If You Are Looking for Consistency, Trump Ain't Your Man by Publius Tacitus

Christmas came early for Donald Trump. He signed a historic tax cut, kept the Government funded and operating and, to the delight of many in his base, used UN Ambassador Nikki Haley as a mouthpiece to tell the rest of the world to go pound sand. He is feeling groovy. But Donald Trump is still his own worst enemy. And his Presidency will be fatally harmed if he continues with his erratic foreign policy and his empty talk on dealing with the opioid plague.

Let's start with his wildly fluctuating foreign policy. There is no consistency nor is their a theme. When he announced that he was recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, many assumed he was on the Israeli leash and was behaving as any obedient dog would. Perhaps.

How then do you explain yesterday's (Thursday) decision to arm Ukraine as a show of force to Russia:

The Trump administration has approved the largest U.S. commercial sale of lethal defensive weapons to Ukraine since 2014. . . . Administration officials confirmed that the State Department this month approved a commercial license authorizing the export of Model M107A1 Sniper Systems, ammunition, and associated parts and accessories to Ukraine, a sale valued at $41.5 million. These weapons address a specific vulnerability of Ukrainian forces fighting a Russian-backed separatist movement in two eastern provinces.

The people we are arming in the Ukraine are the actual and intellectual descendants of the Nazi sympathizers who helped the Einsatzgruppen murder more than a million Jews after Hitler invaded the Soviet Union. Scholar Richard Sakwa provides the horrifying details on the pro-Nazi ideological foundation of the key Ukrainian political groups we are backing:

“The Orange revolution, like the later Euromaidan events, was democratic in intent but gave an impetus ‘to the revival of the radical versions of [the] Ukrainian national movement that first appeared on the historical scene in the course of World War II and a national discourse focused on fighting against the enemy’.41 ” . . . . 

“In Dnepropetrovsk, for example, instead of the anticipated 60 street-name changes, 350 were planned. Everywhere ‘Lenin Streets’ became ‘Bandera Avenues’ as everything Russian was purged. One set of mass murderers was changed for another. Just as the Soviet regime had changed toponyms to inscribe its power into the physical environment, so now the Euromaidan revolution seeks to remould daily life. In Germany today the names of Nazis and their collaborators are anathema, whereas in Ukraine they are glorified.”

Excerpt From: Richard Sakwa. “Frontline Ukraine : Crisis in the Borderlands.” from the Afterward

At the very moment we are signaling our support for Israel, the country founded largely because of the horror over the Shoah, we are also giving weapons to political groups whose parents and grand parents helped carry out the Shoah. Oh yeah, in the process of doing this we are providing a tangible threat to Russia. Imagine what our reaction would be if Russia decided to step up its weapons supplies to Cuba.

Then we have Trump's tough talk on the opioid slaughter taking place across America. Let me be clear. He is not responsible for the start of this plague. The Obama Administration carries a heavy burden on that front. CBS 60 Minutes has done a magnificent job in exposing the role that the Obama Justice Department refused to play in going after the major corporate opiate drug pusher--i.e., the McKesson Corporation:

In October, we joined forces with the Washington Post and reported a disturbing story of Washington at its worst - about an act of Congress that crippled the DEA's ability to fight the worst drug crisis in American history - the opioid addiction crisis. Now, a new front of that joint investigation. It is also disturbing. It's the inside story of the biggest case the DEA ever built against a drug company: the McKesson Corporation, the country's largest drug distributor. It's also the story of a company too big to prosecute.

In 2014, after two years of painstaking inquiry by nine DEA field divisions and 12 U.S. Attorneys, investigators built a powerful case against McKesson for the company's role in the opioid crisis.

[According to DEA Agent Schiller]  This is the best case we've ever had against a major distributor in the history of the Drug Enforcement Administration. How do we not go after the number one organization? In the height of the epidemic, when people are dying everywhere, doesn't somebody have to be held accountable? McKesson needs to be held accountable. 

Holding McKesson accountable meant going after the 5th largest corporation in the country.  Headquartered in San Francisco, McKesson has 76,000 employees and earns almost $200 billion a year in revenues, about the same as Exxon Mobil. Since the 1990s, McKesson has made billions from the distribution of addictive opioids. 

