Category Archives: current events

The incriminating info has long been public…

Frustrating that Merrick Garland’s Department of Justice, scrupulous about avoiding the appearance of political motivation, has been so reluctant to even investigate anti-democratic criminal activity we all saw play out in front of us, that we see playing out in front of us now as our democracy hangs by a thread, amid the threat of further, better-organized mob violence.

The belatedly formed House Select Committee on January 6 is doing an excellent job investigating and laying out the case, as two teams of impeachment managers also did, clearly setting out a case that could have been proved beyond doubt by testimony and other evidence withheld, for the benefit of Mr. Trump who never, ever obstructed justice. Of course, the impeachment trials were pure politics, the foreman of the jury pledging to work closely with the defense team to acquit each time. The outcome would have been far different in a court of law. Now it’s Garland’s moment to step up. Step up, my man.

Garland famously followed Barr’s lead when he appealed the judge’s decision not to let the Department of Justice stand in for Trump as defendant in E. Jean Carroll’s defamation suit, on Barr’s ridiculous theory that the president calling someone who accused him of rape a fucking liar he wouldn’t fuck with Mike Pence’s dick was acting in the scope of his “official duties”. It’s true that the DOJ leaped into action to try to challenge the Texas anti-abortion law that cleverly circumvents court review (DOJ appeal dismissed by Supreme Court) and to protect parents at school board meetings (quickly weaponized by the GOP as Garland’s partisan war against people giving totally legal Nazi salutes to show their hatred of commie school boards who hate our freedom) but, Jesus Christ.

Bending over backward to appear impartial and apolitical, the Biden DOJ let Don McGahn finally testify behind closed doors about what he told Mueller (Trump asked him to fire Mueller, then, when McGahn refused, asked him to write a memo stating they’d never discussed firing Mueller– you know, as one does while not corruptly abusing one’s power…) not under oath (the honor system again), after the court belatedly found McGahn’s defiance of a subpoena under Barr’s ridiculous blanket protective privilege claim not supported by law. You can read the transcript of McGahn’s boring, two year-delayed interview, but nobody else ever did, I won’t even bother you with a link. (OK, fine, click this one— link to transcript halfway down, above graphic.) A cold, legalistic transcript is nothing like damning testimony, delivered under oath, with skilled cross-examination, on live TV.

Equally tellingly, the Biden administration has done nothing to combat Trump’s favorite tactic of weaponizing court delay until the underlying issue becomes moot. No inter-branch dispute court has been created, no changes to the judicial docket in DC have been made, let alone the assignment of special judges for expedited rulings on urgent matters of national security, things that can currently be tied up indefinitely by unscrupulous litigants employing toothless appeals to waste additional months or years. Oh, well.

As for the detailed information that is already out there, here’s a bit from the November 6, 2021 New York Times, all undisputed (except by a compulsively litigious serial liar with millions in donated legal funds) and supported by sworn testimony and documentary evidence:

WASHINGTON — Even by the standards of President Donald J. Trump, it was an extraordinary Oval Office showdown. On the agenda was Mr. Trump’s desire to install a loyalist as acting attorney general to carry out his demands for more aggressive investigations into his baseless claims of election fraud.

On the other side during that meeting on the evening of Jan. 3 were the top leaders of the Justice Department, who warned Mr. Trump that they and other senior officials would resign en masse if he followed through. They received immediate support from another key participant: Pat A. Cipollone, the White House counsel. According to others at the meeting, Mr. Cipollone indicated that he and his top deputy, Patrick F. Philbin, would also step down if Mr. Trump acted on his plan.

Mr. Trump’s proposed plan, Mr. Cipollone argued, would be a “murder-suicide pact,” one participant recalled. Only near the end of the nearly three-hour meeting did Mr. Trump relent and agree to drop his threat.

Mr. Cipollone’s stand that night is among the new details contained in a lengthy interim report prepared by the Senate Judiciary Committee about Mr. Trump’s efforts to pressure the Justice Department to do his bidding in the chaotic final weeks of his presiden

The report draws on documents, emails and testimony from three top Justice Department officials, including the acting attorney general for Mr. Trump’s last month in office, Jeffrey A. Rosen; the acting deputy attorney general, Richard P. Donoghue, and Byung J. Pak, who until early January was U.S. attorney in Atlanta. It provides the most complete account yet of Mr. Trump’s efforts to push the department to validate election fraud claims that had been disproved by the F.B.I. and state investigators.

The interim report, released on Thursday, describes how Justice Department officials scrambled to stave off the pressure during a period when Mr. Trump was getting advice about blocking certification of the election from a lawyer he had first seen on television, and the president’s actions were so unsettling that his top general and the House speaker discussed the nuclear chain of command . . .

