Pete Hegseth

The New York Times reports the details of the incident that caused Fox News host and defender of Navy SEAL war criminal Edward Gallagher [1], Pete Hegseth, Trump’s nominee to head the Department of Defense, to pay an undisclosed amount of money to a woman in exchange for a non-disclosure agreement.

Trump himself couldn’t have done it better. Perfect agreement! 

The salacious details don’t matter (read the NY Times account anyway), the agreement is ironclad and absolutely nothing wrong happened, per the agreement and the undisclosed sum of money paid to settle the matter and keep it private forever (see NY Times account).

In other news, Matt Gaetz, also totally innocent and viciously persecuted by angry, name-calling libtard cucks armed with disgusting leaked private details of Mr. Gaetz’s personal life, cleared the way for Aileen Cannon’s appointment as Attorney General of the United States of America.

[1] Gallagher was turned in by his fellow Navy SEALs after, among other things, witness accounts that he stabbed a wounded teenaged Iraqi prisoner to death, and posed with the corpse, holding the cadaver’s head by the hair (as one does). A military tribunal convicted Gallagher of posing for a photograph with a corpse and texting the photo to friends. Gallagher was outraged. So was Hegseth, who became his powerful advocate. Trump gave Gallagher a full pardon. A perfect pardon! As all presidential pardons now are, according to the Federalist Society Six. Here are some of the now irrelevant details about the accusations against Gallagher:

Gallagher was accused of multiple offenses during his final deployment to Iraq and during the Battle for Mosul. The most prominent accusation and the best-attested to was the murder of a prisoner of war, a war crime.[9] Khaled Jamal Abdullah, a captured 17-year-old fighter of the Islamic State, was being treated by a medic.[12] According to two SEAL witnesses, Gallagher said “he’s mine” over the radio, then walked up to Abdullah and allegedly proceeded to stab him with his hunting knife without explanation. Gallagher and his commanding officer, Lieutenant Jake Portier, then posed for photographs of them standing over the body with some other nearby SEALs. Gallagher then text messaged a friend in California a picture of himself holding the dead captive’s (ISIS) head by the hair with the explanation “Good story behind this, got him with my hunting knife.”[9][13]

Prosecutors alleged that Gallagher’s sniper work during his 2017 deployment became “reckless” and “bloodthirsty”.[5] He allegedly fired his rifle far more frequently than other snipers;[5] according to testimony, the other snipers in the platoon did not consider him a good sniper, and he took “random shots” into buildings.[1] Other snipers said they witnessed Gallagher taking at least two militarily pointless shots, shooting and killing an unarmed elderly man in a white robe as well as a young girl walking with other girls.[5] Gallagher allegedly boasted about the large number of people he had killed, claiming he averaged three kills a day over 80 days, including four women.[1] Gallagher also was reportedly known for indiscriminately spraying neighborhoods with rockets and machine gun fire with no known enemy force in the region.[9]

A charge of obstruction of justice was brought against Gallagher for alleged witness intimidation. According to the claim, Gallagher allegedly threatened to kill fellow SEALs if they reported his actions.[5] The Navy cited his text messages as attempting to undermine the investigation, with messages sent to “pass the word on those traitors”, meaning cooperating witnesses, and to get them blacklisted within the special warfare community.[9][1] This resulted in him being confined in the brig for a time with heavy restrictions on his ability to communicate, although this confinement was later lessened.[5]

Gallagher was also charged with nearly a dozen lesser offenses.[5] Some of these charges, such as flying a drone over a corpse, were dismissed during preliminary hearings.[14]

According to the original Navy prosecutor Chris Czaplak, “Chief Gallagher decided to act like the monster the terrorists accuse us of being. He handed ISIS propaganda manna from heaven. His actions are everything ISIS says we are.”[6][5] Gallagher’s lawyer, Phillip Stackhouse, alleged the accusations were without foundation and came from a small number of disgruntled SEALs who could not meet Gallagher’s leadership demands. The accusations against Gallagher were recorded to be fabricated by teammates that started a mutiny in the SEAL platoon.[5]

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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.

The definition of insanity, redux

The meme definition of insanity, often attributed to Albert Einstein, is doing the same thing over and over expecting a different outcome. I offer a full-color real-life illustration of that principle in action. I am only slightly less insane, for most of this anecdote, than the madman I am describing.

An old friend was going through a difficult divorce (I know of few easy ones) from a wife whose impressive anger he was physically afraid of. He had reason to be afraid, she looked like she could kick the shit out of him if it came to it. They fought constantly, though he never crossed the line to find out if his wife would actually beat him to a pulp, maim or murder him.

That’s where I, his closest friend ever, as he often told me, came in. He could take out some of this anger in the safety of our friendship, through passive aggressive attacks. Physical aggression was never his style, nor mine, but if it came to it, he was taking no chances with me. So he’d provoke me, usually by playing a merciless devil’s advocate in any situation where I expressed indignation, hurt or confusion.

