- This topic has 9 replies, 6 voices, and was last updated 3 years, 10 months ago by
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I have sipped the local hard liquor with a table full of Finns approximately 5 miles from the Russian border in a town called Imatra, and so I can tell you with certainty that Finland is not Russia but sure does drink like it is.
I have worked on nukes in the UK, and can state with certainty that there are in fact nukes there.
If North Dakota wasn’t part of Canada, would anyone really care?
Now, what’s the question again?
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Sic transit gloria mundi (so shut up and get back to work) -
I’m curious which angle Rocky will take this time:
- Deep state
- Never Trumper
- Ad hominem
- Book Deal
My money is on number 4 this time, with a dash of number 3.
It’s amazing how many of the former administration officials go on to recount the incompetence and corruption. It reminds me of the old adage, if every room you walk into smells like shit you should probably check your shoes. It’s hypothetically possible that everyone else is corrupt and Trump is actually just the victim. But it’s far more likely he stinks.
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This reply was modified 3 years, 10 months ago by
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This reply was modified 3 years, 10 months ago by .
NO MALARKEY
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There’s an easy answer for the book writers: Right now the market is likely a LOT hotter for a book about what’s wrong with Trump than it is for a book about what’s right.
That tends to be the answer to what gets put into books: What will sell.
I’ll just put it this way, if this was about Trump and Bolton’s book, you have to ask yourself if Bolton the hawk should ever be a left-wing darling? Of course not, but I’m betting they are buying his book. Wouldn’t surprise me if Trump is blowing it up to help.
The thing we really ought to ask is whether a civil servant ought to be able to make millions off a book deal after leaving government. Makes for some real ethical problems.
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Sic transit gloria mundi (so shut up and get back to work)
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That’s a fair question PL (whether they should be able to sell books), but it’s a different issue than whether the allegations are true. Whether you agree with him or not Bolton and many of these other folks aren’t known for making stuff up. And yet as soon as they criticize Trump suddenly they can’t be trusted.
NO MALARKEY
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No doubt. And, I’m one who suspects that Bolton isn’t one to sell out.
I’m also one who figures that Trump is probably crooked, and almost as crooked as his opponents and supporters in DC.
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Sic transit gloria mundi (so shut up and get back to work)
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Not like Bolton hasn’t carpet bombed everyone and everything in DC.
“George W. Bush later appeared to regret his choice of Bolton, reportedly saying he didn’t “consider Bolton credible.” Those remarks, made in the final days of his administration, came after Bolton wrote a column in the Journal, criticizing the Bush administration: “Nothing can erase the ineffable sadness of an American presidency, like this one, in total intellectual collapse.””
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/03/john-bolton/556346/
He is going to sell a shit load of books, regardless of what he says about Trump.
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Bolton has been hand grenade wherever he has been. He has never left any position without trying to denigrate his employer because he is inevitably fired for his inability to formulate reasonable policy, play on a team or not let his personal ideology and destructive fanaticism be compromised. He may not be a card carrying deep stater but I feel the same result would transpire regardless of whom he worked for or on what side of the political spectrum he was temporarily aligned with. He is a card carrying coward.
I quote from a recent publication:
“Whatever the merits of Bolton’s new book, it’s important to remember that he is no truth-telling hero. Here’s a short list of just some of his dreadful actions over his long and destructive career.
- Bolton strenuously supported the Vietnam War, but just as strenuously opposed the idea of him personally having to fight it. Before graduating from Yale, he enlisted in the Maryland National Guard to be sure he avoided combat. He later explained, “I had no desire to die in a Southeast Asian rice paddy,” suggesting that he was generously providing an opportunity for someone who did want to die like that. Bolton shortly went on to intern for Vice President Spiro Agnew.
- Perhaps Bolton’s most powerful impact on U.S. politics is the oldest and least-known: his role as a baby right-wing lawyer destroying post-Watergate campaign finance reforms. In Bolton’s memoir, he writes proudly of his efforts on the lawsuit Buckley v. Valeo, which resulted in a 1976 Supreme Court decision that was more important than Citizens United. The ruling struck down limits on campaign finance expenditures and self-funding by super-rich candidates. As Bolton explains, “Everyone knew the decision in Buckley v. Valeo could determine … the future shape of American politics.” He was right. Without Buckley v. Valeo, Donald Trump would never have been able to spend tens of millions of dollars of his own money to get elected and then hire Bolton.
- Bolton held many different positions in the Reagan administration in the 1980s. One administration obsession was killing international regulations on the marketing of baby formula in countries without clean water. A subordinate later wrote that when she refused to help with this project, Bolton “shouted that Nestlé was an important company and that he was giving me a direct order from President Reagan.” He then tried to fire the subordinate, and when he couldn’t, had her moved into a basement office.
- Bolton joined the George W. Bush administration as an undersecretary of state for arms control. In 2002, he declared that Cuba had a limited offensive biological weapons program. When a State Department analyst disputed stronger language in an earlier draft of the speech, Bolton characteristically tried to have the analyst fired.
- That same year Bolton did succeed in getting Brazilian diplomat leader José Bustani ousted from his position as head of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. “We know where your kids live,” Bolton told Bustani when first attempting to get him to quit. “You have two sons in New York.” Bustani’s sin was persuading Iraq to sign the international chemical weapons ban treaty. This in turn would have led to intrusive OPCW inspections, which would have demonstrated that Iraq didn’t have anything. This would have been, from Bolton’s perspective, the worst outcome possible, since it would have made it more difficult for the U.S. to attack Iraq.
- In 2015, Bolton wrote an op-ed for the New York Times headlined, “To Stop Iran’s Bomb, Bomb Iran.” It was riddled with Bolton’s characteristic falsehoods, all to make the case for unprovoked war.
- Just before Trump brought Bolton into his administration in 2018, Bolton wrote an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal calling for yet another unprovoked war, this time with North Korea. In it, Bolton argued that presidents should now be able to ignore the war powers clause of the Constitution, which reserves the right to declare war to Congress, and attack other countries whenever they feel like it.
This barely scratches the surface of Bolton’s lifelong self serving crusade. In particular, it will likely be years before we have a full accounting of his actions as national security adviser. But in a certain sense, Bolton’s expulsion from the Trump administration demonstrates just how successful he’s been. Like many extremist revolutionaries, he triumphed and then found that the people who eventually seized power in the chaos didn’t share his agenda, and finally decided that he himself had to be purged.”
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