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ijustkindalikebooks · 5 months

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Am I writing this on New Year's Day at 1am? Yes.

It's been a wild year, 2023 truly the best of times, the worst of times, Dickens was on to something there.

I had three five star reads in my final month of the year and I hope you can check them out and enjoy them as much as I did.

(Also please keep in mind what's going on in Gaza and if you can donate to MSF or The Red Cross, please do and PLEASE keep calling for a ceasefire, there are plenty of templates online right now to contact your rep/MP to ensure your voice is heard).

Lost In The Moment And Found by Seanan Maguire - I don't think this author has ever failed me when it comes to five star books. Lost In The Moment And Found is the most recent installment of The Wayward Children series. We see Antsy runaway from home and end up in a shop where all the things are lost end up, seeing her grow up and see through a new portal. There's something about Maguire that enables her to drop you into a scene and create tension, create joy and create drama like no other author, and in so few pages. An incredible addition to the series.

The Theory Of Everything Else by Dan Schreiber - A book packed with ridiculous beliefs and 'facts' to people from speaking Dolphinese to people who believe the Titanic sank because too many time travellers arriving to watch sank it, this book made me laugh out loud reading it and left me astounded at what this author describes 'batshit' theories. It's a fantastic book, and one that I'm not shocked a QI Elf wrote at all. I highly recommend it, so glad I got it for Christmas and started on it as soon as possible.

Dear Dolly by Dolly Alderton - A compilation of columns from her Telegraph Style column, Dear Dolly leaves you thinking about something or at least gives you something that can help a friend in need and sometimes, like myself both. I saw it in the same vein as Cheryl Strayed's Fragile Beautiful Things but with a little more for me connection (I'm a millenial, I can't help it). Incredible insights told with humour and warmth, it's a great quick read that I highly recommend an audiobook (though the audio is slow, so if you hate that speed it up).

What did you read in December? Feel Free to message and if you need a recommendation or a question answered, feel free to inbox me.

Happy new year, my friends.

Vee xo.

#booklr #books #fiction #bookblr #book #book review #book reviews #books and reading #lost in the moment and found #the theory of everything else

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peachesnbees · 7 months

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So I wrote a letter to my rep to stop sending money to Israel and call for a ceasefire, and my rep contacted me back and basically said “🥺🥺b-but Biden sent aid to Gaza so like you don’t need to worry 🥺🥺”

Like nah fuck you for using my tax dollars for funding this shit, my indigenous ass knows what exactly what y’all are doing because my people have been through this horrendous shit before.

Free Palestine, think about them and do what you can to help them because politicians sure as fuck aren’t going to.

#I’m angry as hell…they are okay with funding this genocide. FUCK THEM!!#also how the fuck can you be sending aid to people and still funding the people THAT ARE BOMBING INNOCENT PEOPLE!??!??#beebee rants #beebee posts

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writerdragon · 6 years

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Hi I thought of an actual plot for transformers movies and then wrote it down in bullet points because I loathe Bay and all the wasted potential in his movies.

Keep in mind this is just me putting down words at 1AM so

it's a trilogy now i guess

1st movie:

- okay so this thing started entirely bc i wanted to make the trailer w humans and imply that they're important

- scene opens to show that all the trailer bits are a show the autobots are watching in-between battles

- fuck earth we're not going there

- i'm making it a mcfucking SPACE OPERA

- and mashing up bits from everywhere and also mtmte

- 1st movie is autobot-focused

- they're still in a heroic light, show them winning a bit

- war's been going on a while and the decepticons look like they're flagging, unlike the autobots of course

- it's a slog

- what's this about a truce? coded message?

- oh hey tyrest is here

- tyrest says the cons are lying

- maybe subplot megs is on the dark energon again

- blah blah trying to fish for info from unknown sender

- megs suddenly disappears/looks like he's gone into hiding

- autobot council meeting

- tyrest is like "true peace can only be achieved if the decepticon threat is removed" or something

- OP still thinks they can come to an agreement

- lots of ppl are for eradication

- what's this? it's jazz!