As I’d start getting pissed off and testily tell him to pump the brakes, he’d announce, each time, that I had a problem with my temper. That raises a separate question, most people will eventually lose their composure if provoked relentlessly enough by someone close to them.

Of course, he could never admit to provoking me, since he is a high minded man of peace who simply wants everyone to get along.  How would admitting he purposely makes his closest friend angry every time they got together make him look?  So we had a long stalemate that lasted several years.  We had more than one sit down to talk things out, things that I hadn’t yet realized were in the nature of the irrational beast that was our childhood friendship.  

During this time I exercised a patience that sometimes felt superhuman to me.  I almost slugged him on a couple of occasions, but our middle class upbringings got the better of that impulse.  I came to regard him as something close to a friend, but stopped trusting  him with vulnerabilities he could exploit.  This compromise made our friendship a seriously limited partnership.  If you can’t trust a friend with your feelings, there’s not much left.

In the end, after speaking to him many times about this constant provocation, and his reflexive denial that he’d ever provoked me, or anyone else, I concluded the friendship was not viable. This was some years before I learned the terrible law of some friendships — whatever you once tolerated from a friend is the baseline for what you will get in the future, if things start going south. There is no saving certain relationships. When you see contempt and the constant dismissal of your right to your actual feelings, a friendship can’t be saved.

Toward the end of his hellish thirty year marriage, and the official end of our friendship, I called to see how he was holding up. He texted back that we couldn’t talk on the phone, that any talk would need to be in person. He texted back that he needed to see me as soon as possible. A few days later he showed up in my neighborhood, texted when he arrived and we chose a corner to meet on. I stood on that corner and waved to him, as he pulled up. He looked around frantically, made a right turn and drove up Broadway. When I caught up to him at a red light and got in, I saw how stressed he was by the way one of his eyes was twitching.

He smiled and made small talk until I asked him what the urgency to meet in person was. Then he came to the point.

“I don’t know if our friendship can be saved,” he said, “too much damage may have already been done by what you did, and I don’t know if it’s forgivable.”

I think he understood from my expression that I had no idea what he was talking about, but, taking no chances, I said “you’ll have to help me out here, I truly have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Then it came out in a cascade. I had, either deliberately, or with a recklessness no friend is ever allowed to show to someone he cares about, tried to destroy his marriage.

You could have knocked me over with yer proverbial feather. I asked him to elaborate. It turns out that at a marriage counseling session his wife had quoted me, with massive distortion and out of context, to crippling effect. She was then able to say “I’m not the only one who knows you’re a compulsive liar. Your best friend from childhood says you’re a fucking liar!” citing what I’d supposedly said about two versions of the same story I’d heard from each of them.

His story of a recent conflict between an insane and destructive friend of his and his wife, an anecdote I had no interest in hearing, lasted less than a minute. He stopped, telling me he regretted that he’d started to tell it to me. I asked no questions and we went on to other subjects. His wife, who I always liked, called a few days later and told me the complete story. When she was done I said “well, that makes a lot more sense than what Moishe told me.”

“Oh, what did that fucking liar tell you?” she asked, gearing up for the next round with her provocative sparring partner husband.

I told her he’d started to tell me the story, I had no interest in hearing it, he thought better of telling it, stopped, I’d asked him no follow up questions. I told her I didn’t care to hear about it, and his partial version, which lasted about a minute, hadn’t made much sense, but that her long version totally explained what had actually happened.

From here it was a straight line to the marriage counselor agreeing with his angry wife that if he didn’t have the courage to confront a friend who called him a liar behind his back, a destructive person and false friend deliberately or recklessly trying to destroy his marriage, then neither his wife, nor the marriage counselor, could ever have any respect for him. Thus manipulated he rushed off, eye atwitch, to do battle and prove his courage under fire, to save his doomed marriage.

My reaction doesn’t matter for purposes of this story. I sat with him for a few hours, talking everything through, giving him context, making my best suggestions. I told him to go back and tell the marriage counselor what had actually happened, give her all the context.

I was still too innocent, somehow, to realize that talk, no matter how rational or persuasive, can never make a dent in craziness like this. I also didn’t yet grasp the right thing to do when confronted that way, particularly by someone who fears you. Taking the high road, I could have just left the car and walked away. Alternatively, I could have grabbed him by the front of his shirt and menaced him before walking away. I could have also offered him one hard, open handed slap in the face, to be done with the brittle veneer of our friendship forever. Talking reasonably wasn’t going to help anyone at that point, though, by reflex and long habit, I did this for literally a few hours. He even thanked me at the end.

Now we fast forward a decade or so, a period of non-friendship. He has become, in some ways, an observant Jew. He goes to the Chabad House in his town, puts on t’fillin (ancient prayer accoutrements bound to the head and arm) every morning to pray and studies the teachings of the Jewish religion with a rabbi.

The most important teaching of our religion is our duty to our fellow humans on the holiest day of the year, Yom Kippur. On that day, according to tradition, God judges each of us, according to our deeds. We are required, before nightfall on Yom Kippur, to seek forgiveness from those we’ve hurt the previous year, forgive those who seek our forgiveness and make amends whenever we can.

