Trump Tripped

What did we learn from Michael Cohen's testimony before the House Oversight Committee this past week?  Well, we learned that Donald Trump is a bigot, we learned that Trump personally saw to it that Cohen paid the two women he slept while married to Melania to keep quiet and that Trump reimbursed Cohen personally, and that it turns out that Trump was well aware of the Wikileaks dump of DNC e-mails after all.

In short, we learned nothing new.  But the fact that it all came out of Cohen's mouth made it all the more believable.

Except of course, for the Republicans on the House Oversight Committee, who refused to believe Cohen because he had lied to Congress before.  But Representative Stephen Lynch, a Democrat from Massachusetts, made it clear why the Republicans had problems with Cohen.  It wasn't that they thought Cohen would lie this time, but rather, that he would tell the truth.  And the GOP committee members bashed Cohen without defending Turmp.

Although I'm disappointed in her for her botched roll-out of the Green New Deal - and although I'm flabbergasted by her threats to run liberals against moderate House Democrats like my own congresswoman, Representative Mikie Sherill (D-NJ), in the 2020 primaries if they vote with Republicans on, well, anything - Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) was still impressive in how she got answers from Cohen about the suppressed stories that the National Enquirer and its parent company, American Media Incorporated, have been hiding. Cohen replied that he was no longer certain of where these documents were, and  Ocasio-Cortez was able to get Cohen to tell her and the committee under oath who might know without asking for salacious details about the stories themselves.  He named David Pecker, Barry Levine, and Dylan Howard.

It was kind of entertaining to hear Cohen say that Trump never expected to win the Presidency and only ran to make money off the 2016 campaign, but there's nothing funny about the fact that Trump won and that he's ripping off the country.  It may be, though, the Trump's time is almost up.  Not only is he flailing and flapping like a fish out of water at home, he's bumbling and bungling abroad.  His summit meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un accomplished nothing, and Kim realized, when asking for a relief from sanctions before giving up his nuclear weapons,. that Trump, while stupid, is by no means insane.  Trump's mature handling of an otherwise regrettable situation, however, doesn't excuse his own ignorance of foreign affairs.

But at least the old draft dodger finally made it to Vietnam. 

If Trump finally falls to scandals of his own making, historians will say that it started here.  If he comes back stronger than ever, the Democrats will be blamed for blowing a golden opportunity to win back power in 2020.  Alas, that may yet happen. 

Summits and Nadirs

So what's my takeaway from the Trump-Kim summit?  I think that they established an excellent framework for President O'Malley to use to strike a deal with North Korea in 2021.

Seriously, though, it's a good thing that Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un are talking and have agreed to eventually denuclearize the Korean peninsula and lessen tensions between the one-and-half countries.  It's good that two megalomaniacs who threatened to annihilate each other are now talking to each other.  But the statement over how to achieve this was too vague, sort of like the deal Roosevelt and Churchill negotiated with Stalin on what to do with Berlin after the war ("We'll figure it out later!"), and Trump's promise to cancel U.S.-South Korean military exercises will make South Korea less secure and less ready to fend off another North Korean invasion.

Even more troubling is that Trump is treating Kim like a buddy even as he alienates Justin Trudeau and Emmanuel Macron over trade while disrespecting Angela Merkel and Theresa May over the fact that they're women.  Even though they're all - you know - democratically elected leaders?  Trump, of course, was not democratically elected, as 54 percent of the American electorate voted for someone else but Trump won in the Electoral College.   But even the 46 percent of the American electorate that did vote for him, and certainly the 50 percent of Americans of voting age who stayed home on Election Day 2016, couldn't possibly approve of separating migrant children from their parents and keeping them incarcerated in an abandoned Wal-Mart and keeping them inside 22 hours a day with two hours of regimented yard activities like they're criminals.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions quotes the Bible to justify this action by referencing in Romans 13:1, to obey the laws of the government: "Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God."  Aside from the fact that this quote was used to justify slavery before the Civil War and pro-British loyalism before the Revolution, he completely ignored the compassion emphasized in Romans 13:10: "Love does no harm to a neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law."  And Sarah Huckabee Sanders defends Sessions.

