This story has appeared in two or three books, but never the exchange that led up to it.

Check out the whole article. It put a chill down my spine...

I loved the description of Pence as “a wax museum guy.”

Pure projection.

will openly and vociferously stand up to this moron and his outrageous ignorance.

What the hell?

Employees.

Could have something to do with it.

I'll inform the press.

he's an evil crooked mf'er please read Rachel's book "Blowout"

As the CEO of Exxon he cozied up to brutal dictators, abetted human rights abuses across the globe, funded climate change denialists, and aggressively pushed to open up some of the world’s last pristine places to oil and gas extraction, but it took stupid trump for him to get pissed off at what he was hearing ?

risking your life and not getting hugely paid for it.

Might have trouble sleeping the rest of your life. There is only so much Trump insanity overload one can handle.

Are they that afraid of dear leader? Why didn't someone who hasn't abused others for profit stand up and leave or just say no?

I am continually amazed at how wimpy and willing to be abused by their boss people in power are.

Why did that woman cry? She should have stood up, screamed NO and walked out. What a bunch of whimps these senior executives and military leaders are.

But as a Naval Officer, I've seen men who would climb into a burning portal to put out a fire let men, who never risked their own lives, lecture them on heroism. I just never understood it.

I have a bad habit of always talking back when cowards lecture me.

book sales. First these guys, then Bolton, then who-knows-who.

A book. How does it take years for this information to get to the public, is the issue. And you know it.

Does "wtf" justify your accusing me of "blaming"?

You dare make this about me instead of the issue of information release?

If the spirit of my post is to criticize the time lag of information getting to the public, and you can't explain something to me, don't make it about me.

so if you didn't mean it that way, I'll chill.

That's all I meant.

The occasion of a pattern of politicos or journalists' leakage of context, for profit, and at the disadvantage of the body politic -- meaning me, you, and anyone on DU -- should be as dismaying as exciting when the information finally gets out.

It's bad enough that the NSA has a weekly sitdown with NYT publisher/editors to "manage" what gets reported.

Add to that the control and outright freezing out of information -- that Congress is constitutionally entitled to by a sleazy presidential and DOJ team -- and a precarious distrust results everywhere in and out of the beltway.

Jefferson said that The People will make the right decisions when they get the whole truth.

How we get to know the contexts of what's going on in this administration isn't helped by the publishing of books after the fact. It only weakens the body politic's desire to trust govt or media.

That is still my point.

There's a reason they won Pulitzers. Both are dedicated journalists and have been doing excellent work in covering the Trump WH.

Of course, there are BAD journalists (Cillizza, Ken Vogel, John Solomon) which should be called out as such.

But, without people like Rucker, Leonnig, Maddow, we'd be in the dark about the Trump admin.

the body politic.

As we don't appreciate all the Medal of Freedom recipients, we truly should expect more from our journalists than two year-old information that could have increased Americans' knowledge at that time.

I distrust journalists who decide when we know what they know. It's the calculating, manipulating stuff of profiteers. Information in politics should not be commodified.

I won't support such journalism. They can report context in timely ways, when it comes to politics, then later do their compiling to help keep historians straight.

is venal and self-serving. JMHO. Bolton is scum.

On any other topic, it's just the titillation business.

When it's about the nation's business, it's cheap disdain for, and bad faith manipulation of, the body politic.

Preferably he or she has served in the military.
or
Husband or wife. Son or daughter.
or
Father or mother
or
Grandfather or grandmother

As to the mercenary point. Here is what I said a few days ago about mercenaries.

The entire post here: https://www.democraticunderground.com/100212876538

The summary below.
If they are going to make mercenaries out of our young men and women. PAY THEM merc's money.

According to CNN, private military contractors' salaries range from $500 per day and $720 per day. For the US army, pay depends on rank and experience. The higher the rank, the more responsibilities you have and the corresponding pay. A private, doing advanced training pockets $1,468 per month.Apr 5, 2019

Do you think the Bushes were better as far as wars than Clinton or Obama?

POTUS's skin was so maddening to millions of what are now called Trumpers. Trump cultists is a more accurate description. The cultist that are his base and help get him elected in 2016 and will try a repeat in 2020. With of course Russian's interference.

So now we have this idiot who sees the whole world as his personal marketplace where he can enrich himself because he is entitled to.

Maybe you are right I should have said: "I will never choose a businessman over a person with a personal military connection AS MY FIRST CHOICE for POTUS."

than their countries' interests.

Erik Prince's model should never be scaled. Yet that's what this president wants, without appropriate higher pay for our all volunteer force, that never signed up with mercenary intent. Paying troops to be loyal to other countries' or corporations' interests should never create a conflict in their loyalty to their country's safety. Their country's safety should never be exploited or compromised. That doesn't mean they shouldn't get paid more.

"Trump’s impulsive ideas stemmed from his lack of familiarity with U.S. history
and even where countries were located."