- with some pretty damning evidence that tyrest has been lying about details of various truces and ceasefires in the past to both sides

- tyrest secretly keeping the war going on bc he hates cons

- had history of being bribed by the senate

- his entire thing was that big truce he managed to get them to agree to and he's terrified of losing his authority and power if the war ends and that he'll be "reduced" to judging petty crimes

- figure more out later

- idk i just want this one to be all heroic autobots and then showing how they still started from senate enforcers, and that they've also got their fair share of horrifying shit

- at the end after wrap up have the coded message send a signal frequency

- some autobot high commmand members in a room as they tune in

- surprise it's soundwave

- short speech about how they've been going at it for way too long, their population is near extinction, the whole point where it all started has been mostly forgotten/overshadowed by all the death

"We: are tired."

"And what does Megatron have to say about all this?"

"...Megatron: temporarily deposed."

2nd movie

- SUP BINCH DECEPTICON TIME bc they don't get enough love

- 1st movie covered the present war, now we go back in time and get all the juicy cybertron history, leadup to and outbreak of all the shit

- kaon slums w soundwave bc he's my favourite

- gets nabbed by the senate bc of telepathy

- all that delicious political drama

- all the shitty capitalistic bs the senate does

- meets megatron

- soundwave just wants to keep his family together

- soundwave would do anything for that

- include help to incite a rebellion and execute the senate

- the plan is going well (fuck canon they didn't touch six lasers, what even is the POINT, that's just giving the senate more ammo in their propaganda campaign against the cons)

- also gimme that good good soundwave and starscream friendship I want them to be the saltiest mutual bitching coworker friends

- also soundwave and orion and ratchet being friends at this point would be cool too

- also see jazz at the club he gets dragged to bc I’M NOT FORGETTING THE PARTY AMBULANCE THING and they lowkey nerd out about music stuff

- it’s going well

- uh oh soundwave saw/overheard some info he shouldn't have

- welp having a pet telepath was nice but yknow they really don't want this security risk

- THE INSTITUTE FOR YOU

- fuck the institute btw

- also meet shockwave

- hi shockwave

- he's been stuck here for a while, doing their science and trying to mess it up/delay it as much as possible

- he's so, so angry, angry past the point of rage and going straight on to cold

- he's almost on autopilot at this point except for fucking w shit as much as possible

- oh look there's an important con in here

- ...an important con who knows COMMS STUFF

- take shockwave w you when you leave and he'll help

- fuck yeah ping a comm off to the cons

- CAVALRY'S HERE

- CONS BUSTING IN

- WAVES BUSTING OUT

- starscream's here too bc he's chaotic vengeful fucker and they took his friend

- you don't take starscream's anything

- i just really want decepticon high command kicking ass

- afterwards screamer and shocky can bond over science

- also WAVEWAVE ROMANCE

- shockwave has been cold for so, so long, but soundwave makes him feel like he might be able to feel warmth again, one day

- meanwhile sounders is like fUCK i'm GAY and the cassettes are like yea we know this is fuckin HILARIOUS

- also shockwave and ratchet bond over being old grumps who know medical shit

- knockout and breakdown are also there bc I like them

- megs and OP drama happens but like i don't want it to be a focus it's just a thing that happens while the DHC try to keep this rebellion together

- SENATE MURDERTIME

- cybertron starts dividing up

- shit happens

- friends meet for one last time, OP and megs in the bg having their big breakup or whatevs

- lines in the sand are drawn

- TEAR MY HEART OUT FRIEND-TO-ENEMIES SCENE

- they all walk away at the end

- war takes over the planet

- flash forward/catch up to near present

- dark energon, yet another one of megs' increasingly desparate schemes

- we all know what happens w dark energon

- at this rate they'll wipe out the population

- DHC have had enough

- lowkey arguing amongst themselves about what to do, shit gets tense

- they've been doing damage control for megs for some time now (the truce message in movie 1 is their doing, they need time to recover and regroup)

