While Trump judges continue their war against the right of the people to even live, Putin and Kim Jong Un come racing to Trump’s “rescue” in blatant election interference—and what do they expect in return for this “favor” if he wins?

 

Many voters—or people generally—in this country seem to be too consumed with their own petty grievances to have any real understanding of where this country is headed, and have no clue to the damage being done to their rights by far-right judges, many of whom were personally selected for Donald Trump by the Federalist Society. And it only takes one federal court—such as the Fifth Circuit Court based in Texas—to do such damage that effects the whole country, along with five far-right Supreme Court justices to support its rulings, or not rule on them at all.

Not everyone can know how much they are affected by the lawlessness of these judges until they or people they know are directly affected by their decisions. One of the ways that businesses can shield themselves from the lawsuits is through the legal loophole called forum non conveniens, which a business can sneak into a contract, stating that if an employee wants to file a claim against the business, they can only do so in a “jurisdiction of convenience”—meaning the business’ “convenience.”

Thus in its recent ruling in the Mathews v. Tidewater case, the go-to court for far-right extremists, the Fifth Circuit with its six Trump appointees, dismissed the lawsuit brought by Malek Mathews against Tidewater, who claimed that the marine company had for decades exposed him to hazardous chemicals on board their merchant ships, leading to his now terminal illnesses. The court did so by ignoring at least the “suggestion” by the U.S. Supreme Court that a serious illness caused by the defendant would be reason enough to bring a case to a “reasonable” location—say in the same country both the defendant and plaintiff are located. But Tidewater had put in the contract that any case brought against them had to be brought before a UK high court.

The far-right court ruled that Mathews taking the case to the UK would not “inconvenience” him, it’s “logic” being that “modern technology" was sufficient to overcome such “inconvenience,” and besides, it would “inconvenience” the defendant to have the case tried “locally.” As the Transnational Litigation Blog noted in calling the court’s ruling “troubling,” the court did not have even attempt to rationally “explain” its reasoning behind either "opinion." 

Tidewater is incorporated in Delaware, but its base of operations is in Texas. No “mystery” why; the vendor I was working for at SeaTac Airport pre-ACA offered a “health insurance” plan that was on a list of healthcare “scams” that were illegal in the state of Washington; it was less “insurance” than “income replacement”—meaning it paid a small lump sum and you paid the rest (the opposite of what “real” insurance is supposed to provide), which is why health care providers would suddenly remember they are taking “no new patients” when you mentioned it.

But the vendor was allowed to skirt the state law because the “situs” of the company was in Texas, where it was “legal.” If the ACA had not been largely “approved” by previous Supreme Court decisions, the Fifth Circuit Court would long have struck down the program, and there would be no ACA and continuing denial of coverage for pre-existing conditions, and people would be condemned to die without justice or rights by its rulings, just as it has done in the Mathews case.  

But hold on a minute: didn’t we just learn that Trump secretly provided best friend Vladimir with American-brand COVID-19 test kits for his “personal use”? So Putin’s life and criminal activities—that include the “mysterious” deaths of political opponents—is more important to him than all those “suckers” and “losers” who believed his COVID misinformation and conspiracies?

And what do we see now between “friends”?  Putin and Kim Jong Un are making even more hysterical nuclear threats against the U.S. and NATO less than a month before the election, obviously election interference in support of Trump; Kim has even insinuated his belief that Trump is dumb enough to give him what he wants in “exchange” for a renewal of “talks.”   

So, we are supposed to believe that dictators who have had opposition leaders “mysteriously” murdered by KGB-type methods—or in the case of Kim, his “traitor” uncle beheaded, and his exiled half-brother poisoned in a “hit-and-run” attack in an airport, and who doubtless ordered the torture that ended in the death of American student Otto Warmbier—do not see Trump as someone with criminal inclinations of his own who has already enabled their crimes, and will do so again?

Well, we do know what Putin’s motivations are: the war in Ukraine hasn’t gone exactly as “planned,” since he assumed he would capture Kyiv in three days, and such an “easy” victory would have motivated him to complete the “conquest” of the old Soviet empire (no doubt Belarus was next if nationalists took control over its current dictator and Putin puppet, Alexander Lukashenko)., and then intimidate the former Warsaw Pact countries out of NATO.

Putin obviously believes that Trump—who has already expressed his contempt for NATO and Western European democracies—simply doesn’t care what happens to Ukraine, he will just get bored with the whole thing and walk away, just like he did with talks with Kim, whose own negotiators in Sweden simply walked away after a few hours of “talks,” claiming that Trump offered them “nothing.” Of course Kim wanted something for nothing, keeping his nuclear arsenal for “safekeeping” while the U.S. would abandon sanctions and support for the South Korean government. 

Of course if Trump had agreed to such a “deal,” his reputation as a “deal maker” would have taken a hit that even his lies and bluster could never overcome. But with Trump claiming that he can still make a “deal” with Kim, the latter seems to think that Trump can yet be taken advantage of if he is elected and owes him (and Putin) a "favor."

