JD Vance, untruthful? Me, sarcastic?

It’s hard to believe the vice president of the United States would lie, isn’t it? Is not as if he admitted to repeatedly lying about Haitian immigrants (in an Ohio town whose economy they had saved) eating their white neighbors’ dogs, eating their cats. He explained, after his remarks were shown to be false, that his statements, while not truthful, were to wake up Americans to the fact that we are under existential threat from brown people who are not white Christian nationalists. His expressed fear that Donald Trump is the American Hitler, (not an unreasonable fear, actually), yielded to his overweening political ambitions. To put it bluntly, the man tends to be untruthful, when he makes statements of any kind.

Vice President J.D. Vance said there was a “legitimate misunderstanding” about whether the ceasefire included Lebanon. “We never made that promise,” he said. But in fact, Pakistani prime minister Shehbaz Sharif, who posted the terms of the ceasefire on Tuesday, noted that the agreement did include a ceasefire in Lebanon. He tagged Vance in the post. source

Another big lie is almost certainly under way [in Orban’s campaign in Hungary]. While Vance was in Budapest, he claimed that the Ukrainian secret services interfere in elections on the United States and Hungary — an activity that is unknown to the scholarship of the subject, to put it mildly. This was reinforcing a campaign message of Orbán: the tall tale that the Ukrainian secret services had somehow penetrated all of Hungary and were preparing a systematic electoral falsification. When, as i likely, Orbán loses the vote count, he will probably revive this story in some form. Americans might endorse it; they might copy it themselves this fall. It is a comfortable story for Trump and Vance because it inverts the historical fact: that Russia always tries to tilt elections their way. source

When Trump is the smartest person in the room

25th Amendment, anyone?

The New York Times reported in detail on Trump’s path to a war he can’t justify. Fellow war criminal Bibi Netanyahu gave a February 11th Situation Room sales pitch to Trump about the perfect time to attack Iran and decapitate its leadership. It’s not that Trump wasn’t advised of the risks, he was, by virtually every adviser, but every one of these professional ass lickers deferred to their boss’s “instincts”. Most horrifically, to me, “diplomats” Jared Kushner and Steven Witkoff were in the room for Bibi’s sales pitch, which was presented with a video presentation by the head of Mossad. source

Two weeks later, on February 26, two days before the US began the unprovoked, unjustifiable bombing of Iran, raining mass death on civilians, there was another meeting in the Situation Room. The cast of characters included Karoline Leavitt, with the lips Trump has praised, and raging asshole/communications genius Steven Cheung (pictured below).

Here are a few “highlights” of that meeting, from the NY Times report.

Mr. Vance, whose disagreement with the whole premise was well established, addressed the president: You know I think this is a bad idea, but if you want to do it, I’ll support you.

Ms. Wiles told Mr. Trump that if he felt he needed to proceed for America’s national security, then he should go ahead. . .

. . . Mr. Cheung laid out the likely public relations fallout: Mr. Trump had run for office opposed to further wars. People had not voted for conflict overseas. The plans ran contrary, too, to everything the administration had said after the bombing campaign against Iran in June. How would they explain away eight months of insisting that Iranian nuclear facilities had been totally obliterated? Mr. Cheung gave neither a yes nor a no, but he said that whatever decision Mr. Trump made would be the right one.

Ms. Leavitt told the president that this was his decision and that the press team would manage it as best they could.

Mr. Hegseth adopted a narrow position: They would have to take care of the Iranians eventually, so they might as well do it now. He offered technical assessments: They could run the campaign in a certain amount of time with a given level of forces.

Murderous maniac threatens genocide

Try not to be upset that our president has threatened that “a whole civilization will die tonight” if his demand that Iran drop its defensive posture after refusing to unconditionally surrender, in spite of literally thousands of bombing raids against it in recent weeks, is not immediately met.

You have to see it from Trump’s point of view — he’s upset because the world still doesn’t take him seriously as a major league mass murderer. What does a strongman have to do to earn his place alongside the all-time greats? He’s killed hundreds, perhaps thousands, but that’s chump change to members of the strongman Hall of Fame. He needs a big kill to get the cred as a killer for the ages that he has sought since childhood.

