More Hard Evidence The Trump Administration Is Batshit Crazy: They're Planning A Strike On North Korea

Michelle Goldberg's column in the New York Times concerning the reasons that Victor Cha backed out of serving as U.S. Ambassador to South Korea, ought to scare the Bejeezus out of any sentient person. See e.g.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/30/opinion/trump-boring-warmongering-sotu.html

Ms. Goldberg picked up the account of Cha's backing out from a piece in The Financial Times.  As reported therein, Mr. Cha backed out after being asked if he could "manage the evacuation of Americans" from Seoul and surroundings after an American preemptive attack to "give Kim Jong un a bloody nose".  The account adding:

"The move comes as the Pentagon prepares for a possible order from Mr. Trump to launch military action at North Korea aimed at convincing Pyongyang dictator Kim Jong Un  to abandon his nuclear weapon program."

Yes, you read that correctly. These deranged imbeciles are actually contemplating a preemptive strike on the North that would literally unleash hell, not just on South Koreans but the entire surrounding region - and possibly expand to a global thermonuclear war.  That is the measure of fucktard  in this misbegotten administration we are now saddled with.  According to the FT the two hard liners itching for the strike are H.R. McMaster (national security adviser ) and Chuck Pompeo, CIA Director.

Even Gen. Jim Mattis, generally known as the cautionary adult was quoted by the FT as saying:

"There is little reason for optimism."

According to Ms. Goldberg in her own piece:

"According to The Washington Post, the nomination of Victor D. Cha, a hawkish veteran of the George W. Bush administration, was very close to being sent to the Senate, but was derailed when Cha privately expressed reservations about a preventive American strike on North Korea.  The Financial Times reported that Cha was asked if he was “prepared to help manage the evacuation of American citizens from South Korea,” which would be necessary in the event of an American bombing. This is terrifying, because it suggests that Trump is serious about starting a war."

Adding:

"Cha himself seems frightened; just before the State of the Union started, he published an op-ed in The Washington Post arguing against a preventive attack. Apparently assuming that some readers would be indifferent to millions of potential Korean deaths, Cha emphasized that many Americans would also die in a military confrontation."

Let's be clear no actual "warhead" ready North Korean ICBM could reach the U.S. presently.  The primary impediment to  N. K. ICBM deployment is the design of a re-entry vehicle capable of withstanding the fall through the atmosphere as the warhead zeroes in on the target.  This is a formidable challenge, make no mistake.  It defines the difference between lobbing a giant missile with no 'boom' across continents, and lobbing one with a nuclear punch. 

By comparison  - and for reference - the warhead of the 1960s' era Atlas D was originally paired to a  re-entry vehicle (RV) with a W49 thermonuclear weapon, for a combined weight 3,700 lb (1,680 kg) and yield of 1.44 megatons (Mt). The W-49 was later placed in a higher ablative RV, for a combined weight 2,420 lb (1,100 kg) The maximum explosive yield delivered with these later designs was 3.75 megatons. The North's capabilities are nowhere near this. 

According to  Physics Today (April issue last year) the North's existing weapons would deliver a yield of roughly 0.08 kt/ kilogram. That is the yield per actual bomb mass.  This means they’d need to be able to launch or carry (via plane) at least 100 kg of bomb mass to get an 8 kiloton A -blast, or 200 kg to get a 16 kt yield.   These magnitudes are roughly on the scale of the Hiroshima blast.

Despite its nuclear limitations - and make no mistake they are not giving them up, after seeing "regime change" with Iraq in 2003 -  the North could wreak havoc on Seoul, South Korea. Even one or two bombers lifting an 8 kt bomb has the potential to obliterate over 20 million people as well as all U.S. troops stationed in S. Korea.   And we aren't even yet considering the 10,000 odd artillery pieces facing the Demilitarized zone. Each of these loaded with chemical and biological weapons.

Interviewed last April,  and asked if Trump would actually attack North Korea, former CIA North Korean analyst Sue Mi Terry responded:

 “I can’t see him following through on this and that is the problem with the brinksmanship policy. Because you’re putting yourself in a bind. You will either have to back down and lose credibility or you are stuck on a ledge with a military option which is very, very risky.