. . . Republicans have sought for months to downplay reports of Mr. Trump’s pressure campaign, arguing that he simply cast a wide net for legal advice and correctly concluded that it would be a mistake to replace Mr. Rosen with Mr. Clark. Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, echoed those sentiments on Thursday with the release of a report by committee Republicans, which called Mr. Trump’s actions “consistent with his responsibilities as president to faithfully execute the law and oversee the Executive Branch.”

But Mr. Rosen, Mr. Donoghue and Mr. Pak — all Republicans — testified that Mr. Trump was not seeking their legal advice, but strong-arming them to violate their oaths of office, undermine the results of the election and subvert the Constitution.

The report is not the Senate Judiciary Committee’s final word on the pressure campaign.

Link to article

Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, echoed those sentiments on Thursday with the release of a report by committee Republicans, which called Mr. Trump’s actions “consistent with his responsibilities as president to faithfully execute the law and oversee the Executive Branch.”

Of course, they did. Merrick?

As for Barr:

The report recommended that the Justice Department tighten procedures concerning when it can take certain overt steps in election-related fraud investigations. As attorney general, the report said, Mr. Barr weakened the department’s decades-long strict policy of not taking investigative steps in fraud cases until after an election is certified, a measure that is meant to keep the fact of a federal investigation from impacting the election outcome.

The Senate panel found that Mr. Barr personally demanded that the department investigate voter fraud allegations, even if other authorities had looked into them and not found evidence of wrongdoing. These allegations included a claim by Rudolph W. Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer and a prime force behind the unfounded election fraud allegations, that he had a tape that showed Democratic poll workers kicking their Republican counterparts from a polling station and fraudulently adding votes for Joseph R. Biden Jr. into the count.

Fucking bagpipe playing bastard.

Merrick?

We are all crazy with anxiety now

I don’t say this judgmentally, we’d have to be crazy not to be feeling a bit crazy right now. We don’t talk about it much, but we are all stretched to the breaking point from two years (and counting) of a politically weaponized (talk about insanity…) highly infectious pandemic that began toward the end of the angrily divisive reign of a malignant narcissist troll, who came to power in the final act of a well-organized, almost complete, decades-in-the-making radical right wing coup that now defends white mob violence, justified by bold, insane lies. The shit storm blows not only here, but there and everywhere. We puny earthlings are facing scary uncertainties related to interlocking global crises, as the great state of Texas sets new records for Christmas temperature (a balmy 82 degrees F) and rolling back constitutional rights.

The newspapers and TV don’t dwell on the cascading crisis of mental health, an unaddressed epidemic of anxiety, depression, loneliness, grief, loss, fear, moodiness, hopelessness, anger and aggression as deadly as any of the other crises facing all of us these days.

Every so often an article is published laying out the scope of our observable epidemic of mental health troubles. The New York Times found, after surveying more than a thousand therapists, that therapists are starting to burn out (though the survey didn’t ask that), like Covid overwhelmed doctors, nurses and hospital staff, and are very concerned about their freaked out patients (and, presumably, the masses of freaked out mental health deniers). Read the Grey Lady’s article to find out Why 1,320 Therapists Are Worried About Mental Health in America Right Now. The survey respondents reported that demand for therapy has surged, waiting lists are long, medication needs have increased, children’s mental health issues are intensifying, couples are struggling, the outlook for 2022 remains bleak. Here’s a slice:

While there were moments of optimism about telemedicine and reduced stigma around therapy, the responses painted a mostly grim picture of a growing crisis, which several therapists described as a “second pandemic” of mental health problems.

“There is so much grief and loss,” said Anne Compagna-Doll, a clinical psychologist in Burbank, Calif. “One of my clients, who is usually patient, is experiencing road rage. Another client, who is a mom of two teens, is fearful and doesn’t want them to leave the house. My highly work-motivated client is considering leaving her career. There is an overwhelming sense of malaise and fatigue.”

The Washington Post recently chimed in with an article called The pandemic has caused nearly two years of collective trauma. Many people are near a breaking point. The article begins:

An airplane passenger is accused of attacking a flight attendant and breaking bones in her face. Three New York City tourists assaulted a restaurant host who asked them for proof of vaccination against the coronavirus, prosecutors say. Eleven people were charged with misdemeanors after they allegedly chanted “No more masks!” and some moved to the front of the room during a Utah school board meeting.

Across the United States, an alarming number of people are lashing out in aggressive and often cruel ways in response to policies or behavior they dislike.

“I think people just feel this need to feel powerful, in charge and connected to someone again,” said Jennifer Jenkins, a school board member in Brevard County, Fla., who said she has faced harassment.