Checking to get the insane bastard’s genocidal quote right, AI gave the first result (I forgot to add “-AI” at the end of my search) I got this:

The auto-generated answer “may contain inaccuracies,” as the psychopathic monetizers of incoherence, fear and hatred — the masters of the universe — inform the users at the bottom of the partially accurate answer. The president’s statement reflects, it’s plain to see, “escalating tensions and the potential for severe military action.” AI does not reflect any kind of psychotic break from reality, not derangement, dementia, a desire to commit war crimes, an inability to back down, ever, stemming from childhood trauma and an overwhelming terror of more humiliation. “Escalating tensions.” you understand, between reality, which has a famously anti-Trump bias, in fact, hates and vilifies all Christian white men, and … the violently acted out prejudices of terrified, enraged white Christian men, as well as Mr. Trump himself.

Look, if an American president, surrounded by sycophantic, militant white Christian Protestants, (including a Secretary of War who believes there’s no such thing as a stupid war crime), can’t make a little Easter joke in a menacing social media post threatening mass killing and sarcastically praising Allah, what is our freedom really worth? Others have a right to hate that freedom, but, you have to admit, it’s pretty incoherent to insist on your right to freedom while denying a Nazi’s right to the same freedom, right? The freedom of the top of the top 1% to do what benefits them is so precious and inviolable, in an incoherent schema, that the lives of a couple of billion poor people don’t amount to a hill of beans. Fair is fair. Be a billionaire or shut the fuck up.

You have to like the symmetry here. Trump promises oil executives that if they give him a billion for his campaign he’ll take care of them once elected. Then he cuts all the renewable energy projects funded under Biden. Then he drops bombs on a country whose predictable defensive move is to close the Strait of Hormuz, driving oil prices up and with oil prices, most other prices. Win-win, if you’re an oil billionaire. Charles Koch may privately hate the vulgar, incoherent, criminally insane Mr. Trump, but he sure is good for the bottom line.

Insane terrible two year-old as the most powerful man on the planet

Below is Dan Rather’s clear analysis of the deadly box Trump has placed himself (and all of us) in. I’ve been at a loss to explain my recent level of anxiety to myself, this — starting with a photo of a woman walking through a bombed out section of Tehran — puts some of my anxiety into pretty good perspective. After watching the excellent Nuremberg the other night on Netflix — the story of how the nations that defeated Nazism began creating a body of international law to prevent another such threat to life on earth — to see our own country in the hands of creatures so similar to the soul-dead men on the docket at the world’s first war crimes trial, makes my skin crawl. It is horrifying to know that the U.S. is now the single greatest threat to life on the planet the world has ever known. Because we have an enraged victim of lifelong epic fury as our Unitary Executive, manipulated by a cabal of determined “ideological” psychopaths with unlimited wealth and power. Here’s Dan:

Wars are chaotic. They’re unpredictable — hence the phrase “the fog of war.” That fog has descended on the war in the Middle East. There are some people who believe Trump’s war is going well. But the consensus of opinion right now is that the battle is going poorly for the United States and Israel.

You have to wonder if anyone is telling the president the truth. Because his version of what will happen if the war continues much longer differs wildly from that of experts in the region. If we think gas prices are high now, just wait.

It boils down to this: Donald Trump is trapped. As of this writing, there is no good option to end this conflict.

  • The U.S. walks away — as Trump has threatened — and the Strait of Hormuz remains under Iranian control. No one in the region likes that scenario.
  • The U.S. bombs Iranian infrastructure, including power plants, which is a war crime. Iran retaliates, likely targeting energy resources around the Middle East, while retaining a sizable portion of its missile stockpile.
  • Trump launches a ground war, which could be long, bloody, and expensive.

Any of the above scenarios could lead to a worldwide recession, or worse.

By the tone of his tweets, Trump’s frustration with the options is boiling over.

the rest is here

Could be, Grey Lady?  Bombing civilian targets like water desalination plants, power plants, infrastructure like bridges and girls schools, all calculated to terrorize and kill masses of noncombatants, ARE war crimes.

