Waltz Gets a Signal

 

When anything happens in TrumpWorld that sort of comports with reality, like the Signal chat-loving NSA Mike Waltz getting the boot, I want to do a blogpost about what the heck seems to be going on, but am always tempered by it being TrumpWorld, and the facts probably being muddier and dumber than what we initially hear. Of course, the fellow who initiated the notorious SignalGate chat is out, and so is his deputy, Alex Wong. 

Of course. A proper Administration might have done that weeks ago, and sent SecDef Hegseth packing as well. 

But this is TrumpWorld. It probably isn't the chat itself so much as Waltz having a perceived "unfriendly" journo in his saved phone contacts that did him in. And the contributions of MAGA influencer Laura Loomer. 

Marco Rubio is, like Elon Musk in the other day's cabinet meeting, wearing multiple hats, now. All I know is, Waltz shouldn't be replaced with Witlesskopf because that would be horrible--so that's what will probably happen. 

Ashes, Ashes

 

There's a Tweet going around about the above two that one knows he's going to hell and the other doesn't, but that isn't it. If Marco Rubio thought he was going to hell for being here--would he be here? He's just mad he doesn't have a bigger part in the betrayal. But why fret? The coins are transferred, the kiss has been placed, the offering of rare earth minerals has been set. The body of Ukraine. The heroes have already given so much blood. And now, the martyrdom.

Rubio will play his part. The cock hasn't crowed three times, yet. But the US has retracted intelligence and aid. And the weapons they have, have been low-jacked. Leaving the Ukrainian people, who until now have been our allies, tasting gall. 

A TrumpWorld Cabinet of Curiosities

 

Pictures often are worth a thousand words--take a look at the picture above of Elon Musk, standing, not seated at the table, while Donald Trump is not even at the head of the table, but slumped, unnoticed by anyone, apparently drifting off to sleep. Just a podgy senior citizen with his hands in his lap, while everyone is listening to the real boss, who has not even bothered to put on a suit for the occasion but is dressed, as he generally is, like some close approximation an adolescent might make at adult clothing. He threw on a big-boy jacket over his play-clothes. 

It's not exactly The Last Supper, but what if I told you one of these folks assembled would betray Trump and every last one of them had eaten of his body and blood? 

We are getting on to a political Carnival. Lent for you, and Fat Tuesday for rich motherfuckers forever, so I felt like sprinkling a little Catholic consciousness over the above tableau. Also, I am very, very mean. 

I thought to myself when I perused Twitter's commentariat regarding the first cabinet meeting that what we were looking at was a Dunning-Kruger Group Therapy session where no one realized what their problem was and no one was getting any better. 

Cowardice Chasing Stupidity

Welcome to a stupid enterprise--emissaries from the Trump Administration appearing in Riyadh ready to deal away things they have no control over to appease Russians who our best intelligence indicates have no intention whatsoever to end the war in Ukraine.  They sat there and discussed what we were willing to stipulate without Europe or (and ESPECIALLY) Ukraine there, like their input would not matter. 

Because what the hell is the country that was actually invaded even doing in the picture, right? Let alone our NATO partners, huh? Like, what ABOUT Poland?

The picture above is a portrait of "cowardice chasing stupidity". Collectively, they might know what they are doing has no fucking chance in the world of leading to anything productive because of course not--but they are all dancing to Trump's incredibly foolish tune. 

TWGB: Terminal Main Character Syndrome

 

A young DOGE staffer has left because the Wall Street Journal had some questions, as in, "Is this racist account you? " I'm sure Elon Musk is shocked--shocked! That there are little racist pishers in his Kekistanian domain.  Wow. So exotic and not-vetted. 

What's really funny about this is, when our actual confirmed Secretary of State, former US Senator and former presidential candidate Marco Rubio, made a big statement about not going to the G20 in Johannesburg:

I wanted to ask the Real President (tm) Elon Musk if this was the result of his bitch titties being in a wringer over the concept of the US confronting the Woke Mind Virus on what used to be his terf. I mean, "turf".

Of course, I do. I was just confused because the US is obviously in a transitional period and our pronouns stopped being US and seem to be he/huh! regarding Astroboy. 

He's not the president that MAGA voted for, but he's what they got. Up in our databases, taking our numbers, deciding the size of the government HE thinks we deserve. Regardless of what any vetting into him might show, or what his conflicts of interest might be. 