And the GOP is going to win the 2018 midterms because of a robust economy and a booming stock market? 

Trump's only worthy accomplishment, apart from reducing tensions with North Korea, is breaking the Bush-Clinton dynasty continuum with his election victory.  But it's long since time to fight back and stop him from doing more damage.  And then, in 2020, we work for . . . new leadership.

Meanwhile, Paul Manafort is going to jail.  It's a start.

Trumptonite

You might remember the Mississippi rock band 3 Doors Down, not to be confused with Three Dog Night.  Back in 2000 (let that sink in for a moment), they were a top band on what passed for rock radio in America, and they were apparently hoping to replace the Allman Brothers Band as the Beatles of the South.  But, like so many rock bands that proliferated in the quarter century after the grunge revolt, they were gone almost as soon as they'd arrived, and to this day I still can't name a single member of 3 Doors Down without checking out their Web site or their Wikipedia biography.  By 2017 they'd fallen so far that they were one of the (very) few pop acts to accept an invitation to play at Trump's inauguration; their appearance suggested imagining the Beatles not having another hit after "Love Me Do" and playing a Tory rally on the occasion of Margaret Thatcher's assumption of the prime ministership of Great Britain seventeen years after.  As a result of this gig, 3 Doors Down lost numerous fans, shrinking their already pathetically small audience.

Ironically, their only hit of any consequence was a song called "Kryptonite."

Since 3 Doors Down killed their already-dead careers with their Trump gala gig, many Trump watchers have been patiently waiting for the one thing that would destroy Trump's Presidency - the equivalent of kryptonite, the one thing that could kill Superman.  This past week proved once and for all that nothing - and I mean nothing - can kill his political career.  Trump imposed steel tariffs on our closest allies - Canada, Mexico, the European Union countries - and our ex-friends vowed to retaliate.  At that news, the stock market plunged a couple hundred points. Then the next day, he leaked the latest unemployment statistics before the Labor Department could officially release them, sending stocks back up.  A friend of mine says Trump did this to manipulate the stock market to his advantage.  Maybe.  But he did manipulate the news to his advantage; thanks to the good jobs report and the headlines about a robust economy, you don't hear much concern about tariffs.

All right, so import taxes that could undermine future American economic growth didn't kill him.  How about the aftereffects of Hurricane Maria, and the news that, while only 64 people on the island of Puerto Rico died directly from the storm, over 4,600 Puerto Ricans died indirectly from the hurricane's damage - mainly because of the interminable blackouts and the disruption of the territory's services?  Certainly Trump's failure to react sufficiently to the damage from Maria would kill his Presidency!  That is, until the National Hurricane Center announced that the 2018 hurricane season, having just gotten under way, is expected to be an average season, lessening the chances of another storm like Maria, which allowed people on the mainland to shrug off last year's hurricane season as old news.  So what if Puerto Rico was turned into a wasteland? So what if Puerto Rico isn't even prepared for even a storm just short of Category 1 status? >:-(

But of course, there was the North Korean situation.  Trump felt the need to cancel his summit with Kim Jong Un in Singapore, which denied him to burnish his foreign policy credentials (even though he actually has none.  What a setback.  Until the North Koreans and the Trump administration worked out their differences over the proposed meeting.  Now the summit is back on.  Trump is back on top.

Nothing can kill him.

At this point, we have to realize that if Trump's Presidency is going to be brought down, it won't be brought down by circumstances beyond his control.  Whether or not he survives depends on a strong opposition.

It's too bad that the Democratic Party is prone to kryptonite poisoning.

3 Doors Down records, anyone?  

Ain't Gonna Happen

You knew the U.S.-North Korean summit wasn't going to take place.