So what has Donald Trump done? That is the wrong question. What has he failed to do? We are approaching the one year anniversary of his Presidency and Trump has failed to nominate a Director for the Drug Enforcement Administration, a Director for the Office of National Drug Control Policy, a Director for the National Institute of Justice and an Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs . In other words, none of the people who would be on the policy frontline putting the President's tough words into action have been nominated. Not one. And those agencies and departments are drifting like a rudderless ship on stormy seas.

Another problem for Trump is his mixed signals on getting entangled in foreign wars. During the campaign he made a point of ridiculing those candidates who wanted to go to war in Syria. Now that he is in office, Trump, along with several members of his cabinet, are threatening Iran on almost a daily basis. The Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity just put out a memo on this very subject (which, I'm happy to note, reflects some of the themes I've written about previously):

Iran has come out ahead in Iraq and, with the 2015 nuclear agreement in place, Iran’s commercial and other ties have improved with key NATO allies and the other major world players—Russia and China in particular.

Official pronouncements on critical national security matters need to be based on facts. Hyperbole in describing Iran’s terrorist activities can be counterproductive. For this reason, we call attention to Ambassador Nikki Haley’s recent statement that it is hard to find a “terrorist group in the Middle East that does not have Iran’s fingerprints all over it.” The truth is quite different. The majority of terrorist groups in the region are neither creatures nor puppets of Iran. ISIS, Al-Qaeda and Al-Nusra are three of the more prominent that come to mind.

You have presented yourself as someone willing to speak hard truths in the face of establishment pressure and not to accept the status quo. You spoke out during the campaign against the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq as a historic mistake of epic proportions. You also correctly captured the mood of many Americans fatigued from constant war in far away lands. Yet the torrent of warnings from Washington about the dangers supposedly posed by Iran and the need to confront them are being widely perceived as steps toward reversing your pledge not to get embroiled in new wars.

We encourage you to reflect on the warning we raised with President George W. Bush almost 15 years ago, at a similar historic juncture:

“after watching Secretary Powell today, we are convinced that you would be well served if you widened the discussion … beyond the circle of those advisers clearly bent on a war for which we see no compelling reason and from which we believe the unintended consequences are likely to be catastrophic.”

Finally, there is the recognition of Jerusalem as the Capital of Israel. I defer to Colonel Lang on this. He believes that this single decision has planted an odious seed that will sprout into a global anti-U.S. sentiment that will reduce our global influence and tangibly damage our leadership on the world stage. While I suppose there always is a chance for a different kind of outcome, I learned long ago not to bet against the old warrior on matters like this.

Taking all of this together I think we are looking at a 2018 where U.S. foreign policy will continue to careen around the globe devoid of a strategic vision. 

 

Comments

[different clue]

ked,

(reply to comment number 38)

This is unfortunate. Because if that is how many people feel by election 2018, then the Democratic Party will be able to win many Congressional and other seats with the same old Borg-vetted candidates as before.

[optimax]

Babak

Blame Abraham Lincoln for America's drug problem. That war created a multitude of wounded addicts and spread as a panacea to the ennui in the middle class. Even without cocaine being infused these days into Coca Cola it is still addictive. As a child I was told about a kid had to drimk a sixpack of Coke a day or he'd throw a tantrum. Saw a kid ironically name Happy scream at his mother for not making him a pitcher of Kool aid. It amazed she didn't wack him good. Animals are prone to addiction, some more than others.

[J]

PT,

It's simmering around the web this month regarding Julian Assange's March comments that malleable Pence and crew were/are planning an inside coup against Trump. Dunno if the rehash is to make sure it doesn't happen axiom [the more know the less its likelihood], or something maybe really in the works.

[Fred]

Babak,

"Marriage has been redefined among the Diocletians." That redefining is being done to Americans by the American left, not the Diocletians. The forbidden question is still "who, whom".

