He runs the U.S. like his inherited family business (plus Alex Acosta/Barr/Trump/Epstein FN)

Strapped for cash, as often in his life, billionaire playboy Donald Trump convinced his siblings to violate the terms of their deceased father’s trust and sell all of the Trump properties his father had built and stated, in writing, that he wanted his name on in perpetuity. The Artist of the Deal then quickly arranged to sell all the properties, appraised at $1,000,000,000, for a generous $262,000,000 discount to the buyers. His piece of the sale was still a nice chunk of change and held him over for a while, at least until his next bankruptcy.

The mainstream media continues to sane-wash the accelerating ravings and irrationality of the clearly insane Mr. Trump, who is now also showing daily signs of worsening dementia. Every dollar this self-made genius ever had, until his highly successful presidential grifts began, was provided by his psychotic father, an unscrupulous man with a talent for business as well as criminally avoiding paying taxes on his wealth. Willful, mediocre little Donald was his father’s second choice for heir, after the more intelligent, more talented and affable heir, the oldest son, was afflicted by conscience, moral hesitation and other traits undesirable for the “killer” dad needed to run his ruthless, law-skirting real estate empire.

Young Donald quickly took to the role of killer and decider, nothing that happened in the Trump Organization was not subject to his unappealable will. That total, unquestionable dominance, defiance of his mother (root of his lifelong misogyny) and sadism (initially toward his little brother are all he took into the presidency, riding a showman’s ability, honed for years on a fake reality TV show portraying him as a business genius, to bullshit and con millions of Americans with legitimate grievances, along with irrational ones. Trump’s real genius is his ability to command loyalty from a cast of characters he repeatedly betrays and to stoke irrational rage over things he makes up and repeatedly lies about.

Trump’s expectation of absolute loyalty to his will is beyond question by anyone who works for him. Flattery is also required, and in most cases, a certain of amount of humiliation by the big guy.

So is complete unaccountability for his many criminal acts, among these sexual assault (found liable in the only case to proceed to a verdict), defamation (ditto, twice), paying off a porn star he adulterously date raped to dummy up in the days before the 2016 election, and fraudulently hiding those payments (convicted on all 34 counts), violating the Espionage Act (t seized evidence shows he committed every element to be convicted of it, including obstructing the investigation over and over), running a fraudulent charity (dismantled by state AG), exhorting his followers to “peacefully” break through police barricades and smash their way into the Capitol to overturn the 2020 election (and failing to stop the riot for three hours as he excitedly watched it on TV). The list is really too long to need further elaboration, though I shouldn’t fail to add that he was one of the “unnamed” close Epstein associates granted total immunity in the Dubya DOJ’s infamous 2007 “sweetheart” non-prosecution/immunity deal with Jefferey Epstein, for any and all acts related to Jefferey, or girls Jeffery introduced them to, no matter their age [2].

Trump has never been held accountable for any of his countless crimes and other acts of indecency. The only good that’s come of his reign, and it’s a dubious one to many, is that words like FUCK and SHIT may now be said openly almost everywhere (“cunt” likely coming soon).

Who is surprised, then, when his former criminal attorney, Todd Blanche, acting AG, now auditioning for Attorney General, signs court papers claiming The National Trust for Historic Preservation, who brought suit to stop construction of the Donald J. Trump-Marie Antoinette-Jeffery Epstein Ballroom on the site of an illegally demolished East Wing, failed to rebut DOJ’s very strong statement, in a court filing, that they are nongovernmental partisans acting out of Trump Derangement Syndrome. They NEVER DENIED IT, JUDGE! BECAUSE THEY ARE TRUMP DERANGED LIBTARD CUCKS WHO HATE AMERICA — and that’s a legal fact asserted by the United States Department of Justice, bitch! Nice work, Todd, the boss must be, momentarily, very happy.

Of course, a man who incompetently ran a billion dollar inherited business, and bankrupted every business venture he started, or had it shut down for fraud (Trump University, for example, and he only had to pay $25,000,000 — thanks Pam Bondi, for dropping the case in Florida), believes he is the smartest deal maker who ever lived. He did, as promised, make peace between Ukraine and Russia, by giving Putin everything he wanted (including billions after Trump’s blitzkrieg caused Iran to retaliate by shutting down the Strait of Hormuz). Dunning-Kruger [1].

Too stupid to know how stupid he is, he believes he’s a genius. After all, as he himself tells it, it’s in his genes, his uncle was a brilliant professor at MIT. For the rest of us, he’s placed incompetent, subservient clones of himself in every important position of public trust. Pete Hegseth’s own mother expressed her humiliation at having a misogynist drunk like Pete as her son — and Trump got her to publicly apologize so Warrior Pete could get confirmed as Secretary of WAR on a party line vote. What could go wrong for men who have never been wrong?

Heather Cox Richardson:

Today Connor O’Brien of Politico reported that the Republican chairs of the House and Senate Armed Services committees were surprised and angry at the news that Hegseth was recalling the [5,000] troops from their deployment in Poland. At a hearing with Army officials—who said they had only been informed of the decision days ago—House Armed Services chair Mike Rogers (R-AL) said: “We don’t know what’s going on here, but I can just tell you we’re not happy with what’s being talked about, particularly since there’s been no statutory consultation with us.”

Committee member Don Bacon (R-NE) said the canceled deployment “is a slap in the face to Poland; it’s a slap in the face to our Baltic friends. It’s a slap to the face of this committee.”

In Trump’s mind, Committees were made to be slapped in the fucking face. As hard as possible, as always, for sadistic bullies. Not only that, but there’s no longer such a thing as “Abuse of Power” (as proved by Alan “I Kept My Underwear On at Epstein’s” Dershowitz in Trump’s second, now expunged, impeachment trial) or, LOL, “Conflict of Interest“. This is from the same Heather Cox Richardson letter quoted above:

Wall Street executives told the journalists they were “baffled” by the high volume of trades [thousands of Trump stock buys, based on insider knowledge and profiting from his own taxpayer funded deals with the CEOS of companies he bought shares of] and concerned about the appearance of conflicts of interest. “All of this raises questions that you’d rather not raise as a president,” wealth manager Matthew Tuttle told the reporters. “So now people are asking why is he buying Nvidia and other companies now? When you’re the president you know everything, so any stock you buy, there’s a huge question mark.”

