On the one hand, as I said after the 2016 election, I have never gone wrong betting on the racism and arrogant ignorance of the Right: I've only erred occasionally on the point spread. And six months later my faith in the suicidal stupidity of the average Republican voter remains deep and abiding.
On the other hand, every election between now and 2020 is a referendum on President Stupid and his just-fucking-sack-the-place agenda.
We live forever as long as somebody picks up where we left off and carries it forward. On this occasion, I'll take a moment to remember the main point: Far better men than Putin and Trump have been trying to conquer the world for 40,000 years or more. And guess what - the world remains undefeated.
The first Russian institute document was a strategy paper written last June that circulated at the highest levels of the Russian government but was not addressed to any specific individuals.
It recommended the Kremlin launch a propaganda campaign on social media and Russian state-backed global news outlets to encourage U.S. voters to elect a president who would take a softer line toward Russia than the administration of then-President Barack Obama, the seven officials said.
A second institute document, drafted in October and distributed in the same way, warned that Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton was likely to win the election. For that reason, it argued, it was better for Russia to end its pro-Trump propaganda and instead intensify its messaging about voter fraud to undermine the U.S. electoral system’s legitimacy and damage Clinton’s reputation in an effort to undermine her presidency, the seven officials said.
The current and former U.S. officials spoke on the condition of anonymity due to the Russian documents’ classified status. They declined to discuss how the United States obtained them. U.S. intelligence agencies also declined to comment on them.
HuffPo (updated): When U.S. officials claimed two weeks ago that an American aircraft carrier was heading toward waters near North Korea, it was actually sailing in the opposite direction, The New York Times and Defense News report.
“We have the best military people on Earth. And I will say this: He is doing the wrong thing,” Trump added, referring to Kim Jong Un.
But Defense News pointed out on Tuesday that photos released by the U.S. Navy showed the aircraft carrier passing through the Sunda Strait in Indonesia, about 3,500 miles from the Korean Peninsula, last Saturday. It was moving away from North Korea when U.S. officials said it was moving toward the peninsula, the Times confirmed on Tuesday.
One little thing first, if I may: We can't have the best baddest butt-kickin'-est military in the world and at the same time a military that's depleted and badly in need of another $50 Billion blah blah blah. Not that any of that comes as news, but it's helpful for me to remind myself just who this 45* asshole is.
And we need to remember he's prob'ly being manipulated into getting us to spend the money on lots of cool new big-ticket MeatSpace gadgets that're mostly worthless in the CyberFight that's going on now.
So anyway, he loves to think being "unpredictable" makes him some kind of mastermind. His main tactical approach is to keep everybody off balance - including the people around him. And that can work - it's worked very well to make him one of the world's great douchenozzle promise-breakers who won't be held to account for anything by anybody.
But when you're POTUS you can't just shoot from the hip. You need the people around you to know something about what the fuck you've got in mind.
Without some level of careful consideration, everybody ends up looking stoopid; the "bad guys" catch on pretty soon (or think they have - which is the biggest problem), and before long he's "unpredictable-ing" a few hundred thousand actual people to death.