Most people I know are near the breaking point, not that my circle is given to busting up tyrannical restaurants, assaulting flight attendants or giving Nazi salutes at school board meetings. I’m closer to the breaking point than I like to be. Are you as calm and dispassionate, and filled with gratefulness and occasional joy, as you like to be? If so, my hat’s off to you, though I’m also leaving the door open in case you suddenly pick up a weapon.

Then, as we know, since fear and uncertainty are such terrible emotions to sit with, many turn to anger and the certainty of righteousness a good, boiling rage always brings. Check out this Washington Post headline (and the article is a gift to you from the ever generous Jeff Bezos) Anger at Covid drives GOP lawmakers in Red States, which has since been re-titled: Anger over mask mandates, other covid rules, spurs states to curb power of public health officials (tendentious subtitle: Republican lawmakers pass laws to restrict the power of health authorities to require masks, promote vaccinations and take other steps to protect the public health.)

And really, who among us does not have the right to be fucking furious at a persistent disease that keeps morphing and spreading, with deadly effect, among people who find it as enraging as being told what to do? And, also, you know, as bad as the disease itself, and as infuriating — fuck those fucking so-called public health official Nazi fucks and their goddamned liberty-infringing “mitigation strategies.”

It is good to keep in mind, as we walk through this shattered landscape we are all living in today, that we are all at a breaking point and every one of us needs to treat each other with an exceptional amount of mercy. Few of us are at our best during prolonged, draining periods of terror and uncertainty.

Yes, crisis is supposedly viewable as opportunity (I think that Chinese ideogram meme has been debunked) but it is also a high wire act we’re forced to perform, without a net, over broken glass and everything that ever caused a nightmare. Remember very few of us were ever taught how to deal with fear, with anger, with terror. We learned by example: pretend to be fearless, deny anger (and attack the fucking accuser) and as for terror, the word speaks for itself.

This horror show too will eventually pass. Most likely. Denying the scope of our mutual suffering helps nobody. Of course, the mainstream right-wing/corporate bloc in the Senate will block debate on any proposed government efforts to fund mental health care, or any kind of health care, for that matter ($100,000,000 in this year’s military budget for bands to play John Philips Sousa marches is one thing — your fucking personal problems are another).

Being aware of the fearful situation we are all in, as we try to understand the suddenly intensified insanity of everyone around us, can only help. It certainly can’t hurt. And every little act of mercy, and everything else that doesn’t hurt, tends to help.

Reminds me of what a kindly old drug dealer told me, many years ago on a Greyhound bus in Boston, after I declined his offer of a selection of drugs. Seeing my crutches on the seat next to me, and my bandaged foot, he asked if my foot hurt. I told him it did. He handed me a single percoset, on the house, which I thanked him for. “Enjoy it, baby. Like I said, if I can’t help, I don’t hurt” and he smiled, heading up the aisle to his seat.

Council for National Policy’s deal with Trump

The religious right’s bargain with Trump, in a nutshell, from Bob Garfield’s recent interview with CNP researcher, author Anne Nelson on his podcast Bully Pulpit:

GARFIELD: All right. Let’s now turn to the more-or-less present: the rise of Trump and the now violent assault on democracy. How was CNP involved in Trump’s ascent?

NELSON: The CNP was involved with Trump, initially, very reluctantly. He wasn’t one of them, he had no particular religious background, he was multiply divorced, and he really didn’t reflect their values in many ways. Their favored candidate was Ted Cruz, but they had a problem – which was that Cruz had a tremendous charisma deficit, and as he lost the primaries, they realized that either they supported Trump, the primary victor, or they lived with Hillary Clinton’s presidency, which was unacceptable to them.

GARFIELD: Oh, I – I’m sorry, I just – I just have to interrupt to remind you what then Senator Al Franken (laughs) said about Cruz.

AL FRANKEN: I probably like him more than most of my other colleagues like Ted, and I hate him (laughs).

NELSON: That is the case. Cruz is a formidable intelligence and strategist. He was not a winning candidate outside Texas. So the fundamentalists convened something like a thousand leaders and representatives in New York City in June of 2016 at the Times Square Marriott. They brought Trump out to parade him before them, and they had a number of leaders from the Council for National Policy there on the program. And publicly, what that event was about was to sell Trump to this thousand fundamentalist leaders, many of whom had been Never Trumpers, and they were like, “This is going to be your guy. You need to go home and tell your flocks that this is the plan.” But the second part of that agenda involved meetings where they cut a deal with Trump. They said, “You don’t have a war chest, you don’t have ground troops for the election canvassing, you don’t have a strategy. And all indications are you’re going to get creamed.” So we have all three of those that we can put into your service. But in return –

GARFIELD: We have a shopping list. 

