As you can plainly see, God spared his life in Butler, Pennsylvania, while causing only a small wound on his ear, like a stigmata of the ear, because God so dearly loved him that He deflected a deadly bullet and gave an innocent member of the audience, seated behind the president, a quick pass to heaven, so that His imperfect vessel could be miraculously spared and go on to be reelected as the most righteous president, the most righteous leader of any country, in human history. Amen.
Meanwhile, vicious critics continue to attack him, without mercy, seemingly every second. Thankfully, he can defend himself, including against those who brutally gouged a 250 foot long gash at the bottom of the beautiful reflecting pool in DC to destroy his donor’s perfect work restoring the historic pool to its pristine 1922 beauty:
Friday night, Trump blamed “Radical Left Lunatics, most likely Dumocats [sic], who have spent their lives trying to ruin our Country,” for “some real problems with Vandalism at the beautiful Reflecting Pool.” By this evening, he was blaming “multiple individuals for vandalizing our Nations magnificent Reflecting Poll [sic]. Who would do such a thing? These are very serious crimes having to do with the destruction of National Monuments. Years in jail! Work will begin immediately on its repair.” Source
Understand, first of all, why people lie. If the truth is embarrassing, especially if it’s humiliating, someone with a propensity to lie will always lie. If confronted about the lie, they will lie again, make you the liar for accusing them of lying.
This hideous, maddening cycle will be familiar to anyone who has ever been close to, or worked for, someone who can never be wrong no matter what. If you can’t be wrong, and the facts clearly show you are, then the facts are fucking liars and so are you for bringing up those lies.
Trump is perhaps the most prolific compulsive liar in American history. He’s up there with the all-time heavyweight liars of world history. He may be number one (though, it is said, he smells like number two). If he gets his ass kicked in an election, obviously, the election was rigged, he was cheated out of a victory he actually won by a landslide, was the victim of a massive bipartisan fraud, and when you are the victim of fraud, as he told his enraged crowd on January 6th (a day of love, obviously), you get to play by very different rules. You fight like hell to make your truth the real truth and violence is totally justified because the liars who cheated you won by being scumbags who viciously rigged everything against you and deserve whatever they get, including death.
Picture working for a vengeful, childish asshole like this guy. Lying is a condition of employment. You can’t tell the truth. If you do, the boss will fly into a rage. When asked if Biden won the 2020 election you deliver the company line “well, he was sworn in as president on January 20, 2021…”. When pressed on whether Biden won you must not give an inch, must continue this line of idiotic equivocation. If you say “yes, senator, Biden won…” then you are out of a job, out of the party, out of the cult, out of business, kaput. Plus, you face an excellent chance of death threats on your phone day and night. Everybody who works for Trump knows this.
Still, sometimes there are slip ups, like this, from a recent convert to MAGA spokesman for those furious that Obama “gave” Iran $1.6B in the JCPOA deal where Iran agreed not to develop nuclear weapons.
Trump is trying to cover over the release of $24 billion in frozen Iranian assets [in his birthday Memo of Understanding — not a final agreement] by saying “no money will exchange hands.” But this morning, Vice President J.D. Vance told CBS that in addition to that $24 billion, Iran will also have access to $300 billion in funds for reconstruction. source
Oopsie. Et tu, CBS?
Liars lie, that’s not news. I guess the news is that the central characters of Trump’s inner circle appear to have been captured on tape, discussing various illegal ways to allow the president to do whatever pops into his insane head. If Stephen Miller, our foremost, infernally powerful, Jewish Nazi, orders 3,000 brown immigrants captured, detained and deported daily, and the boss loves the idea, then… fuck it, suspend habeas corpus (the right to a hearing to contest your confinement)… change administrative rules to make a loophole to avoid giving habeas corpus rights to those illegally detained, invoke the Insurrection Act… kill more “paid protesters” like Renee Good and Alex Pretti…
The squealing among Trump’s inner circle about the New York Times report on secret meetings in the Situation Room (without the president present) that someone tapped into our nation’s most secure SCIF (sensitive compartmented information facility) is an unintentional admission, as Lawrence McDonnell points out, that the reporting is super accurate. NY Times reporters Haberman and Swan couldn’t have transcribed all those verbatim quotes without a recording.
