The Signs of the Crocus

 

So, #ISIS posted a graphic body cam video of one of the terrorists. Which looks & sounds bona fide ISIS. Here’s the blurred out version. The original is under the link.

It was ISIS. https://t.co/42q0Fm7uKW#MoscowAttack pic.twitter.com/GScxXL9DS0

— olexander scherba🇺🇦 (@olex_scherba) March 24, 2024

The shocking thing about the kind of society Russia is, is that a horrific terrorist attack can take place in the heart of the country, where the government had been warned such an attack might be immanent by the US, where credit for the attack has been claimed, the sitting dictator fresh from his irrelevant and rigged election can decide to blame it on Ukraine, and such is the propaganda network, absolute chunderfucks will vomit out this unintelligence for actually--free. They don't even need to be paid to be conspicuously wrong about a grave thing. 

The intelligence all says it is ISIS. But what if these guys looked awfully white to be Muslims (I dunno, man--it's not like there's a reverse paper-bag test to get into ISIS)? What if they were headed towards Ukraine? What if your aunt had balls and you were a chimp--would that make her a monkey's uncle? Kremlin Supergenius Putin thinks maybe it could be Ukraine. 

If one wanted it to be enough, couldn't it be? 

Twenty Years Ago, the US Invaded Iraq

 

Saddam Hussein was no hero and his statue rightfully was toppled ending an anti-democratic regime so many years ago, but the invasion 20 years ago was a war of choice and the US often blows off our dumbest choices, refusing to understand the how and why of our clearest fuckups. But our basis for war then was thin.  The US made choices during that war that impacted the country very negatively, and the US failed to understand why or how until it was too late. The cost was high. 

To me, the worst thing about it was the war of choice also lead to horrible choices at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere--the dehumanization of populations, the broken faith that we were supposed to be the good guys. That even now, we have a potential US Presidential candidate who sanctioned rectal feedings at Gitmo should appall us. He rose up in the GOP bestride a very horrific steed--the willingness to not just follow a multitude to do evil, but to lead a pack. Iraq was a proving ground of what was the worst in us. Our attempts to manage the government of Iraq by crisis, to use their tragedy to make bank should be taught in every classroom. It won't be, but it should. 

He Was Just Trying to Get Home

 

I have no interest in sharing the video that some of us had to watch to take in, once again, the brutality human beings can inflict on one another, and that some of us had to avoid, unable to see another violent, avoidable death. So, I choose this image from a video of a skater, full of life, arms stretched out in the light, in motion as he should still be. 

Tyre Nichols should be alive. We don't even have a good answer as to why he was stopped. But what I saw was disproportionate force on a compliant individual undertaken with what looked like enthusiasm. This video of police brutality was twice as long as the Rodney King video I saw so many years ago--and which then felt to me like watching an eternity of a human suffering--he lived. This is watching Black officers of the law behave unlawfully, keepers of order being without order. This feels like watching something primal and ritualistic. 

I am not better for having seen it. It leaves me wondering what trapdoor in the human soul drops open in the midst of serving one's job that reveals a monster below--not for one depraved individual, but for a collective. 

And what also breaks me is that he called for his mother--and yeah, I've heard that before too, and I, without kids by choice, hear that and I am suffering for that human, so close the last of his life calling out for she who was there for the first part of it. If I am so moved, what is it like for one who carried a child under their heart, and lived with a child in it, concerned for their every breath under the sun, until the time that breath was stolen? 

Many Ukraine/Russia Commenters are Confused

 

After Russia has tried to bomb the hell out of maternity hospitals and schools and places clearly marked for being where children were sheltering in place, and after kidnapping tens of thousands of people, and trying to punish the Ukrainian out of the kidnapped children to make them Russian, after all these understood tactics of genocide? No, I don't think any of these things are appropriate, and "Fuck off" is the only answer. Ukraine doesn't have to negotiate shit, because they got invaded by Putin on bullshit made-up terms that even he lets on were always fake: he wants territory, the territory formerly held whenever but certainly not considered Russian territory this minute.

Putin's history is wrong, and the support of it by his apologists are wrong. When Russia was supposed to have a neat little 72 hours war or so, maybe there was reason to think Ukraine needed to negotiate. 

It's been longer and costlier than Russia anticipated, and for people who bothered to listen to what Putin has actually been saying about his hopes for westward expansion, support for Ukraine has only become more necessary as support for the borders of sovereign states who already have self-determined. If Ukraine falls, who is next?

