'Tis the Season in Pictures

 

A time for rebirth and renewed hope?  And a promise of protection?

The 25th consecutive day of protests in Georgia. The "Georgian Dream" might just be heading towards a "Romanian Christmas". pic.twitter.com/oNkhkwvZYq

— Daractenus (@Daractenus) December 22, 2024

Asma Triggers

 

JUST IN: Former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's wife files for divorce and plans to move to the United Kingdom. pic.twitter.com/WGQLXrlvFX

— BRICS News (@BRICSinfo) December 22, 2024

Asma wants a divorce, of course, of course,

because no one wants stuck with a dumb dead horse

a coursing bore, a nasty sore,

Syria's famous former head!

(Apologies to the Mr. Ed theme song writers and absolutely no one else. She's a nasty piece of work herself.) 

UPDATE: This morning, Twitter tells me this is apparently not true. Or as I tend to think, not true yet. 

UPDATE: To get all my ducks in row, Moscow says she isn't divorcing Assad to get her ass out of Russia and back to the UK. Also she might have leukemia.  I was going to find a solitary fuck for her, but it might have got lost in a mass grave somewhere. 

Lab-Created Bullshit

Some western observers don't quite understand why General Igor Kirillov was a legitimate military target (see: what is a "general"?)  or understand that lying war criminals are actually bad. Kirillov was behind the dumb propaganda that there were US/Ukrainian biolabs about to threaten the RU/UKR border. I always thought this was a little bit of a backhand at the US for claiming mobile biolabs in Iraq before 2003. But it is totally not the case and never was. And the fuckers who play games with the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant have no business talking up Ukrainian "dirty" nuclear bomb threats anyway.

Which brings me to Elon Musk, incoming US president in fact if not in name, who is goofing with a government shutdown even before his old-age addled proxy is sworn in, threatening the GOP Speaker (presumptive) of the next Congress and also lying his dumb goofy pale face off. He says this on his dumb loss-leader propaganda site:

The Touch, the Feel of Cotton

 

Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov, the Commander of the Russian Armed Force’s Radiological, Chemical and Biological Defence Unit, as well as one of his Deputies were Killed in a Bombing earlier tonight at the Entrance to an Apartment Building in the Ryazansky District of Moscow. pic.twitter.com/FhbzUuwwlj

— OSINTdefender (@sentdefender) December 17, 2024

I'm sure this guy has a family and all that, but so you know, the term you see online regarding explosions: Bavovna!  has to do with cotton, and this is really interesting to me at the moment. 

So anyway, I was thinking when I first started seeing "Bavovna!" that it was like some onomatopoeia thing. The sound of an explosion. We say "BOOM!" So why not? "Ba-VOV-na!" ka-BOOM! 

It means "cotton".  Little puffy cloud. RU colonizing language and people--you'll see.

Anyway, Ukraine gave some Bavovna fuel to Syria. Even RU says so.  (Sell our weapons to end Assad--I am not even MAD!)  And RU has to withdraw when they were having such an influence in Africa:

The End of Assad

 

I haven't really known where to start this week. Tblisi? Romania? But it's Syria. Good gracious if I were ever to believe, God. The rebels took over everywhere. Everything, after so many years, fell. And Bashar al-Assad's Russian friends have been run off, too. And he has fucked off to Moscow. (Actually, I know he was in Moscow last week and never noticed him leaving. When the heck did he leave to fuck off on back?)

I don't know if Assad-cheerleader and avid consumer of RU agitprop, Tulsi Gabbard is at home crying into her Putin shaped comfort woobie, but the quality of her often-offered pro-Assad and pro-Putin opinions are about to take an uncommon beating.  Which she totally has earned. 

I also don't know how Trump and them feel about what Romania has done with respects to their dodgy election. I personally think Trump should have been disqualified as an insurrectionist, but we just don't do stuff like that here, regardless of what our Constitution says. 

I do winder if some of the people who voted for him are feeling the buyer's remorse yet. And what exactly would happen if we tried to stage a "do-over" here. 

But this post isn't about the US--it's about this:

Which One, Sweetie?