As for Putin, he has a plan that Trump and his supporters are too stupid to imagine: he will con Trump into believing he is “serious” about “negotiations” to end the war, convincing him to end all aid to Ukraine. Putin will then fake non-serious talks while he re-builds his forces, and when ready to attack, he will declare the “negotiations” a “failure” and that will be the end of Ukraine as an independent state, or so he hopes. Trump, of course, will blame Biden and Zelensky, just as he blames Biden and Harris for his incompetent and disastrous actions in regard to Iran and Afghanistan.

Of course if Trump was privy to Putin's plan, and went along with it because it was the kind of thing he would do if he was Putin's place, what would that make him? A traitor?

But let’s talk more about North Korea, why it is where it is today, and why past negotiations have failed, and will continue to as long as Kim and his family remain in power. This is a country that survived economically with trade with the old Soviet Union; instead of building its economy on “light” industry, meaning consumer goods, the regime built the economy on heavy industry, which in time meant mainly in military hardware. Its economy collapsed after the fall of the Soviet Union, and today 60 percent of the population lives in abject poverty and starvation. 

Any occasional allowances for "humanitarian" assistance via sanction relaxation has gone not to people in desperate need but either to the military or into the pockets of the Kim family. There have been “economic plans,” but there has never been any kind of effort at privatization or encouraging entrepreneurship, since it is seen as a “threat” to the “family” regime, and thus the country remains a state-controlled economy.

Naturally, a country ruled by a paranoid family dynasty must find a “cheap” way to defend itself, and that would be with a few nuclear-tipped missiles to threaten its neighbors with, who wish nothing more than North Korea just taking care of its own problems, not making their problems everyone else’s. As noted on the Arms Control Association website, the Clinton administration made efforts to control North Korean belligerence and seemed on the cusp of doing so, but further negotiations were derailed with the election of George Bush, who was against any “settlement,” even against the building of light-water nuclear power plants which were to be built as “peaceful” power-generators by Japanese and South Korean contractors. These were in fact under construction until suspended for failure of the North Korean government to comply with the agreement; in fact the regime continued to seek to produce weapons-grade plutonium in secret hideouts.

So in fact in 1994, following negotiations surrounding North Korea’s announced withdrawal from the nuclear weapons non-proliferation treaty, the United States and North Korea signed an agreement—the “Agreed Framework”—

calling upon Pyongyang to freeze operation and construction of nuclear reactors suspected of being part of a covert nuclear weapons program in exchange for two proliferation-resistant nuclear power reactors. The agreement also called upon the United States to supply North Korea with fuel oil pending construction of the reactors. An international consortium called the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization (KEDO) was formed to implement the agreement.

But afterwards, North Korea began testing long-range missiles in 1998, the only purpose of which appeared to be for the use of nuclear warheads, and when presented with evidence that it was not in compliance with the agreement to stop development of weapons-grade material, North Korea announced its withdrawal from the “agreement,” which then resulted in reinstating sanctions. It wasn’t quite over yet, since a six-nation mediation process was begun that included China and Russia was begun, but eventually that also failed to produce any results.

While the Clinton initiative largely failed to achieve its ambitions during the remaining six years of Clinton’s tenure—blamed on his “crisis of the day” approach instead of focusing a long-term resolution—the Bush administration decided it wasn’t going to be “blackmailed” by the regime with threats and missile launches, and would not start talks or relieve sanctions unless the regime halted its nuclear program.

And that’s how events progressed since then: North Korea threatening the status quo with renewed quests to become a “nuclear superpower,” and negotiations going nowhere if started at all. While there have been occasional attempts by the regime to fake trade cooperation, this hasn’t been enough to end the on-going famine crisis in the country, and the current Kim has created an economy that is basically as a weapons dealer to those who ignore international sanctions against it (mainly Russia and Iran), and is obviously taking a chapter out of the Trump—or any oppressive dictator’s—playbook, misdirecting the people’s attentions away from the failures of the regime by shifting blame to outside “threats.”

Would Trump “fix” this? Oh, those of short memory.  As the Wilson Center noted that after all the pomp and circumstance following Trump taking a walk over the border for a happy-face photo-op with Kim,

By the end of Trump’s term, the talks had petered out and he had little more to show for his efforts than a drawer full of flattering letters. For all of the talk of their great personal relationship, Kim Jong Un had only advanced his capabilities once again. At a military parade in October, he rolled out his biggest intercontinental ballistic missile yet, immediately dubbed the “monster missile” by analysts. Donald Trump could only add his name to the list of American presidents who had tried and failed to curb North Korea’s nuclear ambitions before him.

Trump failed because he thought that he could “persuade” Kim with his “brand.” That’s right, slap the “Trump” name on the side of a crumbling barn and suddenly it becomes a $10 million mansion. History tells us that the Trump “brand” means nothing, save eventual failure and bankruptcy for those foolish enough to believe that Trump is anything but an empty shell in front a Potemkin Village.

