The build up to war with North Korea has begun.

Courtesy of Vox: 

“There is a military option: to destroy North Korea’s nuclear program and North Korea itself,” Graham told the Today show’s Matt Lauer. “He’s not going to allow — President Trump — the ability of this madman [Kim Jong Un] to have a missile that could hit America. “If there’s going to be a war to stop him, it will be over there,” Graham continued. 

“If thousands die, they’re going to die over there. They’re not going to die over here — and he’s told me that to my face.” 

Graham’s press office confirmed that the senator was, in fact, reciting the details of a conversation he had with the president. According to Graham, the president “doesn’t want a war” — but would be willing to start one that would kill millions of people in the region if it came down to it. 

Graham went even further later in the interview, saying war between the United States and North Korea was “inevitable” under this president unless North Korea stops testing intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). These missiles, Graham says, are an unacceptable threat to the American homeland — so Trump would go to war to stop them.

I actually believe that the talk of North Korea's ability to send a missile far enough to hit any city or state in America is overblown.

In a very short amount of time we have gone from mocking North Korea's efforts to build a working missile, to fear mongering about potentially being blown up in our sleep.

All of this feels far too similar to the selling of the Iraq War to me, and I am not buying it.

And the cost of this war could be catastrophic:

While all war game scenarios show the US winning a military confrontation, that victory could come at the cost of hundreds of thousands of deaths, mostly in South Korea where millions of innocent people -- and nearly 30,000 US troops -- are already in range of North Korea's current missile capabilities. 

And that is not even considering the possibility that China may come to the aid of their longtime friend and ally. 

But none of that will matter to Trump, because keep in mind that this presidency is coming apart at the seams, and the ONLY thing that will distract the public from talk of investigations into Russian collusion, is the start of a new war.

This is what Republicans do, this is what they ALWAYS do, and yet people keep voting for them.

The guy who has nothing better to do with his time than tweet at 3 AM is criticizing the guy who has nothing better to do with his time than fire long range missiles.

North Korea has just launched another missile. Does this guy have anything better to do with his life? Hard to believe that South Korea.....

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 4, 2017

....and Japan will put up with this much longer. Perhaps China will put a heavy move on North Korea and end this nonsense once and for all!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 4, 2017

This of course inspired some criticisms of its own from Twitter users.

"Does this guy have anything better to do with his life?" is the rhetorical question Americans ask each morning. About you, Mr. President.

— Adam Best (@adamcbest) July 4, 2017

Same could be asked of Trump. He has spent more of his presidency watching TV, rage tweeting, and playing golf than any of his predecessors

— Robert Maguire (@RobertMaguire_) July 4, 2017

Excellent points.

By the way for those of you worried because you heard these new North Korean missiles might possible be able to reach Alaska, don't.

First off I seriously doubt that North Korea could hit the side of a barn.

Secondly our missile defenses would swat away any missiles that DID make this far like a pesky fly.

And third we are currently trying not to get eaten by bears in our own backyards, so we actually have  more important things to worry about.

So it appears that Ivanka Trump was actually the one who decided to launch a missile attack against Syria. I'm sorry, when was she elected president again?

Syria made me very upset Daddy. Bomb them...bomb them all.

Courtesy of The Telegraph:

(Eric Trump) also confirmed that President Trump’s decision to bomb a Syrian airbase to punish President Bashar al-Assad for a nerve gas attack last week was influenced by the reaction of his sister Ivanka, who said she was “heartbroken and outraged” by the atrocity.

So let me get this straight.

We just launched an illegal attack against a sovereign country, without first seeking the approval of Congress, because Ivanka Trump was traumatized by some photographs?

Don't get me wrong I was upset by those photographs as well, as I am sure many of us were.

However having an emotional response to a picture is not what should determine a military response.

Especially if that emotional response was from your grown ass daughter who is not currently holding an elected position or seat on your cabinet.

I have to imagine that if we were living in an alternative universe where Hillary Clinton won the election, that if Chelsea approached her sobbing over a photograph and saying that we need do something, her mother would have informed her that they already had a plan in place, and to suck it up because there is no crying in the Oval Office.

