Some Mistake

 

He never misses an opportunity to not criticize Russia — even when they murder 35 people on Palm Sunday pic.twitter.com/G7zy6i22At

— The Tennessee Holler (@TheTNHoller) April 14, 2025

The Palm Sunday murder of civilian people in Ukraine was no accident, no mistake. It was purposeful, as has been every horrific step in the course of Russia's invasion. The vicious lie that the deaths are some mistake gives Russia an unearned grace, enables Putin, gives Trump and his bootlicker Witkoff space to pretend they are accomplishing anything by their idiotic path of continued appeasement. Trump refuses to learn and his emissary can't be taught.

And the little Trump fanclub is full of the weak and the bought and the braindead--I don't know what to make of this:

Except to say Russian influence is, as Ukrainian President Zelenskyy said in his 60 Minutes interview, everywhere in the US. But as for me, I can see clearly. This is Russia, once again for the umpteenth time, telling the world they aren't interested in peace. 

And Witlesskopf and Trump can't hear that.  If they could make peace happen, why, wouldn't they be heroes?

Trump's Ukraine/Russia Delusions Do Not Go Unnoticed

 

Ukraine: *exists*

Ukrainians: literally just sleeping in their beds at 4 AM.

Russia: invades, bombs,kills, destroys, rapes, lots, kidnaps

Trump: "You don't want to pick on somebody that's a lot larger than you."pic.twitter.com/R9uDjR487G

— Kate from Kharkiv (@BohuslavskaKate) March 14, 2025

Trump's kiss-up, punch down bully philosophy really shows in this nugget from Friday--but it's pure Kremlin propaganda. A few years ago, we were hearing from Tucker Carlson that Russia just wanted some space because they were feeling threatened by their neighbor, whom they already been at war with. In what way is Ukraine "picking on" Russia? By defending itself? By having done so successfully? 

But this is just a little bit of this week's weird double-speak--here's part of Trump's social media stupidity:

It's not actually true. At a point when, if there were about to be honest negotiations, it would be extremely important for this Administration to be clear on the intelligence regarding Ukraine's actual military situation--Trump has, essentially, got the matter fucked up. 

For obvious reasons (I think Russia has owned Trump for years and he made Tulsi flipping Gabbard his DNI) I think this is a horrible sign.

The "Riviera of the Middle East"

 

There's something hilariously ghoulish about Trump's desire to own Gaza. We've gone from MAGAs claiming he's for America First and against war, to him talking about re-taking the Panama Canal, Greenland, and maybe making Canada the "51st state"--and now he has dreams of turning Gaza, a place he says is associated with so much death--

And turning it into the "Riviera of the Middle East." 

That's right, we will have to first permanently relocate the people already in Gaza. Then remove all the rubble and rebuild. And of course there will need to be a military presence....

I Guess You Can't

 

I know. Things you see on Twitter might just be for provocation and engagement and not serious. But my stars and garters:

You can't hijack planes. You can't throw Molotovs. What is this world coming to? 

Look, I'm all for a good boycott, a march, a strongly worded letter to the editor, a ripping blog post, and some bang-up trolling, but yeah, how you do protest--the medium, if you will, is the message. I don't really have a problem with hunger strikes, for example. I just think like, a 12 hour fast is humorous when that's normal. Some people diet doing a 18 hour fast.  Every day. I think blocking streets is fucked up if you block ambulances. I am not sure how stopping people from getting home at rush hour is supposed to influence them to do anything in particular but be mad at being inconvenienced. Ditto messing with holiday parades and church functions--I mean: Give people their own spaces. Respect.

I also think heckling politicians is mostly great because they signed up for some trouble, but people who dump manure on the property of someone who isn't even Speaker of the House anymore is disgusting. Trying to co-opt every event is kind of disrespectful to other causes. Also, what if people were working on a solution, and activists were just barking up the wrong tree and slamming the ones who were, actually, doing the work? 

What if self-immolation was the waste of a life where so much good could be done besides? 