And here we are today, with North Korea teetering on the brink, and the regime still believes that making ever more hysterical threats of nuclear blackmail is its only way out. So what is Kim’s eventual plan, if like Trump he even has one? In a BBC story in 2022, it isn’t about a “negotiated settlement” acceptable to any side save the North Korean dictator’s:

Professor Brian R Myers at Dongseo University in the South Korean city of Busan says Pyongyang has a much more ambitious goal for its nuclear and missile programmes. He believes North Korea's hope is to use its arsenal as leverage to negotiate a peace treaty with South Korea and a US withdrawal from the Korean peninsula. After that, he says, the North believes it will be free to subjugate the South.

Sound “familiar”—like Putin, for example, or even China “reclaiming” territory from its neighbors? Dictators are not interested in “negotiations”—it all must be a win-win proposition for them alone at the expense of their neighbors and world peace and security. Given an inch, and they will eventually demand a mile. And Trump is just the man to give it to them, since he’s done it in the past—with his “deal” with the Taliban example number one. Putin knows this, and he has certainly advised Kim on one his visits to North Korea that Trump can still be played for a fool against the interests of his own country if you are “friendly” enough.

So-called journalists share the blame for why this election that shouldn't be close is fueled by ignorance

 

Why isn't it a well known "fact" by the majority of the electorate that Donald Trump is incapable of rational, coherent thought? When asked for specific information about his “plans,” all Trump does is wander off into nonsensical tangents, usually to attack Biden or Harris, mainly about the “border," dumping more gasoline on the fire to fuel racism with demonizing and dehumanizing lies; do you think I like being the object of lies by ignorant people? Do you like being called a Nazi, which I think some of you have some (many) things in common with?

Trump has also revealed much about himself before as a “businessman,” when he shielded himself from his own incompetence by insuring that other people invested in his new business ventures, to insure they were the ones who lost their shirts, and not him, when those businesses inevitably went bankrupt.

This is a man who claims to stand with working people and the military, yet in private conversation he shows nothing but contempt for them; unlike them, he is of the “master race” who they must grovel before (if he thinks they did anything to deserve such "compensation"); after all, they are “suckers” and “losers” because some of them served in the military, or were not born into wealth, and didn't have a lot of "suckers" to do his dirty work for him, and thus end-up in prison (Michael Cohen, Allen Weisselberg) 

This is a man who doesn’t have a shred of moral or ethical principles of his own, thus easily led by "friendly" far-right fringe fanatics with their own "plans" for the country, who "love" his ignorance and petty, juvenile grievances, such as the Heritage Foundation (Project 2025) and the Federalist Society headed by Leonard Leo, which John Oliver talks about here...

 

 

...and fascists looking for a home, like Stephen Miller, Michael Flynn and Kash Patel. We see this time and time again when Trump cannot articulate a rationalization on any subject free of lies and personal attacks, and sends out his dangerously crazed dirty-workers to "articulate" what they plan on doing if Trump is elected again.

And in a country that is supposed to separate law from religious fundamentalism, we find ourselves increasingly ruled by judges who make decisions based not on the law, but on their “personal beliefs,” which they claim are inspired by their religion—apparently that of the anti-Christ, in the form of Trump. You see people with these "Don't Tread on Me" flags, yet it is the courts with Trump-installed judges and fascist governors and attorney generals in states like Florida and Texas that are the ones doing the "treading" on the freedom of speech, abortion and voting rights of those who oppose them.

And yet here we are, in an election that as late as 2012 would have been unthinkable that a man who is clearly a psychopath may yet again become president.

How did we get here? Marty Baron, former editor with the Boston Globe and Washington Post, offers one explanation. He condemns the mainstream media—meaning “liberal” news media outside of MSNBC—with engaging in so-called “fair” media coverage, which some say is in reality reaching for “false equivalency.” We saw that in the vice presidential debate, when the moderators forced Tim Walz to defend himself from what knew were lies told by Trump, and “explain” some fib he told about when he was in China at a particular time four decades ago.

Yet they allowed JD Vance to get away with the current Republican claim about the new revelations of crimes committed by Trump that clearly fell outside the far-right U.S. Supreme Court’s attempt to “immunize” him, by claiming that all happened “in the past,” and he was focused “on the future," whether or not that includes another January 6 riot if Trump loses. This while the cowardly Mike Johnson used the same line while George Stephanopolous showed him clips of Trump repeating his election conspiracies and lies during rallies; what  should have been done was also expose Johnson’s own history of supporting Trump’s election lies dating from 2020.

Baron, as reported by the Harvard Gazette, “argued that misunderstandings over objectivity stem from the incorrect belief that it amounts to neutrality,” and that “There are people who think they know the answers before they embark on the reporting, and I think that’s a problem for our profession. We do need to go into stories with an open mind with a recognition that we don’t know everything. In fact, we don’t know all that much, and we may not even know what we think we know. (Objectivity is not) on-the-one-hand and on-the-other-hand journalism,”

Baron observed that many journalists choose to engage in false “moral clarity” over “objectivity”—meaning any side, right or left, can claim to have the moral high ground, but what journalists should do is just “stick to the facts,” and be willing to change his or her opinion, based on the facts. Trump’s fact-free lies have no “moral equivalency” with that of Kamala Harris’ occasional elaborations of the facts, and should be treated by the media as such.  