By the way in this same article Uday...I'm sorry...Eric also said this: 

Donald Trump’s decision to launch a cruise missile attack on Syria proved he is not in league with Russia and will not be “pushed around” by Vladimir Putin

Uh no.....no it doesn't. 

But nice try.

North Korea is now using Trump's missile attack on Syria as justification for their nuclear weapons program.

Good job in Syria, we are so grateful for the excuse.

Courtesy of the Daily Beast:  

North Korea says the U.S. airstrikes in Syria prove that its nuclear weapons program is justified, calling the strikes “absolutely unpardonable.” The remarks were made by an unnamed official from the country’s foreign ministry, according to state-run Korean Central News Agency. “We will bolster up in every way our capability for self-defense to cope with the U.S. evermore reckless moves for a war and defend ourselves with our own force,” the North Korean official said. 

The North Koreans have long used "US aggression" as the justification for their nuclear weapons program, and this Syria attack just provided more credibility in that arena.

As it turns out North Korea's benevolent overlords, China, were ultimately unimpressed with Trump's first outing as commander-in-chief as well.

Courtesy of the New York Times: 

With President Xi Jinping safely out of the United States and no longer President Trump’s guest, China’s state-run media on Saturday was free to denounce the missile strike on Syria, which the American president told Mr. Xi about while they were finishing dinner. 

Xinhua, the state news agency, on Saturday called the strike the act of a weakened politician who needed to flex his muscles. In an analysis, Xinhua also said Mr. Trump had ordered the strike to distance himself from Syria’s backers in Moscow, to overcome accusations that he was “pro-Russia.” 

That unflattering assessment reflected China’s official opposition to military interventions in the affairs of other countries. But it was also a criticism of Mr. Trump himself, who Mr. Xi had hoped was a man China could deal with.

So much for the tyrannical toddler approach to diplomacy. 

I think that Trump was hoping that by doing something militarily, anything militarily, that he would suddenly be viewed as an actual leader worthy of holding the most powerful position in the world.

Instead he appears pathetic, impulsive, and essentially impotent.

And unfortunately so does America.

Has Trump's attack on Syria changes the narrative about his ties to Russia?

Courtesy of Politico:

In Russia, they call it kozyrnut’. It means “to play a trump card.” 

Donald Trump’s missile strike this week against the Russian-backed Syrian regime not only damaged its chemical weapons program, it also happened to give the U.S. president a useful political tool. 

Now, whenever anyone accuses Trump of being too cozy with Russia, he can point to the strike against Syria as evidence that he’s willing to defy the Kremlin: Kozyrnut’. 

The missile strike on a Syrian airbase came just days before Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is due to visit Moscow, and the implications could be wide-ranging for Trump's relationship with Russia, which kept its push-back largely rhetorical. 

The political side effect, meanwhile, could burnish Trump’s defense against claims he is too close to Russia amid ongoing federal probes into whether Moscow tried to swing the 2016 election his way. 

“Many people have had concerns that Trump was going to be too soft on Russian President Vladimir Putin, but clearly the actions this week would alleviate some of those concerns, at least in the short term,” said Alex Conant, a Republican strategist who previously worked for Sen. Marco Rubio, a Trump 2016 rival.

This, this right here is what we have to guard against. 

Now I am not going to go all Alex Jones here and suggest that the gas attack on the Syrians was a 'false flag attack" orchestrated by Putin and Assad in order to provide cover for Donald Trump.

I don't have enough evidence to really support such a claim. (Though it IS interesting how little damage our missiles did to that airfield, and how bizarre it is that Russia did not try to shoot them down.)

However I will say that whether it was intentional or not currently Trump surrogates are all over the Sunday cable shows pushing the narrative that now we can put that whole Trump/Russian collusion nonsense to rest. 

But no we certainly cannot.

This essentially impotent response from Trump does NOTHING to suggest that he and his team were not working with the Russians to steal this election from the American people.

So it is up to us to remind idiots on our Twitter and Facebook feeds that this investigation is still ongoing and that as of right now there is plenty of evidence to suggest that the Russians absolutely did what they did to get Trump elected, and that some of Trump's operatives played an active part in that.

I will state publicly that no Syrian has to die to convince all of us that Trump was NOT working with Vladimir Putin. All he has to do is release his taxes going back about ten or twenty years.

