LBJ redux

Hey, hey Donald J.
How many lies did you tell today?

For those who are too young to remember (or too old, as the case may be), half a century ago at the height of the U. S. war in Vietnam under President Lyndon Baines Johnson (LBJ), marchers in the huge demonstrations against the war often chanted "Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?"

What's LBJ got to do with anything that's happening today, or could happen? Plenty, because Johnson was no stranger to alternative facts, including one awful departure from truth that led to the deaths of tens of thousands of American soldiers in Vietnam, along with hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese civilian casualties.

This was the lie that led to the Gulf of Tonkin resolution of August 1964 approved by a compliant Congress in which Johnson's Democrats held majorities in both houses, based on false information about a North Vietnamese attack on U. S. Naval vessels in the Gulf of Tonkin,  developed by Johnson and his Defense Secretary, Robert McNamara, who years later acknowledged, "It never happened."

As McNamara described it in an attempt to apologize for the harm he had done to America, the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution ""Gave complete authority to the President to take the nation to war."

The consequences were devastating. Within months, Johnson ordered massive bombing raids against the North and a massive escalation of U. S. troops in Vietnam: from 23,300 in 1964 to 184,300 in 1965, and a peak of 536,100 by 1968.

More than 58,000 Americans died in the Vietnam conflict.

Donald J. is no LBJ. In the realm of political experience and skill, LBJ was a giant; Donald J. is a shrimp. When necessary, LBJ was a skilled manipulator of facts and non-facts. Donald J. is not a skilled liar; he is just a liar, day-in and day-out, so it seems appropriate to call him out:

"Hey, hey, Donald J. How many lies did you tell today?

Queston is: How long will it be before a Trump lie has fatal consequences, if that has not already happened? And who will protect us from that?

Given the pusillanimous toady leading the U. S. Senate today and the blindly ambitious enabler leading the House of Representatives, protection by that branch of government seems undependable at least.

If America is to survive the fatal consequences of the excesses of Donald J. and his praetorian popinjays it probably will take the judiciary and the free press, both of which Donald J. has made it clear he fears and wants to invalidate or destroy.

This must not stand. Resist! Persist!

Who you callin' so-called?

So-called President Donald Trump, predictably, has called U. S. District Court Judge James Robart of Washington State a "so-called" Judge after Judge Robart issued a temporary nationwide ban on key parts of the Trump regime's order restricting immigration to the United States.

Since "so-called" suggests illegitimacy, it seems reasonable to ask who is the illegitimate one here?

Trump, America's insulter-in-chief, who assumed the Presidency after losing the popular vote by almost three million, is possibly the most illegitimate and certainly the most unpopular president ever to occupy the Oval Office.

Or, Judge James Robart, legitimately nominated by a Republican, President George W. Bush,  and legitimately and unanimously confirmed by the U.S. Senate in a 99 to 0 vote in 2004.

Thank God for Judge Robart. Going forward our country may need to depend on such judges to protect against continuing assaults on citizens' rights to liberty and justice.

Important observations on the Trump regime's travel ban

Arnold "Skip" Isaacs, a friend and former colleague at The Baltimore Sun, where his assignments included postings in Latin America and Asia, has shared some wise and important observations concerning the crisis brought about by the Trump regime's acts against Muslims entering the United States.

I am proud to share his message here:

Dear friends --

A three-part message...

(1) I am not very comfortable tooting my own horn, but given current

headlines it seems appropriate to call your attention to a long report I

wrote a couple of years ago that touches on both Muslim American and

refugee issues. From Troubled Lands: Listening to Pakistani Americans

and Afghan Americans in post-9/11 America is available online at

www.fromtroubledlands.net. Two chapters have particular relevance to the

present uproar over President Trump's immigration order: chapter II,

"The 9/11 Aftermath" and chapter V, "A Clash of Civilizations?" Another

looks at aspects of the refugee experience -- chapter IV, "Afghan

Americans: the Heritage of Trauma."

(2) Editorial comment: With this policy Trump has given a huge gift to

the Islamic State and other extremist fanatics. He validates their

message that the United States and its people are at war with the Muslim

world and Muslims need to defend themselves with violence. We will never

be able to quantify exactly how many more fighters they will enlist as a

direct result of Trump's action, but there is no possible doubt that it

will help their recruiting. Nor will we be able to count how many fewer

Muslims will join the anti-extremist side, but the number will certainly

be lower than it would have been without this disaster. The number of

Muslims in America who will trust and cooperate with law enforcement and

other public agencies to help find and head off possible violent

radicals will be lower, too. Trump's order will not make us safer; it

makes us significantly less safe.

I can't prove this either but I would make a substantial bet that the

immense majority of our own counter-terror professionals and those we

work with overseas understand that Trump has just made their job a lot

tougher, completely unnecessarily. Americans need to oppose his order as

strongly and publicly as possible not just for the sake of very

important values but for our safety as well. And the Americans who have

the most responsibility for that are the Republicans who control

Congress, who if they have any moral integrity and any grip on reality

will take immediate, decisive steps to reverse this policy and begin

repairing the damage it has done.

