World

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. This one is more than just a thousand words. It simply takes your breath away. Arguably, the very best American public servants in recent memory captured...

Please stop, news cycle. Please just stop. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe nominated U.S. President Donald Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize last autumn after receiving a request from the U.S. government to do so,...

In a week filled with many unappealing stories this is one of them that has got to take the shitcake. The president of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, has been openly called for a union between...

Silence speaks volumes, and Mike Pence can testify to that. In his address to a security conference in Munich Friday, Pence said, “I bring greetings from the president of the United States of America, Donald Trump” — and the silence was deafening. Pence stood there, like a deer caught in the headlights for about five seconds, before carrying on. Addressing U.S. allies at the Munich Security Conference, Mike Pence is met with silence as he tells the audience: "I bring greetings from the 45th president of the United States of America, President Donald Trump." pic.twitter.com/yr7SNVhCVf — Axios (@axios) February 16, 2019 Trump has already horrified our allies abroad, especially in NATO, which he portrays as a bunch of deadbeats. Pence addressed that cheery topic, and then went on to antagonize the Chinese. The Hill: “The United States expects every NATO member to put in place a credible plan to meet the 2 percent threshold. And, by 2024, we expect all our allies to invest 20 percent of defense spending on procurement,” he said. Pence on Friday also blasted China and Russia in front of delegations from both countries “Under President Trump’s leadership, the United States has also made it clear that China must address the longstanding issues of intellectual-property theft, forced technology transfer, and other structural issues in China that have placed a burden on our economy and on economies around the world,” he said. Pence later noted the U.S.’s move to withdraw from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. The decision to withdraw has triggered questions about the potential impact on European security and the global strategic environment amid weakened U.S.–Russia relations. Mike Pence, out there in the world, alienating our allies, giving our enemies a good laugh. Swell.

Vice President Mike Pence received an icy response from world leaders at the Munich Security Conference Saturday, as he made clear his aim for the weekend was to promote his President Donald Trump's "America...

Anybody who has ever thrown a birthday party for a kid knows that there are two basic forms of entertainment. There are clowns, and then there are magicians. Donald Trump is a true cross over, a magician clown. He lumbers around the yard with his big flopping feet, knocking over the folding table with the cake on it, while he makes a cute little bunny out of a long pink balloon, which somehow or other ends up with a hard on on it. Donald Trump has been pretty transparent since day one in regards to his response to problems with his Presidency or his administration. That’s Trump the magician. Throw a handful of sparkling pixie dust into the air to attract attention, while your other hand puts the rabbit into the hat. But because Trump is a clown, he throws the damn pixie dust directly over the hat. Every time. Never has Trump needed a major distraction more than right now. His approval numbers are in the toilet, and there’s a hand on the pull chain. People are finally seeing the bait-and-switch in his tax cut dodge with lower IRS refunds, and he’s taking friendly fire from the right wing media over the wall. Oh yeah, and Robert Mueller is making his Cornholeone family look more like the “Kid Sally” Palumbo family in The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight. There is one whopping distraction required here. For a while there, sane minds worried that he would actively try to engineer a war with North Korea if he were backed far enough into a corner, the ultimate distraction. But no, as long as in Dung Pil keeps sending His Lowness 3’x4’ Valentines cards hand delivered by an envoy, they’re golden. Then people worried that he would manufacture an incident to enable him to go big into Syria. But Vlad the Imp shook a finger and made tsk-tsk-tsk noises, so that is now one of the few options in Trumpmenistan that is actually “off of the table.” Which leaves us with Iran. Trump has been laying the groundwork for a pissing contest with Iran for quite a while now. All the way back when he was a candidate, he slammed the Iran nuclear deal, but that was back when Trump honestly thought that whatever he said wouldn’t matter in the long run. It was just his way of raining on Baravk Obama’s parade for being able to craft a goddamn deal that actually worked. Once he got elected, common sense and realpolitik never entered into the equation, he had a reputation of “excellence in ignorance” to live up to. He wiped his ass with the Iran nuclear deal and threw it into the toilet, and then he unilaterally restored sanctions on Iran, doing everything in his power to poke the tiger with a stick, just to prove that his obstinance was as overpowering as his stupidity. For quite a while, none of this mattered as much, for one simple reason. That’s because “Mad Dog” Jim Mattis had the keys to Donald Trump’s cage. Trump could howl at the moon all he wanted, but it was ultimately Mattis who would decide whether or not to let slip the dogs of war. But now Mattis is gone, and The $1 Store Caligula has a chickenhawk piece of shit like John […]

Amazon and Jeff Bezos just announced that their big public relations disaster of a headquarters will not be built in Queens, New York. Amazon’s statement, care of the New York Times: After much thought and...

Mike Pompeo is off to a summit in Warsaw that is ostensibly about Middle-East security, but seems to be where various parties are sending up trial balloons about starting a war with Iran. The Trump...

Tom Barrack plays a central, if somewhat unheralded role in all of our Trump troubles, as you can read in his Wiki bio… It was Barrack who, in 2010 pulled Jard Kushner’s chestnuts out of the fire with a 70 million dollar loan on Kushner’s distressed and over-leveraged 666 5th Avenue property, the terms of which he made less onerous at the request of Trump. It was Barrack who recommended Paul Manafort be hired as campaign Chair, and who later pried a plank out of the 2016 Republican Platform calling for release of the 28 pages of The Joint Inquiry into 9-11’s report that implicated Saudi Intelligence figures connected to the Kingdom’s government. And he was Chairman of Trump’s Inaugural Committee, the activities of which we will hopefully soon be learning much more about. Barrack is of Lebanese descent and has made much of his approximately 1 billion dollar fortune in the Gulf region, and his criticisms of U.S. and Great Britain’s history in the region are not without merit and worthy of consideration. However this charge… “Speaking on stage at the Milken Institute MENA Summit in Abu Dhabi on Tuesday, Barrack was asked by CNN’s Becky Anderson about the reputational damage to Saudi Arabia over the Jamal Khashoggi killing. In response, he joked: “As long as you don’t make me a guest at the Ritz.” With regards to the murder of journalist Khashoggi, Barrack said that “whatever happened in Saudi Arabia, the atrocities in America are equal, or worse …” …seems to me patently ridiculous. Sure, it takes only a casual perusal of American history to find crimes and atrocities equal to or worse than the killing of a lone journalist. My readers here are knowledgeable enough that I hardly need to list them. But the luring of, brutal murder and dismemberment of one of our own citizens in one of our flagged Embassies – and sanctioned explicitly (allegedly) by our head of state is not among them. But you see, Barrack further states, MBS is merely misunderstood: “The atrocities in any … country are dictated by the rule of law,” he continued. “So for us to dictate what we think is the moral code there, when we have a young man and regime that is trying to push themselves into 2030, I think is a mistake.” Maybe, Tom, you should look to shoring up your own legal defense team rather than apologizing for MBS. Cause we are coming after you. ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………… To receive articles of mine not published elsewhere become a patron on Patreon. Please follow me on Twitter @durrati

As Iranians this week mark the 40th anniversary of their country's 1979 revolution, President Donald Trump's national security adviser John Bolton declared in a message to Iranian leaders on Monday that he doesn't think...