#george will

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

@GeorgeWill: "Pete Hegseth seems to be a war criminal. Without a war. An interesting achievement. ... The killing of the survivors by this moral slum of an administration should nauseate Americans. A nation incapable of shame is dangerous, not least to itself"

[WAPO]

[rjzimmerman]

A sickening moral slum of an administration. (Washington Post)

If you are conservative or still worship at the altar of trump, please read this and pay attention. It was written by George Will, one of the traditional conservative columnists who has been around for decades.

Click/tap on the caption, and the article should open for you. I "gifted" it from the Washington Post, meaning you shouldn't be confronted by a paywall.

I like this paragraph the most:

"The killing of the survivors by this moral slum of an administration should nauseate Americans. A nation incapable of shame is dangerous, not least to itself. As the recent “peace plan” for Ukraine demonstrated."

[ahumourlessworld]

Medvedev reminds Trump of Russia's Doomsday nuclear strike capabilities as war of words escalates

“Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Thursday told U.S. President Donald Trump to remember that Moscow possessed Soviet-era nuclear strike capabilities of last resort after Trump told Medvedev to "watch his words".

Trump, in a post on his Truth social network in the early hours of Thursday, singled out Medvedev, who is deputy chairman of Russia's Security Council, for sharp criticism after Medvedev said that Trump's threat of hitting Russia and buyers of its oil with punitive tariffs was "a game of ultimatums" and a step closer towards a war between Russia and the United States.

"Tell Medvedev, the failed former President of Russia, who thinks he’s still President, to watch his words. He’s entering very dangerous territory!," Trump wrote, in his second warning to the close ally of President Vladimir Putin in recent weeks.

(…)

Medvedev said that Trump's statement showed that Russia should continue on its current policy course.

"If some words from the former president of Russia trigger such a nervous reaction from the high-and-mighty president of the United States, then Russia is doing everything right and will continue to proceed along its own path," Medvedev said in a post on Telegram.

Trump should remember, he said, "how dangerous the fabled 'Dead Hand' can be," a reference to a secretive semi-automated Russian command system designed to launch Moscow's nuclear missiles if its leadership had been taken out in a decapitating strike by a foe.

(…)

Trump also rebuked Medvedev in July, accusing him of throwing around the "N (nuclear) word" after the Russian official criticised U.S. strikes on Iran and said "a number of countries" were ready to supply Iran with nuclear warheads.”

Trump Says He Ordered Subs Repositioned in Rare Nuclear Threat to Russia

“President Trump said on his social media feed on Friday that he had “ordered two nuclear submarines” to be repositioned in response to online threats from Russia’s former president, Dmitri Medvedev, a rare threat of nuclear escalation between the superpowers.

Mr. Trump said he had ordered the submarines “to be positioned in the appropriate regions, just in case these foolish and inflammatory statements are more than just that.” He added: “Words are very important, and can often lead to unintended consequences, I hope this will not be one of those instances.”

Mr. Medvedev, who often serves as something of an online attack dog for the Kremlin, had said in a social media post of his own on Thursday that Mr. Trump should picture the apocalyptic television series “The Walking Dead” and referred to the Soviet Union’s system for launching a last-ditch, automatic nuclear strike.

Because nuclear submarine movements are among the Pentagon’s most closely held tactical maneuvers, it will most likely prove impossible to know if Mr. Trump is truly repositioning the submarines, or just trying to make a point.

But in Mr. Trump’s sudden and escalating confrontation with Russia over Ukraine, it is the first time he has referenced the American nuclear arsenal, much less threatened to reposition it. Mr. Trump said on Thursday that he intends to impose new sanctions on Russia over its unwillingness to wind down its war in Ukraine, the latest step in his gradual shift toward a more antagonistic stance toward the Kremlin.

Still, such public flexing of nuclear muscles is rare even for Mr. Trump, who last made explicit nuclear threats to Kim Jong Un of North Korea early in his first term, in 2018. At that time he said his “nuclear button” was “much bigger and more powerful” than Mr. Kim’s. That exchange ultimately led to a diplomatic opening to Mr. Kim, three meetings between the two leaders — and a complete failure of the effort to get the North Korean leader to give up his nuclear arsenal, which is now larger than ever.

But Russia is a different case, and Mr. Trump has often talked about the fearsome power of nuclear weapons, something he contends he learned about from an uncle who was on the MIT faculty. So while President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has made threats about putting nuclear forces on alert during the opening days of the Ukraine war, and may have been preparing to use a tactical nuclear weapon in the fall of 2022 against a Ukrainian military base, the U.S. has never responded.

(…)

It was not clear what kind of nuclear submarines Mr. Trump was referencing. The U.S. has nuclear-powered attack submarines that search for targets, but it also has far larger, nuclear-powered and nuclear-armed submarines. Those don’t need to be repositioned; they can reach targets thousands of miles away.”

80 years since Hiroshima. How much longer can the world’s luck hold?

“Historian Antony Beevor, writing in Foreign Affairs, noted that Hiroshima and Nagasaki effectively ended “the first modern conflict in which far more civilians were killed than combatants.” Which suggests that technological virtuosity advanced as morality regressed. But, Beevor wrote, Japan’s military government was “prepared to sacrifice millions of Japanese civilians by forcing them to resist an Allied invasion with only bamboo spears and explosives strapped to their bodies. By 1944, some 400,000 civilians a month were dying from famine in areas of East Asia, the Pacific, and Southeast Asia that were occupied by Japanese forces. The Allies also wanted to save the American, Australian, and British prisoners of war who were starving to death in Japanese camps — or being slaughtered by their captors on Tokyo’s orders.”

