Heather Cox Richardson concludes last night’s letter

The fantasy of those who embraced cowboy individualism was that if only they could have full sway, they would solve the world’s problems and keep Americans safe. But the conduct of the war is starting to illustrate that any claims of a moral code disappear when a leader exercises military might on a whim. According to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, the U.S. will not be bound by any “stupid rules of engagement” and will rain down “[d]eath and destruction from the sky all day long. This was never meant to be a fair fight,” he said, “and it is not a fair fight. We are punching them when they’re down, which is exactly how it should be.”

On Wednesday, March 4, a U.S. submarine torpedoed an Iranian warship in international waters. The vessel was not participating in hostilities; it was off Sri Lanka returning from a naval exercise organized by India in the Bay of Bengal. In the past, the U.S. has participated in those exercises.

Andrew Roth, Cate Brown, and Hannah Ellis-Peterson of The Guardian noted that submarine attacks since World War II have been incredibly rare, as are attacks on vessels not taking part in hostilities. The ship was believed to have 180 people on board; Sri Lankan officials said they rescued 32 and recovered 87 bodies from the water. Hegseth boasted: “An American submarine sank an Iranian warship that thought it was safe in international waters.”

On Thursday, Phil Stewart and Idrees Ali of Reuters reported that the U.S. appears to bear responsibility for the February 28 strike on a girls’ school in Minab, in southern Iran, in the early waves of the Israeli-U.S. attack. The strike appears to have killed 168 people or more, many of them children. Since the Reuters report, others have noted that the U.S. was operating in the area and Israel was not. The strike remains under investigation.

After Saturday’s dignified transfer, Trump told reporters on Air Force One. “I hate to do it, but it’s a part of war,” he said. “It’s a sad part of war.”

“It’s the bad part of war.”

read the whole, very much on point, letter here

So true, sad, and also, bad

War crimes are not war crimes, if done in the name of justice, truth, freedom, decency and Jesus, according to people like unindicted war criminal Secretary of Virile Maximum Lethality, Pete Kegsbreath. Genocide is not genocide, if God tells you to do it, according to indicted war criminal Bibi Netanyahu, whose radical religious allies, and a multifront all-out war of mass destruction, are keeping him from standing trial for corruption. Every mass murder in history has been committed with God on the side of the murderers. Thoughts and prayers, y’all, and a dignified transfer to each of us.

A few facts (and opinions) about the war/not war in Iran

The president, Caroline Leavitt told the press, launched the attack on Iran “based on a feeling based on fact.” You can take that shit to the bank, better than “concepts of a plan” even. Perfect.

The devastating attack was launched, by Israel and the United States, in the middle of Ramadan, the holiest month of the year for Muslims.

Iranian negotiators working with Jared Fucking Kushner (who elected him?) and Putin’s own Steve Witkoff (WTF?) felt they were making progress in their talks in Geneva.  Israel and the U.S. were making their attack plans as Witkoff and Kushner cosplayed as diplomatic negotiators. The bombing commenced as planned.  Such are negotiations when the major diplomats across the table are psychopaths who are themselves serving psychopaths.

The nation that could not afford health care premium subsidies for lower wage working people, or SNAP benefits for poor children and the disabled, or millions to continue preventing preventable deaths in poor countries (USAID) has spent over three billion dollars on the first four days of Operation I’m NOT INSANE and I’ll Fucking Kill All of You Fucking Fucks!!!  (officially called Operation Epic Fury — Epic Tantrum works too)  [1].

With the people we have in charge, the best of the best, what could go wrong by committing acts of war against Iran? Nothing the Board of Peace can’t handle.

Heather Cox Richardson adds:

In Need to Know, David Rothkopf today called out the madness of the fact world trade and global security is being shattered by a single man. “Not since Adolf Hitler blew his brains out in a bunker beneath the garden of the German Reich Chancellery on April 30, 1945, have the lives of so many people around the world been so buffeted by the psychosis of a single man.”

Why has Trump launched a war against Iran on a whim, attacked other countries, and upended world trade, Rothkopf asked. “Because he’s insane. Because he’s venal. Because he’s a malignant narcissist. Because he’s a sociopath. Because he has a fragile ego. Because those around him exacerbate and play to those traits to advance their own interests. Because CEOs and investors do likewise to fill their coffers. Because to some people, whether he is insane or malevolent or repugnant or not matters less than whether his actions will feather their nests, increase their power.