Donald Trump accepted Kim Jong Un's offer for a summit meeting, even setting a time (Tuesday, June 12) and a place (Singapore), before even beginning to figure out what they were going to talk about.  Kim apparently had everything figured out . . . including Donald Trump.   He hoped to use Trump's myopia to show him up in Singapore or pull out of the summit himself.  But then, he should have known better; Trump is the master of pullouts.      

Trump actually did the right thing for once.  He was so eager to achieve a diplomatic breakthrough that he misread Kim's intentions - and it took comments from national security adviser Milk Mustache Man and Vice President Mike Pence comparing hopes for North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons to Libya's Muammar el-Qadaffi giving up his nuclear program to draw them out.  There was one thing wrong with that comparison - Qaddafi was overthrown and killed.  But even if the Trump White House envisioned a plan based on Libya that would allow Kim to remain the North Korean leader, Kim would never agree to anything that would require him to disarm.  But by canceling the summit before Kim had the opportunity and being nice about it, Trump actually got the North Koreans to respond with a hopeful message for future talks.  Some Democrats are even giving him creidt for his efforts at a peaceful solution.  Right now, there are rumors that the summit may be back on.  But, no, more likely that not, it's off.  It's not going to happen.

Which brings me to the subject of Stacey Abrams, a former Georgia House Democratic leader and the new Democratic nominee for governor of Georgia.  Abrams became the first black woman nominated for governor of any state by a major party, and she did it by bringing in new Democratic voters in Georgia. Asked if she would still be proud of her achievement if she loses in November, Abrams replied that she's going to win.

Yeah, right.  Ain't gonna happen.  Her Republican opponent hasn't been decided yet - the Georgia Republican Party needs to have a runoff for that - but I think it's fair to say that the mere thought of a black female governor is going drive Republican voters in Georgia to the polls in November in record numbers and cancel out any new Democratic voters Abrams brings in.  Also, Democratic candidates in past elections have had trouble getting to 50 percent because the Georgia GOP is so entrenched and there simply aren't enough independents to get the Democrats over the threshold.  I keep hearing about Georgia's changing demographics and all that, but if you want any proof that demography is not destiny, look at Texas.

If Democrats want to win back power, they should concentrate on places where they can win.  I'm sure a black woman can get elected governor of a Democratic state, but even a white man with a D next to his name can't get elected governor of Georgia, as Jimmy Carter's grandson Jason found out when he tried to run for that very office in 2014 (and became the latest in a series of Democrats banished to the Archipelago of Failed Democratic Candidates).      

Also, Hillary Clinton thought she could win Georgia in 2016.  The end.

Dear Imprudence

So Trump pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal.  That was expected.  What happened next was unexpected.

The United States's withdrawal from the Iran deal this past Tuesday was the dumbest thing Trump has done since last Thursday.  It re-imposes sanctions on Iran that will hurt the Iranian people more than it hurts the Iranian leadership, the sanctions will cost American companies that have already pursued business interests with Iran, like Boeing, billions of dollars, it allows the Iranians to enrich uranium sooner rather than later, it will cause a rift with the Europeans and prevent their companies from doing business with Iranians due to the sanctions, and it makes the U.S.'s word on honoring commitments as valued as a used Kleenex.  Even if Martin O'Malley or some other Democrat does become President in 2021, no one will want to deal with this country out of fear that another Republican President will go back on this country's word.

So what was unexpected?  The stock market did not go down. In fact, it's been increasing over the past three days.  Oil prices fell because of French and German commitment to preserving the deal (a deal a Democratic President will not be able to rejoin for the reasons sate in the previous paragraph).  This is despite Israeli attacks on Iranian positions in Syria.  It's also despite Iran's threats to go ahead and start working on the bomb, as evidenced by this statement by Foreign Minister Javad Zarif: 

"The President of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran has been tasked with taking all necessary steps in preparation for Iran to pursue industrial-scale enrichment without any restrictions, using the results of the latest research and development of Iran's brave nuclear scientists."