I just think you should put your good where it will do the most. It just won't matter if your heart is in the right place if your ass isn't. 

Don't Look Away From These People

 

Food is at the heart of Palestinian culture — Laila El-Haddad, author of the award-winning cookbook ‘The Gaza Kitchen,’ shares how it helps maintain humanity while under Israeli occupation pic.twitter.com/I7LcXUPo1G

— NowThis (@nowthisnews) December 4, 2023

I am not articulate enough to explain what I feel about the horror of this war, because while what happened on 10/7 was certainly not an act of resistance, what has happened since has gone long past defense to retribution, to something atrocious. It's hard not to feel like journalists are being targeted and that outspoken parts of Palestinian culture are being forever silenced. Like the city of Gaza is being razed so that no one can live there. Just like the settlers of the West Bank try to erase the Palestinian past and present.

Fine, I say, if you want to counter that this is the fault of Hamas. Tell me why Hamas is the boss of what Israel's government does? How is the moral depravity of the terrorists specifically at cause for every murderous and foolish decision that the Israeli government makes? I don't want "explaining". We hear a lot of "because". I want a real vision for what the aftermath is. Every school, every hospital, every government building they destroy, they remove the possibility of anyone living there: how can we assume it isn't intentional? That they are purposefully making a place where these people cannot live? That so many of these people already are not able to live under the current dire situation of collapse of water and food supplies. 

Or under the collapse of buildings. 

I've talked about why the language of "from the river to the sea" was noxious to the state of Israel and its right to exist. Israeli propaganda mocks the dead of Gaza by claiming they will take that beach. They will remove all of the people in their way to owning all the land. 

What the fuck is it worth? 

TWGB: We're Never Leaving 2016, Right?

 

Hammered Junior interrupts Michael Flynn to riff on the allegations of his dad getting golden showers from Russian prostitutes. pic.twitter.com/2TyiLBQrW5

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) September 25, 2023

Heh, yes, the takeaway of the Steel Dossier is DEFINITELY the golden showers part. Jesus.  See, this is the ridiculousness of the Real Housewives of TrumpWorld that keeps me hanging on. Junior always looks like he wanders into rooms vaguely hoping someone cares enough about his ass to stage an intervention (they don't). Mike Flynn should have been x'd from a professional political campaign over fake news shit in 2016, but went on to be pardoned for lying to the FBI by the Trump Administration because my god. He's a Russian-influenced quisling practicing psyops on the US population, but he's their Russian-influenced quisling practicing psyops on the US population. 

They're bringing up the Steele Dossier because it didn't actually start the investigation into Russian interference and no one heard anything about pee tapes before Trump was already in office, but most people don't remember things linearly. It still scratches a very specific itch--the desire of Trump to exorcise the "Russia, Russia, Russia" demon with his own specific and frankly amusingly stupid counter narrative. 

Ukraine are the bad guys who helped Hillary Clinton by framing Russia and no they didn't, and despite all the obvious RIGGING! like in California, where Trump could have definitely won! um. Trump won in 2016 anyway. He had his little bullshit election fraud commission that found nothing and disbanded. Why does he need to pretend he was wronged? He had his opportunity. He fucked up COVID. He lost more jobs than like, Hoover. He got impeached twice! Why is he still here?

Why are we all still here in 2016? 

The GOP Appeasement Caucus

 

This flag 🇺🇸 stands for the sovereignty and freedom of other democratic nations or GTFO. We stood with our allies against authoritarianism in WW2 and to not do so now is appeasement. Meathead Mike thinks isolationism is based. The reality is: it's impossible. Reality intrudes. https://t.co/Ff5tEuQm8M

— Vixen Strangely (@VixenStrangely) September 22, 2023

I remember when the right wing was calling President Obama an "appeaser". They liked to do that, back in the day. They would compare someone to Neville Chamberlain. And along comes Russia, sponsor of their little Tin Godlet, Trump. And some of the biggest Trump fans are all about letting Putin and his desire for lebensraum cook. He'll only take Crimea. He'll only take Donetsk. He's just annexing Russian-speakers...