In this guy’s personal vision of Judaism, apparently, expressing sympathy for another person’s health problems is the highest moral act a person can perform. He calls periodically to express sympathy for my medical challenges, and ask endless questions about my several major health aggravations. I speak to him calmly, tell him about life lessons I’ve learned since we last spoke. He never has any new lessons to report. He calls a few months later, and after expressing shock that we haven’t talked for so long, asks the same detailed questions about the same aggravating health headaches.

In his mind, it would seem, if enough time passes after even the worst interpersonal ugliness, everything mystically heals. Time itself, through the operation of the Divine, perhaps, eliminates the need to do any more than show sympathy for physical troubles in order to make friendship magically bloom again, no matter what has occurred in the past. You can call this idea crazy, I certainly do. And yet, until now, I have picked up the phone when he calls. It is a weird thing on my part, I have to confess.

I recognize that he is, arguably, the most neurotic person I’ve ever met. It’s easy to see he lacks even the most primitive ability to be self-critical, though he is visibly self-loathing enough for a whole family of self-haters. Why do I pick up the phone when I see his name on the screen? I’m certainly far beyond expecting a different outcome.

I guess there’s a side of me that wants to see how far he will keep pushing this crazy envelope. There is a strange fascination for me, not untinged with horror, every time he reaches out as though we are still the best of friends. So far I haven’t had the heart to ask him this heartbreakingly simple, deal breaking question:

If you accuse somebody of maliciously trying to hurt you, and it turns out they were not trying to hurt you, that, acting on false intel, you acted unfairly, unwisely, hurtfully, in a way that would have badly hurt you, had someone done it to you, are you right to pray every day, and study the words of the sages, righteously hoping for a better life, without ever offering an apology to the person you hurt?

I could add, why don’t you ask your rabbi what the thing God wants you to do is? But that would be overkill, no? Like sending him a link to this piece.

Concierge medical care

America is rapidly becoming, if you have the money and you want responsive medical care, the land of concierge doctors and nurses.

The number one hospital for orthopedic surgery, HSS, where I had my left knee replaced almost 600 days ago, boasts on huge banners all over its grounds that it has been the top hospital for orthopedics fourteen years in a row. That doesn’t mean they provide aftercare, and they don’t claim to. If you have a problem, pain, stiffness, difficulty walking, sleeping, whatever, when the x-rays show a perfect mechanical result, it’s not their problem, since the operation was 100% successful, even if you can’t walk more than a block 18 months after surgery.

They don’t claim to be the number one hospital for follow-up care, as you learn when they provide zero aftercare, can’t get you in to see their physical therapists for post-surgical evaluation and offer no solution (other than another operation, a 50/50 coinflip) to a not uncommon, foreseeable but difficult to fix chronic disability they did not help you avoid.

Corporate medicine increasingly works this way in the United States. Health care is an enormously profitable sector and vampire entrepreneurs are increasingly getting in on this lucrative growth industry. More and more doctors work for corporations that take care of all the business aspects of medical care. The bottom line is probably better for all of them and it’s easier to be a doctor in our country if you don’t have to compete with giant medical corporations that have the wealth and infrastructure to put you out of business.

The only casualty is the patient, sometimes. In the event of a good result, there’s no problem. In the event of a problem, complication, need for follow-up, corporate medicine has an answer — concierge follow up, done by telephone, billed as a regular doctor visit, sometimes 100% paid by insurance, or in the case of someone over 65, if you have purchased supplemental insurance for your 20% Medicare copay.

I had a call from my new urologist’s office the other day. These folks are hard to reach or get a return call from on a good day and I’m not optimistic about reaching anyone there if something goes wrong with my upcoming procedure. The caller, a likable guy named Tony, called to offer me a direct number to call and talk to a dedicated nurse any time after my upcoming surgical procedure.

We wound up speaking for a while and it emerged he was not affiliated, nor did he know, the medical practice he was calling from. Somehow, through corporate wizardry, his call appeared to be coming from the difficult to reach office with an offer to give me a direct after care line. Tony worked for a third party selling concierge assurance to rightfully nervous patients.

He agreed it was crazy that he couldn’t tell me the price I’d have to pay for one of these follow up calls billed as a doctor visit. He was with me when I pointed out the madness of healthcare being the only store in America where they can’t tell you the price of anything before you buy it. The standard line is that the doctor has to wait for insurance to bill them before they can tell you the price. My standard reply is to ask if I’m the first patient who ever came to them with this insurance that they take every day. Their standard reply is some kind of smile reflecting an attempt to be civil. None of these folks have any control of anything, and it’s pointless to antagonize them with questions there are no reasonable answers to. Tony and I parted as friends, our call recorded, and by midway through he was no longer trying to sell me a service he could not tell me the price of, but one I’d definitely be on the hook to pay 20% of.

America the beautiful. Exceptional. About to become even more exceptional. I’m keeping my fingers crossed it won’t become too much more exceptional. It’s already much more exceptional than is healthy for almost every American.

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?