- it's not suspicious to see them talking together real close

- except dark energon so megs is real paranoid

- don't do unicron drug kids

- they have a rep at this point for shadowy sneaky shit

- megs attacks DHC

- they remember how to work together but it's a close thing

- megs is in stasis

- they get their shit together, they're not just in this for themselves, they're responsible for all the cons

- starscream gets his leader on, they discuss terms for a treaty, what to do if the bots accept or reject it, contingency plans

- shockwave is willing to do drastic things to keep megs in stasis and also if things don't pan out

- at the end they're like soundwave you contact them, ur the spymaster but also comms officer

- starscream's rep is what it is, and shockwave couldn't persuade his way out of a paper bag (he could so, /starscream/)

- hyperempathy working for him for once

- starscream, as an aside, almost smirking: "besides, they did like you best, back then"

- make the call

3rd movie:

- TIME FOR MEGA TRUCE NEGOTIATIONS AND DRAMA

- rebuilding?

- well fuck it’s the quintessons

- look we still hate each other but for the sake of there actually being a tomorrow, we have to work together

#Dragon Rambles #Transformers #Maccadam

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newsfundastuff · 4 years

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President Donald Trump’s phone call with Taliban leaders last week was profound and unprecedented in the long timeline that makes up America’s longest war. For some in American national security and diplomatic circles, it was a climax in a frustrating, years-long peace process. For others, it was also a worrisome event—not because of what Trump said but because of who, exactly, he spoke with. Some of the Taliban leaders on the other end of the line were also on secret U.S. kill-or-capture lists. The commander in chief was chatting with people his government officially still wanted jailed or dead, two Defense Department sources told The Daily Beast.Of course, any peace initiative is going to require talking with one’s enemies—and this call was no exception. But some U.S. defense officials insisted that this was a step too far, and a sign of what they see as a slapdash approach to ending America’s involvement in the Afghan conflict.It’s the latest indication that Trump, who has long wanted out of Afghanistan, is far apart from the Pentagon on how to wind down the U.S. military’s longest foreign war. Military anxieties are understandable. The U.S. is, for the first time, taking a gamble on negotiating an endgame with an enemy it doesn’t trust and which has all the leverage in the negotiations. A pre-deal ceasefire already broke down on Wednesday, five days after the deal was unveiled, when the U.S. bombed a Taliban position in Helmand to disrupt an attack by the militant group on a checkpoint run by Afghan security forces. NBC News reported late last week that there is “persuasive intelligence” that the Taliban has no intention of abiding by the deal. But military concerns go beyond whether the other side in the conflict is trustworthy; there are also concerns about the American side of the equation. Four Trump administration officials, two who are generally supportive of the plan for pulling out troops and two who aren’t—the withdrawals began on Monday—told The Daily Beast that the administration did not have a clear plan for doing so. The call is just one indicator among many. “It’s ground-shaking that the president spoke to individuals on a target list,” said a senior Defense Department official. “It was a big give from our side, towards an adversary that traditionally has never held up their side of the bargain in numerous other attempts towards de-escalation and peace. We made a group that lacks absolute operational control over their forces a legitimate player on the world stage.”The target lists, known as Joint Priority Engagement Lists, are said to be held by the Central Intelligence Agency and the U.S. military’s elite Joint Special Operations Command, according to two U.S. Defense Department sources who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to disclose such matters. U.S. military and intelligence officials The Daily Beast spoke to said that whenever they receive information through any kind of intelligence, the information is forwarded on to the agency that controls the list for further analysis. If the information is found credible, then someone like Amir Khan Muttaqi, who listened in on the call with Trump and who was wounded in a July 2018 airstrike in the Ghazni province of Afghanistan, could have several military or intelligence operations built around them for their ultimate capture or death. The Central Intelligence Agency referred questions to the National Security Council, which did not respond. The White House also did not respond. The Pentagon did not return requests for comment, but after this story published, provided a statement: “After 18 years of war it is clear that peace in Afghanistan will not come through military means. It will come when Afghans come to the table to talk with one another and decide their future together.”Trump praised the phone call he had with Mullah Adbul Ghani Baradar—who is also on one of the targeting lists. Baradar, who was formerly held in a Pakistani prison, is a co-founder of the Taliban and the head of its political office in Qatar. “We had a very good conversation with the leader of the Taliban today, and they’re looking to get this ended, and we’re looking to get it ended. I think we all have a very common interest,” said Trump. “We had, actually, a very good talk with the leader of the Taliban.” Trump is said to be planning a meeting with Taliban leaders in the near future, an intention the president promised at the White House this past Saturday, but no date has been set. In September, Trump canceled a planned meeting with Taliban leaders at Camp David after a string of bombings that killed multiple Afghan people and an American soldier. “What he doesn’t understand is that the president’s decision to speak directly to Mullah Baradar and other senior Taliban political leaders was seen by the Taliban as a form of legitimization,” said Thomas Joscelyn, a senior editor of the Long War Journal, a project under the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “It raises their so-called Islamic emirate to the status of a political peer of the United States. And the Taliban trumpeted