It has become apparent that Ukraine needs to win, and I don't even know where these "negotiate people", these "sue for peace" people are even coming from.  Russia, in their fake annexation and mass mobilizations are committing themselves to a path from which there isn't an off-ramp. This isn't fixed at any negotiation table. It stops when Russia pulls back a helplessly bleeding stump and realizes shit isn't ever going to get better for them. 

The annexation votes were bullshit, and never should have been staged, so how the hell should they be re-done? When those loyal to Ukraine have been relocated as refugees for their safety? How do you manage anything approaching serious and fair? How do you re-introduce the original citizen pool safely?  You don't.  The idea of the vote itself is an affront. A lie. An imposition. 

As a humanitarian issue, of course people should have the right to water. but that is a human rights issue that the instigator of the aggression--Russia--should consider their responsibility and should be rightfully sanctioned for what they fail to achieve regarding human rights--

But that's a fucking laugh, isn't it? These Russians are rapists and torturers. They don't care about their own people. They've been thieving from Ukraine for their own material benefit. No one at the top of the Russia food chain thinks they will ever see repercussions for what they've done, even if it should wind them up in the Orange Hotel. 

And don't get me started on how Ukraine is supposed to stay neutral after all of this. Would I if this was what was done to my country? Would you? 

The apt sobriquet stays the same: if Russia stops fighting the war ends, if Ukraine stops fighting, Ukraine ends. 

There isn't any room for negotiation here. and for US quislings who want to relent on Ukraine aid, I am telling you: Putin isn't your potential benefactor so much as you are his potential bitch. If you think the US way of life is superior, you don't fucking cater or crater to his influence, because he is planning to expand it and already has made inroads to do that.  If you want America First, you don't place Russia anywhere on your priorities. We are not buddies with Putin. He isn't even a necessary evil.  He's the kind of evil we can do without. 

People missing this understanding have slipped a cog in their cogitations. 

I Would Do Anything for Love, But Absolutely Not

 

I am not here to tell Amanda Marcotte what to do with herself, because she is a whole grown person with an entire outlook of her own about what kind of world she wants to live in and so on, but as for me, if it comes down to would I ever vote for Liz Cheney, the answer is no, absolutely not, are you fucking kidding me, and what kind of fucked up monster do you think I became overnight when I started to hate Donald Trump more than I loved my own skin? 

I appreciate what Liz Cheney has done with the 1/6 committee just as I appreciate what Adam Kinzinger has done. And they are both dyed in the wool conservatives who, for any other reason, I would not fuck with. Let me talk about Liz Cheney, who I once characterized as being the parrot for her pirate father, a character entirely driven and drawn by her association with his political engineering. 

She defended torture. I am not over that. She never recanted that that I know of. But more monstrous to me, and unforgiveable, is the sort of culture war Hail Mary she launched as if to signify how much she still hated libs--she called us infanticides and talked about extremely late-term abortion.  She decided to talk over the necessary terminations of pregnancies that would not result in healthy children, she gloated in the face of tragic stillbirth and miscarriage, and pregnancies incompatible with life, to demonize liberals though (who lean towards uplifting the mother, a person in her own right, who deserves love for her experience of genetic tragedy, etc.)

I can't with that. What she is doing regarding 1/6 is entirely necessary and appropriate and has everything to do with national security and still having a democracy. But she is not a Democrat, and that matters to me. 

Her heroism in the face of becoming politically irrelevant is important. But not to the extent that I would give her political importance back. I would simply rather support Democrats. Full stop. The end.

That Authentic Grief Dollar

 

Wow, what a-holes.

The original: @nytimes: "Biden, Still Grieving His Son Beau, Finds That Not Everyone Wants to Hear About It"

Now: "In Invoking Beau, Biden Broaches a Loss That’s Guided His Presidency" pic.twitter.com/6IHuzr52q6

— Tommy moderna-vaX-Topher (@tommyxtopher) September 4, 2021

I didn't want to broach this part of The Discourse and all, but when supposedly serious journalists started in on whether President Biden's references to his son were appropriate because they might rub some people the wrong way, I heard Bill Hicks in my head. Something along the lines of: 

The Authentic Grief dollar. That's a good dollar. Lot of authentic grief to go around. Covid-19, endless wars, the opioid epidemic (we really helped that last one along, sir, let me tell you...). But we're not getting positive reactions across the market, so we think you're gonna have to workshop your grief a bit, Mr. President. Just to give it a more broad, universal, generic appeal. You with us? 

And my gut-level response to what that makes me feel about it is very like that of the late Mr. Hicks. Just kill yourselves you fucking fucks. 