NELSON: We have a shopping list, and it’s basically got three items. The first one was enact some of our policies by executive orders. So when suddenly the Republican platform has this new anti-trans, anti LGBT language that was literally written by the president of the Council for National Policy, Tony Perkins, Trump enacted the anti-trans policy for the Pentagon against the Pentagon’s wishes, which, you know, the Pentagon said, “This is disruptive of our operations and trans people are not a problem,” but Trump had to deliver on his deal. The second part was to create an evangelical advisory council. Obama had a religious advisory council, but it included Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Muslims. This one was 100% Protestant, and none of these other religions needed to apply. The leadership of this council were in and out of the White House on policy discussions and photo ops on a weekly basis. The third was by far the most important, far reaching, and devastating to our democracy. And that was when they got Trump to agree that any federal judges he nominated would be approved from a list that was submitted by three organizations run by members of the Council for National Policy. These were the Federalist Society, the Heritage Foundation, and the National Rifle Association. Now, what business the NRA has in recommending federal judge nominations? I do not know, but that’s how it played out, and after his first confirmation, he invited the representatives of these groups, most of them from the Council for National Policy, for a little victory luncheon at the White House.

GARFIELD: So that was the origin story of Trump’s deal with the devil, a man with not only no religion, but no ideology to speak of creating himself in the image of his political and financial sponsors. Over the ensuing – well, so then he was elected, more or less – and then over the ensuing four years, many of Trump’s 30,000 lies, big and small, find their provenance, what do you know, in the CNP. So, can we just tick a few of these off beginning with the COVID hoax, and the savior drug hydroxychloroquine?

NELSON: So if you get to the beginning of 2020, the Trump campaign is in trouble and the Council for National Policy recognizes it. They had hoped that the 2020 elections would be won with a popular vote, that was cast into doubt. COVID set in a couple of months later, and the whole strategy of the Trump campaign had been built around mass rallies and data harvesting from attendees of the rallies and building on that to secure a victory. Well, mass rallies became impossible because of COVID restrictions, so there was a critical phone call that involved the president of the Council for National Policy and members of the Trump campaign staff, where they said, “We need to open up society, get the economy roaring again, and people are afraid of COVID, but they trust doctors. We have a group of doctors who will say that COVID is a hoax, will argue for the reopening of society and the mass rallies.” So that summer, these doctors were convened by Jenny Beth Martin in Washington. Jenny Beth Martin, co-founder of Tea Party Patriots and a leading figure in the Council for National Policy. At that point, the point person – when Dr. Simone Gold announced that hydroxychloroquine was a cure for COVID – she was put on partner media platforms of the CNP, including the Charlie Kirk Show and the Christian Broadcasting Network, spreading this disinformation 

SIMONE GOLD: With the tyranny of medical apartheid nipping at our heels, rise up. Rise up. Rise up.

NELSON: And that has now expanded into a small army of unethical physicians who are continuing the hydroxychloroquine hoax. They’ve added ivermectin as a cure and, in fact, they have online prescription services charging money to people who are ordering ivermectin as a COVID cure.

JAKE TAPPER: Poison control centers are reporting that their calls are spiking in places like Mississippi and Oklahoma because some Americans are trying to use an anti parasite horse drug called ivermectin to treat coronavirus, to prevent contracting coronavirus. What would you tell someone who is considering taking that drug?

FAUCI: Don’t do it.

NELSON: There’s no evidence that it helps against COVID and, in fact, there are several cases of deaths. Not just from COVID and the failed approach of ivermectin, but people taking overdoses of ivermectin. At the same time, they’re discouraging vaccination, and the purpose that lies behind this is, I believe, to discredit any federal agency, to discredit the CDC and the NIH, and to have their followers distrust any kind of fact based authority. Whether it’s science, whether it’s professional journalism, whether it’s federal agencies, and work them into this stoked anger and frustration that is then politically mobilized, and so is chaos.

GARFIELD: And not just because they’re elites and look down at the silent majority, as Nixon called Middle America, but because there is a vast conspiracy to make money for Bill Gates or to turn children against their country, or to put right wing political dissidents into concentration camps or, you know, whatever the crazy talk is. It wasn’t enough just to make people suspicious of – of expertise and authority, but to brainwash them that they were actually active enemies of the people.

NELSON: I would say that the strength of the Council for National Policy is to figure out what I call the raw nerves of our culture and to further inflame them. So right now, parents – with kids in public schools – are stressed on so many levels. Are the schools open or are they not open? Are there mandates? Are there not mandates? Can working mothers go to work if their kids aren’t in school? Right? These are real, real issues. And then you put on top of that our very difficult conversation nationally about race. When the Black Lives Matter protests happened, the way that the CNP’s media and other media systems played it was, “these are violent riots,” and they cherry picked photos of buildings and flame and violence in the streets and amplified it and exaggerated it. These were not invented or doctored photos, these things happened, it’s just that they happened as very, very few cases and very small percentage of the peaceful protests. But that’s not what their audience saw.