[Anna]

Correct. Ziocons and neo-Nazis have united in Ukraine. This is monumental. So much for the numerous Holocaust museums and for prosecution of anyone questioning the H-business data...
“German police have raided the house of an 86-year-old lady Ursula Haverbeck, after she publicly questioned the Holocaust story:” http://yournewswire.com/elderly-german-woman-arrested-for-questioning-holocaust/
“German-born Australian Frederic Toben was arrested in transit at Heathrow airport … Toben, having participated in Ahmadinejad’s Holocaust “conference” ... already served seven months in a German prison as a denier.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Fredrick_Töben
In comparison, in the Kagans-liberated Ukraine, “residents celebrated the 70th anniversary of the German invasion “as a popular festival, where parents with small children waived flags to re-enactors in SS uniforms... … extreme right-wing deputies in the Lviv district “renamed a street from the Soviet-era name Peace Street to instead carry the name of the Nachtigall [Nightingale] Battalion, a Ukrainian nationalist formation involved in the mass murder of Jews in 1941: https://consortiumnews.com/2016/01/28/nazi-roots-of-ukraines-conflict/
The neo-Nazi supporters of the US policies in Ukraine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRrf1QD6sEI
The WWII veterans attacked in Ukraine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dtOmdA5SCiU

[Anna]

The Democratic Party has lost moral compass long time ago. The ongoing Russiangate saga has exposed the illegal meddling of the FBI into the political process in the US, namely, in taking sides against the US citizenry' wishes. And yet the DP operatives are in full and loud support of the disgraced (treasonous?) McCabe: “FBI Deputy Director McCabe "retiring" after "Trump insurance policy" debacle:” http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-12-23/fbi-deputy-director-mccabe-retiring-after-trump-insurance-policy-debacle

[Anna]

True. But not the Saklers' family; there was a special provision protecting the deadly profiteers.

[Anna]

"Genrikh Yagoda, head of the NKVD, was just one of the Jews in the Bolshevik government (which was 80% Jewish) that helped perpetrate the Holodomor against 7 million Ukrainians, and helped to murder 30 million Soviet citizens in total during Jewish Bolshevik rule. (99.9%+ of the victims being gentiles.)"
Add also the name of Lazar Kaganovitch, an Ukrainian Jew, who was the main organizer of the Holodomor (the murderer lived into old age in Moscow) and the name of Naftaly Frenkel, the organizer of GULAG-- "Of all those who helped devise and perfect the slave labor system of the Gulag, special mention must be made of Naftaly Aronovich Frenkel:" https://tarbaby.wordpress.com/2017/07/22/gulags-frenkels-efficiency-system/
“Kaganovich was one of a small group of Stalin's top sadists pushing for very high rates of collectivization after 1929. He became Stalin's butcher of Christian Russians during the late 1920s and early 1930s when the Kremlin launched its war against the kulaks (small landowners who were Christians) and implemented a ruthless policy of land collectivization. The resulting state-organized forced famine, was a planned genocide and killed 7,000,000 Ukrainians between 1932 and 1933, and inflicted enormous suffering on the Soviet Central Asian republic of Kazakhstan.” http://www.rense.com/general11/stal.htm
http://real-life-villains.wikia.com/wiki/Lazar_Kaganovich

[mongo]

Hi Babak,

"Are you smoking more now but enjoying it less?"

This is a verbatim quote from an ad for Camel cigarettes, whose manufacturers are famous (infamous?) in retrospect for other public assertions like "More doctors smoke Camels than any other cigarette." The comparison to Big Tobacco is apt here -- now that awareness of the harmful effects of smoking are ubiquitous, has the incidence of smoking increased or decreased?

@Comment 24,

Gun manufacturers are quite different, unless you can find one for me that presents them to the public as anything other than a weapon.

@Comment 26,

Hi Fred,

They are bound under the Controlled Substances Act. Have a look here for details:

https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/928481/download

Statistically speaking, I would say that the probability that they were unaware of this law is zero.

[Babak Makkinejad]

Stalin was a very prescient man, he saw the war coming and proceeded to rapidly industrialize USSR - a very popular policy at the time - paying for it by expropriating the agricultural surplus of rural USSR.
I do not believe that the famine in Ukraine was a premeditated act of genocide, nor do I think that the estimates of the numbers of the dead to be reliable.
Had Stalin - and indeed the Soviet Government - not undertaken that brutal policy, USSR would have almost certainly been defeated by the Third Reich and the Third Reich would be with today - as a legitimate and respected member of the "International Community" of "White people" and then Slavs would be agriculturalist servants of the New Improved Diocletian civilization.
In regards to Kagnovitch, he and many other Jews among Bolsheviks were executed during the Stalinist Purges; was it another case of Christians avenging themselves on Jews - I wonder.
I must confess that I never understood the Jewish hostility to USSR, USSR almost certainly saved what was left of European Jewry, she should have a place of honor on Yad va Shim - I should think.

