Category Archives: current events

Totally, totally normal, you traitorous cucks!

President Trump has long been the “decider” in the closely held family business he inherited from his successful, psychopath father. He has bankrupted every business venture he ever went into, or had them closed down for corruption, fraud and abuse — like Trump University or the Trump charity. The guy is a blustering con artist who nobody in his employ has ever said no to. There have never been consequences for anything he’s ever done. The spoiled bully he was as a child is the same special guy running the most powerful country in the world. Falling asleep at a recent televised meeting, during a boring presentation about numbers, a more tactless person than I might call him Sleepy Don.

His niece Mary put it perfectly — he’s the weakest man she’s ever known, his genius is consistently finding people even weaker than him. This weakness in his inner circle must always include a non-existent moral compass. Little Marco, Lyin’ Ted, Pete Kegsbreath, MAGA Mike Johnson, Kashyap Patel, Todd Blanche, Tulsi Gabbard, Howard Lutnick, Scott Bessent, Hung Cao, Michael Cohen, the list goes on and on. The soul-dead opportunists riding the MAGA train all know the key to Trump’s inner circle is eternal public deference to the big guy’s desperate, sucking vacuum of an ego. Trump can’t be wrong, has never, ever been, so if he is wrong, forcefully, angrily defend how right he was to do whatever stupid or evil thing he’s just done. Then smirk defiantly for the cameras, threaten to sue, prosecute, imprison, and wait for the moment the bus rumbles by, the one you will inevitably be thrown under, when the time comes.

Is this a surprise to anyone?

A classic asshole, whatever we may opine about his psychiatric condition or how the abuse he endured as a child warped him into the destructive, compulsive liar, with a taste for killing (double tap strikes on fishing boats, a girls’ school in Iran, firing squads for federal executions, yo), who now controls 5,000 nuclear warheads. Sometimes, as they say, a schmuck is just a schmuck.

Same ear, two years later. A miracle.

And in shocking breaking news, truly shocking, who would ever imagine such a thing at such a time?

War is (lucrative as) hell

War is hell, except to those happy few who profit from the atrocities.   It takes billions of dollars a day, as we learned recently, to bomb the shit out of a far away land, to destroy its civilian infrastructure, kill its leaders and make it submit to our demands, whatever they may be.  

The Nazis were the first modern regime to target civilians for death and terror, to demoralize and torture the population to advance its war aims (he says, pulling this dramatic factoid directly out of his ass and qualifying it with the hazy word “modern”) [1].   The Japanese did the same in places they invaded, with swords, to hellish effect, as did the Americans in that horrific world war, mostly by air.  The targeting of civilians is a war crime under the international laws enacted to prevent another World War Two style mass murder event.  Killing an unarmed civilian, a surrendering soldier, blowing up a hospital, a school, a water treatment plant, bridges, power plants, any non-military target, threatening to do any of these things, all war crimes. The devil, as always, is in the details.

What happened after the US violated international law, (its president also defying the US Constitution, in contempt of Congress and the electorate) and rained unprovoked death and destruction on Iran?   That remains to be seen, but since the US withdrew from the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court (Reagan — he didn’t want to take shit for illegally mining the harbor of the new communist state in Central America) there will be no enforceable criminal sanctions for the American killing of 160 girls at an Iranian school targeted by AI, blown up by the world’s most sophisticated Air Force.  

Likewise for the people Trump and Hegseth lethally droned on boats in the Caribbean, people who were eating the dogs, eating the cats, eating the pets!  Wait, those are Haitians in Ohio JD Vance lied about…  The people we murdered in those boats a thousand miles from our shores, over a hundred of them now, are TERRORISTS, yes, that’s right, narco-terrorists who were, in fact, killing Americans by the millions, literally, as Pam Bondi testified, tens of millions, an invading army, and under emergency anti-terrorism powers, the US president can legally order their murder. 

Maybe not legally, but who is going to stop him?  Obama did this to a US citizen (and his son, a week later), under the Dick Cheney Doctrine, on the president’s sole determination, based on the best available intel, designated the father a terrorist, a pirate, hostis humani generis, outside of the realm of law of the civilized nations, reduced them both, by armed drone, to chopped meat. No need for criminal charges or due process of any kind for either of them.  The killing of the boy was said to have been a mistake, but there was never an apology to anyone about it.   “Fun fact”:  Trump’s special forces killed the boy’s little sister, Nawar, a few years later, in a controversial, illegal raid in 2017. Nawar was eight when she was shot to death [2].   War and its horrific excesses continue in a straight line, soon to be drawn by robots. The history of war is always written in the blood of the meek, the ordinary and the decent, for the benefit of the profiteers, folks untroubled by torturing some folks, or seeing them slaughtered.

You have Israel mass killing in Gaza, letting their “settlers” murder with impunity on the West Bank. Israel is not the only nation doing this in the world right now, but Israel is doing it. Now they are bombing southern Lebanon, fighting a terrorist menace. A matter of national survival, Israel says. On the other hand, you have more than a million innocent Lebanese civilians, driven from their homes, many of those homes destroyed by bombs, countless injuries and many deaths. Blowing up the bridges they need to cross to return to the rubble of their homes is a war crime. As my grandfather used to say, when I caught him being a hypocrite, “call me ‘pisher'”.