this phone call all across their media in multiple languages, specifically for that purpose.” Annie Pforzheimer—a former deputy chief of mission in Kabul, now with the Center for Strategic and International Studies—agreed. “It’s close and it is more than I think the Taliban deserve,” said Pforzheimer. Of course, there are “people”—often, very dangerous people—“you must deal with in order to end the violence.” But those people don’t have to get access to the commander in chief. “That’s something where you could hold your president and your secretary in reserve [during negotiations], for a later point when more has been achieved… It’s a tool that a negotiator, in my opinion, should have been allowed to leave for much later in the process.” Meanwhile, on Capitol Hill, lawmakers have openly questioned the administration’s deal, calling for increased transparency into discussions that led to the agreement. Two sources on the Hill told The Daily Beast that lawmakers are interested in scrutinizing communications, including those between the State Department and White House, about the agreement. The State Department did not respond to requests for comment from The Daily Beast before publication. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) wrote on Twitter late Monday: “I got a classified briefing today on the agreement with the Taliban. I have been a supporter of negotiations with the Taliban, but the more I learn, the more concerned I become that Trump got fleeced. ... The Taliban's security guarantees are so vague as to be effectively void.”Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and Sen. Jim Risch (R-ID), the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, are preparing to hold hearings on the agreement. It is not yet clear exactly what the two committees will focus on. Some lawmakers who this week studied the classified annexes to the deal walked away from the review worried about the agreement and the administration’s ability to enforce the deal.Rep. Liz Cheney, one of the top Republicans in the House, said in a statement Feb. 29 that the deal “includes concessions that could threaten the security of the United States.” In a hearing Tuesday, Cheney said the annexes did not detail mechanisms that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said would be included in the deal. Pompeo has previously said the agreement would include a mechanism to ensure that the Taliban upheld its end of the deal and that the group would renounce al Qaeda. “What we have seen with this agreement now concerns me as much as the Iranian nuclear deal did, now that I have seen the documents and now that there seems to be still no verification mechanism by which we are going to enforce any of the so-called Taliban promises,” Cheney said. But with the November presidential election looming, it’s no surprise that the president has been such a public booster of the deal. For Trump, it’s an objective that he holds as a highly political conviction. For at least the past two years, the president has regularly told, or angrily demanded of administration officials that he wants “the hell out” of Afghanistan before the end of his first term, according to those close to Trump. In the time since the Taliban deal was publicly announced, the president has repeatedly told close advisers, at times using the same phrasing, he wants it “done before November”—a clear reference to Election Day and signaling that he wants to run on the accomplishment of ending America’s longest war—two people with direct knowledge tell The Daily Beast.But the agreement signed by the United States and the Taliban on Feb. 29 in Doha, Qatar, has already begun to show signs of buckling in the region as members of the militant group have restarted offensive operations as of last week. Afghan President Ashraf Ghani rejected a provision in the agreement between the United States and the Taliban that calls for the release of 5,000 prisoners, which is a condition for further intra-Afghan negotiations scheduled for March 10 in Oslo, Norway. Pompeo brushed off the Afghan president’s rebuke of the clause on CBS’ Face the Nation: “There have been prisoner releases from both sides before. We’ve managed to figure our path forward.” “Boy, how the tune has changed,” said retired Marine Col. David Lapan, a former Homeland Security and Pentagon spokesman who’s now a Trump administration critic. “This is the same Pompeo who criticized Obama’s administration for swapping five Taliban militants for Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl. Now we are talking five times a thousand and all of a sudden, it’s OK.” When discussing the potential for the Taliban not honoring the deal or the possible dangers and uncertainty ahead, one of the sources with direct knowledge recalled Trump cutting off a recent conversation on the matter and immediately stressing, among other things, that “the American people, Republicans and Democrats” want U.S. troops out and that “you can look at any poll” and see that.It was unclear to what polling, public or internal, the president was referring. However, according to a source familiar with the matter, a paper that has circulated among the upper ranks of the White House since 2017 consisted of research demonstrating that Trump did better in the 2016 election in areas of the U.S. that suffered higher Iraq and Afghan war casualty rates. The authors of that paper, professors Douglas Kriner and Francis Shen, even wrote in an August 2017 piece for Politico that “for all his lofty rhetoric, Trump might come to regret this decision [to order a troop surge in Afghanistan]. In a recently released research paper… [what] we found was a significant correlation between war casualty rates and Trump votes. In fact, we think three states key to Trump’s victory—Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin—might have swung the other way if they’d had even modestly lower” casualty rates.“The vast majority of the American people—including the majority of veterans of the recent wars—support bringing our troops home from Afghanistan,” said Dan Caldwell, foreign policy campaign manager for Stand Together, a new name for the Koch network’s policy advocacy group. “Withdrawing all our troops is not only good policy, but it is a good political move for President Trump. He should follow through with a withdrawal from Afghanistan even if the Taliban and Afghan government can’t work out a deal.” Read more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