More lies are now needed to cover the lying lies that some liar recorded and made them lie in their own voices on a tape that doesn’t exist, like Epstein, who never actually existed, never knew the president, never shared any “wonderful secrets” with him — and the president certainly wasn’t rough with fourteen year-olds’ nipples, where did those stupid, lying quotes come from and, more to the point, who was the traitorous leaker? — the boss was always a gentle lover who always had consent from every woman and girl he ever touched — no, wait, he never touched anybody! Epstein and those little bitches are all LIARS!!!
Trump is not playing five dimensional chess, he doesn’t even know what a game is. Point out that he just took a crap in his pants and he will angrily scream: “NO! YOOOO took a crap in my pants!!!!” I know you are, but what am I? Another win for the Winner-in-Chief.
Early this morning, Trump posted on social media: “On July 4th, at The Lincoln Memorial and Washington Monument, in beautiful and safe Washington D.C., we are going to host the most spectacular TRUMP RALLY of them all, a ‘TRIBUTE TO AMERICA.’”source
Be there, fans, will be wild!There should be, literally, hundreds there, mad as hell and ready to rumble. You go, Mr. President, sir!
The proud, the few, the fewer and fewer, Trump’s increasingly less competent Department of Justice. Trump’s childishly vindictive reign — he is our retribution, after all, as promised — (and, arguably, America’s punishment for centuries of racism, slavery, mass murder of the indigenous people, sexism, tolerance of pedophilia, consequence-free rape and so on) requires the unquestioning loyalty of unprincipled men and women (almost overwhelmingly white and almost all born male) who will do literally anything for proximity to power.
If a law needs breaking, they must be prepared to defiantly break it. If an honest answer to the court will make the boss look bad, and hamper “his” vengeful, cruel and illegal “agenda” — lie. As federal appeals judge for life Emil Bove instructed his attorneys going into court to defend the illegal detentions and deportations of several hundred men, be prepared to say “fuck you” to nosy federal Judge Boasberg if he tries to push back against illegal government tactics. Thousands of career lawyers in the Department of Justice have either been forced out, fired (scores for prosecuting January 6 rioters or working with Jack Smith — same with FBI agents)or demoted for lack of, I don’t know the German word for it, unlimited zeal for the Leader’s every corrupt and vicious whim. The New York Times notes:
Things have gotten so ugly with the openly corrupt Trump/Charles Koch/Heritage Foundation/Federalist Society agenda, and its in-your-fucking-face AI generated dump of tons of excrement on America, that even the NY Times has felt empowered to be a little saucy with her headlines. Picture the clucking, matronly tone of voice delivering, after the pause indicated by the comma, ” and it stings.” Shaking her head, pitying you: “it stings, doesn’t it? I know, the truth hurts…”
Any judge ruling against the president’s/Project 2025’s “agenda” is deemed a dangerous, sick, partisan hack activist judge. Here’s former Krisi Noem spokesperson, from a few months back, when she defended the unconstitutional practices of the Department of Homeland Security:
In February, then–DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin explained away the administration’s dismal record by saying that “many activist judges have attempted to thwart President Trump from fulfilling the American people’s mandate for mass deportations.”source
We, you and I, elected Mr. Trump (by a landslide and, coincidentally, a victory, by almost identical margins, in all seven swing states) and gave him a mandate to open a nationwide system of brutal concentration camps to house millions of “illegals” of all ages (and the five year-olds are as dangerous as the 75 year-olds, aren’t they?). That’s exactly why we put the man in power, isn’t it? That’s democracy and if you don’t like it, GEO group has a nice, damp cement cell you can share with twelve other cucks, with a nice bowl of maggot-filled mush twice a day if you’re hungry.
You see, people like Trump, Koch, the insane chainsaw wielding Musk, hate fueled zombie Stephen Miller, can NEVER BE WRONG ABOUT ANYTHING. You must understand this. They are capable of committing unthinkable acts to never be wrong, to prevail, to try to bring about the triumph of their will.