 

Tulsi Gabbard was everywhere today, and it turns out, she isn't just on the short list for Trump's running mate, she's got a book! With Regnery! What is fun to me is, her Tweet about the book has the above title, and the Amazon picture has a different title:

The difference between "Why I Left the Democratic Party" and "Leave the Democrat Party Behind" is actually pretty unsubtle. The first suggests a personal decision and calls the party the preferred name: Democratic Party. The second version uses "Leave the Democrat Party". This is phrased like a command and a slight--Hey, you! Leave those Democrats. 

I do believe, and have believed, that Gabbard is a mess. But her "For Love of Country" so stimulates me: Which one? Syria? Russia? She says she left the Democratic party behind--and I am assuming it was because someone made a better offer. A better person than her once quipped that he didn't leave the Democratic Party behind, it left him. But has the Democratic Party changed at all--with respects to civil rights, to diversity and equality and LGBT rights--since she tried to run for the presidential nomination in 2020? 

One War

 

BREAKING:
Pentagon: U.S. military hit two facilities in eastern Syria used by Iran in “self defense strikes.”

Secy of Defense Austin warns “If attacks by Iran’s proxies against U.S. forces continue, we will not hesitate to take further necessary measures.” pic.twitter.com/SI6jSUcUhd

— MSNBC (@MSNBC) October 27, 2023

Having considered the Israeli massacre by Hamas occurring on Putin's birthday and the way it directed attention away from Ukraine, I really can't count out the idea that there is one war. When I see Putin using Iran materiel, I see one war. When I see a Hamas delegation going to the Kremlin, I see one war.  International conditions, conceived in fuckery, owing to one guy who is probably chronically if not terminally ill and mentally unfit--Putin. Trying to make his former Soviet something again. 

I get how trying to make a country something again can be the most misplaced nostalgia in the world. All the more reason why I see a petrostate hand funneling money to support the assbackwards dreams of MAGA right here, funding the Civil War or Revolutionary ideation of the NRA via guns. As one pretty obvious example. Or more lowkey: they just own the right because of bigotry and authoritarianism. 

This nation (the US) started by overthrowing the right of kings to rule--a religious right to a chosen few sanctioning an abrogation of individual rights. The idea of God-appointed rulers should appall people living in our representational republic. And yet some want to install Trump and call him "chosen", As Putin got installed by various forms of unfreedom and leverage. As a Bashar al-Assad represents massive unfreedom so authoritarian right-wingers will approve.  It's not hard to understand. It is also not hard to understand that their support of this travesty of freedom isn't about liberation at all, but force. 

Force they want to use on the US to scare us away from the one war. The war against democracy and rule of law. 

The Flog of War

 

Tom Cotton on Fox News Sunday: "As far as I'm concerned, Israel can bounce the rubble in Gaza. Anything that happens in Gaza is the responsibility of Hamas. Hamas killed women and children in Israel last weekend." pic.twitter.com/j1BiV7yjab

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 15, 2023

Sure. Make the rubble bounce.  As far as Tom Cotton is concerned. But I'm not Tom Cotton (thanks be) and I have a conscience and understand that just because Hamas sucks, doesn't mean responsible people get to be comfortable that innocent humans become collateral damage. This is why someone like Tom Cotton shouldn't really be a senator. One of my absolutes in a very small basket of them is sociopaths shouldn't be in office. If you have no empathy for other people, go be elsewhere. Sell patent drugs to gym rats. Produce reality television. Design hideous clothes for plus size people. You'd still be a horror-show, but you wouldn't this fucking dead-eyed horror-show, talking about how Palestinian kids are bearing responsibility for shit they never did to the extent that bricks should fall around their ears. 

He thinks he's talking about "rubble". He doesn't see that people, real humans, live in and around that. Kids are in, around, and under the rubble. They are starved and thirsty when supplies are denied them. He's a father. He isn't thinking about the rubble bouncing on his own kid. It never would. 

I'm a little sorry for my delinquent posting--but I took a couple days to think about why anyone needed to demand pictures of beheaded babies on Twitter to believe the Hamas massacre against Israelis existed, and why I saw so many pictures of Syrian dead babies I remembered from 10 years ago being called Palestinian dead babies. I'm having a hard, hard time understanding who is satisfied by pictures of dead babies at all. (This sort of thing isn't new at all and is for shock value.) 

