Midnight Meme Of The Day!

-by Noah

In precipitating the freeing of ISIS prisoners and their families, President Trump has given the entire world as clear of a picture into his utterly insane mind as he ever has. I've always said that Trump is clearly the president who hates all living things. At no time has this been more evident. Trump is a psychopathic death worshiper. That is a fact that way too many people continue and continue to tiptoe around. Too many people refuse to speak the obvious truth. They call him things like "inept" or "in over his head" as if those were excuses when, in fact, they are cover. He knows exactly what he is doing. Thanks to Trump and those who protect him, innumerable ISIS terrorists are once again free to roam about the world to murder as many people as they possibly can. Trump has willfully and, no doubt gleefully, turned them loose from their cages. You can all but hear the cackling laughter coming from the White House, and not just from the oval office.

All murders committed by ISIS in future years, whether abroad or right here in the United States, will be as a result of Donald Trump's psychotic actions in this matter. Make no mistake, Trump owns those future deaths. He, his family, and his team of sickos will be happy to do so. All politicians who continue to not call for and vote for Trump's removal will also own those deaths. The Republicans are so far gone that they don't even see a glimmer of irony in calling themselves a pro-life party. There is extra sadness in the fact that they are proud to protect him, just as Republican voters are proud to have voted for Trump and gotten exactly what they voted for. This is what Republicans are. With Republicans, as you can see by their policies and statements, it's always about causing as much human misery as possible. It isn't just the nutjob at the top.

Tough shit if you think I'm being too harsh. The plain, simple fact is, Trump and his henchmen deserve a lot more than just removal. They should be placed in cages for the rest of their lives for the sake of the security of the world. I suggest that we place them into the same cages that were, until recently, used to house the now free ISIS members. Then, one by one or two by two, or whatever, we should place any recaptured ISIS terrorists in the same cages with them. It's horrid enough that we have let crimes against humanity go unpunished before. Let the punishment fit the crime for once. This is my dream, a pipe dream I suppose, but, a dream of justice.

Now think of this: Trump and his supporters plot for and cheer for placing innocent children in cages while supporting freedom for terrorists. If you want an en example of what it means to be a psychopath, you needn't look any further. There is no reasoning with such people, not in Washington and not at the upcoming Thanksgiving dinner table. In a properly run society, there is only trial and punishment delivered in accordance with the nature of involvement in the crime against humanity. Or, if leniency is required, humane commitment to asylums belongs in the discussion. And don't go telling me there isn't enough room. We have a private prison system that would love to expand and branch out. Either our society demands accountability or it doesn't. So far, it doesn't. Sad.

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

Or, to put it another way: "I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot someone and..."

Make no mistake about it, both houses of Congress have more than enough evidence of Trump's corruption, obstruction of justice, and, perhaps most importantly, abuse of power, to vote for impeachment, conviction, and removal from office. They have had enough evidence for months. More recently, they could have assembled and voted him out as soon as the news of the Ukraine phone call became public. And yet, as I always say, Washington takes care of its own. Even the freeing of the ISIS 10,000 and the betrayal of the Kurds has not moved the House and Senate to do the right thing for America and the world. They could have done so as I write this (Saturday the October 12th) or they could have done it 10 minutes ago. Instead, the House and Senate have chosen to join in the multiple betrayals rather than remove Trump from the White House. They have taken the accomplice route.

Trump has earned incarceration. So have his enablers and accomplices. All of them.

Trump Just Ordered All U.S. Troops Out Of Syria (Again)-- Lindsey Graham Has A Breakdown... Is This Withdrawal Good Or Bad Or Just Too Complicated For Trump To Be Involved With?

Having served their purpose, the Kurds are being fucked-over by the U.S. once again. Lindsey Graham knows how to reach Trump when he doesn't pick up his phone-- you just call in to Fox & Friends instead (above). And there's always the ole tweet machine:

On Saturday, Reese Erlich, currently reporting from Turkey, explained what Turkey is up to in Northern Syria. Maybe Lindsey should have paid attention so Trump's decision wouldn't have surprised him as much. Turkey has its own agenda there and isn't following ours-- which is exactly what, anyway?

This morning Trump ordered U.S. forces to start withdrawing from the Turkish-Syrian border region, which is what caused Graham's flip out. The Washington Post called it "the clearest sign yet that the Trump administration was washing its hands of an explosive situation between the Turkish military and U.S.-allied Kurdish fighters... Trump, in a series of Twitter messages Monday, suggested that the United States was shouldering too much of the burden-- and the cost-- of fighting the Islamic State. He rebuked European nations for not repatriating citizens who had joined the extremist group, claiming that the United States was being played for a 'sucker.' And he chided his own Kurdish allies, who he said were 'paid massive amounts of money and equipment' to fight the militants."

The withdrawal followed a late Sunday statement by the White House that the United States would not intervene in a long-threatened Turkish offensive into northern Syria. The announcement, which signaled an abrupt end to a months-long American effort to broker peace between two important allies, came after a call between Trump and Turkish President Recap Tayyip Erdogan.

Erdogan said in a speech Monday that the withdrawal began soon after their phone call.

A U.S. official confirmed to the Washington Post that American troops left observation posts in the border villages of Tel Abyad and Ras al-Ayn at 6:30 a.m. local time.

The fast-moving developments threatened a fresh military conflagration in a large swath of northern Syria, stretching from east of the Euphrates River to the border with Iraq. Syrian Kurds had established an autonomous zone in the area during more than eight years of Syria’s civil war.

Ankara, however, has been increasingly unnerved by the Kurdish presence, and by the close ties between U.S.-allied Syrian Kurdish fighters and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, a militant group that has fought a long insurgency against the Turkish state.

For months, Erdogan has been threatening an imminent invasion, as Trump administration officials attempted to work out an accommodation that would satisfy Turkish demands for border security while providing a measure of protection for the U.S.-allied Syrian-Kurdish force.

But on Sunday, the United States appeared to throw up its hands. White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham said the Turkish leader would “soon be moving forward” with dispatching troops to battle the Kurdish forces, known as the Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF. Ankara views the group as a terrorist-linked entity, but the SDF has fought closely alongside the U.S. military as a primary partner against the Islamic State.

“The United States armed forces will not support or be involved in the operation, and United States forces, having defeated the ISIS territorial ‘caliphate,’ will no longer be in the immediate area,” Grisham said in a statement. ISIS is another name for the Islamic State, the militant group whose rise drew the U.S. military into Syria.

The SDF, in a statement critical of the United States, said the American troops have begun pulling out.