White House spokesperson David Ingle told the reporters that Trump “only acts in the best interests of the American public” and that “[t]here are no conflicts of interest.” source

[1] The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias that describes the systematic tendency of people with low ability in a specific area to give overly positive assessments of this ability. The term may also refer to the tendency of high performers to underestimate their skills Continued in Wikipedia

[2] The fuckery goes all the way back to Epstein’s team of lawyers refusing to accept a non-prosecution agreement in 2007-2008 until it was under the terms Epstein demanded (and eventually got) — including absolute anonymity and complete immunity for anyone Epstein ever introduced to a high school, or middle school, girl, for any purpose, (Dershowitz and Kenneth Star led his powerful army of lawyers). The verbiage below is from Bill Barr’s DOJ’s November 2020 report on how to whitewash a travesty of justice and make it seem reasonable indeed, even if regrettable. Even then the court had to force an Epstein deferential Department of Justice (who somehow couldn’t prevent his sketchy “suicide” when he was back in their custody), to comply with the rape victim protection law they had flagrantly, and without consequences, violated way back in 2008. Barr cites a technicality that makes the DOJ’s refusal to hand over the sealed non-prosecution agreement to victims for more than a decade seem reasonable indeed.

On July 7, 2008, a victim, identified as “Jane Doe,” filed in federal court in the Southern District of Florida an emergency petition alleging that the government violated the Crime Victims’ Rights Act (CVRA), 18 U.S.C. § 3771, when it resolved the federal investigation of Epstein without consulting with victims [violating the CVRA — as Barr’s DOJ avoids concedinging], and seeking enforcement of her CVRA rights. In responding to the petition, the government, represented by the USAO, revealed the existence of the NPA [Non-prosecution agreement], but did not produce it to the petitioners until the court directed it to be turned over subject to a protective order; the NPA itself remained under seal in the federal district court. After the initial filings and hearings, the CVRA case was dormant for almost two years while the petitioners pursued civil cases against Epstein. . .

. . . The USAO [DOJ local office] opposed efforts to unseal various records, as did Epstein, who was permitted to intervene in the litigation with respect to certain issues. Nevertheless, the court ultimately ordered that substantial records relating to the USAO’s resolution of the Epstein case be made public. During the course of the litigation, the court made numerous rulings interpreting the CVRA. After failed efforts to settle the case, the parties’ cross motions for summary judgment
remained pending for more than a year. . .

. . . In the decade following his release from incarceration, Epstein reportedly continued to settle multiple civil suits brought by many, but not all, of his victims. Epstein was otherwise able to resume his lavish lifestyle, largely avoiding the interest of the press.

On November 28, 2018, however, the Miami Herald published an extensive investigative report about state and federal
criminal investigations initiated more than 12 years earlier into allegations that Epstein had coerced girls into engaging in sexual activity with him at his Palm Beach estate. The Miami Herald reported that in 2007, Acosta entered into an “extraordinary” deal with Epstein in the form of the NPA, which permitted Epstein to avoid federal prosecution and a potentially lengthy prison sentence by pleading guilty in state court to “two prostitution charges.” According to the Miami
Herald, the government also immunized from prosecution Epstein’s co-conspirators and concealed from Epstein’s victims the terms of the NPA.

Of course, fucking Alex Acosta was found, by Barr, his former colleague from the law firm Kirkland Ellis, to have committed no ethical or legal violations by Barr’s DOJ twelve years later, although they felt compelled to add this paragraph (fair is fair, one supposes).

Nevertheless, OPR concludes that Acosta’s decision to resolve the federal investigation through the NPA constitutes poor judgment. Although this decision was within the scope of Acosta’s broad discretion and OPR does not find that it resulted from improper factors, the NPA was a flawed mechanism for satisfying the federal interest that caused the government to open its investigation of Epstein. In Acosta’s view, the federal government’s role in prosecuting Epstein was limited by principles of federalism, under which the independent authority of the state should be recognized, and the federal responsibility in this situation was to serve as a “backstop” to state authorities by encouraging them to do more. However, Acosta failed to consider the difficulties inherent in a resolution that relied heavily on action by numerous state officials over whom he had no authority; he resolved the federal investigation before significant investigative steps were completed; and he agreed to several unusual and problematic terms in the NPA without the consideration required under the circumstances. In sum, Acosta’s application of federalism principles was too expansive, his view of the federal interest in prosecuting Epstein was too narrow, and his understanding of the state system was too imperfect to justify the decision to use the NPA. Furthermore, because Acosta assumed a significant role in reviewing and drafting the NPA and the other three subjects who were supervisors left the USAO, were transitioning to other jobs, or were absent at critical junctures, Acosta should have ensured more effective coordination and communication during the negotiations and before approving the final NPA. The NPA was a unique resolution, and one that required greater oversight and supervision than Acosta provided. (above at p. 11)

[“A unique resolution,” indeed.]

. . . Although Acosta’s decision [not to inform Epstein’s victims that he was about to enter into a [unique, secret] non-prosecution agreement and allowing a letter to be sent to them letter falsely telling them the investigation was ongoing, after the NPA was signed] was within his authority and did not constitute professional misconduct, OPR concludes that Acosta exercised poor judgment when he failed to make certain that the state intended to and would notify victims identified through the federal investigation about the state plea hearing. His decision left victims uninformed about an important proceeding that resolved the federal investigation, an investigation about which the USAO had communicated with victims for months. It also ultimately created the misimpression that the Department intentionally sought to silence the victims. Acosta failed to ensure that victims were made aware of a court proceeding that was related to their own cases, and thus he failed to ensure. that victims were treated with forthrightness and dignity.

