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Trump Timeline ... Trumpocalypse
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AMONG THOSE MOST alarmed by President Donald Trump’s selection of John Bolton as his new national security adviser on Thursday were supporters of the Iran nuclear deal, the 2015 international agreement that curbed Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for a partial lifting of economic sanctions.
Rob Malley, who coordinated Middle East policy in the Obama administration, observed that Bolton’s appointment, along with the nomination of Iran deal critic Mike Pompeo as secretary of state, seemed to signal that the agreement would most likely be “dead and buried” within months. Trita Parsi, leader of the National Iranian American Council wrote on Twitter: “People, let this be very clear: The appointment of Bolton is essentially a declaration of war with Iran. With Pompeo and Bolton, Trump is assembling a WAR CABINET.”
Their alarm was understandable. Bolton has not only demanded that the Trump administration withdraw from the nuclear deal, he also previously advocated bombing Iran instead. Bolton has spent the better part of a decade calling for the United States to help overthrow the theocratic government in Tehran and hand power to a cult-like group of Iranian exiles with no real support inside the country.
Just eight months ago, at a Paris gathering, Bolton told members of the Iranian exile group, known as the Mujahedeen Khalq, MEK, or People’s Mujahedeen, that the Trump administration should embrace their goal of immediate regime change in Iran and recognize their group as a “viable” alternative.
The Justice Department published a proposed regulation on Friday that would effectively ban bump stocks, devices that can increase the firing speed of semi-automatic weapons, by classifying them as illegal machine guns under federal law.
The proposal — which would require existing devices to be surrendered or destroyed — reverses a position held by both the Obama and Trump administrations, which have held that the attachments don’t make firearms fully automatic.
In the new draft rule, officials contend bump stocks do make weapons fully automatic, allowing “a shooter of a semiautomatic firearm to initiate a continuous firing cycle with a single pull of the trigger.”
Bump-fire stocks and similar instruments allow semi-automatic rifles to fire more frequently by using pressure from the shooter’s body to push back against the gun’s recoil, quickly triggering another shot.
Officials at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives — a division of the Justice Department known as ATF — previously found that since pressure must be applied to the gun from behind in addition to pulling the trigger, the devices evade a ban on machine guns under the National Firearms Act and Gun Control Act.
In the new draft rule, however, officials write, “The bump-stock-type device functions as a self-acting and self-regulating force that channels the firearm’s recoil energy in a continuous back-and-forth cycle that allows the shooter to attain continuous firing after a single pull of the trigger so long as the trigger finger remains stationary on the device’s extension ledge (as designed). No further physical manipulation of the trigger by the shooter is required.”
The proposal is subject to a comment period of 90 days.
This is the second phase of tyranny, after the more benign settling-in: the purge. Any constraints that had been in place to moderate the tyrant’s whims are set aside; no advice that counters his own gut impulses can be tolerated. And so, over the last couple of weeks, we have seen the president fire Rex Tillerson and Andrew McCabe, two individuals who simply couldn’t capitulate to the demand that they obey only Trump, rather than the country as well.
And because of this small gesture of defiance, they deserved especial public humiliation. Tillerson was warned of his impending doom while on the toilet — a nice, sadistic touch. McCabe was fired hours before his retirement, a public execution also fraught with venom. What kind of man is this? We have become numb to it, but we should never forget how our president is a man who revels in his own cruelty. Revenge is not a dish best served cold for him. It’s the reddest and rawest of meats.
No one with these instincts for total domination over others is likely to moderate the longer he is in power. Au contraire. It always gets worse. ...
Part of me, of course, has long worried and hoped that my assessment of Trump as truly the tyrant of Plato’s imagination is melodramatic overkill. I’m given to excitability, even catastrophism. I’ve been wrong before. And there are many ways in which American life still seems the same. Political tribalism didn’t begin with Trump; neither did the appeal of populist authoritarianism, or the celebrification of politics. We still hold elections — even if the president asserts that they are all rigged against him. In November, we have a chance to use the ballot box to save this country, and there are some signs that a wave is building. The courts still have some independence and feistiness; the media is still free, if now accompanied by a full-bore state propaganda channel.
But I worry that the more Trump is opposed and even cornered — especially if he loses the House this fall — the more dangerous he will become. If Mueller really does have the goods, and if the Democrats storm back into congressional power, then Trump may well lash out to protect himself at all costs. We know he has no concern for the collateral damage his self-advancement has long caused in his private and public life. We know he has contempt for and boundless ignorance of liberal democracy. We know he is capable of anything — of immense cruelty and callousness, of petty revenge and reckless rhetoric, of sudden impulses and a quick temper. We also know he is commander-in-chief, who may soon need the greatest distraction of all.
War is coming. And there will be nothing and no one to stop him.
MARCH FOR OUR LIVES
https://claytoonz.com/2018/03/24/march-for-our-lives/
Over 500,000 people, mostly high school students, are expected to march on the Capitol today, and in over 800 other locations around the world to protest gun violence.