Trump can muse at a news conference about how weird it would be to sue himself, then a few months later he can sue himself, settle with himself (with a deal that ends all IRS investigations into years of his tax fraud, and his family’s — retroactively, prospectively and in perpetuity) and attack the judicial process that calls bullshit on his bullshit.
If it comes out of your ass, sir, and it smells like shit, and when you smear it on the wall it looks like shit, it’s unlikely to be anything else. The same goes for the excrement that pours out of your pie hole, sir.
When the judge in Trump et al v. The Internal Revenue Service saw Trump quickly withdraw the baseless, fraudulent lawsuit the day before the judge would have dismissed it as a baseless, fraudulent lawsuit — and thrown out the clearly fake “settlements” that Trump claims ended the suit, she noted in her decision that no settlement had been filed with the court, as is required. The two-part “settlement” only came out after Trump dismissed the case against himself.
Undaunted Trump’s lawyers, the Acting Attorney General most prominent among them, insisted over and over, in public, that the illegal seizure of almost two billion dollars in taxpayer funds to compensate Trump allies and innocent victims of Biden’s DOJ vindictively prosecuted and convicted, or forced to plead guilty, to Trumped up charges of breaking into the Capitol, assaulting police, respectfully defecating in the halls of Congress, chanting “Hang Mike Pence” after constructing a gallows outside the Capitol, assaulting those defending the joint session of Congress as members and their staff fled for their lives, conspiring to bring weapons across from Virginia for a fully armed assault, etc. was completely above board, He also defended the second half of the “settlement” released the day after the slush fund was created, the one that said the IRS can never investigate Trump for anything, ever. Blanche claims that his order that the IRS will never investigate any person or entity associated with Trump, his children or the Trump organization is 100% legal and binding, now and forever. He also claims it does not give anyone “blanket immunity”. I have to say, Blanche is a fucking moron, though one must admire his doglike brazeness, I suppose.
When the judge reopened the case to hold a hearing on the clear fraud on the court and the conspiracy to bring about these fake “settlements”, after a filing by 35 retired federal judges of urged her to do so [1], TACO Trump immediately withdrew the slush fund — though Blanche, as pathetic a suck up as I’ve ever seen in politics, insists his order that the IRS never investigate anyone related to Trump will stand for all time, and that there is nothing foul or in the least bit irregular or suspicious about the order. Just don’t hold it too close to your nose.
[1] 35 retired federal judges were not having this shit, and their motion to the judge who consented to dismissing the case is worth reading in its entirety. It is beautifully written and perfectly argues a flawless point, the judge who dismissed the case is legally permitted to, and must, reopen Trump’s fake case for a hearing on a fraud against the Court. The next day she did. Trump’s “answer” to conspiracy to commit fraud on the court is due on June 12, two days before the handsome rascal turns an athletic eighty years old. I told a nurse yesterday that I plan to celebrate my birthday by hosting a cage match on somebody else’s lawn. Hey, if you can do it, why not?
People have to do things they may not want to do to please their boss, particularly if your boss is an unreasonable, demanding asshole. When your boss is Donald Trump, you sometimes are asked to do extreme things, illegal things. If you do them, you keep your job (for the moment). So you do things like this:
Federal judges have been accusing [Trump DOJ] prosecutors of misconduct, most recently in a case last week in Chicago in which a grand jury indicted six people, including a Democratic congressional candidate, for interfering with a federal agent and conspiring to interfere with a federal agent at a protest at a detention facility.
As Julie Bosman of the New York Times reported, U.S. District Judge April Perry dismissed the case after she discovered that prosecutors had talked to individual grand jurors outside the courtroom and removed those jurors who refused to indict, as well as apparently overstating the strength of the evidence against the defendants. After making these maneuvers, the prosecutors then tried to hide evidence of them by redacting the transcripts from the grand jury.source
In an extremely rare DOJ case ruled vindictive prosecution, the court found that the Trump DOJ had brought a baseless criminal prosecution against Kilmar Abrego Garcia in order to punish him for exercising his rights in court, and beating a team of Trump’s lackies to vindicate rights they clearly violated. Here is former DOJ prosecutor Glenn Kirschner explaining vindictive prosecution to Dean Obeidallah.