OPR concludes that the decision to postpone notifying victims about the terms of the NPA after it was signed and the omission of information about the NPA during victim interviews and conversations with victims’ attorneys in 2008 do not constitute professional misconduct. (at 12)

And in a final fuck you to the victims, and the public (and this investigation was conducted AFTER Epstein was suicided in DOJ detention under highly unusual circumstances still being covered up) fucking Bill Barr’s DOJ investigation concludes, with characteristic candor:

“Acosta … failed to ensure that victims were treated with forthrightness and dignity.” You think?

. . .After examining the full scope and context of the government’s interactions with victims, OPR concludes that the government’s lack of transparency and its inconsistent messages led to victims feeling confused and ill-treated by the government; gave victims and the public the misimpression that the government had colluded with Epstein’s counsel to keep the NPA secret from the victims; and undercut public confidence in the legitimacy of the resulting agreement. The
overall result of the subjects’ anomalous handling of this case understandably left many victims feeling ignored and frustrated and resulted in extensive public criticism. In sum, OPR concludes that the victims were not treated with the forthrightness and sensitivity expected by the Department.

“OPR concludes that the government’s lack of transparency and its inconsistent messages led to victims feeling confused and ill-treated by the government; gave victims and the public the misimpression that the government had colluded with Epstein’s counsel to keep the NPA secret from the victims; and undercut public confidence in the legitimacy of the resulting agreement.”

The misimpression of a unique and unprincipled sweetheart deal to protect wealthy sex offenders, you say?

Here’s an IDEA, Trump DOJ. Violate the Epstein Files Transparency Act Trump signed by heavily redacting everything, in the small percentage of documents belatedly dumped, relating to the perpetrators protected by Acosta’s sweeping non-prosecution agreement against any unnamed man or woman who participated in Epstein’s crimes. At the same time publish hundreds of previously undisclosed victim names and include their nude photographs. That’s forthrightness and sensitivity, Nazi fuck style.

“I really don’t care, do you?”

The Very Picture of Health

You have to admit, he looks great, as always.

Meanwhile, in under-reported news, Trump is holding strategy meetings with government election deniers, including his new Postmaster, David Steiner (whose position on election denial is unreported, as far as I know), about combatting non-existent election fraud (on the voter side, anyway) and 100% debunked claims of voter fraud by mail — and what the USPS can do to enforce Trump’s executive order banning mail-in voting, a prophylactic against Blacks — and other voters he considers illegitimate fraudsters from ‘anarchist jurisdictions’– attempting to run the country by unfair majority rule, (over his dead, racist body).

President Donald Trump’s attempt to impose federally approved voter lists on states and restrict mail-in voting is moving full-steam ahead.

White House officials have held discussions in recent weeks about putting the plan into action with the help of the Justice Department, the postmaster general and a known election conspiracy theorist who’s been put in charge of “election integrity” at the Department of Homeland Security.

According to a government official with direct knowledge of these discussions, the talks have involved top administration officials at particular departments. The official responsibilities of the individuals involved hints at how the government is planning to implement — and defend — the policy in court. This source provided evidence that these discussions have involved DOJ Civil Rights Division head Harmeet Dhillon and her deputies; U.S. Postal Service CEO David Steiner; and Heather Honey, a far-right activist whose disproven research fueled Trump’s 2020 election challenges.

Honey is now the DHS deputy assistant secretary for election integrity in the department’s Office of Strategy, Policy and Plans. She has been described as a “protege” of Cleta Mitchell, a Republican lawyer who guided Trump as he attempted to cling to power after losing his 2020 reelection bid. source

Election Fraud conspiracy theorist Heather Fucking Honey is now the Department of Homeland Security’s deputy assistant secretary for ELECTION INTEGRITY in the department’s Office of Strategy, Policy and Plans (one shudders to think what that office actually plans). Only in MAGAland, folks.

Honey’s security team is likely the same Proud Boy contingent that guarded super patriot ratfucker Roger “Stop the Steal” Stone, before he fled Washington the night of January 5th, 2021.

Words have meaning

Odd to have to say that, but also necessary to remember in our effort to combat incoherence, in this boiling Age of Incoherence we are living in.

Speaking of words with clear meaning, here are some, from psychiatrist Bandy X. Lee, from The Independent (no mass media news source in the US is seriously, directly covering the issue of Trump’s clear, dangerously escalating insanity), that should be heeded, goddamn it…

Many psychiatrists adhere to the “Goldwater Rule,” which discourages diagnosing public figures without personally examining them…. While this wasn’t a diagnosis per se, they [Dr. Lee and 35 other experts in dangerous mental health issues] based their conclusions, they say, on “voluminous evidence from the historical record of the president’s bizarre and impulsive behaviour, rambling digressions, factual confusions, unexplained sudden changes of course in strategic matters, both national and international, and his deeply impaired judgement.”

An accompanying statement concluded that the most worrisome examples were his outbursts of what was termed “extreme, seemingly uncontrollable rage,” such as his multiple threats to destroy Iran. Lee told The Independent that Trump’s grandiose, wishful fantasies and images “are signs of a psychotic spiral…. A desperate attempt to counteract the total helplessness one feels when one is losing one’s mind”….

Since the statement was released, she noted in her Substack that Trump has “exhibited even more signs of grandiosity, e.g., posting images of himself on social media shaking hands with God, acting like Jesus and dressing as a pope. And he has continued nocturnal bingeing on social media posts that are filled with accusations of multiple conspiracies against him, as often as 150 times a night.”

While she maintains she is not diagnosing Trump as she would a patient, Lee says she has a positive obligation to improve society and better public health, which includes acting “if anyone is a danger to society—in fact, danger for psychiatric reasons is a mandated duty for which we could be held legally liable for not responding.”