“The United States forces have not fulfilled their obligations and withdrew their forces from the border area with Turkey,” the statement said. “This Turkish military operation in north and east Syria will have a big negative impact on our war against Daesh and will destroy all stability that was reached in the last few years.” Daesh is an Arabic acronym for the Islamic State.

It added that the group reserves the right to defend itself against Turkish aggression.

Erdogan, who has portrayed a Turkish incursion as necessary to protect his country’s borders, has spoken in recent weeks of resettling millions of Syrian refugees in Turkey in a “safe zone” in northern Syria, a plan that has been criticized by refugee advocates as well as local Syrian Kurds who could be displaced by such a proposal.

On Saturday, Erdogan said the invasion, dubbed Operation Peace Fountain, could begin “as soon as today or maybe tomorrow.”

U.S. officials depicted the impending offensive, and the U.S. troop withdrawal, as a dramatic turn after their prolonged attempt to hammer out an arrangement that would allay the Turks’ concerns about Syrian Kurdish forces close to their border, while also averting a battle they fear will be bloody for Kurdish fighters whom the Pentagon sees as stalwart allies.

Military officials point out that Kurdish assistance is still required to avoid a return of the Islamic State in Syria and to guard facilities where Islamic State militants and their families are being held.

A senior U.S. official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an evolving situation, said the U.S. government “has no idea” what the Turkish operation would look like, whether it would be a small, symbolic incursion or a major offensive intended to push as far as 25 miles into Syria.

U.S. officials said an operation deep into Syria could further jeopardize the security of prisons holding Islamic State fighters. “There are many potential disastrous outcomes to this,” the official said.

The White House announcement comes only two days after the Pentagon completed its most recent joint patrol with Turkish forces, a central element of the U.S. effort to build trust in northern Syria. But similar patrols and other measures overseen from a joint U.S.-Turkish military hub in southern Turkey have not reduced Ankara’s impatience to establish the buffer zone it has envisioned.

Speaking to reporters on Friday, Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper described ongoing U.S.-Turkish cooperation in northern Syria, saying that his Turkish counterpart had agreed in a call last week “that we need to make the security mechanism work.”

In negotiations, the United States had said it would agree to a strip along the border to be cleared of Syrian Kurdish fighters and jointly patrolled by the United States and Turkey on the ground and in the air. That strip is about five miles wide, only about a quarter of what the Turks have demanded.

The joint patrols are taking place in only about a third of the border length, with the idea of gradually expanding them. In addition to not liking U.S. terms for the agreement, Erdogan believes the United States is dragging its feet in implementing it.

“Mr. Trump gave the order; he ordered to pull out. But this came late,” Erdogan told reporters in Ankara on Monday. “We cannot accept the threats of terrorist organizations.”

Erdogan’s plan to send up to 3 million Syrian refugees into the 140-mile-long strip also runs counter to what the United States says was part of the agreement they had reached to allow only the 700,000 to 800,000 refugees who originally fled the area to resettle there. Turkey currently hosts more than 3.6 million Syrian refugees, but the government has recently begun deporting hundreds back to Syria as public sentiment turns against the migrants.

She should have said #ErdoganIsNotOurFriend-- Turkey is

Ibrahim Kalin, a spokesman for Erdogan, wrote on Twitter that Turkey has no interest in occupying or changing the demographics in northeastern Syria and that the “safe zone” would serve two purposes: secure Turkey’s borders and allow refugees to return home. [By allow he means "force."]

After months of warning about the turmoil such a move could create, U.S. officials said they are now watching Turkey’s actions closely to inform their own decisions about how quickly they must move the hundreds of troops expected to be affected.

“We're going to get out of the way,” another U.S. official said.

There are about 1,000 U.S. troops in northeastern Syria.

The SDF also predicted that Islamic State fighters would break out of prison camps the SDF manages in different areas of Syria.

The potential for greater risk to Islamic State prisons and camps comes after months of unsuccessful efforts by the Trump administration to persuade countries in Europe and elsewhere to repatriate their citizens.

The White House statement said that “Turkey will now be responsible for all ISIS fighters” in that area. “The United States will not hold them for what could be many years and great cost to the United States taxpayer,” Grisham said.

Erdogan said Monday that Turkey has “an approach to this issue” of ISIS, without specifying what it was.

The United Nations is also concerned about the impact that any Turkish operation would have on the protection of civilians in northeastern Syria, Panos Moumtzis, U.N. regional humanitarian coordinator for Syria, said in a telephone interview.

“We want our message to all governments and actors on the ground to be to make sure that this latest development does not have an impact first of all on a new displacement of people,” he said.

The United Nations already provides services to approximately 700,000 people every month in the northeast. Moumtzis emphasized the importance of freedom of movement of civilians and ensuring the continuation of access to humanitarian groups. He stressed that any movement of Syrians must be done voluntarily and with safety and dignity.

“We have not had any specific instructions on” the safe zone, he said, adding that the United Nations has a contingency plan depending on how wide and deep the safe zone would be.

The planned offensive comes amid already heightened U.S. tensions with its NATO ally Turkey, over Ankara’s plans to operate a sophisticated Russian air defense system.

A former senior Trump administration official on the unwillingness of Senate Republicans to almost ever criticize Señor Trumpanzee: "Nobody wants to be the zebra that strays from the pack and gets gobbled up by the lion. They have to hold hands and jump simultaneously." Still a few other usually quiescent Trump enablers who denounced his decision this morning included Liz Cheney (WY), Adam Kinzinger (IL), Peter King (NY) and Marco Rubio (FL), who warned that withdrawing the troops would be a "grave mistake that will have implications far beyond Syria" and that "It would confirm Iran’s view of this administration and embolden them to escalate hostile attacks which in turn could trigger much broader and more dangerous regional war."

UPDATE: Trump Backed Down Already

He says he meant he was only redeploying 50 troops. Everyone is laughing at him.

The Worst Foreign Policy "President" In Living Memory

Did South Korea put him on a postage stamp? No-- but North Korea did. According to a report from Nicole Gaouette and Kylie Atwood at CNN, Trump has soured on South Korea, not North Korea, South Korea, our allies. The orange-hued imbecile "has reacted to four North Korean missile tests in less than two weeks with little more than a shrug," they wrote. "Instead, he appears to be turning his frustrations about the peninsula on South Korea. Trump chided Seoul on Twitter Wednesday for paying 'virtually nothing' for US protection, while two administration officials said that behind closed doors, the President is fuming that South Korea is not doing more to contain Pyongyang's increased aggression."

