Category Archives: current events

What do you really want?

Boil it down to what you actually need to have a good life.   I suspect even the most ardent Nazi or Klansman will have a list fairly similar to mine.  For Nazism to flourish, the fact of our mortal commonality, that vast confluence of basic human/animal needs and desires, must be denied.  Denial is a powerful force in human affairs and so it is not hard to prove to a racist that all his problems are imposed on him by the Other, powerful, pathetic, inhuman monsters who are vastly inferior to him.  It’s not true, strictly speaking, but we have seen the limits of true and false in recent years, they are no barrier to any faithful belief.

What do we agree that we all need?  All of us need love and understanding.  Parents should be gentle with their children, firm when needed, and never abusive toward them.   We need friends, people we can share our lives with, the good and the bad.  Friends don’t always have to agree with us, but they always treat our feelings with care.  We need to laugh once in a while.   We need sex, and tenderness, from our partners.   We need to feel productive, however we define that.  We need food, clothing, shelter, health care, treatment of diseases that threaten us.  We need a feeling of dignity. We all want to feel safe from attacks, safe from natural disasters, the destruction of our biosphere, safe from criminals, safe from killers of various kinds.  We want to live in peace and be treated fairly by others. We want to control our own lives.  We want to live in a world where justice rules, everyone’s basic needs are met and bad people are kept away from the rest of us. 

An insane criminal court judge I used to know coined the phrase “honor anemia” to describe a root cause of the epidemic of anger, despair, shame and violence that is convulsing our society.  Most people feel they are treated as disposable by a profit-driven economic system that clearly favors only the rich and famous.  The lack of respect the other 98% of us rightfully perceive is constantly burning us, like a draining physical disease that saps our better nature.   The judge, who was greeted as “Your Honor” in all of his favorite restaurants, and who eventually convinced me that he was not just blowing smoke when he claimed he was insane, was certainly an example of the disease he diagnosed as a widespread cause of American misery.

Our better natures are challenged a hundred times a day in our corporate media-driven culture. Scroll through the headlines of your favorite newspaper and try to remember that you are a reflection of the divine.  Read one headline too many and you find yourself snarling “fuck that, these Nazi motherfuckers have to pay!”   The Nazi reader will have a similar reaction to the headine that finally sets him off “fuck that, these Jew motherfuckers have to pay!”   The impulse, of course, is identical.

We go to the dark side when our ability to keep hoping is finally crushed.   In many of us, this hopefulness is a tiny, often timorous flame, as fragile as the human soul itself.  Take away hope and you destroy the impulse to strive to be better, to dream of anything better than despair and revenge.  You wind up joining the Ku Klux Klan, and screaming in the torchlit night, with your equally enraged comrades, filled with the virile mass-murderer’s belief that at least you can go out taking some fucking inferior race mongrels with you.   A dead-end dream that leads only to death, but a dream, at least.

There are many more things that unite us than divide us.   We all need a home.   We will all die.  We all grieve and mourn the deaths of our loved ones. We all feel well-disposed toward people who treat us with kindness.  We prefer to trust people than to assume that everyone is an irredeemable piece of shit.   We all want a better world.   We would all at least flinch to see a baby toddle into traffic, or into a river, many of us would leap to save the kid before thinking about it.

The “genius” of Nazi-types is in creating specific, infuriating wedges to drive us apart.  Keep us divided, angry, afraid, insulted, ignored, ravaged by “honor anemia,” savaged daily by crushing examples of injustice, informed in a stilted status quo–confirming way by a corporate press owned by a small handful of billionaire sociopaths, and you have fertile soil for an ideology of hatred and revenge.  Then the only trick is to keep that rage focused on anyone who denies that dictatorship/oligarchy is the best form of human society.  Punish those who tell the truth under oath, criminalize dissent, incentivize partisan vigilantism and violent intimidation of hated, inhuman enemies worthy of only death.  

Me, I’m trying to keep my eye on the ball.  Someone, I think it was the Jewish sage Hillel, wrote “in a place where there are no mensches, strive to be mensch.”   Strive, my dear unknown friends, to be a fucking mensch in your life.  It is the best we can all hope for.

Obstruction of justice, witness tampering, willful destruction of evidence?

It’s almost impossible for me to understand how a 6-year and counting seamless pattern of lying, obstructing investigations, quid pro quo pardons for people who lied to obstruct, real time witness tampering, ongoing obstruction of investigations, orders to defy subpoenas, false privilege claims, ongoing destruction of evidence, has not given an apolitical Department of Justice enough evidence to bring obstruction of justice charges against the most corrupt administration in American history. I mean, seriously, what the fuck?