From a psychiatric standpoint, what does a pattern of sleeping four hours or fewer do to executive function, impulse control and the ability to make life-or-death decisions? Lee says that whether caused by anxiety, depression, mania, stress or substances, lack of sleep will worsen any diminished capacity in a person, including executive function, impulse control and critical decision-making.

“We know that he appears to fall asleep during important functions…. So, the fateful, life-or-death decisions that are handed to him, or that he takes upon himself despite not being equipped to handle them, imperil our nation and all the globe”….

Perfectly normal, and much, much better than “Sleepy Joe” and his pathetic AUTOPEN! Best president ever, bigger than Elvis, bigger than the Beatles, bigger than the Pope, bigger than Jesus Christ. And don’t even think of calling him Dozy Don, you Trump Derangement Syndrome suffering mother cuckers.

Proud pirate president primps

Hostis humani generis (Latin for ‘an enemy of mankind’) is a legal term of art that originates in admiralty law. Before the adoption of public international law, pirates and slavers were generally held to be beyond legal protection and so could be dealt with by any nation, even one that had not been directly attacked.

I’m so cool, I don’t care about anything, the only thing I care about is a very strong talking point that has nothing to do with my perverted sexual or financial history with my sadly suicided buddy and my many other good friends.

Interpersonal politics

I should have been a fucking diplomat (or maybe an advice to the lovelorn columnist).

Dear C:

In answer to your question [“whatever happened to rachmunnis and forgiveness?”]: rachmunnis is mercy, empathy, decency, kindness. Forgiveness is a close relative, in fact, rachmunnis is sometimes translated as forgiveness.

This impulse to act with love, to move past hurt, to nurture someone else, after sitting with their uncomfortable feelings, is the heart of relations between humans who care about each other. Rachmunnis is easier to recognize than to consistently practice.

Humility and self-awareness are essential parts of being an empathetic person. You have to be willing (and able) to put yourself in someone else’s place in order to resolve problems, to forgive each other and show love instead of clinging to righteous anger that always escalates when conflicts are never resolved.

When someone tells you that you’re hurting them, and you insist they’re being oversensitive, overthinking it, making unfair accusations, making you uncomfortable and so on, you are showing the opposite of rachmunnis. If you do this once in a while it means you’re having a bad day, you weren’t yourself, and it’s not hard to overlook.

If you reflexively get angry and intransigent when someone tells you that you’ve hurt them, you’re not capable of rachmunnis. Forgiving a person who lacks rachmunnis is folly. It’s not true forgiveness, for one thing; it’s an empty gracious gesture that guarantees ongoing future harm. Forgiving without a real apology means you agree to swallow repeated spoonsful of shit every time the other person feels bad about anything.

What happened to rachmunnis and forgiveness in our case is that I’ve told you, over and over, and in writing several times — writing you tell me is clear, stylish and easy to understand — that it’s impossible to forgive someone who can’t acknowledge fault. You continue to act like you can’t understand this.

Your son is a very neurotic person, he’s also very angry. He can only express his anger passively, and he has never conceded any kind of fault to me — or anyone else — as far as I know. He’s too insecure to admit he’s ever been wrong about anything. He’s too neurotic to express regret for anything he’s ever done, no matter what the cost to himself might be for not being able to do so.

In the end, for reasons you know well, I stopped trying to fix things with people who can’t even acknowledge anything is broken. For your part, you once seemed to understand this — telling me I had enough aggravations with my medical challenges without worrying about trying to be friends with R. Now you’re intent on forcing me to forgive a very aggravating person, because it pains you that I am such a fine person and your son only wants to be friends with me.

Can you forgive someone who accuses you of something his angry wife made up, angrily confronts you about it, eye twitching, telling you, before he even informs you what he’s accusing you of, that he’s not sure you can continue to be friends because of the viciousness of what you’ve supposedly done? Instead of showing anger, you answer him like a friend and try to help him with his problem, instead of walking away after the aggressive, ridiculous accusation. He never has to thank you for being a good friend or express the slightest regret about falsely accusing you or threatening you with the loss of an old friendship?

To be put on the defensive by a person like that, after years of asking him to stop passive aggressively provoking me, is intolerable. Yet, as even R will probably admit, I acted like a friend, treated him as a friend, did my best to help, seeing him in such a painful position. To be told years later, many Yom Kippurs [the day when Jews are traditionally required to make amends with those they’ve wronged] come and gone, that, for a series of frankly senseless reasons, I have to forgive him, even if his rabbi/therapist can’t make him see the need to honestly try to make amends with someone he claims to love and admire, is intolerable. Him lying to you about having apologized to me “a dozen times” – the disgusting icing on an excrement cake.

If you still can’t understand whatever happened to rachmunnis and forgiveness, read the enclosed.

(which is slightly less diplomatic, I add, diplomatically.)

Lying is cool again in MAGA-land

If you want something badly enough, and have no scruples about lying, it must be exhilarating to land your dream job after lying your ass off. Lying in a public service setting is only a crime if it can be weaponized against an enemy of the current president and cost that hated enemy tens of thousands of dollars, or more, defending herself in court against baseless charges. Isn’t that right, Pam?

The other day Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, a business partner of Jeffery Epstein well after his 2008 conviction, flanked on his way to his closed door non-sworn testimony by a dozen big, imposing men (to protect him from the press) apparently lied his corrupt ass off while sweating through his suit. This putz is the same guy who, while publicly supporting Trump’s unconstitutional tariffs, also bet millions that the tariffs would be struck down, and made millions for himself and his sons, when the Supreme Court eventually ruled Trump’s tariffs illegal. So what if he lied about his close association with a blackmailing sexual predator he claimed he hadn’t seen since 2005, so fucking what?!!! What about TRANSEXUALS and caravans of raping, murdering, disease-infested, blood-poisoning, pet dog and cat eating brown ILLEGAL ALIENS?!!! What about BLACK VOTERS?!!!