[Babak Makkinejad]

The rot is across the entire civilization; please see below:

http://www.pewforum.org/2017/08/08/gay-marriage-around-the-world-2013/

And then there is this:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/dec/23/two-heterosexual-irish-men-marry-to-avoid-inheritance-tax-on-house

[Bobo]

Your right. I do not know McCabe from Adam but how he could not see the Conflict in his wife running for office and he continuing at the FBI in a senior position is astounding. What's more astounding is his superior or the IG not seeing it and stepping in tells us things are rotten in the upper echelons of that agency. There should be no argument on this but there is which is sad.
I'm finding it entertaining that the declared PIGS are now coming out the wash attempting to regain there old positions. Seems that Old Hen (used to have nice legs) at MSNBC has been pushing her pig who has been washed but that reincarnation will have to be rinsed before she can push the spin cycle again. Yes, there are limited morals there.

[Babak Makkinejad]

Identical or very close analogues of psychotropic molecules exist in animal and plant life. Their receptors certainly exist in human brain, and very likely in other animals with a central nervous system.

But to your point, men cannot hold their drugs - individually and collectively. This much seems to be an empirical fact. There has been historical examples of widespread usage of drugs in certain societies; Safavid Persia, Imperial China. Neither of them ended well.

I think the Islamic injunction against consumption of alcohol must be considered as a defense mechanism against a presently forgotten empirical reality in which Arabs could not hold their liquor.

The European peoples - between Urals to the Atlantic Ocean - have been using alcohol for a longer period of time and likely have developed physiological as well as social and familial mechanisms to deal with drunkenness to a certain degree.

But they have only been partly successful as such things as Alcoholics Anonymous, or the sight of so many skimpy-clad young women passed-out or vomiting in the streets of London attest.

I understand that the Doctrine of Political Liberty is being misused to justify any and all of the whims of the individual. That is why I am willing to meet the advocates of Hedonism half way, through the artifice of Freedonia.

Freedonia serves the excellent purpose of exposing the disingenousness and speciousness of the arguments of Hedonists: that they crucially need everyone else to live on the proverbial straight and narrow to essentially subsidize their hedonism.

[Babak Makkinejad]

Hi Mongo:

Another specious argument.

Some drugs, if you will, are now too entrenched to do anything about.

Aspirin, due to its manifold actions in human body, would not receive FDA approval toady as an Over-the-Counter drug; but it cannot be removed from the market either.

For Aspirin and for Nicotine, it is too late to do anything - but that does not imply that we should do nothing against Cannabis, Opioids, Meta-amphetamines etc.

But really, all of this discussion is dancing around the central issue; you guys want to be free to indulge in your appetites and whims, all the while expecting us - on the straight & narrow path - to come in and either bail you out or to clean up after your mess.

That is why no one wants to live in Freedonia - they cannot leech from the others and continue to live.

[Babak Makkinejad]

You are so right.

We need to go after all of them.

But I think one must admit that some importance ought to be attached to the matter of individual choice.

[Robert]

Being prescribed painkillers by your Doctor, and paid for by Health Insurance providers is very different. Patients are assured of their safety, necessity, and told that they are the only way to manage pain. They are given a schedule to take them on, and refill prescriptions. That is how people become addicted. Do you think the Drug companies don't have that data? General Motors knew for years that they sold cars with a ignition design defect that resulted in hundreds of deaths and injuries. Would you blame the people who bought and drove those cars? At what point do companies have a responsibility for the products they sell and market?

[blue peacock]

Bobo

McCabe's wife received a $700,000 campaign contribution by Clinton surrogate McCauliffe. And McCabe supervises the Clinton mishandling of classified information investigation. We saw how the original charge of "gross negligence" suddenly became a legal non-entity of "extremely careless". Then you have Strzok & his paramor, FBI attorney Lisa Page discussing "insurance policy" in McCabe's office during the election.

This guy is a corrupt, partisan hack who attempted a coup on a legitimately elected POTUS. Why is he being allowed to hang on to collect his pension? He should be fired and prosecuted and made an example of.

This is exactly the problem in DC. If you get high enough you can act with impunity as long as you are a Borgist. From Clapper to Petraeus and McCabe, Strzok, Baker, Comey at the FBI and Ohr, Lynch and who else at DoJ, at best they get a slap on the wrist. But Flynn gets nailed and everyone lower on the totem pole gets crucified for the slightest infraction. How can any ordinary citizen believe in the rule of law, when the law enforcers have proven to be malevolent law breakers?

[rjj]

lest we forget.....

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/53/Caffeine_and_adenosine.svg/250px-Caffeine_and_adenosine.svg.png

16-17th tea and coffee drinking fad coincided with an outbreak of creativity, didn't it? withdrawal takes about a week. Then there is chocolatl.

I think sugar was originally considered a drug. It is certainly habit forming.

[rjj]

that was a response to BabMak @ post 92.

[different clue]

J,

( Reply to comment 82)

I remember commenting some months ago that I regarded Pence as the rattlesnake in Trump's sleeping bag, the scorpion in the toe of Trump's boot.

Pence isn't "impeachment insurance". Pence is "impeachment incentive". Pence knows it and is counting on it, in my fact-free purely intuitive opinion.

[Publius Tacitus]

Anna,
Your comments carry a stench of anti-semitism. The fact that some Jews in Russia were Bolsheviks does not therefore indict it as a phenomena of Judaism. And your claim that "80%" of the Bolsheviks were Jewish. Wrong. You are quoting a speech made by Putin at the dedication of the Schneerson Jewish Museum. He said that in the very first government of the Soviet Union that 80 to 85% were Jewish but he noted that their religion played no part in their bad decisions.
So, what is your point?

[different clue]

Babak Makkinejad,

(reply to comment 75)

Thank you for responding to my comment. And yet . . . and yet . . . your comment does not actually provide the fact-cased step-by-step description of how the Sixties youth turn to marijuana and the hallucinogens led to the current addiction crisis of a totally different group of people to a totally different group of drugs. All your comment has really offered is the same unbacked assertion as before.

Could you at least help me with an specific answer to one particular question: what taboos did the Sixties youth-use of marijuana and the hallucinogens break . . . that extensive mainstream American use of alcohol during Prohibition had not broken 30 years before?

[Fred]

Babak,

"...you guys want to be free to indulge in your appetites and whims, all the while expecting us -... - to come in and either bail you out or to clean up after your mess."

That's a very apt summary of a couple of generations of Americans.

[J]

POTUS Trump has just given U.S. a Christmas Present that has many jumping up and down for joy. POTUS is continuing to drain the swamp and this draining affects Bill and Hillary's finances, namely their big payola they have been getting from Bill Clinton's pardon of Marc Rich:

Backgrounder:

https://nypost.com/2016/01/17/after-pardoning-criminal-marc-rich-clintons-made-millions-off-friends/

Now back to the present, the new White House Executive Order, in its Annex lists an individual by the name of Dan Gertler an Israeli whose criminal enterprises, who acquired a fortune through shady (aka corrupt) deals in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is listed in the Annex of the E.O.. Gerler was also exposed in the Paradise papers as Glencore secretly donated millions to Gertler to act as a middleman for DRC deals. Glencore former leader of the firm Marc Rich fled the U.S. in 1983 after being indicted for a host of charges including sanctions-busting, fraud, tax evasion, arms dealing. Rich's family were major donors to Bill Clinton, Rich later pardoned by Clinton in the final hours of his presidency.

Another Clinton Foundation type listed in the E.O. Annex, Gulnara Karimova organized Clinton Foundation fundraiser in Monaco trying to acquaint herself will Bill and gain favor with Hillary.

Continuing on, the E.O. Annex lists Sergey Kusiuk, a Ukraine police commander who engineered the Obama-Clinton coup against the Ukraine. Kusiuk hired Georgian merc snipers that fired on police and protestors Nov. 30 2013.

When POTUS promised U.S. he was going to drain the swamp, he really meant it.

LOL Love it when a plan comes together.

[jld]

Huh?
Aspirin as a drug which should be "removed from the market"!
Are you sure that you have not (inadvertantly?) imbibed on some pretty hard stuff?