Lies. Actually, he's performing war crimes , and negotiating how he can keep any of the territory he's seized is...appeasement, politically demonstrating that if you are a celebrity, they just let you grab whatever territory you like. Deciding not to intervene is certainly some kind of moral choice, but I would not commit to it being the right one. 

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 Darkest Timeline 2022 Roundup

 

As with last year, I feel like providing a year in review for the blog, but this year, I noticed a certain trend and I did not like it one bit! But it is my blog, and sometimes you can't ignore the things you see--actually, you just shouldn't. 

January:  IOKIYAR, or the Republican Permission Structure.  There is a goal behind Republican rhetorical devices, and they are loaded.

February: AFPAC and CPAC are Like Peas and Carrots.  GOP-ers and Groypers are practically peas in a pod. 

March: The Country is Held Hostage by the Fifth Dentist. How did one side of our politics become so conspiracy-theory-ridden?

April: "Free Florida" and "Don't Say Gay". The GOP wants old school bigotry to have a comeback and I sure the hell don't. 

May: Jesus, Guns, Babies, American Exceptionalism.  Wow. boiled it all down to the maple syrup of the thing. 

June: Jesus , Guns, Babies, SCOTUS:  As the Bible had written, so conservative justices would likely try to have it done. 

July: Who is Paying for Dinner?  Just some reasonable thoughts about SCOTUS and ethics. 

August: But They Keep Admitting It, Though.  Supposedly mainstream conservatism has gone out of its way to support domestic terrorism. I do not think this is sarcasm. 

September: TWGB: Everything Looks Worse in Black and White.  Trumpism is fascism. It is. It looks bad because it is bad. 

October: Genocide as Peer Pressure.  Eliminationism is like a gruesome bandwagon. There are ugly people trying to normalize mass death of "suspect" populations. This is fascism. 

November: They *Do* Want us Dead.  More on the eliminationism.

December: TWGB: They Aren't Joking.  They say civil war and worse like they mean it, and I think they do. 

I don't like this timeline. But these are the posts I've got. 

Jesus, Guns, Babies, Genocide

 

Georgia Republican gubernatorial candidate Kandiss Taylor said “our founding fathers” came to “destroy American Indians’ homes and their land” to secure “our right to worship Jesus freely.” pic.twitter.com/DxS8HPij6w

— PatriotTakes 🇺🇸 (@patriottakes) May 19, 2022

Kandiss Taylor, polling in the single-digits, is unlikely to overtake the heavily-favored Brian Kemp in the Georgia GOP gubernatorial primary this Tuesday, but I finally put together into words what is especially horrifying about what this woman is saying--her full-time job is educator. She has a doctorate from Regent University. Her understanding of American history is essentially Dominionism--Christians came to America, conquered, and now, should run the government, to put it in the almost simplest terms. 

She herself has boiled it down even more simply than that. Her campaign's slogan is "Jesus, Guns, Babies".  In light of her above comments indicating that our founding fathers committed genocide for Jesus and the recent conversation around great replacement theory, her slogan starts to make a lot more sense, especially so when considering that she will be appearing at an event with Stew Peters, Mike Lindell and Lauren Witzke--her brand is based in White Christian supremacy and grievance. Worship Jesus, shoot "others", make white babies.

It comes off as almost comical in a sick way because she's so blatant, but it's dangerous because there are Republicans who share the same view and put it forward much more subtly. (Although the mask slips when they call liberals anti-religion and anti-family for actually calling for separation of church and state, anti-racism, and recognizing non-traditional families.) 

It also reminded me that the recent movement of "Jericho marches" derived from the Book of Joshua, which depicts God-sponsored genocide. It is a very uncomfortable thing to see theocracy so nakedly, and so clearly insinuating violent tactics are Jesus-sanctioned, but I think this is exactly what I'm looking at. 

