Category Archives: History and Politics

Why Biden can’t do it (or can he?)

Do it, Joe Biden!

Horrifically enough, Biden can’t legally order FBI vetting of Trump’s mad cabinet picks.

Donald Trump, as transgressive a psychopath as we’ve ever had running this country, is doing what he does best, the thing he shares with angry South African superfreak Elon Musk and their proudly stinking ilk, saying a loud, saucy “fuck you!” to the law and the norms it rode in on. His minions love him for his transgressiveness.

The law in question is The Electoral Count Reform and Presidential Transition Improvement Act of 2022. This law was designed to fix flaws in the previous laws to make sure a lawless, insane fucker like Trump couldn’t run roughshod over the law to, say, try to get his minions, and an enraged lynch mob, to overturn the lawful results of an election., while refusing to put his estimated $700 trillion dollar brand into a blind trust to avoid conflicts of interest while president.

This law provides that the incoming president must sign papers submitting to the provisions of this orderly transition law, allowing his administration to smoothly flow from the one before it. Trump being Trump is doing what he did when Mueller found his final answer to written questions “inadequate” or however the ultra-polite Mueller put it. Trump left his answer to the final, incriminating question completely blank. Nada. Ain’t signing it. Fuck you, pedophile commie cuck losers!

Biden can’t legally order FBI vetting of any of the incoming corrupt incompetents Trump has nominated until, and unless, Trump signs the paper ensuring an orderly, legal transition of power without obvious conflicts of interest.

This would be a perfect test of the absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts the Federalist Six put into place recently to protect their criminal benefactor. It is clearly an important part of Biden’s official presidential duty to ensure a peaceful, legal transfer of power. If he has to break a law that his successor refuses to obey, in order to enforce the law and protect the republic, why the hell not? What are they going to do, prosecute him?

As for why Trumpie is not obeying the law? As Trump said when asked, after a secret, private meeting with Putin in Helsinki, if Putin interfered in the 2016 election “I don’t know why he would.” Trump ain’t signing Jack Shit, Jack Smith! Also, there is no legal way to enforce the law against him, given that the law smashing turd is firmly in charge of the enforcement of all laws and norms, given his huge, 49.9% electoral mandate and the abject sycophancy of his spineless henchpersons and handmaidens.

I take back what I said up top. Do it, Joe Biden.

Pete Hegseth, part 2

Timothy Snyder:

[Trump nominee for Secretary of Defense, Pete] Hegseth does not need to know early American history, though, since he disavows the American republic.  He is a Christian Reconstructionist who believes that God’s law should prevail.  The Constitution has to be understood, Hegseth claims, as subordinate to a broader unwritten Covenant with God, the meaning of which is of course known to him personally.  He thus opposes the constitutional structure of the United States as it figures in the actual text. 

Hegseth denies the rectitude of the First Amendment, which separates church and state: “without God, America is not America.”  He says explicitly that “the diminished role of Christ’s Kingdom in America’s founding” is to blame for the malaise that followed.  Switching his metaphysics for a moment, he claims that the separation of church and state opened “the gates of Mordor.”  Constitutional patriotism is not a good thing, since it can “untether us from the timeless truth, from the Bible.”  Of course, as is always the case, God’s law turns out to mean what Hegseth and his friends say that it means.

The enemy within, broadly defined as “the Left,” is presented as already having a plan to annihilate everyone else.  This is, of course, what fascists always say: it is legitimate to destroy the other side, because however invisibly and conspiratorially and secretly, it is planning to kill you first.  Thus for Hegseth, the Left has the goal of “erasing America’s soul, culture, and institutions. We are the ones standing in their way—and have been targeted for annihilation.”  Hegseth does not dwell, for some reason, on the actual countries that actually want the American system to break.

Only the “enemy within” captures his imagination. Hegseth enjoins his readers to “remember the plan the Left has for you—utter annihilation.”  And again: “In more ways than you can imagine, leftists have surrounded traditional American patriots on all sides, ready to close in for the kill: killing our founders, killing our flag, and killing capitalism. The only option for survival in a near ambush is to charge; to close with, and destroy, the enemy.”

Trump’s nominee for the position of secretary of defense seems to believe that we need a cleansing civil war.  He instructs us that “we are not only fighting a battle against foreign enemies.”  “Sometimes,” he writes, “the fight must begin with a struggle against domestic enemies. Those who would violate the Covenant that binds us as a community of faith and that grants us blessing.” 

source

Deus Vult — God wills it.

