It’s Not Just North Korea: Now Iran’s Rev Guards are Threatening War With U.S.

A Revolutionary Guards Commander has threatened the U.S. military, warning that if the U.S. classifies Iran’s Guards as terrorists and introduces fresh sanctions, it would regard the move as a U.S. withdrawal from the nuclear deal, making future engagement between the two countries impossible.

“The Guards will consider the American military all over the world, especially the Middle East, as equal to ISIS [the so-called Islamic State],” said General Mohammad Ali Jafari, the chief commander of the Revolutionary Guards in a speech on Sunday.

Currently, the Guards are actively fighting against ISIS in Syria and Iraq. These words by Gen. Jafari, even if they are interpreted as merely a bluff or bravado, could potentially lead to heightened tensions between the two countries.

A report by Sepah News, the Guards’ official website, emphasized that Jafari was talking to the Guard’s Strategic Council, and confirmed that the general was not expressing his personal view, but representing the view of the Guards.

More: https://www.thedailybeast.com/its-not-just-north-korea-now-irans-rev-guards-are-threatening-war-with-us?source=TDB&via=FB_Page

NOPE ‘We Don’t Stand by Our Agreements’: Diplos Brace for Donald Trump’s Assault on the Iran Deal

Experienced diplomats are warning that Donald Trump’s anticipated vote of no confidence in the Iran nuclear deal is a “crisis” whose impacts will reverberate to America’s detriment far beyond Iran.

Already, within the hallways of the State Department, anticipation over the imminent end of Secretary Rex Tillerson’s tenure is mixing with fear that a Tillerson replacement will help push the U.S. on a more bellicose path with Iran, whether the deal survives the year or not.

“Given what we’ve seen thus far, who the hell knows? It could certainly get worse,” a State Department official told The Daily Beast on condition of anonymity. “State could go from being underutilized and dormant, as it is now with Tillerson, to actively furthering really scary policies.”

Trump is expected to decline to certify Iran’s compliance with the nuclear agreement ahead of an Oct. 15 deadline, even though Iran has not violated the deal. He’s likely to give a speech on Friday denouncing Iranian support for terrorism and its development of ballistic missiles, both of which are outside the terms of the accord.

More: https://www.thedailybeast.com/we-dont-stand-by-our-agreements-diplos-brace-for-donald-trumps-assault-on-the-iran-deal

A Trump For Every Occasion

Robert Reich Sez...

My mind keeps going back to the 25th Amendment, which contemplates precisely what we have today – a president who is mentally unfit to hold the office, and therefore poses a danger to the nation. I remember being struck many months ago when Republican Senator Bob Corker, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said Trump “has not demonstrated he understands the character of this nation” and “has not yet been able to demonstrate the stability, nor some of the competence that he needs to demonstrate in order to be successful.” And then when former director of national intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. said: “I really question his ability to — his fitness to — be in this office, and I also am beginning to wonder about his motivation for it.”

I've also been reading whatever I can by specialists who study personality disorders. For example, Robert Jay Lifton, a psychiatrist and a psychoanalyst, and Judith L. Herman, a professor at Harvard Medical School who has done pioneering research on trauma, have written that Trump’s “repeated failure to distinguish between reality and fantasy, and his outbursts of rage when his fantasies are contradicted” suggest that when faced with crisis he “will lack the judgment to respond rationally.” Lifton and Herman have expanded on their diagnosis in introductory articles to a collection called “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President,” edited by Bandy X. Lee, a psychiatrist at the Yale School of Medicine. Other contributors find Trump to be a sociopath, malignant narcissist, hypomanic suffering from delusional disorder, and cognitively impaired.

All this leads me back to the 25th amendment. It has never been employed, but this seems to be the condition for it. And yet, as long as Republican control Congress, I wonder if it's relevant. Could there be a tipping point? I ask myself what behavior on the part of Trump might cause congressional Republicans to look to the 25th Amendment?

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ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER TRUMP LIE

"...Teddy Roosevelt, Herbert Hoover, Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, and Barack Obama all made official visits before Trump. Dwight Eisenhower, Harry Truman, Lyndon Johnson, and Gerald Ford all made unofficial visits to Puerto Rico.

Trump isn’t even the first Republican president to visit.