This movement began after the tragedy at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida after a former killed 17 with an AR15 assault rifle. It’s led by students who are scaring the daylights out of the NRA and Republicans in Congress, state legislatures, and governors’ mansions. Donald Trump and the majority of Republicans in Congress have made sure they’ll be out of town during tomorrow’s march.
Since Republicans and gun nuts can’t counter the students’ campaign with logic or facts, they’ve taken to attempts to delegitimize the students. They’ve accused them of being actors who are being manipulated by Democrats. Some say they should focus on their school work and not discuss topics that are best left to adults. Basically, they’re arguing that students shouldn’t express an opinion after surviving an assault by a shooter who acquired his weapon with support by the NRA.
After every shooting, we’re told it’s too soon to talk about gun control. Not this time. We’re talking about it and we’re not going to stop. Republicans and the NRA can’t wash blood off their hands, continue to collect blood money, and hope to be reelected time and time again.
This is a march to save lives. It’s a march saying “enough is enough” and “never again.”
Trump may be in Florida on a golf course Saturday sweating what Stormy Daniels is going to say on 60 Minutes Sunday night, but hopefully he’ll hear the students all the way from Washington, D.C. The rest of the GOP and the NRA will hear them too.
https://claytoonz.com/2018/03/24/march-for-our-lives/
Over 500,000 people, mostly high school students, are expected to march on the Capitol today, and in over 800 other locations around the world to protest gun violence.
This movement began after the tragedy at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida after a former killed 17 with an AR15 assault rifle. It’s led by students who are scaring the daylights out of the NRA and Republicans in Congress, state legislatures, and governors’ mansions. Donald Trump and the majority of Republicans in Congress have made sure they’ll be out of town during tomorrow’s march.
Since Republicans and gun nuts can’t counter the students’ campaign with logic or facts, they’ve taken to attempts to delegitimize the students. They’ve accused them of being actors who are being manipulated by Democrats. Some say they should focus on their school work and not discuss topics that are best left to adults. Basically, they’re arguing that students shouldn’t express an opinion after surviving an assault by a shooter who acquired his weapon with support by the NRA.
After every shooting, we’re told it’s too soon to talk about gun control. Not this time. We’re talking about it and we’re not going to stop. Republicans and the NRA can’t wash blood off their hands, continue to collect blood money, and hope to be reelected time and time again.
This is a march to save lives. It’s a march saying “enough is enough” and “never again.”
Trump may be in Florida on a golf course Saturday sweating what Stormy Daniels is going to say on 60 Minutes Sunday night, but hopefully he’ll hear the students all the way from Washington, D.C. The rest of the GOP and the NRA will hear them too.
Out There ...
George Will ...
Because John Bolton is five things President Trump is not — intelligent, educated, principled, articulate and experienced — and because of Bolton’s West Wing proximity to a president responsive to the most recent thought he has heard emanating from cable television or an employee, Bolton will soon be the second-most dangerous American. On April 9, he will be the first national security adviser who, upon taking up residence down the hall from the Oval Office, will be suggesting that the United States should seriously consider embarking on war crimes.
The first two charges against the major Nazi war criminals in the 1945-1946 Nuremberg trials concerned waging aggressive war. Emboldened by the success, as he still sees it, of America’s Iraq adventure that began 15 years ago this month, Bolton, for whom a trade war with many friends and foes is insufficiently stimulating, favors real wars against North Korea and Iran. Both have odious regimes, but neither can credibly be said to be threatening an imminent attack against the United States. Nevertheless, Bolton thinks bombing both might make the world safer.
What could go wrong?
Much is made of the fact that Bolton is implacably hostile to strongman Vladimir Putin, whom the U.S. president, a weak person’s idea of a strong person, admires. And of the fact that the president has repeatedly execrated the invasion of Iraq that Bolton advocated. So, today among the uneducable, furrowed brows express puzzlement: How can the president square his convictions with Bolton’s? Let’s say this one more time: Trump. Has. No. Convictions.
Because John Bolton is five things President Trump is not — intelligent, educated, principled, articulate and experienced — and because of Bolton’s West Wing proximity to a president responsive to the most recent thought he has heard emanating from cable television or an employee, Bolton will soon be the second-most dangerous American. On April 9, he will be the first national security adviser who, upon taking up residence down the hall from the Oval Office, will be suggesting that the United States should seriously consider embarking on war crimes.
The first two charges against the major Nazi war criminals in the 1945-1946 Nuremberg trials concerned waging aggressive war. Emboldened by the success, as he still sees it, of America’s Iraq adventure that began 15 years ago this month, Bolton, for whom a trade war with many friends and foes is insufficiently stimulating, favors real wars against North Korea and Iran. Both have odious regimes, but neither can credibly be said to be threatening an imminent attack against the United States. Nevertheless, Bolton thinks bombing both might make the world safer.
What could go wrong?
Much is made of the fact that Bolton is implacably hostile to strongman Vladimir Putin, whom the U.S. president, a weak person’s idea of a strong person, admires. And of the fact that the president has repeatedly execrated the invasion of Iraq that Bolton advocated. So, today among the uneducable, furrowed brows express puzzlement: How can the president square his convictions with Bolton’s? Let’s say this one more time: Trump. Has. No. Convictions.
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