Look at Justice-for-Life Boof Kavanaugh, a poster boy for anything goes while under oath, if you’re loyal to your winning team. FOX news was despondent after Dr. Christine Blasey-Ford got done testifying about the inebriated teenaged Kavanaugh tackling her, feeling her up and trying to get his hands inside her bathing suit before he apparently passed out, rolled off her and she was able to get away from him. The talking heads on FOX, and I remember watching it in real time, concluded that the Kavanaugh nomination was cooked. It certainly looked that way to me too.

Kavanaugh, a longtime rightwing Federalist Society partisan (most of his partisan legal writings while a legal advisor to Dubya, whose election he’d helped to secure in Florida, and even his later legal and judicial writings, were withheld from the Senate Judiciary Committee/American people [1]) had been a zealous young advisor to highly principled right wing activist/special prosecutor Kenneth Starr. He had strongly advised Starr to give Bill Clinton no break during his under oath deposition, so that they could eventually trip Clinton up when he got tired, and get him on perjury. After melting down under hard questions himself, when Kavanaugh flashed entitled rage and snarled at one of his questioners, Senator Amy Klobuchar, his allies on the Senate Judiciary Committee quickly called for a time out.

Boof presumably cried it out behind closed doors, was comforted by Lindsey Graham and others, probably spoke to Trump during the break, The president would presumably have asked him if he was a “fucking pussy” or a “real man” and how much he really wanted the job, if he was a pussy. When the hearing resumed, Graham came out wildly attacking the commies who were trying to defame and destroy this good, Christian man, this churchgoing father of girls.

Meanwhile, the lies Kavanaugh told under oath were quickly turned into truth on the internet. When asked what “boof” meant, next to his Georgetown Prep yearbook photo, he lied. Boofing is when your frat bros put a tube in your upturned anus and pour vodka or another pure spirit directly into your colon. Apparently produces quite the buzz. Kavanaugh replied, lying, that it was a reference to his flatulence. Embarrassing, yes, but not as bad as being nicknamed Boof for taking a tube of whiskey up the ass to impress your friends and get shitfaced in the exclusive $60,000 a year high school he attended.

Kavanaugh also lied about the term Devil’s Triangle, claiming it was a “drinking game” (for underage drinkers…), when it was an apparent reference to his desire to have sex, or claim to have had sex, with a young woman named Renata, known to be amenable to such things. Operatives, from an IP address in the same building where Kavanaugh was being questioned, instantly updated the Wikipedia entry for Devil’s Triangle to indicate it is, indeed, just what Kavanaugh said it was — an innocent, uh, drinking game he liked to play while underage at Georgetown Prep — and not a claim, probably also a lie, of youthful sexual conquest.

Judge Kavanaugh’s lies were deemed immaterial, just like his lie that Roe v. Wade was “settled law” supported by strong precedent, until he voted with Alito, Gorsuch and Coney Barret to overturn it, based on the learned wisdom of a seventeenth century British witch hunter. Literally. (Note, Mike “Lock Her Up, Q-Anon, I Take the Fifth” Flynn’s lies about his undisclosed work for foreign governments and illegal contact with the Russians were also deemed “immaterial” by master rightwing piece of shit AG Bill Barr.)

Which brings me to corporate balls and strikes umpire Chief Justice John “Arbitration Clause” Roberts, longtime enemy of Black Americans’ right to vote. Callais , and its unprecedented shadow docket enabled immediate effect, was Act III in destroying the Voting Rights Act (VRA) once and for all, legislating unappealably from the bench. Talk about “activist judges.

Act I was a 2013 case involving racist Shelby County, Alabama (suing the nation’s first Black AG), in which Roberts struck down a unanimous 98-0 vote in the Senate, a 390-33 vote in the House and President George W. Bush calling the VRA, at a signing ceremony, “an example of our continued commitment to a united America where every person is valued and treated with dignity and respect.” Roberts thus substituted his judgment for every elected representative of the People, ever senator and member of Congress, along with the president who appointed him to the court. With four fellow corporatist rightwing justices, he ruled, 5-4, suck it, y’all, the Court hath spoken. Roberts also lied in his decision, claiming the vast majority who voted for it in Congress, after looking over a record 16,000 pages of current data, had relied on 40 year-old data to reauthorize the law that fixed a century long problem. A pox on this smiling corporatist shithead:

Speaking of shitheads, here’s some AI by the guy who flew an AI fighter jet, maskless at high altitude, to dump an endless river of his AI excrement on a large crowd in New York City who had marched in a No Kings protest. Fuck that puto.

[1] Let us only focus, for a minute, on the historically liberal classification of Kavanaugh’s written record as a lawyer and judge. 90% of his legal writings were withheld from scrutiny during the disgracefully partisan confirmation process. Classified, top secret, like his president’s financial information — and like which rightwing billionaire paid off Kavanaugh’s jumbo credit card debt, or the massive ad buy to get him confirmed, right before his confirmation hearings started.

This shroud of secrecy over Kavanaugh’s partisan record, dating back to his law student years as a hard drinking Federalist Society zealot, and the mysterious wiping of a large credit card debt, contrasts starkly with the full records disclosed for every previous nominee, for each of Obama’s recent appointees. Kagan and Sotomayor’s full writings from their judicial and legal careers were given to the Senate Judiciary Committee (and Obama had a terrible record on transparency, in spite of his many inspirational speeches about it). Less than 10% of petulant partisan Kavanaugh’s record was available for scrutiny by the body rubber stamping the zealot’s rushed confirmation by a one vote, party line majority.

source (citing himself…)

The personal is political

In these bitterly divided times, the chasm intentionally created by far-right profiteers who blame the lunatic left, Antifa, unfair, ungrateful colored people, college students, lying, vote rigging, corrupt, crime supporting commies, “illegal aliens”, bloodthirsty baby murdering abortionists, city dwellers, godless feminists who want to castrate all white, Christian men while they’re innocently tanning their testicles, transexual pedophiles, etc. is widened and deepened 24/7 by the corporate media.

