5th bullet point in the OP. Just sayin’.
Yeah…I’d have to agree with this. I was hasty when writing that. Coulter is easily my go-to when suggesting a right-wing troll is literally that and just cashing in on it.
Bolton also supported the Confederates during the Civil War.
But worse, Bolton actually has political acumen. He knows how to sell ideas and build coalitions of people to execute them. He’s ideological to the point of being seeming like he’s mad - he will refuse to admit that he’s wrong and he will use deception to get what he wants. He’s ideological, but he’s but not dumb.
Men too. Maybe that’s why Trump picked him.
In the 69 his Bolton stash will tickle your rear.
(I’d rather have Shock G as our National Security Advisor, in all seriousness.)
Just to pick a nit, I wouldn’t say that he was a neo-con in the same sense that guys like Perle, Wolfowitz, and (to a lesser degree) Cheney. They generally believed in coalition building and working within international frameworks; they just believed that the US had the right to make exceptions to those frameworks as needed.
Bolton doesn’t believe in any of that shit. The Great Walrus would probably be more at home in the late 19th and early 20th Century, a time of intense competition between colonial & industrial powers. His worldview is indeed much like that of Trump’s own, believing that the world is a jungle and it’s every country for itself. And those who survive in the jungle can only do so with aggression. Trump just hired people who believe that there is absolutely nothing at all immoral about nuclear first strikes on a country like North Korea or Iran, even if it’s not at all clear that they’re actually poised to attack us or our allies.
They couldn’t find office space for him
Whoa whoa whooooaa, why do you have to go slandering Wilfred Brimley by giving his title to this Bolton character? :dubious:
Wasn’t Bolton instrumental in steering Hans Blix and the IAEA towards some pre-determined conclusions? Or was he just spouting off what he wanted to hear when the IAEA wasn’t exactly to his liking. . . I can’t remember.
Tripler
This White House is sinking fast.
You are absolutely corrrect.
So, he’s a talented ass-clown?
Hans Blix said while the inspections were happening that they weren’t finding any evidence of WMDs in Iraq. Eventually the Bush administration declared that they were invading Iraq, which forced Blix to leave before the inspections were complete. I don’t know what role Bolton played in this.
His wife is a financial planner for a French multinational. They have a daughter. His wife went to Wharton. I wonder if she knew Trump when he was number one in his class at Wharton. </sarcasm>
Bolton has announced that he will be getting rid of all of the NSC employees who have been “disloyal” to Donald Trump. And according to what some people are saying, that means everyone who worked as part of the Obama administration.
I’m sure the national security of this country will be well protected after we fire everyone who has more than a year’s experience on the job.
Isn’t that Kelly’s job?
Wow…
I shouldn’t be laughing, because I live here.
But really, if this is somehow going to wind up as the end of the USA, yeah, OK. I’m not OK with the probable mass bombings and irradiation. But the USA turning itself from the Leader of the Free World into basically a bigger, almost as dumb, version of Berlusconi’s Italy, well, yeah, it kind of is already. Democracy, everybody!
I like his mustache where it actually belongs. Kurt Vonnegut needs to rise from the grave, stalk Bolton down, and bodily retrieve his mustache from Bolton’s lip, sans anesthesia.
A good example of right wing hackery is here, where Fox News reacts with horror at the idea that Obama might meet with America’s generic enemies, but sees Trump’s alleged meeting with Kim Jong Un an act of high statesmanship. I sort of doubt that they mentioned how unusual it is for a head of state to meet for a tete-a-tete with an adversary with minimal diplomatic preparation.
Speaking of conservative suck-ups, Hugh Hewitt thinks Bolton is awesome, “an honest broker”. As evidence he points to a Fox News interview where Bolton accurately related the NSA chief’s job description: presenting “the president with a full range of views and options on every national security situation and to make sure the pluses and minuses of each option were detailed.”
Conservative in exile Max Boot takes a different evidentiary approach: he considers Bolton’s actual track record: [INDENT][INDENT][INDENT] The Senate Foreign Relations Committee heard copious testimony that, as Undersecretary of State, Bolton browbeat intelligence analysts into cooking up evidence that Cuba had a biological warfare programme and that Iraq was developing weapons of mass destruction. A senior State Department official and fellow Republican testified that Bolton was a “bully” who was “a quintessential kiss-up, kick-down kind of guy”. When he finally went to the UN with a recess appointment, Bolton became notorious for making enemies and not influencing other countries.
The job of the national security adviser is to co-ordinate all of the defence and foreign-policy agencies and to get them to work smoothly together. This requires the kind of interpersonal skills that Bolton singularly lacks. [/INDENT][/INDENT][/INDENT] But Max! Bolton can rattle off his job description at any time! What more do you want!?!
Hey, Max, nice acorn! You find that one yourself?
In an OpEd piece yesterday in the Sydney Morning Herald Kim Beazley (former opposition leader and Australian Ambassador to the US) noted that during his stint as UN Ambassador that Deputy Secretary of State Rich Armitage resorted to denying him access to State Department working documents and intelligence.
I really would prefer if “White House” didn’t become the OED’s collective noun for a group of loose cannons.