TUCKER CARLSON: This may be a lot of things this moment we’re living through, but it is definitely not about black lives. And remember that when they come for you, and at this rate, they will.

The rest of their conversation is HERE. Fascinating and horrifying, both.

The Council for National Policy

Formed in 1981, the Council for National Policy is an invitation-only, secretive charitable organization that promotes deeply conservative Christian values [1], and advances plans and policies for that purpose. It is a coordinating leadership committee for a network of far right groups with an influential membership list.

CNP’s highly private membership is a Who’s Who of right-wing royalty and wealthy dark money donors. Among the member names that some traitor leaked you will find Oliver North, Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, former AG John Ashcroft, Steve Bannon, Kelleyanne Conway, Leonard Leo of the Federalist Society, Clarence Thomas’s influential right-wing wife Virginia and the billionaire philanthropist mother of billionaire donors Erik Prince and Betsy DeVos [2].

Here’s a huge shocker:

On October 14, 2020, The Washington Post reported that it had obtained videos recorded by CNP of several meetings in February and August 2020 whose overtly partisan, political nature raised “potential issues of compliance with election laws and charity rules.”[1]

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I hadn’t even heard of this influential group until a recent, excellent Bob Garfield interview with author Anne Nelson. Garfield says of their talk: a conversation with author Anne Nelson about the Council for National Policy, which has spent decades exploiting bugs in the system to gain minority control of our politics — and our future.

In a two part discussion they talked about the sixty year right wing coup, carried out quite brilliantly by what Hillary Clinton was widely mocked for calling the vast right wing conspiracy. The CNP is part of a large network of well-funded, hugely influential, interlocking organizations. The reach of this network is definitely vast and always serves a well-coordinated right-wing plan to control the narrative of American politics, get and maintain power and make laws consistent with its distinctly minoritarian views.

CNP appears to be close to the top of the movement conservative food chain, the beating heart at the center of well-financed, secretive right-wing power. Here’s a bit more about CNP.

Membership is by invitation only. The organization’s membership list is considered “strictly confidential”. Guests may attend “only with the unanimous approval of the executive committee.” Members are instructed not to refer to the organization by name to protect against leaks.[4] The New York Times political writer David D. Kirkpatrick suggested that the organization’s secrecy since its founding was intended to insulate it “from what its members considered the liberal bias of the news media.”[2]

CNP’s meetings are closed to the general public, reportedly to allow for a free-flowing exchange of ideas. The group meets three times per year.[13] This policy is said to be similar to the long-held policy of the Council on Foreign Relations, to which the CNP has at times been compared. CNP’s 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status was revoked by the IRS in 1992 on grounds that it was not an organization run for the public benefit. The group successfully challenged this ruling in federal court. A quarterly journal aimed at educating the public, promised in the wake of this incident, has not substantially materialized. The organization has a website that contains many policy speeches from past gatherings (covering the years from 2013 up to the present).[14]

While those involved in the organization are almost entirely from the United States, their organizations and influence cover the globe, both religiously and politically. Members include corporate executives,[15] legislators[15] former high ranking government officers,[15] leaders of ‘think tanks’[15] dedicated to molding society and those whom many view as “Christian leadership”.[15]

In May 2016, the Southern Poverty Law Center released a leaked copy of the membership directory for 2014.[16][17]

A membership list for September 2020, leaked a year later, revealed that members, who could attend meetings together, included elite Republicans, wealthy entrepreneurs, media proprietors and pillars of the US conservative movement, and anti-abortion and anti-Islamic extremists. It was reported that members of the secretive CNP are instructed not to reveal their affiliation or even name the group.[

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The first rule of Fight Club, yo. If they don’t ever find out you’re even doing it, how are they going to be able to stop you? Use your fucking head!

Coming up: the CNP wish list and Trumpism, the deal that was made between CNP and The Donald before the elite of the organized right in the US would throw its weight behind a clearly unsuitable presidential candidate with vast media charisma. It was one deal that Trump kept, 100%, for maybe the only time in his long, transactional life.