Tattoo on Pete Hegseth’s strong right arm. A man of unquestioning faith, only God knows how much Hegseth knows about His eternal, awesome, incomprehensible, all-merciful, terrifying will. Deus vult, baby.

MAGAmania, yo, gigantic mandate!

Trump transition spokesperson Alex Pfeiffer told Will Steakin of ABC News that discussions of Gaetz’s payments [apparently for sex with two seventeen year-olds] “are meant to undermine the mandate from the people to reform the Justice Department.”  (Heather Cox Richardson)

Gaetz would have been the perfect MAGA Attorney General to carry out Trumpie’s mandate to reform the DOJ, considering it’s currently impossible to reanimate the corpse of Roy Cohn, the only better pick for that role.   Here’s Trumpie’s latest bestie, South African twat Elon Musk, making a genius case for Matt Gaetz:

If you’re a super-wealthy, born-entitled, angry, attention-craving dork with an oversized taste for trolling and dominating others, you want a smart AG with a spine of steel and an ax to grind. Of course you need a super-loyal bully with an ax to grind, got to have that revenge motive working. What good is power if you don’t get to swing a sharpened ax to make sure your will is forever obeyed?

Meanwhile, the MAGA spokes-shills are tirelessly spinning the myth of MAGA’s enormous, throbbing mandate.

A spokesperson for the Trump transition said of [Trump Secretary of Education pick Linda] McMahon’s misrepresented credentials [lying about having a BA in education while running for a school board position]: “These types of politically motivated attacks are the new normal for nominees ready to enact President Trump’s mandate for common sense that an overwhelming majority of Americans supported two weeks ago.” (Heather)

That overwhelming majority of Americans now stands at an impressive 49.9% of those who voted (in an election with a turn out about 10,000,000 voters lower than 2020). Within the margin of error, true, and we don’t know how many mail-in ballots were undelivered from Democratic-leaning districts in swing states by the smirking Trump megadonor postmaster (and the odds are that we may never learn that number– try finding any clue on-line), but an OVERWHELMING majority, nonetheless.

Compare that mandate to the one Dick “I Am Not A Crook” Nixon, patron saint of these modern day MAGA zealots, got in 1972 (after the infamous Watergate break-in, before Nixon’s inglorious resignation to avoid indictment two years later):

Leaving aside the question of why I get these from the goddamned Richard Nixon Foundation…

So far we are not even talking about walking Putin talking point, friend of the Syrian dictator and good looking woman who allows the loathsome Orange Polyp to literally paw her in front of a large audience, Tulsi Gabbard, Trumpie’s pick for Putin-approved Director of National Intelligence [1].  Gabbard, a former Democrat, was a dark horse 2020 Democratic contender for the presidential nomination (like her whacky fellow traveler Bobby Kennedy Jr. in 2024) before waking up one day suddenly loving of the taste of the GOP strongman’s “ring”.   They all have to kiss it, come on.  Lindsey Graham will tell you exactly what it tastes like and why it is so hard to stop “kissing”. Take one look at the smile on MAGA Mike Johnson’s cherubic face, it speaks louder than all of the Christ-fearing extremist’s words ever could.

In other news, hate crimes are up in the USA, and on the rise, as white supremacists stage shows of force in towns and cities all over America. This trend started under the first Trump administration, which saw a 20% rise in hate crimes. Here’s a trusted fake news site, Newsweek, from November, 2020:

Hate crimes have surged nearly 20 percent during the administration of President Donald Trump, according to a new FBI report on hate crime statistics. The report also shows that hate-motivated murders, largely committed by white supremacists, spiked to their highest number in 28 years.

source

Nothing wrong with violent expressions good old fashioned hatred, of course, if the people your followers hate are hateful, sick, blood poisoning, dangerous enemy-within vermin. Nothing to worry about, unless you’re a hateful loser. That’s why the massive congregations of wealthy Christian theocrats, the Klan and American Nazis helped give MAGA it’s overwhelming mandate.

[1] But Trump’s pick for director of national intelligence makes McMahon look like a prize. As military scholar Tom Nichols points out in The Atlantic, former representative TulsI Gabbard is “stunningly unqualified” to oversee all of America’s intelligence services, including the Central Intelligence Agency. Nichols notes that her constant parroting of Russian talking points and her cozying up to Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad make her “a walking Christmas tree of warning lights” for our national security.  

