Category Archives: current events

The Pope vs. the recent convert to Catholicism

And there’s this:

Also today [May 5], at a meeting to announce that Washington, D.C., will host the 2027 National Football League draft, Trump confirmed that he suddenly decided to announce he was reopening Alcatraz because the word sounded strong. “It represents something very strong, very powerful in terms of law and order. Our country needs law and order. Alcatraz is uh, I would say the ultimate, right? Alcatraz. Sing Sing and Alcatraz, the movies…. Nobody’s ever escaped from Alcatraz and just represented something, uh, strong having to do with law and order. We need law and order in this country. And so we’re going to look at it. Some of the people up here are going to be working very hard on that, and, uh, we had a little conversation. I think it’s gonna be very interesting. We’ll see if we can bring it back. In large form, add a lot. But I think it represents something. Right now, it’s a big hulk that’s sitting there rusting and rotting, uh, very, uh, you look at it, it’s sort of, you saw that picture that was put out. It’s sort of amazing, but it sort of represents something that’s both horrible and beautiful and strong and miserable, weak. And it’s got a lot of it’s got a lot of qualities that are interesting. And I think they make a point”

source

Photographic proof, MS-13

Self-portrait of an asshole

Posted by the wannabe Pontiff himself on Trench Central.

The photo is as real as the MS-13 “tattooed” on Abrego Garcia’s knuckles.   You can trust Truth Social, it’s social, meaning friendly, and it has truth in the name.  Why would they lie?  Trump is obviously the new Pope, though the lying media (die lügenpresse) will not let the world know.

Grey Lady, pitch perfect

From a New York Times May Day editorial, entitled — There Is a Way Forward: How to Defeat Trump’s Power Grab. Here they describe a few of his despicable acts of vengeance against a nation that rejected him by a large margin in 2020.

He has fired federal workers without the 30-day notice that the law requires.

Doesn’t this also mean he fired federal workers illegally? Can’t say it, can you?

He has tried to cut university funding by citing antisemitism without following the established procedures for such civil rights cases.

“Such civil rights cases?” More accurately: he has threatened universities, and unilaterally withheld their federally funding, on transparently baseless grounds.

He has issued executive orders punishing law firms for invented wrongdoing.

Well, no problem with that one.

I did have a real problem with this earlier paragraph:

The building of this coalition [to oppose a Trump dictatorship, which the Times apparently calls for] should start with an acknowledgment that Mr. Trump is the legitimate president and many of his actions are legal. Some may even prove effective. He won the presidency fairly last year, by a narrow margin in the popular vote and a comfortable margin in the Electoral College. On several key issues, his views were closer to public opinion than those of Democrats. Since taking office, he has largely closed the southern border, and many of his immigration policies are both legal and popular. He has reoriented federal programs to focus less on race, which many voters support. He has pressured Western Europe to stop billing American taxpayers for its defense. Among these policies are many that we strongly oppose — such as pardoning Jan. 6 rioters, cozying up to Vladimir Putin of Russia and undermining Ukraine — but that a president has the authority to enact. Elections have consequences.

The Grey Lady’s normalizing characterization of Trump’s ridiculous performance as president with a massive mandate is, to say the least, cherry-picked. His many destructive acts, his administration’s rampant lawlessness and contempt for truth, his unqualified, lie-spouting loyalist appointees in crucial positions leaving America open to ridicule and worse, the president’s unprecedented and well-earned unpopularity, all left out of the Grey Lady’s delicate balancing act, their attempt to treat a psychopath as a perfectly normal president just doing the job like any other duly elected president.

To take one example — did he win the election fairly? We all seem to accept it, in the name of affirming democracy as expressed at the ballot box, but to me the jury is out after every MAGA state suppressed voting with new laws making it harder to vote, Trump being the sole Republican to win in several swing states, and Russia literally calling in bomb threats to Democratic districts on election day. Also, I saw no reporting whatsoever (except for mine) on the 20,000,000 less mail-in ballots delivered by the Trump megadonor postmaster in the first election since 2008 when mail-in voting didn’t increase.

