We now live in a world where this headline is necessary
I like the fact that the qualifier "immediate" was added.
Trump has said several times since July that he could simply destroy Afghanistan if he wanted to. Most recently, Trump stated during his Aug. 26 meeting with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi that, "I've said we can win that war in a very short period of time, but I'm not looking to kill 10 million people, okay?"Although the president has insisted that he is not talking about a nuclear option for Afghanistan, it is unclear how else the U.S. military would be able to wipe out 10 million Afghans so quickly...
When Task & Purpose asked if the president is helping ongoing peace negotiations with the Taliban by repeatedly bringing up the possibility of killing millions of Afghans, Esper emphasized that the Trump administration is focused on reaching a political settlement with the Taliban that meets U.S. security needs.
Several times!?! I only heard about it once.
How many times did Trump want to nuke North Korea?
It makes me wonder what else Trump wants to nuke.
This is the same guy that Congressional Democrats couldn't give him spying powers and oversized military budgets fast enough.
Which brings us to the next headline.
Still, "let's blow up a hurricane with a nuke" is definitely a little bit farther down the "Actual Villain versus Cartoon Villain" scale than Trump is normally. What in the Pinky and the Brain hell is this? Am I microdosing? One week he's declaring himself King of Israel and everyone looks around awkwardly and double-checks the Wikipedia page for the Left Behind series; the next week he's like, "I'm going to straight up murder a windstorm." You gotta admit, he keeps you on your toes; but then again so does a hangman.
You've got to hand it to Trump.
Most cartoon villains don't try to control the weather until Season Two.
Trump is doing irrepairable damage to political satire in this country.
Remember when the vice president shooting a guy in the face was impossible to believe? Now we've got this.
Seriously. Where would one begin? What paradigm could we possibly make fun of that he himself hasn’t already exhausted? Because two of the most reliable elements of satire are irony and exaggeration, the Trump White House leaves us with no place to go. Think about that. How would one go about “exaggerating” Donald Trump? The man is already a walking, talking exaggeration. It would be like trying to “exaggerate” a circus clown.
Comments
Don't worry, Nancy is on it
She won't allow this to stand. How won't she? She's going to make a public statement stating so! In fact she already has. Besides, there's no reason to be concerned. Trump is self-impeaching himself every day. A thinking person could ask "what, exactly, does that mean?" Unfortunately those who are close enough to her to be able to ask the question won't ask it and those who are close enough to yell out the question will be treated to her famous "what? I can't hear you" as she turns disgustedly away from the riff-raff.
Nicely done
You summed up Nancy's plan very well. But behind the scenes the democrat rats are busy busy busy getting their ducks in a row and writing lots of things that will eventually get Trump to impeach himself. Any day now... no really...
Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.
Well, Democrats would have impeached him, except
that they remember what happened to the respective approval ratings of Clinton and Republicans when the Republican House impeached Clinton, but the Democratic Senate decided not to convict him of a perjury the entire world had witnessed him committing. And there was no issue of the unreliability of eyewitnesses because there was videotape.
Because, as you no doubt know, the Framers wrote impeachment into the Constitution with the approval ratings of politicians in mind, not the good of most Americans. And Pelosi, much like Scalia, always strives to remain faithful to the Original Intent of the Framers, as should we all.
So, the first thing Speaker Pelosi did when the House flipped in 2006 and 2018 was take impeachment of Shrub, then Trump, off the table. Hence, impeachment has now been de facto written out of the Constitution, much like the a number of provisions of the Bill of Rights.
Because electability of Democrats, even if they are not doing the job that Democratic voters expected them to do.
When I get X-Rays taken, the technician gives me orders, like "Turn to your right." I nonetheless sometimes start to turn to my left, whereupon the technician says, "Your other right." And those are our voting choices anymore: Your Right or Your Other Right.
I'd put it a bit differently
We live in a world in which the headline "we have no immediate plans to nuke Iran" is seen as no big deal, just business as usual.
I'm thinking back to the 1960s. If the news media had started talking about a possible nuclear attack - by anyone, against anyone, for any reason - the American people would be freaking out. With reason.
In the 1960s, we understood the consequences of deploying nuclear weapons. Nuclear winter, for instance. We still believed in attempting to resolve things via diplomacy.