The media hovered like vultures over Al Gore's honesty, Hillary Clinton's laugh, Barack Obama's tears and said "Look, they're human. That means they die and we eat." And then both-sidesed people who promoted unregulated fossil fuels in the face of climate change, policies of torture and endless war, and featured columns from people who, with a straight face, suggested little kids could fling their bodies at a mass shooter to stop him. Eventually. 

If it bleeds it leads. The bloodthirsty dollar. Always a great promotion. You know how it goes.

That's right. We have little kids going to school with bulletproof backpacks or with active shooter drills where they pile into a coatroom, but thanks to scum-life mouthpieces, we are supposed to be respectful when ever-growing numbers of kids are getting COVID because god forbid someone's little precious had their freedoms impaired by covering their wee Hummel figurine features with a mask. Because empathy and common sense have been beaten to death in a parking lot for not having the right Q rating.

Leave people's bloody personalities alone (unless they are unrepentant racist rapist narcissistic sociopaths, in which case, report that shit early and often). Report facts. We're fucking dying over here!

Ah the Fear of Death dollar. A very reliable mover. Pretty much our oldest trope....say, can we interest you in a flight to Mars in like, 2037 to escape all this? Some vitamins? A weapon to protect yourself in our future Mad Max Hellscape? 

Fuck. This. For. All. Time. 

Things Related and Not

 

It happens that a man can live a long time and do any number of appalling stupid things, like help facilitate a long, brutal, murderous war of choice and authorizing torture, and if he is capable of mustering a grin and fashioning statements that in hindsight seem ghoulish or hysterical depending on how you look at things (among the greatest hits, "I don't do quagmires", "You go to war with the army you have, not the army you want to have", "Freedom is messy" and the convoluted mush that is the full "unknown unknowns" quote) and he will somehow receive surprising praise even in death,

He's still dead though, and the history he leaves behind him is still brutal. Some people will say that the Iraq invasion, and the way the justification was tied to 9/11, and the excuse made for appalling judgements of error and misrepresentations of fact were judgment calls by people who felt, after the enormity of 9/11, that they were doing the right thing. Others will say those choices were deliberate and, had there been no 9/11 to tie them to, would have still been made, if more slowly.

Unknown unknowns, right? 

Even after investigations and time, accountability is hard to come by. 

That's the frustrating thing, after the lives lost and damage done and still ongoing. And there was a lot of blame to go around. 

When Originalists Say "Kings are Good, Actually"

I'm not even a "simple country lawyer" like Oxford-trained good ol' boy Louisiana Senator John Kennedy tries to pass himself off as, but I do have to say that when Trump's other personal lawyer AG Bill Barr tells me in his Federalist Society speech on originalism that our grade-school civics education regarding the anti-monarchism of the Founding Fathers is way off base, I kind of think back on that Declaration of Independence letter that was written during a hot Philadelphia summer and reads like a "Dear George" letter to run down the English monarch for all his abrogating of citizen's rights and think to myself: Who the fuck is Barr kidding here? 

Now, I don't doubt the fine education and vast experience Barr has at being a dogsbody for privilege. I'm just saying that even if claims of Washington refusing a crown were overstated, the founders were, doubtless, republicans. If they were not, why were oversight (as part of the implied powers) and impeachment (as part of the explicit powers) ever considered the constitutional remit of Congress, and why was a Bill of Rights a part of our Constitution? (Because, unless I'm really mistaken, calling yourself a Federalist and not actually understanding the limits of any government with respect to individual rights is just irony, no?) We've all learned our little lessons about "check and balanced" in grade school, and then you get to a certain level of "big boy" education and, as the gang at the Badda Bing say, "Fuhgeddaboudit"?

Ah, Billy, you slay me. Just admit that the whole "unitary executive" thing means you want all powers invested in a Republican president, and all taken away from a Democratic one out loud in simple language we all understand, and believe me, your audience will still approve, and you will not have said a single thing different from what liberals understood from that.

I've called this attitude "nihilism" previously. I still consider it so. Does it rely on truth, or outcomes, consider the future, respect tradition, take in the full scope of the past, answer to the demands of the present? Nope. He's just giving reasons why he's going to render unto Trump as if he were Caesar, even though he demonstratively gives lip-service to God.  After all, for the theocrat, are they not, in some ways, one and the same? 

In the same rough respect that the founders would have given limited space to religion, separating it from matters of state, they also would not have removed a president (a mere human with faults) from accountability. Would the people who decried "taxation without representation" have been satisfied with a government they paid for, but could not audit? What sense does that make? Where the hell was the money of our gentlemen farmers and mercantile ministers going--they would have asked! And they were people of civilization as well, they considered how their actions and decision would reverberate through history. This impact mattered to them; Barr's POV is short-sighted. 