Welcome to the TrumpWorld Kakistocracy

 

Did you know that being a deer in the headlights "Me and My Shadow" fig leaf for El Cofeve might get you a berth as head of Homeland Security? Yep. Kristi "We Also Kill Dogs" Noem has gotten a little promise from the ship of state she chose to barnacle on. I guess it is something she promises beyond supporting Trump in his momentary "Swaycation" from a rally where he momentarily found himself beyond words. I'm trying not to think it's because she put a half roll of quarters in his front pockets and offered to make change. 

You know, if right wing fuck for brains want to pretend Kamala Harris slept her way to the top, there is no end to the fucktacular permutations amongst RW personalities permissible--especially if they have already demonstrated being down like a clown. I presume Marco Rubio's exceptional capacity for supine boneless nuggetry has enhanced his likelihood for being chosen for Secretary of State. I can also foresee his being eventually "You're Fired'd" after giving up a guaranteed lifetime Senate seat. Compared to the other Sec of State possibilities he seems like the least worst--so there has to be a catch. 

TWGB: All the King's Goons

 

It took me awhile, but I remembered when Matt Gaetz used Twitter to harass witness against Trump, Michael Cohen (he was cleared of wrongdoing for that, but you know, and I know, he crossed a line), and then again, there was this time he and his fellows stormed a SCIF during Trump's first impeachment--an actual stupid and futile gesture:

So am I really shocked to see Matt Gaetz thugging it up the 2020 election way by declaring he is "standing back and standing by" in an echo of the Proud Boys? 

Of course he is. Little Lauren Boebert, handy as always, lent her 1776 spirit to Thursday's proceedings. In an echo of unwise guy Tommy Tuberville, she copped to being there to be a disruption and say things Trump can't say under the gag order. 

So, Iowa Picked the Rapist with 91 Felony counts?

 

I don't especially enjoy the primary season because the idea of caucuses themselves are dense and dumb to me--what the whole fuck is going on with those? People are dropping votes randomly into paper bags and empty popcorn buckets. Who knows who is showing up? (I see no ID's in the deep freeze, they don't need these when the voters are all Y.T.'s.) 

And then there's Iowa itself--an entire state that feels like a FOX news set-up in a rural PA diner no more than ten miles from the nearest militia training site. What gets me is the state gets these political creatures camping out among them, speechifying at them, trying to shake hands with them for at least six months out of the year, and when the inevitable man/woman-in the street interviews take place, they just say the most normie, uninformed things. Like, one guy was hung up on where Vivek Ramaswamy was from because of 9/11. There were no Hindu people with Indian ancestry having anything to do with that. And if he was concerned, how about looking up anything at all ever? Candidates do townhalls, have debates, have featured articles in newspapers and magazines and there's FUCKING WIKIPEDIA and some dolt allowed to vote doesn't know where this man's people are from. OR who did 9/11. 

One young lady said she was just thinking about Jesus and how he died for our sins, and wasn't that why Trump was going through all these trials? No, damn it, I want to yell--you weren't thinking that; Trump and every asshole warming up the crowds for him told you that and it somehow drilled its way into the thing you pick out sandwich fixin's with. Being in trouble for defaming one of his rape/assault/harassment victims has NOTHING to do with you. He stole government docs belonging to the US Gov't which is basically all of us, and that is a crime against you. The insurrection was a crime against our government. Also against you. 

How in the hell did about half the caucus goers decide the guy who has been determined to be a rapist and a fraud, is twice-impeached, and had a whole bathroom's worth of White House docs, PLUS, horked out of his Florida home is still somehow fit to be president?

The Supremacist Who Worked for FL GOP (UPDATED)

 

In a story I want to highlight for obvious reasons--Lil Marco Rubio took a break from posting on Twitter as a Vacation Bible Camp fortune cookie and told us that one of his campaign canvassers was put into the hospital for just being a Republican, which is a horrific thing to be happening in Hiahleah, Florida, 

It quickly turned out that the young man in question had a long history of being associated with hate groups and had been paid by the GOP in FL for a while, apparently without them noticing or caring he was a part of the Unite the Right Rally or had been arrested previously for jabbing a Confederate flag at people.  

The first assailant who had been caught is probably not even political. A second man has been arrested, but nothing there reinforces Rubio's Republican persecution story, either. 

So, I guess what I want to know is, did Rubio point out that a person associated with Charlottesville and was a known right-wing provocateur in all innocence of who he actually was in the hope that people would honestly consider Republicans to be martyrs facing an underdog battle in (consults notes) Hiahleah, Fl, against militant liberal antifa hordes just roughing up innocent canvassers left and right, or was he trying to get in front of the story that RW/Proud Boys, etc. type guys were now a regular part of the GOP political scene by spraying the sanctity of a martyrdom beatdown all over him? 