So it’s no surprise when ambitious scumbags, working for a criminally insane boss, file a fake lawsuit and make a fake “settlement” (as the fake lawsuit is about to be dismissed as a fraud) to defraud US taxpayers out of almost $2,000,000,000 and finance an army of loyal violent white men who have already demonstrated their willingness to gouge the eyes out of police officers to serve the illegal wishes of the man who brought the fake lawsuit and established the slush fund to pay them.
35 retired federal judges were not having this shit, and their motion to the judge who consented to dismissing the case is worth reading in its entirety. It is beautifully written and perfectly argues a flawless point, the judge who dismissed the case is legally permitted to, and must, reopen Trump’s fake case for a hearing on a fraud against the Court. Here’s the introduction:
On May 18, 2026, this Court dismissed this action with prejudice in response to Plaintiffs’ Notice of Voluntary Dismissal with Prejudice, filed earlier that day. The Court expressly noted in its Order dismissing the case that “the Notice does not reference any settlement or include a stipulation of settlement,” and thus “there is no settlement of record.” The Court further noted that Defendants “neither submitted any settlement documents nor filed any documents ensuring that settlement was appropriate where there was an outstanding question as to whether an actual case or controversy existed.”
The Court was deceived. Despite Plaintiffs not having mentioned any settlement in their Notice, the Department of Justice (“DOJ”) publicly announced a “settlement” of this action shortly after Plaintiffs filed their dismissal. That “settlement” commandeers the contrived sum of $1.776 billion from the United States Treasury, to be handed out to recipients chosen by a commission effectively controlled by the President.The DOJ is calling this the “Anti-Weaponization Fund.”
The day after the “settlement” containing the Anti-Weaponization Fund was announced, the DOJ announced that it had subsequently agreed to release “any and all claims . . . whether presently known or unknown, that—as of the Effective Date of the Settlement Agreement—have been or could have been asserted by [the United States] against any of the Plaintiffs or related or affiliated individuals . . . or parties . . . by reason of, with respect to, in connection with, or which arise out of . . . any matters currently pending or that could be pending . . . before Defendants or other agencies or departments.”4 The plain language of this extremely broad provision sweeps in Internal Revenue Service (“IRS”) audits of Plaintiffs’ tax returns and all other claims the United States might have against Plaintiffs—extraordinary benefits for which no consideration was provided to the government.5
The parties to this case are using this lawsuit as the legal justification for these actions. This is not speculation; the parties themselves have proclaimed it, repeatedly. For starters, the DOJ implemented all of the actions described above via a document expressly titled “Settlement Agreement,” captioned with this case’s caption, plus a three-paragraph addendum that references that “Settlement Agreement” in its first paragraph and in its third paragraph purports to “forever bar[] and preclude[]” the United States from pursuing claims that could have been asserted “by Defendants against any of the Plaintiffs” in this case.6 The “Settlement Agreement” was signed by Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward the same day Plaintiffs filed their Notice; in fact, Plaintiffs’ filing of the Notice was expressly required by the “Settlement Agreement.”
The addendum granting the extraordinarily broad releases to the President and his family and businesses was signed by Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche the next day, May 19. Yet none of the parties filed either of these documents with the Court. In addition, shortly after announcingthe “settlement,” the Acting Attorney General issued an order creating the “Anti-Weaponization Fund.” That order—which references the “Settlement Agreement” in this case—explicitly identifies the Judgment Fund statute, 31 U.S.C. § 1304, under which Congress has authorized appropriations for payments of settlements against the United States, and 28 U.S.C. § 2414, which authorizes payments of “final” judgments against the United States including compromise settlements and “imminent” claims, as the statutory bases for the creation of the AntiWeaponization Fund. Payments purportedly made pursuant to these statutes in the absence of a genuine case or controversy are not authorized. Movants submit that this “settlement” is a product of collusion and is itself a fraud on the Court.
The initiatives [see below] are part of an effort by Mr. Trump to honor himself while commemorating the nation’s 250th birthday.