So America will go on like the future is going to be like the present only more so - no jolts, no surprises, no crisis arises, our economy goes along as it should.   Nowhere was this more apparent than yesterday's meeting between Trump and auto company executives seeking relief from fuel-economy standards that would - HORRORS! - force them to make smaller cars and dial back their SUVs.  This is going on as Trump tries to force California to give up its higher fuel economy standards, a policy that has the support of the car companies.

You know, I'm going to look forward to seeing gas hit ten dollars a gallon.

Meanwhile, Trump's eagerly awaited summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un take place one month from today in Singapore. and I'm anticipating it like I anticipated the premiere of Shanghai Surprise in 1986 - I didn't like what the two major players did on their own, and I'm not looking forward to their collaboration!  Trump has praised Kim as an honorable man for releasing three American hostages, all Korean ethnics, and said that Kim was "really excellent to these people."

In fact, they were tortured.

Those of you old enough to remember John F. Kennedy's disastrous summit meeting with Nikita Khrushchev in Vienna in 1961 and how Khrushchev "savage" Kennedy can expect a similar savaging of Trump next month. 

Locked and Loaded

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un says his country will no longer test nuclear weapons.

Donald Trump sees this as positive step in advance of his planned summit with Kim later this spring.

Uh, Donald?  The reason Kim isn't testing nuclear weapons anymore is because he doesn't need to test them anymore.  The experimental phase is is over - North Korea is now a nuclear power!  Kim wanted those weapons because he believes that peace can only be achieved from a position of strength.

And where did he get that idea from?  He got it from us!

Specifically, this guy.

Or maybe you don't remember the American arms buildup of the early 1980s.

Right, now that Internet neutrality has officially bitten the dust, I don't expect this post to get very far . . .

Suicide Is Painless

Donald Trump is going to talk with North Korea's Kim Jong Un?

This is both the best and the worst news anyone could have imagined.  Trump has an opportunity to establish a productive rapport with Kim over his nukes - but he's going into this meeting, likely to take place in May, with no diplomatic background, few if any Korea experts by his side, no sense of the history of post-war Korea (or its pre-war history as a Japanese colony, for that matter), and no understanding of how summits really work.  On the other hand, he and Kim complement each other as mirror images - they're both pompous, self-absorbed, megalomaniacal, and consumed by a desire to be taken seriously.  So maybe they'll be best buddies.

Trump isn't as crazy as Kim, but Kim isn't as stupid as Trump - he's actually a shrewd cookie, as Trump himself has acknowledged.  He could play Trump for a fool, the same way Khrushchev played Kennedy for a fool in Vienna at their only summit meeting in 1961. Except that Kennedy knew he'd been played for a fool, and a year later he resolved the Cuban Missile Crisis.  Trump - who has Reggie Mantle's ego but is cursed with Archie Andrews' incompetence - could be played for a fool but go away from this meeting thinking he got the better of Kim . . . and then . . .    

Every President since Nixon, who famously went to China and established a rapport with Mao and Chou (clearing the way for President Carter to establish full diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of China in 1979), has wanted a major diplomatic breakthrough with an unfriendly nation.  Obama did it with a nuclear deal with Iran and a normalization of relations with Cuba (both short-lived, thanks to Debbie Wasserman Schultz tipping the scales for Hillary and letting Trump get in power and roll back both achievements).  Reagan tried to reach out to Iranian "moderates" to improve relations with the Islamic Republic and that plan backfired miserably . . . but he redeemed himself with an important arms-control treaty with the Soviet Union.  But previous Presidents had a general idea of what they were doing.  Trump is making things up as he goes along.    

This will bring on many changes . . . but you can take or leave it . . . if you please.   

Going Nuclear

I thought we'd be spared any more saber rattling between Donald Trump and North Korea's Kim Jong Un.  U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson (above) has been in talks with the Chinese in an attempt to cool the tensions between the United States and North Korea and said there would be "lines of communications" with Pyongyang to prevent what Tillerson called the "dark situation" of a nuclear crisis. He even got China to approve sanctions on North Korea.