TWGB: We Said He Wasn't Right

 

President Biden threw his support behind the top U.S. military officer, Mark Milley, a day after a new book said he went around civilian leaders to place secret calls to his Chinese counterpart over concerns about then-President Donald Trump https://t.co/mgr8I1Rd7T pic.twitter.com/0PNUDrO7rx

— Reuters (@Reuters) September 16, 2021

Pause to consider for an instant what happened in a brief span--a leak from Woodward's latest book reveals that post-1/6, Trump was so out-of-bounds that Joint Chiefs Chairman Mark Milley wanted to see to it that there were additional guardrails in place to prevent an international catastrophe from occurring.  The reality seems to be that Milley's actions weren't quite as "mavericky" as the book depicts. And I'm not privileging the insights from one view of his actions over the other, I wasn't there and am no military expert. 

What's fascinating to me is people who seized on whether Milley trying to mitigate the apparent volatility of the CinC was wrong (if not treasonous!) instead of noting that the outgoing president was, in fact, acting as if out of his goddamn mind. After all, it's not a secret that Trump made decisions after his loss that weren't really "America First" but seem like a tantrum made manifest in abrupt foreign policy dictates.  And, as I've regularly indicated here in the blog--the man is not well. Trump has boasted that he is a "stable genius" at regular intervals, and believe me, no one does that unless their intellect and stability were both seriously under question.

But Senator Marco Rubio roared out of the gate to demand that Milley be fired for his temerity.  Which is something that would just mean Biden appoints a new one (although for crying out loud--I guess GOP senators would make a "thing" out of the "advise and consent" deal. After all, blocking State Department picks, or State Department and DOD picks for insincere counterproductive reasons (for a value of counterproductive that includes national security but does not include self-promotion) is apparently the new trifling stunt from the clown shoes brigade that triflingly stunted over the Biden election confirmation. 

I could point out, as I have before, so what good does it do us that someone is telling us this--NOW? But to be clear, any corroboration that TrumpWorld has operated and still does operate around the damaged psyche of a spoiled brat with neither empathy nor loyalty is necessary to keep in view in a world where this guy is still considered a GOP 2024 presidential frontrunner, and not an epically disgraced has-been. It is also good to remind people that the current administration is coping with fall-out of irresponsible choices made by the previous administration.

And it serves to tell us who is still a deluded dupe paddling in The Former Guy's wake, incapable of committing the sin of ever holding Trump accountable for anything.  You can tell who they are, because they blame Trump's failures on the people who tried to curb his foolishness, because in a world where expertise is demonized, mere competence itself is considered suspect. 

Although, IMHO, not too many current GOP officeholders need to be overwhelmingly concerned about being considered "suspect".

Marco Rubio is a US Senator

This is a screenshot because, oh my! it will surely be deleted, but you know what? He did. He Tweeted it. Marshall law.

UPDATE: But what he's saying is, unfortunately, completely necessary. People do get to speculating, and run their mouths from zero to FEMA camps without any proof.

What The Hell are You Doing? 3: CoNsErvAtIsM Edition

Reporter: Has the President ever denounced Steve King?

Sanders: He denounced him to me privately. pic.twitter.com/B5gq1bmX2q

— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) March 11, 2019

I know Sarah Huckabee Sanders hates her job the way I hate touching the little wet bits of plate scrapings that end up stuck in the sink strainer when I do dishes. She doesn't address the press very much, and when she does, it seems a little hostile and she's pretty quick to say a lie. The above exchange isn't exactly a lie, though--it's just a deflection. But whew! Denouncing someone privately to a person whose job is to relay your message (and maybe try and make you look not-terrible) is not actually a "denunciation". An actual denunciation would be saying Steve King is a racist and what he says is not acceptable, right out loud where the people can hear. What Trump would have done if he privately let on to his press secretary that he would just rather Steve King not be so icky and embarrassing and whatnot, is a complaint. It's a wholly different, and in this case, less honorable tactic called "having it both ways". Trump would like to keep his racist cake and eat it, too.

The dishonesty of this barely touches the "infanticide" claim, though--which was made by several Republicans at CPAC and has now been repeated more than once by Sanders. (She also played about with the idea that Democrats hate Jews, which is also inflammatory and astounding.)