Speaking to reporters Wednesday on the White House South Lawn, Trump said the US and South Korea "have made a deal" in which Seoul will "pay a lot more money" toward the costs of basing US military personnel in the country-- the second increase the Trump administration has pushed for and gotten this year.

"We've been helping them for about 82 years and we get nothing, we get virtually nothing," Trump said, incorrectly, and hinted that he would push for still higher payments in future. "They've agreed to pay a lot more and they will agree to pay a lot more than that."

Two US officials said that Trump has further soured on South Korea in recent months. As North Korea has grown more aggressive with its missile launches, the President sees it as South Korea's role to rein in Pyongyang and does not think Seoul has done much to deliver. NSC officials declined to comment on those assertions.

Trump's dismissal of Pyongyang's missile tests, his push to ratchet up South Korea's payments to stay under the US security umbrella and his criticism of Seoul raise concerns that North Korea is successfully driving a wedge between Washington and Seoul, analysts said.

At the same time, Trump's transactional approach to South Korea prompts questions about whether he is committed to an alliance that serves US interests as much as it does South Korea's.

"The US-South Korean alliance was forged in blood during the crucible of the Korean War," said Bruce Klingner, a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation. "Its enduring motto is katchi kapshida-- 'we go together'-- not 'we go together, if we are paid enough."

Klingner and others said the US defense of its national interests in Asia requires US bases, access, enough deployed military forces to deter aggression, robust follow-on forces and strong alliances with South Korea and other Asian partners.

Kim has been focused on undermining the US-ROK alliance in particular, said David Maxwell, a senior fellow at Foundation for Defense of Democracies. One of Kim's "main line of efforts is to divide and conquer the US-ROK alliance," Maxwell said.

Vipin Narang, a political science professor at MIT, called Trump's assessment of the alliance "a stark break from 70 years" of US presidential custom.

"2019 is weird," Narang said. "The President has more respect for Kim Jong Un than he does for South Korea ... our formal ally."

On Wednesday, Trump tweeted that "South Korea has agreed to pay substantially more money to the United States in order to defend itself from North Korea. Over the past many decades, the U.S. has been paid very little by South Korea, but last year, at the request of President Trump, South Korea paid $990,000,000."

Trump went on to say that "talks have begun to further increase payments to the United States."

South Korea spends about 2.6% of its GDP on defense spending, more than most NATO allies, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. The US spends about 3.2% GDP on defense.

Seoul has also long reimbursed the US for various operating costs for the American troop presence there.

But Maxwell and others raised concerns that Trump could badly strain or even undermine the alliance.

"With Trump making these demands on South Korea, it could be a perfect storm to damage the alliance," Maxwell said.

Despite Trump's tweet saying talks on more payments had begun, a South Korean official said they haven't and added that a starting date hasn't even been set. The White House on Wednesday countered that at least some discussions are underway.

Eliana Johnson wrote for Politico about how Señor Trumpanzee, delusional as always imagined he would be heading "into the 2020 campaign season as the world’s consummate deal-maker. He may instead enter his reelection campaign not just empty-handed, but vulnerable to the charge that his policies have helped sow chaos across the globe. His trade war with China keeps escalating, with mounting costs to the U.S. economy. Diplomatic overtures to Iran and North Korea have so far failed to yield the president’s desired outcome. Jared Kushner’s Middle East peace plan, two years in the making, is nowhere to be seen. And America’s retreat from Syria, where the president once boasted he had defeated ISIS, has allowed the terrorist group to regenerate, according to a new Pentagon inspector general’s report."

Trump’s critics see these data points as alarming signs that the president is out of his depth on international affairs, if not complicit in the breakdown of global order. And while his allies enthusiastically support his efforts to squeeze Iran, some are quietly nervous-- if not openly scornful-- of his policies elsewhere.

“He’s trying to pivot from being sort of a militarist to being a deal-maker and delivering on diplomacy. That’s his sort of political goal going into 2020,” said Thomas Wright, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. “He’s made all of these decisions and choices that are sort of getting him into trouble and he’s having to cope with the decisions and consequences.”

...Whether pushing for troop withdrawal from Afghanistan or imposing tariffs on China, many of the administration’s most consequential foreign policy moves over the past few months have taken place over the objections of the president’s senior advisers. Trump allies describe a wear-down factor among his top aides in the face of Trump’s uncompromising views on these issues as they work to manage crises across the globe...The sheer number of complex international standoffs, former officials said, threatens to overwhelm an already taxed foreign policy apparatus in Washington.

...[T]here are signs, too, that the president’s penchant for personal diplomacy is bumping up against the harsh realities of global power politics.

And now the Pentagon is warning that ISIS has been taking advantage of Trump's drawdown in Syria in anticipation of a come-back. "Despite losing its territorial 'caliphate,' the Islamic State solidified its insurgent capabilities in Iraq and was resurging in Syria. The reduction of U.S. forces has decreased the support available for Syrian partner forces at a time when their forces need more training and equipping to respond to the ISIS resurgence." Basically everything turns to shit that Trump touches.

Chuck Park, a career foreign service officer, resigned from the State Department and penned a blistering op-ed in the Washington Post that he could no longer serve in "The Complacent State," particularly in the wake of the El Paso mass shooting. He wrote that he "worked to spread what (he) believed were American values: freedom, fairness and tolerance. But more and more I found myself in a defensive stance, struggling to explain to foreign peoples the blatant contradictions at home... I let free housing, the countdown to a pension and the prestige of representing a powerful nation overseas distract me from ideals that once seemed so clear to me. I can't do that anymore. My son, born in El Paso on the American side of that same Rio Grande where the bodies of Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez and his daughter were discovered, in the same city where 22 people were just killed by a gunman whose purported 'manifesto' echoed the inflammatory language of our President, turned 7 this month. I can no longer justify to him, or to myself, my complicity in the actions of this administration. That's why I choose to resign."

When Extremist Online Recruiters Get Close To Home

My neighbor is in synch with Bernie's views but she's a personal friend of Bill and Hillary Clinton and she voted for Hillary in 2016. So did her son. Her son, who's in his 40s, is sorry he did. After the election he changed his mind and is now firmly committed to Trump. How firmly? He's a well-educated and talented guy and believes Trump is using the things he writes in his speeches. Writes? Yes, he halted his cable connection-- thinking mainstream TV is controlled by liberals-- and now gets all his info from some very extreme right/extreme Trump internet sites. And he writes for them.

He told his mother she's brain-washed because she rejected some of the things he's found out and keeps telling her. Like Obama has sex with 10 year old girls. Like the Clinton's run a sex island featuring minors. Like Hillary drinks human blood.

