A Constitutional Crisis and a Confederacy of Dumbasses

 

Huh. You know, if a general violated any international treaties and committed war crimes, a judge would very legitimately have something to say about that. A judge could certainly reject the case of an attorney general and determine that their reading of the law was wrong if it very much was. And the idea that judges can determine that an act of Congress or of the executive office was in violation of the Constitution is called "checks and balances." The old separation of powers thing where we don't want any branch of government to be really dictatorial. 

This is the "are you smarter than a fifth grader?" level of understanding how our government works.  Senators Mike Lee and Tom Cotton also played very dumb about what they should have very earnestly understood based on their own education. 

The Russia Campaign Reminds Me--

 

This is what Tenet Media was broadcasting for Putin in the U.S. They support Elon Musk, Trump, RFK Jr, and violent protests. 1/ pic.twitter.com/s3C2BPCZl6

— Karen Piper (@PiperK) September 8, 2024

If you take a look at the topics above, you'll note among other things--misogyny.  This was a key part of the 2014 "Gamergate" dry run and a big part of the attacks on Hillary Clinton. It's why my ears perked up at the allegation that gamers were part of the Russian disinfo targeting for the 2024 election. (And minorities--that voter suppression technique that was used pretty well in 2016, both by Brad Parscale for Trump as he admitted and by the Internet Research Agency on "parallel tracks".) 

Flashforward to 2024, and we have Tucker Carlson, whose Putin interview and Moscow supermarket adulation were both deemed surprisingly cringey even to producers of Kremlim-inspired sludge, calling women in the US military: feces. 

Tucker Carlson is revolted by our war wounded.

He compares them to literal shit.

He will almost certainly have a position in the second Trump Administration.pic.twitter.com/5QSoyVvHjH

— Veterans For Responsible Leadership (@VetsForRL) September 8, 2024

The Things They Say

 

The desperation is hilarious. https://t.co/8OZ0H0y44C pic.twitter.com/Owr6iTAPaO

— Chris D. Jackson (@ChrisDJackson) September 1, 2024

(This post been busted--here's a link adjacent as fuck.) I should have saved the image. 

The same kind of people who think Kamala Harris never saluted also are mad Barack Obama saluted once with a coffee cup or wore a tan suit that one time.  The same kind of people will boldly assert she doesn't know where Arlington Cemetery is, when she knows the route. Someone like Senator Tom Cotton, who wrote a book about Arlington, can say with some confidence that Biden and Harris should have attended an event to which they were not invited on his weekly Sunday chat shot hit. (Yes, weekly, and why? Do people want to see this mook?) He says it with confidence not because it's true, but because he doesn't expect to be thrown out on his ear. 

This is the guy who wrote the letter ages ago that recommended we back out of the JCPOA, and it was literally one of the dumbest foreign policy decisions ever. He's an open partisan whose opinions aren't to be trusted--ergo, he's on tv every week. 

Apparently, the media just exists to air opinions without context. 

Are You Now or Have You Ever?

 

Tom Cotton: "Have you ever been a member of the Chinese Communist Party?"

TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew: "Senator, I'm Singaporean. No!"

Cotton: "Have you ever been associated or affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party?"

Chew: "No, Senator. Again, I'm Singaporean!" pic.twitter.com/5Wa72aJIr9

— Justin Baragona (@justinbaragona) January 31, 2024

Sen. Tom Cotton (R--1950s Red Scare) indulges in a little McCarthyism overlayed with anti-Asian bigotry. He so completely serves as an example of my theory that the Ivy League schools have a form of affirmative action for mediocre conservatives that I'm almost embarrassed to show him off.  Is he over-compensating for attending an egghead school by aggressively Bubba-ing like this?

(I think Sen Kennedy does the same thing, TBH.)

I think he's coming at it from the wrong direction: one doesn't have to be a member of the party to be influenced by leverage from the party. His performance is a sort of distraction; appeal to the audience watching, without getting to the heart of the matter. In other words, the need to represent (echoing McCarthy) has significance that effectiveness does not. 

This is a problem that is going around. 

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.) 

TWGB: Trump's Loss

 

Seems like just yesterday when Donald Trump was coming down that escalator in the iconic Trump Tower to announce his bid for the presidency, and we all heard he paid people to show up. He was already fantastically famous due to his reality tv program which depicted him as a very successful businessman, albeit with an entire fuckton of editing. The reality has always been a lot more complicated.  As in, very legally complicated. Just so, so, so complicated.  Trump was already knee-deep in litigation over Trump University--a fraud. 

