Trump?

[Larry Hancock]

In order to shift this thread back towards a bit more relevance to the JFK assassination, lets consider the foreign relations and military side of the coin again.

Its not uncommon to hear the proposition that the goal of the assassination was to essentially "give the generals the war they wanted" in Vietnam.  You even see quotes attributed to Johnson in that regard.  Personally I've suggested that the war the generals (and admirals) wanted was really with Cuba...that was one they could win and win quickly.  I've also suggested reading some of the great studies that actually explore Johnson's terrible relationship over time with his Joint Chiefs and his rejection of many of the military requests on SE Asia.

But that aside, we do have a pretty clear picture of who was talking to Johnson, who was pushing him on Laos and Vietnam and the influence they had.  Given that history what can we predict about the military course to be followed by our new President. Its pretty clear from the campaign that there is no majority military view pushing him or at least one that he respects - his remarks on the military have been extremely dismissive and critical. However there is one voice that seems to influence him and that voice leads back to the neocon roots of our current conflict across SW Asia. The following article gives us some insight into the officer who might become the key influence on the new President....

http://www.cnn.com/2016/11/11/opinions/trumps-national-security-guru-general-flynn-bergen/index.html

So who really convinced LBJ to fully jump into the muck of SE Asia, was it a host of people, a few, or his own personal political desire to look hard nosed for the 64 election (as the Tonken Gulf incidents might suggest).

GWB swore there would be no nation building in Afghanistan or Iraq after 2001...he got his mind changed.  Trump has sworn against nation building...but will someone or some few of the same ilk change his mind as well?  In some ways Trump is very much like Johnson, does that give us any grip on projecting what Trump will do at yet another military tipping point?

 

[Ron Ecker]

Larry, any speculation as to what Trump might do militarily has to take into account that America is 20 trillion dollars in debt. How could we afford to fight another war, no matter the cause?

The only politician I recall pointing out that we can't afford another war anywhere was Ron Paul back in the 2012 Republican debates, and he was ignored like a pariah. As I recall, some of the other candidates just quietly chortled. I'm no economist, but there are those preaching a financial doomsday even without any war. 

Take Iran. Apparently Trump wants to tear up the Iran deal. So what's the alternative? Invade Iran? On whose dime?

 

 

Edited November 11, 2016 by Ron Ecker

[Larry Hancock]

Ron, the same applies to Trump's campaign promise to immediately end sequestration and dramatically expand all the branches of the service -if you look at his stated level of military spending...including building up the Navy, an immense increase in aircraft (without that many more personnel for those services) and a huge Army build up it looks much like Reagan - which I don't see that Putin would cheer.  So where is the money for that?  Personally I'm totally at sea how he plans to fund many of his promised actions - but to some extent The Great Society of Johnson and the war in SE Asia represented the same intrinsic conflict and Johnson ignored that.

So, your point is well taken but I'm afraid we don't have many good examples of restraint based on financial capability. Not to mention that if you look at the current supplemental budget for contingency military operations...meaning all the anti-jihadi warfare we are doing not, its huge all by itself.  Going beyond what we are doing now would be nothing less than full scale warfare with all its expense and risks. Which of course takes us back to Congress..

 

Edited November 11, 2016 by Larry Hancock

[Robert Prudhomme]

21 hours ago, Ron Ecker said:

Larry, any speculation as to what Trump might do militarily has to take into account that America is 20 trillion dollars in debt. How could we afford to fight another war, no matter the cause?

The only politician I recall pointing out that we can't afford another war anywhere was Ron Paul back in the 2012 Republican debates, and he was ignored like a pariah. As I recall, some of the other candidates just quietly chortled. I'm no economist, but there are those preaching a financial doomsday even without any war. 

Take Iran. Apparently Trump wants to tear up the Iran deal. So what's the alternative? Invade Iran? On whose dime?

 

 

"Deficits don't matter."    ~~ Dick Cheney ~~

[Ron Ecker]

5 minutes ago, Robert Prudhomme said:

"Deficits don't matter."    ~~ Dick Cheney ~~

Dick Cheney. Thanks for ruining my day.

 

 

[Robert Prudhomme]

[Larry Hancock]

Yep, pretty much....now I'm off to spread more sunshine and smiles...

[Cliff Varnell]

22 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

That might be so.  But I think that Trump and Putin want to stop the crazy PNAC stuff that is going on in the Middle East. 

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Trump and his allies want war with Iran.

[James DiEugenio]

As Ron mentions above, any war with anyone will be very close to creating another economic blowout. 

This country is not fully over the last one. It would be lil slighting  fuse to a time bomb.

Any president, even Trump, will be very much limited by that factor.

As per PNAC, and its goals, Trump essentially knocked out Jeb Bush when he accused him of destabilizing the Middle East. 

 

Edited November 11, 2016 by James DiEugenio

[Cliff Varnell]

On 11/9/2016 at 7:31 PM, Ron Ecker said:

The directors are under orders or pressure from higher up when they "get away" with something.

I don't buy it.

A career bureaucrat like James Comey has nothing to fear from politicians or political appointees.