Israel has not been prosecuting anyone for killing non-Jewish civilians, though they’ve passed a law allowing Palestinians to be executed in Israel for certain crimes. This law doesn’t apply to Jews because Israel is not, no matter what its antisemitic and arch Jewish detractors (such as myself) might say, an apartheid or otherwise racist state.     

Damaging a statue of Jesus while depopulating southern Lebanon will not be tolerated by the world’s most moral army, the army of the sole democracy in the region, America’s beloved ally. It makes Israeli soldiers look anti-Christian, which is not a good look for an army of Jews supported by faithful. well-funded Christian Zionists. Depopulating southern Lebanon is a different matter entirely, as is the killing of unarmed Palestinian paramedics coming to the aid of the injured, murdered and buried in a mass grave, along with their ambulance, by an Israeli bulldozer.

As is the use of the passive voice to describe what happened when at least one Israeli shot two Palestinians to death near a school in the occupied West Bank. Got to admire how this shit is done, and how deftly the Grey Lady turns those headline phrases.

[1] I “stand corrected” by robotic intelligence:

[2] Nawar al-Awlaki, the 8-year-old daughter of Anwar al-Awlaki, was killed during a U.S. military raid in Yemen on January 29, 2017, which was the first military operation authorized by President Trump. The raid resulted in the deaths of several civilians, including Nawar, and raised significant controversy regarding its execution and the loss of innocent lives. Wikipedia NBC News

Civilian deaths

The U.S. military initially denied there were any civilian casualties, but later declared it was investigating if they occurred.[37] The Pentagon later confirmed that civilians, including women and children, were likely killed in the attack.[47] A Yemeni government official in Al Bayda Governorate said on January 31 that at least eight women and seven children (ranging in age from 3 to 13) were killed.[48] Human Rights Watch reported on February 24 that at least 14 civilians, including nine children, were killed in the operation.[10] The Bureau of Investigative Journalism (BIJ), a London-based NGO, found that the operation went “dreadfully wrong” and that, according to local villagers, 25 civilians, who were not members of AQAP, were killed; this included nine children under the age of 13, with the youngest being a three-month-old baby. The BIJ listed the names and ages of the dead children. Beside the nine children killed, the BIJ reports that one pregnant woman was also killed.[36] The civilian deaths appear to have been a result of the aerial gunfire from U.S. support aircraft, according to a CENTCOM statement.[49] source

Great lesson on the Strait of Hormuz

David Feldman, in his incomparable style (I started to say ‘inimitable’, but his distinct delivery isn’t hard to imitate), uses maps to lay out the supreme idiocy of Trump and Hegseth’s loud assertions that they won the war against Iran overwhelmingly and are only negotiating now to… uh, they completely and utterly won, decisively, destroyed Iran’s ability to wage war with unprecedented lethality and violence in the name of all that is holy (and the bossy f-ing pope be damned),  which is why they have agreed to a ceasefire and are negotiating terms with a nation that, whenever it wants to, can stop all oil tankers from passing through the Strait of Hormuz.

It is clearly the lügenpresse [1], the lying globalists who control mass media (you know who he’s talking about…) lying about the most perfect war, more perfect, even, than Mr. Trump’s perfect call asking Ukrainian president Zelensky to “do him a favor” if he wanted the arms shipment Congress had already approved for Ukraine’s defense against Putin’s invasion.   The stinking rat who made that secret phone call public, and lied about the transcript, which was perfect (PERFECT!),  is going to get prosecuted pursuant to Tulsi Gabbard’s referral, and that will happen toot sweet, says Kashyap Patel, who will now be subject to being deposed in the idiotic defamation case the angry asshole brought against The Atlantic for smearing his good name (I know, what good name?).  It’s all the fault of the lying goddamned commie mass media that needs to be brought to heel, clearly.  These public servants are all perfect, the most perfect ever to serve this good nation.  PERFECT YOU SICK FUCKING LYING TREASONOUS MANIAC BASTARDS!!!!!

[1]

NY Times releases memos showing origins of corrupt 6-3 majority “shadow docket”

As disgusted as I often am with the NY Times’ typically Chuck Schumer-like courage and integrity, they regularly publish important investigative pieces. Their in-depth reporting on Trump’s father’s criminal tax avoidance scheme is a great example [1]. (Gift link no longer available, it seems, but try this.) This one, from today’s paper, is another good one. It is a short history of the shadow docket, the new rightwing mechanism for greenlighting illegal moves by its front man, on an almost instant “emergency” basis, by issuing quick, no argument/no legal reasoning decisions that enable their interests to advance unimpeded.

These short, quick decisions were usually reserved for yes/no rulings on a last minute death penalty appeal (and were usually a thumbs down for the person to be executed). Now they are used to allow their avatar to do maximum damage in minimum time without undue delay to his/their agenda. It all started, predictably enough, to block an Obama clean energy initiative.