Since then, he's had to pay $2 million and shut down his fraudulent Trump Organization charity, his business has been found liable for tax fraud, and now, in a summary judgment, NY AG Leticia James' bank fraud case against him has been substantially bolstered--Trump and his family loses their business, and Trump even parts with that golden escalator. 

Abortion is Medical Care not a Fucking Spa Vacation

 

TOM COTTON: The military should not be paying for abortion tourism

SHANNON BREAM: So what should women who are in uniform in a place where they cannot access an abortion because they are there on orders, what should they do?

COTTON: They have 30 days of annual leave pic.twitter.com/18UHQnmWx6

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 16, 2023

He's being disingenuous about how easy it is to just go ahead and get leave depending upon what your unit is up to, and seems to be oblivious to how time-sensitive the mission to get a pregnancy resolved truly is, but I guess what this dead-eyed putz is implying that really set me off is the idea that taking leave and making a trip to where safe, legal reproductive care can be obtained is a FUCKING VACATION! A FUCKING TOUR OF THE WONDERFUL AND LUXURIOUS WORLD OF NOT CARRYING A FETUS. A GODDAMN SIGHTSEEING EXTRAVAGANZA OF YOUR KNEES UP AND WHATNOT IF SURGICAL AND A PHARMACY IF MEDICAL! AND MAYBE YOU WILL WITNESS THE LOCAL ANTI-ABORTION TRIBES PERFORMING THEIR SLUT-SHAMING RITUALS! AND EVEN INVOLVE YOU IN THEM!

I don't know how Tom Cotton was raised, but I guess if it was in Arkansas, land of the Duggars, maybe his early rearing really was as backwards regarding sex ed as a very backwards thing can be. The thing where women who are raped are seen as having been traps for their rapists. The thing where having had sex taints and uses a woman up--makes her less worthy. (Describing the sexual female as "used gum" in Christian abstinence education haunts me. Vaginas, are elastic like gum and self-cleaning like ovens. What the whole fuck?) The thing where her life is nothing compared not only to a viable fetus, but even to a nonviable one. As if she was obliged to go down with the ship because someone else desperately believed in miracles. 

The Ballad of Feckless Tom Cotton

 

DNC Chairman Jaime Harrison sounds off on Tom Cotton in particular and the GOP in general on Morning Joe: "It is a party build on fraud, fear, and fascism. And they don't deserve to be in power." pic.twitter.com/5fNseWcwqr

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 6, 2022

Ol' Tom Cotton seems misbegotten, his basic cognition spoiled by ambition.

O, has he forgotten? The Constitution and its clear admonition,

that due process is a cornerstone mission? 

This bug-bothered brain, that can't recall what he swore an oath to, at all, at all--

Cassius like, hungry and lean, but above all else, trifling and mean,

he lies like a bear rug--a bare-faced mug, that no mother would hug. 

A stranger, no ranger and a clear and present danger--

Would I call him racist?

To his face-it's 

possible but the benefit of the doubt

he should be without. For he would deny

the same to any other guy

and my Golden Rule applies:  

he should get done as he would others be done by. 

Because here is the ballad of feckless Tom Cotton,

grifter assisted, sold and boughten,

Donor-approved and moral bereft,

Intellectually touted but having no heft,

I've sung out his lay and still he lies

and so he will till the day he dies-- 

And all of his beetling brow becomes flies. 

The GOP Still Supports Putin's Puppet

 

You know, the more time goes by, the more I wonder what exactly was said between Trump and Putin at Helsinki, because the physical attitude of Trump and Putin couldn't have looked more like a smiling owner and a chastised pup. I think about this now because of the stark contrast between the attitudes of Trump and Biden, naturally. I also think of it because Republicans who want to criticize Biden at this moment seem to have lost the plot, if they ever even had it. 

Take today--Devin Nunes doesn't entirely understand why the Biden Administration is telegraphing the moves of Putin before they are made. Why have intelligence, and act on it? It seems deliberately dense to not understand that circumventing disinfo like a false flag operation is acting in a time-sensitive fashion to derail Russia's plans, and that the revelation is about advising Russia and the region that the US has eyes on. If Nunes does not get this, he's daft. But I think he might understand this, and is merely grousing that things are being made harder for Team Trump's favorite dictator. 