This Was Not Resistance

 

“And as you might have seen, there was some sort of rave or desert party where they were having a great time, until the resistance came in electrified hang gliders and took at least several dozen hipsters” Speeches held at the ‘All Out For Palestine’ protest outside the Israeli… pic.twitter.com/JXLpPIvW6A

— Brendan Gutenschwager (@BGOnTheScene) October 8, 2023

Hundreds of young concert-goers were killed, survivors were raped. They were young people: not the oppressors. Resistance discriminates. It uses necessary force. This was blood lust. This is why I don't feel a part of the far left: they suck. The DSA constantly uses division and smug up-fuckery to fail to accomplish even the merest goals. I noticed fucking PLO posters carried during the anti-Iraq war march 20 years ago. Fuck, people. Concentrate on one clear atrocity and stop being fellow travelers with bullshit. 

For example, Codepink dressed in weird costumes and played Pick-me Progressives and did nothing to end the Iraq or Afghanistan Wars because no one took them seriously. They protested against striking on ISIS. Also against striking Assad for the chem attacks, which I in retrospect wish Obama did. Because fuck that guy.

And here's Code Pink seen just recently snuggling up to Marjorie Taylor Green's gym-sweaty armpit:

The war in Ukraine must END!

Today, I met brave @codepink activists who protested for peace in Bernie Sanders’ office. He had 11 of them arrested!

Peace & free speech shouldn’t be a partisan issue.

We don’t agree on most things, but we do agree Congress should STOP fueling the… pic.twitter.com/uFzenFyMNn

— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene🇺🇸 (@RepMTG) October 4, 2023

Being exactly who one might expect:

Palestinians have every right to resist with force up to and including the murder of civilians and rape currently being committed by HAMAS, but Ukraine does not have the right to resist the murdering and rapist Russians who are hell-bent on occupying them? Ok. That's certainly...a take. 

Things You See on Twitter About Foreign Policy

 

I just screen capped a thing you can click to embiggen, which is pretty much the state of the stupid horseshoe fringe--Ann Coulter re-tweeting Max Blumenthal fluffing RFK Jr. because he's excoriating US policy supporting Ukraine's self-defense against the Russian invasion, because of course Kennedy is wrong because he's full of himself and of course Blumenthal is a useful idiot who spouts Russian propaganda anymore and Ann Coulter is, and always has been, an utter bitch. 

I used to wonder what happened to Max Blumenthal. Did he experience a conversion experience because he wanted in Rania Khalek's pants or WTF? I used to speculate. How do you hate Israel apartheid and also think maybe Bashar Al-Assad is misunderstood? He was a good journalist for a whole minute. But look at Robert F. Kennedy Jr. He used to be a credible-ish environmentalist. Now he's an anti-science crackpot who sucks up to the dictators of petrostates and basically has the worst opinions in existence. 

RFK Jr. talks in front of cultists who think maybe his cousin JFK Jr, is a five o'clock shadow dipshit with a porkpie hat who has no resemblance other than white and brown haired. This does not seem to faze him. 

I have never wondered what happened to Ann Coulter. Oh, no. I never, ever, ever have. She's her own thing, all daddy issues and GOP manly hero-worship aside. If she has a Putin fetish I would not wonder at it for a second. 

Anyway, Ann Coulter, Max Blumenthal, and RFK, Jr, and for what it's worth Dennis Kucinich, can all go autocopulate until they are desperately chafed. Their weird fringe "bold" controversial, contrarian opinions are only relevant to their wankery, not to anything happening in the actual world we live in, where Russia is trying to commit genocide and Ukraine is fighting against that because of course they are, and being a democratic nation that has some kind of morals, the US should oppose that. 

People who don't understand that basic calculus flunk my tolerance right now. If you don't know Russia is the bad guy and more than diplomacy is required (like making Russia bleed because bullies only know that language) you are wasting our time with wishful thinking. There is no negotiation that is not some degree of surrender, and a pass for future violence.  Fuck off Tinkerbells. Ask not for who I clap, it is not the entire fuck for you. Who have shitty opinions with no stake at all, at all. 

