The Buck is nowhere to be found.

The Professor is by nature a man of peace and someone who has been and remains uncomfortable with the militarization of such things as baseball games and other sporting events and the deification of all things military. I am glad to see that the New York Mets for example have stopped wearing camouflage jerseys on Monday home games.  And I find the requirement that the start of each season be marked by a flyover of some sort of aircraft mystifying. 

However I don’t question the members of the military love of country and their willingness to prove that by making the ultimate sacrifice if necessary i.e. dying in the service of this country.

Which brings us to today. Some weeks ago a raid was launched into Yemen a country that has various terrorist cells along with many many very very poor people.

The raid by most reports was a massive bust – they never got to where wanted to be, civilian casualties were heavy (30 by some counts) and along with the US wounded a navy seal one Chief William Owens.

Navy Seals are in the tired phrase “the best of the best’ commandos supreme who are used in this sort of raid – and the loss of one is a big hairy deal.

As the story unfolded, the raid had been in the planning stages under Obama who had nixed it as too risky without better information. Then Trump, wanting to prove what a decisive president he was as opposed to the calculating Obama pulled the trigger on the raid which as noted did not turn out so well.

At first the Trump people were claiming it was a wild success but that story once the cost was known was dropped. Yemen was apparently not informed about the raid and has made it quite clear it wants no more raids or drone strikes on their country. Now with the father of the dead seal making ugly talk about how the raid was botched Trump has stepped forward and bravely said ‘it is the general’s fault”

Apparently Mr. Trump is unaware of the saying “the buck stops here”

Or is an utter coward not fit to shine the least serviceman’s shoes.

And as such is trying to weasel out of his responsivity. Sir you are the President of the United States, you are the commander in chief you gave the order, it’s on your shoulders. But because you are nothing but an old spoiled rich man’s man baby son who has never taken responsivity for anything in your life, you’ve opted to the standard CEO response: It’s x’s fault not mine. Seriously when was the last time you hear a businessman accept the blame for anything? Ever?

Sorry it won’t fly – you don’t get to be saluted by the Marines when you get out of your helicopter just because, you have a vast responsibility on your shoulders and god spare us, you are so obviously not up to the task.

Oh yes, on a practical matter you just tossed the Military under the bus. Is there a single group in DC you can’t alienate? You colossal worthless fool.

Go to hell okay?

Taking to the Russians

The news these days remains it mad froth but meantime, like the solid bass line that would ground a Frank Zappa guitar solo, more and more weird things about the Russians are coming out.

The latest is the news that both the White House Chief of Staff whose name I can never quite remember well enough to type tried to get the head of the FBI to say publicly that there was nothing to the Russia Story (which is rather illegal given the circumstances) and Mr. Spicer seems to have arranged some phone calls from the head of the CIA to reporters to tell them there was nothing to the story although nobody seems to have details on why there was nothing to it. It’s not clear just yet whether Mr. Spicer broke the law or stretched it but my word it surely does not look good. 

All this froo fra and attempt to put a lid on story about the connections between the Trump campaign and Russia and just what they were are of course making it worse,  and one can be pretty sure that neither party thought to do this all by himself. Trump one assumes has told them to do these.

But why? Why risk having the story get more legs by trying to squash it? It does give one pause – Trump is a sitting president he’s in charge of the Dept of Justice and he’s gotten an absolute troglodyte in as Attorney General who about as likely to launch any sort of investigation as he is to admit he’s racist baboon (no insult to the Baboon’s intended).

Meantime both houses of congress are under GOP control run by a pair of small brained ideologues who wouldn’t care if Trump put slot machines in the oval office and was chopping the heads off of bunnies in the rose garden as long as he signs the tax cut bill (once they figure out what it is, they are not skilled men these men).  So one can pretty sure no probes will be forthcoming form them.

So, one wonders, why the panic? Why stomp all over the city insisting in louder and more hysterical voices that there is nothing to the story? Which can only make more people think that there is a there there.

Two hypotheses come to mind – one is simple stupidity – these are not bright people we are talking about and doing something stupid like this simply because they are unable to understand how this would play out is a logical conclusion.