After all, one upon a time, Republicans like Nunes would have totally thought that sharing is caring regarding Trump talking to Lavrov and Kislyak in the Oval Office, of all places, about highly sensitive things. That was an amazing act, as much as his obligingly servile claim to have gotten rid of Comey just to end the Russia, Russia, Russia investigation (which did not happen). 

So before I hear shit about Biden in any foreign policy capacity, I need Republicans to admit that Trump came off during his four year learning experience of how to almost world leader like Peter Griffin at his terrorist pool party. 

And I need to them to also admit that unlike Trump, Biden is capable of putting American interests actually first. Which I think they are too scummy to admit, but which he actually does, and kiddos, this is why we never trust Republicans. 

 

I also think it's funny when a certain party suggests that the White House release the transcript of Biden's calls with Zelenskyy. Oh, this sweet summer child, someone in the White House has access to the transcripts of many of Trump's "perfect calls" and I doubt that game is something they want to actually play. And no, it isn't a game.  This is real life, where many Ukranians can die and we should support democracies as the supposed leader of the free world. And not extort their leaders or just be ignorant anti-NATO puppets of Putin. 

TWGB: The Once And Future President

 

As I fleetingly touched on earlier, Sidney Powell is still touting the possibility that Trump really won 2020 and will somehow be reinstated, and it seems like Trump himself believes this very weird thing, too. You could point out for a number of reasons why this makes no sense at all and isn't how anything works, and it would not mean a whole lot to the sort of person who would come to this belief in the first place, because that person is no longer concerned about what makes sense or how things worked in the real world, if they ever did. 

Where the Trump mythos takes place is in a different world, though. Even Powell, when financially pressed, will point out that it's a fictional one. But in the Trump mythos, Our Everyman can come back from multiple trips to the underworld. He can be bankrupt, investigated, be waylaid by "temptresses", be stabbed in the back (I have shaded him before but--Bret Stephens wrote a very good one, there, no lie) by the press and even insufficiently faithful political allies. But he isn't supposed to lose. And that faith (wherever tokens of faith are sold) will be rewarded with either satisfaction, or knowledge. Or not. (They're just getting ripped off. )

So on a day when the New York Times lets us know that Mark Meadows, Trump's COS, spent the last days of Trumpelot wielding a lance on a dubious quest to find the Golden Chalice of Shit that Would Make Trump not Have Lost the Whole Fucking Enchilada, we see baggy-pants clown Trump, Trumpliaccio, take to the North Carolina GOP convention, to be wrong about things like whether the Spanish Flu pandemic started in 1917 (Jesus, this again?) or, you know, whether he didn't spend the early part of the pandemic kissing Xi's ass because he fucked up the China trade issue. 

Meadows even questioned whether it was an Italian Job. I blogged this one in disbelief the night before the insurrection that some people had come to swallow extraordinary stupidities--and found myself acknowledging what was said so often just after January 6--those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities. 

And all for this guy.

This. This tottering elderly unvital slurring fuck, who looks like his ass is on backwards, and has his hair piled into a box and sprayed square before being dumped onto his numb receptive skull, is probably the GOP 2024 front-runner.

Not Ted Cruz. Not Tom Cotton, Not Nikki Haley. Not Marco Rubio. Not Mike Pence. Not Josh godforsaken Hawley. This guy. This guy right here. 

So basically, he's both the worst threat to democracy that ever existed, or the best friend the Democratic party ever knew. He had the White House, and seems to think he will have it again. 

If Ronna McDaniel finagles the primaries to benefit him, and eliminates debates so he doesn't get his ass kicked in, because of course, he needs that advantage just like he needs stimulants and capacious legwear, I don't really worry about how well Democrats will do. But I guess some people's mileage may vary. Even if Trump is clearly going nowhere.

He's the once and future president that our country will have to work to live down. A national nightmare. A conspiracy-theory president. A myth. But look and despair. There's also a real human being called Trump, and shit. Horror and pity. Horror and pity. Family tragedy and all that. But I also think his kids encourage dear papa in his madness. and alas--the GOP as well. This clown Lear, former king and fool at once.

Tom Cotton: Literally or Seriously?

On Fox & Friends, Sen. Tom Cotton compares protesters to the Confederacy: "These insurrectionists in the streets of Portland are little different from the insurrectionists who seceded from the union in 1861 in South Carolina, and tried to take over Fort Sumter." pic.twitter.com/7ylYh3N1dB

— Bobby Lewis (@revrrlewis) July 21, 2020

Um, so, should we be raising statues to the Portland protesters then?