I've Seen the Future and It Is Mother

 

The genuinely stoked millennial in the selected picture is Trump-supported state senate candidate Jackie Eubanks, who does not think women should have sex outside of marriage or for other than procreative purposes and definitely should not have birth control.  Birth control is outside of God's moral order, which I guess he told her this one time at Bible camp, and now welp. Also too, you apparently can't have a successful society outside of Christianity. Sorry, most of world history. You are apparently entirely wrong for having existed outside of Miss Thang's experience. 

I'm being mean, but mostly because this moral scold is young enough to be one of my not-even youthful indiscretions. You are not young enough to be the welp of me and tell me when, with whom and for actual progeny!? I am going to fuck. Oh no. Jacky and her sock puppet Jesus are not the boss of my vagina. They can mind their own business. 

But Trumpism is apparently going full metal-mama on us. Matt Schlapp's response to whether Great Replacement Theory is a thing is to tie it to abortion--why don't we just stop white ladies from aborting the future? The white future. The future that isn't reliant on what Steve King spoke of as "somebody else's babies".  (Right up in Hungary where I guess democracy is dead and long live Orbanism? Anti gay, anti-minority, paranoid, declining? ) 

The answer to "white genocide" (which isn't happening, unless you count suicide by desperation and incel by having extremely bad internet habits--but none of that is imposed by the outside) is supposed to be women wanting to have children, but none of this culture is making me even think for a moment I missed out by not making white babies for this shithole culture. Whiteness isn't enough and making kids would be too much for me. Writing is my babies. People who don't read wouldn't understand that and that's why my blog isn't for them. And people who never woke up and cried that they had to get out of bed don't understand why I never wanted kids that I would have to make my body do shit for everyday when it was enough I did anything for me.

Fascism is making reproduction-capable people into baby factories and telling them they need to be happy they have a job.  It is telling disabled people they have to produce to be considered valuable. It is saying something is so special about motherhood that rejecting it is a sin. I sometimes wonder if I might be a good dad-figure to someone--I have lots of drinking and fighting and sportsmanship lessons to bestow. But the government should not tell people how to make their families. They should not tell people with uteruses they have to be mothers anymore than people with penises need to be fathers. We need to do these things for ourselves. And race is irrelevant to what makes a society--any society that hates and micromanages people is already fucked. 

And Fuck Off, It Certainly Did!

 

⚡️Two Ukrainian Neptun missiles hit Russian cruiser «Moskva» — Maksym Marchenko, the head of Odesa Regional Military Administration. «Moskva», the flagship of Russia’s Black Sea fleet, is the very same «Russian warship» from the meme. pic.twitter.com/Mh1j7JwssY

— UkraineWorld (@ukraine_world) April 13, 2022

Is it not the height of incompetence for Russia to experience one of their most demoralizing naval losses in a land war? (I am only asking questions.)

In other news, Finland and Sweden are seriously considering NATO membership despite (because of?) a stern warning that there would be retaliation from Russia if they joined. So much for Finlandization and neutrality. It's okay. Putin isn't sure he wants to blame NATO expansion anymore at the moment. But what of the bullshit he does still say?

Putin’s justifications for the war in Ukraine:

– “the main goal is to help people”
– “we were forced to do it”
– “we couldn’t put up with it any longer”
– “a clash was inevitable”
– “it was just a matter of time”
– “we didn’t have a choice, this was the right thing to do” pic.twitter.com/FxDttjqrqh

— max seddon (@maxseddon) April 12, 2022

Saying things like "it was inevitable" is Putin trying to shift off the idea that this was his choice, in much the same way he is purging top intelliegence officers who supposedly mislead him by telling him exactly what he wanted to hear. Putin's created reality is starting to look starkly peculiar. (The UK is staging atrocities to make him look bad? Intercepted phone calls from Russian soldiers to their families back home now tell us they were instructed to rape and pillage. And their families are not horrified. This is the vast moral damage that disinformation can produce.)