The other one, which I think is more interesting, is that whatever is being covered up is absolute dynamite something so toxic that all support for him would vanish in an instant. Knowing just what sort of horrible things Trump has done that the GOP iare perfectly okay with, one does have to wonder what it could be.

You just can't keep up

Not a bit. On any given day there is enough madness flying about to last as the saying goes a month of Sundays.  Between the decidedly mixed signals being sent to Europe:  “We Will honor our EU commitments” “The EU must die!” and the continuing drum beat of spooky stuff out of a spy novel involving Russia (the covert peace plan that would allow Trump to undo the sanctions that a close Trump associate did or did not deliver to one of the presidents of Ukraine- the Russian appointed one) , the mystifying claim of first terrorist attacks and then a rising crime rate in Sweden caused by refugees,  the invite than canceled invite to the annual right wing hate fest called CPAC  to one alleged human being  Milo Yiannopoulos who creeped the world out to point where not only did he get uninvited to jabber to CPAC, Simon & Shuster killed his book deal (no word if he had to give the money back).

The times are simply just too crazy to cope.

And it’s only been a month.

Today apparently Trump has decided that Anti-Semitism is bad.  Not that he’s going to do anything about the white nationalists in his organization  (which isn’t very organized) including one Steve Bannon. But he has spoken about it and for his followers, that is enough. Deeds are not needed only words.

We are in trouble folks.

 

Quick thoughts from a couple of days 2/14 & 2/15

2/14/17

Happy Valentine’s Day

One keeps trying to write something and one keeps finding oneself hopelessly behind the stories as they lurch into the sunlight the after the other to dance their little dance and then be replaced by a newer and more grotesque grotesques.

This morning Mr. Flynn the National Security advisor quit mostly because his lies about his ties to Russia and folks had proof and that things were getting a little hot so someone needed to be tossed to the wolves. Thus exit Mr. Flynn.

The right is falling all over themselves to say “well things happen and let’s just move on here”.  Which is actually pretty much par for the course in DC – when proof emerged that W had blown off a briefing paper titled “Bin Laden determined to strike the US” and that he had the rest of the establishment had lied about WMD’s (poison gas actually) and this was treated as while mildly interesting, it was not dire enough to warrant anything actually being done about it.

Now we have Flynn leaving and they are saying well okay that’s it.

No it isn’t.

When Obama bum rushed some number of Russians out of the country and imposed even more sanctions on Russia for their interference in the US elections, Flynn  bowled several people over in order to get to a phone so he call Russia and reassure them that once Trump was president things would be fine. Flagrant violation of several laws this was and of course he lied about it. This is what got him canned.

About this time Trump tweeted some sort of mash note to Putin saying how smart he was for not responding to what Obama did. The timing is weird as hell one must say.

And here’s the thing – what the hell made Flynn do that? Did he just get the idea to contact the Russians on his own or did someone –say,  Trump for example – tell him to make the call.

If the later we are in deep deep waters.

In one of my stupid on-line comments I suggested watching this unfold was something like watching a John Le Carre novel from the outside – we’re not seeing what is going on inside the intelligence community or inside the white house or Congress.

2/15/17

Well coming as not much of a surprise, per various news reports Flynn wasn’t the only one in the Trump Camp with links to the Russians, no names yet but it doesn’t look good and the FBI is per the Times investigating – which does raise the uncomfortable question of hey why were these contacts kept under wraps with you gabbed about emails? (The professor also notes with grim amusement that the same folks who praised the little creep who runs the FBI with being a  hero for leaking about the Emails suddenly find leaks ‘a concern’. The professor has not had much amusement lately so he’ll take what he can get.

Meantime one of the websites I cruse comes in interesting story. Trump once Flynn’s corpse was safely stowed away under the Bus took to Twitter to complain about all the leaks that had come out of the Intelligence Community. Bad Intelligence community Bad, the tweets said.

Anyway per this story the intelligence community is really really really angry at Trump now. I suspect that Flynn’s quick and brutal fall from grace was a warning from the Intelligence Community which it would seem Trump did not take.  Hence the Intelligence Community is now really pissed and one of them sent an email to this former NSA staffer John Schindler saying per his quote “he will die in jail”

I don’t think he meant Flynn.

To quote Betty Davis  “Fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be bumpy flight.”