Then Trump told him to cut it out.

Trump told Tillerson that his efforts were a waste of time and added, "Save your energy Rex, we'll do what has to be done!"

This sounds like a man who sees the danger of the North Korean crisis and is ready to take bold and decisive action to resolve it.

I meant Rex Tillerson.

It just flabbergasts me that Trump would rather risk - nay, start - a full-scale war in Asia and turn half if not all of Korea in to an ash pit than do anything that could avoid it.  Such a war could easily engulf a good chunk of the rest of the planet.

Both Trump and Tillerson have grandchildren.  The difference between the two is that Tillerson, who also opposed pulling out of the Paris Agreement on climate change, wants his grandchildren to live in a clean, safe world.

Tillerson obviously views his grandchildren differently.  He actually loves them.

The H-Word

No, not "hurricane."  "Hydrogen."  As in a hydrogen bomb.  And North Korea has one!

And contrary to Rex Tillerson's insistence that Kim Jong Un (third from right) has shown restraint with nukes, he's tested this one, underground.  It even caused an earthquake!

Yeah, Uncle Rex, Kim's showing a lot of restraint, isn't he?

Kim doesn't believe that the U.S. doesn't want to overthrow him and reunite the Korean peninsula under the Republic of Korea government in Seoul.  But we should believe him if (when?) he promises to nuke Los Angeles if we don't get our troops out of South Korea.  Whether we do or not, Kim has sent a message to South Korean President Moon Jae-in that should be crystal clear - "Good night, Mr. Moon." 

And coming in February 2018 . . . the Pyeongchang Nuclear Winter Olympics! 

Who needs climate change and hurricanes that are so strong we need a sixth category for them when a country the size of Mississippi can bring about Armageddon in a matter of days? :-O 

Loose Bannon

Steve Bannon is out.  Fired.

The dark knight of the Trump White House may be gone, but Donald Trump's Presidency could be in even greater trouble.  Because Bannon has long since indicated that he could be more of a problem spitting into the tent than spitting out of it.  And he demonstrated that by, in the style of Anthony Scaramucci, talking to a reporter when he thought he was speaking off the record.

At one point in his talk with  Robert Kuttner, co-founder of the liberal American Prospect magazine, Bannon said tht white supremacists were a "collection of clowns" whose anger could be harnessed to help Trump, thus producing a double-edged sword that he ended up falling on - both edges.  Bannon dismissed Trump's tough talk on North Korea as just that - talk.  Bannon says that the White House knows that any attempt by Trump to make good on his threats against North Korea will lead to a war that no one really wants. 

"Forget it," Bannon said about the North Korea crisis, calling it a sideshow. "Until somebody solves the part of the equation that shows me that ten million people in Seoul don't die in the first 20 minutes from conventional weapons, I don't know what you're talking about, there's no military solution here, they got us."

Gee, thanks, Steve.  I suddenly feel a whole lot better. :-p

But here's something else Bannon said that Democrats should take note of about the Democratic Party's pre-occupation with identity politics - the idea that a racial, ethnic or other sort of group's unique concerns are more important than the concerns of the general population.

"The longer they talk about identity politics, I got 'em," Bannon said.  "I want them to talk about racism every day. If the left is focused on race and identity, and we go with economic nationalism, we can crush the Democrats."