Then I read a line like this and just say “fuck you” and turn away:

We understand that Mr. Trump’s defenders believe that Democrats started this cycle by prosecuting him, and there are reasonable arguments against some of those cases.

We understand that the New York Times represents a certain well-invested segment of the status quo, so what else are they going to say? Still, the words “fuck you” ring in my head when I read this kind of pandering nonsense in the journal of record. “His defenders defend him against what they call political persecution and they make some reasonable arguments.” Can you give us one?

Heh, of course you can’t.

In other news that’s fit to print:

The Face of MAGA

The conspiracy theorist/far-right influencer, Laura Loomer, is able to get Trump to fire experienced, nonpartisan national security officials she deems disloyal to MAGA. The perfect face of MAGA, this portrait was published by the New York Times the other day, as part of an editorial about the damage Trump and his myrmidons have done in the first hundred days.

Also in the New York Times, among a full spectrum of legal experts weighing in on Trump’s enactment of Project 2025:

The impression of a constitutional crisis is misleading. That impression was initially created by overreaching district judges selected by plaintiffs, who obtained temporary victories and leveraged those victories in the media. If there is a crisis, it does not arise from the actions of the administration but instead from a slew of highly aggressive judicial decisions that have transgressed traditional legal limits on the relationship between the judiciary and the executive branch — limits the courts respected during the Biden administration.
— Adrian Vermeule, professor, Harvard Law School [1]

[1] Wikipedia: A convert to Catholicism, Vermeule has become an advocate of integralism, a form of modern legal and political thought originating in historically Catholic-dominant societies and opposed to the Founding Fathers’ ideal of division between church and state. Integralism in practice gives rise to state order (identifiable as theocratic) in which the Common Good has precedence over individual autonomy, the value prioritized by American democracy. Rather than electoral politics, the path to confessional political order in integralist theory is “strategic ralliement“, or transformation within institutions and bureaucracies, that lays the groundwork for a realized integralist regime to succeed a liberal democratic order it assumes to be dying. The new state would “exercise coercion over baptized citizens in a manner different from non-baptized citizens”.[11][12][13]

Incoherence is maddening to me

I grew up in a home where incoherent positions were taken regularly by our parents during our nightly standoffs at the dinner table. I was told over the years, with no uncertainty, that at three days old I silently declared myself an implacable enemy of my innocent father. My parents, both highly intelligent and well-educated, believed this to the day they died, eighty years later. As a result of this kind of mind-numbing idiocy, from two otherwise smart people, I have a lifelong intolerance for incoherence, particularly when it is being asserted as a fact you’d better goddamned believe, because I insist it’s true.

Spirited debate is sometimes necessary to resolve a disagreement. This process is not always easy or fun. But with good faith we can often thrash out solutions to difficult problems by producing arguments that persuade the other person to consider their position from another angle. This ability to reason a way to compromise is what enables democratic government to function. It stems from mutual, if sometimes grudging, respect and a recognition of objective reality that serves as the baseline for discussion and negotiation. It is the ability to reach consensus, and the logical methods used, that tyrants attack with everything they’ve got. The main weapons of tyranny are incoherence, fear and violence.

Incoherence is absolute, rigid, brazen, unblinking, it never changes its tune. Compromise is never possible when faced with an incoherent position defended to the death. The project of those who argue incoherently is total domination. As a matter of logic, it is impossible to reason with somebody who is rigidly irrational. If they offer no proof of something baseless that they insist is true, and they insist it’s true loudly and proudly anyway, you will never find common ground on anything.