The President’s ignorance of US history is both astounding and predictable. Trump claimed that the Puerto Rican people loved having him there when all of the events he attended were heavily choreographed and loaded with supporters that were picked by the White House to attend. ..."

MOAR HERE.

I ain't calling for banning all guns. But I guess laws slow many peeps from speeding (not all, I realize), from stealing (not all I realize), but laws won't work for gunz. At least in the USA. Interesting.

What Is Conservatism and What Is Wrong with It?

Liberals in the United States have been losing political debates to conservatives for a quarter century. In order to start winning again, liberals must answer two simple questions: what is conservatism, and what is wrong with it? As it happens, the answers to these questions are also simple:

Q: What is conservatism?
A: Conservatism is the domination of society by an aristocracy.

Q: What is wrong with conservatism?
A: Conservatism is incompatible with democracy, prosperity, and civilization in general. It is a destructive system of inequality and prejudice that is founded on deception and has no place in the modern world.

These ideas are not new. Indeed they were common sense until recently. Nowadays, though, most of the people who call themselves "conservatives" have little notion of what conservatism even is. They have been deceived by one of the great public relations campaigns of human history. Only by analyzing this deception will it become possible to revive democracy in the United States.

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HOW THE RIGHT LOST ITS MIND AND EMBRACED DONALD TRUMP

During the 2016 election, conservatives turned on the principles that had once animated them. Somehow a movement based on real ideas—such as economic freedom and limited government—had devolved into a tribe that valued neither principle nor truth; luminaries such as Edmund Burke and William F. Buckley Jr. had been replaced by media clowns such as Ann Coulter and Milo Yiannopoulos. Icons such as Ronald Reagan—with his optimism and geniality—had been supplanted by the dark, erratic narcissism of Donald Trump. Gradualism, expertise and prudence—the values that once were taken for granted among conservatives—were replaced by polls and ratings spikes, as the right allowed liberal overreach in the Obama era to blind them to the crackpots and bigots in their midst.

Some have argued that the election was a binary choice, that Hillary Clinton had to be defeated by any means. I share many of their concerns about Clinton, but the price was ruinous. The right’s electoral victory has not wiped away its sins. It has magnified them, and the problems that were exposed during the 2016 campaign haven’t disappeared. Success does not necessarily imply virtue or sanity. Kings can be both mad and bad, and the courtiers are usually loath to point out the obvious—just look at Caligula or Kim Jong Un.

Today, with Trump in office, the problems of the right are the problems of all Americans. And the worst part of it is that we—conservatives—did this to ourselves.

Donald Trump is the president we deserve.

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Russian Agents Used Facebook to Organize Pro-Trump 'Flash Mobs': Report

Events included rallies with names like "Down with Hillary!" and "Miners for Trump."

A new report from the Daily Beast sheds more light on how Russian intelligence operatives used Facebook to organize support for Donald Trump’s candidacy during the 2016 presidential election.

According to the report, a Russian-sponsored Facebook group called “Being Patriotic” helped organize and promote multiple Trump rallies and events throughout the election campaign, including a pro-Trump “flash mob” in Florida that was promoted by a local Trump campaign chairman, who posted photos from the event on his Facebook page.

The “flash mobs” weren’t the only events that the Being Patriotic group organizer, either. The Daily Beast also found that “events promoted by the page last year included a July “Down With Hillary!” protest outside Clinton’s New York campaign headquarters, a September 11 pro-Trump demonstration in Manhattan, simultaneous “Miners for Trump” demonstrations in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh in October, and a pro-Trump rally outside Trump Tower last November, after his election victory.”

http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/russian-agents-used-facebook-organize-pro-trump-flash-mobs-report

Donald Trump’s Foreign Policy Doctrine Makes No Sense

His rambling, incoherent speech to the U.N. General Assembly was proof that the president only has one audience in mind—and it isn't a global one.

In the lead-up to President Donald Trump’s maiden speech before the United Nations General Assembly, there were whispers that we would see a new Trump. After weeks of being schooled by Chief of Staff John Kelly, the White House’s own Henry Higgins, our nativist president would renew America’s commitment to upholding the world order. With reports that the administration was also considering renewing the U.S.’s commitment to the Paris climate agreement and the Iran nuclear deal, it had the possibility to be a momentous event: A normalization of relations between the U.S. and the rest of the world, after months of upheaval.

