Agent Krasnov is Going to Russia?

 

Please don't embarrass him in front of his BOSS. He gets nervous and his tummy hurts. https://t.co/33XOFfMWb5

— Vixen Strangely (@VixenStrangely) August 11, 2025

Trump was a little late to his big press conference announcing he was going to use the military to occupy Washington, DC in order to liberate it, but that's OK--he all know the occupation is about his preoccupation with the idea of big city crime (homeless, people, ethnic people, fascist stuff) and to divert attention from his connections to Jeffrey Epstein (which is NOT going away). What fascinated me, of course, was that Krasnov seemed to think that Alaska was Russia. 

It's the kind of mistake any senile reprobate with no basic idea of geography could make quite accidentally twice, I guess. After all, Trump s still patting himself on the back for putting out the LA fires (which were already contained by the time he took office) by turning a big beautiful spigot nowhere near them, wasting a lot of water and doing nothing, on the general principle that water flows downhill. Because north is at the top of the map, you see. South would be downhill--that just science!

What I'm getting at is, he's just really dumb, but also? He may very well think Alaska is part of Russia if Putin says so. After all, it's just like Crimea. Putin called "dibs."  That counts for something, right? 

Self-Evident

 

Macron publicly humiliated Trump at the White House, shutting down his false claim that Europe was loaning Ukraine aid.

In reality, France gave billions—Trump just didn’t do his homework.

Another day, another world leader treating him like a clueless intern. 🧵 pic.twitter.com/ZeGETlnYPB

— Brian Allen (@allenanalysis) February 24, 2025

Yesterday, the government of President Trump sided with a horrific evil, a war criminal, an invader, and enemy of democracy, and Trump himself tried to tell his little lies about why he thought it was all right for him to do so.

And was corrected.

It is, after all, a little thing, an OBVIOUS thing, to tell the truth. But it isn't done often enough, and still less to his stupid, mulish face.  

Trump tried to say that why he did what he did was self-evident. It's an opaque answer hiding a basic truth--Trump is unfit for whatever reason you care to name, but among them, the truth is not with him. And a nation that would be "great" cannot be afraid of the truth. 

Macron also pointed out yesterday that they ceased talking with Putin after Bucha, to rub Trump's face in what it is he is trying to make a deal with, like a stupid boy signing his soul away to the devil. Does it make any impact of Trump? Probably not. But it should affect the conscience of people who still have one of those dusty, put-away with the good china things. 

As with truth, we could stand to use that a little more, as well. 

Lab-Created Bullshit

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

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

The Very Discriminate Assault on WCK Humanitarian Workers

 

I am outraged and heartbroken by the deaths of seven humanitarian workers from World Central Kitchen, including one American, in Gaza yesterday.

Incidents like yesterday’s simply should not happen.

Here is my full statement. pic.twitter.com/Nl2jq8wqTt

— President Biden (@POTUS) April 3, 2024

With respect to my president, whom I continue to support, I lack faith in the ability of the IDF to investigate what they did wrong here and be honest about it, because they keep saying they are NOT indiscriminately bombing or attacking journalists or aid workers or children, and since the results are that aid workers and journalists and children keep being assaulted, I am going to have to take them at their word:

It isn't indiscriminate. If these are the results they are getting, and they insist they are targeting precisely, I must assume these are the results they want. 

I'm not an infant--I get that even innocents die in wartimes all the time. Privations are a part of the deal. But famines can be planned, and the deliberate starvation of Gazans over the decisions of their terrorist government is a bridge way too far. 

Hamas does not give a shit. Hamas rejects ceasefires. Hamas won't give up the hostages. They continue to fire missiles. I am not immune to the call for Israel to self-defense. I am long past immune, however, to the idea that the IDF is being disciplined in the process of this conflict or that they are taking necessary steps to minimize non-combatant casualties. I have begun to see the civilian population of Gaza as a kind of hostage as well. They seem to have decided on behalf of these innocent civilians to go ahead and let Israel to their worst, because when it comes to Palestinian liberty, well okay, they will also take death. For them. Those guys who aren't in the tunnels and end up paying for the privilege of eating intercepted aid to terrorist mafiosi. 