The situation, despite military successes, is dire, because this is no doubt, genocide, as President Biden has the guts to say. Putin has made clear many times that he does not think that Ukraine exists as a country except as a political delusion and that the nationalism and patriotism of the people who want to defend their homeland is what he has the utter gall to label "Nazi." When Putin says "de-Nazification"--he is saying  "de-Ukraineification".  And to de-Ukraineify, he must kill Ukrainians. And as for the case against Putin, whatever his whataboutisms, he is relocating masses of people including children. That's the proof. The destruction of maternity hospitals and schools is our proof. Putin has always been threatening the future of Ukraine by sending missiles towards its babies. 

Some people think Putin wants a win somewhere, somehow, a biscuit's worth of concessions thrown his way and he'll fuck off like the Moskva. The devastation already engaged in tells me that isn't it, just like the build up of troops on the Ukrainian border before the invasion told me they weren't in it for any stupid "negotiation tactics" and that Putin was certainly not some genius. If Russia continues to not get their way, they will still engage in total war, Vernichtungskreig, and kill everything in sight. And if there is any concession, they will still do so, because who the fuck is stopping them, then? 

The thing is, the free world has to. There is no concession to these tactics. only a total response to total war. The hand that does not draw back is struck off.  His concept of "inevitability" is not one I would care to live with, as a free person, and I despise anyone who would. It is not inevitable that Ukraine falls. It is, however, inevitable that if they did, he would seek another target. 

We aren't in the zone of "reasonable" talk. There isn't a value in pretending that if we don't call the atrocity what it is, that it will stop. Cheering on successes like the Moskva sinking don't stack up to the tragedy of the mass graves and ruined lives. What could? 

I am a partisan against Putin and international fascism. And fascists should always be made to fuck off.  I understand who the true totalitarian is. Everyone should. 

The Jumper Reality

 

Mario Draghi: “Do you prefer peace or the air conditioning on? That’s the question we should ask ourself”. pic.twitter.com/ErT6E5X4aq

— David Carretta (@davcarretta) April 6, 2022

There is a similar complaint--would we be willing to freeze if Russian oil demanded it? Like, seriously--is it worth freezing not to support genocide? Is it worth putting on a jumper and extra blankets?  When portable crematoria might be disappearing the evidence of bodies in Mariupol? So, now that it is spring, and we don't need to think about the cold as much, what if summer was a good reason to partially fund genocide? 

I would say, no. The temperature is never a reason to actually ever support genocide. Supporting genocide is always bad. Air conditioning can also be contributing to climate change so we should think good and hard about how we achieve our very temporary tolerable temperatures, and what we are willing to sacrifice for that limited comfort. 

We aren't presented with peace or AC, however. We are presented with genocide and an eventual desert called peace, and the future where we are always getting our commodified energy resources from monsters unless we try to do better and fully engage in renewable energy and become really self-sufficient. Anywhere. 

I like the idea of energy that isn't monster-fueled and doesn't fuck up the environment. We can do it. We seriously can. 

Canceled Because of War Crimes?

 

"Look, Russia is now being canceled."

— Former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Monica Crowley, proving again that cancel culture is really consequence culture pic.twitter.com/Z2t9TN051w

— The Recount (@therecount) March 2, 2022

There's this funny old thing about Russian psyops, they pay really close attention to what we're supposedly doing in "the West" but it's a funhouse version, just like, for whatever reason, Fox News is like a funhouse version of reality. Monica Crowley equating sanctions and unrest with whatever canceling seems to mean. Seriously, Monica Crowley and Fox News? It's not that. 

This reminds me so much of Papa John bitching at CPAC that he got canceled because he said the N-word. Not because these things are similar, but because "canceled" is a stupid concept that bad people bitch about when everyone recognizes they are too problematic to fuck with. So, wouldn't you know it, but Russian Foreign intelligence Director Sergei Naryshkin ends up using this same language--Russia is being "canceled." 

Man, it's a shame we are being so woke about how Russia is bombing children and old people and hospitals and targeting civilians and just very recently caused a fire at a major nuclear plant and then fired at the firefighters. Wow, why is everyone shading Russia now with their ULM (Ukrainian Lives Matter) empathy over the genuine fear that the crazy person in charge is maybe going to annihilate tens of thousands?