As far as his mother knows, he doesn't have a gun, but he's very dangerous. He stopped paying for insurance (ObamaCare) and is waiting for Trump to offer much less expensive insurance. That sounds dangerous, especially because he's walking arounds L.A. with a red MAGA hat and could-- hopefully not-- wind up with broken body parts.

Ever read how ISIS recruits online? I always thought people susceptible to that were pathetic people with low IQs. My friend's son is anything but. He's very intelligent, went to college and speaks several languages. And it isn't only ISIS that recruits on-line, of course. Neil Johnson, writing for the New Republic looked at the problem of self-affirming virtual communities in 2016. "[A]ny of us might join online groups focused on some common interest," wrote Johnson. "The videos, audio messages, letters, chatter and know-how that they then share are much more sinister than typical online hobbies, though. They may ultimately inspire terrorist acts by individuals who have no prior history of extremism, no formal cell membership, no direct links to leadership."

Do you have a crackpot brother-in-law who send this out?

This isn't about supporting Trump; obviously anyone is entitled too and millions of Americans do. 62,984,828 Americans voted for him (46.1% of the voters), almost as many as voted for Hillary. Even in California he had 4,483,810 votes (31.62%). Hard to believe! Even in L.A. County 620,285 people voted for him (23.4%); hard to imagine! But that's their prerogative, right? But Hillary drinking human blood? Obama screwing 10 year olds? Now we're getting into serious delusion that could easily lead to something more than just voting for Trump in 2020 or do other fascists in the future. Maybe it's worth figuring out how ISIS does it and how that relates to Americans. Johnson and his colleagues are attempting to "decode the online 'ecology' of ISIS supporters."

Our research revealed an ultrafast ecology of self-organized aggregates that share operational information and propaganda, and whose rapid evolution drives the online support.

...[P]ro-ISIS aggregates are leaderless, self-organized entities that change rapidly over time. But now that we’ve identified a rather precise mathematical equation that describes their evolution, we can start to think about how to intervene.

To start, the main implication of our work is that once you identify the aggregates, you have your hand on the pulse of the entire organization. Instead of having to sift through millions of internet users and tracking specific individuals, an anti-ISIS agency can simply follow the relatively small number of aggregates to gauge what is happening in terms of hard-core global ISIS support.

As these ISIS supporters coalesce over time into aggregates, anti-ISIS agencies have an opportunity to step in and break up small aggregates before they develop into larger, potentially powerful ones. One concern is that if anti-ISIS agencies-- be they government-based, private hackers or online moderators-- aren’t active enough in their countermeasures, pro-ISIS support could quickly grow from a number of smaller aggregates into one superaggregate.

...[O]ur research also suggests that any online “lone wolf” actor will truly be alone only for short periods of time. Since we observed that people with serious interest in ISIS online tend to coalesce into these aggregate groups, any such lone wolf was likely either recently in an aggregate or will soon be in one.

This year Meghan Keneally, reporting for ABC News, wrote that American racist and alt-right hate groups are using similar online recruiting methods as ISIS. John Cohen, an ABC News consultant and former acting Homeland Security undersecretary, told her that "many of these groups appeal to the same type of person in the same type of way."

"All of these extremist groups promote an agenda that focuses on fighting those who are victimizing them and that resonates with these individuals who all believe that they have personally been victimized in their own lives," Cohen said in an interview.

..."When you see someone falling off the grid, what happens is they have less and less connection to what you and I know as reality. They become more and more connected to other people who fall off the grid. And that’s why it’s not a surprise that when you got nothing you end up in some, you know, skinhead Aryan Nazi hate-Jew group. So it fits the picture that everybody should have seen here."

Oren Segal, the director of the Anti-Defamation League’s center on extremism, reiterated that the online propaganda for hate groups mirrors the way that ISIS and other extremist groups, who, he says "were sort of early adopters to technology," have been trying to approach Americans for years.

"What we have seen in, I’d say the last two years, is the white supremacists and in particular the alt-right finding new ways to exploit social media platforms [and] recruit adherents to make use of the tools that are pretty much available to anyone," Segal said.

The Internet "has never been the sole domain of ISIS or al Qaeda. White supremacist propaganda has been available the way that ISIS and al Qaeda propaganda has been available online for years," Segal said, noting "there’s more accessibility… than ever before."

Cohen pointed to slickly produced videos, almost like music videos or movie trailers, that ISIS and similar groups create with the "underlying message [of] 'join our cause, you will be a part of our family and your life will have meaning.'" Cohen said that thematically similar videos featuring footage of protesters carrying tiki torches in Charlottesville were "posted throughout the white supremacist social media world" after the August protest.

Ryan Lenz, a spokesperson for hate group watchdog organization the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project, told ABC News "the Internet is a place of both passive and active radicalization."

"ISIS as an organization has a very deliberate and systematic means of reaching out to people online. The alt-right does so in a very different fashion. More often than not, people stumble into an ideology on the far right," Lenz said.

Both Segal and Lenz pointed to Dylann Roof, the Charleston church shooter who killed nine people in 2015, as another example of a young American man who became fascinated with racist ideologies. During a police interview that was later shown in court, Roof said that he was reading about the Trayvon Martin case online and "for some reason I typed in ‘black on white crime’ and ever since then" he had looked into race issues.

The SPLC released its annual report called "The Year in Hate & Extremism" last month and noted how large online audiences for white supremacist groups had grown. Specifically looking at The Daily Stormer, which the SPLC called "rabidly racist and anti-Semitic," the report stated that the site averaged 140,000 unique page views a month in the summer of 2016 but had reached 750,000 unique monthly views in August of 2017, before the violent rally in Charlottesville.

"When you look at how the white nationalist movement has evolved in the United States in the last, say five years, there is no doubt that the Internet has become a principle grounds for recruit and radicalization," Lenz said.

Some technology companies took action to curb the spread of hate groups online. Web hosting service GoDaddy gave The Daily Stormer 24 hours to find a new provider after the Charlottesville rally and when it switched to Google Domains the site was rejected based on the company’s terms of service. Similarly, certain crowdfunding sites have rejected campaigns that raise money based around hateful beliefs.

Cohen said young male attackers can be easily influenced by whatever material they see first online.

"In some cases, they find material posted by ISIS and that's what resonates with them and they connect with that cause. In other cases, these individuals come upon materials posted by white supremacists, anti-government militia or other extremists groups and they self-connect with that cause instead, but the result is the same," Cohen said.