I want the Democrats to talk about racism every day, too.  But that's not all I want them to talk about.  I want them to talk about the economy, infrastructure, income equality - everything Bernie Sanders and Martin O'Malley have talked about.  Bannon is no longer there to help Trump crush the opposition, but he was right in saying what others had said in the past - that if the Democrats keep focusing on ethnic or cultural identity to the point where they disregard issues that affect everyone, they're never going to work their way back to anything resembling real power.  I was flabbergasted when Hillary Clinton's supporters bashed Bernie Sanders and his supporters for focusing too much on income inequality and called it an issue that white men were "privileged" to focus on because they didn't have to worry about being oppressed.  I explained back in May 2016 what an asinine argument that was, but it was an argument that the Hillary Clinton campaign evidently embraced at her own peril in the general election.  Democrats are already hoping to nominate another non-white and non-male presidential candidate in 2020, though that could easily put a non-white centrist like Cory Booker ahead of a white liberal like Sherrod Brown for the Presidency at at time when the Democratic Party has to return to its progressive origins and not care about the race or sex of the presidential candidate who could lead the party back there.  Just remember . . . it was a privileged white male - Franklin Roosevelt - who initiated the New Deal, and it was a white male Southerner - Lyndon Johnson - who initiated the Great Society, the centerpiece of which was civil rights legislation.

And what was it I pointed out in discussing Martin O'Malley's presidential prospects for 2020, back in March 2017?  "If the Democrats are so obsessed with identity politics that O'Malley has even less of a chance for the party's presidential nomination in 2020 than he had in 2016, then they deserve to go the way of the Whigs."  Bannon knows that.  And, more importantly, he's let on that he knows that.

And now that he's left the Trump administration. he could let on a lot more that Trump doesn't want you to know.

Spitting into the tent . . .

So good riddance  But in some respects, it's too late; he did the worst damage he could ever do when he stoked racial animosity and also when he convinced Trump to pull out of the Paris climate change agreement, thus restoring America's place as the world's toxic idiot.

Fire and Rain

The sanctions against North Korea to deter its development of a nuclear weapon this past Sunday came too late, as Kim Jong Un's government reportedly miniaturized a nuclear device to fit onto one of its missiles, which was reported on Tuesday.

The dear leader promised "fire and fury" against his adversary like the world "has never seen before."

Kim said that?  No, Donald Trump!

Later it was reported that North Korea was considering an attack on Guam.

As dangerous as Kim and his paranoia toward the United States are, Trump's airheaded machismo is exponentially worse.  The only way to deal with North Korea at this point is to try to find a diplomatic solution to avoid a military confrontation that could lead to a full-scale war worse than the one on the Korean peninsula in the early 1950s.  Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has been making one declaration after another that the U.S. has no intention of removing Kim from power and uniting Korea under the government in Seoul, and now Trump has undermined him by answer Kim's nasty rhetoric with even nastier rhetoric.  With North Korea promising to rain fire down on the United States - including the East Coast! - those fallout shelters I used to see as a kid are going to have to be put back into service.  

And the Mormons can be expected to congregate en masse along the banks of the Missouri River for the Second Coming when Moroni blows his horn. :-O  

And remember, South Korea would be annihilated by a North Korean attack and and Japan is under greater threat than we are by virtue of its proximity to Korea.  South Korea's forces are too small to beat back North Korea alone, and Japan doesn't have much of a military to begin with these days.  Guess who's expected to step into the breach.  Guess.

Oh yeah, only 37 percent of voters approve of the way Trump is handling the Korea crisis. Good news, until you realize the 37 percent are the same voters that Steve Bannon wants to keep Trump connected to.

With hopes for a negotiated settlement with North Korea slipping away, we have to pin our hopes on the President . . . of China. Xi Jinping is the last person who can talk Kim Jong Un of the ledge over self-destruction.  Kim is, somewhat ironically, interested in survival, and if Xi can convince his fellow Communist leader that restraint in handling nuclear arms is his best recourse, that will help a lot.  But I don't see how he does that.  I don't even see how anyone keeps Trump restrained.

In the meantime, we have Trump trash-talking a guy who might be able to take out Los Angeles in a few months and take out Guam sooner.  I've never been afraid of nuclear war in my entire life, not even when Reagan was President, but I am now.  Even with Secretary Tillerson saying that Americans can "sleep well at night."  

And deciding to hold three consecutive Olympiads in the Far East has turned out to be a really stupid idea. :-( 

What To Do About North Korea

Okay, this is bad . . .