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teeky185 · 4 years

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from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines https://ift.tt/3aGHN3l

#latest news #Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines

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kansascityhappenings · 4 years

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Pompeo expresses outrage over American’s ‘pointless’ death in meeting with Egyptian President

https://newsource-embed-prd.ns.cnn.com/videos/newsource-video-embed.js

WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Sunday met with Egypt’s president and expressed outrage “over the pointless and tragic death” of Moustafa Kassem, an American citizen detained in the country.

Pompeo met Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi in Berlin, where both men are attending a conference aiming to bring peace to Libya.

“Met with President Sisi today and addressed the pointless and tragic death of detained U.S. citizen Moustafa Kassem in Egypt. On #Libya, President Sisi and I agreed on the urgent need for a return to a @UN-facilitated political process and a ceasefire,” Pompeo tweeted Sunday morning.

Kassem, who once begged for President Donald Trump’s help, died Monday of heart failure during a hunger strike after more than six years in an Egyptian prison. He was 54 years old.

The Egyptian American was detained in August 2013 in Cairo while visiting his family. He was beaten by security forces and held in pretrial detention for more than five years before being sentenced without due process in September 2018 to 15 years in prison, according to Pretrial Rights International and The Freedom Initiative, the two organizations that represented him during his case.

Shortly after his sentencing, Kassem sent a handwritten letter to Trump to inform him of his plight and implore the US President for his help.

“I pray that you have a plan for me,” Kassem wrote. He told Trump that he was diabetic and was going on a hunger strike “knowing full well that I may not survive it.”

According to Mohamed Soltan, the leader of The Freedom Initiative, Kassem was on a liquid-only hunger strike on and off before cutting off liquids last week. Shortly afterward, he was transferred to a local hospital, where he died.

“I am putting my life in your hands,” Kassem wrote to Trump in that September 2018 message.

It is unclear if the President ever saw the letter, which was passed to him by Rep. Peter King, the New York Republican who represented Kassem’s brother and sister-in-law. The White House declined to comment on the record about Kassem’s death.

Last week, a bipartisan group of lawmakers and activists on Wednesday gathered on Capitol Hill to urge the administration not to let Kassem’s death be in vain.

“He died in an Egyptian prison for no reason whatsoever,” said Sen. Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat. “I’m a former prosecutor. I would call his death a homicide. It was as preventable as his imprisonment was unlawful.”