As I read about this speech, I also read that Trump, who boasted about permitting torture and more, pardoned soldiers accused of war crimes, over the objection of the Pentagon.  He doesn't care about human rights or military discipline or how our actions are perceived by ally or enemy alike, so this means nothing more than a macho gesture supposedly aimed at gaining military support by giving them "liberty" to do what they like to "others". I read about the way migrant families were being separated at our border, perhaps for good. I remembered when researching to write about the camps migrants were kept in under Trump,  reading that the administration wanted migrant families to be kept at Gitmo, like some kind of enemy combatants.  A camp for migrants, to mirror a top adviser's appreciation of the racist novel Camp of the Saints? 

TWGB: Is This a Good Look?

Great night with the President. Republicans are united! pic.twitter.com/Ea60bt1EWM

— Kevin McCarthy (@GOPLeader) October 30, 2019

House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy seems to believe that presenting a united front as a party is of more benefit to him than taking a strong interest in the impeachment process is. This is reasonable--I remember a handful of years back when the Freedom Caucus had so little use for him that they'd rather Paul Ryan be Speaker when John Boehner stepped down. They didn't even especially want him after Paul Ryan stepped down. So I reckon keeping tight with Trump keeps his fractious minority in some kind of unity--although that's kind of like teaming up with Manson to get your Gacys in a row. I mean--Trump is not what we'd call a mollifying influence on the Republican party's excesses. That's something to keep in mind when Sen. Minority Leader Chuck Schumer suggests that Trump might shut down the government over the impeachment inquiry.

There's a reason the founders put the power of impeachment in the hands of congress, and then left process pretty much alone. Not to play at reading minds, but the powers vested in a unitary executive without oversight--without a check, leads to a destructive imbalance. Thus, the powers of government lie in separate branches with distinct powers to act as a check on a corrupting absolute power. They might have written extensively on this sort of thing, as it happens. Does that mean President Trump can't take his very good friends to dinner? Probably not. But does that mean his very good friends should think about the propriety of that image when they are determining whether he has committed high crimes and misdemeanors when a serious deliberation of that question is ongoing? On the off-chance it politically backfires as new details come out, or establishes House GOP members as less than independent representatives of their constituents' interests and more the subjects and cronies/lackeys of a makeshift majesty? And if Trump endangers the livelihood of any member's constituents in a petty flail against the due process he is getting while mostly being sad at being held accountable to the public he is supposed to serve--how does that make them look?

In other words--is this a good look for you, Kev? Or for your unmanageable caucus of coots--your Gym Jordan, your Matt Gaetz, your Ted Bleeding Yoho--eligible to attend depositions but refraining because the big words bore him, your Mark Amodei-incapable of finding extortion and solicitation of bribery in black and white, or even consider them wrong if they hypothetically happened.

What fine, principled motherfuckers McCarthy is leading! Loyal to their capo, dedicated to crimes. A great and amazing look for you, certainly. Do go on.

In the meanwhile, right-wing media covered itself over in less-than-glory in trying to smear Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman as I guess a Ukrainian double agent? This was so gross in aftermath that John Yoo, torture apologist and all-around unitary executive enthusiast, tried to walk this shit back. Yeah bruv, but we got you on the digitals. Smearing soldiers, like outing whistleblowers (one of Devin Nunes' friends is on that tip and House GOP tried to get the whistleblowers' name out of Vindman, but he says he doesn't know) or CIA agents is basically long been a part of the GOP deal, but--hmm! Still not a good look.

So what did Vindman say that was fucking them up today? Well, he indicated that the Bidens were a huge part of Ukrainian discussion despite denials of that by other senior officials and that yes, indeed, it was noted as being problematic. And if Perry or Sondland wanted to say this wasn't the case, they were straight-up lying. Also, Vindman was a first-hand recorder of the July 25th call and realized there were issues, and he explains that the White House-issued call summary is missing some valuable details that hammered home the quid pro quo aspects and indicate that Trump believed there was a tape of Biden pressuring someone.

This sounds to me like we would all really benefit from a full readout of the call. You know, in the name of transparency, which we are all supposedly about, right? Anyway, something about what Vindman recalled seems to have Sondland wondering if he understood what he was saying just right. It's amazing what things do look like when there is, uh, negative corroboration?

In the meantime, while we consider these bombshell-like things, let's also not forget that Trump's sloppy legal team is also paid in some sloppy interconnected ways with all kinds of folks. Keeping in mind Trump's weird Turkey phone call that precipitated some much movement in Syria, it is interesting to know that Trump was casting about for deliverables for Turkey's Erdogan. (I am warming up to this word-"deliverables". It has been used in connotation with Trump before.)

Let's also keep on the TWGB* back-burner the weird fate of former NSA Flynn, whose formerly great plea-deal has now devolved into a game of "I lied in my plea, so cut me a better one." I just...I mean....I am not a lawyer, but, is that even a thing? Or is the Flynn defense now suffering from what has been called Flynn facts? Also, consider the attempts of Giuliani et als in trying to put the 2016 election hacking on Ukraine--is this an attempt to clear Manafort in the public view enough to justify pardoning him for the favor of staying shtum? (I don't know, Ukraine is just a hinky-ass world to me.)

Is any of this a good look? We will probably have a better view once public hearings have started--want to bet?

(*"TrumpWorld Grab-Bag". I am doing a whole series and have collected the set here.)

A Moat Full of Snakes

President Trump wanted the border closed. He wanted a snake-filled moat. He fired aides who pushed back. Here's an inside look at his border war. https://t.co/SyC62z64xc

— The New York Times (@nytimes) October 1, 2019

There will be a lot of news today, but I don't think it should escape us that this is a man who hasn't just said out loud in front of people, in all seriousness, that he wanted to build a wall and to make Mexico pay for it (which could just be a cynical campaign gimmick) but has elaborated upon the design of this racist monstrosity with features like electrification, spikes to impale people on, and a moat full of alligators and snakes. In all seriousness. Apparently, a government document exists with a price-estimate of this sort of thing.

This is the bloody-minded imagination of a child who pulls wings off of flies. He fired aides who thought this plan wasn't serious, even if it was elaborate and cruel. People relent, eventually. Maybe not a moat, but the electrification. Maybe not snakes, but spikes. Maybe migrants aren't shot in the knees, but with tear gas....

The compromise one is left with, that mediation between normal and whatever moat full of snakes is in Trump's head? It is still a brand of monstrosity, even if milder and more workable to whoever has the stomach for it.

And he has never pretended that this is not who he is.

UPDATE:

Okay. Sometimes he pretends this is not who he is. Such a stable genius.

Cages Where Sick Babies Sleep on the Floor

There's a weird familiarity I feel with regards to the recent argument over whether the term "concentration camps" should be used regarding the detention centers where the US government is currently holding undocumented migrants. It's not that long ago, really, that former DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen was raked over for disputing whether "cages" was the right term for the wire holding pens in which children were being kept. 

But leaving aside the semantics of "dog pound" and "freezer" and all that, the facts are, themselves, very grim. There are children without their parents in filthy, miserable conditions, being asked to watch after younger, more miserable children.  Conditions that children (and adults) are being held in are ideal for the spread of disease and the potential for preventable deaths.  The family separations, and even the process of reuniting families are handled indifferently with shitty logistics and negligence bordering on the insane. Whatever one might prefer to call the conditions under which human beings are being kept, they are inhumane. 

And yes, despite what no less an expert on inhumane activity as Rep. Liz Cheney is might claim, it is very reasonable to call these shelters "concentration camps."

The messengers, here, are part of the problem for me, too--this is where the familiarity really sets in. It wasn't that long ago that Liz Cheney was extolling the virtues of what she would call "enhanced interrogation" techniques, and simple bloggers like myself would call "torture", with its embrace of tactics like "stress positions" and "rectal feeding."  Euphemizing horrible things to try to make them palatable is. itself, a form of abuse. It's gaslighting. It's telling all of us that our eyes and ears and minds aren't working right--that we are crazy for thinking there is something seriously wrong with seeing a problem with cages where sick babies sleep, or try to, on the floor, or that a system that hides the deaths among its inmates is trying to minimize its violence, or that is staffed with people who use dehumanizing language is unable to humanely deal with a humanitarian crisis.

What I can see is that when the Trump Administration argues that soap and toothpaste and bedding are too much to provide detained children, we are seeing people who have no concept of duty of care regarding their fellow human beings--even the smallest and least offending among us. And while it is true that facilities are overwhelmed, how can it be that this much is not viewed as inhumane--when it is asked of children that they rest on the concrete on as much space as a severely overcrowded area affords (sleep deprivation has been used as a form of torture) and somehow stay healthy when little basic hygiene exists?  When people are denied their reproductive rights for political reasons?

The US is housing migrants now where we once kept Japanese-American citizens during WWII. The Trump Administration has also considered keeping migrants at Guantanamo Bay.  The number of migrants coming to seek asylum or work or anything else here has not abated because of the administration's deterrence approach, and the decision to cut aid to Central America only seems likely to make things worse.  (And I'm not saying the Obama Administration had superb answers about what to do with detained migrants and asylees either--they deported at a greater rate than currently, conditions in facilities were also not ideal.)

The argument over whether to call the facilities "concentration camps" just seems to be one of throwing words at a physical and immanent issue. There are some people who can be moved by words. The people who most need to be, will perhaps already be beyond shame.  And have been for a long time.

It is useful, however, to see who falls into which group.

The Celebrity White House

My most difficult task as a blogger in the Trump era is trying to sort out the noise from the actual reality of things, when, for a considerable part of this administration, the noise is their point. It's easy to be distracted by something as obviously eyeball-seeking as Trump's invitation of Kid Rock and Kanye West to a White House bill signing to-do that really had nothing to do with them. The bill in question ensures artists can still receive royalties from music made before 1972. Neither Kid Rock nor Kanye West were making any music before 1972, but they are vocal Trump supporters--so there they are. 

Amidst the odd things rambled about in the event, one might miss that Trump, when questioned about the apparent murder of US green-card holder and Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, gave some of the weakest baby-shit answers imaginable. Well, it's a darn shame. And it didn't happen here but in Turkey. And he wasn't an actual US citizen. And we made an arms deal. This genuinely makes me wonder if Trump actually grasps that murder is bad when governments do it. He doesn't seem to--consider his admiration for the Chinese handling of the Tiananmen Square protesters. He's praised the toughness of people like Rodrigo Duterte and Kim Jong Un specifically regarding their ruthlessness. It might sound in his mind like he's being some version of macho, the same as when he threatens the press with phrases like "enemy of the people"--he's "fighting back"!

And yet, here's the weakness of his rhetorical corner: this peculiar admiration for "toughness" means he "fell in love" with the North Korean dictator who delivered Otto Warmbier back to us in a clearly brutalized state. And because of Trump's "happy talk" kind of rhetoric, he paints himself into a bit of a corner, doesn't he? If North Korea is not compliant regarding what they might have agreed to think about doing (or if, perhaps, China and Russia are not compliant in upholding any sanctions re: North Korea on their end), Trump's switch from "love" is like a confession of failure. Trump needs his list of accomplishments, after all. 

It seems like, to Trump, a wee bit of extrajudicial killing for dictators is like pussy-grabbing when one is a celebrity: they just let you do it. "They" being people with no earthly observed or enforced ability to stop you. Why would he enforce what he clearly thinks is okay for Saudi Arabia to do? Aren't we already helping them do genocide in Yemen?

Which brings us back to celebrity and Kanye West. I am curious about what brought about the invitation of Trump-backing musical artists to this particular event, and wondered if, in part, the batshit signal didn't go up in response to Taylor Swift's recent endorsement of Democratic candidates and clarion call regarding the importance of voting.  It's like a form of entertainment-news poker: "I see your Swift and raise you a Yeezy."

But I worry that this is sort of like creating a spin-off of his usual brand now that his campaign-style rallies are even being ditched for low ratings on Fox News Channel. In rather the way The Celebrity Apprentice was a more interesting vehicle for the Trump reality tv brand--will we be seeing more famous(ish) Trump-supporting faces out there to sort of give him a little buzz when press is rough? Will Trump Administration press turn away from press briefings (which Sarah Huckabee Sanders seems really loathe to do, and Raj Shah is basically not likable for Sean Spicer values of "ugh") to just do weird "Love Boat" like "episodes" where Scott Baio or whoever just show up and everyone's time gets wasted because this person was in entertainment? 

There is no good reason for press persons to ask Kid Rock what he thinks about anything, except for enumerating the various right reasons for starting an escort service. There is no value in psychoanalyzing Kanye West, or even studying whether his performance suggests that Get Out was a documentary. His mental health is a family issue--but his and Trump's rhetoric about race (and masculinity) is definitely and regardless, not healthy. It's window-dressing that forces us to deal with "Trump as Celebrity" when we need to look at "Trump as Accountable Elected Official".

And he is failing at accountability, transparency, swamp-draining, and more. His celebrity persona, his carefully-cultivated persona, was being the guy who said "You're fired" and made money all the time--but the reality is he's a cheat, a scam artist, and he is afraid of firing John Kelly. He can't stand up to North Korea or Saudi Arabia and has to pummel immigrants and shit-talk Democrats to fake being something. 

He is a Potemkin president, all surface. But he has nothing at his core. His image is celebrity, and nothing more. 

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

The Trump Brand Means "Class"!

When Trump pretends that he thinks the statement is just "terrible"--I'm not actually buying it. That thudding sound you hear is the lowering of the discourse.

As an editorial note, I'm more alarmed at the waterboarding boosterism than the word "pussy".

The Crucifixion of Ali al-Nimr Would Be Barbarism

The young man facing a death by beheading and the crucifixion of his body to serve as a warning to others would, in an open culture, not even be sentenced with such a disgusting fate because his right to protest and to freedom of speech would already be well understood. The slim hope that he might be given a pardon by the King is, well, slim. The pace of state executions is a tip-off that mercy isn't a very strong quality with the House of Saud at the moment.

Considering the reaction of the government in sentencing and the increasing harshness, is it plausible to assume the Saudi rulers are in trouble? One takes into account things like the chaos of the Hajj, and the tragic deaths of what might be as many as 1100 persons because of poor security planning. (The government of Iran would like an apology and have implied the Saudi state is very much at fault--and likely to be looking at some regime change inshallah.)

Just as with the case of Raif Badawi, I can not accept the idea of a state corporally punishing a person in this cruel manner for the kind of thing I, as an American, take for granted as being my right to do. This sentence should be pardoned. It is simply appalling.

Jeb Bush and the "Pretty Good Deal"

When hearing that Gov. Jeb Bush referred to getting rid of Saddam Hussein as a "pretty good deal", I immediately thought of his mother. Ten years ago, after Hurricane Katrina, she had made staggeringly insensitive comments about the victims:

"Almost everyone I've talked to says: 'We're going to move to Houston,' " Mrs Bush said late on Monday after visiting evacuees at the Astrodome with her husband, former president George Bush.

"What I'm hearing, which is sort of scary, is they all want to stay in Texas. Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality," she said.

"And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this - this is working very well for them."

It's the same kind of insensitivity--a family resemblance, you could say. Sure, over four thousand US service members lost their lives, tens of thousands were maimed, over three thousand military contractors were killed, and so on, the country of Iraq was completely destabilized and not only was al Qaeda brought there and ISIS born there in what many people have called the worst foreign policy decision ever, but hey, the war got rid of Saddam Hussein so, that's one thing!

Regarding the Iraq War, he's basically wrong on everything. He's wrong about what happened and he's wrong about what he's fixing to do about it. And yes, he's also leaving torture on the table as something he might be all about when he inevitably gets the US enmeshed in an open-ended boot-on-the ground military conflict.

I really don't think Jeb sounds like a "pretty good deal", himself.

Moaz Al-Kasasbeh Apparently Burned Alive.

 



I have no interest in watching the death by fire of this man which Jordanian intelligence indicates may have been from a month beforehand. A death of a man in a cage by fire is an extraordinarily painful thing, and watching snuff porn was never an interest of mine.  

 

If this is what ISIL wants to show about themselves; they aren't happy enough that they behead a handful of people here or there, but let it be known they also sometimes set a human being on fire. What can we do about that kind of mentality?

 

Is this supposed to be attractive? Is this supposed to be how they recruit? By gleefully, publically, being the worst sort of monsters that can exist?

 

The Jordanian government has swiftly responded by executing ISIL jihadist prisoners.  Did ISIL think something else would happen?

 

Dick Cheney is Living Like it's 2003

That former VP Dick Cheney goes on the slowly sinking media vessel called Meet the Press to try and air out his recently exposed dirty laundry seems less surprising when one just gives in and accepts that in Cheney's mind, it is always February 2003, and we are in the business of selling the Iraq War. In the Cheneyverse, 9/11 has happened so recently that no one really questions whether the government is meaningfully pursuing the people responsible, and leeway has been ever-so-fraughtfully-given. Because a lot of people trusted the intelligence given out by the Bush/Cheney administration at the time as being meaningful in a post 9/11 context. 

Does former VP Cheney wonder where Tim Russert has gone (RIP)? Does he wonder why he himself isn't trolling down to the West Wing anymore, and why his access to intelligence has dried up? I can't imagine, but mentally, he seems to be living in the first handful of months prior to the invasion of Iraq, because he's still selling that piece hard. And all the tactics that bought that sweet lying trash that made that war plausible. Here's some of that:

In fact, he seemed to suggest that if some innocent people were tortured, it doesn’t matter, because the program still overall has had what he believes to be a successful result. “It worked. It worked now for 15 years,” he explained. “We’ve avoided another mass-casualty attack against the United States. We did capture bin Laden. We did capture an awful lot of the senior guys who were responsible for that attack on 9/11. I’d do it again in a minute.”

