I think the risk of Trump engaging in negotiations with Iran lies somewhere between zero and none. He just violated the War Powers Act and reinstituted Bush the Lesser’s illegal preemptive war doctrine to justify the assassination of Soleimani, and the GOP controlled Senate will be his cheerleading squad under the command of Lindsey Graham.
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I was speaking of a tweeter trump put out very recently. I realize we are now in a shooting war. I’ve been to Iran and I’ve got a pretty good measure of the people and culture. And you are very much right that trump has ignored the law. Not that laws mattered much to him anyway. They’re more an “inconvenience” than something to be followed.
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Not that the law matter much to Iran either, but the main issue here is he opened up a can of worms, and i highly doubt they are prepared for whatever happens. Is the US in a better position today vs early yesterday, i doubt we are.
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Trump was bored by and tended to ignore the mechanisms normal presidents used to help make decisions like this, so he pretty much dismantled it all. We’re flying blind.
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“Several months ago, a foreign policy expert on the international level went to advise Donald Trump. And three times [Trump] asked about the use of nuclear weapons. Three times he asked at one point if we had them why can’t we use them,” Scarborough said on his “Morning Joe” program.
Scarborough made the Trump comments 52 seconds into an interview with former Director of Central Intelligence and ex-National Security Agency Director Michael Hayden.
Scarborough then asked a hypothetical question to Hayden about how quickly nuclear weapons could be deployed if a president were to give approval.
“It’s scenario dependent, but the system is designed for speed and decisiveness. It’s not designed to debate the decision,” Hayden said.
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But think of all the deals that we can make now!
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Russia will be making the deals.
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Even though I’ve been acutely aware of GOP vote suppression, these new revelations make me ineffably sad. The polls are looking good for a Dem POTUS popular vote win in November, but this sort of thing scares me on an existential level. As Stalin said, “It doesn’t matter who votes. It’s who counts the votes”. He knew. Yes, he knew.
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I wouldn’t say we’re flying blind because we’ve flown this route before, the only change is we have a cuckoo bird at the head of the flock instead of an eagle.
These Trumpian reruns are getting old and stale. We knock off some other country’s bad guy that we are not at war with to retaliate for a single death of an American. This places us in a position to start another war while we’re based in a neighboring country. The only thing that changes is the weaponry and the country’s language, si?
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Keeping ballots secure from voters.
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Doomed…we are just doomed.
The handwriting is on the wall.
There are no more free & fair elections.
Putin won.
This is one of the real cuckoos, a yellow-billed one and a real favorite bird of mine and while they have unusual behavior, don’t know why the “cuckoo” came about.
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Non,
This violated Iraqi sovereignty for one thing and they’re PISSED about that at the moment. And yes that begins a shooting war. It is like trump bragging about shooting someone on 5th ave and getting away with it. Except that Soleimani was very high up in Iranian power structure. They will now feel no constraint on …
building a nuke
going after any westerner they can find. Military civilian, government, whatever.
Blowing up our ships in the gulf (gas up your car)
This will not end. Iranians don’t forget.
I’d like to see the House’s interpretation of the War Powers Act.
One other thing… it seems the threads on anything to do with this Iran strike have no commenting ability. What the hell is up with that?
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I’ve seen them here and heard them in Europe, where they sound exactly like the Swiss clocks, it’s very amusing.
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Site issues is aware of it and the developers are working on it. It happened yesterday as well but the fix did not last.
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Lindsey Graham was briefed but not the gang of eight. So Trump told whoever was on the links with him?
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I got to go on birding surveys in Az with Tucson Audubon several years and this is such a cool bird. More often heard then seen except if you play a call back. There’s a black billed one in other parts of Va that I haven’t seen yet, but hope to.
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The RNC told TPM that Democrats were only worried about the dissolution of the consent decree because it had given them an advantage over the GOP in the last 30-plus years of elections.
And anyone looking at election results from dog catcher to president knows how much of an advantage Dems had. 
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I was going to contact them, but figured at least a few hundred of us already had. Seems it’s been quite awhile since this has happened.
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It is always a good idea to let them know. There has been more than one occasion when I was the first to contact them and I am on the West Coast. The comments were down yesterday for a brief bit.
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