 North Korea is not Syria. It’s not Afghanistan. It’s going to have very devastating consequences.  North Korea will retaliate to any kind of military option. They will retaliate against South Korea given seventy percent of its ground forces are deployed within 100 kilometers (60 miles) of the DMZ.  And there’s twenty thousand U.S. military in South Korea and twenty million people in Seoul”

Clearly, despite that, the military know nothings in the Trump White House believe they can get away with a decapitation strike. Which again, proved they are all stark raving mad.  Just like Gen. Curtis LeMay  in the Kennedy era, e.g. with the Cuban Missile crisis,  who really believed a "pre-emptive strike" could be managed with no further risk of conflagration. 

Then we had JFK with the brains and balls to face down these knuckle dragger hawks. Now we have only an overgrown 71 year- old toddler with anger issues and an ego the size of the planet.    If there is a preemptive strike, my bet is that Dotard will launch it when the first charges from special prosecutor Robert Mueller come down.

If he is going to go down he will want to take the whole country, hell - the whole world - with him.

Trump Another JFK? - Total Delusionary Balderdash

Seems some addle-pated conservo bloggers with too much time on their hands have taken the fake news idiom even further - to fake history. That is, actually trying to argue (presumably with straight face) that Donald J. Trump and John F. Kennedy are both cut from the same cloth. Not bloody likely!

Let's start with some basics: namely the god-forsaken tax cuts just passed by the Repukes which will gut the poor and middle classes (taxes set to increase by 2025, and ACA repealed - tossing 13 m off healthcare) and amount to a ransom paid to the GOP donor class (e.g. the Koch brothers). In other words, these tax cuts are supply side bunkum on steroids.

JFK at NO time supported "supply side" tax cuts, because technically these did not even exist until Arthur Laffer (with his "Laffer curve") invented it ca. 1974 on a napkin.   Laffer's curve  (below)became the basis of Reagan's tax cuts and the whole supply side definition which meant cutting taxes more for the wealthy than the lower or middle class to enable "trickle down" effects.



Laffer argued that higher tax rates on the rich would only cause them to work fewer hours, or if REALLY rich, invest in fewer projects, enterprises, hence create fewer jobs.

Thus was born "voodoo economics" or supply side theory as it has come to be known. Now it's more rightly called "trickle down" because the crumbs from the richest are forecast to fall on our respective tables to enrich us too. Well up to a point! A meager one in the case of this latest GOP iteration. (By way of comparison, the middle class tax cuts in 2009, as part of the Obama stimulus package, were 5 times greater for those earning less than $75, 000 than Dotard's "greatest cuts" deliver now.)

In their examination of supply side tax cuts,  authors James Medoff and Andrew Harless in The Indebted Society, 1995, found, p. 23:

"For the health of the economy, Reagan's policies turned out to be just about the worst thing that could have happened: investment did not increase, growth continued to stagnate, and the federal deficit ballooned to new dimensions....In 1981, the year Reagan took office, the public debt was 26.5 % of the gross domestic product (GDP)....In 1993, the year that Bush left office, the public debt was a staggering 51.9 percent of the GDP."  

In contrast JFK's tax cuts were 180 degrees from supply side or trickle down. Why? Because  JFK's tax cuts were overly weighted (by 60%) to the working and middle classes while Trump's are weighted (according to recent scoring) by 83 percent to the top one percent.  In  addition, JFK only advocated lowering the top tax rate to 65 % from 91 %. And note that 65 % is still 63 percent higher than the top rate today.

Seldom mentioned in conjunction with JFK's tax cut proposals were the other aspects he had in mind, including:

-the elimination of all tax breaks set up in the form of foreign investment operations or companies

- the repeal of all tax advantages by corporations operating in low tax countries, such as Switzerland

- the repeal of the 100% charitable contribution write-off by the wealthy

- Withholding tax on the investments, dividends and capital of the wealthy to ensure revenues could not be lost by too many shelters or at the 'end point'.

- Tax on investment dividends so that all those earning in excess of $180 k would pay a much higher rate.

-Devices that would prevent 'high bracket taxpayers' from concealing income from 'personal holding companies'.

(Source: 'Battling Wall Street - The Kennedy Presidency', by Donald Gibson, Sheridan Square Press, 1994, pp. 22-23)

Don't take my word for it, just consult the published accounts in the  financial press at the time, to see how they actually felt about JFK's proposed policies and initiatives. One of these, which appeared in Fortune accused him of an attempt to "manipulate the tax level against the business cycle". ('Activism in the White House', June, 1961, p. 117). Two years later, Fortune implored Congress to stop JFK from using tax policy "as instruments to manage the economy". ('The Dream Businessmen Are Losing', Sept. 1963, p. 91).