Nowadays, no talking to foreign leaders is allowed, lest one be accused of treason or of being a puppet of said foreign leader. Just blast away, destroying everything in our way, displaying our glorious imperial might.
Nuke 'em! Nuke 'em! What could possibly go wrong?
"Don't go back to sleep ... Don't go back to sleep ... Don't go back to sleep."
~Rumi
"If you want revolution, be it."
~Caitlin Johnstone
Waiting for Hillary to burst forth from President Trump’s chest
like the monster in Alien.
https://www.globalresearch.ca/hillary-clinton-if-im-president-we-will-at...
Seems like no matter who you vote for, you get war and nuclear saber-rattling. Genuinely anti-war politicians like Ron Paul, Dennis Kucinich, or Mike Gravel, and now Tulsi Gabbard, are few and far between.
Edited to add:
This comment by wendy davis would seem to show that it’s wrong to think of Tulsi Gabbard as anti-war:
https://caucus99percent.com/comment/438973#comment-438973
Hillary has come out against using nukes
but apparently only for hurricanes. Dropping bombs on Wikileaks was okay with her, but it's a good idea that she knows where to draw the line.
Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.
Thank you Lotlizard
For digging that quote up. Curiously her nuclear threats never made headlines.
There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier
do i take it that you
disagree, then?
About Tulsi? It’s less a matter of my disagreeing with you
and more a matter of feeling disappointed in her, as the latest disappointment in a long line of disappointing Democrats I’ve supported at one point or other.
It’s like being “rick-rolled.” Oh, no, yet another one in Israel’s vest pocket? They’ll do it every time . . .
it's just that you'd noted:
...then had edited my comment, that's all. well then i won't expand on how 'anti-war' she is not, nor for whom she is not anti-war. ; )
peace to you and to all of us...when we can manage it.
Trump is an egotistical blowhard
And I suspect we are going to see a lot more headlines like this as we endure another interminable performance of electoral kabuki theater.
There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier
We've lived in that world since Hiroshima. The expression is
still "saber rattling," even though sabers long ago ceased to be our latest military technology.
Mutually Assured Destruction is supposed to be the deterrent, so we can all sleep well, right?
Sometimes, we forget how much of a tool of the establishment media is. If they unearth a story on their own or, more likely, via an anonymous whistle blower source, our "watchdog press" will hold back on it for a year or more, if an establishment Executive Branch asks nicely, using the "national security" Open Sesame password. Or the establishment can feed media a nonsense story and media will run with it, without asking intelligent questions.
So, when I read something like "Obama is considering nominating a Republican to the Supreme Court," shortly before he nominates DINO Gorsuch, I wonder, "Was the first story true, or was it intended to make us feel relieved, instead of angry, about Gorsuch?
Similarly, when I read that Trump may nuke Iran or North Korea or Afghanistan, I wonder if the story is intended to get the reaction of the US public, or scare us or scare the "deciders" of Iran, or North Korea or Afghanistan's Taliban.
That's the beauty of minion media. Americans never know what the hell is real. Indeed, didn't a CIA head once say as much? That the CIA will know that it has done its job when nothing Americans believe is real? I imagine the same is now true all over the world.
I have no explanation for threatening Mother Nature with nuclear warfare, but I'm not worried. After all, a mere figure of speech like "Mother Nature" can't take revenge, so what could possibly go wrong? /s
Afghanistan is about the size of Washington, Oregon and Idaho
So that would require a lot of nuclear weapons. Also, because the country has lots of mountains, guerrilla fighters could hide out there. We could wipe out their major cities, but that would destroy the infrastructure. Who would do better controlling a country without an infrastructure, US or the locals?
Then there's the problem with throwing up so much stuff into the atmosphere which would cut down the amount of sunlight, thus triggering a global cooling.
Plus, there's the problem with selling radioactive opium around the world.
There are a lot of things to consider before nuking Afghanistan. I think the Trump administration should go back to contemplating nuking hurricanes.
I doubt Trump is aware of a world
Where people don't live in over priced apartments with no fire sprinklers.
" In the beginning, the universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry, and is generally considered to have been a bad move. -- Douglas Adams, The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy "
Too bad the links died.
Or were you trying to cut down on the strokes evoked by reading such genocidally insane comments? Coming from the U.S. "Defense" Secretary, yet.
I've been expecting him to invade the Bahamas for years now. n/t
"Obama promised transparency, but Assange is the one who brought it."