The GOP Appeasement Caucus

 

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

— Vixen Strangely (@VixenStrangely) September 22, 2023

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

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

And Fuck Off, It Certainly Did!

 

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

— UkraineWorld (@ukraine_world) April 13, 2022

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

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

Putin’s justifications for the war in Ukraine:

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

— max seddon (@maxseddon) April 12, 2022

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

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

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

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

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

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

You Won't Steal Our Joy

The Senate confirmation hearing of Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson got super emotional when Sen. Cory Booker brought Jackson to tears with his touching testimony on racial progression. https://t.co/imXiGk6ZeS

— The Daily Beast (@thedailybeast) March 23, 2022

Where Republicans mugging for the camera and showing every willingness to swim in the sewer to drag an exceptionally qualified Black woman through the mud for the dopamine hit of a Fox News spot exist, I am refreshed to focus on the only US Senator who brought Judge Jackson to tears, Senator Cory Booker, because he supported and respected and showed his joy for this glass-ceiling shattering woman. 

If the calumny and slander of the mugging mental mites, the political parasites, the social media self-checkers like Cruz and the drama-queens like Lindsey Graham, the unapologetic militant police state loving fuckfaces like Tom Cotton and the weasel-headed insurrectionist sumbitches like Josh Hawley made anyone ever want to take a long Silkwood-style shower, he gave us this refreshing moment, this shower of love, to study how Judge Jackson has borne up during an onslaught intended to rattle her and shake her faith. 

And she has persevered throughout questioning that has more to do with right-wing axe-grinding and the next election cycle than her own nomination. She is being accused because less qualified candidates than her were rightly challenged, but a party that no longer has a grip on right and wrong can only see tit for tat. 

I've raged, because I can, watching this, and she cannot, because she is living this and has to be professional. When Sen. Cotton accuses her of loving terrorists because of her service as a public defender, I want to intimately introduce him to the concept of due process that actually is a cornerstone of the Constitution he himself swore an oath to and is pretending now not to know about by shoving said document down his narrow throat. Also, I think GWB and company actually are guilty of war crimes and I've been saying so for years. 

When Josh Hawley accuses her, a woman and mother of daughters, of being soft on sex criminals, I want to throw out the discussion of whether he was slow as MO AG to investigate Gov. Eric Greitens' crimes until it was politically convenient to do so. His silence on Roy Moore. And the general disapprobation he is rightly receiving for this slander. 

As a woman, I cringe at the contempt and condescension thrown her way, the interruptions by men who think they are great because the Fox News camera is going to love them. I can only imagine what it would be to be a Black woman seeing this appalling display of white men in power, trying to disempower a woman every bit their equal in education and dignity, and their superior in mastery of herself. 

I have no doubt she will be seated on the highest bench, but I am appalled at this display by such obvious political maneuvers by pure partisan shitheads. Have they no shame? Of course not. Can their shame-glands be kickstarted by anything at all? I don't even know, but I have feet and time. 

TWGB: Very Fast and Very Hard

The thing with Trump and his unique pathology (I don't know what else to call it) is that he isn't exactly transparent about the things he prefers others don't see, but then he goes and threatens things like obstruction of justice or war crimes or whatever in public. His sense of right and wrong isn't like an ethical thing so much as an optical one. The payola shit like who he owes money to makes him look weak, but he thinks blowing up mosques might make him look strong.

Does he really have 52 Iranian sites he's planning to wipe out in the event of Iranian retaliation for the death of Soleimani? Here's the thing--maybe. And they may include world heritage sites. A lot of commentators have pointed out that this is like ISIS or the Taliban targeting things of cultural and historical value because he, like them, has no idea of the value of these things. But there's more to it than that.

He refers in the Tweets to Iran's civil unrest and the crackdown. I don't think he realizes that instead of highlighting the social division of Iran internally, he might be providing cause for some cohesion--to rally against us. He doesn't think like that.

We know some things about how Trump thinks, though--he telegraphed in 2011 and 2012 that he imagined that a desperate president might try to go to war with Iran to save his political bacon. We know guests at the "Winter White House" might have heard as much about Trump's big plans against Iran as the Senate did, and we know he spoke with friendly GOP Senator Lindsey Graham, but not the Gang of Eight.  This makes the rationale behind the move suspect--because when he and Defense spokespeople suggest that this move was "to prevent a war not start one" or to "prevent an immanent attack" which they for sure and really no honest have proof of, I feel like the public should be demanding receipts.

It's especially troubling when VP Pence (and why don't we have more information on his conversations with the Ukrainian president?) just bald-faced lies about how Soleimani might have been involved with 9/11 terrorists, because he seems to think the justifications (potentially true but requiring verification) aren't valid enough without a total lie thrown on top (which tends to suggest they weren't all that valid, right?). It actually appears the likelihood of immanent attacks was "razor-thin".  It also seems that Trump was presented with an array of options of retaliations towards Iran aggression and picked the most severe one.

This makes me think of the "madman theory"--the idea that some countries will only respect a power if they feel that the person in charge is so insane that they will do anything and are best left alone. It's associated with Kissinger and Nixon.

It doesn't work, though. "Fire and fury" didn't get Trump anywhere with North Korea. (Nor did reversing course.) It hasn't with China trade negotiations, and it won't here.

Iran has time to do whatever they mean to do--they don't have to respond "very fast and very hard". The thing with asymmetrical warfare is that it can be as slow and grinding as possible for the "weaker" side. They reply on their own terms, and there is a limit outside of total war that Trump can engage in. But one shudders when Secretary Pompeo mourns the lack of support Trump has from European allies.  Maybe Trump threatening them with dumping ISIS fighters back on their soil was....not good? Will Pompeo express the same amount of surprise at the lack of assistance we might expect from the Kurds? Does he not understand why our good friends in Russia and Turkey will look at us blankly, as well?

This choice seems to have been made as if in a world where events never had consequences (much like Trump's decision to shake down Ukraine). If Trump is going to ever learn anything, he'd have to come to some kind of understanding very fast and very hard.

But he won't--it's off brand. He will stand by his decision and his people will stand by him--however it turns out.

Acts of War

pic.twitter.com/VXeKiVzpTf

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 3, 2020

It's simple physics, right? Every action has an equal and opposite reaction--except life isn't physics. Qassem Soleimani may have been responsible for great quantities of grief and bloodshed--perhaps even that of hundreds of US servicemembers in a role of giving support to militias in Iraq. But unlike targets such as Osama bin Laden or Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who led actual stateless terrorist organizations which were somewhat decimated as of the time of their respective assassinations, Soleimani was a top Iranian general, and that means something different. Even if Quds and the IRGC had been designated as terrorist organizations by the US, it's nonetheless a matter of perspective--to Iran, these are simply their military. It is not unreasonable to expect that Iran will view this as an act of war. That response might look like a direct declaration of war or it might simply resemble terrorist attacks--it's just not unreasonable to expect it.

This Tweet of a clipart flag is part of Trump's response. I assume a further briefing from Sec. Esper should be forthcoming. Sec. Pompeo's long distrust of Iran and probable counsel regarding this act are taken by me to be assumed, and I don't care if I hear from him outside of a congressional hearing.