You know, like every REAL president has done since Richard Nixon.

As it turns out Donald Trump stands to benefit financially from launching missiles at Syria. Well of course he does.

Courtesy of CNN: 

Raytheon, the company that makes the Tomahawk missiles used in the air strikes on Syria by the United States, is rising in early stock trading Friday. 

Investors seem to be betting President Trump's decision to retaliate against Syria after the chemical attack on Syrian citizens earlier this week may mean the Pentagon will need more Tomahawks. 

The Department of Defense asked for $2 billion over five years to buy 4,000 Tomahawks for the U.S. Navy in its fiscal 2017 budget last February. 

Nearly five dozen Tomahawk cruise missiles were launched at military bases in Syria from U.S. warships in the Mediterranean Sea late Thursday.

Why does this matter to Trump you might ask?

Because of course he owns stock in Raytheon. And don't you feel silly for asking?

Courtesy of Business Insider:

Donald Trump's personal financial disclosure report, which was filed as part of his presidential campaign on Wednesday, contains fairly detailed information about what's in his stock portfolio.

According to the report, Trump's investments cross a wide spectrum of industries, with technology companies, financial firms, defense contractors, and energy are all represented in his portfolio. Trump also owns stock in many well-known companies including Apple, Nike, Whole Foods, Google, Philip Morris, Raytheon, Facebook, and Morgan Stanley, among others.

In other words Raytheon's stock goes up, Donald Trump gets just a little bit richer.

So not only did Trump gain politically from the attack, with plenty of pundits now calling him "presidential," but he also made his wallet just a little bit thicker.

And the best part? Well the best part is that if didn't even do anything to protect the people of Syria.

JUST IN: Syrian warplanes take off from air base hit by U.S., carry out strikes in Homs countryside - Syrian observatory for human rights

— Reuters Top News (@Reuters) April 7, 2017

You know most of my nightmares only last the one night. But this one just goes on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and............

In response to chemical weapons attack Trump orders missile strike against Syrian airbase. Update!

Courtesy of ABC News:  

Responding to a Syrian chemical weapons attack on Tuesday that left scores dead, the United States initiated a military strike Thursday on an airbase in Syria, multiple U.S. officials have confirmed, launching 59 missiles at an air base in the country. 

The Pentagon said that the airstrike, which targeted Shayrat Air Base in Homs Province -- where the chemical attack was initiated earlier in the week -- struck multiple targets with tomahawk missiles launched between 8:40 and 8:50 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, from destroyers USS Porter and USS Ross in the Mediterranean Sea. 

President Donald Trump said the strike was in the "vital national security interest" of the U.S. 

In a statement to Syrian state TV, the Syrian army said the attack had left six people dead and several injured, in addition to "big material losses."

A couple of things to keep in mind here.

First Russia was warned about the airstrike before it occurred.

However Trump did NOT warn Congress.

Despite the warning Russia is pissed off: 

Russia has reacted angrily after the US launched a missile strike on a Syrian government air base. 

US officials said the base had been used to launch a chemical weapons attack in north-western Syria that left dozens of civilians dead on Tuesday. 

But Russia, which backs President Bashar al-Assad, condemned the US strike and suspended a deal designed to avoid mid-air collisions over Syria.

Hillary Clinton also stated publicly that she would have attacked the Syrian airbase. (However I think we all know that she would have sought approval from Congress first. After all this IS Hillary Clinton we are talking about.)

Another thing to note is that Trump was completely against this same response back in 2013, after a chemical weapons attack left 1,400 dead.

So I guess 80 dead on his watch justifies a military response by not over a thousand dead during the Obama Administration?

And finally a certain MOH recipient is right on board with this decision.

Good on @realDonaldTrump for showing the world that America will no longer stand by and watch this barbaric behavior on innocent people.

— Dakota Meyer (@Dakota_Meyer) April 7, 2017

(I think we already know what the mother-in-law thinks about her boyfriend's response)

One final thing to note is that President Obama was quite ready to take decisive action against Assad back in 2013, but he was blocked from doing so by a majority Republican Congress.

Funny how times cahnge, don't you think?

Update: Ah so it appears that the Syrians also knew an airstrike was coming. 

Gee it appears that only the Americans were kept in the dark.