“Because they, the billionaires…play their games and the consequences for the little people down below, the consequences for us, hardly matter a whit.” [2]

On Thursday, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) called attention to another factor in play. In a speech to the Senate, Whitehouse noted that throughout his second term, Trump has advanced policies that help Russia, pausing weapons shipments to Ukraine, easing sanctions on Russia, and pushing a peace deal favorable to Russia. Last summer, he welcomed Putin to American soil, and administration officials have parroted Russian propaganda. Russian state media gloated when Trump “installed Russia apologist Tulsi Gabbard as his director of national intelligence,” and Attorney General Pam Bondi upon taking office stopped the anti-kleptocracy work that had targeted Russian oligarchs.

Trump’s new national security policy threw traditional U.S. allies overboard and favored policies that Russian government officials praised as “largely consistent” with their own.

“If Trump were purposefully doing Russia’s bidding,” Whitehouse said, “it is hard to see what he would be doing differently. The United States is the most powerful nation in the world. Russia is a weak, corrupt regime. My old friend Senator John McCain used to say that Russia is a gas station, run by gangsters, with an army. It doesn’t make sense that the President of the United States, who insists—insists—on being dominant in essentially every relationship, is so submissive to one person and that one person is Russia’s dictator, Vladimir Putin.” source

Here is Sheldon Whitehouse’s entire speech. I highly recommend it.

Last we heard, Putin was giving strategic information to the Iranians, to help them target the U.S. military. I wonder which side Elon Musk and Starlink is taking in that transaction.

[1] The war is costing about $891.4 million per day, according to a think tank based in Washington, DC, that analyzed the information the Pentagon has shared about targets it struck and the assets involved in the operation.

The Center for Strategic and International Studies predicts that the cost will decrease as the US shifts to “less expensive munitions” and as the drones and missiles launched by Iran declines.

“However, future costs will depend mostly on the intensity of operations and the effectiveness of Iranian retaliation,” CSIS added in its report. source

[2] Billionaires are happy when their insane puppet crashes the world economy helping them make even more profit. Crisis for us equals opportunity for them.

What critical thinking looks like

Sadly, critical thinking has become fleetingly rare in American “public discourse” which is based, largely, on advertising and its moral twin, political propaganda.  Ads and propaganda, both designed to make money for the wealthiest, are aimed at our irrational impulses and they shape the angry black and white exchanges over who is right and who is wrong.  We all want to buy the very best product, after all, and defend our choice in buying our particular brand. 

Timothy Snyder demonstrates how critical thinking is done, and its usefulness (when applied widely) in debunking mindless propaganda, in this selection from his Substack Thinking About…

And so who does benefit [from war/not war in Iran]? Again, it has to be emphasized that we do not have the kind of sources that future historians would like. But there are nevertheless a few candidate who petition for our attention. Israel is the American co-combatant in this war, and its government has a clearly expressed interest in destroying Iranian power.

Saudi Arabia has been engaged in a regional struggle for power with Iran for 47 years. Interestingly, American war propaganda (picked up by regime-friendly commentators) now maintains that the United States has been at war with Iran for 47 years. (Orwell has gotten a lot of attention recently, but his “we have always been at war with Eurasia” in 1984 is very much a propos.) This obviously untrue claim implies that the United States has been a Saudi client state working against Iran for the better part of half a century.

This propaganda line is historically ridiculous — remember when we trafficked missiles to Iran in 1981-1985? or when Saudis flew airplanes into the Twin Towers on September 11th, 2001? But it is telling. source

Of course, we also sold missiles and poison gas to a modern day Hitler, Saddam Hussein, lynched by an avenging George Dubya Bush in the middle of the night. Saddam used these American weapons to fight Iran and to gas ethnic minorities in Iraq. It doesn’t matter so much what we say or who we support in a given war, or what rationales we use, or nowadays don’t even bother to use, as long as the machinery of war, in its endlessly lucrative glory, continues to pump out obscene profits for the weapons industry and its savvy corporate shareholders. It matters not that we mass murder girls in a school on day one of a war that is not a war, as long as we perform maximum lethality against the rest of the worst of the worst and keep blowing up those million dollar missiles we make defending freedom.