I do not know if the lies are the part of the job she hates, or if facing the press is the part of the job she hates, but I genuinely believe she could, if she cared to tell the truth, just do so and be fired, or fucking quit and see if someone else will let her lie to people who might not ask her annoying questions, as actual journalists do. Maybe she could teach a course in doublespeak at Liberty University or something. She just seems so unhappy, and I'm close to thinking she really damn well ought to be.

The Difference Between Hearing and Listening

The nail-bitten and wash-raw hands of Donald Trump in the image above clutch a note in the handwriting of some aide counseling him to say, clearly, a few things:

1) What would you want me to know about your experience?

2) What can we do to help you feel safe? 

and

5) I hear you. 

"I hear you" can be meant in a lot of ways, you know. "I hear you" can mean "I am listening to you because what you say is important to me". It can mean "I recognize your importance." When folks regularly say "I hear you" or "I hear that", it easily means "I know where you are coming from. I recognize and see you".  I don't know why things so anodyne and basic to the human political response even needed to be written down. Who needs to be told to acknowledge the person asking you things? Who needs to be told that the survivors of a gun-related tragedy should be invited to speak from their experience?

(Someone who probably does not care, is my guess.)

These notes were given to Trump so he could remember how to not look like someone bought and paid for by a shit-ton of NRA money. He was supposed to be interested in what the folks had to say, seem welcoming to input, try to reassure his hearers that he wanted to keep their security in mind, like some kind of chief executive of a very large nation might. And then he was supposed to reassure his querents that he was not just a mighty oracle, but a benign one, by ensuring them that he was "hearing them".

It might have been better if he was actively listening to them (not that I know he has ever actively listened to anyone in his life). Many hearers of his talk came away with the idea that he was not listening at all.  Who, for example, comes away from a group of people agreeing that no more guns is the answer, and then states like a super-genius--"Let's arm teachers!"    

Someone who isn't listening and can't even read a room, I would say.

I did not watch the CNN Townhall with the students and Marco Rubio and Dana Loesch from the NRA, so I don't even know how that went. But I feel like this discussion needs a crash course in people understanding how to not just hear one another, but listen. But especially to survivors who would not feel protected if they had a gun. 

He Watched Fox News

Wow! -Senator Mark Warner got caught having extensive contact with a lobbyist for a Russian oligarch. Warner did not want a “paper trail” on a “private” meeting (in London) he requested with Steele of fraudulent Dossier fame. All tied into Crooked Hillary.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 9, 2018

So, there was a funny old thing that happened about a minute ago, where Julian Assange tried to slide some info on Senator Warner into a Hannity parody account's DM's.  Or, like, use other channels. This struck me as so hilarious when it happened that I mentioned it sideways in a TrumpWorld Grab-Bag thingy as a sign that old Jules was going batshit. But this Warner thing has apparently filtered from the Fox News mushroom feeding trough to POTUS--and it's wrong.

Actually, Marco Rubio put the kibosh on it, to his credit. This turns out to be just as "devastating" as the bombshell texts that were supposed to show that President Obama was keeping tabs on the investigation into Hillary Clinton's emails, when he was actually interested in being fully briefed about the real national security threat of Russian fiddling with our elections (a thing Trump himself apparently can't be arsed to do anything about--has WH COS Kelly talked about his lazy ass getting this situation corrected enough?)

This reminds me of a study that once showed that people who watch Fox News were actually less informed than people who watch no news at all. Trump watches Fox a whole lot, it seems.  Makes one wonder if a president of a developed nation like, well, the US, could get better information somehow. If he could be bothered to.


UPDATE: From the Washington Post: he doesn't read the daily briefing because it isn't his "style of learning".  Who knows if he gets more value from the oral briefing than from his "executive time"?

Marco Rubio Should Keep Out of This

One of the most disturbing things the media tried to do with Marco Rubio was try to portray him as someone who was less radical and incendiary than a loud-mouth like Trump. Rubio's professed beliefs on social issues are extremely retrograde--take his appearance at a homophobe hootenanny.  The guy claimed that the mass shooting at an Orlando LGBT nightclub reminded him of his calling to public service--and at the first opportunity, he's back on the side of oppressing people who happen to be gay, and he won't do anything about guns, either, and oh, he's basically fish-titty useless on understanding the causes and concerns of Islamic radicalism, because he doesn't know the difference between Shia Iran and Sunni Wahhabist ISIS. But you know what he never needs to insert himself in--

Family planning. Especially when it comes to his recent empathy and good sense-lacking commentary on what Zika-infected women should do regarding their pregnancies.

