Red_Dragon wrote:

Kennedy Center is now a no-go zone for me. It's sad to pass up some really good classical and opera music opportunities, but the Orange Shit Stain has pretty much made it impossible. 

"I'd like to say, this is a little controversial but I couldn't care less, uh, we have a lot bad criminals that came into the, uh, into, uh, this country, and they came in stupidly, it was an unforced error, it was, uh, an incompetent president that allowed it to happen, it was an autopen maybe that allowed to happen, and it did happen, but we also have a lot of bad people that have been here for a long time, people that whack people over the head with a baseball bat from behind when they're not looking and kill 'em, people that, uh, knife you when you're walking down the street, they're not, they're not new to our country, they're old to our country, many of them were born in our country, I think we ought to get them the hell out of here too you wanna know the truth, so maybe that's the next job we'll work on together."
— Donald Trump

You wanna know the truth, says Trump. I think we should get citizens the hell out of America.

Citizens.

1933: Germany begins denaturalization of "undesirables" (mostly Eastern European Jews naturalized after WWI)

1935: The Nuremberg Laws: Defined who was a Jews, stripped Jews of citizenship, criminalized Judaism, began moving Jews into Ghettos or deporting them in large numbers, confiscated Jewish property. Only Germans "by Blood" were considered Citizens

Of course, there's a logistical problem, you just can't deport that many people, especially your own denaturalized stateless citizens. Even if you can move that many people, there's a point where no one will take them.

1939: the SS St. Louis, a German ocean liner carrying 1,000 Jews, fled Nazi persecution across the Atlantic and was denied port entry by first Cuba, then the United States, and then Canada. Racism, antisemitism, nationalism, isolation, no one would take in those refugees. So, the ship returned to Europe, and eventually the United Kingdom France, Belgium, and the Netherlands agreed to take in the stateless Jews.

1940: Germany invaded France, Belgium, and the Netherlands and starts rounding up all the "undesirables" (including nearly every Jew from the SS St. Louis) and then...

1941: The Final Solution.

~Jim Wright

“If you take it , we take every single base of the Americans from Aviano to Ramstein, from Romania, to all the other military bases will be confiscated, and you will lose it, and the whole position of American power since World War II, if you take Greenland, you have to leave,”

— Gunther Fehlinger, Austria's NATO committee chair

Any attempt to take Greenland (and there's no guarantee we could actually take and hold it, especially against an alliance of multiple nations) would result in a complete loss of EVERY OTHER EUROPEAN BASE. We have over 80 years of investment in those facilities, trillions upon trillions of dollar. We'd lose access to every runway and port in Europe. Nearly every US OPLAN is built around use of those facilities from logistics to repair to communications to command and control to intelligence to weather prediction to fueling to reaction time to power projection.

Hell, US military planning for defending GREENLAND depends in large part on NATO assets and access to European bases and resources.
We might even, and it's increasingly likely that we would, lose access Canadian facilities, assets, airspace, and waters. You could potentially be looking at a collapse of NORAD.

Loss of those facilities, loss of those allies and alliances, would be a catastrophic disruption of military planning and a monumental reduction of US capability to project global military and political power. The North Sea, the Arctic, the Baltic, the Mediterranean, North Africa, the Black Sea, the Suez Canal, the impact and second order effects can't even be measured at the moment.

That's what Trump is risking for Greenland — a landmass we ALREADY have military access to. A landmass that American companies can already invest in for resource harvesting — just as they can enter into business arrangements with any other nation for oil, mining, and etc.

Who benefits?

No, really, that's not rhetorical. WHO does it benefit?

When Trump destroys NATO, who benefits?

When Trump convinces Americans to refuse vaccination and America is increasingly vulnerable to disease, who benefits?

When Trump declares Americans themselves as enemies, as terrorists, as unamerican, and turns violent force on the citizens, who benefits?

When Trump imposes tariffs, destroys trade, crashes the economy, and drives up unemployment, who benefits?

When Trump incites civil war, when Trump attacks US states, when Trump divides us, who really benefits?

Who benefits.

Answer that question and you know who Trump really works for — whether HE knows or not.

~Jim Wright

 Red_Dragon wrote:

FTFY

Washington National Opera bows out of Kennedy Center

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power

For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

 HaydukeTwo wrote:

From a man who, inarguably

cheated on all three of his wives
is an adjudicated rapist
has been convicted of 34 felonies
and has pardoned thousands of insurrectionists and other criminals

Irony alert

 HaydukeTwo wrote:

Well now we know that there is no constraint whatsoever.

Sinistrophobia

 ScottFromWyoming wrote:

Our local newsreader used that word in the quote. Freudian slip?

 Red_Dragon wrote:

Mortality though...

 HaydukeTwo wrote:
Manifest destiny

There was never a set of principles defining manifest destiny; it was always a general idea rather than a specific policy made with a motto. Ill-defined but keenly felt, manifest destiny was an expression of conviction in the morality and value of expansionism that complemented other popular ideas of the era, including American exceptionalism and Romantic nationalism.

Very Fine People

 HaydukeTwo wrote:

Someone should gently remind the @$$#0|es in the White House that all their whackadoo justifications can be used by other countries against American possessions in other countries or against American allies. I'm sure Xi Jinping is taking notes on Trump's claims while gazing at Taiwan...

 HaydukeTwo wrote:

He has no morality.

https://www.theguardian.com/us...

‘I don’t need international law’: Trump says power constrained only by ‘my own morality’

President says morality ‘the only thing that can stop me’ in New York Times interview on limits to his authority