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Manqueman's avatar

Speaking of crickets: As I rant without end, when Trump announced in 2015, he was completely unfit and unqualified for office. Ten years later, he’s even less fit and qualified.

As a child of late Nam and Watergate reporting, I’d like to think that that unfitness for office thing would have been a huge, important story.

But no, for ten years we’ve gotten crickets from the establishment media.

So we get that insane statement at the NATO presser. There is no case by which that’s a sane, acceptable statement from a POTUS.

But the irony or whatever is that there’s no way to report it without, even if just between the lines, making Donny look seriously insane. (Fact is he’s seriously insane.)

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Lance Khrome's avatar

All part of the "Art of The Deal", don't you know...Iranians passed on the info that they will "attack" pro forma the al-Udeid base in Qatar, tRump says, "cool, give us a day for complete evacuation, then go for it". Desultory missile launches follow, most if not all intercepted, little or no damage or casualties. Iran happy, tRump happy, Nobel Peace Prize beckons...what's not to like?

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Manqueman's avatar

Art of the Deal was a work of fiction, a roman au clef at most.

I say he was born insane and being POTUS the first time was more than he could handle. His bluster and the establishment media covered up the increased insanity. But somewhere in the last eight-plus years, something broke.

A very sick near-person…

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Lance Khrome's avatar

You did appreciate the reference to AOTD was in jest, I trust.

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Manqueman's avatar

Hoped so, wasn’t sure.

Sarcasm travel (love it) travels so poorly. Like snowflakes, one might say…

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Michael's avatar

Well I don't want to disagree with either Lance or Manqueman, the two stalwarts of TPM. But I think it is entirely possible the retaliatory strike was given a greenlight by the president!

But maybe not entirely his idea. There was something a little fishy about the strikes and counterstrikes. Here we all thought WWIII was about to break out and I was telling my wife to stock up on TP. Then Russia didn't do diddly in support of its ally and client state. Iran just mounted a pro forma attack on an airbase that was conveniently evacuated beforehand. In fact there is satellite evidence the Chinese may have helped Iran remove stuff out of Fordoe before the strikes came. Meanwhile there's no need of any shipping interdiction in the strait of Hormuz. Methinks the great powers moved in to cool the boiling Mideast pot, everybody saved face, the oil continues to flow, the uranium is somewhere getting enriched, China gets a bigger role in the Mideast. But unfortunately Trump won't get his Nobel Peace prize.

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Manqueman's avatar

Personally, I think there’s been a lot of overreaction to all things Israel/Iran. Starting with none of this is eve of WWIII stuff.

Israel shows that it can slap Iran around with minimal repercussions.

Iran’s nuclear program takes a hit but not a major one.

But then our infantile POTUS has to show he’s not Netanyahu’s puppet by dropping a bunch of huge bombs only he has which accomplish pretty much nothing.

But!

Whatever behind Donny’s statement at the NATO presser was insane and excusable whatever the reason you think behind it. And I mean literally DSM-5 insane.

The media ignoring it is almost as insane, maybe even more.

As for Donny’s other master, I initially wondered why Putin was low key, hands off etc. I’m thinking now that he just didn’t have anything all that important at stake.

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Amy Smith's avatar

So if the President gives a foreign enemy permission to bomb a US base, isn't that Treason????

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Michael's avatar

One would think so Amy, but trying to impeach Trump is like trying to boil already steamed rice.

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Katharine O'Moore-Klopf's avatar

This administration is filled with evil people who have lost their minds. Frightening!

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Michael's avatar

Katharine, what I find frightening is that they are coldly sane and are persistently trying to accomplish their aims and adapt to the resistance they're encountering.

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Katharine O'Moore-Klopf's avatar

Michael, you and I may be saying the same thing.

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Richard's avatar

Some encouraging news amidst the ongoing efforts to overturn our constitutional democracy. I wish that there was more than a handful of judges and the Parliamentarian (and some Democratic Senators and Representatives) pushing back against the Project 2025 agenda.

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Diane Matza's avatar

I am currently thinking about the Nixon administration’s scandals and lawlessness. Following that dark period in our history, there was a sincere effort to tangle with those failures and impose new restrictions to ensure they wouldn't be repeated. We're now facing something far worse, and I am wondering if anyone has any ideas about how to reign in these extraordinary abuses, not only of the executive branch but of a feckless and supine republican party

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Lance Khrome's avatar

This a.m. SCOTUS by a 6-3 voted to lift nation-wide injunctions issued by several District Courts blocking tRump's "birthright citizenship" EO. Majority said that a handful of plaintiffs can't stand in for an entire"class" as the challenge was presented. The Court delayed for 30 days its order so that other parties can fashion a class-action suit that would entail ALL persons that would be affected by the EO, embracing the US in its entirety.

Essentially, the Court said that ONLY those within THAT particular federal court district issuing the injunction were affected, and that the rest of the country fell under the EO provisions, until a certified class-action suit was mounted and that a ruling "on the merits" would be forthcoming — next term.

Yes, perhaps a "procedural" issue, but the fact that the Court gave tRump's birthright citizenship EO life is really troubling, suggesting some in the majority felt some merit in challenging the constitutionality of a constitutional amendment, if that makes any sense.

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Michael's avatar

It does make sense and it is troubling.

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Victoria Brown's avatar

Thank God it's Friday!

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Karen's avatar

Iran was in a no-win situation. They had to retaliate against the US's illegal bombing in some manner in order to appear their citizenry. So Trump admin gave them an easy out. Qatar and the US Air Force were given advance notice of who, what, when and where in order to eliminate the possibility of destruction or loss of life, and then everyone could move on. Even without a frank admission, this was clear from the first-day reporting.

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Michael's avatar

Good analysis

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Karen's avatar

appease, not appear

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Maureen Ogle's avatar

He said this last weekend. This wasn’t “news” yesterday.

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Naomi's avatar

There is no bottom limit to the lies he will perpetrate in protecting and promoting himself. He wins the all time, world wide record for this.

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Susan Linehan's avatar

I trust the pilots realize that the only ones suggesting they were incompetent are, by implication, the regime's spokespeople. I am not happy they were ordered to go, but simply bombing sites isn't the kind of war crime for which "I was only following orders" is needed.

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John Schroeder's avatar

I've been saying for years that Dirty donnie Dimwit is a traitor to America. He is trying to install fascism to replace our democracy. This is all on the naziCON party of spineless suck ups. They surely know TACO is totally unfit to lead our great country, yet they do nothing to restrain him. No guts, no glory!

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LeftysLefty's avatar

"pretty much come and gone with virtually no attention and certainly none of the outrage commensurate with what Trump said."

- that's the power of NDAs. They don't have them when the Dramers were around, were they?

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Patricia Andrews (WA)'s avatar

I can barely contain the information in this article. Not because I don’t accept it, but because i must add it to the insanity of T being quoted as having “allowed” Iran to bomb “an American base”. How can an entire party participate in supporting his egregious pronouncements as “truth”?

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xaxnar's avatar

This can’t be real. Computer - end program!

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