Ha--I kid, but you knew that. It's kind of hard to tell when Sen. Cotton is kidding and it's kind of hard to take someone saying that seriously. It's just goddamn stupid. They aren't trying to secede from the US, they want the US actually support the rights enumerated in the Constitution. His comment could be considered a kind of hyperbole, but it's only hyperbole if that isn't how the person saying it seems to think and talk all the time.

This is why I hold that the best way to treat Cotton (see here, and here, and here, and here) as a dangerous fuckwit. Treat the culture war like Confederate secessionists, and then what? Have a new civil war? (There's imagery Trump uses a lot, also.) It's obscene.

Who is Protected and What is Served?

SHOCKING VIDEO: LAPD officers seen striking protesters with batons in Fairfax district confrontation https://t.co/gWbBswwzvs pic.twitter.com/HscxXj4sKN

— ABC7 Eyewitness News (@ABC7) June 4, 2020

Before I go any further, I want to unburden myself of a confession: I read Senator Tom Cotton's op-ed in the paper of record, and was unsurprised. Cotton has snakes in his head. He would necessarily view the poor, beleaguered, heavily-armed, body-armored and outnumbered municipal police forces inadequate to properly batter down the protests against: people being battered down by heavily-armed police forces, because there is just something about the snap and shine of a jackboot that sends a thrill through a certain kind of person. That's Our Tommy. He never saw the situation but the application of force would make it better.

He's wrong, of course. The problem with his premise is that the American people aren't fucking sheep to be prodded along off the streets by the armed forces they fucking pay for, and the very idea that the First Amendment rights of people to mostly peaceably gather and voice their wholly reasonable opinion (that unarmed people should not be brutalized by law enforcement, because that is not, actually, enforcing the law) is not, for the sake of a handful of over-publicized vandals and shit-stirrers, to be abridged. (Folded, spindled, or even mutilated.)

Pining for the Fjords 2: Makes Sense to Them!

I thought it might just be a one-weekend weirdness kind of story when Trump's Greenland obsession came to light, although it was cute, at first, watching the slightly-blitzed Larry Kudlow defend it in all seriousness. It took a bit of a turn when he postponed his trip to Copenhagen and then put the Danish PM on blast, but Darn it all! He had apparently been thinking about this thing for a long time. Why, it's prime real estate!

(The joke about trading Puerto Rico for Greenland is a bit dark, though.)

But now that it's become a diplomatic incident, apparently, the Republican party thinks this is definitely very legal and very cool, and are fundraising off of it. I guess it's life-support-system for an Adam's apple, Senator Tom Cotton, though, who really takes the old birthday cake by admitting to be the person who gave Trump this tremendous brainstorm.

Oh, Tommy. What kind of super brain genius is going to take you seriously now...

Ah, right. He's still after a Trump cabinet position. Loyalty! He shows it!

Yeesh. I really did not think I'd still be blogging about this.

Catapulting the Propaganda 2

hmmm: “The team of U.S. military experts was sent to investigate at request of UAE, but American officials have not provided details about what happened or any proof of possible Iranian involvement in the explosions” https://t.co/LP8wKWlsoK

— John Harwood (@JohnJHarwood) May 15, 2019

Some of you readers are like me and can remember where I filched the phrase "catapulting the propaganda" from--that was from the Bush Administration. George W. Bush admitted he had to repeat things over and over again for the "truth" to set in in order to "catapult the propaganda".  That word "truth" is a pretty slippery commodity, but the idea of "catapulting the propaganda" pretty accurately described his Administration's messaging. He let that moment of reality slip while talking about privatizing Social Security, but it more truthfully describes what happened regarding the use of repetition, changing justifications, and outright frauds to create a casus belli for the war in Iraq.

Now, here comes the Trump Administration, no strangers to repeating things that are inaccurate or unclear or perpetrating frauds, talking up the possibility of a threat of war with Iran out loud and in private (looking for their "slam dunk case" perhaps?). Even though our allies indicate that there seems to be no real urgent threat.

All I'm saying is, we have sure as hell been here before, and pretty damn recently, too. I don't think it's a "wag the dog" situation, necessarily, to draw attention away from the eleventy-odd investigations into Trump, his family, his businesses, etc., the unwisdom of his trade policies, or even necessarily because blood appeases his base--although I think that last thing, right there, might be a little relevant.