Easter message from the chairman-for-life of the (billionaires only) Bored of Peace

There is no proof that the president is insane, demented, gravely ill, so traumatized early in life that his worldview is irremediably dark, childishly selfish, that his only motive is retribution, but the evidence continues to mount. Easter Sunday he posted this message to the people we have “eviscerated”, the evil Iranian regime and all the Iranian people. No time like Easter Sunday for the leader of white Christianity’s mightiest army to threaten the enemies of Christ with massive war crimes. Open the fuckin’ straits or I’ll commit so many war crimes against you scumbags they’ll be shooting the Flintstones, live, in Tehran.

Speaking of hell, does the demon to the left of the flawed vessel of Jesus look familiar?

And here’s Elon Musk’s Grok’s take on the VERY STABLE GENIUS’s holy day threats:

Charisma, times two

Grey Lady highlight

Bold, in its own way. Truth is an undefeatable defense against defamation. Even the most aggressive, vexatiously litigious, criminal ever to be the president has to know this, on some level. Besides, the Commander-in-Chief, now an unprovoked-war time president, has bigger fish to fry at the moment. Got to love the directness of this NY Times headline and lede.

Actually, he threatened Iran with Putin-like war crimes, Netanyahu-scale crimes against humanity. Going to bomb them back to the Stone Age, says the rambling, bellicose, frightened, all-powerful whiner-in-chief, echoing war hawks of the 1960s, when he was but a young molester. He will destroy Iran’s energy grid and blow up their source of fresh water. He will mass murder them, because they’re evil (and he represents the only alternative, a different, more nihilistic, flavor of evil).

After regular prime time broadcasting was interrupted (“we interrupt this program for an incoherent rant by a deranged, criminally insane psychopath…”) for a rambling, out of breath reading, by Mr. Trump, of his recent lying Truth Social posts from the teleprompter, the Times added this:

The speech ended (and The NY Times printed the entire transcript):

Tonight, every American can look forward to a day when we are finally free from the wickedness of Iranian aggression and the specter of nuclear blackmail. Because of the actions we have taken, we are on the cusp of ending Iran’s sinister threat to America and the world. And I’ll tell you, the world is watching.

And when we do, when it’s all over, the United States will be safer, stronger, more prosperous and greater than it has ever been before. May God bless the men and women of the United States Armed Forces, and may God bless the United States of America. Thank you very much, and good night.

In more important news:

It’s ours, the federal, not the states!!!

These comments by our Very Stable Genius echo ones famously made by fellow son of a billionaire and self-made moron, Jared Kushner, during the Genius’s first term.   “You can’t do it on a federal.”

At an Easter lunch reception yesterday, Trump echoed this argument [Goldwater’s states’ rights and federal government is only for military protection position] precisely. “I said to [Office of Management and Budget director] Russell [Vought], ‘Don’t send any money for daycare because the United States can’t take care of daycare,’” he said. “That has to be up to a state. We can’t take care of daycare. We’re a big country. We have fifty states, we have all these other people. We’re fighting wars. We can’t take care of daycare. You gotta let a state take care of daycare, and they should pay for it, too. They should pay. They’ll have to raise their taxes, but they should pay for it. And we could lower our taxes a little bit to them to make up, but we, it’s not possible for us to take care of daycare. Medicaid, Medicare, all these individual things, they can do it on a state basis. You can’t do it on a federal. We have to take care of one thing, military protection.” source

Here’s part of Jared’s snitty real-time response to a national lack of Covid protective gear for healthcare workers, while he served, with no qualifications whatsoever, as the Covid Czar.

At Thursday’s briefing on how the government is responding, Trump’s senior adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner scolded states for not building up their own stockpiles, saying that the “the notion of the federal stockpile was it’s supposed to be our stockpile, it’s not supposed to be states’ stockpiles that they then use.” source

The world these born-entitled folks live in, a world where they perceive their own excrement as emitting an enticing fragrance, is pervaded by the belief that it’s ours, not theirs. They have no right to what is rightfully ours, everything! Everything belongs to us, the vicious, lying propaganda of freeloaders, takers and communist parasites notwithstanding. The psychopathic greed of this Epstein class, and its wanton destructiveness (not to mention its fundamental incoherence) makes me wanna holler.