M. Gessen of the New York Times also derided the mainstream media for putting facts and lies on equal footing. When doing so, “it basically creates a political sphere in which there’s no fact-based reality. That’s a pre-totalitarian condition. You can’t have politics if you don’t have a shared reality and if you don’t place an absolute value on the truth. I think that normalization degrades our political life and degrades our understanding of politics.” 

Gessen argues that the failure of most of media to do more to expose Trump and the people he will put in his administration if elected, and the placement of more far-right judges who “judge” by personal opinion and not by the law, will not only endanger democracy, but their own “free speech” to report the truth when they finally realize the danger they helped create by enabling Trump to get elected.

That enablement for what we saw in Germany in 1933 is apparently not clear to some people in the journalism business—despite the fact that we see the germ of it in states like Florida under DeSantis, and Texas under Abbott and Paxton—especially CNN and other “mainstream” news outlets who have a hard time learning that being “fair” to “both sides” when one side is clearly wrong doesn’t gain them more viewers or readers from one side, and loses those on the other. Either you are for democracy, or you are not. Gessen goes on

We, as journalists, do our absolute worst when we engage in a kind of false evenhandedness. What I think their thinking was — and I can only conjecture — but their thinking was probably: We have one candidate who is in the habit of lying, as is his running mate. Let’s find a way that we can show that we’re equally critical of both candidates. So before Vance even has to face a question about Jan. 6 or about whether Trump lost the 2020 election, let’s ask Walz why he lied about being in Hong Kong during Tiananmen Square. The idea that that is in any way comparable to the kinds of really malignant lies that Trump and Vance have been spreading intentionally. There is no equality here.

CNN reported on a “poll” that claims as many people believe Harris is “lying” as those who do Trump. Now why is that? It goes on and on, just as it did in a story about Walz’s “lie” about being in Hong Kong at a particular time, although to be honest, Walz would have done better to stay in this hemisphere to do his “philanthropic” work, which would put him in better stead with Hispanic voters, since he certainly isn’t going to win new voters with this China connection. 

OK, so CNN mentioned this thick document that Jack Smith released, but only mentions a few anecdotes that doesn’t give people a full picture of Trump’s crimes—as if videos of the January 6 rioters wasn’t enough to put an idea of it in people's heads.

Gessen also noted that even though a majority of people thought Harris won her debate over Trump, the media did not spend much time on what she said, but on what Trump (and subsequently Vance) said: 

But if you judge it in terms of its influence and think about who dominated the news cycle afterward, well, it was clearly Donald Trump and his lies, and Vance’s lies about Springfield, Ohio. I fear that we’re going to see even more of that now because Vance got his message out and it’s going to be Vance normalized, Vance validated, Vance quoted, Vance clipped, and we have another MAGA news cycle.

This is nothing “new,” of course. It is certainly what got Trump elected in 2016, after all. In PressWatch in 2019,  Dan Froomkin wrote “False equivalence fuels political journalism’s race to the bottom.” Journalists (and all you have to do to be one is “report” or have an “opinion”) seem to believe that you are “doing your job: if you present “both sides.” But Froomkin notes that in this divisive atmosphere fueled by Trump and far-right extremists (and we shouldn’t claim that they are “equivalent” to the so-called “far-left”) makes a mockery of the idea of covering “both sides” of a political argument:

That serves the public reasonably well when the two parties represent competing political philosophies — but share basic convictions and the same knowledge base. But when one party starts to espouse extremist views that are based neither in reality nor in the core values of an increasingly diverse United States, there is no balance.

Staying impartial – typically a journalistic virtue – results in a journalistic failure: False equivalence, which legendary Atlantic writer James Fallows describes as the “strong tendency to give equal time and credence to varying ‘sides’ of a story, even if one of the sides is objectively true and the other is just made up.”

While Harris uses government statistics to bolster her claims—whether you choose to believe them or not, they at least have the façade of being actually “factual,” Trump engages in made-up numbers and claims that things were “great” when he was president (they most definitely were not), and “the worst ever” in the current administration, which most definitely is not true; frankly, I’m making more money that I ever have, even long past my “prime."

I’m sure there are a lot of people who can say the same thing—including Trump fundament-smoocher Elon Musk, who I think is a “closet” racist (born in South Africa) who likes to pass along racist “research” on X and doesn’t like people expressing their freedom of speech by calling out his “freedom of speech.” Tesla was sued for racial discrimination and harassment, but of course Musk doesn’t even have the self-control to say racism isn’t tolerated; he just says it is just another liberal “conspiracy” to deny him his “rights.”