The official phase began when new president Trumpie fired FBI director James Comey for insufficient personal loyalty to the boss when he refused to “drop the Flynn thing.” Flynn pleaded guilty to lying about his illegal contacts with the Russians, eventually a Special Counsel was appointed and negotiations were undertaken with Trumpie to testify under oath. Despite his Bannon-like bluster about not being afraid of Mueller (who he tried several times to fire, enlisting various lackeys including White House Council Don McGahn, to do his dirty work), the ex-president agreed only to have his lawyers respond to written questions, his answers claiming no recall of anything, except for the final answer about Flynn, Kislyac, Jared, Don Jr., Bannon, Erik Prince and others. That was, arguably, one of Trumpie’s most “inadequate responses”. The response was, and I quote, “no response given.” Inadequate, indeed. But apparently no indication of intent of any kind, and absolutely no legal repercussions.

The piously corrupt William Pelham Barr, took the extraordinary step of trying to rescind the charges against Flynn, charges Flynn had already pleaded guilty to. Barr argued in a motion to dismiss that Flynn’s admitted lies to the FBI were “immaterial” and therefore noncriminal. In coordination with Flynn’s new lawyer, Sidney Powell, the DOJ moved to dismiss Flynn’s guilty plea. Trumpie later pardoned Flynn. Nothing to see here! Flynn, who went on to advocate invocation of the Insurrection Act and the imposition of martial law so his buddy could remain in power, recently pleaded the fifth over and over again in response to virtually every question the January 6 committee asked him. As you do, you know, when you have nothing to hide.

No presidential phone records during the riot that Trumpie unleashed on the Capitol, all gone, along with the burner phones Trumpie used to speak to his allies in Congress, and in the Willard hotel war room. Call logs all gone missing, whoops. No outtakes from Trumpie’s January 6, go home, beloved patriots video. Secret Service texts from the lead up and the hours of the riot, all permanently deleted after preservation orders were sent by numerous government entities. Though DHS has known about this by all appearnces illegal mass deletion of evidence since at least February, just last week they announced a criminal investigation into what appears to be a criminal cover-up that the Trump appointed director of DHS may well have been personally involved in. Nothing to see here, but the attorneys for people stonewalling the January 6th Committee, paid for by Trumpie, get copies of all transcripts, which the vindictive boss carefully reads, don’t forget!

Apparently, in a post-truth USA, proving obstruction of justice is virtually impossible. If the person angrily denies he obstructed Justice, intimidates all witnesses to his obstruction and rewards everybody who lies about, and obstructs investigation into his obstruction, in a pinch pardoning them, well isn’t that kind of a draw?

Trump 2020– fuck the transition!

In the overwhelming torrent from the high powered right-wing fire hose of excrement, it’s hard to keep track of all of the poisonous shenanigans that keep us constantly distracted from focusing on any one depraved or illegal act by Trump’s wildly obstructionist GOP. 99% of them in the House of Representatives voted recently against contraception, same sex marriage, abortion, and interstate travel for pregnant women. That betrayal of American values and our notions of privacy and personal freedom barely made the news.

It’s worth noting that our original insurrectionist former president, before he finally petulantly relinquished power (and did not attend his successor’s inauguration, which he tried to prevent), the stinking angry two year-old did not have a transition team giving the new Biden Administration daily briefings on Covid, national security or anything else.

Mind you, this was during a huge surge in infections and deaths Trump caused (with the assistance of Barr, DeJoy, Kavanaugh and others) by forcing voters to vote in person, rather than more safely by mail. The frequently repeated preemptive excuse for Trumpie’s loss was massive voter fraud, but even Bill Barr himself, one of the most despicable lying smug fat fucks of all time, told the president that voter fraud claims were bullshit, “they’re shoveling bullshit, Your Highness.”

Trumpie’s refusal to cooperate in any way during the transition was as unprecedented as a lame duck president hatching a multi-tentacled conpiracy to prevent the peaceful transfer of power and remain in office. The punishment this unprcedented rogue former president receives must also be unprecedented. It has to be a cautionary lesson to every future enraged two year-old who manages to get enough free speech/financial backing to become president.

Trump’s lawyers argue like Trump

“The … suggestion that President Trump did not act swiftly enough to quell the violence is absolutely not true. Upon hearing of the reports of violence, he tweeted, pleading with the crowd to be ‘peaceful,’ followed by a tweeted video urging people to ‘go home’ and to do so in ‘peace.’ He and the White House further took immediate steps to coordinate with authorities to provide whatever was necessary to counteract the rioters. … He, like the rest of the Country, was horrified at the violence.“

— Trump lawyers’ trial memorandum, second Trump impeachment, Feb. 8, 2021.

https://wapo.st/3b0P3wF

Sheldon Whitehouse on the greatest Supreme Court that dark money can buy

Ever hear of the Major Questions Doctrine, the Independent State Legislature Doctrine, the Non-delegation Doctrine, the This Came Straight out of Charles Koch’s Costive Colon Doctrine? Here is Senator Sheldon Whitehouse with another excellent installment of his series The Scheme. I wish millions of people could take in these lectures and learn what we are actually up against, it is a fucking monster.

If you have trouble playing the video (as one viewer reported), here’s the link:

https://youtu.be/uk6rctOF8hY

But he later deleted it!