James Comey is a Justice Department lifer -- around before Obama came in, and around after,

H.R. Haldeman's The Ends of Power describes a situation where a mid-level Justice Department official wanted to sue International Telephone and Telegraph for anti-trust.

Richard Nixon opposed the move,  Those ITT guys were friends and supporters of his.

ITT was sued by the Justice Department for anti-trust.

Career bureaucrats give a rat's ass who's friends with whom.

Quote

Take Comey, for example. Was he naïve enough to believe that his boss the AG meeting with Bill Clinton (ominously to talk about "grandchildren") while Hillary Clinton was under investigation was an innocent, ill-advised little get-together?

It was an ill-advised innocent get together.

That whole e-mail investigation was a railroad job.

 

Quote

It didn't take but a few days after that for him to conclude, after listing all her "extremely careless" misdeeds, that Hillary shouldn't be indicted. Whew! Comey could rest assured after that that he and his family including any grandchildren and any family pets were safe.

 

First of all, the "extremely careless" charge was directed at the entire State Department.

Hillary committed no mis-deeds.

Comey admitted under oath that any reasonable person would have concluded the material wasn't classified, as she did.

When Comey sent that letter to Congress about Huma's e-mails 11 days before the election he was committing a political assassination.

In a two party system what do you have when all one party does is launch witch-hunt investigations into the leaders of the opposition?

That's not democracy.

That's Fascism.

 

Edited November 11, 2016 by Cliff Varnell

[Cliff Varnell]

15 minutes ago, James DiEugenio said:

As Ron mentions above, any war with anyone will be very close to creating another economic blowout. 

This country is not fully over the last one. It would be lil slighting  fuse to a time bomb.

Any president, even Trump, will be very much limited by that factor.

As per PNAC, and its goals, Trump essentially knocked out Jeb Bush when he accused him of destabilizing the Middle East.

 

Trump lied about his support for the Iraq war and CNN/MSNBC/Fox let him get away with lying for a year and a half.

The people who want to tear up the Iran nuke deal want to go to war with Iran.

These people make money when the economy goes up, and they make money when it goes down.

They'll have no problem blowing up the economy with an attack on Iran.

[Cliff Varnell]

34 minutes ago, Robert Prudhomme said:

"Deficits don't matter."    ~~ Dick Cheney ~~

There is a difference between debt and deficits.

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2014/feb/27/debt-vs-deficit-whats-difference/

Ronald Reagan tripled the National Debt.

George W. Bush doubled the national debt.

The National Debt has no impact on economic growth or the ability to wage war.

 

 

[Douglas Caddy]

Posted by me on my Facebook page today:

Trump is fighting back against the rising mass demonstrations against his being inaugurated as president in January. The national police union endorsed his candidacy. The FBI helped rig his election. Now these pro-trump law enforcement entities are infiltrating the mass protest demontrations using paid skilled persons who purposely cause violence. This leads to arrests of innocents and ultimately to an attempt to ban all demonstrations. The process is called COINTELPRO and America has seen it before. The difference this time is that we are now entering stage one of a national police state under a Trump Adminstration.

 

COINTELPRO - Wikipedia

COINTELPRO (a portmanteau derived from COunter INTELligence PROgram) was a series of covert, and at times illegal,[1][2] projects conducted by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) aimed at surveilling, infiltrating, discrediting and disrupting domestic political organizations.[3]

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Cliff Varnell]

On 11/9/2016 at 11:55 PM, Paul Brancato said:

I think that Comey might have decided to go public because the NY office was leaking to Giuliani, and Comey may have decided to close ranks in order to preserve what he saw as the integrity of the FBI. Eventually the leaks became news too, but it had less impact than it would have. I don't mean to be whitewashing Comey's actions. He may have had a political agenda. But I'm presenting another possibility.

Comey could have found out in a matter of hours that none of those 650,000 e-mails were relevant.

Instead he committed treason.

[Cliff Varnell]

5 minutes ago, Douglas Caddy said:

Posted by me on my Facebook page today:

Trump is fighting back against the rising mass demonstrations against his being inaugurated as president in January. The national police union endorsed his candidacy. The FBI helped rig his election. Now these pro-trump law enforcement entities are infiltrating the mass protest demontrations using paid skilled persons who purposely cause violence. This leads to arrests of innocents and ultimately to an attempt to ban all demonstrations. The process is called COINTELPRO and America has seen it before. The difference this time is that we are now entering stage one of a national police state under a Trump Adminstration.

 

COINTELPRO - Wikipedia

COINTELPRO (a portmanteau derived from COunter INTELligence PROgram) was a series of covert, and at times illegal,[1][2] projects conducted by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) aimed at surveilling, infiltrating, discrediting and disrupting domestic political organizations.[3]

en.wikipedia.org

 

We have to overwhelm them with numbers.

Trump asked for this.

He said he wouldn't accept an election that wasn't fair.

If James Comey announced 11 days before the election to great fanfare that Trump's private e-mail was connected to a Russian financial institution -- Alfa Bank -- and then on election day he got 200,000+ more votes but lost the electoral college do you think he'd say the election was fair?

Edited November 11, 2016 by Cliff Varnell