The fact is that the far-right is exploiting the “need” for the “mainstream media” to be “neutral” for its own evil purposes, and let’s not be dishonest about this: theirs' is a white nationalist, xenophobic agenda (i.e. Abbott and Paxton in Texas) that fears loss of “power” and is being fueled by billionaires and corporations who have their own agendas that have nothing to do with helping working class people. We only need to look at what Trump did to help himself get richer, with tax cuts for people like himself and not for anyone else, and gutting regulations meant to keep people like him lawful and not injuring the lives of working people.

Trump has never done anything for working people, but pulls their attentions away from what he has (or has not) done—and the media has aided him in this; for example, in its failure to talk about the circumstances (I mean, the truthful ones) that brings migrants to this country. In that regard, I watched John Sayles’ 1997 film Men With Guns over the weekend, which at some point before the election I’ll do an overview of here. They are not treated as human beings, but only through scenes which portray them as subhuman objects, "vermin" in need of an "exterminator" like Trump—but for reasons Republicans and the far-right prefer to keep under wraps.

Social media scholar Danah Boyd points out what the far-right has managed to do to the country through the ignorance of many in the journalism business:

The stark reality is that we all got played. And we’re continuing to get played. Accusing journalists of bias makes them “twist themselves in knots to challenge such a critique. News organizations are profiling extremists as legitimate voices to perform a version of neutrality that is rooted in false equivalency. I hope you can hear what I’m saying. Because our democracy depends on you recognizing that you are being manipulated. Understanding the vulnerabilities in news media that manipulators see can help you strengthen your approach.

Some journalists (again, those outside of MSNBC, which tends to rely on reality and facts in its reporting and opinion) have awoken to the truth, although only on occasion when Trump's lies hit too close to home. A group of newspapers in North Carolina in a joint editorial communique condemned Trump’s lies about Hurricane Helene and the “Democratic” response to it:

This is not a situation to capitalize on for political gain. But former President Donald Trump has politicized the situation at every turn, spreading falsehoods and conspiracies that fracture the community instead of bringing it together…the worst examples" of this is a Truth Social post this week in which Trump claimed that the federal government and Democratic state officials were "going out of their way to not help people in Republican areas" in the aftermath of Helene.

There can be differences of “opinion” on “fixes” to common issues that affect everyone, especially working people. But Trump and those who enable him don’t have a “plan” to “fix” anything (except close the border, which will be a lie too, since farmers will still need migrant labor); they just have "plans" to blow things up, allowing Trump to play the vindictive “dictator,” and not just on “Day One.” 

So journalists think they have to be “fair” to Trump and Vance. Why? They are dangerous and need to be exposed. That is the simple truth. Harris and Walz at least have “plans” that are worthy of rational discussion.  Trump has been given ample time to be a rational human being, and he has failed utterly; he is incapable of it. He cannot lead, he is being led by fringe fanatics with a "plan" to succeed in using his stupidity and dementia to manipulate him for their own purposes against the country and the principles it allegedly still stands for.

Packers beat Rams as Stafford is the same Stafford we remember from his days with the Lions

 

Jordan Love went into today’s road game against the Rams in the hope of avoiding the ignominy of opening the season 0-3 as the $220 million starting quarterback, while his unknown backup, Malik Willis, won both of his starts. That the Packers pulled out a 24-19 win was mostly due to Matthew Stafford being Matthew Stafford; outside the Super Bowl team he inherited from Jared Goff, he does what he usually does—get the team close to a scoring opportunity, and more often than not fails. Two turnovers and two loss on downs in Packer territory—including a first-and-goal opportunity—was been-there, done-that for the Packer defense. Stafford threw one TD pass on 45 throws; this season through five games, he has thrown just 3 TD passes on 175 pass attempts.

Should the Rams have won this game and sent Love to an 0-3 start, losing by just a touchdown? The only way they could have won is if the Packers gave it way, and not that they didn’t try in fourth quarter; on their two possessions of the quarter, a drive into Rams territory was aborted on a pass that netted minus-9 yards, and after the Rams scored to make it a one-score ballgame, Love and the Packers managed to burn-up all of 20 seconds off the clock to give the Rams a shot at winning the game still with 3 minutes to play. Stafford got the Rams into Packer territory, but a sack and the lack of big-play ability we’ve seen before when Stafford was playing with Lions snuffed out Love’s opportunity for ignominy.

In between an impressive 96-yard drive aided by a 53-yard pass to Jayden Reed that ended with Josh Jacobs finally scoring a touchdown from one-yard out, and then Tucker Kraft barreling his way 66 yards on a pass caught at midfield for a touchdown, Love produced one of those plays a $220 million dollar quarterback is not supposed to make, scrambling in his own end zone and tossing a ball up in the air for an easy 4-yard pick-6 by the Rams Jaylen McCollough that briefly gave the Rams the lead at 13-7. But Brayden Narverson surprised by making a 46-yard field goal attempt, and Kraft caught not one, but two TD passes in the third quarter, following-up his 66-yarder with a 7-yard strike from Love.

