Category Archives: History and Politics

Lying is cool again in MAGA-land

If you want something badly enough, and have no scruples about lying, it must be exhilarating to land your dream job after lying your ass off. Lying in a public service setting is only a crime if it can be weaponized against an enemy of the current president and cost that hated enemy tens of thousands of dollars, or more, defending herself in court against baseless charges. Isn’t that right, Pam?

The other day Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, a business partner of Jeffery Epstein well after his 2008 conviction, flanked on his way to his closed door non-sworn testimony by a dozen big, imposing men (to protect him from the press) apparently lied his corrupt ass off while sweating through his suit. This putz is the same guy who, while publicly supporting Trump’s unconstitutional tariffs, also bet millions that the tariffs would be struck down, and made millions for himself and his sons, when the Supreme Court eventually ruled Trump’s tariffs illegal. So what if he lied about his close association with a blackmailing sexual predator he claimed he hadn’t seen since 2005, so fucking what?!!! What about TRANSEXUALS and caravans of raping, murdering, disease-infested, blood-poisoning, pet dog and cat eating brown ILLEGAL ALIENS?!!! What about BLACK VOTERS?!!!

Look at Justice-for-Life Boof Kavanaugh, a poster boy for anything goes while under oath, if you’re loyal to your winning team. FOX news was despondent after Dr. Christine Blasey-Ford got done testifying about the inebriated teenaged Kavanaugh tackling her, feeling her up and trying to get his hands inside her bathing suit before he apparently passed out, rolled off her and she was able to get away from him. The talking heads on FOX, and I remember watching it in real time, concluded that the Kavanaugh nomination was cooked. It certainly looked that way to me too.

Kavanaugh, a longtime rightwing Federalist Society partisan (most of his partisan legal writings while a legal advisor to Dubya, whose election he’d helped to secure in Florida, and even his later legal and judicial writings, were withheld from the Senate Judiciary Committee/American people [1]) had been a zealous young advisor to highly principled right wing activist/special prosecutor Kenneth Starr. He had strongly advised Starr to give Bill Clinton no break during his under oath deposition, so that they could eventually trip Clinton up when he got tired, and get him on perjury. After melting down under hard questions himself, when Kavanaugh flashed entitled rage and snarled at one of his questioners, Senator Amy Klobuchar, his allies on the Senate Judiciary Committee quickly called for a time out.

Boof presumably cried it out behind closed doors, was comforted by Lindsey Graham and others, probably spoke to Trump during the break, The president would presumably have asked him if he was a “fucking pussy” or a “real man” and how much he really wanted the job, if he was a pussy. When the hearing resumed, Graham came out wildly attacking the commies who were trying to defame and destroy this good, Christian man, this churchgoing father of girls.

Meanwhile, the lies Kavanaugh told under oath were quickly turned into truth on the internet. When asked what “boof” meant, next to his Georgetown Prep yearbook photo, he lied. Boofing is when your frat bros put a tube in your upturned anus and pour vodka or another pure spirit directly into your colon. Apparently produces quite the buzz. Kavanaugh replied, lying, that it was a reference to his flatulence. Embarrassing, yes, but not as bad as being nicknamed Boof for taking a tube of whiskey up the ass to impress your friends and get shitfaced in the exclusive $60,000 a year high school he attended.

Kavanaugh also lied about the term Devil’s Triangle, claiming it was a “drinking game” (for underage drinkers…), when it was an apparent reference to his desire to have sex, or claim to have had sex, with a young woman named Renata, known to be amenable to such things. Operatives, from an IP address in the same building where Kavanaugh was being questioned, instantly updated the Wikipedia entry for Devil’s Triangle to indicate it is, indeed, just what Kavanaugh said it was — an innocent, uh, drinking game he liked to play while underage at Georgetown Prep — and not a claim, probably also a lie, of youthful sexual conquest.

Judge Kavanaugh’s lies were deemed immaterial, just like his lie that Roe v. Wade was “settled law” supported by strong precedent, until he voted with Alito, Gorsuch and Coney Barret to overturn it, based on the learned wisdom of a seventeenth century British witch hunter. Literally. (Note, Mike “Lock Her Up, Q-Anon, I Take the Fifth” Flynn’s lies about his undisclosed work for foreign governments and illegal contact with the Russians were also deemed “immaterial” by master rightwing piece of shit AG Bill Barr.)