A perfectly coherent answer from a very stable genius

People criticize the president for not giving straightforward answers to difficult questions. We can now put that criticism to bed once and for all, critical, carping, condescending cucks. Heather Cox Richardson writes:

Trump told reporters today that “we’re doing very well on the war front, to put it mildly,” rating it 15 on a scale of 1 to 10. But Americans stranded in Middle Eastern countries are desperate to get out, and the government has not been able to help them. When asked today why not, Trump answered:

“Well, because it happened all very quickly, we thought, and I thought maybe more so than most, I could ask Marco, but I thought we were going to have a situation where we were going to be attacked. They were getting ready to attack Israel. They were getting ready to attack others. You’re seeing that right now. And a lot of those missiles that are hitting in those are stationary. Those were aimed there for a long period of time at these other countries. So I think I was right about that. We attacked first, and if we didn’t, it could have been, you know, look, we’re really decimating them. They’re being decimated. And if we didn’t. If we didn’t, and by the way, we have massive amounts of ammunition. We have the high end. A lot of it was given away stupidly by Biden, very stupidly, for free. And I’m all for Ukraine, but they gave away a lot. As you know, when I give away ammunition, everybody pays for it. The European Union is paying for it, then they can do what they want with it, but they are giving it, let’s say, to Ukraine, and it’s okay, but we gave away a lot of high end but we have plenty. But we have unlimited middle and upper ammunition, which is really what we’re using in this war. And we have an, really an unlimited supply. We also have a lot of the very high end stored in different countries throughout the world. With this, we’re literally storing it there, which is actually something that I insisted on in my first term. I rebuilt the military. In my first term, the military is great. A lot of, not unbelievable, amount of of ammunition, or munitions, as they say, were given away to you know, the Wall Street Journal incorrectly covered the story when they said that it was given away to the Middle East, not to the Middle East was given away to Ukraine. Very little was given to the Middle East. Middle East would buy a lot. And some of the nations, because they’re rich, they have a lot, but it was given away to Ukraine and it just should have been done. Look, it’s a war that should have never happened. If I were president, that war would have never happened. But we have a tremendous amount of munitions, ammunition at the upper upper level, middle and upper level, all of which is really powerful stuff.” source

So you see, my fellow Americans, there’s nothing whatsoever to worry about. A perfect answer, perfect. 15 on a scale of 1 to 10!

Compare the president’s excellent, forceful, bulletproof answer to the wimpy word salad served up by a pinhead in the Senate (also from Heather’s letter)

Senator Susan Collins (R-ME), who is facing a difficult election in the fall, said: “Passing this resolution now would send the wrong message to Iran and to our troops. At this juncture, providing unequivocal support to our service members is critically important, as is ongoing consultation by the Administration with Congress.”

Supporting our troops unequivocally means sending them into a meat grinder, for no articulable reason, no questions asked, and having as many prove their valor by dying as is necessary to complete the mission, whatever that mission may or may not be? Come on, Collins! Take a lesson from your boss, the way he learned his lesson, as you predicted, after his first or second impeachment.

Now we know how Melania got to chair the UN Security Council, as her husband wages an illegal war of aggression against Iran

Heather Cox Richardson:

Whatever their immediate trigger, the strikes [on Iran] fall in line with the ideology of cowboy individualism that began to take over the Republican Party in the 1980s and which, under Trump, has turned into brutal displays of dominance. The old idea of a cowboy from rural America who cuts through the government bureaucracy that threatens his livelihood by coddling racial minorities and women has curdled into the notion that a leader can do whatever it takes, including violence, to force opponents to submit to his will.

In foreign affairs, that means smashing the international alliances built after World War II. One of the crowning achievements of that international order is the United Nations, constructed to maintain international peace and security by creating organizations that could provide a forum for diplomacy and stop countries from attacking each other. The U.S. currently owes the U.N. nearly $4 billion in unpaid dues as Trump seeks to replace the organization with his own “Board of Peace” that he alone controls. This month, the U.S. holds the presidency of the U.N. Security Council, enabling it to set the agenda. Today, Trump sent First Lady Melania Trump to chair the meeting, the first time a presidential spouse has done so. source

So apparently this genius, the son of a Trump-pardoned felonious billionaire who is now serving as the U.S. ambassador to France under the totally uncorrupt regime of Donald Trump, was unable to make peace in his talks with Iran, even with the able assistance of the brilliant Steve Witkoff.

Accordingly, Jared’s father-in-law, lifetime head of the powerful Board of Peace and proud owner of someone else’s 2025 Nobel Peace Prize, had to order massive air strikes and the mass killing of civilians in Iran, as well as the assassination of its leader.

I had to look this one up just to make sure that this guy is as fucking stupid as I remember he is. Listen to his imbecilic comment about Federal stockpiles of PPE when he was the czar of the inept and deadly U.S. Covid response.  Just watch the first few seconds where he speaks, incoherently, and publicly, for the first time. His powers as a natural diplomat can be observed in this great interview with Christiane Amanpour , the chyrons alone are worth the watch.