(great line from today’s NY Times, referring to Trump’s glaring face on the new $250 bill, his signature on all paper money, more sycophants lapping from his capacious tush)
E.J. Carroll at the time of the sexual attack Trump lied about and defamed her over
It’s a bad state of affairs when your own government is less trustworthy than a theocracy that mass murders protesters in the streets. Of course, our biggest, most important psychopaths would have no hesitation to do the same here, as soon as the time is right. Trump talks out of all eleven sides of his crusty ass, his puppets, and those sharing in his record-breaking corruption, rush to agree with every contradictory statement. To do otherwise would be career suicide and financially stupid. One of his recent ass-utterings was about a great, secret peace deal with Iran, immediately opening the Strait of Hormuz, almost done, much better than Obama’s, that traitorous critics were already criticizing even though it’s still only a concept of a plan, and even he doesn’t know what’s in it, but it’s almost a done deal and it’s going to be unbelievably fantastic, like nobody’s ever seen. And if not, more mass killing in Iran and elsewhere.
But Iran’s state media immediately posted that Trump’s claim that the strait would reopen as it was before the war was “not true,” adding that “it should be noted that American officials have acknowledged in multiple messages to Iran that Trump’s tweets are primarily for promotional purposes and media consumption within the United States, and they have recommended that no attention be paid to these statements.”source
Speaking of murderous compulsive liars — more slaughter on the high seas by Pirate Trump’s central casting toxic male asshole Pete Hegseth. They are pulling out all the stops to control the news to protect powerful white male pedophiles from exposure and accountability. (BREAKING: DOJ investigates Trump sexual assault and defamation victim E. Jean Carroll for ‘perjury’, banner headline in the NY Times — you want vindictive prosecution? In your fucking faces, cucks and bitches! [1]). In more Trump Epic Temper Tantrum news, President Hostis Humani Generis killed more fishermen:
Yesterday the U.S. military struck another small boat in the eastern Pacific, bringing the number of boats struck in the eastern Pacific and the Caribbean to fifty-eight. At least 194 individuals have been killed. The administration insists the boats are trafficking drugs but has produced no evidence for that accusation, and as Eric Schmitt of the New York Times reported today, “military experts say the strikes are illegal, extrajudicial killings.”source
War crimes, shmawr crimes. We’re not even at war with these fisherman, so how can these drone killings be war crimes, asshole? It’s just good, old-fashioned cold blooded, unaccountable murder from the air. Just the way our insane sadistic Commander-in-Chief likes it.
[1]
Call it vindictive and we’ll prosecute you, fuckface!
The “case” against her is for a supposedly knowingly false statement she made in a deposition about who was paying her legal fees. She had a contingency fee agreement with the lawyers who whipped Todd Blanche’s lying ass in court twice. Under a contingency arrangement, the lawyer pays costs leading up to a verdict and then takes a percentage of the award. Roberta Kaplan, Carroll’s lawyer, put all this in a letter when news broke that another vindictive prosecution was starting under the president who promised to be “your retribution” (if you are actually me, that is.).
This case is even weaker than the 86 47 Seashell/Kashyap yap yap (Patel) case against known Communist antifa leader James Comey (also a member of MS13 and the Southern Poverty Law Center and all other hate groups not aligned with the president). Still, it is also a slam dunk, according the state attorney (from a district far from Manhattan where the “perjury took place) handling the case. This Trump prosecutor recently had charges thrown out in his unrighteous prosecution against six protesters of ICE brutality in Operation Make Chicago Beg For Mercy, LOL. He was reprimanded by the judge, for his manipulation of the grand jury that eventually voted to indict in the “slam dunk” case against the Broadview Six, right before DOJ dismissed its case against all six defendants. I’ve heard rabidly loyal partisan hacks like this assclown prosecutor referred to as punk-ass bitches, though I’ll take the high road here and assume he just made a mistake, like the one he’s making by signing up to head this transparently baseless and clearly vindictive prosecution of Trump’s defamation and sexual assault victim, E. Jean Carroll. The shit fountain never stops.