Kim Jong Un, the leader of the inappropriately and redundantly named Democratic People's Republic of Korea - that would be North Korea - just had his military conduct a successful missile test.  The intercontinental ballistic missile that was tested can reach Alaska . . . and  with a nuclear warhead, it can turn our 49th state into a baked Alaska.

And then it really will be the Last Frontier.

Okay, here's the situation.  Kim Jong Un wants nuclear weapons to prevent the reunification of Korea under the Republic of Korea in the south.  He wants to prevent his own people from rebelling against him - you can do that with nukes.  He also wants to drive a wedge between the United States and South Korea by pointing offensive nuclear weapons at the U.S.  He bases this policy on the fear that the U.S. would be instrumental in reunifying Korea under the government in Seoul.  Meanwhile, China, North Korea's closest (only?) ally, doesn't want a reunified capitalist Korea threatening its interests.  What can be done beyond tighter sanctions against North Korea?

Okay, here's the solution.

Leave Kim Jong Un alone.

I mean it.  Send a signal to the North Korean leader that we have no intention of bothering him, and maybe he won't bother us.  If he does, even after we and the South Koreans act in good faith and show a purely defensive posture along the so-called demilitarized zone, maybe the Chinese can go into North Korea and replace him with another Communist leader - someone who won't cause so much trouble but maintain the status quo.

Defense Secretary James Mattis believes that we can still use diplomacy.  As long as we make it clear that we're not going to do anything that would instigate an armed conflict with North Korea, Kim may very well realize that, should he succeed in developing nuclear weapons, like the Chinese did in the 1960s, he would be better off keeping them as deterrents to aggression, and not actually, well, using them.

And if all else fails . . . we can always call Dennis Rodman.

Failure To Launch

Donald Trump is suddenly an internationalist.  He thinks the Chinese aren't so bad after all and the Russians aren't as cool as they seem.  I guess that proves it, the Russians had nothing to do with getting Trump into office - like, they were going to take a chance on promoting an irrational dude who just might turn against them?

It is in this milieu that the Trumpster decided to drop a Massive Ordnance Air Blast (MOAB) bomb on an Islamic State contingent in Afghanistan, which earned him condemnation from . . . the civilized world.  Even anti-Islamic State Afghans were appalled at this move, as it killed only a few dozen terror commandos while causing destruction that went beyond "mass."  It makes me wonder if Trump would use a bazooka to kill a mosquito.

And, as these guys will tell you, there's nothing more dangerous than a wounded mosquito.

If using a megabomb with an acronym that sounds like the name of a town in Utah was meant to scare North Korea into thinking twice about testing a missile that could carry a nuclear warhead, it didn't work.  Kim Jung Un had the missile fired anyway.  

Meanwhile, speaking of misfires, the Democrats - you knew this was coming - ran a Bernie Sanders liberal, James Thompson, in a special election for the U.S House seat in Kansas vacated by Mike Pompeo when he became CIA director, and Thompson lost . . . but he could have won, despite the fact that Kansas has been a solidly Republican state since the the then-Grand Young Party shepherded the state into the Union in 1861.  But the Democratic National Committee, either convinced that Thompson would be blown out of the water (and so it wasn't worth the effort to help him) or so embarrassed that a progressive somehow got the nomination that it didn't want to be associated with him, didn't give Thompson the extra money and support that could have put him over the top.   The Democrats are now planning to blow a similar special U.S. House election in Montana, where another Sanders liberal is running for an open seat as the Democratic nominee, by ignoring him as well.  They seem to be concentrating more on tomorrow's special U.S. House election in Georgia to replace now-Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price, where Democratic nominee Jon Ossoff is running in an open primary and could get 50 percent plus one and avoid a June runoff.  If he doesn't win a majority, though, he'll have to face a single Republican candidate in June instead of several, and then it will be even harder for him to get above 50 percent.

Uh, Dems?  You sure you thought out your special-election strategy well?