Never again.

by the intelligence or military services?

I just don't get it. This fucking idiot, puffed out Mandarin Mussolini is going to be told to *go on his way* by the retrumplicans - to a one - and, once again, he is not going to face any consequences, not ONE, for what he's responsible for here, for what he's ordered. This is playing out in the news cycles in plain sight, and dear god, there's absolutely not a fucking thing anyone can do about it. The retrumplicans, ordered by McConnell, are going to all fall in line because they can envision those courts being packed with fundy ideologues (never mind the fact that most of them couldn't pass a bar exam on their own without crib notes stapled to their foreheads and asses). All they can see is SCOTUS seats and the sundown of laws that have benefited the middle, working classes, the sick, the elderly, and the poor. Women are going to be rendered nothing but chattel in retrumlpican America (gotta give all the jobs to the menfolks, doncha know, even if they're jobs they don't want or aren't qualified to hold; you run along little ladies, just spread your legs wide for us and make sure the supper is on the table by six). Good bye forever to Social Security, Medicare and the ACA. Get used to making plans to take care of your aged parents, uncles, aunts, brothers and sisters, even if it means retrofitting the outhouse on the back forty to put a "roof" over their heads. Never mind how you're all going to be able feed them and keep shoes on their feet.

Fuck this goddamned infernally stupid, stupid country who put these modern era Robber Barons in office, presided over by PT Barnum's slow-witted great nephew, and Moscow-Machiavelli-McConnell. God dam them all. I'm sick of this shit. Sick to the bottom of my heart and soul.

I guess it's a good thing that the planet is going to burn up sooner than later. The world is going to cease being a hospitable place in which to dwell. Might as well get it over with as soon as possible and put the sentient and the suffering out of their collective misery.

The f-ing moron, because I already knew he was completely odious and amoral...

Or every flag officer, active duty or retired, in that room who did not immediately resign and report to the American public that this man views the blood of our sons and daughters who have volunteered to protect us as nothing more than a means for profit.

Seriously... this happened years ago and we are only now learning about it? (Beyond the f-ing moron part, that is)

too about the situation we are in. Many people could have caused him to be removed already.... but... crickets....

I think it would have. Some one needed to slap Trump in the face. They could have done it together. But they didn't.

Since July 2019 most of the Joint Chiefs have been replaced. But they left one at a time.

When the "impeachment" is over, fasten your safety belts. It's going to be a bumpy ride. . . .

He has a thin veneer of polish & civility but make no mistake about the kind of man he really is. Frum should know better. Anyone looking for good guys in this crowd is wasting their time.

The boys in power stick together, no matter what. They have no intention of relinquishing (or sharing) even an inch of their grip on power. That's one reason why promote someone like Trump—anything goes to stay in control.

tRump soon realized it would never fly, so, just like the way he's outsourced the State Department to Rudy Colludey, he's trying to run a shadow military for profit!

Last edited Fri Jan 17, 2020, 02:37 PM - Edit history (1)

He can't understand higher motives because he's not even aware that they exist, much less that others embrace them.

“One of the things Ford Prefect had always found hardest to understand about humans was their habit of continually stating and repeating the very very obvious, as in It's a nice day, or You're very tall, or Oh dear he's a fucking moron. At first Ford had formed a theory to account for this strange behaviour. If human beings don't keep exercising their lips, he thought, their mouths probably seize up. After a few months' consideration and observation he abandoned this theory in favour of a new one. If they don't keep on exercising their lips, he thought, their brains start working.”

and tell it like it is? Silence indicates complicity

longer the highly significant revelation about Trump that it would have been when Tillerson was still Secretary or when he resigned.
When Trump is acquitted, it will be on the heads of journalists like Rucker who consistently normalize Trump by turning his ravings and lies into coherent narratives and then let his enabling Republicans get away with incessant Trump coverups and violations of the oaths of office.

Oh, yeah.



Hitler: "The generals are no more than a bunch of disloyal cowards. Cowards, traitors, and incompetents! The generals are the scum of the German people! No sense of honor. You call yourself general because you spent years at the academy, where you only learned to use a knife and fork... I never went to any academy. But I conquered Europe all on my own!"

On edit: Hitler never became much of a leader in the army. But at least he did serve.

THAT IS WHAT I THOUGHT OF!

Hitler received some medals/honors in WWl

https://sites.google.com/site/adolfhitlerspoliticalevolution/medals-received-in-ww1

Black Wound Badge

1918

Last edited Sat Jan 18, 2020, 02:15 AM - Edit history (1)

Cadet Bone Spurs got a Neatness and Order Medal in his military school.

Actually, Donald did get a Purple Heart...

Last edited Sat Jan 18, 2020, 04:55 AM - Edit history (1)

Trump out? How pathetic, how can anyone call him bulldog. Just like in the photo of Pelosi giving Trump a dressing down, all the military men sat there with their heads hung down. Pathetic men of honor!