How stupid is this line of bullshit? So stupid Karyn Boroshenko  (I think "late" of Prager U) also went for it, the weirdo who also thinks Jews chose to die in the Holocaust, is cool with it. "Why we aren't giving genocides more slack these days, srsly?" is certainly some kind of...ethos. I guess. 

Sociopaths Shouldn't Be In Government 4: Governor DeathSentence

BREAKING NEWS: A petition to recall Florida governor Ron DeSantis over his disastrous, deadly handling of the COVID pandemic is starting to catch fire🔥🔥🔥. Let’s make it go viral! https://t.co/iWsuYcjCav

— Occupy Democrats (@OccupyDemocrats) August 17, 2021

I guess it is very interesting that Ron DeSantis wants to promote a costly drug protocol over a vaccine that is basically free. Hmm. Like "hmm hmm hmm hmm". Now, I am not saying that I know that I know that Governor DeSantis is encouraging the virus along precipitously amongst schoolchildren and everyone they contact because he is associated with the worst kinds of crisis capitalist opportunists. I am saying I have no reason to doubt it based on his behavior, which is a whole other thing. I just think he's hanging on to his position by very grasping fingertips that don't mind stirring a pandemic pot. 

 UPDATE: But it is serious and allowing an epidemic is actually quite bad.

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.

No Holiday in Cambodia

"Ocasio-Cortez already receives a high number of death threats; by allowing this PAC to air an ad that links her to genocidal violence in Cambodia, ABC grants undeserved legitimacy to ideas that make her a target."https://t.co/fUWquQjDKc

— Democratic Coalition (@TheDemCoalition) September 13, 2019

This is probably deeply ill-advised of me to notice, but I'm a Gen-X blogger who realized a long time ago that I'm not really presidential material (even if the fitness of the current resident makes even me and my tattoos feel a little like, what the hell? Y not?) so let me just say--wow, but by the visibly melting frame of the yet-living Hank Kissinger, are we really going to go through whether the left-liberalism calling itself democratic socialism is kinda Khmer Rougey and not take notice of the entire right-wing foreign policy failure at influencing positive change with respects to....

Why, no. No we are not doing that. Or at least, you go ahead and do that history dissertation if you've a mind, but:  This is actually just my usual warning that conservative rhetoric is inflammatory and that inflammatory rhetoric is really the thing we should worry about regarding genocide, not mere issues of domestic economy. Because conservatives have been doing this thing with inflammatory and violent rhetoric. And sometimes it results in bad things.

No, Really. Shut up.

I'm not pretending that I have all the answers but I will say this--not all opinions are created equal. You could have some flaming hot takes on a thing based on an ideology you inherited that you haven't really thought the hell out, or you could be a person who regularly confronts the actual human toll of determining what some definition of "others" really "ought" to do with themselves, and the situation they "ought to consider themselves in" to sort themselves out properly (not like a threat, ha ha!?) just as a very real and remembered historical tragedy.

Just idly wanting to call Jews who support Obama "Kapos" as if implying that the current American presidential administration is exactly like a concentration camp committing genocide, is not merely disgustingly inflammatory, but cheapens the idea of genocide. It's clearly intentionally inflammatory. Schlichter doesn't see any problem with equating a person like Bernie Sanders with Pol Pot.  Really? Wanting a living wage and health care for all is exactly like exterminating numerous people for political reasons? When we talk about Donald Trump's love of dictators, which is a real thing, are we even bringing up genocide? Or are we trying to demonstrate that Trump doesn't even know what he's about? That he wants to approach dissenters with force because he doesn't even have a handle on how to subdue them with informed rhetoric?

I don't think Schlichter knows what he's about in alleging that folks at the Auschwitz Museum don't understand what genocide is. I'm just spending a minute on him here because being that badly wrong needs to be recognized. Israel is vulnerable to terror, and exposed--in part especially in the settlement regions. Failure to recognize this danger, and the peril of any thinking that antagonism is necessarily the best strategy in addressing these threats--is if one might pardon my assumptions, a recipe for violence. Trying to mitigate the situation to remove most potential for provocation is diplomacy. Doing otherwise is setting a stage for war. And avoidable deaths. This is a valid criticism many Israel supporters have against RW hardliners like Netanyahu.