[1]

CNP was founded in 1981 by Southern Baptist pastor Tim LaHaye, author of The Battle for the Mind (1980) and the Left Behind series of books. Other early participants have included W. Cleon Skousen, a theologian within The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and founder of the Freemen Institute; Paul Weyrich; Phyllis Schlafly; Robert Grant; Howard Phillips, a former Republican affiliated with the Constitution Party; Richard Viguerie, the direct-mail specialist; and Morton Blackwell, a Louisiana and Virginia activist who is considered a specialist on the rules of the Republican Party.[40][41][42]

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[2]

Members of the CNP have included: General John Singlaub, shipping magnate J. Peter Grace, Edwin J. Feulner Jr of the Heritage Foundation, Rev. Pat Robertson of the Christian Broadcasting Network, Jerry Falwell, U.S. Senator Trent Lott, Southern Baptist Convention activists and retired Texas Court of Appeals Judge Paul Pressler, lawyer and paleoconservative activist Michael Peroutka,[10] Reverend Paige Patterson,[11] Senator Don Nickles, former United States Attorneys General Edwin Meese and John Ashcroft, gun-rights activist Larry Pratt, Colonel Oliver North, Steve Bannon, Kellyanne Conway, philanthropist Elsa Prince (mother of Blackwater founder and former CEO Erik Prince and Trump Administration Secretary of Education Betsy Devos), Leonard Leo, and [1] Virginia Thomas (wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas).[1] Former California State Assemblyman Steve Baldwin was CNP’s executive director from 2000 to 2008.[12]

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They never sleep

Octogenarian Rupert Murdoch, powerful autocratic media mogul with a distinctly fascistic worldview, never wastes a minute when he can be spreading patriotically packaged hate to convert another disgruntled citizen to his point of view. He gave up citizenship in the country of his birth, Australia, to become a naturalized, and ultra-nationalistic, highly influential U.S. citizen in 1985. In fairness to Murdoch, fascism is the ideal business environment for well-connected super-wealthy right wingers. Like other Nazi types, Murdoch and his propaganda machine are laser focused on relentlessly hammering home their message and never seem to fucking sleep. Even the enemy armies on the front in World War One took a truce in Jesus’s name on Christmas, came out of their bunkers, toasted each other, sang carols together, sometimes even exchanged gifts. Not Rupert, not today, not any day.

Here is a clip that FOX “news” posted to youTube shortly before Christmas Day turned into the day after Christmas. I am going to transcribe this articulate former elite soldier’s patriotic speech, calling for STRONG military leaders who believe in the exceptional greatness of our threatened nation, so that you can see its compelling, if simplified, “argument” plainly in front of you.

In full disclosure, my Instagram profile, my pronoun is listed as Attack Helicopter so you can let everyone know exactly where you are.

So, yeah, the military has a very specific and strategic job and that’s to keep our country safe and when you thrust them in to be the front line of a sociological experiment which has a pernicious ideology that makes people hate the United States, a soldier can very quickly start to despise the very thing he’s supposed to be protecting.

As the military is getting “woke” it is learning that its country is evil and racist and xenophobic and greedy and steals land and so why in the world should I defend something that is evil and awful? And the answer is “no, only evil people would defend evil things.”

And so it’s really less about whatever little headline is happening right now, it’s really more about the totality of what “wokeism” is doing to the military in general, the whole structure, the whole anti-everythingism that wokeism is is destroying the very fabric of why a soldier would even fight. You’re demoralizing the troops so it’s something far more at the heart of what a soldier is. You’re destroying their love of country and therefore their reason to fight and possibly die for their country. We can’t survive it.

My question for the general would be is are you studying the enemy’s playbook to war against them or to join them? And judging by things like the Afghanistan withdrawal, it looks like we’re more interested in supplying them all kinds of weapons that will absolutely be used, and have been used, to kill innocents. And so I wonder is the general reading to join them or to defeat them? And it looks like the former, not the latter.

My background was in special operations and I’m forever connected to that specific brotherhood, and I do know that that type of elite soldier, whether it’s Army Rangers or Seals or Special Forces they are highly pragmatic they’re intelligent and they’re very impervious to bullying. They’re not “woke”, they don’t go “woke”, you can’t make them be “woke”, wokeism, forced on the military will absolutely make you lose your most elite soldiers. We’ll lose them.

If we can’t get strong leaders who understand that their job in the military is not to play sociological games, but it’s to keep our borders safe from all enemies, foreign and domestic, we’re in serious trouble. That’s problems that we cannot survive.

There’s an ancient quote by a warrior poet named Thucydides and he says “the state that separates its scholars from its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting done by fools”. We have to have strong military leadership that cares about pragmatic, in real-world results to keep people physically safe.

They’re everyday Americans, they’re civilians, they’re military, they’re police, they’re EMS, they’re doctors, bankers, lawyers, they’re all of us. And that’s what we’re after. We’re after the common man who loves freedom and who lives for higher purpose, is ready to sacrifice in the defense of others, and that’s the whole idea.

