Category Archives: current events

Tropical Trump and Global fascist Bannon

Heather Cox Richardson, writing about yesterday’s Brazilian version of January 6, 2021 (accomplished after a consultation visit to Bolsonaro from Sloppy Steve Bannon) flagged this ‘social media’ post by the big orange polyp.

“‘Tropical Trump’ as he is affectionately called, has done a GREAT job for the wonderful people of Brazil,” Trump said on his social media outlet. “When I was President of the U.S., there was no other country leader who called me more than Jair.”

Jair, you recall, famously said he’d kill his son if he turned out to be a homosexual.  More ominously, he lamented the mistake of the military coup he took part in as a junior officer — their failure to murder another forty to fifty thousand members of the intelligentsia, labor and church leaders and so on.  If those dissident fucks were all dead, you’d have a wonderful dictatorship in Brazil.

Heather concludes, after a sampling of condemnations of the violence by US, UN and EU officials:

As of 11:00 tonight, neither House speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) nor Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) had any comment on the events in Brazil. 

By Sunday night, Brazilian police had retaken control of the vandalized buildings and arrested 170 rioters.

https://open.substack.com/pub/heathercoxrichardson/p/january-8-2023?r=74gv9&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

Look, McConnell and McCarthy can’t condemn this kind of murderous fascist riot without crossing a party line. They can’t acknowledge that the official Republican party position on the recent American assault on the Capitol — “legitimate political discourse” — is a steaming pile of dung.  They must act like it’s totally fine, if you lose an election and claim for months (with a $50,000,000 dark money ad campaign) that it was stolen, to express yourself with massive violence and organized lawlessness.  That’s all, according to the Republican National Committee, protected by the First Amendment, and the Second — and the Fifth!  

Anyone who sees daylight between the aims and methods of the MAGA party, the fanatical fans of Bolsonaro, and the good old brawling Nazi party is hallucinating. 

Excellent telling of Kevin McCarthy’s pathetic “victory”

Dana Milbank, with a thorough description of man of principle “Well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are” McCarthy and his sacrifice of everything imaginable to end up as the Speaker of an ungovernable MAGA majority House. Ironic and grotesque, that the goal of the elected GOP House hardliners is disabling the United States government crippling the “administrative state” and the destruction of liberal democracy. Here’s Milbank:

The holdouts had been given essentially everything they had asked for — and still, the extremists demanded more. “A deal is NOT done,” Perry, head of the House Freedom Caucus, tweeted Thursday afternoon

“Somebody should check and make sure Kevin McCarthy still has two kidneys,” Adam Smith (Wash.), top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, quipped Friday.

By Friday evening, the rebels could hardly believe the breadth of McCarthy’s capitulation. “We’re running out of things to ask for,” Gaetz marveled.

Yet still they tortured McCarthy. One vote shy at the end of Friday night’s 14th ballot, McCarthy publicly humiliated himself by walking over to Gaetz and pressuring him to switch his vote. In view of the whole House and the TV cameras, Gaetz rebuffed him. McCarthy retreated. “We’ll do it again,” he said angrily.

Finally, after four full days of chaos capped by intra-GOP fisticuffs and Republicans voting down their own motion to adjourn, McCarthy claimed the gavel. But by then his fate had become unimportant, because whoever occupies the speaker’s chair will now be irrelevant. McCarthy’s surrender has condemned the House to two years — or more — of anarchy.

https://wapo.st/3GR6pcI

“We’re running out of things to ask for,” said one of several insurrection-minded MAGA Representatives who had previously asked for an unconditional presidential pardon, from the man with absolute pardon power.

A small group of irrational fanatics publicly demanding absolute power, by any means necessary, what could possibly go wrong?

The insurrection continues

Let’s leave aside the question of how a brand new member of Congress gets away with tweeting the real time location of the Speaker the House as the Speaker is being secured from a mob calling for her death. If that’s not giving aid and comfort to an insurrection, I don’t know what the fuck is. Then she wins re-election by 500 or so votes. Then, along with a handful of other extremists, blocks all action in Congress for several days commemorating the original insurrection on its second anniversary. Only in America, baby.

But leave that aside, here are two pictures from the more than three hours the defeated President let his bonfire burn in the Capitol building.

If all of those hopped up idiots shown in the second picture had swarmed into the building, there would have been a massacre.

This 2:24 pm tweet, deleted by Elon Musk when he reinstated the Big Orange Turd to Twitter recently, certainly didn’t help.

As maddening as it is that none of the wealthy architects and funders of the violent riot to overthrow democracy, in the name of an enraged, racist asshole who lost the election, has been touched by the law so far, it is equally maddening to see insurrectionists in Congress, serving as obstructers of the People’s business without consequence for their treachery.

Get the indictments rolling, Jack Smith! Come on, Fani Willis. Keep going, Letitia James.

MAGA logic

On the surface “MAGA logic” is kind of an oxymoron, I know, but there is a brutal logic followed by the wealthy few who have funded and used first the John Birch Society, later the “Birthers”, the Tea Baggers, the Freedom Caucus, then MAGA itself. These pathologically greedy, entitled psychopaths knew exactly what they were doing, for their own self-interest, at every step.