“Who’s laughing now, bitches?”

The incoherence is the point

And Donald Trump, a man of fundamental incoherence, is the perfect point man to effortlessly make that point over and over again.  Below Lawrence O’Donnell lays it out with characteristic intelligence and thoroughness.

Trump: “We may have casualties, that often happens in war.” Often, yes, so true, and shrewdly observed, war kills and maims, very, very often.

And this recent tour de force of presidential incoherence, which truly never gets old:

Legal arguments not yet articulated or vetted, but irrefutable. No need for Congress, or hostile voters with TDS, I alone will ensure that I remain irrefutable. And be honest, those drapes I picked out are to die for, as is often necessary in a room done up like one of Saddam’s castles.

Good night, boys and girls, don’t let the Nazis bite.

We all love gold, don’t we!

Trump “reviewing” Executive Order placing himself in charge of U.S. voting

I saw a video last night from Angela at Parkrose Permaculture in which she reminded viewers that an executive order is not a law or a royal decree.  Executive orders that are illegal, and most of Trump’s have been, can be challenged in court and ruled unconstitutional, as many of Trump’s have.  But what jumped out at me was the reporting she played that kept saying that Trump is “reviewing” a draft secret executive order.   He’s considering it.   But who wrote the executive order for his review and consideration?

My money is on the cabal of fascist billionaires who put him back in the Oval Office, using both hook and crook.  These amoral organisms, focused solely on increasing their already obscene wealth and profiting handsomely off every economic disaster,  are intent on a creating a new feudalism where most of the work is done by unpaid robots and where all non-billionaire humans are dependent on their mercy.  Billionaires have shown over and over that they have very limited mercy for anyone but themselves.

Bear in mind that Trump’s DOJ (literally, since he consistently lied that Biden weaponized his DOJ, he considers himself fully entitled to use it as his personal Roy Cohn) has sued 30 states for their detailed voter rolls, the better to identify and disenfranchise anyone who voted against MAGA in the past, lives in certain zip codes, or who can be identified as Black, Hispanic, young, female, Asian, a voter in Democratic primaries, etc.  Since the five-four 2010 decision in Citizens United, when unlimited campaign contributions from billionaires and corporate “persons” became unquestionable “free speech”, these sick bastards have spent literally thousands of millions of dollars getting their preferred candidates into power.

Meanwhile, wielding his dependable high-powered fire hose of diarrhea, and spraying it in every direction at once, Trump, acting unilaterally, at the prodding of Netanyahu, Kushner and Witkoff, and on behalf of the monetary interests of these same obscenely wealthy monsters, sent US forces to attack Iran and destabilize the Middle East.   The Iranian head of state has been killed by either the US or Israel.  USA!  USA!!!  Or should I say, TRUMP!  TRUMP!!!!.

So today we don’t see stories on the front page about the 13 year-old interviewed by the FBI four times about Trump forcing sex on her and smacking her around when she tried to resist. Once a rapist, always a rapist, most would say. If you can do whatever you want to girls and women, because you’re an aggressively litigious star with a hundred white-shoed pit bull lawyers on staff, you’re golden.  You can do whatever you want to the people who donated to your charity, the suckers who attended your “university”, that multitude who died of COVID because you weaponized the pandemic, the millions of working class voters you suckered into voting for you.  The question is — why not do it to THE WHOLE WORLD?   Why wouldn’t you, if you were Trumpie? 

Trump’s favorite poem is The Snake.  When someone recites their favorite poem over and over, believe it.

Are they Nazis yet?

Freedom is safety from domination by willful, arbitrary state powers, or the violence of mobs, under the protection of law. Fascism is obedience to the will of willful, arbitrary state powers. The Leader’s word, truthful or blatantly false, is the law. Fascists demand obedience to the will of the infallible Leader or death. Death in service to the infallible Leader is seen as the greatest show of patriotism in a fascist regime. Killing to enforce the will of the infallible Leader is the sacred duty of the duped faithful. The ultimate weapon of fascists is their ability to convince their citizens to kill all dangerous, sick, hated, inhuman enemies, to unleash the faithful and obedient on everyone else.

Stephen Miller, American Nazi, is the worst of the worst. Born Jewish, to a family that escaped Nazi persecution and found refuge in the U.S., he has embraced a murderous ideology of force based, as all such ideologies, on a series of hate-inspiring lies. Miller himself is a prolific liar and perhaps the most adept Trump whisperer in history. There is nothing worse than a Jewish Nazi, from my perspective as a Jew with zero tolerance for Nazi behavior, especially when done by those who call themselves Jews. I compare Miller to Black Klansman Clarence Thomas, a “conservative” Black man who shows no hesitation to consistently delight white racists with his racist rulings.