I see Sen. Cotton thinks an Iran War would short and sweet:

Senator @TomCottonAR tells Firing Line if it comes to war with Iran, he is confident the United States would win, and would win swiftly. “Two strikes, the first strike and the last strike,” says the Senator. pic.twitter.com/twTdrFTwHu

— Firing Line with Margaret Hoover (@FiringLineShow) May 14, 2019

This answer seems asinine for reasons I don't think one even has to have served in the military to figure out--a "first strike" indicates we start a war of choice to send a message. What the actual entire fuck thinking is that? Maybe the message inadvertently sent won't be "Don't start a war with us", but rather, "You might as well retaliate".(This is not an invitation to try and explain his thinking to me--it's not thinking!) After the first and last strike--then what? Because a war is pointless unless you can then win the peace. (Unless you don't actually want peace. I guess that, too, is a possibility.)

We did have a diplomatic deal with Iran for a bit and I know Cotton didn't like it at all, but the funny old thing is, you don't shoot at people or bomb them and expect diplomacy. You can just do diplomacy.

I'd love to think that having been here before, and having watched how Iraq played out (and is still, really, playing out), we could expect the media to not help "catapult the propaganda" but I don't know. Trump (and his allies') propaganda seems to be repeated all the time, even if, paragraphs down or further in the conversation, someone, somehow, factchecks. And the repetition is what matters for propaganda to succeed.

Catapulting the Propaganda

Trump has Tweets again:

He still isn't actually saying that American consumers will be paying the tariffs, and his Tweets make no actual sense, but then, neither do his advisers.

Simply rest assured, sacrifices must be made in a trade war, but Trump still believes they "easy to win".

UPDATE:  Holy shit, he actually "believes" his bullshit.

A former Trump aide to @jonathanvswan: There’s little hope in trying to convince the president that China does not, in fact, pay the tariffs, because Trump’s belief in them is “like theology.” https://t.co/9EO5g4F37i pic.twitter.com/nhFSSd4K7k

— Megan Cassella (@mmcassella) May 14, 2019

HATAWL 3: Everything He Said He Would Do

So among things that are now happening with what potential Trump say out loud where the people can hear--let's talk about the possibility of a Muslim registry--the US had something similar during the Bush Administration for tracking people (males, specifically, over the age of 16) who came from a list of suspect countries. That program survived court challenges regarding its Constitutionality but didn't so much catch would-be terrorists so much as people who overstayed their visas. (It was ended largely because other DHS tracking systems made it redundant.) A part of an anti-immigration policy, it seems like using terrorism as a pretext to discourage Muslims from coming to the US, even to work or go to school--a step in the direct of a Muslim ban, without being an outright Muslim ban.

But rhetoric that cites Japanese internment camps as a precedent is alarming. It gives the impression that the system would be used  to ultimately "round up" people for mass deportation or detainment. The incoming Administration used campaign language that doesn't really encourage me to give them the benefit of the doubt. GOP Senator Tom Cotton has been floated as a possible Secretary of Defense pick:

Cotton made a name for himself soon after arriving in Washington by penning a letter to the Ayatollah of Iran disputing the Obama administration’s right to engage in negotiations over the Iran nuclear deal — a deal Trump has called “terrible” — and pulling almost all Senate Republicans on board. Sessions, meanwhile, is renowned for being one of Congress’s most uncompromising voices on immigration enforcement, which fits in well with the president-elect’s plans to build a southern border wall.

Both Cotton and Sessions believe that the United States should have kept more troops in Iraq, and agree with Trump that waterboarding should an available tool to U.S. interrogators — Cotton recently went so far as to argue that waterboarding doesn’t constitute torture — a stance considerably more hawkish than that held by most members of Congress.

I don't think it's reassuring that someone who has said there are too many empty beds in Guantanamo, that detainees can all "rot in hell", and advocates for torture is considered appropriate for that position. But it's not at all out of line with Trump's own comments about Guantanamo Bay and torture (even "taking out"suspected terrorists' families which sounds like a call for murder).  It doesn't sound like anything that would "make America great" to me--

But ISIS seems to like the sound of it:

"This guy is a complete maniac. His utter hate towards Muslims will make our job much easier because we can recruit thousands," Abu Omar Khorasani, a top Isis commander in Afghanistan, told Reuters.

"Our leaders were closely following the US election but it was unexpected that the Americans will dig their own graves and they did so," Khorasani continued, describing President Barack Obama as a moderate infidel with a little more intelligence than Mr Trump.

 "A complete maniac". Who is surrounding himself with more of them.