So while it seems counterintuitive that the most extreme members of the MAGA “movement” are torturing and humiliating the pathetic and cowardly Kevin McCarthy, the one Trump told to go fuck himself when he called in terror from the Capitol on January 6th, it may not be. Remember McCarthy vigorously denounced Trump after January 6th, shortly before he went down to Florida to selflessly sample his leader’s crusty nether regions in order to get back into the good graces of someone at that time regarded as a traitor. An, at the time, powerful traitor, mind you.

So this shit show in the House of Representatives is bad for the country, it’s bad for democracy, it’s bad for the fucking MAGA brand itself (even though that brand is, frankly, destroy the government and democracy) but luckily for MAGA, the ends always justify the means and their base is up for anything as long as someone is hurt and humiliated by it. Ask newly minted statesman Mitch McConnell about that winning strategy, if you have any doubts…

I think this is meant to show Trump’s greatness, somehow

We live in an amazing world, where facts can be denied because millions prefer a nice “fuck you” to anything else.  I seriously think this video is supposed to prove, although the data shows that the US had by far the highest rates of Covid-19 death anywhere on earth (and fuck “data,” you know?), that only Trump can… make us the greatest country in the world again.

https://youtube.com/shorts/8EWpuls5wWI?feature=share

Film noir true story of American Nazis during WW II

My mother loved Rachel Maddow, and I like her okay, though I was often annoyed by her coy long-windedness and premature gloating. She was at the top of the food chain at MSNBC for many years and then stepped down to do some independent research and reporting. All I can say is, holy shit, go listen to her report, an eight-part podcast called Ultra. Mind-blowing, fascinating, horrifying, typical, amazing — a film noir acted out in real life by a cast of Nazi loving villains right out of today’s Freedom Caucus.

As Hitler invaded country after country in Europe, in the USA his allies in Congress, the America First Committee, were actively supporting Hitlerism, attacking FDR and his “failed” New Deal and readying the US for Nazi rule. Senators and congressmen gave the Nazi salute at rallies and sent out mass mailings, signed by them, that were written by Nazi propagandists. This continued even once America entered the fucking war against Hitler. The federal trial of some of these insurrectionists, a raucus affair that continued throughout the war, and the angry, defiant, deflecting defenses made by the America First senators and congressmen implicated in the plot… you got to hear this.

I have to say, Maddow tells the story so compellingly, and in such piquant detail, that I don’t wonder that Steven Spielberg has already purchased the movie rights to this story. I wish it was in movie theaters right now. I can’t recommend this podcast highly enough. Here’s a link to the first episode:

https://www.msnbc.com/msnbc-podcast/rachel-maddow-presents-ultra/episode-1-trip-19-n1299374

Here’s their description of Ultra, followed by a bit from the final episode.

Sitting members of Congress aiding and abetting a plot to overthrow the government. Insurrectionists criminally charged with plotting to end American democracy for good. Justice Department prosecutors under crushing political pressure. Rachel Maddow Presents: Ultra is the all-but-forgotten true story of good, old-fashioned American extremism getting supercharged by proximity to power. When extremist elected officials get caught plotting against America with the violent ultra right, this is the story of the lengths they will go to… to cover their tracks.

American groups that were getting support and instruction and even funding from the Nazis. American businessmen who were not just personally sympathetic to the Nazi cause — they were finding ways around the law to continue doing business with the Nazis even during the war.

And these American political figures. It turns out, the Nazis had kept meticulous records about which members of Congress were the most help to them, which might be the most help to them in the future after a fascist takeover of the United States, and which were on the payroll or otherwise involved with their senior propaganda agent in America, George Sylvester Viereck.

Hart: Rogge details in great depth, the extent of involvement between members of Congress and George Sylvester Viereck

https://www.msnbc.com/msnbc-podcast/rachel-maddow-presents-ultra/transcript-ultra-vires-n1300885

Trump’s top ethics lawyer appears to have tampered with witness

Stefan Passantino

“You don’t have to say you remember things that might hurt our friend’s case. You can always just say ‘I don’t recall’, even if you do remember. That’s not perjury” advised a lawyer working for Trump’s Make America Fully Nazi PAC, allegedly.

This allegation was raised in the last January 6th committee hearing the other day. In response the lawyer involved, Trump’s former ethics advisor in the White House, still working for the big guy, was scrubbed from his law firm’s website. The guy’s a partner there and his law firm cut him loose immediately, based on this explosive allegation of professional misconduct and criminality, which, of course, does not become a fact until the jury finds that he did what he is accused of. Although, of course the words “Trump’s ethics lawyer” speak for themselves, loudly and with very bad breath.

Zelensky asked for “bicameral and bipartisan support”

Good luck with that ask Mr. Zelinsky, but excellent speech, man.

I’m sure that Trump and the party of Putin in America is not very happy about this little Jewish lawyer/ comedian/president’s speech in Congress. It’s amazing that the GOP seems to be taking the side of the aggressor in this war-crime ridden war for territory and domination of a sovereign neighbor. Or maybe not so amazing, considering everything else the party of violence stands for…