The military, even before its leadership was captured by what FOX calls the false and pernicious notion that our country has a deep history of racism, xenophobia and land seizure (not to mention the fake history of our government ‘disappearing’ of millions of indigenous Americans) has long been a democratizing institution, oddly enough. Not sociological games based on a pernicious ideology, but exposure to other Americans from different backgrounds in a hierarchy that rewards good service. I have a friend who grew up in Tennessee, had few contacts with Blacks and recalls he didn’t particularly like them as a group. In the army he became good friends with Black guys from different parts of the country, he found he had more in common with them than many others in the service. He says the army opened his eyes to how unwittingly racist some of his thinking had been, based on lack of contact and popular racist bullshit that other ignorant friends spouted. This insight came to him simply by his exposure to others, from other walks of life, other parts of the country, in an integrated military, everyone serving the same larger cause.

The strong military leaders this guy calls for never question that our country is the greatest in human history and will give their men good reason to fight and die for this greatest of all nations. It is as simple as good vs. evil. He clearly sees himself as something of a scholar warrior, like Thucydides, who he quotes. Presumably like pardoned felon General Mike Flynn of Q-Anon. As he points out, and follow this sophisticated argument:

And so it’s really less about whatever little headline is happening right now [1], it’s really more about the totality of what “wokeism” is doing to the military in general, the whole structure, the whole anti-everythingism [2] that wokeism is is destroying the very fabric of why a soldier would even fight. You’re demoralizing the troops so it’s something far more at the heart of what a soldier is. You’re destroying their love of country and therefore their reason to fight and possibly die for their country. We can’t survive it.

Fucking anti-everythingism will fucking destroy us, true dat. For example, as he points out, Biden gave the Taliban weapons to use against us, FACT, and Trump unilaterally negotiating the release from prison of 5,000 top Taliban fighters as a condition to our scheduled withdrawal from that unwinnable twenty year war had nothing whatsoever to do with it. The Al Qa-qaa explosives depot that our victorious army in Iraq inadvertently gave to the insurgents back in 2003 has nothing to fucking do with our woke “president” giving weapons to our enemies now!

Real Americans, Murdoch’s myrmidons remind us, know that we can’t survive a direct assault on our belief that we never fucking ever did anything wrong, to anybody!

It’s quite simple, really, are you on the side of good or evil? Choose a fucking side, buddy.

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For example all these nefarious headlines about Trump’s inner circle and their conspiracy to overturn the election results, (presidential results only, mind you) employing every means necessary, including mob violence to do so. These little headlines are clearly designed to distract you from the real threat — “woke” people who hate our freedom, the mindless, godless anti-everything caucus.

The active and former military and police who participated in the totally legal protest at the Capitol to Stop the Steal did so because they sincerely believed their leader when he told them they’d all been robbed. Do not be distracted by headlines about “sedition” the real traitors are those 81,000,000 fake “woke” voters whose communist party claims to have legally defeated the man who got a record 74,000,000 totally legit votes.

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You can’t compromise with Anti-everythingism. The supporters of Anti-everythingism are simply insane, evil, and should answer to superior force pursuant to the argument advanced by scholar warriors like Thucydides and Mike Flynn, and the MyPillow guy.

Liar’s truth slip ups

A broken clock is right twice a day. Tip of the skull cap to Heather Cox Richardson.

(Fucking Twitter apparently requires permission to reproduce a video from Twitter, which I don’t know how to get, so click the link and watch the 15 second clip of Trump nonchalantly saying the wall Mexico paid for would have been completed by now “had we won the election”)

And this refreshing bit of conceited honesty from the same source, just in:

American Exceptionalism — democracy edition

American Exceptionalism is well-known and beyond dispute, though, of course, it cuts both ways. We are the land of the free and the home of the brave. We lead the world in spending on health care, by a country mile. We lead the world in death by constitutionally guaranteed firearms. Military spending, we’re exceptional by a landslide, numero uno mundial. It’s not even a contest if you put our budget up against the total of the next five miltary big spenders. Though not among the very worst nations for infant mortality, our numbers are impressively high considering our great wealth. We have a deadly, ongoing partisan war over basic health precautions during a deadly plague, for fuck’s sake, and a raging debate over gathering, frequently devastating climate catastrophe we are all witnessing. We have Texas Justice.

Here’s a professor, a constitutional scholar, describing our remarkable, indeed, Exceptional, constitutional democracy. He lays out the unamended anti-democratic traditions enshrined in our original, elite-protecting constitution, blueprint for the most anti-majority democracy in the modern world, by design of the sainted Framers. The Electoral College and non-proportional apportionment of Senators, check it out, fascinating food for thought.