*How A Trump Administration Will Look= HATAWL

Mark Kirk Might Have Metaphorically Ganked Himself

Sometimes, when someone uses a metaphor, they are taking a little poetic license, dressing up things a bit, just adding a dash of color to their wording. And on the other hand, especially in politics, metaphors remind us that words mean things. For example, when IL Senator Mark Kirk, who is challenged by Rep. Tammy Duckworth in a contest for his US Senate seat, compares President Obama to a drug dealer in a contorted metaphor about the Iran deal, it might be necessary to wonder what the hell he meant. Do drug dealers regularly pay ransoms for hostages, I wonder? Is there anything about securing the release of Americans from a hostile government that is particularly drug-dealerish? There isn't really any valid reason for his metaphor as such, except to paint the President as some kind of "thug" (hmm) because he doesn't care for his policies. I don't know how one pays hostage-takers ransom with their own money. That's not how ransom works is it?

This isn't a metaphor that is new with Kirk, anyway. AR Senator Tom Cotton described President Obama as behaving like a drug cartel. There's a lot wrong what Tom Cotton says about the Iran deal as there would be . Not sure how conducting foreign policy is a drug-dealing thing, but ok. I get that they feel some kind of way about the deal--but what the hell is up with calling Obama a drug-dealer?

Maybe they have an Obeezy for Sheezy problem with him. I don't know. Except maybe I do. This line of criminalizing, Un-Americanizing, Un-Christianinzing, has been going on for too long for observers not to gather what, exactly, is up with those kinds of comments.

But it is the jig, damn it. The jig is up. It's more than dogs that heard that one. Mark Kirk, if that is what you have left, it is a terribly bad raft to cling to.

Rep. Tammy Duckworth better win the hell out of this Senate race--because metaphors can hurt. They also reveal how one looks at things. And he's got this thing very wrong.

We Are Almost Fighting Alongside Russia in Syria

Yes, that'sTom Cotton, reminding us that there were politics in the 1980;s and the 1930's. What I find interesting, as a student of history and politics, is that Russia and the US were aligned in the conflict that Cotton is alluding to--the fight against Nazi Germany, and were cautiously allies.

What the simpleton from Arkansas doesn't understand is that we--the United States, have been dealing with Syria via diplomacy or direct warfare, for a couple years now. That would be under the leadership of our current president, Barack Obama. We have to be leading from behind in the sense that being the US (not being the leader of the US, Barack Obama, but a representative thereof) is regarded negatively in the world because of things like the Iraq invasion which made so very many things regionally worse for people in the Middle East.  There have been Iraq and Syrian refugee crises.

But here is an interesting thing. Iran, Russia and some Iraq military are allied in going into Syria to allegedly whack ISIL. Ask yourself--what does Russia even want with the dirty candy that is being on Assad's side?

A Thought Experiment for Senator Cotton

Of course, Senator Tom Cotton thinks that strikes against Iran's nuclear facilities would be over in a matter of days. I'm pretty sure that's what the folks who donated big bucks to his campaign have to say about the matter, and the only thing I wonder is how long it took him to stop nodding his head after they took leave of him.

But I think a bit of a thought experiment is in order. Let's say a nation we weren't on really great terms with decided to take out some of our nuclear capacity, like, well, Arkansas One. (Sure, they'll take out Peach Bottom and Limerick, too, but we're just talking about Russellville right now.)

What would his constituents want him to do if the Bad Guys melted a nuclear power plant right in the vicinity of a town of about 30K?

My bet is, they'd want him to vote to go to war with those people until the land they're sitting on doesn't get printed on any future maps.

So, what in the merry hell does he think Iran would do about 5 or six days of playing shoot'em up with their centrifuges? I don't wonder about that part, myself.

Warmongo Only Pawn in Game of Life

I think it was when Sen. Cotton actually said that Vice-President Joe Biden had never been right in 40 years (more years than this punk has been alive) that I basically had it--when in the two months this arse has been a senator has he risen to the opportunity to be right?

There's a real question regarding where this stupor mundi came from, what with his senate run being well-funded by the usual neo-con suspects, and the hard-right economic Spartans--Club for Growth besides; to launching this letter with 46 GOP confederates and then having a nice little handshake to-do with defense contractors. (His confederates have varyingly dumb ideas of why they went along with this.)

Neidermeyer  Cotton is apparently a very driven sort of person. Made his way to Harvard as nothing less would do, and turned like Cincinnatus from the plow of his studies to war at the time of our nation's need. Quotes the Founders and philosophers. Comes off a little bit like Otto from A Fish Called Wanda, that last bit.