The world according to Rupert Murdoch

In Murdoch’s world you’re either a capitalist who doesn’t mind fascism if it lets you make more money or you’re a violent advocate of communist revolution. Black and white thinking is the sole intellectual mode of fascists (and hardline communists too, by the way). If you protest a criminally insane president’s destructive actions — communist or dupe of communists! If you publicly oppose fascism — ANTIFA TERRORIST! The First Amendment, with its protection of political dissent, makes this country ripe for communist agitation and overthrow with its license for every commie in the world to denounce the president and his agenda. Grrrr, grrrr… fucking commies…

Without (or with) irony, Murdoch refers to spineless contortionist Little Marco Rubio as “Florida man”. Usually the term refers to someone who got a body part removed (or worse) as the result of a drunken provocation of an alligator. In this case we have the two Republican “front-runners” legging it toward the finish line for who will succeed Mr. Trump in 2028, after Trump’s maker calls him for his eternal reward. Got to love the charisma exuded in that photo of soul dead, shape shifting opportunist J.D. Vance.

Onward Christian soldiers

The last supper of Jesus, with his followers, was a Passover Seder. Tomorrow evening is the Passover Seder. Easter Sunday, this year, is a few days later. Jesus preached peace, protecting the weak, welcoming the stranger, being always ready to forgive those who act hatefully toward you. Christians believe that the crucifixion of Jesus is the ultimate sacrifice and demonstration of love and acceptance from the most humble and pure being who ever walked the earth — God’s son. Jesus was willing to painfully give his life to redeem mankind from hatred and war. On Easter Sunday, the New Testament tells us, Jesus rose from the dead and went back to sit at the right hand of his heavenly father.

There are many beautiful, awe-inspiring stories out there that explain mysteries humans can’t otherwise understand. I think about this as my little seven year-old neighbor is suddenly very curious about God, saints and the like. She’s drawn to the local church (partly for the free Lent merch, baby saints on cute keychains). She was surprised to learn that humans worship many gods, after I gave her two Hindu examples. She wasn’t that impressed by Hanuman, the monkey-headed god I mentioned to her, but she seemed fascinated by Ganesh, the beloved elephant-headed deity. She recalled the elephant-headed god days later and demanded pictures, which led to many questions. Humans have always had a longing for a transcendent story, particularly one that gives meaning to death and makes our puzzling stay here on this often incoherently violent earth part of a holy mission from an all-knowing, all-loving creator.

Long wars between various religious factions, often worshippers of the very same God, wars that last centuries, have long been the human rule here on earth. The chief spokesmen for religious purity (and they’re usually men) don’t always take the teachings of their religion as literally as they expect their followers to take their authoritative interpretations of religious doctrine. Take the Evangelicals in the United States, good Christians who passionately embrace faith and unquestioningly accept the absolute power of a corrupt, criminal, irreligious maniac, for its own ends. In this schema, Jesus was the Prince of Peace, maybe (certainly certain limitations apply to who deserves peace). Here’s Pete Hegseth on what his Lord and Savior Jesus Christ wants from the US military:

Yesterday Michelle Boorstein of the Washington Post reported that former high-ranking military officials, experts on religion and law, and veterans groups, as well as current Pentagon staff and officers, have expressed deep concern over Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s extremist evangelical worship services and his casting of the U.S. military as a force for Christian holy war. Last Wednesday he prayed for U.S. troops to assert “overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy,” saying: “We ask these things with bold confidence in the mighty and powerful name of Jesus Christ.” source

I know, what you’re thinking. What in Christ’s name is that supremely unqualified, drunken misogynist asshole talking about? Anybody who has ever read the sickening history of religious war over the centuries, and down to the present and immediate future, knows exactly what the sick fuck is talking about — “holy war” — mankind’s most murderous curse. Overwhelming violence, in the name of an all-knowing, all-loving God, against those who deserve no mercy (because they don’t believe as we do, worship differently, are Christians who pray in Latin, have different colored skin, etc.). Jesus, at his father’s side in the heavens above, pukes his guts out when he hears this kind of confident, mighty perversion of his powerful name.