The Totalitarian Dysfunction

 

It makes sense to me to start this post with Madison Cawthorn and his disturbing embrace of Putin and Hitler. I don't know enough about Cawthorn's family to judge anything from them but that Cawthorn was homeschooled and got his biases somewhere. The love evangelicals have for Putin feels wrong after hearing conservatives for so long decry "godless commies" in Russia. But the big problem they have is with the godless, multicultural liberals here, so they can kind of ignore the necessary multiculturalism of Russian imperialism and the dictates that actually exclude evangelism in favor of his nods to the orthodox church and the total capture of the state apparatus, from media to military. It's like Putin got all seven mountains going for him.  (And weirdly, atheism is not actually how most Russians identify--it's about 13% according to one poll. The jury is out on the number of actual US atheists. I'd like to think it was that high.) 

But anyway based on whatever, somehow the youngest GOP Rep. decided it was okay to demonize Zelenskyy, the Ukrainian president who is a former tv actor and won a democratic election, as a thug and called him woke to just add extra stink on the shot. 

My Eyes Don't Deceive Me

 

The opponents of critical race theory, not more than a handful of months ago, were telling us it was a damn shame that Dr. Seuss was being cancelled for racial caricatures in a handful of nearly-forgotten children's books (yes, I do believe the Venn Diagram there is exactly a circle) but I wonder what they would say about the banning of books by Black authors in a school district in Pennsylvania. To me, it looks an awful lot like my impression that the criticism of CRT is actually a way to demonize a very specific kind of Black history (the kind that comes from Black voices and is heard from even when it isn't February) is pretty much the mood being catered to. 

The reason certain people want CRT to be minimized, want to discredit the 1619 Project, want to talk about All Lives Matter instead of why Black lives need to be discussed, why Latino/a/ex lives need to be discussed, why Asian lives need to be discussed, all within their contexts, is because the context doesn't show white culture in a positive light. Because it shouldn't. 

In discussing policing in the US, it's hard to divorce law enforcement from the slave patrols charged with keeping the peace (for a very racially-biased version thereof) in our early history, and about as hard to separate our Border Patrol from the same. 

So when right wing people talk about caravans and the gathering of Haitian refugees (just like the "threat" of Syrian refugees) and think of course violence will turn them away because who even are they? I don't think my eyes deceive me. I see human beings who deserve life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. But I know those other folks don't and I see what they are, too. And it's not so much that I want to emulate our nation's founders--I think we could do better. 

We are not free if we don't believe in these principles for all. All. One runny pimple on Montana's ass just got upset at the notion of a mere 75 Afghan refugees resettling there, some very small quantity of a huddled mass of people yearning to breathe free.  Sure, 75 human beings, with hardly nothing to their names, women and children included, are going to overrun your whole dumb gun-toting red white and blue-blooded state.

I'm not a Christian, but I believe what you are willing to do for the people with the least is your whole job as a human, because you need to know that could be you, too.  Politics and weather and poverty and all the shit fate throws at you permitting. But there's a very good label for what my eyes see when I see CBP deploying whips (or whatever your sensibility prefers to call the lash or the strap) on Haitian asylum-seekers. 

And it's the very word the anti-CRT folks want to pretend very much the US isn't about anymore, but you know what? Maybe we still live with that history and need to recognize and confront it. And we shouldn't fear people fleeing from danger so much as to hate, revile, and punish them on top of their own tragedy. 

The Always-Denial Denial

Trump doesn't take responsibility. He does things, all right, but he lives in a universe of diminished consequences. People settle out of court, exhausted by him. He goes bankrupt (through his own incompetence and more than once), but still lives like some demi-royalty (whilst hard-working people can easily struggle through no fault of their own, but the machinations of folks just like Trump). He gets people to sign NDAs so they don't rat him out--even his own family. He creates a kind of squid ink of lies around himself so that there's a cushion of implausible deniability--sure, sure, he's clearly a racist, a con-artist, a half literate and a creep according to the fake news media--but what if he wasn't? 

Of course, he is those things. From his own mouth, he's a whore monger and a pussy-grabber; from his own mouth, he tells on himself about his racism and so much more. 

So, did he know about the bounties Russia had on US troops and UK troops in Afghanistan payable to the Taliban? Trump and already-proven liar WH spokesperson Kayleigh McEnany say of course he didn't. News reports are starting to really corroborate that of course he was told.  But what does it mean that Trump was told? Was he given something to read? Was he verbally told? Did he grasp the whole deal?