Love wasn’t great in this game after throwing for a career high in yards last week (not that he was “great” throwing 3 INTs in the loss against the Vikings). Outside of his two long completions, he was just 13 of 24 for 105 yards. He was sacked twice, but otherwise suffered only three quarterback hits (compared to 10 hits and 3 sacks against Stafford), so it wasn’t as if Love was enduring a lot of “pressure” in the game. There was talk pregame about his injury status, but it was just talk; all that money and “pride” has to play a role. At least Love finally has a win under his belt—five games into the season.

Next time the Packers play the Cardinals, who “upset” a 49ers team with its playmakers on the sidelines. This is a team that was blown-out by the Commanders 42-14, yet also crushed this same Rams team 41-10. Kyler Murray is one those quarterbacks who had one great season in college that hasn’t exactly translated in the pro-level. He was a high school player of the year in 2014, but didn’t do much in his first two years of college before wowing people with an NCAA record 11.6 yards per pass attempt in a season with Oklahoma in 2018, and becoming the first college quarterback to throw for more than 4,000 yards and rushing for 1,000.

But with the Cardinals, despite putting numbers on the stat sheet that make him at least look competent, on the field he’s been fairly ordinary, a 30-39 record as a starter and one playoff game. However, a quarterback who at least manages to be a “game manager” who keeps his turnovers at a manageable level is worth keeping around in the “hope” he takes his game to the next level—which Murray has not necessarily shown in his last two injury-shortened seasons. The Packers play at home, so this should be a winnable game.

"Hope" is not a useful "strategy" when it comes to Trump's foreign policy "expertise"

 

Some people are calling the VP debate between Tim Walz and JD Vance last night a “wash” or with a “slight” advantage for Vance. While most in the media think that Vance “won” the debate, apparently based on the moderators repeating lies made by Vance and Trump, and engaging in breathtakingly ignorant false equivalencies,  USA Today reports among likely voters in a poll by Politico, “Among the ‘other’ category, which includes independents, 34% of voters surveyed thought Walz won the debate while 25% chose Vance. Forty-four percent of voters thought Walz would make the better vice president while 36% chose Vance.” 

Another poll that showed that both of their approval ratings improved after the debate is more telling—that Walz’s approval rating went from 52 to 60 percent, while Vance’s went from 30 to 41 percent. That means that Walz still has a significant advantage over Vance, since the latter still has to overcome some serious negatives concerning his belief in various lies and conspiracies that he will likely return to back on the campaign trail, which the media needs to point out; just because he tells lies and conspiracies in a “calmer,” less demented way than the man he is tagging along for the ride with doesn’t make what he says less “crazy.”

The psychiatric term for someone who believes his or her own lies is “psychopath,” so we can say that at the very least Vance is feeding into Trump’s psychological state, since Trump is clearly completely consumed with the alternate “reality” that he has created for himself, as people who read his Truth Social posts can clearly (or should) see for themselves.

That leads us to one thing that polls seem to suggest Trump has an edge over Kamala Harris, besides the constant border hysteria and demonizing and dehumanizing migrants: foreign policy. Tell me, Trump supporters: name one single international initiative that Trump supported or introduced that came to anything—you know, the “leadership” thing? Zero, nada, nothing. All Trump did was attempt to “erase” the international accomplishments of Barack Obama, such as attempting to vacate the Paris Climate Agreement, and pulling out of the Trans Pacific Partnership agreement, which claimed to have these benefits in an effort to thwart China's trade stranglehold:

 

No, Trump doesn't support any of those things as a matter of actual "action" or a "plan," as if we didn't know that already. He and his friends may say they do not like China, but they admire its "methods." Trump “replaced” this with the inflationary-for-consumers tariffs on some Chinese imports. Trump claims to have done this to “bring back jobs”—presumably manufacturing jobs—which in fact did not happen during his administration, only the loss of such. Trump always claims that he is only thinking of “working people,” but as the Brookings Institute has pointed out, Trump doesn't actually "think," but pulls out whatever is ailing his gut:

There is no escaping the fact that Trump is a unique figure in American presidential history. He is unique ideologically. No other post-war president believed the radical things he believes. He is unique cognitively and in how he processes information. No other president trusted crazy cable talk shows over his own intelligence agencies. He is unique temperamentally. No other president, not even Nixon, was as thin-skinned or as insecure. And he is unique intellectually. No other president knew less about history and current affairs than Trump. And no one cared less about what they did not know.

Trump’s foreign policy has been nothing but a disaster because of this, and the effects of it only continues. After he threatened to blow the whole of North Korea to kingdom come did Kim Jong Un send him what Trump called a “love letter,” which Trump responded to by allowing Kim a photo-op with him, which most people criticized because it only strengthen Kim’s “standing” and power in a country where looking sidewise at the “supreme leader” could mean a death sentence. Instead we saw a U.S. president debasing himself before a dangerous mini-me without first having an agreement ready to sign for that first “personal” meeting.

Instead, Kim—who had no intention of destroying his nuclear arms stock—took advantage of Trump’s foolish nature and weakness for flattery, and led him on until Trump simply dropped the whole thing. Whether by intent or by surprise that Trump was so easy to play, Kim merely has become more dangerous and less controllable thanks to Trump’s incompetence that is now impossible to "fix" without a major military offensive that Trump himself could not now prevent, save simply allowing North Korea to do in South Korea what Putin is doing in Ukraine.