The Republican “Culture War” is a supremely cynical, lie-based, profit-driven corporate distraction, curated and promoted by the insanely greedy to divide people and turn us against each other, instead of the unthinkable — a united movement for fairness and government by consent of the governed. Such a movement would be … (shudder) … Class Warfare… so unfair to our best and wealthiest citizens! Many billions in tax breaks, government contracts and subsidies to the wealthiest individuals and our most important corporate “persons” would be lost if “inequality” was seriously addressed — talk about totally unfair!

The personal is political. You can either support injustice and inequality, based on a series of emotionally satisfying but rationally empty conceptions, or you believe in fairness, and do your best to act on that belief. That’s as personal as it gets. Nobody likes to be treated unfairly, although perhaps 250,000,000 of us routinely are in this pay-to-play democracy.

If you are OK with institutional injustice, the justification is generally either “well, I personally benefit from it” or, more commonly, for the masses, God wills it, Deus Vult! Who are we puny humans to question the unknowable will of almighty God and those vessels He fills with His spirit to carry out His divine impulses? That was the impetus for the Crusades, for every organized religious slaughter in history, faithfully serving an omniscient, all-loving, all-merciful god.

Speaking of God and his vessels, lately the president of the United States, an objectively crazy, criminally insane person, openly attacks the pope after launching a cynical, senseless, illegal war of aggression, a war that is already starting to cause great global suffering, to protect himself and his privileged “friends” from the evidence of their sexual predations being made public. How dare the pontiff contradict the will of the Leader?!!! Even the devout Catholics in the orbit of the Leader dare not speak up for the pope’s right to quote scripture to advance the cause of world peace and stability. They know the Leader will smite them, righteously, madly, humiliatingly.

I’m thinking about this fairness/unfairness business as my blood pressure has been surging lately with the aggravating news cycle (the Callais decision foremost among them– ruling, essentially, along “ideological” lines, that blacks are racists, not whites — and that equal protection of the law under the 14th amendment was meant to protect persecuted whites, not angry blacks and giving the persecuted majority emergency permission to immediately redraw all maps for maximum “partisan” advantage). My own health challenges walking, even standing, without pain, three years after an unsuccessful knee replacement, don’t make me any more cheerful or relaxed in the face of this KKK pleasing 6-3 fuck you to democracy. The former Confederacy has rushed to remove all “minority/majority” districts and end representation of Black voters. Makes me wanna holler.

Yesterday, by US Mail, I had a note from an ancient old friend of my long departed mother’s asking “whatever happened to rachmunnis (mercy, compassion) and forgiveness?”

This after I explained to her many times, on the phone and in writing, over the course of several years, why it is impossible to forgive someone who can’t acknowledge they’ve hurt you and continues to do it. Her neurotic son, a childhood friend, is an aggravating person, as she herself conceded a couple of years ago when I was recovering from the knee surgery, undergoing treatment for kidney disease and in the throes of a prostate emergency induced by a psychopathic urologist. “With all the aggravations in your life, you don’t need to deal with him,” she told me, in what seemed a very loving gesture. Since then she’s been on a relentless campaign to force to me to forgive her passive aggressive asshole of a son, no matter what my high horse might have to say about it.

It’s a question of basic fairness — If I give you the benefit of the doubt, over and over, and you, feeling comfortable, are increasingly aggressive in making unreasonable demands of me, how is that fair? If you can’t acknowledge fault, as her son can’t (and he learned it from the mother he hates, who learned it from her unbearable mother — I’ve known four generations of this family), then there is never a reason to do anything differently, let alone apologize. The status quo in that kind of nonmutual relationship is irremediably sick, no conflict can ever be resolved fairly and must continue to fester and escalate. I’ve finally learned the only healthy response in this situation is a quiet sayonara. Here is the old woman’s “final” (I’ve had a few more calls and two note cards since) attempt to make amends:

This is my very last call to you, but since I received your letter yesterday I’m just going to say you know that you write very well. Throughout that letter, which I understood not all of it, there was never the word forgiveness. You don’t forgive anybody anything. So, at any rate, I just wanted to make that last statement.

I’m about to say my prayers, you’ll always be in my prayers, for your operation and for the two of you, you’re both good kids. And this is the last call you’ll hear from me. All right, I won’t bother you anymore and I’m sorry that you can’t forgive me for whatever it is I said, or did, or thought, or whatever the hell it was. At any rate, whatever it is, I’m sorry that you can’t forgive me. Have a good Passover and take care.

This message is beautiful in so many ways, in addition to how succinct and reductive it is. Talk about getting the last word. Since I can’t forgive her son, who has never acknowledged doing anything hurtful to anyone, and now her, for insisting I have to forgive him, no matter what I may feel about it, I never forgive anybody anything. Case closed. Pretty categorical. I’m a monster because I can’t forgive, maybe crazy too, certainly terminally enraged. Also, her apology is a beautiful example of blame shifting, her sorrow perfectly calibrated for the occasion: I’m sorry that you are such an unforgiving asshole.

I gave the old lady the last word, as I have learned to do with this type.

Then more calls from her that I didn’t answer and two antique note cards, weeks and months later, challenging me again to be a human being, to stop being ‘uncourageous’, a hypocrite, to get off my high horse, stop overthinking everything, being oversensitive, taking everything as a personal insult, being petty, unforgiving, merciless and so on.

In hopes of ending this relentless cycle, and because writing focuses and relaxes me, I replied to her note card by highlighting sections of the last note I sent her. That last note made the same basic, simple points I’ve made every other time. If someone hurts you, angrily insists they didn’t, and keeps doing it, there can be no apology and no reason to forgive. You have to just get away from this type.

I printed my previous final note to her, including the two paragraphs about forgiveness. I put them in red so she couldn’t miss them. Having the words highlighted in red makes it harder for her to pretend I hadn’t given the subject she claimed I never mentioned careful consideration. I added a few explanatory notes, with just a couple of ugly details to illustrate what I’d already written to her, since she’d told me she hadn’t understood some of my previous letter.