It was not to be. Instead, Trump gave a dark and tempestuous speech in which he referred to Kim Jong Un as “Rocket Man” and threatened to “totally destroy” North Korea. He labeled the Iran nuclear deal an “embarrassment” and strongly signaled that he planned to rip it up. In Trump’s spin on the Axis of Evil speech, the Iraq slot was given to Venezuela; while poorly cosplaying Ronald Reagan, he attempted to turn Venezuela into a cautionary tale: “The problem in Venezuela is not that socialism has been poorly implemented, but that socialism has been faithfully implemented.”

Trump was belligerent and bombastic, threatening to start or exacerbate a number of conflicts, while ranting about refugees and free trade. It was a speech clearly influenced by adviser Stephen Miller, who many presumed had been cowering in some corner of the White House ever since Steve Bannon’s ouster in August. When it comes to foreign policy, at least, the Bannon wing is still very much alive.

https://newrepublic.com/article/144899/donald-trumps-foreign-policy-doctrine-makes-no-sense

PROOF REPUBLICANS ARE ASSHOLES

https://thinkprogress.org/lynne-disanto-south-dakota-loses-real-estate-job-for-posting-meme-encouraging-running-over-protesters-c81e74aede0a/

Republicans are promising to vote on the miserable excuse for a "healthcare" bill next week. Even though they all complained that Obamacare was passed with nobody reading it (even tho' Republicans did have input on that bill) they are rushing this odious excuse of a bill fast-fast-fast without any hearings, discussions, or without anyone even bothering to read it.

If this monstrosity passes, we'll have the disorganized mess of 50 different healthcare plans put forth by 50 states. Some states will try to keep protections for poor folks, older folks, and the middle class. Other states, like Texas and most southern states, will offer bare bones plans that will make it impossible for folks with pre-existing conditions (millions of Americans, including me, and most likely you), the poor, and middle class folks to afford the healthcare that they need to live. Insurance companies will make out like bandits because they won't have to cover expensive continuing medical care for older Americans. Most states will not be able to afford Medicaid because the $ that will come from Uncle Scrooge, er, Sam, will be limited. So the working poor will be screwed, too.

Hospitals, docs, nurses, governors... all are speaking up against this assault on Americans' health, but thems in control in Washington will not listen to reason, because they do not care about me 'n you.

All this to give rich folks yet another tax cut. The war on regular Americans continues. MAGA?

When you have to listen to your manbaby boss embarrass the country at the UN...

Trump tells UN that job growth is best 'in a long time.' But last year was better

The U.S. has added an average of 176,000 new jobs a month so far this year. Last year the U.S. economy added an average of 194,000 jobs a month in the same period, between January and August. The full-year average for 2016 was also above 2017's pace at 187,000 jobs a month, according to Labor Department data.

And it wasn't just last year that was better. In 2015, job growth averaged 226,000 a month. In 2014 it was 250,000 jobs a month.

Dan Rather: No Acting Presidential From Trump...

The real Donald Trump has stood up... again.

There will be no pivot. There never was going to be.

There will be no becoming presidential. There never was going to be.

There will be no humility. No decorum. No sense of justice or empathy. There never was going to be.

We are far past the time for excuses, for anyone.

In one of the most surreal and depressing presidential press conferences ever, Mr. Trump said what most people dreaded but already knew. His blatant false equivalence between Nazis and those who oppose them that he said on Saturday, that's how he really feels - times a thousand.

With any other president this would be unbelievable. But with Mr. Trump it is all too believable. It is clear that he doesn't consider himself to be the President of the United States of America - no matter what his official job title says. Down where he lives he is the president of his base, which includes a lot of bigots and even Nazis and members of the Klan. Not everyone who voted for him is in this category, not nearly. But they make up a large majority of his personal base. And thankfully for all of us, this is a distinct (but frightening) minority of our nation. The vast majority of Americans are decent people of conscience. And I believe in the end this vast majority will prevail.

The question is whether those who defend the President, or seeks to normalize him or change the subject, will be seen as worse than enablers. Will they be viewed by history as sympathizers to the worst instincts of American hatred?

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Thrump is so horrid...

... that I can't keep up, so I'll just post cartoons and memes that capture The Essential Thrump™.