Who can say? We are presented with the appalling spectacle of a person who might not take in information whether read out or spoken, who is bellicose to allies and fawning before dictators, who has a probable vault of "perfect calls" that are by no means perfect, or are, in fact, "abominations":

The White House did not respond to a request for comment before this story published. After publication, White House deputy press secretary Sarah Matthews said, "President Trump is a world class negotiator who has consistently furthered America's interests on the world stage. From negotiating the phase one China deal and the USMCA to NATO allies contributing more and defeating ISIS, President Trump has shown his ability to advance America's strategic interests."

One person familiar with almost all the conversations with the leaders of Russia, Turkey, Canada, Australia and western Europe described the calls cumulatively as 'abominations' so grievous to US national security interests that if members of Congress heard from witnesses to the actual conversations or read the texts and contemporaneous notes, even many senior Republican members would no longer be able to retain confidence in the President.

These two paragraphs of this CNN piece from Carl Bernstein (!?*) are from different universes; one, the spin universe of those who still think you can polish a wet one, and the reality of those who ruefully admit the solidity of the excreta is beyond burnishing. If the Speaker of the House had the will and the time, we'd be totally up for more impeachment trials, and I entirely wish it could be so. But it would take years to unscrew all of Trump's impeachable offenses (although please! they could try for some of AG Barr's!)

But here's something to ponder: just today, Iran submitted a warrant to Interpol for the arrest of President Trump and 30-0dd other folks for the hit on General Qassem Suliemani. Ok, it isn't gonna go anywhere, and nice, troll, Iran. But recall that this assassination occurred right in the midst of the impeachment, and Trump tried to minimize the resulting casualties from the subsequent attack on our bases in Iraq. He doesn't like to admit things (like, say, our current Covid-19 crisis) are as bad as they really are, because it reflects on him. He also doesn't know what to do about anything, so everything gets worse.

He's a bully, and ignoramus and a head case. Many Republicans are covering up for him. I guess they are also in extraordinary and even delusional denial.

UPDATE: * Because how many journalists have the presence to be about to bring down two presidents during their careers, right? And this glimpse into Trump's modus operandi should be fatal.

Ladies and Gents, This is Lindsey Graham

Graham blocks resolution recognizing Armenian genocide after Trump-Erdoğan meeting https://t.co/VURZgeFkqn pic.twitter.com/PzGP1sHFUL

— The Hill (@thehill) November 14, 2019

Senator Lindsey Graham met with his golf buddy Trump and his golf buddy's good friend President Recep Erdogan and has decided that the US Senate should not be so hasty (It's been, like, a century, so?) about condemning the Armenian genocide. He says he's objecting "not because of the past, but because of the future." This is happening while, in the present, Kurds are being subjected to war crimes by Turkey.

Before we condemn Graham too swiftly, he never showed much interest in the history of the genocide of Armenians previously. Opposition to such a resolution has a bit of a history, actually, and it has been rejected before for the same kind set of general reasons--because what does it have to do with what is happening now?

The problem I have with this thinking is that not acknowledging the past is a way of denying the events that led to our present. Today, politicians are already coming up with their reasons for why we're going to be okay with ignoring what is happening to the Kurds. What we tolerated in the past, we demonstrate we can tolerate again. We have already witnessed the senator contort himself over whether Trump's concession to Erdogan in greenlighting his military advance into Syrian Kurdistan was a great "out of the box" idea. We will soon dispense with even sanctions, correct? if Graham become concerned about "the future" where sanctions inhibited Trump's out of the box thinking.

Which I think might mean something to do with Graham's perception of his own future in being elected once again to the Senate in the upcoming 2020 election? Because I know, because Graham has said so himself, he worries about the demographic changes the country is going through and what it means to his party, and he has seen that Trump can harness forces of isolation, resentment, division, and "economic anxiety" to establish a solid turnout regardless of issues of right or wrong, or even what conservatives have previously supported. (Or for that one time. In 2016. With a possible assist.)

Or maybe Graham still just doesn't give a shit about Armenians, because in South Carolina.... except South Carolinians actually do give a good goddamn about people who have suffered. Even if Graham cares a little bit more about himself and his Erdogan and Putin loving friend right now.