This is the dilemma we find ourselves in today as Americans. One of Charles Koch’s most respected Libertarian thinktanks, The Heritage Foundation (author of Project 2025), maintains a database of election fraud going back to 1982. The documented incidents of voter fraud comprise a microscopic, statistically insignificant fraction of all votes cast. Even Bill Barr, as despicable and bellicose a Christian hypocrite as you will find anywhere, called MAGA claims of massive voter fraud bullshit.

Still, you will hear endless claims of widespread voter fraud used to support various voter suppression schemes in every state controlled by a gerrymandered MAGA legislature. If you can’t win at the ballot box, make an incoherent, but relentless argument, about the need to defeat widespread fraud. Anyone inclined to believe that Blacks, Muslims, Asians, college students, city dwellers, college students, naturalized citizens, gay people, environmentalists, humanists, atheists, those manipulated by Jewish practitioners of the Great Replacement “theory”, enemies of the anonymous, all-seeing Q, child blood drinking pedophiles, etc. commit voter fraud in massive numbers does not need proof. That there is a database, even if it has only 1,200 cases of fraud out of a billion votes cast, is enough to convince them.

It seems to me there are two basic kinds of people in society. One needs, above all, honest, mutual conversation, they are open to changing their minds in light of new information from a trusted source. The other kind is willing to accept lies, no matter how absurd, if there is something to be gained — money, membership in a group, prestige, power, being on the “winning team” — and they tend to be rigidly faithful in their beliefs. Black and white thinking characterizes this second type, a certainty that makes logic irrelevant. This kind also demonstrates a willingness to do whatever must be done to feel part of something greater than themselves.

I’ve heard this incoherent style called the dance of rage. The part of the brain that processes logic and can put things into cause and effect sequence is disabled if the anger center is inflamed. If you need to be right, above all else, you will fight to the death with any weapon that comes to hand. You may not be able to win a debate based on what actually exists, but there’s nothing stopping you from insisting on something that clearly doesn’t exist until the other person’s head simply explodes. If you can’t make the other person’s head explode, physical violence is your next best option, provided you have the numbers on your side.

You can’t reason with someone whose mind is closed. You may be able to find common ground, with enough skill and persistence, since we are all humans and have similar basic needs. Common ground is great, but often not enough to move the needle much. When you see that someone is prepared to assert incoherent talking points in order not to be wrong, that’s a pretty good sign it’s time to smile, wink and say goodnight.

Are we all created equal?

I believe we are. So does Heather Cox Richardson:

That decision [man born in America, to Chinese-born parents, is a US citizen — U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark 1898] has stood ever since, as a majority of Americans have recognized the principle behind the citizenship clause as the one central to the United States: “that all men are created equal” and that a nation based on that idea draws strength from all of its people.

On the last day of his presidency, in his last speech, President Ronald Reagan recalled what someone had once written to him: “You can go to live in France, but you cannot become a Frenchman. You can go to live in Germany or Turkey or Japan, but you cannot become a German, a Turk, or a Japanese. But anyone, from any corner of the Earth, can come to live in America and become an American.”

He continued: “We lead the world because, unique among nations, we draw our people—our strength—from every country and every corner of the world. And by doing so we continuously renew and enrich our nation. While other countries cling to the stale past, here in America we breathe life into dreams. We create the future, and the world follows us into tomorrow. Thanks to each wave of new arrivals to this land of opportunity, we’re a nation forever young, forever bursting with energy and new ideas, and always on the cutting edge, always leading the world to the next frontier. This quality is vital to our future as a nation. If we ever closed the door to new Americans, our leadership in the world would soon be lost.”

source

American Carnage, cucks!

Trump is a childishly self-centered person who can’t be wrong. In order to prove that he was right all along about his dystopian hellscape of a desperate, abused, ripped off, violent, ugly, unfair, criminally infested shithole America, he’s brought that vision about by his own, and the Charles Koch network’s, determined willfulness to destroy essential government programs and angrily divide the masses in the recently great nation they are determined to continue to loot, immiserate and poison with impunity. The winner of Trump v. US, according to Koch’s handpicked majority, gone wild.

Here’s a snapshot of one tiny corner of the hideous picture the enraged, insane, medium IQ master of chaos and destruction is painting right now:

Happy 4/20, y’all

With the same sick irony that had Trump’s second inauguration fall on Martin Luther King, Jr’s birthday, Easter Sunday, this year, falls on the 136th birthday of one of Trump’s main idols, Mr. Hitler. On a personal note, two years ago today I was wheeled out of the David Koch pavilion of the #1 hospital for orthopedics fourteen years in a row, into the sunshine of a nice spring day, with a brand new titanium and chromium left knee. Presently I am unable to walk around the block with my six year-old neighbor, which I miss. Seeing the world through the eyes of a bright young kid is a wonderful thing, particularly in springtime, as is being able to walk without pain.

But enough with the personal sob stories. Today is the day that the myopic intellectuals and reactionary lawyers employed by far right billionaires submit their arguments to the Leader for why he should impose a version of martial law under the 1807 Insurrection Act so that he can use the military to end these large demonstrations by US citizens increasingly organizing against Project 2025’s determinedly fascist moves. After all, Trumpie has already used emergency war powers to arrest, detain and deport US residents for indefinite stays in a cool 43 year-old dictator’s super-max prison for “terrorists”. What war, you ask? Dubya and Cheney’s “War on Terror” authorized by Congress shortly after 9/11 under the AUMF [1], an authorization that made the illegal invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq perfectly kosher and that never expires, apparently. If the president calls it “terror”, who is Congress to question that?

As soon as he was in the Oval Office Trump issued an executive order calling for a report, within 90 days, from the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of Homeland Security Director, assessing the need to invoke the Insurrection Act for the “emergency” at the southern border. Today is day 90 since inauguration day. Pete Hegseth and Kristi Noem will sign whatever report is put in front of them, one of the conditions for their appointment as Trump ass-lickers, the same condition accepted by everyone in MAGA.

Presumably, at some point today, probably this evening when the Leader is done cheating at golf to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus, the press will announce what Hegseth, Noem, Mike Flynn, Stephen Miller, Steve Bannon, Samuel Alito, Leonard Leo, Charles Koch et al have decided about the president’s right to invoke the 1807 Insurrection Act. I’m not a betting man, but it’s not hard to guess what this crew of insane, ethically compromised haters will endorse. Particularly now that public opposition to Trump’s purposefully mad leadership is mounting and even reaching some in his own party.

The likeliest outcome, it saddens me to say, is a conspiracy among these lawless maniacs, on the brink of their longtime dream of American fascism, to create a mass death event at some peaceful assembly, call it “terrorism,” blame several marginalized groups for the act they themselves organized and carried out, and bring down the curtain on American democracy once and for all with legally sanctioned state violence. State violence to repress violence they themselves provoke (and often perpetrate as an excuse for martial law) is the go to move of every dictator.

As former civil liberties advocate turned Nazi defender Alan Dershowitz said, defending Trump during his second impeachment for inciting an insurrection, that if the president truly thinks the Jews are using space lasers to unfairly destabilize his absolute rule, he has the right to do whatever he feels is necessary to stop them from using these immensely powerful imaginary weapons in a way that harms the nation. In the words of Nixon, echoed by John Roberts and the Five Moral Dwarves in the unironically captioned Trump v. US, “when the president does it, that means it is not illegal.”

Happy Easter to my Christian friends and may the mercy of the Eternal be upon us all as we wait for the ABC headline.

[1] Wikipedia: The Authorization for Use of Military Force is a joint resolution of the United States Congress which became law on September 18, 2001, authorizing the use of the United States Armed Forces against those responsible for the September 11 attacks. The authorization granted the president the authority to use all “necessary and appropriate force” against those whom he determined “planned, authorized, committed or aided” the September 11 attacks, or who harbored said persons or groups. Wikipedia