Former Republican governor of South Carolina Nikki Haley suggested that Gabbard is “a Russian, Iranian, Syrian, Chinese sympathizer” who has no place at the head of American intelligence. A Russian state media presenter refers to Gabbard as “our girlfriend” and as a Russian agent. (Heather)

Führereid

We are in for a hell of ride, boys and girls, a Führereid, if you will.

My German vocabulary is extremely limited. Virtually every phrase I know is an idiosyncratic, specialized term I learned while studying the history of the Nazis. I know words like vernichtungslager (annhiliation camp) sonderbehandlung [1] (“special handling” stamped on the papers of Jews being expedited to the camps) and Lebensunwertes Leben [2] (“lives not worth living”, as deemed by the Nazis). Today I added a highly pertinent phrase, Führereid, the blood oath of personal loyalty to the infallible party leader, Herr Hitler.

We are living at a moment when an eighty-nine year-old psychopath, Charles Koch, is excited to see the culmination of his life’s work, his father’s Hitler-admiring dream come true in the administration of seventy-eight year old psychopath Donald “Jesus” Trump (Donald’s psychopath father was literally named Frederick Christ Trump). This is as serious a moment in history as any evil genius (such as Koch) could create in the lab. Wuhan’s got nothing on this gathering plague.

In order to be an elected (or appointed) Republican in good standing, one must do exactly what the leader demands.  If that demand is to publicly stand behind a thoroughly debunked lie about a stolen election that got several of Trump’s attorneys disbarred, and others to take guilty pleas, if you know what is good for you, you will say, at the very least, that there are legitimate and serious questions about 2020 that were never answered (like, why are numerous Stop the Steal riot conspirators not serving long prison sentences?). 

To be a Republican official in good standing you must state that it is perfectly fine for the leader to violate the Espionage Act by stealing (and most likely selling) secret documents, commit crimes while campaigning and then while in office (34 counts of which he’s been convicted for), have a fraudulent university and charity closed down, incite a deadly riot in a crazed attempt to stay in power, make vile, racist misogynistic threats (as a man convicted of committing a close variant of rape and then repeatedly defaming the victim), proudly echo Hitler in overheated rhetoric about vermin, blood poisoning and the “enemy within”.  

Now, all that’s left for you, if your job is important to you, is to argue why it is necessary to shut down FBI vetting of wildly incompetent, badly compromised cabinet nominees, (as was already done with lifetime appointee Boof Kavanaugh), and the way is clear for Führerswortes haben gesetzeskraft (“the Führer’s word has the force of law”.)

For totalitarianism to take hold of a nation several things must happen.  Language and meaning must be distorted beyond rationality, as in “alternative fact”, so that no reasonable discussion may ever take place.  Fear must be so pervasive that citizens and officials obey pressure to conform in advance (Bezos, Mika and Scarboro, etc.) and are terrorized when they think of organizing to dissent.  Political opponents become sick, evil enemies to be imprisoned, killed or otherwise silenced.  Blackmail becomes the coin of the realm and only powerful insiders are excused for crimes, for all others, justice!

Resisting this oligarch-funded tsunami of blind obedience to their collective will is going to require great creativity, organization, doggedness and, unfortunately, a great deal of collective suffering.   We have to be creative, united, resolute and ready to rumble.  The first thing Biden has to do is order FBI vetting of this drawer full of creepy crawlers Trumpie has nominated as his cabinet.  Then, as Steve Bannon (soon of the long prison sentence for defrauding MAGA nation) says “strap in.”

The Hitler Oath (German: Führereid or Führer Oath) — also referred in English as the Soldier’s Oath[1]—refers to the oaths of allegiance sworn by officers and soldiers of the Wehrmacht and civil servants of Nazi Germany between the years 1934 and 1945. The oath pledged personal loyalty to Adolf Hitler rather than loyalty to the Weimar Constitution of the country. Historians view the personal oath of the Nazi Germany as an important psychological element to obey orders for committing war crimes, atrocities, and genocide.[2] During the Nuremberg trials, many German officers unsuccessfully attempted to use the oath as a defense against charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity.[3]

source

(check out the punishments at the bottom for those who refused to take the oath)

[1]

[2] source

Doctors were the ones primarily responsible for applying the plan in order to eliminate people labeled as incurably ill, children with hereditary defects, criminals, the mentally ill, the physically disabled, pedophiles, homosexuals, and adults or elderly people considered “unproductive.”