It looks like this misfire is going to bomb.

John Bolton Is A @#**! Idiot

No sooner than Bill Clinton return from North Korea triumphant in bringing home Laura Ling and Euna Lee than John Bolton urinated on his shoe. (I could say he rained on Clinton's parade, but this is a reactionary Republican we're talking about.)

Bolton, who served as Bush the Younger's United Nations ambassador in a recess appointment and amazingly alienated us from the rest of the planet even more than Bush had, complained that Clinton only legitimized North Korean leader Kim Jong Il by going to Pyongyang and pleading for Ling and Lee to be released and rewarded the practice of illegitimately arresting and detaining them in the first place, which was tantamount to hostage taking. Even worse, Bolton complained, Clinton negotiated with nothing to offer, putting himself in a position of weakness and making it easy for American journalists abroad to be captured. This sounds like an extreme rightist opinion, and it is, but the Newark (N.J.) Star-Ledger, which published Bolton's op-ed piece, even chided Clinton for allowing Kim to bully him the same way a Chicago ward boss would.

Neither the Star-Ledger nor Bolton seem to be concerned with the fact that the welfare of two women were involved, not nuclear weapons. As for Clinton legitimizing Kim, Kim doesn't need for the former President's help. He's already legitimized by having the fourth largest army - which could invade South Korea the day after tomorrow - in the world.

To think that Bolton was U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Having a xenophobe like Bolton in that position makes about as much sense as making Willie Sutton a prison warden.

I want to hear John Bolton pontificate on international diplomacy as much as I want to hear Michael Bolton sing.

Rescue Mission

Former President Bill Clinton's success in getting Asian-American journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee released from prison in North Korea with a full pardon from North Korean leader Kim Jong Il proved two important things to the world:

1) There's nothing Clinton can't do.

2) Kim Jong Il is still alive.

The Obama administration had been negotiating the release of Ling and Lee for weeks with the North Koreans, and Clinton intervened to close the sale. The White House sought to stay out of the final meetings between Clinton and the Communist government to avoid unnecessary interference on a sensitive matter. Dealing with Kim Jong Il under any circumstances is a tricky affair, so Obama, who makes the dough as President, is happy to let his Secretary of State's husband get the glory.

North Korea hopes to get good publicity with its act of good faith, but last time I checked, they still have a lot of nukes.

There's a bit of ironic symmetry to this story. It ended with Clinton's private diplomacy, but it began when Ling and Lee went to China on assignment for the cable channel run by Clinton's onetime second-in-command, Al Gore - before crossing into North Korea inadvertently. Crossing into unfriendly countries is a common habit of Americans these days.

Meanwhile, back in Washington, late word is that the cash-for-clunkers car program extension should make it through the Senate.

Nukes of the North

A week ago North Korea tested a nuclear weapon that sent shock waves in the ground and around the world. South Korea responded by joining the Proliferation Security Initiative, a U.S.-led effort to keep weapons of mass destruction from falling into the wrong hands, which led North Korea to vow to no longer honor the 1953 armistice ending the Korean War. This week . . . well, the crisis seems to be getting less attention, possibly because of GM's bankruptcy being such a big story. But it's still an issue. South Koreans got a little scared recently when a North Korean patrol boat briefly crossed into South Korean waters. North Korea has put two American journalists, Euna Lee and Laura Ling (Lisa Ling's sister) on trial, accusing them of espionage.

No one seriously believes that North Korea will start another war, and the consensus is that they're merely rattling their sabers in a show of force. But many are concerned with the possibility of their weapons falling into the hands of the wrong people (I'll come right out and say it - terrorists!), and Kim Jong Il, currently reported to be ill, remains impenetrable.

Meanwhile, the North Korean population is starving, and if the country gets in an even deep rut, everything there could collapse. And with nuclear weapons on top of that? If the peninsula ever does become one country again, it won't be as peaceful and seamless a reunification as happened in Germany.

Or even Vietnam.