As far back as 2014, Wired warned that far-right extremists were using Twitter as a recruitment tool and spreading extremism. Wire reported some bad news: "The most influential Twitter followers among the sample are 'highly committed white nationalists unlikely to be swayed by intervention.' Influential users are also 'actively seeking dialogue with conservatives' through hashtags #tcot (or top conservatives on Twitter), #teaparty and #gop, as well as frequently linking to mainstream conservative websites. But only 4 percent of users identified as mainstream conservatives, which suggests the hashtags 'are driven more by white nationalists feeling an affinity for conservatism than by conservatives feeling an affinity for white nationalism.'"

On This 4th Of July We Should Ask Ourselves How Hard Will Daesh Work To Get Trump Elected President?

Trump is probably correct when he says the global elite is out the get him and that they'd prefer Hillary over him. They'd also prefer Hillary over Bernie, probably by even higher numbers. But can there really be any doubt that every dedicated enemy of America is rooting for Trump to win the presidency? And in the case of Putin, one suspects the rooting is more than just passive cheering from the sidelines. Actually, that may very well be the case with Daesh/ISIS fanatics as well-- and for the same exact reasons-- a bubbling idiot in the White House sewing discord and disharmony every time he opens his mouth.

He may be the most flawed of messengers but Trump has taken up the populist banner against global elites pushing the devastating trade agenda that Trump has used to make himself wealthy and now sees as a blunt instrument to use against Clinton who he accuses to secretly supporting globalization type treaties like the TPP. Much to the horror of the dominant Paul Ryan wing of the GOP, Trump has appropriated Bernie Sanders' critique of the TPP, right down to the phrase "rigged economy." Keep in mind, that just over a year ago, when the House voted on granting Obama fast track powers, the 219-211 approval came because 191 Republicans merged with just 54 Democratic corporate whores to pass it. 157 Democrats (and a lonely 28 Republicans) opposed giving Obama fast track authority. Among the Republicans facing tough reelection battles whose votes would be harshly judged by followers of Trump are, aside from Ryan and McCarthy themselves, electorally vulnerable Republicans like Frank Guinta (R-NH), Fred Upton (R-MI), Cresent Hardy (R-NV), Lamar Smith (R-TX), Mario Diaz-Balart (R-FL), Mike Coffman (R-CO), Peter King (R-NY), Pat Meehan (R-PA), Carlos Curbelo (R-FL) and Debbie Wasserman Schultz... oops, she's supposedly a Democrat but she voted with the GOP on that one. "I want you to imagine," the carnival barker barked at a rally near Pittsburgh last week, "how much better our future can be if we declare independence from the elites who've led us to one financial and foreign policy disaster after another."

Tom Donohue, CEO of the Chamber of Commerce, responded to Trump on behalf of the 191 House Republicans who voted for TPP Fast Track, knocking down-- from the GOP establishment perspective-- each point Trump made, demagogue-fashion, at his anti-globalization rally.

Tom Donohue is hardly alone among global elitists warned Americans about Trumps. The Italians are jumping up and down, waving their arms over their heads and throwing plates of taglierini, conchiglie, farfalle, capellini, rotini, bucatini, fusilli, pappardelle, and cannelloni-- both stuffed and unstuffed-- frantically warning us that Trump is just another horrid version of their own latter day fascist, Silvio Berlusconi.

Speaking from hard-earned experience, Italians offer a warning to American voters: Think twice before electing Donald Trump.

That advice is based on the fact that Italy chose a Trump-like leader-- and many later came to regret it.

Italy's version of Trump is Silvio Berlusconi, 79, the media tycoon who served as Italy’s prime minister four times, dating to 1994. The two men have much in common.

They are both billionaires who got their start in real-estate development and who came into politics as newcomers promising to use their business acumen to revitalize their country’s economy. Both are brash and self-confident with reputations as womanizers. Both blame much of their country’s woes on immigration. Both seem impervious to critiques and gaffes that would sink other political careers. They even share an obvious concern about their hair: Trump’s billowy coif is an integral part of his look, while Berlusconi admits to at least two hair transplants to cover up an expanding bald spot.

“For Italy watching the election in the U.S. gives us a sense of déjà vu,” said Gian Franco Gallo, a political affairs analyst with ABS Securities in Milan. “It’s like you’re rewatching a horror movie, and as the protagonist is about to get ambushed, you throw your hands up and scream at the screen, ‘Don’t go through that door!’”

That negative view stems from the fact that during Berlusconi's long tenure, which ended in 2011, Italy suffered prolonged periods of economic weakness, political corruption got worse, and Berlusconi became ensnared in sex scandals and legal troubles that included a wide range of charges, from false accounting and tax evasion to bribery and paying a minor for sex.

Most Americans see Clinton as a safer bet for who would deal with terrorism better (50-39% in the latest polling), especially after the mass shooting in Orlando. As Greg Sargent wrote for Washington Post readers last week, "It’s true that Trump’s anti-Muslim xenophobia and demagoguery did cause his numbers to rise among Republican primary voters in the wake of the Paris attacks. But in the wake of the carnage in Orlando, and even in spite of the raw public emotion it produced, the broader public has been treated to a vivid look at his approach, and Americans have recoiled... [T]he result of both candidates’ response to the Orlando attacks was also that Clinton holds a 34-point edge on which one showed the better temperament in response (it’s 59-25); a 19-point edge on which could handle the situation as president (it’s 53-34); and a nine-point edge on which has the best proposals to prevent future attacks (it’s 44-35).

This may be pushing Trump to bellow at his appearances that ISIS views Clinton as weak and that only he will bring back torture and set the U.S. on a path that includes war crimes like executing family members of suspected terrorists. "They want her to get in so badly. They have dreams at night, and their dreams are that Hillary Clinton becomes president of our country," he asserted to his poorly educated fans who are probably unaware that one of the strongest criticisms of Clinton is that she's a dedicated neocon hawk who is viewed all over the world as frighteningly warlike, far more so than Trump, who is generally viewed as a pompous, bill-mouthed buffoon who would likely stumble from one crisis to another, alienating friends and foes alike. If Daesh leaders dream about anyone in the White House, it's Trump, and if they get the idea that stepping up terrorist attacks will help elect him, expect more terrorism far and wide.

Let Slip the Dogs of War

The dogs of war (source)

by Gaius Publius

In the wake of the horrific tragedy in Orlando, in which one man with an AR-15 assault weapon murdered 50 and wounded more than that, many public figures have made statements. Complicating the landscape is the killer's "murky ties to ISIS" (which I prefer to call by their real name, Daesh, a name they hate, by the way).

Complicating it further is the current electoral season. In that context one important statement stands out. Politico leads with this headline...