Five months before Hiroshima, a single night of incendiary U.S. bombing killed 100,000 in Tokyo. Two atomic bombs probably reduced the war’s quantity of violence and death. Consider this when reading M.G. Sheftall’s “Hiroshima: The Last Witnesses,” which chronicles the end of what he calls civilization’s “prenuclear innocence.”

In a March 21, 1963, news conference, five months after the Cuban missile crisis, President John F. Kennedy said, “Personally, I am haunted by the feeling that by 1970 … there may be 10 nuclear powers instead of four, and by 1975, 15 or 20.” Although that did not happen, nuclear proliferation could result from President Donald Trump’s McGovernite “come home, America” impulse, his disdain for allies and skepticism about alliances. Nations, from South Korea to Poland, that no longer feel protected under the U.S. nuclear umbrella might want their own.

Trump’s vice president recently said the eruption of military violence between two implacably hostile nuclear powers, India and Pakistan, was “fundamentally none of our business.” Oh? The United States has no serious stake in preserving the eight-decade norm against crossing the nuclear threshold? Did JD Vance think Iran’s nuclear ambitions were “fundamentally” none of our business when the administration of which he is an adornment sent the B-2s to Iran?

The war-shattered Soviet Union was prostrate when in August 1949 — just 51 months after the May 8, 1945, end of World War II in Europe — it detonated a nuclear weapon. China was a preindustrial peasant society with a per capita annual income of $85.50 when it became a nuclear power in 1964. Pakistan had a per capita annual income of $424 when it became one in 1998. North Korea struggles to make shoes but is making missiles to deliver its nuclear weapons intercontinental distances.

Any sufficiently determined nation can acquire the know-how to join the nuclear club. Iran has been seriously determined for decades. And when have economic sanctions caused a large nation (Iran’s population: 92.5 million) to surrender what it considered a vital national security interest? So, perhaps only serious military action — war — can keep Iran out of the nuclear club.

(…)

Johns Hopkins University’s Hal Brands said, “China’s nuclear force doubled between 2020 and 2023.” He says there is “an autocratic bloc more cohesive than anything the United States has faced in generations.” Three members (Russia, China, North Korea) are nuclear powers.

(…)

Thucydides said three things cause wars: honor, fear and interest. Come Wednesday, 29,220 days will have passed since the first use of a nuclear weapon, and 29,217 since the second. What in humanity’s carnage-strewn history of honor-driven angers, rational and irrational fears, and ideologically defined interests suggests there will not be a third, and then others?”

[oldshowbiz]

Larry King telling George Will to fuck right off with that shit

[corporationsarepeople]

George Will: House Republicans voted to endanger ‘civilization’ with Ukraine aid opposition

George Will, a conservative columnist for The Washington Post, went after House Republicans who recently voted against more aid to Ukraine i

[newsmagnet]

Longtime political columnist and commentator George Will quipped that former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is “ready to be 1/435th of the House of Representatives,” adding that if she won election to the House it “doesn’t really matter much.”

Will made the remarks in response to a question from NewsNation host Ashleigh Banfield on Tuesday during Nexstar Media Group’s corporate management meeting in Dallas. Banfield asked Will if Palin, who recently announced a run for Congress in her home state, was ready for another job in government.

“Ready to be 1/435th of the House of Representatives? Sure,” Will said. “Because in the grand scheme of things, that doesn’t really matter much.”

Palin announced her candidacy for the seat vacated with the passing of the late Alaska Rep. Don Young (R) just 45 minutes before the filing deadline for the race.

She was endorsed by former President Trump earlier this month, who called her “tough and smart” in his statement backing her.

Will said he would not be surprised to see Trump endorse candidates who are likely to win House and Senate races during this year’s midterms, as an effort to shore up his “prognosticator” brand and build support while mulling a potential run for the White House again in 2024.

“You notice he’s not saying anything about the Senate race in Ohio,” he noted.

Will, during separate remarks, proposed a new way of creating better, less polarizing candidates for president, including “disqualifying anyone who has served as a senator,” from running for the White House.

“It would improve the Senate remarkably,” Will said. “You wouldn’t have all those people just biding their time there. Second, it would improve our pool of presidential candidates. We used to get our presidents from governors, who have run something larger than a Senate office, who have been accountable for more than 1/100th of a legislative body.”

The Senate, Will argued, “has become a purely performative stage where people strike poses, issue statements, and make gestures — but it’s not involved in serious government.”

Part of the ambition seen in modern politicians dovetails with an increasingly partisan cable news landscape, Will suggested.

“We’re suffering from an epidemic of confirmation bias … and an addiction to synthetic anger … People don’t watch cable news for information, but for ratification of their beliefs,” he said.

A columnist at The Washington Post for years, Will was hired by Nexstar Media Group in January to serve as as a senior contributor to cable outlet NewsNation’s nightly news program. Nexstar Media Group purchased The Hill last fall.

[porterdavis]

Ask not for whom the bell tolls

There is no such thing as rock bottom. So, assume that the worst is yet to come. Which implicates national security: Abroad, anti-Americanism sleeps lightly when it sleeps at all, and it is wide-awake as decent people judge our nation’s health by the character of those to whom power is entrusted. Watching, too, are indecent people in Beijing and Moscow.

- George Will

Yes, that George Will, the moss-backed ultra-conservative.

This may be Trump’s Cronkite moment -- when Cronkite turned on Nixon, his presidency was effectively over.