Wednesday, July 3, 2019

Tanks For The Memories

Dear Leader Trump wants a military parade with tanks and jets just like the other dictators do, and he's apparently cajoled, whined at, and threatened the Pentagon and DC city officials to the point where they have to put on a show for the orange little prince of darkness.

Tanks for President Donald Trump’s “Salute to America” Fourth of July celebration were seen arriving in Washington on Tuesday morning, just days before the event is scheduled to take place.

NBC News captured video of the tanks — two Bradley and two Abrams tanks — purportedly en route to the National Mall for Thursday’s event. Also in transport are support vehicles, including an M88, used to help recover heavy armored vehicles.
A photographer for the Associated Press also spotted two M1A1 Abrams tanks along with four other military vehicles on a freight train in southeast D.C. on Monday night.

On Monday, Trump told reporters that tanks would be stationed outside of the Fourth of July celebration, but gave no further details.

The Federal Aviation Administration also confirmed that it would suspend operations at the Ronald Reagan National Airport, the closest commercial airport to D.C., from 6:15 p.m. to 7:45 p.m. ET due to the flyovers from Air Force One and other military planes. Operations at the airport will also be impacted from 9:00 p.m. to 9:45 p.m. ET, during the fireworks show.

Trump has spoken about hosting an event here in Washington that would display military prowess since he attended a similar event in Paris in 2017. Previous plans were scratched after concerns were raised about the cost and infrastructure impact, with critics raising similar concerns about his plans for this week's holiday event.

Local officials and residents have pointed to the damage such massive military equipment could cause to area roads. And Democrats in Congress have criticized the president for putting on an unusually large production at taxpayer expense.

But Trump whined and cried until he got his Fourth of July parade with his generals and tanks, and as Steve M says, if you think this is bad, wait until the billions of dollars of taxpayer money spent on this farce in an election year next July.

Believe me, he'll try. A year from now, an election will be four months away. There's a good chance Trump will be trailing in the polls. Of course he'll try. And this time he'll insist that the damn tanks have to roll down Pennsylvania Avenue, no matter how much damage they do to the roads.

As bad as this year's event will be, next year's will be much worse. Every Trump whim will be indulged.

This is 100% a Trump election rally held with taxpayer money, specifically $2.5 million Trump stole from the National Park Service.  The RNC will make sure that only Trump supporters are in the audience, because Republicans got free tickets, and Democrats weren't invited at all. And it will only be worse as we head into the 2020 election season.

That is if we still have elections, and aren't deep into a shooting war with Iran by then, which most likely we will be. This is almost certainly a test run for the coming "If you question what we're doing with our military, you're not a patriot" era of Dubya's post 9/11 excesses, only on a Trumpian scale, complete with Trumpian levels of violence and fear. America was pretty quick to shame people back in 2001, but in 2019, when, and not if we go to war, it's going to get brutal for the concept of dissent and soon.  Next year's Fourth of July Trump Parade will be mandatory, citizen.

Autocrats have military parades.  Autocrats also have bloody crackdowns on critics.

Have A Happy Fourth!

Reduced posting through this weekend, but if Trump does anything particularly stupid, I'll let you all know.

Have a safe holiday long weekend, and I'll be back on a normal schedule Monday.


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