Which brings me to corporate balls and strikes umpire Chief Justice John “Arbitration Clause” Roberts, longtime enemy of Black Americans’ right to vote. Callais , and its unprecedented shadow docket enabled immediate effect, was Act III in destroying the Voting Rights Act (VRA) once and for all, legislating unappealably from the bench. Talk about “activist judges.

Act I was a 2013 case involving racist Shelby County, Alabama (suing the nation’s first Black AG), in which Roberts struck down a unanimous 98-0 vote in the Senate, a 390-33 vote in the House and President George W. Bush calling the VRA, at a signing ceremony, “an example of our continued commitment to a united America where every person is valued and treated with dignity and respect.” Roberts thus substituted his judgment for every elected representative of the People, ever senator and member of Congress, along with the president who appointed him to the court. With four fellow corporatist rightwing justices, he ruled, 5-4, suck it, y’all, the Court hath spoken. Roberts also lied in his decision, claiming the vast majority who voted for it in Congress, after looking over a record 16,000 pages of current data, had relied on 40 year-old data to reauthorize the law that fixed a century long problem. A pox on this smiling corporatist shithead:

Speaking of shitheads, here’s some AI by the guy who flew an AI fighter jet, maskless at high altitude, to dump an endless river of his AI excrement on a large crowd in New York City who had marched in a No Kings protest. Fuck that puto.

[1] Let us only focus, for a minute, on the historically liberal classification of Kavanaugh’s written record as a lawyer and judge.   90% of his legal writings were withheld from scrutiny during the disgracefully partisan confirmation process.   Classified, top secret, like his president’s financial information — and like which rightwing billionaire paid off Kavanaugh’s jumbo credit card debt, or the massive ad buy to get him confirmed, right before his confirmation hearings started.

This shroud of secrecy over Kavanaugh’s partisan record, dating back to his law student years as a hard drinking Federalist Society zealot, and the mysterious wiping of a large credit card debt, contrasts starkly with the full records disclosed for every previous nominee, for each of  Obama’s recent appointees.    Kagan and Sotomayor’s full writings from their judicial and legal careers were given to the Senate Judiciary Committee (and Obama had a terrible record on transparency, in spite of his many inspirational speeches about it).   Less than 10% of petulant partisan Kavanaugh’s record was available for scrutiny by the body rubber stamping the zealot’s rushed confirmation by a one vote, party line majority.

source (citing himself…)

Nazis don’t care how much they need to humiliate themselves in the fight to ruthlessly dominate everyone else

It is an abomination, in a democracy (or anywhere else, for that matter) for masked, heavily armed “law enforcement” agents to use violence, including deadly violence, against civilians for any reason, or no reason. Totalitarian regimes rely on heavily armed, unaccountable goon squads, often in disguise, ignoring all law in their pursuit of the regime’s enemies, real and imagined. Every such regime has had its Brown Shirts, Black Shirts, Death Squads, Secret Police — American slavery had its well-armed slave catcher militias, and later its Ku Klux Klan, those brave defenders of southern white women’s virginity wore masks, and outnumbered their unarmed victims ten to one, just like today’s ICE agents.

Under Trump 2.0, ICE, armed for military engagement and funded up their masked wazoos, is that violent goon squad. They can murder American citizens, on video (sometimes ones they shoot themselves while firing bullets into a woman’s face through her car window) with no consequences for themselves. They are protected because they are carrying out the will of the Leader. The vast majority of Americans are appalled at this shit, particularly the murderous variant on Trump’s constant bullying of ordinary citizens and others. But Nazis always double, triple and quadruple down. They intend, by doing this — in your fucking face! — to break the will of their victims to resist. Here’s Heather Cox Richardson:

In February, G. Elliott Morris of Strength In Numbers crunched the polls and found that reforms to ICE are extraordinarily popular. Ninety-two percent of Americans want ICE agents to wear body cameras, for example, and 80% wanted an independent investigation in the killings of Good and Pretti. Morris noted that between 60% and 90% of voters—a supermajority that includes Republicans and a majority of Independents—say they want “transparency, accountability, rules, and oversight” for federal agents.

Today, at the Border Security Expo in Phoenix, Arizona, Trump’s White House advisor on border security, Tom Homan, assured Republicans that mass deportation is coming and that the administration will flood immigration officers into jurisdictions that aren’t cooperative. Michael Williams of CNN reported that Homan told Republicans angry that the administration is not deporting enough people: “You ain’t seen sh*t yet. This year will be a good year. Mass deportations are coming.” He added: “You’re going to see more ICE agents [than] you ever seen before.”

The administration’s disregard for the will of the American people also shows in its approach to its war on Iran. Today, Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters: “The operation is over. Epic Fury, as the president notified Congress, we’re done with that stage of it. We’re now on to this Project Freedom,” the attempt to open the Strait of Hormuz. The 1973 War Powers Act required the president either to get congressional approval for the war or to withdraw the troops within 60 days of notifying Congress of a military action. That deadline was May 1.

Now, according to Rubio, the war is now in a different phase: opening the Strait of Hormuz, which was open before Trump’s military adventure.

But Iranian officials have responded to Trump’s Project Freedom with military strikes against both the vessels attempting the transit and other Gulf countries. This afternoon, Trump backed down.

source

The invertebrate lickspittles who serve their demented, compulsively lying leader must resort to counterfactual narratives and bark threats and absurd justifications to stay in their precarious positions of power. Good Catholic Tom Homan “we’re going to round up MILLIONS, y’all ain’t seen shit yet!” and Little Marco Rubio “Epic Fury is over, we rebranded, like the corporate ass-rapers we base our company’s policies on, to Project Freedom, so we get to restart the 60 day clock on the War Powers Act, psyche!”

They are vomiting the quiet parts out loud, because to Nazis, there is no means too humiliating if the end is possible absolute power, revenge on all critics, the violent silencing of dissent and, ultimately, severe, humiliating punishment for all enemies. Anyone, like myself, for example, who routinely compares these fucking Nazis to the German Nazis who were forced to fight a war they insisted the Jews started, with terrible results for everyone involved.

On social media, Trump’s account continued to whipsaw between pressing for an end to the war and threatening apocalyptic destruction if Iran doesn’t agree to U.S. demands. “Assuming Iran agrees to give what has been agreed to, which is, perhaps, a big assumption,” he wrote, “the already legendary Epic Fury will be at an end, and the highly effective Blockade will allow the Hormuz Strait to be OPEN TO ALL, including Iran. If they don’t agree, the bombing starts, and it will be, sadly, at a much higher level and intensity than it was before. Thank you for your attention to this matter! President DONALD J. TRUMP”

The administration’s shifting justifications and claims about the Iran war are “dizzying,” Ben Finley, Matthew Lee, and Farnoush Amiri of the Associated Press wrote today. Yesterday, after calling the war “concluded,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth spent the day selling Trump’s Project Freedom to open the Strait of Hormuz, only to have Trump call Project Freedom off with a post on social media.

source

“A matter of political controversy”

For a Trump nominee to concede that the violence on January 6, 2021, a riot that shut down a joint session of Congress about to make Biden’s victory official, was not a patriotic Day of Love, and perfectly reasonable “legitimate political discourse” is to betray his/her/its deranged master. No Republican is allowed to say that January 6 was anything bad, at worst it can be called a “matter of political controversy.” You know, we can agree to disagree about what we disagree about, right? A talking point, no matter how incoherent, is good enough in the corporate America of 2026, when it comes to blindly partisan lifetime appointees to the federal bench.

The same goes for the legitimate election of Trump’s opponent in the 2020 election. “He was inaugurated…” is the only acceptable answer to the question “was Joe Biden elected president in 2020?”. It is political suicide in Trumpworld to concede that Biden won an honest and fair election (that would make Trump, history’s greatest winner, a loser!). You certainly don’t want to get the most vengeful compulsive liar in American history mad at you. So you choose your evasive words carefully, or repeat the ones your learned colleague just farted out.

In a similar vein, The Confederacy, of course, never lost the Civil War, a war of Northern aggression which was not fought to protect slavery but over states’ rights — to have slavery in their own states. The Nazis never lost World War Two, or caused the deaths of tens of millions, they just had to lay low while the generations who knew their crimes in detail died off. When enough time goes by everything in the past can be seen as “a matter of political controversy.” Everything inhuman is GREAT AGAIN, for anyone still gaga for MAGA. In the land of the desperate, faith beats reason every 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]

Total exoneration

Donald Trump has never been totally exonerated in his long life of being endlessly, unfairly persecuted, no more than he has ever been held accountable for any of his various crimes and misdeeds. He has defeated justice many times, by delay, bribe (e.g. Pam Bondi in Florida, $25,000 to her campaign if she’d drop case against his fake university) obstruction, vexatious litigation, using government resources to prosecute vendettas, making threats against judges, jurors, witnesses, calls to violence, getting others to cover up his many crimes.

The second most corrupt Attorney General of modern times, Bill Fucking Barr, lied when declaring that the Mueller report “totally exonerated” Trump when Mueller wrote, in his report:

Based on the facts and the applicable legal standards, however, we are unable to reach that judgment [that Trump did not act with corrupt intent and did not commit felonies]. The evidence we obtained about the President’s actions and intent presents difficult issues that prevent us from conclusively determining that no criminal conduct occurred. Accordingly, while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him. . .

. . . The conclusion that Congress may apply the obstruction laws to the President’s corrupt exercise of the powers of the office accords with our constitutional system of checks and balances and the principle that no person is above the law.

I know we live in a post-fact age, but consider this:

Any president who leaves office, illegally taking with him with boxes of classified and top secret papers, although presumed innocent until convicted, is a criminal suspect until investigated and exonerated of wrongdoing. Especially if, like Trump, he claims he can declassify them with his mind, that he doesn’t have them, that he returned them all already, that he’s willing to show the government that he doesn’t have them, then gets one of his lawyers to lie that no more classified documents are in his possession, and so on, rope-a-doping the authorities for a year and a half. When a federal judge signs a search warrant, specifically describing the evidence of crime being sought and the exact places where they are likely hidden, that’s not an “illegal raid”. There is nothing more legal, under our law, than the execution of a search warrant adhering strictly to the requirements of the Fourth Amendment.

The punchline; they find some of the classified documents the president illegally took when he was dragged kicking and screaming out of the White House. They find boxes of the documents he claimed he didn’t have, in a bathroom, in a ballroom, in his sock drawer, the ones he lied about having (or selling to Putin, Mohammed bin Bonesaw, et al).

He got away with clear violations of the Espionage Act and obstruction of justice because he had a corrupt judge, appointed after he lost the election he claims was stolen from him, throw the case out, on the shabbiest of legal theories (tip of the cap to Clarence Thomas) after dragging her feet for over a year ruling on routine motions.

Consider Trump’s long campaign to reverse the results of the 2020 election, an election he was told, and knew, he lost (‘how did I lose to that piece of shit?’ he asked one of his lackies after losing the election). 60 baseless law suits, pressure on various state officials, a lying $50,000,000 ad campaign (payments for ‘Stop the Steal’ ads stopped on January 6, don’t you know?), slates of fake electors, threats to state officials, an illegal plan to get the DOJ to contest results in states he lost, a plot with his “friends” in Congress (“The Greenbay Sweep”) to throw the final certification into the House so he’d be declared the winner, increasing madness unto epic fury leading up to the passionate Day of Love on January 6, 2021, when he whipped up a crowd he knew to be armed to go to the Capital for a bloody riot the RNC later rebranded as “legitimate political discourse”. We all saw that legitimate political discourse unfold on TV, along with the president who sent the mob to disrupt the joint session of Congress and watched the assault on TV for over three hours, and how it led to 140 Capitol and D.C. policemen hospitalized with grievous injuries sustained during the legitimate political discourse. That he beat being prosecuted for his multi-tentacled treason and shitting on his oath to defend the Constitution, by delay, obstruction, threats, violence, etc. does not mean he was exonerated for jack shit.

Now Trump’s fully weaponized, selectively prosecuting DOJ, led by his criminal and impeachment attorneys, has fired everyone involved with either prosecution against their boss. At a far-right event the other day, Nazi consigliere Todd Blanche proudly announced this purge was complete. Fair is fair. Come to kill me, I kill you, how you like that, asshole?

Here’s one of the “righteously” fired DOJ attorneys, J.P. Cooney, with a short summary of how guilty Trump was of both of these disqualifying criminal conspiracies. Cooney is now running for Congress in Virginia.

HUNTER BIDEN!!!!

Mr. Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law, has spoken with potential investors in recent weeks about raising $5 billion or more for Affinity Partners, his investment firm, according to five people with knowledge of the talks who were not permitted to speak publicly about the discussions.

As part of the fund-raising effort, Affinity’s representatives have already met with Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, which invests the proceeds of the kingdom’s vast oil reserves, two of the people briefed on the discussions said. PIF is led by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who has formed close ties with Mr. Kushner and the Trump administration. . .

. . . The efforts show the blurring of the lines between public service and private profit-seeking during Mr. Trump’s second term [1]. Only a few weeks ago, in his role as Mr. Trump’s “peace envoy,” Mr. Kushner met in Geneva with Iran’s foreign minister. The U.S. and Israeli bombing campaign in Iran began shortly after those meetings concluded without a deal on Iran’s nuclear program.

Mr. Kushner, 45, also spearheaded the Trump administration’s successful efforts to extract hostages from Gaza and negotiated between Russia and Ukraine in an attempt to end their war.

In January, Mr. Kushner traveled to Davos, Switzerland, as part of the official U.S. delegation at the World Economic Forum, where he unveiled the Trump administration’s plan for a “New Gaza.” source

I know, what about Hunter Biden and the Biden Crime Family? Why didn’t Merrick Garland prosecute him for his fishy ties to a Ukrainian oil company? THE DOJ WAS WEAPONIZED, OBVIOUSLY.

Meanwhile, Jared’s epically furious father-in-law is selling the glorious game of the already won, hole-in-one, home run, slam dunk Iran War to his gamer fanboys. USA! USA!!!!

[1] Note the classic deployment of the passive voice, blurring the line of how the line has been blurred and by whom, if anyone. Later on, though the Times correctly puts Kushner’s unofficial title of “peace envoy” in quotes, it makes the ambiguous statement that the pinhead Kushner “spearheaded the Trump administration’s successful efforts to extract hostages from Gaza and negotiated between Russia and Ukraine in an attempt to end their war.” You’ve got to love the even-handedness of the Grey Lady in giving Kushner his props. Our way of life, and our current excellent condition on the world stage and here at home, would not be possible without her graceful, line blurring contortions of fairness in the name of someone’s version of the truth.

Be fair, any powerful war criminal would make the same demand

For starters, a bully always looks to provoke others, weaker than him, to fight back. This gives the bully the righteous excuse to rightfully retaliate. Trump sought, by unleashing masked, untrained goons, in full riot gear, to rough people up, break car windows and deploy tear gas on peaceful protesters, to provoke a violent response that would enable him to dominate the streets with the military. His attack on Iran, as illegal an act of unprovoked war as Cheney’s war on Iraq, likely has the same larger aim. Get Iran to retaliate with terrorism in the US, then, bingo, September 11, a new Patriot Act (probably already waiting at the Heritage Foundation) and soaring, intoxicating new emergency powers for Trump. Toward that end, he seeks preemptive immunity from the International Criminal Court for war crimes he’s busily committing now.

The 2025 Nobel Peace Prize recipient (he got the winner to give him her prize), Donald J. Trump, is threatening the International Criminal Court to back the fuck off and stop trying to accuse righteous Christian Americans of committing war crimes in various completely necessary excursions to ensure world peace. If the ICC had existed in their time, both Hitler and Stalin would have done the same, rest assured. Trump is just the first US president with the massive balls to do this, (hence the need for the 2,000,000 square foot Trump-Epstein ballroom where the East Wing used to be — finally a place where he can feel comfortable spreading his legs with those unfeasibly gigantic balls).

After the atrocities and massive death toll of World War Two (estimated at 70-85 million– including 40-50 million civilians), and widespread war crimes committed during that war of mass murder, idealists around the world pressed for and created the International Criminal Court. Those who massacred civilians would now be held accountable for crimes against humanity, under international law. Mass murderers of civilians selected by ethnic group would be prosecuted for the newly coined crime of genocide.

Not long ago (when I was in law school, during the last years of the twentieth century) many international law experts were optimistic about the rule of law prevailing among the nations of the world. They believed this even though Reagan had already rejected the ICC’s jurisdiction over Americans and Israel and a few other countries had done the same. Modern day Nazis had other ideas about this so-called rule of international so-called law. Look what our boy Trump has to say about this stupid court:

War criminal Pete Hegseth [1], Secretary of Indiscriminate and Absolute Lethality (not pansy-ish “legality”) keeps bellowing about the right to execute enemy combatants, or suspected drug smugglers, or anyone else deemed a danger, or a potential danger, even if they’re wounded, disarmed, incapacitated or surrendering. (See, nobody has prosecuted the agents who executed Alex Pretti while he was restrained face down on the ground… so, what are YOU going to do about it, bitches?) Hegseth said the US will not be bound by “stupid rules of engagement” and will “give no quarter to our enemies” (it’s also a war crime to kill people who are surrendering) so murdering like it’s a video game is cool again. The Department of Lethality posts video game-inspired little movies about the glorious war in Iran, with mad respect to the American service members who may, theoretically, be dying as a result — “as often happens in war” as POTUS sagely notes.

And while we’re talking about complete immunity, total impunity, pre-emptive exoneration, here’s POTUS:

Last night, Trump posted on social media: “We are totally destroying the terrorist regime of Iran, militarily, economically, and otherwise, yet, if you read the Failing New York Times, you would incorrectly think that we are not winning. Iran’s Navy is gone, their Air Force is no longer, missiles, drones and everything else are being decimated, and their leaders have been wiped from the face of the earth. We have unparalleled firepower, unlimited ammunition, and plenty of time—Watch what happens to these deranged scumbags today. They’ve been killing innocent people all over the world for 47 years, and now I, as the 47th President of the United States of America, am killing them. What a great honor it is to do so! Thank you for your attention to this matter. President DONALD J. TRUMP” source

“Watch what happens to these deranged scumbags today.”

[1] See, for example, his order for a “double tap” strike to kill South Americans clinging to the wreckage of their sinking boat after a drone strike destroyed it, killing everyone else aboard (and sending any evidence of the crime they were never charged with to the bottom of the ocean). See also his recent U-boat torpedo sinking of an Iranian vessel returning from the Indian Ocean, and then letting the survivors drown. The Tomahawk missile that made a direct hit on an Iranian middle school, killing 170 girls the same age as Epstein’s victims? Not his problem. He’s not going to be restrained by no stupid rules of engagement! He’s maximally lethal, yo. No quarter for the godless enemies of Christ! Like it says on his arm: Deus Vult.

Heather Cox Richardson concludes last night’s letter

The fantasy of those who embraced cowboy individualism was that if only they could have full sway, they would solve the world’s problems and keep Americans safe. But the conduct of the war is starting to illustrate that any claims of a moral code disappear when a leader exercises military might on a whim. According to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, the U.S. will not be bound by any “stupid rules of engagement” and will rain down “[d]eath and destruction from the sky all day long. This was never meant to be a fair fight,” he said, “and it is not a fair fight. We are punching them when they’re down, which is exactly how it should be.”

On Wednesday, March 4, a U.S. submarine torpedoed an Iranian warship in international waters. The vessel was not participating in hostilities; it was off Sri Lanka returning from a naval exercise organized by India in the Bay of Bengal. In the past, the U.S. has participated in those exercises.

Andrew Roth, Cate Brown, and Hannah Ellis-Peterson of The Guardian noted that submarine attacks since World War II have been incredibly rare, as are attacks on vessels not taking part in hostilities. The ship was believed to have 180 people on board; Sri Lankan officials said they rescued 32 and recovered 87 bodies from the water. Hegseth boasted: “An American submarine sank an Iranian warship that thought it was safe in international waters.”

On Thursday, Phil Stewart and Idrees Ali of Reuters reported that the U.S. appears to bear responsibility for the February 28 strike on a girls’ school in Minab, in southern Iran, in the early waves of the Israeli-U.S. attack. The strike appears to have killed 168 people or more, many of them children. Since the Reuters report, others have noted that the U.S. was operating in the area and Israel was not. The strike remains under investigation.

After Saturday’s dignified transfer, Trump told reporters on Air Force One. “I hate to do it, but it’s a part of war,” he said. “It’s a sad part of war.”

“It’s the bad part of war.”

read the whole, very much on point, letter here

So true, sad, and also, bad

War crimes are not war crimes, if done in the name of justice, truth, freedom, decency and Jesus, according to people like unindicted war criminal Secretary of Virile Maximum Lethality, Pete Kegsbreath. Genocide is not genocide, if God tells you to do it, according to indicted war criminal Bibi Netanyahu, whose radical religious allies, and a multifront all-out war of mass destruction, are keeping him from standing trial for corruption. Every mass murder in history has been committed with God on the side of the murderers. Thoughts and prayers, y’all, and a dignified transfer to each of us.

A few facts (and opinions) about the war/not war in Iran

The president, Caroline Leavitt told the press, launched the attack on Iran “based on a feeling based on fact.” You can take that shit to the bank, better than “concepts of a plan” even. Perfect.

The devastating attack was launched, by Israel and the United States, in the middle of Ramadan, the holiest month of the year for Muslims.

Iranian negotiators working with Jared Fucking Kushner (who elected him?) and Putin’s own Steve Witkoff (WTF?) felt they were making progress in their talks in Geneva.  Israel and the U.S. were making their attack plans as Witkoff and Kushner cosplayed as diplomatic negotiators. The bombing commenced as planned.  Such are negotiations when the major diplomats across the table are psychopaths who are themselves serving psychopaths.

The nation that could not afford health care premium subsidies for lower wage working people, or SNAP benefits for poor children and the disabled, or millions to continue preventing preventable deaths in poor countries (USAID) has spent over three billion dollars on the first four days of Operation I’m NOT INSANE and I’ll Fucking Kill All of You Fucking Fucks!!!  (officially called Operation Epic Fury — Epic Tantrum works too)  [1].

With the people we have in charge, the best of the best, what could go wrong by committing acts of war against Iran? Nothing the Board of Peace can’t handle.

Heather Cox Richardson adds:

In Need to Know, David Rothkopf today called out the madness of the fact world trade and global security is being shattered by a single man. “Not since Adolf Hitler blew his brains out in a bunker beneath the garden of the German Reich Chancellery on April 30, 1945, have the lives of so many people around the world been so buffeted by the psychosis of a single man.”

Why has Trump launched a war against Iran on a whim, attacked other countries, and upended world trade, Rothkopf asked. “Because he’s insane. Because he’s venal. Because he’s a malignant narcissist. Because he’s a sociopath. Because he has a fragile ego. Because those around him exacerbate and play to those traits to advance their own interests. Because CEOs and investors do likewise to fill their coffers. Because to some people, whether he is insane or malevolent or repugnant or not matters less than whether his actions will feather their nests, increase their power.

“Because they, the billionaires…play their games and the consequences for the little people down below, the consequences for us, hardly matter a whit.” [2]

On Thursday, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) called attention to another factor in play. In a speech to the Senate, Whitehouse noted that throughout his second term, Trump has advanced policies that help Russia, pausing weapons shipments to Ukraine, easing sanctions on Russia, and pushing a peace deal favorable to Russia. Last summer, he welcomed Putin to American soil, and administration officials have parroted Russian propaganda. Russian state media gloated when Trump “installed Russia apologist Tulsi Gabbard as his director of national intelligence,” and Attorney General Pam Bondi upon taking office stopped the anti-kleptocracy work that had targeted Russian oligarchs.

Trump’s new national security policy threw traditional U.S. allies overboard and favored policies that Russian government officials praised as “largely consistent” with their own.

“If Trump were purposefully doing Russia’s bidding,” Whitehouse said, “it is hard to see what he would be doing differently. The United States is the most powerful nation in the world. Russia is a weak, corrupt regime. My old friend Senator John McCain used to say that Russia is a gas station, run by gangsters, with an army. It doesn’t make sense that the President of the United States, who insists—insists—on being dominant in essentially every relationship, is so submissive to one person and that one person is Russia’s dictator, Vladimir Putin.” source

Here is Sheldon Whitehouse’s entire speech. I highly recommend it.

Last we heard, Putin was giving strategic information to the Iranians, to help them target the U.S. military. I wonder which side Elon Musk and Starlink is taking in that transaction.

[1] The war is costing about $891.4 million per day, according to a think tank based in Washington, DC, that analyzed the information the Pentagon has shared about targets it struck and the assets involved in the operation.

The Center for Strategic and International Studies predicts that the cost will decrease as the US shifts to “less expensive munitions” and as the drones and missiles launched by Iran declines.

“However, future costs will depend mostly on the intensity of operations and the effectiveness of Iranian retaliation,” CSIS added in its report. source

[2] Billionaires are happy when their insane puppet crashes the world economy helping them make even more profit. Crisis for us equals opportunity for them.