Clinton breaks from Obama, calls Orlando attack 'radical Islamism'

... but that's not the part that's most interesting. It's this (my emphasis):

Hillary Clinton on Monday broke from President Barack Obama in referring to the terrorist attack as "radical Islamism," countering Donald Trump's accusations that both she and Obama are weak on tackling terrorist threats.

In an interview with NBC's "Today" on Monday morning, Clinton said words matter less than actions, but that she didn't have a problem using the term.

"And from my perspective, it matters what we do, not what we say. It matters that we got Bin Laden, not what name we called him," Clinton said. "But if he is somehow suggesting I don't call this for what it is, he hasn't been listening. I have clearly said we face terrorist enemies who use Islam to justify slaughtering people. We have to stop them and we will. We have to defeat radical jihadist terrorism, and we will."

"And we will." This frightens me, for all the obvious anti-right-wing, "let's solve this, not provoke it further" reasons. It's not the promise to react. It's the eagerness. Eagerness makes a person ... uncareful.

"Pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth,
That I am meek and gentle with these butchers"

One should kill, if at all, reluctantly. Or so one would hope.

GP
 

One Full Century After Sykes-Picot And The Middle East Is In Worse Shape Than Ever

In the Arab world Mark Sykes and François Georges-Picot are major historical villains at the heart, most say, of all that troubles the Middle East today. Most Americans would be hard pressed to tell you who either of them is or why their names are historically significant-- and that probably includes Donald Trump, candidate for president of a party that once took foreign policy and national security seriously. It's the 100th anniversary of the Sykes-Picot Agreement and Lebanese Al Arabiya journalist, Hisham Melhem explained it in language even Trump-- if not his followers-- could understand, although not in terms that simplistic interpretations of history tend to embrace.

Short version: the secret agreement between Britain and France during World War I plotted dividing up the crumbling Ottoman Empire was negotiated between 1915 and 1916 and shared with the Tsar's government. When the Communists took over Russia in late 1917, they published it, much to the embarrassment of the imperialists. Ironically, the original agreement awarded Istanbul and the Bosphorus to Russia. It was seen at the time-- and still is-- as the ultimate betrayal of the Arab people by the West, with France gobbling up what is now Syria, Lebanon and part of Iraq and Britain grabbing Palestine, Jordan. Kuwait, most of Iraq and northeastSaudi Arabia, drawing arbitrary boundaries to suit their own needs. To this day, ISIS lists reversing the Agreement as one of its top policy goals. "For my generation of Arabs," wrote Melhem, "the 'Asia Minor Agreement', better known as the Sykes-Picot Agreement, came to symbolize imperial betrayal and treachery... In the collective mind of the peoples living in what used to be called Asia Minor and the Fertile Crescent, Sykes and Picot became names that shall live in infamy, for they imposed an imperial construct by etching arbitrary lines and coloring zones of influence on a map, and establishing artificial entities over these regions that have been inhabited by a rich mosaic of peoples, ethnicities, cultures, and religions over millennia of successive civilizations."

The Sykes-Picot scheme, like the subsequent agreements, deals, declarations, conferences born out of the crucible of the First World War to create a new order in the land then known as the Near East, were predicated on denying the agency of the human beings who called these regions home. In the decades following the agreement, “Sykes-Picot” became a convenient excuse, and an attractive shorthand used by successive Arab autocrats, despots and ruling elites to justify their disastrous failures at providing good governance, and to explain all the political and economic ills of the region for a full century. To paraphrase Shakespeare, the fault is not in the borders, arbitrary as they may have been, but in what the Arabs have done and not done within the borders.

Huge amount of ink has been shed on the centennial of the map that was born out of the ashes of the First World War and seems to be unraveling now in a crescendo of similar violent upheavals, calamities and disastrous dislocations. But does “Sykes-Picot” deserve this pride of place in the hierarchy of modern Middle Eastern disasters? To begin with, the Sykes-Picot borders and zones of influence have very little in common with the current borders in the Middle East.

But what makes the Sykes-Picot scheme to slice the carcass of the Ottoman Empire stand out is the fact that it was the first of subsequent attempts by Western powers in the decade that followed the war to divide the region. The British issued deceptive and contradictory promises and declarations (the McMahon–Hussein Correspondence and the Balfour Declaration) for the Arabs and the Zionist movement, and in a series of post-war conferences held in locals with strange names for the peoples of the region; The Versailles Peace Conference, The Treaty of Sèvres, the San Remo Conference and the Treaty of Lausanne, most of the current borders of the Middle East were finalized. Again with no regard whatsoever, to the wishes of the peoples whose futures were being shaped by imperial writ.

But the imposition of these maps did not go unchallenged and in fact inspired Arab and Turkish nationalisms. The Turks under the capable leadership of a former Ottoman officer, Mustafa Kemal (Ataturk) undermined both the Sykes-Picot agreement and the Treaty of Sèvres which sought to dismember Anatolia. However, the Arabs led by Faisal Bin Hussein who established the independent Arab Kingdom in March1920 encompassing modern-day Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine and parts of Turkey, could not defend their new brittle realm against the onslaught of France’s Army of the Levant at the battle of Maysalun near Damascus four months later. The French sought to weaken the nationalist impulses in Syria, by the creation of sectarian statelets for the Alawites on the Mediterranean coast, and for the Druze in the South as well as around the historic cities of Damascus and Aleppo. But these cynical plans for divide and rule were resisted by most Syrians.

During the last century the legacy of the “artificial” borders spawned by Sikes-Picot was repeatedly assaulted politically and in some places were changed by military force, as was the case following the Arab-Israeli wars, and recently with the rise of the self-declared Islamic State (ISIS) which following its control of large swaths of land in both Iraq and Syrian, bulldozed the earthen berms marking the border and declaring “the end of Sykes-Picot.” But decades of grievances against Sykes-Picot elevated it into a mythical status in the minds of many Arabs, a malignant milestone in their modern history, a scapegoat explaining the perennial question asked by generations of Arabs in the last hundred years: what went wrong?

True, the current borders of the Middle East are “artificial,” but most borders in the world are artificial, they are drawn by agreement or as a result of conflicts and don’t necessarily follow natural boundaries like river basins or mountain ranges; and most midsize and large states are heterogeneous with diverse ethnicities, religions and languages. And while the borders of the modern Middle East were arbitrarily drawn, they were not totally without basis, and in fact some borders were somewhat based on the Ottoman vilāyet (from the Arabic Wilaya) administrative system.