These Nazis, our own homegrown Nazis, have already shown they will fully support those who murder protesters who hurt their delicate feelings. When their agents shoot a compliant woman in the face, or kill a man pinned to the ground with multiple gunshots into his back, they instantly announce that these people were terrorists who got what they deserved. When videos emerge showing that these claims are blatant lies (like the lie that Derek Chauvin was not deliberately killing a restrained, unarmed man suspected of passing a counterfeit $20 bill), they shift the story slightly, without retracting the lie.

When ICE and CBP repeatedly violate the Fourth Amendment by breaking down doors without a warrant, and send the people they capture to concentration camps a thousand miles away, the constitutionality of this becomes a matter for the Supreme Court to ponder for months or years, since there is, in the mind of the majority, no REAL emergency involved. When Trump petitions them for an emergency ruling to allow him to continue violating the law, they jump to give him enough rope to hang his enemies until they can rule on the merits. People die while the Federalist Society Six jumps through hoops to accommodate the deranged, fully transactional avatar of their merciless ideology.

Recall Trump’s murderous zeal, during his rage after losing the 2020 election, to execute (with the zealous help of religious Catholic fascist Bill Barr) as many federal death row prisoners as possible before he was dragged out of the White House kicking, screaming and stealing classified documents, two weeks after his riot at the Capitol to overturn the election results. How many innocent South Americans on small boats did he have Hegseth murder in international waters far from our shores? How many have died, and continue to die, in ICE detention here in the United States of America, in our lucrative, privately owned concentration camp system? How many Ukrainians and Palestinians have died while Trump ridiculously postures on the international stage and instructs his DOJ to prosecute his enemies here in America? The only death that means anything to Trump and his power-drunk ilk are their own deaths. Killing others is the ultimate high for these Nazi fucks.

Heather Cox Richardson’s report from last night contains this account of the depraved state murder of a highly vulnerable political refugee legally in the United States. Makes me wanna holler.

But the timing of the Republicans’ story [Stephen Miller on how Democrats hate the US and love illegal aliens — ed] coincided with the horrific story that on February 19, Border Patrol agents had dropped Nurul Amin Shah Alam, a nearly blind legal refugee from genocide in Myanmar who spoke no English and could not read, write, or use electronic devices, miles from his home in Buffalo, New York. They did not notify either his lawyer or his family that he had been dropped off, and when his family filed a missing persons case, the police believed Shah Alam was with Border Patrol and closed the file. He was found dead on the street on February 24.

A spokesperson for Customs and Border Protection, the parent agency of Border Patrol, said: “Border Patrol agents offered him a courtesy ride, which he chose to accept to a coffee shop, determined to be a warm, safe location near his last known address, rather than be released directly from the Border Patrol station. He showed no signs of distress, mobility issues or disabilities requiring special assistance.” source

Of course he showed no signs of distress, mobility issues or a need for special assistance. He was inhuman, couldn’t speak a recognizable language, he was a dead man walking — into the Arctic winter of Buffalo, New York. Nothing to see here.

I wonder if the NY Times put this sickening story on their front page. Hey, what do you know? Here’s a gift link to the article, headlined:

Border Patrol Left a Refugee at a Cafe. Days Later, He Was Found Dead.

The disabled man had been released from jail when federal officers showed up and drove him to a coffee shop. His family searched for him for days.

Bad timing, Mr. Shah Alam, coming here on the eve of weaponized Christ’s birth, less than a year before the suspicious reelection of America’s Dictator on Day One…

By the way, the DOJ disabled the search function on their public Epstein Transparency Act database. Nothing to see here!

I’d estimate that most people in the US and worldwide believe that Trump would have punched a fourteen year-old who bit him when he proffered his dick for a blowjob. He’d punched his first wife, Ivana, before raping her, then paying her to recant the story, after all. He has a foul temper, as everyone knows. The FBI talked to this girl on four separate occasions, indicating they found her complaint credible (records of all these interviews put into a black hole by Bondi, Blanche and Patel, to protect the real victim), but there’s no reason to think THAT SHE WASN’T LYING BECAUSE SHE’S A PEDOPHILE HERSELF WHO USED A TIME MACHINE TO GO BACK AND MOLEST AN INNOCENT FOUR YEAR-OLD DONALD TRUMP TO TRY TO PREVENT THE DOW FROM REACHING $50,000!!!!!