But I doubt he's addressing this rationally, but to be exploitative. And his response to the Auschwitz Museum is just more exploitation. In other words, doing exactly the thing they pegged him with.

Climate Sunday: The End of Breathable Air?

While the COP21 talks continue, let's take a minute to talk about breathable air. Normally, when I talk about breathable air around here, I'm talking about the kind of air pollution in Beijing that makes simple breathing the equivalent of smoking 40 cigarettes a day. (And wouldn't you know, it's about as bad as it ever was.) This time, however, what I want to talk about is a recent finding that at 6 degrees C increase in oceanic temperature, we could be seeing the end of actually breathable air--not air that is too dirty to safely breathe, but air without enough oxygen to sustain aerobic life. This comes about due to a die-off of the phytoplanktons that produce most of the oxygen in our atmosphere, similar to the die-offs we see in the current mass coral bleaching event.

This is why it's imperative that fossil fuels like coal are quickly phased out in countries like India, which has made the case that as a matter of economic justice, they will continue to use coal due to its price point over other energy sources. Leaving aside that coal has been determined to be irredeemably "dirty" in CO2 terms, and that increasingly severe weather events from climate change, such at the devastating floods occurring just now in the Tamil Nadu region are not without economic impact, they have a point--and my feeling is that economic aid should be gathered in a trust managed by the UN for the purposes of subsidizing the necessary transitions, which needn't be painful, and which may prove to be even more outstandingly effective than low-cost coal use from an economic point of view, once it's off and running. It's necessary to think in these terms, because India's energy needs show no signs of decrease any time soon. (On the other hand, China, which is still using coal hand over fist, should basically just stop because they should, and shouldn't need paying off to do so.)

Genocide-curious?

The idea that President Obama is a Muslim (or some kind of "foreign") is not terribly new or especially rare, really. Donald Trump specifically began his version of serious political discourse with a terrifically silly quest to obtain President Obama's birth certificate and his school records. This singularly dumb conspiracy-theory nonsense which is not a little racist should have put a stake in The Donald when he became the punchline of the White House Correspondents' Dinner in 2011, coincidentally the same date that Seal Team Six took out Bin Laden. Looking like that big an ass almost made Trump irrelevant as a serious contender for 2012, but it nonetheless resulted in the candidates that year taking him seriously as a donor and an endorser. Funny how that happened.

Or maybe not that funny at all. Trump is a self-promoter and an entertainer. I've covered the degree to which some of his antics have been racialist. But as I've also covered, racism and anti-minority propaganda are not a joking matter, whether he's doing them as a "joke" or as a "straight shoot". We just saw a 14 year old Muslim kid arrested and denied access to his parents and legal assistance because he built a clock for a science project for crying out loud. Not to mention the open hostility that turns up in the national dialogue when Black Lives Matter gets discussed. Even though the extralegal assaults on people of color by law enforcement is a completely real thing. I've covered the way white thugs used Trump's name to justify their violence.

This is why I can't shrug when Donald Trump responds to a question regarding what to do about an overstated claim about the threat of Islamic people in the country that ends with "when can we get rid of them?" with "We are going to be looking at a lot of different things."

Different things? From the guy whose immigration stance already conjures up images of people being rounded up in boxcars for mass deportation? Where are we deporting the Muslims, even the US-born ones, to? Or is there something "different" and worse in store for Muslims?

I know this is just political talk to some people. But seriously--words mean things, and frankly, when I hear talk that sort of sounds like people getting rounded up because they are all assumed to be suspicious because it makes the slack-jawed haters happy, I think shit has gone too far. Maybe there's a joke you can make of "birther-curious". "Genocide-curious" just isn't funny to me. Appealing to hate isn't funny to me. This should be disqualifying. Full stop. This is not entertainment--it's sickness.