Ha ha – you nailed it.
Edit: This kind of move seems apolitical to me. Both Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives, will try to take advantage of position for personal gain like this.
Yah both sides! (Nods sagely)
Plonk.
In a galaxy far far away…
They used to be go to for milkrounds as they paid well and it was a decent career. They fell victim to the internet startups…Who would you prefer to work for Google or Accenture?
Yikes.
What a coup by Russia.
Not good that our entire alliance system seemed to rest on the shoulders of a single man. At least we can all scream “I TOLD YOU SO!” as the bombs drop, right?
It doesn’t. . . if the Republican members of congress would act as a check as it is constitutionally supposed to. Basically, if things completely fall apart, it won’t just be because of one man. A whole party would have abdicated its responsibilities.
We will just have to see how craven the Republicans in Congress are. I am not optimistic that they will put principal ahead of their own re-election interests.
How many moochies will he last?
A Trump man’s longevity as measured in Moochies
Is solely dependent on his skill at ass smoochies.
Mulvaney is going to need to do some major smooching to placate our Toddler-in-Chief.
…“almost childish”?
How about, “totally childish”.
Almost childish as in not-yet-a child? Let’s go with infantile!
Here is the problem, Congress can and should act as check on many things. We are witnessing it tonight with respect to immigration and the dumb wall. Even on things like tariffs and treaties, Congress has a lot more constitutional power than it has exercised over the last 50 years.
But in areas of foreign affairs and defense there is precious little the Congress can do. As Sen. Rubio said tonight on the Newshour. "We could cut funding off for Syria mission to get the troops out of there, but there is nothing Congress can do to force him to KEEP troops in Syria. They can’t make Trump continue to have joint exercise with South Korea, or even keep any troops there. If Trump, wants to declare Russia an ally, and send them the position of all our submarine forces, copies of all our war plans, and even the nuclear launch codes, Congress is powerless to stop him. The only remedy is impeachment.
There is one thing, I’ve been hoping Congress can do and that is pass a law require Congressional act of war before the President can use nuclear weapons, or in response to nuclear attack. I’d sleep a bit better if they did that.
That would be pretty extraordinary. The current launch protocols are a cold war design directly intended to put our total immediate nuclear launch power in the hands of the President, not a committee or any oversight group, or other “adults” in the chain of command.
I wonder how far down our current chain of command we’d have to go to find the first adult.
You are correct. The idea sort of kinda of made some sense in the world of MAD, when the Russian had enough warheads to takeout all our land based ICBM and our SLBM missile were much shorter range. But now a days Ohio Class submarine can parked outside bases in Honolulu, or Bangor Maine, and hit virtually every target in Russia. They also could do the same in pretty anywhere in the Indian, or Atlantic Ocean and much of the Pacific.
History has shown the false alarm, from bad sensor or human errors are much more likely to create a crisis than anything else. I have no issues with tying any President (much less this nutcases) hands and preventing him from launching nuclear warheads until we actually have reports of nuclear warhead have exploded in the US.
Even if the Russian succeed in taking out 1/2 or 3/4 of our warheads. They won’t win a nuclear war.
Or to think of a more plausible scenario one or two nuclear weapon explodes in the US. I want a debate among both the Congress and the White House who we attack and with what weapons.