Those, like me, who just continually attack people like Trumpie just because they’re depraved compulsive liars (Cruz, Graham, McConnell, McCarthy, Jordan) corruptly intent on power at any cost, evil cucks, can’t really be fair.

Here’s a perfect example, HE LATER DELETED THIS tweet, which he sent out after his great diasppointment the evening of January 6th, 2021.

And Twitter with the brave stand that “this claim of election fraud is disputed,” disputed, you dig, after sixty lost lawsuits and zero evidence presented, they should all rot in hell.

Here’s a nice tweet, from a fellow hater:

Inadequate answer

With the revelation that the Secret Service (literally the [US]SS, damn), destroyed all evidence of real-time communications on January 5th and 6th, presumably out of loyalty to their former leader, since they were his praetorian guard and had taken a personal oath of loyalty to him, as in the old days of the Führer oath, my mind goes back to another famous, little remarked on bit of obstruction of justice by our greatest criminal president,

If you want to set the date for when the Department of Justice left an unaccountable criminal president in office because of an OLC memo, look no further than Trump’s final interrogatory answer to Mueller’s last written question. The questions were put to Trump in writing after a long negotiation because Trump’s lawyers understood his inability to tell the truth, even under oath, would inevitably land him in the famous “perjury trap”. The question is long and convoluted and Trump, who has a famously short attention span, had his lawyers provide what Mueller tactfully, and ridiculously, called an “inadequate response.”

Mueller’s question is insanely long and convoluted, but also greatly detailed. Good luck getting through it, I suggest a quick skim noting the names of an infamous cast of characters, and then a moment to review the full depth of Mr Trump’s inadequate response. If you want the date that democracy probably died, just look up when this inadequate answer, that was never answered more adequately, was made.

SPECIAL COUNSEL’S OFFICE:

b. Following the Obama Administration’s imposition of sanctions on Russia in December 2016 (“Russia sanctions”), did you discuss with Lieutenant General (LTG) Michael Flynn, K.T. McFarland, Steve Bannon, Reince Priebus, Jared Kushner, Erik Prince, or anyone else associated with the transition what should be communicated to the Russian government regarding the sanctions? If yes, describe who you spoke with about this issue, when, and the substance of the discussion(s).

c. On December 29 and December 31, 2016, LTG Flynn had conversations with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak about the Russia sanctions and Russia’s response to the Russia sanctions.

i. Did you direct or suggest that LTG Flynn have discussions with anyone from the Russian government about the Russia sanctions?

ii. Were you told in advance of LTG Flynn’s December 29, 2016 conversation that he was going to be speaking with Ambassador Kislyak? If yes, describe who told you this information, when, and what you were told. If no, when and from whom did you learn of LTG Flynn’s December 29, 2016 conversation with Ambassador Kislyak?

iii. When did you learn of LTG Flynn and Ambassador Kislyak’s call on December 31, 2016? Who told you and what were you told?

iv. When did you learn that sanctions were discussed in the December 29 and December 31, 2016 calls between LTG Flynn and Ambassador Kislyak? Who told you and what were you told?

d. At any time between December 31, 2016, and January 20, 2017, did anyone tell you or suggest to you that Russia’s decision not to impose reciprocal sanctions was attributable in any way to LTG Flynn’s communications with Ambassador Kislyak? If yes, identify who provided you with this information, when, and the substance of what you were told.

e. On January 12, 2017, the Washington Post published a column that stated that LTG Flynn phoned Ambassador Kislyak several times on December 29, 2016. After learning of the column, did you direct or suggest to anyone that LTG Flynn should deny that he discussed sanctions with Ambassador Kislyak? If yes, who did you make this suggestion or direction to, when, what did you say, and why did you take this step?

i. After learning of the column, did you have any conversations with LTG Flynn about his conversations with Ambassador Kislyak in December 2016? If yes, describe when those discussions occurred and the content of the discussions.

f. Were you told about a meeting between Jared Kushner and Sergei Gorkov that took place in December 2016?

i. If yes, describe who you spoke with, when, the substance of the discussion(s), and what you understood was the purpose of the meeting.

g. Were you told about a meeting or meetings between Erik Prince and Kirill Dmitriev or any other representative from the Russian government that took place in January 2017?

i. If yes, describe who you spoke with, when, the substance of the discussion(s), and what you understood was the purpose of the meeting(s).

h. Prior to January 20, 2017, did you talk to Steve Bannon, Jared Kushner, or any other individual associated with the transition regarding establishing an unofficial line of communication with Russia? If yes, describe who you spoke with, when, the substance of the discussion(s), and what you understood was the purpose of such an unofficial line of communication.

TRUMP:

(No answer provided.)

Good points from Robert Reich

Sure we can, even if our conservative party has gone full fascist. We just need about 54-55 non-Republican Senators not on the fossil fuel payroll.

Also, British conservatives got rid of their lying chatlatan leader, even after he survived a vote of no confidence, something that apparently can’t happen here. American Exceptionalism, yo. USA! USA!!!

Oh, yeah, also this: