Category Archives: History and Politics

Grey Lady, pitch perfect

From a New York Times May Day editorial, entitled — There Is a Way Forward: How to Defeat Trump’s Power Grab. Here they describe a few of his despicable acts of vengeance against a nation that rejected him by a large margin in 2020.

He has fired federal workers without the 30-day notice that the law requires.

Doesn’t this also mean he fired federal workers illegally? Can’t say it, can you?

He has tried to cut university funding by citing antisemitism without following the established procedures for such civil rights cases.

“Such civil rights cases?” More accurately: he has threatened universities, and unilaterally withheld their federally funding, on transparently baseless grounds.

He has issued executive orders punishing law firms for invented wrongdoing.

Well, no problem with that one.

I did have a real problem with this earlier paragraph:

The building of this coalition [to oppose a Trump dictatorship, which the Times apparently calls for] should start with an acknowledgment that Mr. Trump is the legitimate president and many of his actions are legal. Some may even prove effective. He won the presidency fairly last year, by a narrow margin in the popular vote and a comfortable margin in the Electoral College. On several key issues, his views were closer to public opinion than those of Democrats. Since taking office, he has largely closed the southern border, and many of his immigration policies are both legal and popular. He has reoriented federal programs to focus less on race, which many voters support. He has pressured Western Europe to stop billing American taxpayers for its defense. Among these policies are many that we strongly oppose — such as pardoning Jan. 6 rioters, cozying up to Vladimir Putin of Russia and undermining Ukraine — but that a president has the authority to enact. Elections have consequences.

The Grey Lady’s normalizing characterization of Trump’s ridiculous performance as president with a massive mandate is, to say the least, cherry-picked. His many destructive acts, his administration’s rampant lawlessness and contempt for truth, his unqualified, lie-spouting loyalist appointees in crucial positions leaving America open to ridicule and worse, the president’s unprecedented and well-earned unpopularity, all left out of the Grey Lady’s delicate balancing act, their attempt to treat a psychopath as a perfectly normal president just doing the job like any other duly elected president.

To take one example — did he win the election fairly? We all seem to accept it, in the name of affirming democracy as expressed at the ballot box, but to me the jury is out after every MAGA state suppressed voting with new laws making it harder to vote, Trump being the sole Republican to win in several swing states, and Russia literally calling in bomb threats to Democratic districts on election day. Also, I saw no reporting whatsoever (except for mine) on the 20,000,000 less mail-in ballots delivered by the Trump megadonor postmaster in the first election since 2008 when mail-in voting didn’t increase.

Then I read a line like this and just say “fuck you” and turn away:

We understand that Mr. Trump’s defenders believe that Democrats started this cycle by prosecuting him, and there are reasonable arguments against some of those cases.

We understand that the New York Times represents a certain well-invested segment of the status quo, so what else are they going to say? Still, the words “fuck you” ring in my head when I read this kind of pandering nonsense in the journal of record. “His defenders defend him against what they call political persecution and they make some reasonable arguments.” Can you give us one?

Heh, of course you can’t.

In other news that’s fit to print:

Incoherence is maddening to me

I grew up in a home where incoherent positions were taken regularly by our parents during our nightly standoffs at the dinner table. I was told over the years, with no uncertainty, that at three days old I silently declared myself an implacable enemy of my innocent father. My parents, both highly intelligent and well-educated, believed this to the day they died, eighty years later. As a result of this kind of mind-numbing idiocy, from two otherwise smart people, I have a lifelong intolerance for incoherence, particularly when it is being asserted as a fact you’d better goddamned believe, because I insist it’s true.

Spirited debate is sometimes necessary to resolve a disagreement. This process is not always easy or fun. But with good faith we can often thrash out solutions to difficult problems by producing arguments that persuade the other person to consider their position from another angle. This ability to reason a way to compromise is what enables democratic government to function. It stems from mutual, if sometimes grudging, respect and a recognition of objective reality that serves as the baseline for discussion and negotiation. It is the ability to reach consensus, and the logical methods used, that tyrants attack with everything they’ve got. The main weapons of tyranny are incoherence, fear and violence.

Incoherence is absolute, rigid, brazen, unblinking, it never changes its tune. Compromise is never possible when faced with an incoherent position defended to the death. The project of those who argue incoherently is total domination. As a matter of logic, it is impossible to reason with somebody who is rigidly irrational. If they offer no proof of something baseless that they insist is true, and they insist it’s true loudly and proudly anyway, you will never find common ground on anything.

This is the dilemma we find ourselves in today as Americans. One of Charles Koch’s most respected Libertarian thinktanks, The Heritage Foundation (author of Project 2025), maintains a database of election fraud going back to 1982. The documented incidents of voter fraud comprise a microscopic, statistically insignificant fraction of all votes cast. Even Bill Barr, as despicable and bellicose a Christian hypocrite as you will find anywhere, called MAGA claims of massive voter fraud bullshit.

Still, you will hear endless claims of widespread voter fraud used to support various voter suppression schemes in every state controlled by a gerrymandered MAGA legislature. If you can’t win at the ballot box, make an incoherent, but relentless argument, about the need to defeat widespread fraud. Anyone inclined to believe that Blacks, Muslims, Asians, college students, city dwellers, college students, naturalized citizens, gay people, environmentalists, humanists, atheists, those manipulated by Jewish practitioners of the Great Replacement “theory”, enemies of the anonymous, all-seeing Q, child blood drinking pedophiles, etc. commit voter fraud in massive numbers does not need proof. That there is a database, even if it has only 1,200 cases of fraud out of a billion votes cast, is enough to convince them.

It seems to me there are two basic kinds of people in society. One needs, above all, honest, mutual conversation, they are open to changing their minds in light of new information from a trusted source. The other kind is willing to accept lies, no matter how absurd, if there is something to be gained — money, membership in a group, prestige, power, being on the “winning team” — and they tend to be rigidly faithful in their beliefs. Black and white thinking characterizes this second type, a certainty that makes logic irrelevant. This kind also demonstrates a willingness to do whatever must be done to feel part of something greater than themselves.

I’ve heard this incoherent style called the dance of rage. The part of the brain that processes logic and can put things into cause and effect sequence is disabled if the anger center is inflamed. If you need to be right, above all else, you will fight to the death with any weapon that comes to hand. You may not be able to win a debate based on what actually exists, but there’s nothing stopping you from insisting on something that clearly doesn’t exist until the other person’s head simply explodes. If you can’t make the other person’s head explode, physical violence is your next best option, provided you have the numbers on your side.

You can’t reason with someone whose mind is closed. You may be able to find common ground, with enough skill and persistence, since we are all humans and have similar basic needs. Common ground is great, but often not enough to move the needle much. When you see that someone is prepared to assert incoherent talking points in order not to be wrong, that’s a pretty good sign it’s time to smile, wink and say goodnight.

Are we all created equal?

I believe we are. So does Heather Cox Richardson:

That decision [man born in America, to Chinese-born parents, is a US citizen — U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark 1898] has stood ever since, as a majority of Americans have recognized the principle behind the citizenship clause as the one central to the United States: “that all men are created equal” and that a nation based on that idea draws strength from all of its people.

On the last day of his presidency, in his last speech, President Ronald Reagan recalled what someone had once written to him: “You can go to live in France, but you cannot become a Frenchman. You can go to live in Germany or Turkey or Japan, but you cannot become a German, a Turk, or a Japanese. But anyone, from any corner of the Earth, can come to live in America and become an American.”

He continued: “We lead the world because, unique among nations, we draw our people—our strength—from every country and every corner of the world. And by doing so we continuously renew and enrich our nation. While other countries cling to the stale past, here in America we breathe life into dreams. We create the future, and the world follows us into tomorrow. Thanks to each wave of new arrivals to this land of opportunity, we’re a nation forever young, forever bursting with energy and new ideas, and always on the cutting edge, always leading the world to the next frontier. This quality is vital to our future as a nation. If we ever closed the door to new Americans, our leadership in the world would soon be lost.”

source

Happy 4/20, y’all

With the same sick irony that had Trump’s second inauguration fall on Martin Luther King, Jr’s birthday, Easter Sunday, this year, falls on the 136th birthday of one of Trump’s main idols, Mr. Hitler. On a personal note, two years ago today I was wheeled out of the David Koch pavilion of the #1 hospital for orthopedics fourteen years in a row, into the sunshine of a nice spring day, with a brand new titanium and chromium left knee. Presently I am unable to walk around the block with my six year-old neighbor, which I miss. Seeing the world through the eyes of a bright young kid is a wonderful thing, particularly in springtime, as is being able to walk without pain.

But enough with the personal sob stories. Today is the day that the myopic intellectuals and reactionary lawyers employed by far right billionaires submit their arguments to the Leader for why he should impose a version of martial law under the 1807 Insurrection Act so that he can use the military to end these large demonstrations by US citizens increasingly organizing against Project 2025’s determinedly fascist moves. After all, Trumpie has already used emergency war powers to arrest, detain and deport US residents for indefinite stays in a cool 43 year-old dictator’s super-max prison for “terrorists”. What war, you ask? Dubya and Cheney’s “War on Terror” authorized by Congress shortly after 9/11 under the AUMF [1], an authorization that made the illegal invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq perfectly kosher and that never expires, apparently. If the president calls it “terror”, who is Congress to question that?

As soon as he was in the Oval Office Trump issued an executive order calling for a report, within 90 days, from the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of Homeland Security Director, assessing the need to invoke the Insurrection Act for the “emergency” at the southern border. Today is day 90 since inauguration day. Pete Hegseth and Kristi Noem will sign whatever report is put in front of them, one of the conditions for their appointment as Trump ass-lickers, the same condition accepted by everyone in MAGA.

Presumably, at some point today, probably this evening when the Leader is done cheating at golf to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus, the press will announce what Hegseth, Noem, Mike Flynn, Stephen Miller, Steve Bannon, Samuel Alito, Leonard Leo, Charles Koch et al have decided about the president’s right to invoke the 1807 Insurrection Act. I’m not a betting man, but it’s not hard to guess what this crew of insane, ethically compromised haters will endorse. Particularly now that public opposition to Trump’s purposefully mad leadership is mounting and even reaching some in his own party.

The likeliest outcome, it saddens me to say, is a conspiracy among these lawless maniacs, on the brink of their longtime dream of American fascism, to create a mass death event at some peaceful assembly, call it “terrorism,” blame several marginalized groups for the act they themselves organized and carried out, and bring down the curtain on American democracy once and for all with legally sanctioned state violence. State violence to repress violence they themselves provoke (and often perpetrate as an excuse for martial law) is the go to move of every dictator.

As former civil liberties advocate turned Nazi defender Alan Dershowitz said, defending Trump during his second impeachment for inciting an insurrection, that if the president truly thinks the Jews are using space lasers to unfairly destabilize his absolute rule, he has the right to do whatever he feels is necessary to stop them from using these immensely powerful imaginary weapons in a way that harms the nation. In the words of Nixon, echoed by John Roberts and the Five Moral Dwarves in the unironically captioned Trump v. US, “when the president does it, that means it is not illegal.”

Happy Easter to my Christian friends and may the mercy of the Eternal be upon us all as we wait for the ABC headline.

[1] Wikipedia: The Authorization for Use of Military Force is a joint resolution of the United States Congress which became law on September 18, 2001, authorizing the use of the United States Armed Forces against those responsible for the September 11 attacks. The authorization granted the president the authority to use all “necessary and appropriate force” against those whom he determined “planned, authorized, committed or aided” the September 11 attacks, or who harbored said persons or groups. Wikipedia

How a headline frames the story

This DOJ attorney, Erez Reuveni, was placed on leave by Trump’s DOJ and then summarily fired for being candid to a judge in a federal court.  His only struggle, as an officer of the court, was trying not to lie or be evasive in response to the judge’s questions. Reading it most charitably to ABC, the DOJ did struggle in Maryland migrant case, though Reuveni did not.

Or as the New York Times told it at the time:

Career lawyers representing the government have a long tradition of arguing for the goals of Republican or Democratic administrations, regardless of their personal views. What is different now, they say, is that they increasingly feel trapped between President Trump’s partisan political appointees, who insist on a maximalist approach, and judges who demand comprehensible answers to basic questions.

The most vivid example of this squeeze came on Saturday when one of the department’s senior immigration lawyers, Erez Reuveni, was suspended indefinitely after speaking candidly about the administration’s mistaken deportation of a Maryland man to a notorious megaprison in El Salvador. . .

. . . “Good clients listen to their lawyers,” the judge, Paula Xinis, said.

Instead, the client punished its lawyer. In a letter on Saturday, Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general, said Mr. Reuveni had failed to follow orders and instead committed “conduct prejudicial to your client.”

A second senior immigration lawyer involved in the Abrego Garcia case, August Flentje, was also placed on administrative leave for his failure “to supervise a subordinate,” according to two officials familiar with the move.

source

But corporate media like ABC (who already wrote a fat check to Trump to settle a frivolous lawsuit the president brought against them for a truthful on air statement by one of their talking heads), you know they have to be so careful, because access and frivolous lawsuits and extortion and shakedowns and threatened shutdowns and loss of license, and baseless defamation claims, the threat of censorship and the demand to obey an advance and loss of sponsorships. 

Falling into corporate disfavor by alienating the powerful, and vengeful, is suicidal behavior for a corporation.  So you write the headline that frames it in the best light for the guy you just wrote the multimillion dollar check to Trump’s “library” to avoid a lawsuit you could have easily had dismissed. Hence: THE DOJ LAWYER WHO REFUSED TO LIE TO OR STONEWALL THE JUDGE STRUGGLED IN COURT.  

USA!  USA!!!

Emergency Powers under the Führerprinzip

The Hitlerian behavior just doesn’t stop with these dangerous, angry morons.   Trump’s enraged little Jewish Josef Goebbels, Stephen Miller, during the El Salvador dictator’s staged visit yesterday, announced in the Oval Office that “the Supreme Court ruled 9-0 … in our favor” and that “the Supreme Court said that the district court order was unlawful and its main components were reversed 9–0 unanimously.” 

In non-MAGA world, the Supreme Court actually ruled 9-0 that the unlawfully kidnapped, rendered and indefinitely detained Abrego Garcia, must be brought back to the US to be heard, as due process requires under our constitution. Miller flat out lied, claiming the exact opposite of what the 9-0 Supreme Court ruled in their shadow docket decision. Tens of millions of credulous low-information Americans will hear Miller’s lie and believe him, because, if a man who the president trusts that much said it, it must be true. People are saying it’s true, in ways nobody has ever seen before. Unless you’ve ever read a history of the Third Reich.

It is amazing to me, and horrifying, that Trump manages to hit every single one of Hitler’s notes in this incoherent, atonal aria he is constantly improvising.  When Hitler was trying out mass murder for the German people, it was Germans in mental wards he executed.  These people, incurably insane, severely disabled, physically or mentally, were, according to the Führer, “useless eaters” who only consumed food healthy German warriors needed, and took shits.  These useless eaters were living “lives unworthy of life” (Lebensunwertes Leben).  They were unproductive, a drag on Germany’s greatness and it was a mercy to euthanize them, according to the greatest living German genius and the embodiment of the soul of Germany, at that time, Adolf Hitler.  

Today, as reported by Heather Cox Richardson, it turns out Trump has plans for this same kind of person, born without a multimillion dollar inheritance — the unproductive ones. There is nothing this demented, psychopathic motherfucker is doing or saying, or having his loyal sychophants say, that is not straight out of Herr Hitler’s foul mouth. Here’s a nice bit of improv from the once and future American Leader, as Charles Koch’s network was maneuvering the justice-evading serial felon back into power, backed by the might of a billionaire funded army of true believers in American oligarchic fascism:

[Trump] continued [talking to Musk on X in 2024 about foreign leaders kicking people out of their countries to migrate in caravans to the US]: “The fact is, it’s brilliant for them because they’re taking all of their bad people, really bad people and—I hate to say this—the reason the numbers are much bigger than you would think is they’re also taking their nonproductive people. Now these aren’t people that will kill you…but these are people that are nonproductive. They are just not productive, I mean, for whatever reason. They’re not workers or they don’t want to work, or whatever, and these countries are getting rid of nonproductive people in the caravans…and they’re also getting rid of their murderers and their drug dealers and the people that are really brutal people….”

source

It will not stop with an innocent immigrant living legally and productively (he’s a working member of an American labor union) in Maryland who is jammed into a car by masked ICE agents and illegally disappeared into a foreign dictator’s notorious mega-prison for “terrorists.”  As I mentioned yesterday, call someone a “terrorist” and you are halfway to convincing millions that the guy deserves whatever he gets.  Torture is too good for Abrego Garcia, say a million ignorant voices, ten million.   If a person commits a crime, they are arrested and prosecuted, and if found guilty by a jury, sentenced to some kind of punishment.  If an insane dotard can declare that an innocent person, charged with no crime and rendered due to “administrative error” to an infamous prison, for indefinite detention, and refuse to comply with a 9-0 Supreme Court decision stating that the rendered man must be returned to the US for a hearing, then we have our American Hitler.  As stupid, vain and psychopathic as the original.  And obeyed by his ambitious, loyal, ass-licking cultists, to the end. 

As predicted, harsh consequences for candid DOJ lawyer under Bondi’s like, totally unweaponized DOJ

From no less than today’s NY Times:

Career lawyers representing the government have a long tradition of arguing for the goals of Republican or Democratic administrations, regardless of their personal views. What is different now, they say, is that they increasingly feel trapped between President Trump’s partisan political appointees, who insist on a maximalist approach, and judges who demand comprehensible answers to basic questions.

The most vivid example of this squeeze came on Saturday when one of the department’s senior immigration lawyers, Erez Reuveni, was suspended indefinitely after speaking candidly about the administration’s mistaken deportation of a Maryland man to a notorious megaprison in El Salvador. . .

. . . “Good clients listen to their lawyers,” the judge, Paula Xinis, said.

Instead, the client punished its lawyer. In a letter on Saturday, Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general, said Mr. Reuveni had failed to follow orders and instead committed “conduct prejudicial to your client.”

A second senior immigration lawyer involved in the Abrego Garcia case, August Flentje, was also placed on administrative leave for his failure “to supervise a subordinate,” according to two officials familiar with the move.

source

In a surprise move, the DOJ is recruiting replacements for DOJ attorneys fired for disloyalty to the president and his agenda  from the graduates of “Libertarian” law schools (Antonin Scalia Law School, anyone?) who believe, along with the Federalist Society, the far-right judicial fraternity they join as law students, in the right of the strong (super-wealthy) to do whatever they need to do to the weak (the other 99.5%).  A good psychopath will do that.

We are in the hands of psychopaths (and cowards)

Make no mistake, MAGA is the brand of powerful American psychopaths.  The far-right, anti-fact, pro-corporate movement now called MAGA has long been engineered and funded by Charles Koch, whose father, beloved of Hitler, was a famous conspiracy theorist and psychopath.  The ideology of the MAGA “movement”, presumably headed by Donald Trump, whose racist father was also a psychopath, is based on painful revenge against “takers”,  everyone not born wealthy “booted and spurred” to rightfully ride the backs of their inferiors.

They’ve learned the lesson that Hitler first demonstrated in a modern mass media culture: if you keep true information from the public, and bombard terrified citizens with aggravating lies, the lies will come to be accepted, by most, as the truth. Once you’ve created a mass audience faithful to baseless lies, you’re halfway to ramping up the death camps. The lies are of a specific kind: incendiary reasons to fear and hate marginalized groups. Once you have created unreasoning hatred against, say, homosexuals, a gay hairdresser you illegally deport to a notorious torture prison in El Salvador deserves every rape and indignity he must endure, and forever is not long enough for a foreign government’s fully illumined dark-site to torture a sick individual like him.

Why the obsession, on the far right, with torture and the death penalty? Nothing moves the masses, and the political needle, like terror. These psychopaths (and sometimes, belatedly, their duped followers) know that total fear is the most effective tool any autocrat can wield. Horrific true stories of torture, terrifying random detention and death, the ability of the state to manhandle and murder anyone without due process or legal accountability, what could be better for an insane person hell-bent, literally, on controlling the world?

Why would a president who nonchalantly oversaw as many as 500,000 unnecessary American deaths during Covid-19, because of his damaging politically-motivated interference with scientists and pandemic experts, have any hesitation to let a few dozen, or a few hundred, or a hundred thousand, or a million, poor American children die of preventable disease?   Or starvation?   Or a million or two, or ten million, in Africa, Asia, South America?   The answer is that psychopaths have neither empathy nor the capacity to feel regret.   The worst of them, a very small percentage, are cunning serial killers.  Most of them are just CEOs, surgeons, nightmare bosses, bullies, masterminds of MAGA’s revenge tour.

Some object to a psychiatric diagnosis like “psychopath” to describe someone like Charles Koch or Donald Trump, or most of Trump’s loyal inner circle “ring kissers”.   I object to psychiatric diagnoses myself.  Homosexuality was a a legitimate psychiatric diagnosis as recently as the 1970s.   I am no fan of psychiatry and have no reason to trust the American Psychiatric Association, particularly after they publicly enforced their rule against a non-member and took part in a coordinated campaign to discredit a best-selling book that detailed Trump’s insane behavior, its roots and implications for his destructive presidency.  

A group of psychiatrists and other experts made a thorough and convincing case, The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump [1], acting on their professional duty to warn of the dangers of having someone with severe emotional disabilities as the American president. They made an excellent case. The APA then got busy shutting down the book, and silencing the case for questioning Trump as unstable, vengeful, dangerous, citing a rule it made after unfair criticism of far-right lunatic Barry Goldwater from a group of psychiatrists prior to Goldwater’s 1964 presidential run. Fuck the APA and their “diagnostic manual”. It contains no definition of psychopath anyway.