The eternal stickiness of this type is exhausting. Hopefully she’ll be wounded enough by the clinical precision of my explanatory notes to finally stop fucking badgering me. If not, I’ve already promised her silence after this, and, as she knows, my word is my bond. For good measure, by way of a final kick in her almost hundred year-old ass, I ended by telling her she’ll be in my prayers.

Nazis don’t care how much they need to humiliate themselves in the fight to ruthlessly dominate everyone else

It is an abomination, in a democracy (or anywhere else, for that matter) for masked, heavily armed “law enforcement” agents to use violence, including deadly violence, against civilians for any reason, or no reason. Totalitarian regimes rely on heavily armed, unaccountable goon squads, often in disguise, ignoring all law in their pursuit of the regime’s enemies, real and imagined. Every such regime has had its Brown Shirts, Black Shirts, Death Squads, Secret Police — American slavery had its well-armed slave catcher militias, and later its Ku Klux Klan, those brave defenders of southern white women’s virginity wore masks, and outnumbered their unarmed victims ten to one, just like today’s ICE agents.

Under Trump 2.0, ICE, armed for military engagement and funded up their masked wazoos, is that violent goon squad. They can murder American citizens, on video (sometimes ones they shoot themselves while firing bullets into a woman’s face through her car window) with no consequences for themselves. They are protected because they are carrying out the will of the Leader. The vast majority of Americans are appalled at this shit, particularly the murderous variant on Trump’s constant bullying of ordinary citizens and others. But Nazis always double, triple and quadruple down. They intend, by doing this — in your fucking face! — to break the will of their victims to resist. Here’s Heather Cox Richardson:

In February, G. Elliott Morris of Strength In Numbers crunched the polls and found that reforms to ICE are extraordinarily popular. Ninety-two percent of Americans want ICE agents to wear body cameras, for example, and 80% wanted an independent investigation in the killings of Good and Pretti. Morris noted that between 60% and 90% of voters—a supermajority that includes Republicans and a majority of Independents—say they want “transparency, accountability, rules, and oversight” for federal agents.

Today, at the Border Security Expo in Phoenix, Arizona, Trump’s White House advisor on border security, Tom Homan, assured Republicans that mass deportation is coming and that the administration will flood immigration officers into jurisdictions that aren’t cooperative. Michael Williams of CNN reported that Homan told Republicans angry that the administration is not deporting enough people: “You ain’t seen sh*t yet. This year will be a good year. Mass deportations are coming.” He added: “You’re going to see more ICE agents [than] you ever seen before.”

The administration’s disregard for the will of the American people also shows in its approach to its war on Iran. Today, Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters: “The operation is over. Epic Fury, as the president notified Congress, we’re done with that stage of it. We’re now on to this Project Freedom,” the attempt to open the Strait of Hormuz. The 1973 War Powers Act required the president either to get congressional approval for the war or to withdraw the troops within 60 days of notifying Congress of a military action. That deadline was May 1.

Now, according to Rubio, the war is now in a different phase: opening the Strait of Hormuz, which was open before Trump’s military adventure.

But Iranian officials have responded to Trump’s Project Freedom with military strikes against both the vessels attempting the transit and other Gulf countries. This afternoon, Trump backed down.

source

The invertebrate lickspittles who serve their demented, compulsively lying leader must resort to counterfactual narratives and bark threats and absurd justifications to stay in their precarious positions of power. Good Catholic Tom Homan “we’re going to round up MILLIONS, y’all ain’t seen shit yet!” and Little Marco Rubio “Epic Fury is over, we rebranded, like the corporate ass-rapers we base our company’s policies on, to Project Freedom, so we get to restart the 60 day clock on the War Powers Act, psyche!”

They are vomiting the quiet parts out loud, because to Nazis, there is no means too humiliating if the end is possible absolute power, revenge on all critics, the violent silencing of dissent and, ultimately, severe, humiliating punishment for all enemies. Anyone, like myself, for example, who routinely compares these fucking Nazis to the German Nazis who were forced to fight a war they insisted the Jews started, with terrible results for everyone involved.

On social media, Trump’s account continued to whipsaw between pressing for an end to the war and threatening apocalyptic destruction if Iran doesn’t agree to U.S. demands. “Assuming Iran agrees to give what has been agreed to, which is, perhaps, a big assumption,” he wrote, “the already legendary Epic Fury will be at an end, and the highly effective Blockade will allow the Hormuz Strait to be OPEN TO ALL, including Iran. If they don’t agree, the bombing starts, and it will be, sadly, at a much higher level and intensity than it was before. Thank you for your attention to this matter! President DONALD J. TRUMP”

The administration’s shifting justifications and claims about the Iran war are “dizzying,” Ben Finley, Matthew Lee, and Farnoush Amiri of the Associated Press wrote today. Yesterday, after calling the war “concluded,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth spent the day selling Trump’s Project Freedom to open the Strait of Hormuz, only to have Trump call Project Freedom off with a post on social media.

“A matter of political controversy”

For a Trump nominee to concede that the violence on January 6, 2021, a riot that shut down a joint session of Congress about to make Biden’s victory official, was not a patriotic Day of Love, and perfectly reasonable “legitimate political discourse” is to betray his/her/its deranged master. No Republican is allowed to say that January 6 was anything bad, at worst it can be called a “matter of political controversy.” You know, we can agree to disagree about what we disagree about, right? A talking point, no matter how incoherent, is good enough in the corporate America of 2026, when it comes to blindly partisan lifetime appointees to the federal bench.

The same goes for the legitimate election of Trump’s opponent in the 2020 election. “He was inaugurated…” is the only acceptable answer to the question “was Joe Biden elected president in 2020?”. It is political suicide in Trumpworld to concede that Biden won an honest and fair election (that would make Trump, history’s greatest winner, a loser!). You certainly don’t want to get the most vengeful compulsive liar in American history mad at you. So you choose your evasive words carefully, or repeat the ones your learned colleague just farted out.