(3) Lastly, a few random facts:

-- The overwhelming number of violent terrorist acts inside the United

States after 9/11 were committed by U.S. citizens or permanent

residents. A disproportionate number of Muslim terrorists have been

native Americans who converted to Islam, not immigrants. The risk from

refugees is practically zero; a dozen or fewer cases involving people

with refugee status, out of more than three-quarters of a million

refugees admitted since 2001. And from everything I know, not all those

cases necessarily represent the scenario that anti-refugee rhetoric

promotes: a violent act committed by someone who slipped through the

refugee screening process. As I understand, they include some who did

not do anything violent but contributed funds to supposed terror

organizations overseas, and some who came as children with refugee

families. The number of cases that actually fit the anti-refugee script

is probably no more than three or four.

-- A look back at the wave of sweeping, repressive counter-terror

programs that were put into practice after 9/11 shows that they were

completely ineffective at finding terrorists. NSEERS, the post-9/11

registration program, did not lead to a single terrorism prosecution.

Neither did the years of extensive surveillance by the New York Police

Department in mosques and Muslim neighborhoods. (More about these in my

Troubled Lands paper.) The approach that Trump and his pal Stephen

Bannon and others around him apparently have in mind -- and have put

into practice with this astonishing order -- isn't just questionable as

a matter of logic. It's been tried and proven ineffective.

-- I won't make the case here but will add that the Islamophobia network

was producing fake news years before that term came into use. Its

"evidence" on things like the Muslim Brotherhood "stealth jihad" plan,

the unindicted co-conspirator story about the Council on

American-Islamic Relations, and the plot to impose sharia law is all

provably false -- not just disputed, but conclusively disproven. Stephen

Bannon, by the way, has been a big cheerleader for that crowd (Frank

Gaffney, Pamela Geller, et al) and I would bet is a channel for their

views to reach the White House -- which is REALLY bad news. No idea if

they had anything to do with this immigration order, but it seems

entirely possible.

OK, I'll stop. But I hope you'll pass this along anywhere it might

contribute to the discussion and that you'll find some way to support

opposition to Trump's disastrous order.

Thanks for your patience and best regards

Skip Isaacs

Cock-a-doodle-doo

Ted Chan, a colleague at The Baltimore Sun years ago, writes to alert me that Saturday, January 28, the second Saturday of the Trump presidency, is the first day of the Chinese Year of the Rooster:

“Fittingly, 2017 will be the Year of the Rooster. Puffed chest. Exaggerated Strut. Incessant, irritating noise. And Ruffled feathers!"

Obamanation to Abomination

Inauguration Day 2017:

America Moves From

 Obamanation to Abomination

Israel still gets $10 million a day

Consider some facts in the tempest blown up over President Barack Obama’s decision to allow passage of a United Nations Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlement activity in the West Bank and the part of Jerusalem occupied by Israel since it captured the territory from Jordan in 1967.

In allowing the resolution to pass, The United States effectively endorsed the position it has held with the rest of the international community, under all administrations -- Democrat and Republican -- that the settlements represent an illegal colonization of occupied territory and a real obstacle to peace between Israel and the Palestinians as envisaged under a so-called two-state solution.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has done everything he can to obstruct attempts by the Obama administration to get real negotiations going between the two sides, has condemned as “shameful” the Security Council resolution and the U.S. decision not to veto it. And certainly it’s true that his ability to resist real progress toward peace has been facilitated by a militant, corrupt Palestinian leadership.

So what impact will the U.N. resolution have on Israeli settlement activity?  Probably none. It will not stop Israel from expanding colonization. In fact, given the condemnation of the resolution and of President Obama from Donald Trump and his supporters, including some leading Democrats on this issue, settlement activity is more likely to accelerate.

And what of the notion that President Obama’s action represented an abandonment of Washington’s historic strong support for the State of Israel?

Answer: 38.5 billion dollars.

That’s the record amount the Obama administration agreed recently to give Israel over the next ten years in military aid. That works out to $3.85 billion a year, or more than $10 million a day from the U.S. taxpayer to the State of Israel -- $10 million a day, every day for the next 3,650 days. Israel has long argued that U.S. aid is not used to support activity the U.S. historically has opposed, like settlements, but getting $3.85 billion a year from the U.S. frees an equal amount from other revenue sources to pay for the settlements.

How much would that cost be? According to the Macro Center for Political Economics, a progressive Israeli think tank, the cost of support for the  “settlers and local governments running settlements” in 2015 totaled $368 million.

The U.S. gives that much in military aid to Israel in less than 40 days.

Chemi Shalev, a columnist writing in the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz, put it this way:

“In recent years, after President Obama desisted from efforts to advance the peace process, Netanyahu, his ministers and settler leaders had behaved as if the battle was over: Israel built and built, the White House objected and condemned, the facts on the ground were cemented in stone.

“You can have your cake and eat it too, the government implied: thumb your nose at Washington and the international community, build in the West Bank as if there’s no tomorrow and still get $38 billion in unprecedented [US] military aid.”

Gilding the tangerine

The New York Times today reports that it takes only six minutes for Alec Baldwin to make-up as Donald Trump for his performances on Saturday Night Live. That brings to mind an obvious recommendation for the Donald, who must spend at least two hours every morning arranging to look like himself:

Stop the Twitter assaults on Baldwin's performances and ask him how he does it. Once you're playing President of the United States you need to devote as much time as possible to the job.

On second thought maybe the less time he spends on the job, the better.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/20/arts/television/a-tangerine-wig-and-a-tightrope-walk-alec-baldwin-as-donald-j-trump.html?