Here’s what we know about psychopaths:  they are manipulative, selfish, concerned with exercising power over others.  They are adept liars, very charming and persuasive when needed.  They have no hesitation to commit bold acts (of every conceivable kind) because they lack empathy and have no capacity to feel regret.  They must take revenge whenever they feel slighted. Most psychopaths are very intelligent, some are not.  Our Number One psychopath is not a smart psychopath, but it hardly matters.   He has the genius army of the best of Charles Koch’s legal and intellectual network watching his back, guiding his revenge tour.

Trump had an argument with government scientists who predicted the path of a killer storm.  He changed their map with a Sharpie, to prove he was right.  Now he has defunded that agency, along with FEMA and any other government agency he feels was mean to him, contradicted him, made him feel like an enraged two year-old.  Adults who react like enraged two-year olds, if they have the power to, will kill you if you make them feel like an enraged two year-old.  That’s what psychopaths do, they are driven to take vengeance on anyone who  makes them feel like the monsters they are.  All in their life depends on the people around them recognizing and admiring their superiority.  Anything else is grounds for the most terrifying revenge imaginable. 

[1]

Nazi immigrant  explains why inferior immigrants have an unfair  bias toward democracy

It’s hard to overstate how stupid this painfully awkward “genius” Nazi psychopath (apartheid South Africa’s military service evading Elon Musk) actually is. I hate to kick an unstable, abusive, bullying, anti-worker, “anti-woke,” antisocial warrior while he’s crying, but why not? I may be suffering from PDS, Psychopath Derangement Syndrome, but, if I’m not mistaken, these two shorts showcase this one’s particular, eh, genius, as well as his charming speech impediment:

Below, if you have the stomach for it, is a nice, weepy illustration of how brittle the myth is that obscene wealth makes someone a “winner”, unlike the tens of millions Americans who work multiple jobs every day to afford health care for their families. Winner or whiner, you be the judge, jury and executioner. What a despicable idiot punk… not surprising that his Nazi grandfather, Joshua Haldeman [1], relocated the family from Canada to South Africa a few generations ago, after grandpaw’s idol lost World War Two. Presumably 1950s Canada wasn’t bigoted enough for his refined taste in racial and eugenic matters.

[1] (from Wikipedia link above) During that time [1943-1948], Haldeman formally made statements discouraging the publicizing of the prevalent antisemitism in [his] party.[18] However, he also gave a speech defending a decision by a party newspaper to publish the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, an antisemitic fabrication claiming an International Jewish conspiracy to rule the world. In his speech, Haldeman said “that the plan as outlined in these protocols has been rapidly unfolding in the period of observation of this generation.”[1] He would later claim apartheid South Africa was leading “White Christian Civilization” against the “International Conspiracy” of Jewish bankers and the “hordes of Coloured people” he claimed they controlled.[1] . . .

. . . Weeks after the Sharpeville massacre on 21 March 1960, Haldeman self-published The International Conspiracy to Establish a World Dictatorship and the Menace to South Africa, a 42-page response to the massacre. The United Nations passed Resolution 134, the body’s first official condemnation of apartheid and the beginning of decades of diplomatic isolation. Later Haldeman self-published a second book alleging international conspiracies: The International Conspiracy in Health targeted fluoridation, vaccinations, and health insurance.[1][22]

Traitorgate

Mary Trump posted this picture at the top of her piece called The Ongoing National Security Debacle.  I have only one word to add to the caption of this picture worth thousands of words.  Mary’s caption is fine, excellent, really.

Morons.

I have read several excellent pieces about this foul bit of ongoing fascist foreplay, the illegal, asshole use of a chat group, on personal phones, to plan and gloat about a secret military strike. Timothy Snyder’s analysis of the larger point of this group chat bullshit is brilliant. Heather Cox Richardson’s keeps to her very high standard of excellent, insightful reporting — if you only read one, her’s is the one to read. Robert Reich is on fire on the obvious, burning question of Where Are the fucking Democrats at this moment?

This kind of coverage (the three mentioned above, I haven’t read Mary’s yet) is a huge part of the fight we all need to participate in, now and not when we are done trembling about the lack of amenities at the eventual death camp many of us will be shoehorned into.

When you are up against Nazis you are fighting psychopaths, whatever spineless mainstream Democrats may say about the virtues of playing possum while the Nazis magically self-destruct because of their own hubris, irrationality, stupidity and incompetence.  The very things that drive Nazis.   The exact things we have to remain educated about, highlight and fight at every turn.  At every fucking turn, my friends.