In a similar vein, The Confederacy, of course, never lost the Civil War, a war of Northern aggression which was not fought to protect slavery but over states’ rights — to have slavery in their own states. The Nazis never lost World War Two, or caused the deaths of tens of millions, they just had to lay low while the generations who knew their crimes in detail died off. When enough time goes by everything in the past can be seen as “a matter of political controversy.” Everything inhuman is GREAT AGAIN, for anyone still gaga for MAGA. In the land of the desperate, faith beats reason every time.

The evil we are all facing

Although I resisted believing in the existence of evil for many years, today its existence is undeniable. Evil walks brazenly among us. It is embodied in a system where basic human rights of citizenship, won only after a century of sacrifice and bloodshed, can be taken away at the stroke of a pen by six true believers, their unappealable decision perversely disguised as a constitutionally protected take on human equality. There is nothing wrong with cheating, and violating laws, they rule, if it keeps your party in power, no matter what the inferior majority wants.

The evil we are up against in 2026 is impossible not to see, and like most evil, it depends on constantly lying in order for its blinding truths to prevail. To a malignant narcissist who will say whatever is necessary to never be wrong, always be perfect, and have everything they claim taken as infallibly true — constant lying and righteous rage are necessary to prop up the grandiose vision of those who are damaged beyond repair. Insistence on the reasonableness of incoherence is necessary to force incoherent decisions on others. If you can do it with an affable smile, so much the better for your side.

The Age of Reason was an aspiration, a return to the pursuit of classical wisdom abandoned, during centuries of Christian intolerance and a slavish devotion to blind faith in God’s unknowable will, the long sleep of Reason known as The Dark Ages. The light of Reason, it was believed by those enlightened few who embraced the notion of a world guided by knowledge based on shared human experience and demonstrable facts, would soon illuminate the darkness and lead mankind to a better destiny than irrationality, oppression and death by sword and fire to all “heretics”.

Those who have much, and want everything, insist violently on their right to it all. They will not tolerate any of this Reason shit, if it conflicts with their need to dominate and control everything, and to be exempt from all law. For most of history these literal motherfuckers have ruled the rest of us. And to rule without being pitchforked by those they screw, they must peddle an irrational, counter-factual narrative, destroy the critical faculties of the populace (defund the Department of Education, for example) and cancel the right of expression of those who would expose their fundamental, destructive incoherence.

Burn the books, burn the libraries, burn the satirists, burn those who object to torturing our enemies, our neighbors, burn, baby, burn — Jesus loves a good fire to purge sin from the world (according to his most determinedly perverted followers). Burn the law enforcers, if they threaten you or your allies. Burn anyone who objects to burning people!

This insanely punitive pro-conflagration politics will not go down well with most people, unless they are already insane with rage. All this burning of our neighbors makes no sense, except through the lens of violent fury. That’s what advertising/propaganda is for. Keep them enraged with constantly repeated inflammatory lies and they will cheer the burning of those they hate, or, equally good, they will tune out entirely. Incoherence, insisted on, is the message. Lying is essential to the selling of every ugly enterprise.

I get PTSD from something like the Federalist Society Six declaring the other day that the party they belong to, and the power-crazed ideological movement they believe in, may stay in power by any means necessary, and by every means available. What is the legal rationale for striking down a law that finally brought a measure of justice to millions of citizens denied the right to vote for a century? We have the power, The End. Can the recent decision to finish off the Voting Rights Act be rationally justified? Who cares? We have the power, we finally struck down the last of that hated law that gives inferiors the right to elect their representatives, there is no further appeal and fuck you, what are you going to do about it, cuck?

I get PTSD because I have lived the personal version of this kind of politics. Throughout my childhood, in the little nuclear family I grew up in, I was generally blamed for the anger of parents who couldn’t control their anger. Almost five years ago I watched our closest friends, at each other’s throats for days on end in a beautiful rented vacation house, and afterwards, it was all my fault.

It was my fault because instead of saying, during a particularly insane moment close to the end of our holiday, after tensions between this long married couple escalated to an unbearable level, “goddamn it, fuck.. are you all insane?” I stopped myself and said instead “goddamn it, fuck… face,” while looking at my own partner, who although she’d just annoyed me, was as helpless as I was in that moment. I had utterly shocked them by violating their sacred marriage contract never to call each other names — prolonged silence, glaring, passive aggression, making nasty comments about each other, threats of violence were all fair game — but name calling? That was intolerable! They both agreed about that 100%.

Nothing unites enraged people like a common enemy, and that enemy was now me. My name calling in a moment of frustration, even if I immediately apologized for it, even if my apology was sincere, was something they could never forgive, as was my inability to forgive them for blaming me for something that was entirely my fault alone — and the way I had destroyed a beautiful vacation near Woodstock.

I see our political moment the same way. A compulsive liar is the Leader and anyone on the right who wants power must get it through him (in the original German this was called the Führerprinzip — all power flows directly from the Führer). To be eligible for power the applicant must demonstrate the ability to lie, to attack anyone questioning their lie, to be eternally brazen and always on the attack. Nothing can ever be the fault of someone who can never be wrong. What is hard to understand about that?

That, in a nutshell, is the evil we are up against in this perilous moment. An unreasoning need to be superior that yields to nothing, not reason, mercy, common decency or any humane impulse. The pure, unfiltered will to dominate, no matter what the cost, is the engine of evil. To this end they use lies to turn benefit of the doubt into suspicion, friendship to enmity, love to hate, a willingness to empathize into a desire for violent retribution.

How well will we swim through the sea of blood these fucks have no hesitation to flood the land with? I am breathing deeply today, writing, refining, remembering to relax my breath, as the top of my head feels ready to blow off. We must remain cool and rational for the grim fight ahead. At this point, there is no doubt that we are fighting evil and we have no choice but to continue.

86 47, yo

fourth assassination attempt against Mr. Trump!!!