Here is the ninety-third article in our Republicans on Parade series, featuring individuals who personify what the Republican Party has become. Today’s honoree is Republican Vulture Capitalist Carl Icahn. He is so honored for using his influence as a Trump advisor to make $hundreds of millions from knowing regulation changes in advance.

Carl Icahn’s role as a special regulatory adviser to President Donald Trump has ended after questions were raised by Democratic lawmakers about potential conflicts of interest with his business dealings in oil refining and insurance.

In a letter to Trump addressing his departure that was posted Friday on Icahn’s website, the billionaire investor denied profiting from his advice-giving role — a possibility raised by critics who had asked administration officials to investigate his work.

“Contrary to the insinuations of a handful of your Democratic critics, I never had access to nonpublic information or profited from my position, nor do I believe that my role presented conflicts of interest,” Icahn wrote in the letter. “Indeed, out of an abundance of caution, the only issues I ever discussed with you were broad matters of policy affecting the refining industry.”…

From <Bloomberg>

Of course the Republican is lying.  Rachel Maddow explains just what this Republican criminal did.

Now, can there be any doubt that this greedy Republican deserves his parade?

RESIST THE REPUBLICAN REICH!!

Last night, while I was in the shower (thank God!), Fuhrer Drumpfenfarten finally announced his Afghanistan policy (sort of).  Fortunately he did not adopt Bannon’s plan to give the war to Erik Prince, former CEO of Blackwater, the GOP SS.  Bannon wanted to privatize the war for $30 billion a year, before cost overruns.  Unfortunately, Trump appears to be letting McMasters call the shots.  To a general, the universal solutions to all problems are troops and more troops.  It has been a no-win war for years.

On Monday night, President Trump did what the last two presidents before him did: he doubled down on the war in Afghanistan. Unlike Obama, however, Trump offered no timeline for withdrawal.

“Conditions on the ground, not arbitrary timetables, will guide our strategy from now on,” he told the nation.

There are currently 9,800 troops serving in Afghanistan. We don’t know how many more Trump is sending. We don’t know how long they’ll be there. And we don’t know what victory even means at this point.

To get a sense of where we are in Afghanistan, I reached out Laurel Miller, who until very recently was America’s leading diplomat in Afghanistan and Pakistan. She led the office of the Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan for roughly four years. After her office was abruptly closed by the State Department in July, she returned to her previous position as an analyst at the RAND Corporation.

I asked her straightforwardly if there’s a path to victory in Afghanistan and, if not, why US troops are still fighting and dying there. I also asked her how she thinks this conflict will end. While she’s unsure about the latter question, her answer to the first was one was crystal clear.

“Military victory is not plausible in any foreseeable time frame,” she told me, “and what we’re doing now isn’t sustainable.”… [emphasis added]

From <Vox>

Click through to read their complete conversation.

Now trump did say that, when out troops open their hearts to patriotism, there is no room for prejudice, no place for bigotry and no tolerance for hate.  In a nutshell, that means that all are welcome to be cannon fodder, but when it comes to getting benefits afterward, and especially when it comes to voting while black or brown, that’s a different thing altogether.

Lawrence O’Donnell discussed it.

Withdrawing takes time.  These were my words over six years ago.

GW ChickenHawk got the US into Afghanistan under the pretense of counter-terrorism.  He did not tell us that his true intent was to wrest control of gas in the Stans … from Russia, by building a pipeline through Afghanistan to Karachi.  He installed a Unocal employee as puppet President and committed the US to a war of nation building.  Because that puppet, Hamid Karzai is so corrupt, that war is doomed to fail and Obama has been wrong to continue it…

…Realistically logistics dictate that if we start withdrawing troops now, bringing them and their equipment home will take between one and two years.  The time to start is now.

Afghanistan’s present government is just as corrupt.  My opinion is unchanged.

RESIST!!

If I had a nickel for every time I’ve said that the Reich on the Left, Robert Reich, is virtually always right, we could all retire.  Therefore it will probably come as a shock to you to learn that I think the Reich on the Left is wrong, when he says that Trump can be effectively removed by isolating him.  While I agree that he could be removed, up to a point, I don’t think there would be anything effective about it.

With Republicans controlling both houses of Congress, it’s unlikely Trump will be impeached or thrown out of office on grounds of mental impairment. At least any time soon.   

Yet there’s another way Trump can be effectively removed. He can be made irrelevant.

It’s already starting to happen. The howling manchild who occupies the Oval Office is being cut off and contained…

From <Robert Reich>

First, click through and read the rest of Robert’s article.

The first problem is one that Robert brought up himself.  He could still start a nuclear war.  If the media were to stop reporting on Trump’s tweets, as Robert suggests, that would deprive Trump of the attention he craves.  He would become so desperate for attention that he would do whatever it takes to get some, and a fully isolated Trump would start a nuclear war to do it.

There is another problem.  When it comes to all the evil Trump wants to do, he is not the real problem.  The only difference between Trump and the rest of the Republican Party is that he is blatant about it, while they are sneaky about it.   His racist rants are no different than their dog whistles.  Suppressing Black and Latino voters was just as racist, before Trump was even a candidate, as his support for Alt-Right Nazis was last Tuesday.  If Republicans isolate Trump they can falsely claim they have dealt with the problem.  Millions of sheeple will see that on Faux Noise, say BA-A-A-A, and go back to sleep.  At least with Trump front and center, he keeps outrage high among far more Americans.

RESIST THE REPUBLICAN REICH!!

The New York Times, aka the Gray Lady, tends to be very balanced in it’s editorial positions, often so much so that they have drawn criticism from me for presenting Republican lies with the same weight as progressives’ facts.  This morning I witnessed something I never thought I’d see: an absolute condemnation of not only a [p]Resident, but also, the leadership of both the House and Senate in an editorial.

With each day, President Trump offers fresh proof that he is failing the office that Americans entrusted to him. The rolling disaster of his presidency accelerated downhill last week with a news conference on Tuesday at which he seemed determined to sow racial strife in a nation desperate for a unifying vision.

Since the 1930s it has not typically been a challenge for an American leader to denounce Nazism. But there is nothing typical about this president; urged by some of his advisers and family members to summon the majesty and moral authority of the presidency to heal the wounds of last weekend’s neo-Nazi violence in Charlottesville, to put the good of the country before personal pique, he chose instead to deliver a defense of white supremacists that raised as never before profound doubts about his moral compass, his grasp of the obligations of his office and his fitness to occupy it.

This, in essence, is where we are now: a nation led by a prince of discord who seems divorced from decency and common sense. The alarm bells were loud and swift. Five members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff delivered a rare rebuke, condemning race-based extremism in the military and the nation. Foreign leaders, from Secretary General António Guterres of the United Nations to Prime Minister Theresa May of Britain, condemned intolerance and a failure of leadership in the White House.

Of all the many complaints and condemnations, the strongest came from Mr. Trump’s putative allies in the business community, a glittering who’s who of financial and corporate leaders who began resigning from two White House advisory councils early last week, ultimately forcing the president to dissolve both panels in order to spare himself the humiliation of further corporate desertions. The White House ultimately abandoned a third advisory council, on infrastructure, an area where Mr. Trump had hoped to fulfill at least one of his campaign promises to create jobs… [emphasis added]

From <NY Times>

I strongly recommend that you click through and read this editorial in its entirety.  You may never see anything like this again!

RESIST!!