Aktion T4 was implemented through two channels: euthanasia, practiced on people who fit into those categories, and sterilization en masse, so that there would be no new children with what the doctors considered disabilities that would make people unhappy. And we are speaking here of German patients.

Doctors considered that each of those persons was a “life not worth living” (Lebensunwertes Leben), and presented them as such. It is calculated that between 200,000 and 275,000 people were systematically murdered out of “compassion,” while massive sterilization programs reached more than 400,000 people—always, in every case, against the patient’s will and without consent.

Black women were the only ones who understood the stakes

And by the way, what the fuck is wrong with white people and Latinos?

This new “Biden outrage” just in from the folks who brought you “anarchist jurisdictions” who would not receive emergency federal funds during Covid, the last time they held the Executive branch. Of course the bipartisan, willing to cooperate with those who hate him, Biden is the one who, eh, weaponized the government against his enemies… The incoherent but jubilant fascist revenge tour is now officially underway, with lovable Ron DeSanctimonious leading the way, as real leaders do.

The obvious difference in this story is that the rogue FEMA asshole who did this was immediately fired by FEMA, under Biden. In the Trump or DeSanctimonious administrations, this malignantly partisan assclown would be promoted to acting director of FEMA, pronto.

Black women are not to blame for any of what’s about to come, though they will be hit the hardest by it, along with Black and Latino men. And then, of course, attention will be paid to bigmouthed libtard cucks, homosexuals, liberal mass media, trans people, Muslims, Hindus, Jews, labor unionists, humanists, the disabled, intellectuals, liberals, economic justice advocates, Peace Corps volunteers, environmentalists, Gypsies, the depressed, nature lovers, sensitive, unmanly boys, cross-fit tomgirls, raped teenagers, NATO supporters, battered women, OBGYN doctors and nurses, Human Rights activists, historians, social workers, sociologists, democracy fetishists, anti-fascists, socialists, anti-nuclear activists, Voting Rights advocates, non-corporate scientists, Democrats, non-violent protesters, Ukrainians, Gazans, etc.

Let’s face it, MAGA just had better ideas

Don’t listen to freaks from our shameful hippie past like Robert Reich, there is nothing wrong with the best people in our country having 10,000,000 times more than the lowest low lifes in our country and being able to profit handsomely from their greatness. MAGA won because it has better ideas. Here are just a few:

Eliminating pre-existing conditions from health insurance was pure communism designed to cripple the health insurance industry. So, pre-existing conditions are back. If you’re already sick, don’t come whining about “fairness”, pay what you are required or shut up and die. Health care is not a “right” it’s a privilege you get from your boss, if you work hard enough.

The states should decide, according to local beliefs and customs, if raped eleven year-olds are allowed to have abortions. The Supreme Court, and all elected Republicans, stressed this state sovereignty principle at the time Roe was abolished. To that end, a national ban on abortions. That’s why you gave us a proven fighter for president and a robust majority in the Senate.

Sometimes the so-called racists are right. Who is more deserving to run the country, the richest, smartest, most successful man in the world, and the colorful, controversial son of a famous political leader who was assassinated by a colored person, and Donald Trump, or … you get my point.

Joe Biden was the most corrupt, criminal and dumbest president in history. That’s why he lost, he did nothing but stutter and comically try to hide his dementia. Now we have the least corrupt, most honest and smartest president in history.

So-called climate change is a hoax designed to destroy our greatest corporations by crippling them with expensive regulations. Once those regulations are removed super-storms will stop and this nation will take a giant step toward being great again. There is no reason to believe so-called climate scientists more than the Bible, Exxon and faith.

Homosexuality is banned by the Bible. The punishment for it is death by stoning. The same punishment for women who commit adultery, ye scribes and hypocrites. So saith the Lord.

Women are born to be subservient to men. That is simply God’s will and the natural order for mankind. It’s called mankind for a reason, dummy.

Most liberals are pedophiles.

That so-called Black, so-called female presidential candidate was busy, even while campaigning for an office she was unqualified for, cutting the dicks off young boys in schools, putting dresses on them and sending the poor kids home as girls. This was proved to millions of us real men during the World Series! [1]

She was PERSONALLY cutting the dicks off boys in schools all over the country!