These aren't just fiction, but historical records of the press of the JFK era and what THEY actually thought of his tax proposals. They are available to anyone with the diligence to seek them out.

Along the same lines, the "central organ of finance capital" - The Wall Street Journal, launched various articles and diatribes accusing JFK of being a "statist" and other things. Some of those articles include:

- 8/6/62 'No Cause for Celebration'; p. 6;

- 3/26/63 'Too Much Money, Too Little Thought', p. 18;

- 8/15/63 'When Friends Become Foes', p. 8

Meanwhile, Henry Hazlitt, contributing editor at Newsweek (The Washington Post's sister publication) was airing many of the same complaints against JFK. These polemics, appearing regularly in Hazlitt's 'Business Tides', included taking JFK to task for his tax policies - including the proposed tax on U.S. business earnings abroad while he also chastised Kennedy for "welfare spending".

Do you think Donnie Dotard would ever be accused of "welfare spending"? Give me a break!

Other Differences:

JFK, like my dad, served in the Pacific Theater in WW II and actually helped save a number of his men. Trump, by contrast, used "bone spurs" to evade military service five times.  (He did spend some time at a New York Military Academy, basically because his parents couldn't keep control of him., after being notified he was testing switch blades on alley cats in Queens.)

Further, there is the handling of nuclear tensions - where one can compare Trump's unhinged "fire and fury" response to Kim Jong Un to Kennedy's vis-à-vis Castro and Cuba in October, 1962.   JFK's impulse control was tested most severely when the Joint Chiefs, especially Gen. Curtis Lemay, implored him to invade and bomb Cuba.  A move that would have triggered a release of at least 93 IRBMs and initiated a nuclear exchange. Kennedy refused.

Would Trump have done the same? I doubt it. This is the asshole who asked during the campaign last year "If we have nuclear weapons why can't we use 'em?"  DOH!  Trump also displayed no rational control in his over the top engaging with Kim, only succeeding in making matters worse. Kennedy would never have acted like such a goddamned spoiled, imperious,  impetuous braggart and clueless numbskull narcissist - risking 25 million lives in Seoul as he tweeted like a troll.

Psychologist (Bill Eddy) has noted Trump's inherent instability and fractious nature makes him a “more dangerous politician  than Adolf Hitler”.  In other words, unlike with JFK, we can only assume Trump will make exactly the opposite decision in a nuclear game of high stakes poker.  Little wonder that even Trump toady Lindsey Graham estimated a probability of 30 percent for a nuclear war with North Koreas next year.

Additionally, Kennedy was vastly more equipped to deal with a complex, multi-threat world. He read profusely, up to twenty complete newspapers a day. In addition, he read books - whole books - not comics like Trump, or National Enquirer gossip pieces.  JFK could do this because he read at a rate exceeding 1200 words per minute. This compares to Trump's 50 words per minute, which is why he must stick to tweets.

JFK also  held full news conferences, more than any other president where he took on the press, media openly and ably. His vocabulary and wit never failed to astound the gathered press corps. Trump has yet to call a major press conference in the past 6 months, and if he did is unlikely to say anything more than "Yeah that there idea sounds good".

The extent of Trump's  vocabulary runs to about 200 words, as captured by his twaddle-filled tweets.  His own (rare) "press conferences" are more exercises in egotistic doggerel, aimless, unfocused  babble, and attacks on imagined enemies. More akin to what we'd expect from  a dyspeptic five year old, also suffering from colic.

Don't take my word. See JFK's press conferences  below

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twL2wzOf1c4

And compare them to this one of Trump's, e.g.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAkumy7_Pbc

In particular, note the respect conveyed to the press by JFK, and the boundless wit and intelligence with which he delivers his responses, compared to Trump's petulant, self-absorbed and accusatory exhibition .

I'd say 'case closed' on the batshit crazy notion Trump is a  latter day version of JFK. "Disruptor"? Don't make me laugh! If you are going to disrupt you have to do it in the context of the nation's betterment, not its cynical destruction - especially when you only govern for 30 percent of the country - the dolts that voted for you.