairs subcommittee in 2011.

Russian politician Alexander Torshin helped establish The Right to Bear Arms and cultivate ties with American gun rights groups including the NRA. As a Putin ally, Torshin served as the deputy speaker of Russia's parliament for more than a decade, and also spent time on Russia's National Anti-Terrorism Committee, a state body that includes the director of Russia's internal security service.

The Bolton video appears to be another plank in a bridge built by Russia to conservative political organizations inside the United States. It's unclear why Russian leaders wanted to curry favor with the NRA, but Torshin and Keene appeared to have developed close ties over in the years prior to the 2016 election.

It's a relationship that has outsized importance now that the FBI is reportedly investigating whether Torshin illegally funneled money to the NRA to assist the Trump campaign in 2016, as http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/article195231139.html (McClatchy reported in January). The NRA has denied wrongdoing.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

While advocating a hard line, Bolton is careful not to specify how in the end to put into effect the “tough” approach he favors. He avoids mentioning the use of force but employs instead phrases like “serious efforts” or “actually doing something.” He sometimes goes so far as to say, in the cases of Iran and North Korea, for example, that “regime change” is really the only acceptable solution, without saying how regime change might be brought about without war. Bolton barely mentions Iraq and Afghanistan, the contemporary tests of conventional military force in pursuit of regime change, except to say that he had nothing officially to do with Iraq, but if he had, he would probably have been in the same camp as his friends Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. (He misses, he tells us, Rumsfeld’s “strong voice and sound opinions.” Rumsfeld liked to call Bolton “Mr. Hanging Chad,” in tribute to Bolton’s prowess in the Florida recount battle.)

Bolton and his small band of co-ideologues apparently see themselves as fighting virtually alone against the forces of evil, compromise, and weakness. As far as foreign affairs are concerned, their beliefs seem to be roughly as follows:

United States interests alone are to be considered as paramount; the United Nations is only relevant insofar as it serves those interests.

Foreigners, even some supposed allies, cannot be trusted, and the hostile ones (North Korea, Iran, the enemies of Israel, and others) will always cheat, will never abide by an agreement, and only understand pressure and force.

With such people there should be only sticks and hard words, no carrots, no rewards for good behavior, and no prolonged negotiations. Force always remains an option.

The High Minded, Liberals, multilateralists, and most Democrats are, in their own way, almost as destructive as hostile foreigners.

Such views could be regarded merely as colorful and anachronistic eccentricities if they were not voiced by someone who has held important public positions and who is therefore still regarded by many people as an expert. From such a source, they contribute seriously to weakening, not strengthening, the position of the United States in the world. For all John Bolton’s undeniable ability and strength of mind, his views and his style are a luxury the United States can no longer afford.