Here are some highlights, on the official White House (and a very white house, indeed) website, from Trump’s immortal recent 60 Minutes interview with Norah O’Donnell, in which he vigorously denied being a rapist, pedophile or any other depraved lies peddled by the fucking media. This is on the official website of the residence of the president of the United States.
The Onion or yesterday’s New York Times? You be the judge, and your verdict will be final and unappealable.
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
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.
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.
Trump’s new open hostility to Catholics is kind of funny, when you consider that his vice president, JD Vance, converted and was baptized into the Catholic faith in 2019, and Little Marco, his diminutive Secretary of State, was born Catholic and has not converted to anything but Trump sycophant. Also Catholic: Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, his most ardent judicial ass-lickers, outside of Aileen Cannon, who is silent on whether she’s Catholic or another kind of Christian. Second most corrupt AG in US history Bill Barr and architect of the Federalist Society 6-3 Supreme Court majority, Leonard Leo, HUGE, very religious conservative Catholics, (as well as militant theo-fascists).
Trump made a blasphemous Easter Sunday genocide threat, using the fucking f-word and insulting all Christians while also mocking adherents of Allah, then elegantly followed up a few days later, when– as the NY Times styled it, he “attacked the pope.” Then, while Trump recently sent Vance on a farcical “diplomatic” mission designed to fail, with the two filthy rich idiot real estate moguls Iran indicated were not acceptable negotiators, he sat with the man who should have been his top diplomat, Secretary of State, National Security Advisor, ender of USAID and keeper of the National Archives, Little Marco, at an Ultimate Fighting Championship match in Miami. Meanwhile, posting shit like this:
Me as a doctor, you fucking idiots.
(a doctor bringing Epstein back from death, Jimmy Kimmel noted the patient’s resemblance to JE the other night)
and this old favorite:
This is obviously my Star Wars costume, you fucking dummies.
In his politest manner, he tells the pope to go fuck himself, or things are going to go badly for him. Nice papacy you got there, pal, thanks to me. Would be a shame if you forced me to put my boot up its ass. His loyal Catholics are all silent, while Jesus curses them for their “transactional” Christianity.
No more stable genius ever had himself done up as a “pope” or a more magical “doctor”. You can take that to the bank, or the bankruptcy court.
I never met any of these people. HOAX, witch hunt!
The New York Times reported in detail on Trump’s path to a war he can’t justify. Fellow war criminal Bibi Netanyahu gave a February 11th Situation Room sales pitch to Trump about the perfect time to attack Iran and decapitate its leadership. It’s not that Trump wasn’t advised of the risks, he was, by virtually every adviser, but every one of these professional ass lickers deferred to their boss’s “instincts”. Most horrifically, to me, “diplomats” Jared Kushner and Steven Witkoff were in the room for Bibi’s sales pitch, which was presented with a video presentation by the head of Mossad. source
Two weeks later, on February 26, two days before the US began the unprovoked, unjustifiable bombing of Iran, raining mass death on civilians, there was another meeting in the Situation Room. The cast of characters included Karoline Leavitt, with the lips Trump has praised, and raging asshole/communications genius Steven Cheung (pictured below).
Here are a few “highlights” of that meeting, from the NY Times report.
Mr. Vance, whose disagreement with the whole premise was well established, addressed the president: You know I think this is a bad idea, but if you want to do it, I’ll support you.
Ms. Wiles told Mr. Trump that if he felt he needed to proceed for America’s national security, then he should go ahead. . .
. . . Mr. Cheung laid out the likely public relations fallout: Mr. Trump had run for office opposed to further wars. People had not voted for conflict overseas. The plans ran contrary, too, to everything the administration had said after the bombing campaign against Iran in June. How would they explain away eight months of insisting that Iranian nuclear facilities had been totally obliterated? Mr. Cheung gave neither a yes nor a no, but he said that whatever decision Mr. Trump made would be the right one.
Ms. Leavitt told the president that this was his decision and that the press team would manage it as best they could.
Mr. Hegseth adopted a narrow position: They would have to take care of the Iranians eventually, so they might as well do it now. He offered technical assessments: They could run the campaign in a certain amount of time with a given level of forces.
gratuitousblahg 