The chief justice and some of his colleagues were watching warily, concerned the president [Obama] was going past what the Constitution allowed him to do on his own. In a 2014 opinion written by Justice Antonin Scalia, the court warned Mr. Obama that he needed to tread carefully in setting environmental policy without congressional approval.

That statement was one of the early articulations of what would come to be known as the major questions doctrine, saying that on important matters, executive branch agencies could act only with clear direction from Congress. . .

. . . For now, the chief justice contended that the court had to act immediately because the energy industry “must make changes to business plans today.”

“Absent a stay, the Clean Power Plan will cause (and is causing) substantial and irreversible reordering of the domestic power sector before this court has an opportunity to review its legality,” he wrote.

. . . Over just five days, the justices had decided the issue. Even as they debated the Obama plan’s possible burden on the power industry, in the entire chain of correspondence obtained by The Times, not a single justice, conservative or liberal, mentioned the dangers of a warming planet as one of the possible harms the court should consider.

At 6:20 p.m. on Tuesday, Feb. 9, the court alerted the public to its decision, releasing the cryptic one-paragraph order.

source

The upshot is that the first time they pulled this stunt, at the behest — and insistence — of fucking John Roberts, it was on behalf of the fossil fuel industry who stood to lose half a trillion in profits over the next decade in the switch to clean, renewable energy.   Obama was far from certain to prevail on the merits of the case, but the new regulations weren’t set to go into effect for six years, meaning there was plenty of time for litigation — until a fossil fuel group in West Virginia unaccountably jumped the appeals process to get directly in front of Roberts on an emergency basis.  The “emergency” was a likely Hillary Clinton presidency.   

To protect the oil industry, its lobby, and the overall agenda of his Nazi compatriots, corporatist “balls and strikes umpire” John Roberts jumped into unprecedented action, before the dangerous Hillary Clinton came to power, to rule against Obama without any hearing on the merits, judicial review of any kind or even the fig leaf of judicial reasoning.  The rest, like AI, is history.

This point bears repeating. In weighing the pros and cons, such as they did in a frenzied 5 days of short notes passing between them, none of the justices mentioned the actual emergency before them/us:

Over just five days, the justices had decided the issue. Even as they debated the Obama plan’s possible burden on the power industry, in the entire chain of correspondence obtained by The Times, not a single justice, conservative or liberal, mentioned the dangers of a warming planet as one of the possible harms the court should consider.

How do you say fucking fucks in French?

[1] Trump’s father, Fred Christ Trump, as reported in the NY Times, created 295 income streams for his kids and multiple companies that did all sorts of good work getting dad’s money to his offspring without any of those punitive taxes.   In the case of the Koch brothers, they created and/or fund institutes, societies, non-profits, think tanks, academic programs, ad campaigns, lobbyist groups, even a popular grassroots movement, influential in thwarting all progress toward a more perfect union, except for themselves.  

Negotiators sent by the Orange two year-old “fail”

Iran had already indicated they would not further “negotiate” with real estate mogul/pawns Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff.   Trump told Iran “fuck you, that’s exactly who you get, assholes,” sending those two nincompoops, supplemented by the experienced, steady hand of the always truthful JD Vance.  JD not long ago reasonably feared Trump was our American Hitler.  Now he serves his authoritarian leader, no matter what.   Not surprisingly, the Iranians found no reason to trust the American “negotiators.”   Hard to blame them, however evil their theocracy also is.  

Here’s what Vance was spouting on the campaign trail about Democratic presidents and stupid wars, when he was not lying about brown people eating white people’s pets:

Of course, there is nothing “stupid” about Trump’s murderous rampage against Iran, whether he can give a reason for it or not. Reasons are for losers, violent, lethal action for winners. One day of failed negotiations proves, to the remaining MAGA base, that Iran is a sick, dangerous, totally obliterated theocracy, “Allah be praised” — to reprise the repeated sick, edgy, blasphemous “burn” of our epically furious two year-old-in-chief. Call it “Operation Shut The FUCK UP, Melania!” Speaking of sick burns, whoever wrote this line for Melania’s shock and awe press conference is a genius “I am not Epstein’s victim. Epstein did not introduce me to Donald Trump.” 

Trump’s instinctual, reptilian survival reasoning is always impeccable. In this case “fuck Melania and her big fucking mouth, I’m using force to shut down the Strait of Hormuz and provoke an international standoff, provoke the rest of the world into military action to stop me, because I fucking can and because, fuck Epstein, when I had him suicided, after we managed to get that French fuck who was going to testify against him suicided in a French prison, that should have been the end of this bullshit hoax that never happened. Those little whores are all liars.”

Likewise, there is no reason to fear what these “transactional” mercenary servants of a criminally insane, demented psychopath will do in our name, except for fear itself, as was famously said in another fearful moment for our nation.  We will get through this fascist threat together, or not.  Victor Orban’s loss today is encouraging –as is him immediately covering defeat– hero that he is to Vance, Trump and our American global authoritarians.  All we can do here is organize, communicate, dissent, refuse to be quiet about the irrational, dangerous actions of our American Hitler.  Isn’t that right, JD?

“I am not Epstein’s victim. Epstein did not introduce me to Donald Trump.”

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:

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.