The short of the long is, because he's so very, very pro-life, he doesn't think women should have the right to determine whether they can terminate a pregnancy that may result in a severely impaired child, that may be physically onerous on them (because of being infected) and may prove highly costly to that woman, her family, and their community. He lets his four-letter fig leaf, in other words--"life"--trump everything else that might be meaningful in this discussion. He would prefer he take the power to choose out of the hands of women, leaving them with children whose lives are extraordinarily burdened, and inflicting suffering on families as a result.

I find it less than amusing to note, that he uses the language of pseudoscience: "pain-capable" regarding fetuses, and yet ignorantly and with all paternalism, ignores the actual real pain that is experienced by the post-born people who live in the actual world, and who, if one were the baby in question, endure such symptoms as vision and hearing loss, severely delayed development, seizures, and a host of other ills. And, if one were the parents, a lifetime controlled by the need to provide for a severely impaired infant--who would cease to be an infant in time and would become, at some point, an adult, with all these impairments, with elderly parents who might not outlive that child's needs.

It's none of his fucking pro-life concern whether these people seek out a legal medical procedure to avoid that enduring pain. It's brutality on his part to suppose that his moral qualms supplant the understanding of other people about what they need to do for the better future of their families. He is mind-blind to the struggles they will face, in the certainty of his own internal righteousness.

I hope he loses his damn Senate seat, and that the private sector is as cold to him as as the moral freezer he keeps his regard for us human meat-puppets in.

Just when he thought he was out...

UPDATE: Rubio confirms: I am running for reelection https://t.co/S4TvXC2uMm pic.twitter.com/0w2KQAiUGo

— The Hill (@thehill) June 22, 2016

They pull him back in!

I thought he was saying that the US Senate was no fun and he never got to do cool stuff and really meant it, you guys.

But is certainly is a job. His website offers why he's running. I hope he loses.

Big Hands I know You're the One

Marco Rubio says he's going to the GOP convention https://t.co/4hRWayX97R via @ericbradner https://t.co/XmEr5g0wTA

— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) May 26, 2016

Marco Rubio can say all he likes that he isn't thinking about running for the Senate again and is just going to go to the Republican National Convention to be "helpful"--but I just can't help but think back on all that water under the bridge. You don't decide casually to "be helpful" to someone like Donald Trump, who I think probably has a very long memory for slights. Because while I don't know what Rubio gets out of it, I can't help but think that, you know. One day Mr. Trump will have a favor to ask...someday, and that day may never come...

Or maybe Trump will just ask him to run for his seat again even though the man seems to have come to loathe being in the Senate. After all, a new administration needs all the help it can get on the Hill. And if Lil' Marco were anywhere else but Washington, how else could Donald have quite as much fun with him?

Rubio tried to get out, but he gets pulled back in?


(Sorry--couldn't resist juxtaposing two pop culture references in one short post.)

Marco Rubio Calls it Quits

After being absolutely clobbered in his home state (and showing why he didn't decide to try for another term as US Senator--he might not be all that liked in FL), Marco Rubio is packing in his awkward run for the White House.

The "Robot Rubio" and "small hands" things might have taken away from the impression that he was a plausible presidential nominee, but I think expectations were unrealistically high regarding him in the first place.  He came across as young and ambitious--but the basis for his campaign was sort of horrible: "Congress doesn't do anything fun, so let me try being President instead." Hoo boy. Add that to the kind of neoconservative folderol of his foreign policy (echoes of PNAC right in the slogan) and retrograde social conservatism, and there just wasn't anything fresh and new about him but his face.

It looks like OH Gov. John Kasich really will have to be the GOP establishment's "new hotness", now.

What a Weird Presidential Debate.

Apparently some guy the same exact color as the drapes in the background said that 9/11 happened on George W. Bush's watch, that Iraq had no WMD's, and that Planned Parenthood does some good stuff at a Republican presidential debate, and he is the frontrunner. Also Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio argued in awkward Spanish. Sometimes the moderators introduced facts and the audience booed. Jeb Bush really likes his family because they have wars and almost always stop terrorism except some of the time.

A+ debate. No one thinks we elect presidents based on these things, right?

This One Sounds Broken

Welp. Rubio is on repeat again. Sure, you can make all the jokes you want about whether his campaign has tried switching him off and on again to see if the problem clears up, or checking all his plugs, but to be honest, when they started to see the condensation forming on the outside and kept pouring water in, they should have known they had a coolant failure.