The US State Department confirmed his death on Monday, with top senior State Department official David Schenker saying, “his death in custody was needless, tragic and avoidable.”

Although Pompeo had raised concerns about Americans detained in Egypt, including Kassem, Trump has been less vocal about the Egyptian President’s human rights abuses. The US President instead heaped praise on Sisi in April 2019, when he hosted the Egyptian leader at the White House.

“I think he’s doing a great job,” Trump said, calling Sisi a “great person.”

from FOX 4 Kansas City WDAF-TV | News, Weather, Sports https://fox4kc.com/2020/01/19/pompeo-expresses-outrage-over-americans-pointless-death-in-meeting-with-egyptian-president/

from Kansas City Happenings https://kansascityhappenings.wordpress.com/2020/01/20/pompeo-expresses-outrage-over-americans-pointless-death-in-meeting-with-egyptian-president/

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kansascityhappenings · 5 years

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President Trump moves to sanction Turkey after criticism from Congress

WASHINGTON — Facing scathing criticism from Republican lawmakers and members of his own military, President Donald Trump on Monday sought to project a harder line on Turkey as the country pushes further into northern Syria.

Trump said he was applying harsh new sanctions on certain Turkish officials, and in a phone call with Turkish President President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Trump “could not have been more firm” in expressing his displeasure at the incursion, according to Vice President Mike Pence, who updated reporters at the White House on Monday evening.

Pence said he would travel soon to Turkey to help broker some type of ceasefire between Turkey, Syria and the Kurdish forces who have aligned with the Syrian regime after US troops — with whom the Kurds were previously allied — withdrew from the area.

After days of withering criticism from many Republicans and national security veterans, Monday’s developments reflected an attempt by the White House to adopt a firmer stance as northern Syria descends into mayhem.

In his surprise appearance on the White House driveway, Pence was adamant that Trump’s decision to pull troops from the area did not lead to the current chaos — an accusation that’s been lobbed even by some of his allies.

“The United States of America did not give a greenlight for Turkey to invade Syria,” Pence said.

Standing alongside him, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said the new sanctions would be slapped on the Turkish ministers of defense, interior and energy.

Even as Trump was preparing the economic punishment, a bipartisan group on Capitol Hill was finalizing their own sanctions, threatening to undermine the President’s attempts at confronting the growing crisis.

On Monday afternoon, Trump tweeted a statement saying he would soon authorize via executive order new sanctions on current and former Turkish officials. He said he’d also reimpose heavy duties on Turkish steel and cut off trade talks.

“Turkey’s military offensive is endangering civilians and threatening peace, security, and stability in the region,” Trump’s statement read. “I have been perfectly clear with President Erdogan: Turkey’s action is precipitating a humanitarian crisis and setting conditions for possible war crimes.”

The scramble to apply new sanctions came after Trump’s decision to withdraw US troops from northern Syria, a move that paved the way for Turkey’s military offensive. Even some of Trump’s fiercest defenders have questioned his decision, and senior national security veterans have decried the move as abandoning Kurdish allies.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Monday he is “gravely concerned” about events in Syria that could lead to a “resurgence of ISIS.”

“I look forward to discussing what the United States can do to avoid a strategic calamity with my Senate colleagues and with senior administration officials when the Senate returns to Washington this week,” the Kentucky Republican said in a statement.

Despite Monday’s actions, Trump has defended his decision and shown little evidence he’s second-guessing his instinct with bring home American troops abroad.

“Anyone who wants to assist Syria in protecting the Kurds is good with me, whether it is Russia, China, or Napoleon Bonaparte. I hope they all do great, we are 7,000 miles away!” he tweeted shortly before announcing the new sanctions.

Still, Trump had registered the criticism emerging from all corners and pushed his advisers to develop some type of response.

Trump met Monday with top administration officials — including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and national security adviser Robert O’Brien — to discuss options for punishing Turkey economically after Turkish forces launched a military offensive in northeast Syria last week.