Then there is Iran. In a post last May, Responsible Statecraft had this to say about Trump’s withdrawal from another Obama accomplishment, the Iran nuclear deal:

Then President Trump unilaterally left the deal, calling it a “horrible one-sided deal that should have never, ever been made.” And now we are in a much worse place. Iran says it has no intent to produce nuclear weapons and U.S. intelligence sees no current efforts by Tehran to weaponize, yet Tehran is believed to be not one year but just weeks from being able to produce enough fissile material for a bomb if it chooses to do so.

At the same time, the ability of international inspectors to detect violations in a timely manner has eroded. As one U.S. officials said of Iran, “they are dancing right up to the edge.”

Worse still, relations between the United States and Iran have been so damaged by Trump’s withdrawal that it does not appear as though the deal can be resurrected. Any efforts to stabilize the U.S.-Iran relationship have been severely complicated by the recent exchange of direct attacks between Israel and Iran. Just as we need a non-military approach more than ever, the prospects for a diplomatic solution appear distant. 

What’s worse is that increasing tensions may be pushing Tehran closer to a political decision to go nuclear. The danger of an Iranian bomb and the related risk that Israel could attack Iran’s nuclear sites could lead to wider military conflict in the region. Of course, it did not have to be this way. The deal was working until Trump abandoned it and, if he had not, it could still be working today.

Trump’s resuming of all sanctions against Iran not only discredited “moderates” in Iran and gave the Islamist leadership an excuse to ignore the treaty, but gave it no reason to “moderate” its activities abroad or even enter into “negotiations” again on the matter. Israel opposed the nuclear deal and welcomed Trump's move, but has that made the country “safer”? Clearly it has not. Trump’s incompetence and juvenile desire to simply undo the accomplishments of the Obama administration without a “plan” about what to do next have been lasting and damaging to both this country’s credibility and ability to control events.

Wait, about the “deal” with the Taliban? The New York Times noted that

The United States agreed to withdraw in return for Taliban promises not to harbor terrorists and to engage in their first direct negotiations with the Afghan government. Mr. Trump’s secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, attended the signing ceremony in Doha and posed for a photo alongside the Taliban leader, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, which resurfaced this week on social media.

“Our secretary of state signed a surrender agreement with the Taliban,” Mr. Trump’s second national security adviser, H.R. McMaster, said of Mr. Pompeo during a podcast interview with the journalist Bari Weiss on Wednesday. “This collapse goes back to the capitulation agreement of 2020. The Taliban didn’t defeat us. We defeated ourselves.”

And in an interview with CNN on Wednesday, former Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper said that, while President Biden “owns” the ultimate outcome in Afghanistan, Mr. Trump had earlier “undermined” the agreement through his barely disguised impatience to exit the country with little apparent regard for the consequences. That included an October 2020 declaration by Mr. Trump that he wanted the 5,000 American troops then in Afghanistan home by Christmas.

Neither Mr. Trump nor Mr. Pompeo has responded to such criticism with contrition. Instead, they have attacked Mr. Biden for what they call his disastrous execution of the pullout they set in motion.

Not only that, but Trump agreed to release 5,000 Taliban fighters, putting the Taliban at its greatest operational strength since 2001. Trump did this despite “reliable intelligence” that indicated that the Taliban had no intention of following through on the agreement, which included "talks" with the U.S.-supported civilian government. 

Trump not only knew this and did not care, but even later boasted that he “started the process” and asserted that Biden “couldn’t stop it even if he wanted to.” Sounds a lot like how Trump “reopened” the border after his election loss in 2020 was for all practical purposes confirmed.

Trump claims that he can “stop” the war in Ukraine.  Politico noted that Alexander Vindman, who testified against Trump during his first impeachment, claimed that invading Ukraine was a frequent topic in discussions between Trump and Putin, although due to the classified nature of the discussions he cannot disclose exactly what was said, which of course allows Trump make any claims he wants to now. 

What we do know is that Trump made no effort to “persuade” Putin to withdraw what everyone knew were Russian troops who invaded eastern Ukraine during his watch—merely calling off a meeting or two with Putin if it was perceived that Putin was doing what he usually did with Trump: ignore him and do what he was going to do anyways.

Vindman also asserted that the “weakness” that Putin perceived that allowed him to ignore warnings against invading Ukraine in 2022 rested solely with Trump, “with the positioning for the second military wave came soon after the insurrection of Jan. 6, 2021, ‘Putin took advantage of the domestic divisions Trump created — he thought we were weak.’” 

Putin clearly did not perceive that the West (let alone a divisively-partisan U.S.) would unite against him; he could not believe that after all that Trump had done to weaken U.S. credibility with its allies and undermine NATO, that the U.S. could lead again, this time under Biden, against his aggression.