Arab and Syrian Nationalists in Syria and Iraq would always complain that they were living in truncated states; but if mandated Syria had included Northeastern Lebanon, Northern Palestine and Alexandretta (in present day Turkey), areas Syrian Nationalists craved because they were at times ruled by Damascus, does that mean that Syria would have developed a just, modern, viable and better representative polity? If the Hashemite Kingdom of Iraq had included the old Trans-Jordan and Kuwait, would it follow that Iraq would have followed a radically different political trajectory? We cannot say for sure. But it is very likely, that a larger Iraq and a larger Syria would have ended up where their truncated versions are today. If the Arab Kingdom was not dismantled by the French, in one fell swoop, chances are that it would have gradually unraveled by Turkish Nationalist opposition, and its rejection by the non-Muslim and non-Arab communities within its “artificial“ borders. Creating countries with diverse communities, particularly in the aftermath of upheavals and wars, is always arbitrary, violent and messy, particularly if the new entities are led by oppressive or non-representative regimes and if the basic political and cultural rights of the various communities are not recognized. This is the modern tale of Syria and Iraq. The Ottoman Empire ruled the region for four centuries, before the return of the European armies to the Middle East for the first time since the Medieval Mamluk dynasty that ruled Egypt and Syria drove the Crusaders from their last coastal outpost in Acre, in 1291, thus ending their long occupation of parts of Anatolia, Syria and Palestine.

The defeated Ottoman Empire left behind a devastated Levant and Mesopotamia as a result of war, and famine where whole communities were uprooted and turned into refugees, while others were subjected to mass killings. During the Ottoman centuries the region was controlled by the Sublime Porte in Istanbul through the vilāyet system centered on the historic cities of Damascus, Mosul, Baghdad, and others. Local communities were left to their own devices as long as they paid taxes and did not undermine order. Some communities like the Druse and Maronites of Mount Lebanon enjoyed considerable local autonomy and sometimes decades would pass without these communities encounter a single Ottoman soldier. The various peoples of the region; Arabs, Kurds, Muslims, Christians, Jews and others did mostly co-exist, although there were occasional spasms of religious and ethnic violence and mass killings particularly during the long decline of the Empire in the 19th century. Local leaders representing powerful, domineering feudal families working on behalf of the Sublime Porte, maintained order with an iron fist, and they showed no mercy when confronting social and political protests.

The demise of Ottoman rule exposed a region bereft of political traditions, modern governing institutions and skilled and experienced political elites capable of immediately taking charge of large and diverse societies still reeling from the horrific ravages of a world war. Although the war ravaged and partitioned Anatolia, the emerging Turkish Republic was able to drive the foreign armies from its territories and establish a modern nation-state in part because it was able to rebuild its state institutions and economy and fostered a strong sense of nationhood and quickly established a strong centralized authority. Most of these attributes were lacking in the fragmented lands of the Levant and Mesopotamia. One cannot but ask an intriguing question in this context. What would have happened, if the British/French mandate system was not imposed on the region following the end of the Ottoman centuries? Would it be a stretch to answer: chaos and violence? We will never know for sure, but given the history of the region, the lack of viable institutions, its breathtaking diversity and its tragic conditions after the war, chaos and violence were likely to ensue in the absence of a dominant power exercising control.

In the last five years, with Syria and Iraq unraveling and spewing epic catastrophes, and Sunni-Shia sectarian bloodletting is covering an arc stretching from Beirut on the Mediterranean to Basra at the mouth of the Gulf (not to mention Yemen), predicting the demise of Sykes-Picot has become the default position of many analysts of the region. And one could easily see why. There are powerful forces on the ground trying to demolish the old borders or establish new ones by fire and iron. In the past Arab and Syrian Nationalists considered the imposed borders as the original sin committed by the Europeans against the Arabs, and in the process called into question the legitimacy of the new fragile nation- states that were trying to forge distinct national identities. But now disparate forces, some with legitimate grievances like the Kurds who constitute one of the largest ethnic groups in the world without a state, and who were denied independence after WWI, and terrorist groups like ISIS, are chipping away at the old borders. One could say with considerable certainty that Iraqi Kurdistan has begun its long journey towards independence in 1991 and it is a question of time when the journey will reach statehood. Vice president Joseph Biden, who proposed a decade ago to divide Iraq into three autonomous regions: Kurdish, Shia and Sunnis, told American diplomats and military personnel in Baghdad recently and without a hint of irony, that the U.S. is trying to keep the peace in “places where, because of history, we’ve drawn artificial lines, creating artificial states made up of totally distinct ethnic, religious, cultural groups, and said: ‘have at it. Live together.’”

Scholars and historians will be writing and speculating about the causes of the current convulsions and the absence of good governance in many Arab lands, not only in the Levant and Iraq, but also in Libya, Yemen and beyond for years to come. What is clear is that borders in themselves, are not the causes of Arab dysfunction, or the reasons why Arab civil societies were stunted and never allowed to develop into vibrancy, even in those countries that had nascent civil societies, a modicum of state institutions and relatively modern educational systems, such as Egypt, Iraq, Syria during the period between the two World Wars. In fact there was in these countries from the 1920’s until the late 1940’s and early 1950’s before the onslaught of the Arab militaries against state and society, a semblance of political life, the beginning of admittedly wobbly parliamentary traditions, vibrant cultural debates, considerable artistic creation, a growing space for free expression with noticeable participation of women and minorities in all of these spheres.

But these fragile societies were not allowed to strengthen their state institutions, allow political parties to fully function as legitimate political forces, and the Judiciary was never allowed by the ruling elites to become truly independent.

Then winter descended on the Arabs in the form of military coups masquerading as revolutions claiming to redress the loss of Palestine, to undo the vestiges of colonialism and imperialism, to revive the glory days of the Arabs of medieval times, to build powerful militarized states, and strong economies. These Arab praetorian forces failed in all endeavors. The leaders of these societies where transformed from autocrats, some of them benign, who would not countenance widespread terror or mass killings, into ruthless and vengeful tyrants more than willing to engage in wanton and gratuitous terror against their own peoples and commit crimes against humanity as we have seen in Iraq, Libya and Syria.

These are the men who waged war on the minorities, some of them with deep roots in the region that predate Arabs and Muslims. In recent decades and long before the season of Arab uprisings, we have witnessed the diminishing of what was left of public spaces, the suffocation of what was left of the basic civil rights of the peoples and even the withering of culture. Those who argue that a different set of borders would have given us different outcomes and good governance should tell us how.

One century after Sykes-Picot we are facing a long nightmare: maintaining the old borders, without a radical rearrangement of the political and social contract in these societies and sawing the seeds of good governance, means perpetual conflict. The paradox is if political solutions are predicated on the reconfigurations of the current borders of Iraq and Syria (the same goes for Libya and Yemen), such change could conceivably spark ethnic and sectarian cleansings, claims and counterclaims and new cycles of violence. The breakup of Sudan is very close to home. Breaking up countries with diverse groups is as messy, violent and uncertain as creating them.