But as his team was walking over to the White House residence for the meeting, lawmakers on Capitol Hill forged ahead with their own plans to impose the sanctions.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Monday morning that she spoke on the phone with Sen. Lindsey Graham, one of Trump’s staunchest allies who nonetheless opposes his Syria policy, about potential sanctions. They later tweeted that they agree “we must have a bipartisan, bicameral joint resolution to overturn the President’s dangerous decision in Syria immediately.”

Pelosi claimed that Congress should pursue “a stronger sanctions package than what the White House is suggesting.”

Graham and Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen on Wednesday introduced an outline for strict sanctions on Turkey, and the proposal has quickly picked up support among members from both parties.

White House aides had feared Congress would vote to impose the sanctions before Trump could decide whether to pursue them — a rebuke that would embarrass the White House and expose how little support the President’s Syria decision has in his own party. Some aides feared the Graham-Van Hollen bill was heading toward passage with a veto-proof majority, which occurred in 2017 when Congress voted to hit Russia with sanctions over Trump’s reservations.

There is no evidence Trump laid out the possible punishment on Turkey when he spoke by phone last weekend with President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, a conversation that ended with a statement from the White House that Turkey “will soon be moving forward with its long-planned operation” in northern Syria.

The White House also announced that Erdoğan would visit the White House next month, a meeting that so far has not been publicly delayed or canceled. Pence said Monday there was “no decision” on the meeting.

After it became clear that Turkey’s planned operation would cause havoc in the region, Trump vaguely threatened to sanction the country amid a barrage of criticism from even his closest allies on Capitol Hill, claiming he would “totally destroy and obliterate the Economy of Turkey” if in his “great and unmatched wisdom” he decided Erdoğan had gone too far.

But just two days after Graham and Van Hollen unveiled their bill, Mnuchin was at the White House briefing room podium touting the “very significant new sanctions authorities” that Trump had granted the Treasury Department. The President had not greenlighted any actual sanctions, however, and the announcement was viewed as little more than a verbal warning.

By Sunday, Trump tweeted that he was working with Graham on a sanctions plan and that Treasury would take the lead on executing it. But the following morning, Graham said on Fox News that Congress would be the one imposing those sanctions — deepening the confusion sowed by Trump’s approach to the conflict in Syria.

Trump’s decision last week to allow Turkish forces to attack the Kurds in Syria drew fierce backlash not only from Democratic lawmakers, but also from congressional Republicans who generally avoid splitting with the President. One Republican lawmaker, retiring Illinois Rep. John Shimkus, has even renounced his support for Trump altogether because of the policy shift.

While Mnuchin and Trump have both threatened to retaliate economically against Turkey, neither have outlined specific criteria that would trigger the response. Lawmakers, however, are signaling they have already seen enough from Turkish forces to move ahead with sanctions. A senior Republican Senate aide claimed Monday morning that US sanctions for Turkey are “being driven by the Senate, not the administration.”

Graham said Monday that he planned to meet with Trump as the two seemingly race to be the one spearheading the sanctions. The South Carolina Republican noted earlier Monday that congressional action on sanctions would “supplement what President Trump’s administration has done,” although the administration has so far done nothing to retaliate for Turkey’s military incursion.

The Graham-Van Hollen bill, which would be the most likely vehicle for moving sanctions through Congress, would sanction the assets of top Turkish leaders — including its President — and bar transactions involving the Turkish defense and energy sectors, among other penalties.

But despite the momentum behind the legislation, some Democrats argue that Republicans should still do more to urge Trump to change course.

“Spare me the nonsense on sanctions,” wrote Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy. “People are being slaughtered RIGHT NOW. Bombs are dropping on children RIGHT NOW. Instead of drafting sanctions bills, Republicans should use their massive leverage over the President to get him to change course. RIGHT NOW.”

from FOX 4 Kansas City WDAF-TV | News, Weather, Sports https://fox4kc.com/2019/10/14/president-trump-moves-to-sanction-turkey-after-criticism-from-congress/

from Kansas City Happenings https://kansascityhappenings.wordpress.com/2019/10/14/president-trump-moves-to-sanction-turkey-after-criticism-from-congress/

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