Todd pointed out that the intelligence reports that the White House was receiving about the effectiveness of the torture techniques were coming from the same intelligence sources that were wrong about the presence of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) in Iraq. But Cheney defended the entire process: “I know what they were asked to do and I know what they did,” he assured. “And I’m perfectly comfortable that they deserve our praise. They deserve to be decorated. They don’t deserve to be harassed.”

"If" innocent people were tortured, like the 20% of the people who were swept up and had no reason to be interrogated or held, let alone tortured. It worked for 15 years--if the program of torture started after 9/11/2001, then that would be 13 years--unless we started fucking up people before 9/11 (you know, the way warrantless wiretapping started before 9/11). When he says "we" captured Bin Laden, I am saddened to think he might believe he was still in office at the time--what does he mean by "we"? The "guys who were responsible" for 9/11 mostly went down with the planes. The masterminds got picked up haphazardly. But we know now that torture, like waterboarding, which Cheney is so proud of, did not stop any "ticking time bombs". The interrogators asked about al-Qaeda links with Saddam Hussein. And that wasn't connected. It was bullshit. And thousands of US servicemembers and contractors died or were maimed, or were so profoundly altered by what they'd seen they suicided because of our war there--and how is Iraq doing today?

It's been eleven years since this idiot administration tried to sell us on a yellowcake fraud, aluminum tubes and a diorama of doom. We've had plenty of time to figure out that so much of this was fake. And here is Cheney, stuck in 2003, telling us it was all real and necessary. Acting as if he believed all of it, then and now. Either he is a brutally stupid incompetent gullible shit for brains, or he is the most brazen fraud that has ever strutted across the Sunday chat-show stage. In either event, I do not see why he pollutes our airwaves. If anyone thinks he'll say one thing new, they are foolish. He's hanging with his lie.

He ought to be hanged by it. (Figuratively--I'd say "figuratively".)

So, Approval of Rectal Feeding, Party of You....

I'm still absorbing some of what I've read regarding the US torture program (I will not ever call this bullshit "enhanced interrogation techniques" or EIT, because calling things by nicer names does not make those things any nicer in actual fact)  with a definite sense that the full report is probably even worse.  But let's just get right to the shocking thing--one of the "techniques" as the term is ever-so-quaintly put, that was used on the detainees as a measure of control in the event of hunger strikes and other flourishes of free will, was something so pleasantly referred to as rectal feeding.

To be a bit closer to the mark, let's call this thing "sodomy with a feeding tube". And in my innocent (have you met me? think I'm all that innocent and not-cynical?) little brain, I kind of thought that the idea of ass-rape of anyone, especially via shoving food up there to be violently expelled in a physical state known as "dumping", with a long-term potential for harm in the form of anal prolapse or fissuring, would be viewed as beyond the pale. No. This is not about interrogation. This is about doing the nastiest thing you can think of to a dominated and prone body for the sheer sake of being sadistic that can be found.

And I thought that might even be where the shame might leak in. Because anally-raping prostrate human beings with a feeding tube for non-medical reasons (and the reasons are just about always non-medical) should occur to anyone as being obscene.

This is Not What "Exceptional" Means

The release of the Senate Select Committee Study of the Central Intelligence Agency's Detention and Interrogation Program reveals things we basically already knew or should have known about the CIA program--it was worse than reported, it yielded little to no useful information, and it was run by liars who repeatedly tried to project that they were not performing acts of torture when they were in all actuality, textbook acts of torture.

There are people who seem to believe that releasing this information somehow endangers Americans here and abroad. Since this report details things that actually happened, I would say that the actual program of torture run by an agency of the United States government is what was actually harmful. Much of the information had already been reported in news publications; this report is just filing in the blanks. For that matter, this is just what was unclassified after certain details had been scrubbed, leaving the possibility that there are things yet worse that we don't know--but what is here is pretty starkly disgusting.

It has never escaped my notice that the use of torture is not reliable and has the potential for severe blowback--this was authorized by people who should have known those things. The program was devised by people who should have known better (and got paid some $81 million to not know better). If torture was used by the Inquisition to get people to confess to cavorting with demons, or by the Reds to get false confessions out of captured soldiers, why would it somehow become a force for getting truthful confessions from detainees in the GWOT? It simply makes no sense that battered and broken people who are dissociated by their treatment are now going to impart reliable intelligence. Because why? Because we're so nice? No! They'll lie their asses off to save what remains of their hides! And as far back as the Revolutionary War, George Washington had stern things to say about torture--he believed it brought disgrace on the nation. And so it does.