They WERE eating the dogs and eating the cats, hamsters, iguanas, rabbits, snakes, fish, etc.

Giving further tax breaks to the most successful Americans means we’ll all have a better chance of becoming wealthy.

It is essential to have the party with the most committed billionaire donors win every election. This ensures that our most important citizens have proportionately loud voices in our democracy.

In order for a president to faithfully carry out his duties, obviously it’s sometimes necessary to do things that are plainly criminal. In these cases, it is important that the president not be locked in the straitjacket of “law”. Nothing he does while officially trying to make American Great Again can be considered by any criminal grand jury ever. No pardon he sells can ever be challenged as “corrupt”. As Jesus Christ Himself intended.

White men are better than everybody else.

God bless these United Shaysssssh.

[1]

Liberal pedophiles will claim that this is an outrageous lie promulgated to the tune of tens of millions in ad buys ($215,000,000 spent on these ads, according to Brian Tyler Cohen) by billionaire-funded super PACs working to elect Trump, but who are you going to believe, a great, highly memorable ad you’ve seen fifty times, including during the World Series (second only to the Superbowl for market impact and credibility), or somebody who dreams of diddling children in a disgustingly unChristian way?

Status quid pro quo

Hard as it is to swallow this much shit at one time, we need to start rousing ourselves for the fight against what is about to come.

The corporatization of society, with a narrow focus on the stock market’s sacred bottom line, means both parties are run by corporate/billionaire interests and the vast majority of us can fuck off and kill each other. Although both parties do very well for the rich and powerful, neither corporate party is really looking out for the tens of millions of powerless, basically screwed citizens of the United States. Hence 70,000,000 votes for MAGA, at least Trump acknowledges screwed people’s right to be mad as hell about being treated like shit.

A little history/context, then.

89 year-old Charles Koch, son of abusive Hitler admiring John Birch Society founding member Fred Koch, has been hard at work with his billionaire cronies brilliantly engineering this nightmare moment for fifty years.   His dad would be so proud of Charlie’s accomplishments.   

Thanks to the efforts of Koch’s network of think tanks and far right fraternal organizations (with a tip of the cap to Rupert Murdoch), corporations are people, minorities and individual humans not so much.  Unlimited dark money in politics is now protected free speech.  Billionaires can give uncounted billions to PACs to elect their chosen candidates to public office. What could go wrong?

Well-regulated militia: regulating guns unconstitutional!  Partisan gerrymandering is fine and perfectly legal, unless overtly racist speeches are made by legislators in full Klan regalia while they draw the districts, and there is video tape of it and fifty or more Republican witnesses present.   Voting Rights schmoting rights, majoritarian tyranny must be stopped, enough with the vicious accusations of white nationalist racism already.   

Quid pro quos are fine, as long as the quid gratuity comes after the quo.  Medieval witch burning theologians are fine to cite as irrefutable authorities in a Supreme Court decision to force raped girls to give birth.  Women only have full bodily autonomy if they are wealthy or the wives of right wing extremist Supreme Court justices. 

President may now commit crimes in office if he uses the Dershowitz/Nixon/Nuremberg defense: he honestly feels he is battling inhuman monsters in his official capacity.  If he orders a murder, or a dozen, he can preemptively pardon the murderers, no questions asked.   

This checklist would have been Hitler’s wet dream.  No need to burn down the German Reichstag and seize emergency powers to be a dictator on day one if you had a series of unappealable legal rulings like that to work with.

I think Rebecca Solnit nails why fervent belief in a lying, predatory, raping, revenge crazed, born wealthy, transactional, bigoted, criminal, slightly demented con artist, fiercely held by tens of millions of Americans, has been able to go mainstream enough to put the man and his best people back in power:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/nov/07/us-progressive-election-trump-maga

Words from the demented, unpopular Joe Biden

Popularity polls, the right-wing ecosystem, unregulatable social media and the laser focus of “liberal” corporate mass media, convinced enough Americans that Joe Biden was so diminished by age that, in spite of his many impressive accomplishments as president, he was a failed president unfit for office. Compare his mental acuity and ability to communicate clearly and intelligently — both so disparaged throughout his campaign that he was forced out of the race — to those of the dancing Dictator on Day One we have now.

God bless, and Heaven help, these United Shayssssh.