Graham is wrong an awful lot. It's the malleability and toady-ness of his wrongness, of late, that is simply striking. And I would be remiss if I did not point out that South Carolina has a lovely alternative who would like very much to work for them, and has not established himself as a Washington DC, Sunday chat show know it all hack who is, staggeringly wrong on moral concerns.

So Much Winning?

When Trump announced that ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was killed in a military operation, this was supposed to be a win. He announced that there would be news coming Sunday morning the night before on Twitter, and within moments, it seemed, people knew this is what it was likely about. But instead of simply stating the bare facts of the operation and letting someone from the Pentagon field any questions, Trump's ego got the better of him, and he sort of killed the moment with his mouth. 

He compared the death of al-Baghdadi with the operation against Osama bin Laden (of course Trump says he got the bigger terrorist, and if people only listened to him, they would have known about bin Laden before 9/11, which is just absurd). He thanked Russia first, which was odd, because their Defense Ministry definitely seemed cool about what even happened. He also told them about it before notifying any Democratic lawmakers (which certainly wasn't about operational security--it was pettiness).  And, while he tried to make it appear that this operation came about as a result of his decision with respects to pulling back in Syria--that doesn't seem to have helped matters at all, but made them more difficult. 

He went on in morbid detail about crying, whimpering al-Baghdadi (rather more than good taste or sense would have allowed) but it appears that he wouldn't have seen anything from the tunnel in which the terrorist deployed his explosive vest. And he went on about Syria's oil again, which the US doesn't have a right to and wouldn't be that valuable to us, anyway. While the world won't mourn al-Baghdadi, Trump somehow managed to make his death announcement grotesque and pulled the sense of victory out of it. 

At the top of the post, I have the somewhat stagey-looking picture released by the White House of Trump in the Situation Room. That was supposed to be the iconic takeaway image of the day. The actual picture to take away from today is this:

This picture, showing an "Impeach Trump" banner being unfurled at Nationals Park where trump attended Game 5 of the World Series, shows the real story of the day: Trump was booed and met with chants of "Lock him up." Nothing he does will win with the people who have seen enough of his presidency for a lifetime. 

Of course, it's a job well done for Delta Force and the rest of our fighting men and women, and our partners in the region. To them all thanks. But a dose of reality should be Trump's reward.

Trump Doesn't Know Anybody

Wall Street Journal reporter Shelby Holliday has the best thread regarding Lev Parnas' Instagram account, because it destroys the idea that the recently arrested crime comedy team of Parnas and Fruman were completely unknown to Trump World. Lev Parnas actually has a long Trump history.

But Trump said he never knew these guys.  So weird!

Also, as we might have noticed earlier, former Trump attorney Dowd indicated that they were part of Trump's legal team and had attorney client privilege--how is that possible if he doesn't know them? Right?

But that's normal, Trump also doesn't know the State Department employees that are testifying against him right now. He doesn't know a lot--he gave this discursive speech of sorts today in front of people:

But we’re going to bring our soldiers back home.  So far, there hasn’t been one drop of blood shed during this whole period by an American soldier.  Nobody was killed.  Nobody cut their finger.  There’s been nothing.  And they’re leaving rather, I think, not expeditiously — rather intelligently.  Just leaving.  Leaving certain areas.  Leaving. 

We’ve secured the oil.  If you remember, I didn’t want to go into Iraq.  I was a civilian, so I had no power over it.  But I always was speaking against going into Iraq.  It was not a great decision.  But I always said, “If you’re going in, keep the oil.”  Same thing here: Keep the oil.  We want to keep the oil. 

And we’ll work something out with the Kurds so that they have some money, they have some cash flow.  Maybe we’ll get one of our big oil companies to go in and do it properly.  But they’ll have some cash flow, which they basically don’t have right now.  Everybody is fighting.  It’s not a big oil area, but everybody is fighting for whatever there is.  So we have a lot of good things going over there, and they’re going very well. 

He secured the Kurdish oil that Assad gets with the handful of hundreds who will ultimately remain in Northern Syria? Or he secured the Saudi Arabian oil with the extra couple of thousand people he sent in?  Or both, because he sees securing oil as very important, and maintaining allies--actual human relationships, as not as important? But maybe "we'll work something out with the Kurds so that they have some money". Because that will fix their being displaced, and their slaughtered people. Money. You throw money at them, champ. See how that will fix anything. You jowly orange peel fuck.  You low-lying fungal spore-cluster; you fetid earthen vomit.