Jews cancel FOX cartoon!

The Anti-defamation League, a group of Jews who scream in the mass media and bring lawsuits whenever a mainstream outfit pushes an overtly anti-Semitic idea, threatened FOX “news” and forced them to take down this cartoon right out of Germany’s Der Sturmer 1936.

Before FOX was forced (by the Jews) to take it down 15,978 MAGA adherents liked it. 754 were moved to make comments, no doubt about the sinister truth of the cartoon, that fucking Jews control the child raping, child-blood drinking, godless, communist Democrat (sic) party. If that many FOX diehards had come out to vote for Joe Manchin III’s Republican opponent in the last senatorial race in West Virginia things would have gone differently. If the well-drawn cartoon (nice piece of artwork, credit where it’s due) hadn’t come down, the number of likes it would have by now would eclipse Centrist Joe’s 290,000 total votes in the West Virginia race he won by three points.

But a couple of larger points, before I get back to the meeting with my fellow rabbis to figure out how to get more gullible colored people into the country to vote for the party that supports intolerable affronts like affordable child care, skilled elder care, universal health care, slowing the destruction of our habitat, replacing police as first responders to mental health crises, and other communist pipe dreams like that, and to insert these coloreds to replace the “legacy Americans” (tip of the yarmulke to Swanson TV dinner heir Tucker Carlson) who embrace conspiracy theories about the one non-right wing billionaire we know about, George Soros. The story goes that Soros, at the age of six or so, worked closely with the Nazis and profited handsomely by selling Jewish homes. That’s some power, if you think about it. Diabolical, really. No wonder anti-Semites hate Soros!

This cartoon could work better as a real reflection of the USA in 2021 if you had a three headed puppeteer, say, Charles Koch, a descendant of Andrew Mellon and the reclusive, autistic math genius Robert Mercer (who put Trump over the top by hooking him up with Sloppy Steve Bannon and Kellyanne Alternative-Fact), working the puppets for tax cuts for the wealthy, right wing extremist federal judges and dismantling all government regulation (while enforcing laws prohibiting abortion). Or the monstrous Charles Koch could stand in for the rest of his network of philanthropic psychopaths, or Rupert Murdoch could, for that matter.

One more point, and I hesitate to make this obvious point, even as I make it with my traditional shrugging Jewish irony:

Doesn’t the fact that Jews forced super-powerful billionaire reactionary Rapert Merde-och to take down an arguably anti-Semitic cartoon showing a very ugly Jewish puppeteer controlling things kind of make the anti-Semites’ point for them? I mean, nu?

Minority Rule and President Manchin

Here’s a good graphic demonstrating how powerful minority rule is in our dodgy experiment in representative democracy. A wealthy conservative senator from one of the poorest states in the US has flatly announced his veto of Build Back Better. Manchin, who has almost always voted with the political right (he voted for Sessions, Barr, Gorsuch, banning abortions after 20 weeks, Kavanaugh) won his seat by a slim 19,397 margin over his Republican challenger, in an election less than half of West Virginia voters turned out for. What we Americans call a mandate.

He abruptly announced on Rupert Murdoch’s FOX network that he is tanking the popular Build Back Better Bill he has pretended to negotiate over for months. He said he cannot “in good conscience” support a bill to tackle catastrophic climate change (fossil fuel industry donors and coal barons hate this), lift children out of poverty (back to austerity, little West Virginians), create jobs for caregivers, home care options for seniors and otherwise shore up our shaky social safety net. President Manchin claims he’s concerned about inflation, and the national debt, and that poor people will only waste direct government child care payments (on drugs) if it’s given to them, that providing seniors with dental and vision care as part of the Medicare we all purchase is a slippery slope to … communism?

Then, after snarling about being called a liar and an obstructionist, he gets in his Maserati and drives to the yacht he lives on. Oh, well, at least he doesn’t own any slaves.

If the GOP manages to take back the Senate in 2022, expect this millionaire man of the people (his people) to immediately defect to the party that will immediately end the “bipartisan” filibuster.

Et tu, Mitch?

From today’s New York Times:

Even as House Republicans have condemned the investigation as a political witch hunt, the committee found support this week from Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the top Republican in the chamber. Mr. McConnell, who in May led a filibuster that blocked the creation of an independent commission to investigate the attack, said this week that he believed the House committee was uncovering valuable information.

“It was a horrendous event,” Mr. McConnell said of the Capitol siege in a TV interview. “I think what they are seeking to find out is something the public needs to know.”

Which, of course, is obviously why I led a filibuster to prevent the creation of an independent commission to investigate the horrendous event. And why I waited almost two months to concede that President Biden won the election. And why I need your money and support more than ever.