Of course, it could get worse... even much worse.

Who Spiked Miss McConnell's Bourbon?

I've heard a lot of odd things about Mitch McConnell-- especially in regard to Pickle Park Cherokee, Waverly and Coxs parks in Louisville-- but I never heard he was an acid head. Maybe someone slipped him a dose in his bourbon Wednesday night. Out of the blue-- with no warning to his own leadership team, let alone the Democrats or the party's presidential candidates-- McConnell used a parliamentary maneuver to tee up and fast-track a debate for a complete blank check war authorization against ISIS. McConnell's surprise au­thor­iz­a­tion for the use of mil­it­ary force "would not restrict the pres­id­ent’s use of ground troops, nor have any lim­its re­lated to time or geo­graphy. Nor would it touch on the is­sue of what to do with the 2001 AUMF, which the Obama ad­min­is­tra­tion has used to at­tack IS­IS des­pite that authorziation’s in­struc­tions to use force against those who planned the 9/11 ter­ror­ist at­tacks. By con­trast, the leg­al au­thor­ity put for­ward by the ad­min­is­tra­tion last Feb­ru­ary wouldn’t au­thor­ize 'en­dur­ing of­fens­ive ground com­bat op­er­a­tions' and would have ended three years after en­act­ment, un­less reau­thor­ized." This one authorizes endless war, anywhere-- and not just for Obama. This authorization could go right to a dangerous neocon president like Rubio, Hillary or Christie or to one of the unpredictable crazy people like Cruz or Herr Trumpf.

McConnell's resolution was instantly co-sponsored by 4 of the worst warmongers in the Senate, Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Joni Ernst (R-IA), Orrin Hatch (R-UT) and the retiring Dan Coats (R-IN).

Sen­ate For­eign Re­la­tions Chair­man Bob Cork­er said that there is still a “wide di­versity” of opin­ions on the is­sue. Some Demo­crats were crit­ic­al of even the pres­id­ent’s own draft AUMF, warn­ing that they’d need ad­di­tion­al re­stric­tions from the ad­min­is­tra­tion on troop levels and geo­graph­ic bound­ar­ies be­fore they could sup­port any au­thor­iz­a­tion. Re­pub­lic­ans, mean­while, wor­ried deeply about re­strict­ing the pres­id­ent as this ad­min­is­tra­tion, and the next one, work to com­bat IS­IS.

Cork­er’s com­mit­tee-- and the Sen­ate at large-- was so deeply di­vided over the pres­id­ent’s AUMF pro­pos­al in Feb­ru­ary that the pan­el ul­ti­mately dropped the is­sue, with Cork­er ar­guing with the ad­min­is­tra­tion that no new au­thor­iz­a­tion was needed. “I don’t think it changes any­thing,” he said, of the new res­ol­u­tion.

“I’m in the same place that I’ve been-- and that is I be­lieve the ad­min­is­tra­tion has the au­thor­ity to do what they’re do­ing,” he ad­ded. “They be­lieve they have the au­thor­ity to do what they’re do­ing. If a con­sensus de­vel­ops and I be­lieve that something con­struct­ive re­l­at­ive to us deal­ing with IS­IS might come out of it then cer­tainly I’d be glad to con­sider it.”

...[S]ev­er­al long-time ad­voc­ates for passing a new meas­ure au­thor­iz­ing the ad­min­is­tra­tion’s war against IS­IS were pleased to see an AUMF mov­ing, however slightly, for­ward.

“This is the right thing,” said Gra­ham, a co­spon­sor on the new AUMF res­ol­u­tion. “This is the right in­fra­struc­ture to have.”

“If our Demo­crat­ic friends don’t want to give this pres­id­ent and oth­er pres­id­ents the abil­ity to go after IS­IS without lim­it­a­tion to geo­graphy, time and means-- be on the re­cord,” he ad­ded.

Kaine, a Demo­crat who has ag­gress­ively ad­voc­ated for an AUMF, was thrilled Thursday that the Sen­ate could soon take up de­bate, though he ad­ded that he hasn’t yet seen the de­tails. “After 18 months, I feel like the in­sti­tu­tion might be fi­nally wak­ing up that this is a threat,” Kaine said. “So we’ll see what the plan is on it, but the no­tion that we may be fi­nally tak­ing our job ser­i­ously on it is something I’m hope­ful about.”

Kaine said that al­though he and the vast ma­jor­ity of Con­gress sup­port com­batting IS­IS, he dis­agrees with the ad­min­is­tra­tion that the pres­id­ent is with­in his au­thor­ity to do so. “I be­lieve the war is il­leg­al,” Kaine said Thursday. “I don’t think there’s a leg­al jus­ti­fic­a­tion for it. And I think the greatest danger we end up do­ing is al­low­ing the pres­id­ent to wage a war without Con­gress weigh­ing in.”

Kaine ad­ded that the pres­id­ent ac­ted ini­tially “to pro­tect Amer­ic­an lives” and cred­ited the White House for send­ing over an AUMF last year. “We haven’t done any­thing. So just the no­tion that maybe fi­nally there’s some in­terest in this, I find grat­i­fy­ing. But we’ll have to work through the de­tails,” he said.

In the current politically-charged, fear-dominated environment, it would not be difficult to see the Senate stampeded into backing this kind of proposal. This is a time when we need men and women with wisdom and backbone in the Senate. There aren't many. I know we can count on Bernie Sanders and Rand Paul... but is there anyone else? Anyone? I guess we'll be finding out pretty soon. By the way, one Senate Democrat told me this morning, in confidence, that "The Republicans regard it as an excellent issue for them for November, and like the TPP, it drives a wedge between Obama and the Democrats." One Republican senator who will need no prompting to vote for war is Ohio's Rob Portman. And the Schumercrat opposing him would be likely to go right along for the ride as well, as he always has. But Ohio Democrats have an alternative, P.G. Sittenfeld, who is not a war-mongering fool. "While I believe every President needs authorization from Congress before committing the nation to long-term hostilities, I'm suspicious of Mitch McConnell's sudden change of heart about bringing one to the Senate floor for a vote," he just told us. "An open-ended authorization which in reality is a blank check for endless escalation is dangerous, especially since we don't yet know who the next president will be. I would not support any resolution that could lead America into another quagmire like we had in Viet Nam or Iraq." [You can support Sittenfeld's campaign here.]