He doesn't know. He doesn't know the policy advisors who would tell him to say anything but that bullshit. He thinks they are fighting over sand and oil, and not an actual place where humans have lived, and made history, because he only found this place right now.

He doesn't know these people. He doesn't know foreign policy advisors who would tell him all of this is wrong. He doesn't know anyone in his own home who will let him know he fucked it up. He will look in the mirror, and the face in the mirror will smile fakely and toothily back at him.

He doesn't know what any Ukrainian would have said to him in any situation. He doesn't know what the whistleblower really said, and why this anonymous person is still a blur to him. He doesn't know...

But if you listen to the wind blow through  him, the FOX News wind, the grievance, the stupidity--

You know him a lot. You really do. It isn't good. It isn't making America Great.

TWGB: Time's Arrow

“The cease-fire agreement reached with Turkey by Vice President Mike Pence amounts to a near-total victory for Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who gains territory, pays little in penalties and appears to have outmaneuvered President Trump#.” https://t.co/hiMEvi1kFM

— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) October 18, 2019

There is an annoying refrain I am hearing among people who don't like the impeachment inquiry that it is being used as a means to "cancel" the 2016 election because Dems haven't "gotten over" the results. First of all, I am still not over the 2000 election, thank you very much, but there's a few simple, sad things that have to be recognized. The first is--impeachment is right there in the Constitution as a device for removing a president for high crimes and misdemeanors, but there is no tool for nullifying the election itself, or reversing all that that president has done in whatever time they have been president. History does not work that way, and Trump's years in office, his appointments to the bench, his policies, will continue to affect us even once he's out of office. The process can't unravel existing damage. (And should not be blamed for astonishingly poor decisions that the president makes during the process, either in obstructing justice or in making bad policy decisions.)

Democrats can't use the impeachment inquiry to undo the three years of Trump's presidency any more than he can go back and revise his own history, or the history of what other presidents have tried to accomplish by stating that one's most recent duct-taping* of a self-created disaster was something that had been tried without success for ten years. History, like time, marches on in one direction.

So it goes for defenses of Trump's foreign policy in general: that elections have consequences, and that Trump's foreign policy was bound to be a change from his predecessors'. But should it have meant an entire change in our goals and alliances?  Should it have meant a break with the reputation Americans have worked so hard to create? As I have argued before, alliances aren't easy to create and trust, once broken, isn't easy to mend--Trump gets this wrong. To employ a metaphor that Gen. Colin Powell has used--he has broken something and it must be bought, but Trump gives no thought to who actually pays for it.

With this thought in mind about how history can't be taken back, I think we should also look at something Acting COS Mick Mulvaney would like to take back: his comments about whether of course there are quid pro quos and we do it all the time (and people should get over it). Once that statement was not just made, but so enthusiastically, it's a bit hard to take back (especially when the appearance of a quid pro quo has been outlined in better detail by people with some first-hand knowledge). This tactic (if it is one) of announcing "Yes it happened and it quite all right" as front page news for Trump (and Trump fans) and walking it back as page six news for the benefit of rule of law enthusiasts shouldn't be allowed to fly.

But as we continue to uncover what depths Trump's actions have reached, Trump has also lost nothing (despite his claims of great sacrifices) having awarded the contract to host the June 2020 G7 summit to his own (failing) Doral property. The administration can claim he will not profit from this situation (trying to say it is not an emoluments clause issue at all, at all) because Trump will be doing it "at cost". (And we will see the receipts later--just like his tax returns!) But the boot to him of being able to sell his property as a world-class venue hosting world leaders is a priceless advertising opportunity. He will proceed as corruptly and unmindfully of any law--until prevented. We can not undo Trump's history and barely affect what he does presently.

We must act for the future.

*UPDATE: Just to be clear, even if Trump himself isn't, entirely, and in case I'm not being clear enough myself, we don't have a five-day ceasefire so much as the imposition of some order on an ethnic cleansing.

UPDATE: Turkey has ceased exactly nothing.