Of course as Peter Stone in The Guardian pointed out last March concerning Trump’s continuing “bromance” with Putin,

Donald Trump’s continuing lavish praise and support for Vladimir Putin are fueling alarm among former intelligence officials and other experts who fear another Trump presidency would benefit Moscow and harm American democracy and interests overseas.

Trump praised the Russian president as a “genius” and “pretty savvy” when Russia invaded Ukraine in early 2022, and has boasted he would end the war in a “day”, sparking critics’ fears that if he’s elected again Trump would help Russia achieve a favorable peace deal by cutting off aid to Kyiv. Trump also recently greenlit Russia to “do whatever the hell they want” to Nato members who don’t pay enough to the alliance.

There were other significant signs of Trump cozying up to Russia during his presidency, including a bizarre Oval office meeting with the Russian ambassador and foreign minister where Trump shared classified information. Now veteran intelligence officials and other experts say they have strong worries should Trump become president again, in light of the ongoing Putin-Trump bromance.

“Putin much prefers the chaos agent of Trump because it undermines the US,” Fiona Hill said. “Trump’s not worried about national security, but focused on himself. In paring back the US government and appointing loyalists, Trump will get rid of vital security expertise. Trump is shockingly ignorant” about foreign affairs, Hill added. “Trump rarely read materials he was given before meetings. Trump is less a threat to Russia, and more to the US given his approach to governance.”

Trump claims that World War III is “imminent” and that only he can “stop it.” Of course the problem is that he is the Neville “Peace in Our Time” Chamberlain of our age, but even worse, since he would (deliberately or not) enable today’s version of Hitler in his quest to restore the old Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact due to his contempt for countries that follow a more democratic path than he likes. 

Trump’s attitude about the victims of invasions by his "friends" is like his attitude toward disabled people, which he communicated to his brother Fred Jr.: they should just allow themselves to "die" because they cost "too much." Trump's claim that he will “stop” wars is to simply allow the aggressors to invade and conquer without resistance from an agreeable self-made authoritarian like himself, who completely without a shred of forethought lavishes praise on anti-democratic dictators like Viktor Orban.  

There is the suspicion that Trump has shared U.S. secrets with Putin, including the identity of a critical Kremlin informant that the CIA was forced to remove from Russia for his own safety. The Guardian story goes on

“Trump almost certainly will politicize the intelligence community by going forward with his public promise of installing people on the extreme fringes of right-wing politics such as Michael Flynn and Kash Patel,” said Marc Polymeropoulos, a former senior intelligence service official.

Patel, a former defense department official in the Trump years who has been touted as a possible acting attorney general or top CIA official if Trump wins again, late last year echoed Trump’s talk of seeking retribution against his enemies. Patel told Steve Bannon’s War Room: “We will go out and find the conspirators, not just in the government but in the media … who helped Joe Biden rig elections”

Polymeropoulos stressed that appointments of Flynn or Patel by Trump “would damage US ties with key allies. You’ll see old allies not sharing critical intelligence, and for good reason. They’ll slowly reduce sharing, so as not to provoke the ire of Trump, but their source protection concerns will be paramount and over-ride all else. The intelligence will dry up.”

“If Trump wins, forget the Brits or French – two of our best bilateral intelligence partners in Europe – ever sharing anything significant with us on Russia, for example.”

We have to ask ourselves that if Trump lies about everything, why would his foreign policy claims now be any different? We already know what he has (or hasn’t done). He says “millions” of people have been killed in Ukraine, again a number he pulled out of thin air; but who is “responsible” for that? Putin? Oh no, Biden is to blame. 

We should remember that when Trump claims he will “end” the war between Israel and Hamas, we should also remember that he says he also opposes a “cease fire,” meaning allowing Israel to bomb Gaza into a parking lot “quicker” to “end” the war "quicker." Trump really doesn’t care how many people “need” to be killed to reach that end. He only cares about himself, and if "millions" need to die first, the better for him. 

Trump seems to have the same attitude about intelligence as Israel does, at least in regard to the current conflict; Israeli military and  intelligence knew the evidence of and even the date that Hamas intended to attack a year in advance, but the Israeli government apparently hoped to use an attack as a pretext to invade Gaza (George Bush also needed a “pretext” to invade Iraq and remove Saddam Hussein), but underestimated the level of the attack and the Israeli deaths that resulted. 

Israeli public opinion turned against Netanyahu when this was first revealed, but the fickle public can change its mind, and doesn't see that it was Trump's "fickle" Iranian "policy" that helped refuel Iran's desire to refuel Hezbollah in the current conflict in southern Lebanon.

John Bolton, considered a foreign policy hawk, has been quoted in The Hill that if people think that foreign policy during Trump’s first term wasn’t “pretty,” it could get a whole lot uglier:

“I mean, you hear a lot of Trump advocates trying to reassure people saying the second term is not going to look like the first term; it’s going to be rational foreign policy,” the former White House official said. “I think … that they’re deceiving people — perhaps unconsciously, perhaps hoping.”

Hope, he said, is not an intelligent or useful strategy when it comes to giving Trump another opportunity to "run" the country again, except if you "hope" he runs into the ground.