TWGB: All Roads With You Lead to Putin

There really just might be something to this idea of Trump being self-impeachable after all, as is becoming more evident with each advancing news story.  I've been an advocate of impeachment, but also an admirer of Speaker Pelosi's slow-burn tactics--she seems to be running the impeachment inquiry at a pace that gives the unstable non-genius enough rope to hang himself (and several of his cohorts) with.

This unravelling of the president was in disturbing force today, as President Trump had a bit of a public meltdown where he demanded to know where "the server" was like an unsatisfied patron at a midrange chain restaurant. (Which is about a nonsensical conspiracy theory it is hard to believe that the president actually takes seriously, but in a world of hurricane nukes and windmill cancers, who am I to judge?) He then had a meltdown behind closed doors, when Madame Speaker treated him to exactly the message his disastrous recent policy with respect to Syria deserved:

Pelosi explained to Trump that Russia has always wanted a “foothold in the Middle East,” and now it has one with the U.S. withdrawal, according to a senior Democratic aide who was also granted anonymity.

“All roads with you lead to Putin,” the speaker said.

 And they certainly do. Both the Ukrainian exploits which have brought about his impeachment inquiry and his precipitous Syrian decision with respects to Erdogan do not at all seem to further US interests, so much as Russia's. Trump can pretend that it was she, not he, who "melted down", but the picture above shows a woman with more political experience than Trump ever will have, letting him know something about himself. And once again, he is responding by reflex--"I'm rubber and you're glue".  A schoolyard tactic--not a presidential one.

Perhaps Trump has reasons for his obvious disturbance. I'm going to elide the steady drip-drip-drip of the Ukraine testimonies by simply saying: It looks bad because it is bad, and the testimony of various officials seem to be painting a picture where people were clearly acting on Trump's behalf, not for broad policy goals, but specifically to be of use to Trump and where Energy Secretary Perry, OMB/Acting COS Mulvaney, Ambassador Gordon Sondland and special envoy Kurt Volker apparently conspired to ensure certain business and political outcomes were ensured. It is looking like the very opposite of a bid to combat corruption; a directed effort to control who benefits from it.

This Approach to Foreign Policy Looks Inconsistent

BREAKING: Amid Pres. Trump's decision to remove US troops from northern Syria and his vocal criticisms of US military presence in Middle East, Pentagon announces the deployment of more US troops “to assure and enhance the defense of Saudi Arabia.” https://t.co/bPdc9T4D5O

— NBC News (@NBCNews) October 11, 2019

I don't really have a lot to add to this announcement that I haven't already said with respects to Trump and Saudi Arabia. We've got another announcement of manpower deployment for Saudi Arabia, on a Friday, amidst a sea of bad Trump news. Trying to reconcile the move with any sense of strategy--a "Trump Doctrine"--just doesn't make sense, any more than the Syria move makes any sort of strategic sense. There's nothing that should have been unpredictable about what Turkey is doing now, and there's no, to use a phrase "unknown unknowns" about what engagement with Iran to defend Saudi Arabia ('s oil)is likely to mean--it's a likely clusterfuck.

But is it inconsistent? I have a standing joke with respects to Republican conflicts of interest: "If one always acts in one's own self-interest, there's no conflict." Trump is the apotheosis of that maxim. I am not above assuming he would use our folks in uniform for his ends because he is not above doing it. It's not even very well hidden.

UPDATE: Mnuchin says we could shut down Turkey's economy with sanctions if they don't knock off what they are doing. I mean, we aren't doing it right now, but. We could.  From the Pentagon, we're "very disappointed" in Turkey right now.

UPDATE: Some ISIS militants have escaped prison and Turkey has bombed US Special Forces in an apparent error.

He Thinks He's King Solomon, Over Here

This is a screencap of the real account of President Trump, who is confronting criticism over the likely disastrous consequences over his Turkey decision by touting his "great and unmatched wisdom".

Great and unmatched wisdom? Who is staying in the bunker with this self-aggrandizing goof?

While this sort of thing might just barely sound sarcastic (if Trump had self-awreness and a sense of humor, which would be a "no"), it hearkens back to his "chosen one" comments from not-so-long ago. Trump has surrounded himself with "yes-men", and he's definitely been told by evangelicals that he's part King Cyrus, part Queen Esther.

It's just worrisome, is all.