I feel sheepish. Just days ago, I noted that there was a parallel between the pardoning and lionization of a war criminal with the 1990's black comedy Wag the Dog, which makes me feel a little unprepared for the idea that an actual war might possibly have been floated to deflect from impeachment (as opposed to a staged one, as in the film). However, as the little girl shooter Trump pardoned has hopes of becoming a lifestyle influencer, maybe we are living in wildly optimistic times for terrible people, and Trump hopes that as a "war president", he can avoid a Senate trial altogether. After all, you can easily imagine Pete Hegseth or some similar void/human hybrid meaningfully projecting into a camera that no one could ever imagine the injustice of trying this poor orphan for the murder of his parents this president while we are a nation at war.

It isn't so remote, after all.

And if no trial for removal, maybe no election, n'est-ce pas? After all, why change horses in mid-stream?

I don't have a lot of faith in Republicans at the moment to assume they will not fall, lock-step, into the manufactured moment. If this be war, why, why wouldn't they make the most of it? After all, for so many neocons, the desire to go to war with Iran was always the next step after Iraq, and if the pull-out from Iraq by Obama in line with the SOFA set by Bush wasn't a case of bellus interruptus, certainly the Iran nuclear deal was. But by God they kept their bayonets sharp! (Or whatever, I dunno, I feel like a metaphorical Vitamix at the moment.)

For myself, as a blogger who bounced along in 2007, I feel a little challenged--if you were blogging in 2003, what would you be doing? Because that's what you, a 2019 2020* blogger, are doing right now.

So here's me:

on fox right now responding to the soleimani news: karl rove and ari fleischer pic.twitter.com/y7bAAJpMSq

— Max Tani (@maxwelltani) January 3, 2020

I guess ripping on Ari Fleischer and Karl Rove, because son of a bitch, can't any right-winger ever be too wrong to put on tv ever? I can't even try searching for the clip on Fox because watching geriatric monkeys fucking a football has never been my brand of porn. But here we are. With Republicans looking for reasons why this nice clean dirty hit was great and good, and will have no repercussions and filthy godless liberals are shameless monsters for suggesting otherwise.

This tweet is simply drunk partisanship. Gen. Soleimani has killed hundreds and hundreds of Americans, and was actively plotting more. This commander-in-chief — any C-in-C. — has an obligation to defend America by killing this bastard. https://t.co/eQmiCgegxS

— Senator Ben Sasse (@SenSasse) January 3, 2020

And then again, I could be full of nonsense and Iran won't retaliate with force and we're not in the shit up to our armpits as things escalate in every direction. I can of course, consider such a thing. I just don't know that the Trump Administration considered their alternatives all the way, or saw the potential blowback as a price higher than what they might earn politically. I just don't know that this timing was necessary for any other reason. I don't know how this was necessarily "defensive" at this particular juncture. I have questions.


* Really?

Ol' Shoe

I'm kind of rubbish anymore when you get right down to it--I recall so much of pop culture that I sometimes feel like I am swimming in a miasma of whatever went before.  I guess that's why I think it's a bit weird Trump very notoriously pardoned another Sgt. Calley. in the form of Eddie Gallagher.  It seems like Trump is so obviously trying to signify that he does not care what soldiers do for the greater good of the state (of Trumpworld). And he also doesn't care about law and order if it is his own version thereof. 

He makes law and order. They don't exist in and of themselves,  He decides Gallagher acted within his rights and now, this man is one of TrumpWorld's saints. Having performed the miracle of wasting someone. 

This reminds me the least bit of the 1990's movie "Wag the Dog" and the story of Ol' Shoe where the figure manufactured to be heroic turned out to not actually be sane or great at all. 

Anyway, Gallagher is not so great. 

Eventually, the Navy Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) began an inquiry and the platoon members were called to give evidence.

“The guy is freaking evil,” special operator first class Craig Miller, one of the platoon’s most experienced members, told investigators in sometimes tearful testimony. “I think Eddie was proud of it, and that was, like, part of it for him.”

Miller said Gallagher, who had the nickname Blade, went on to stage a bizarre “re-enlistment ceremony” over the body of the captive. “I was listening to it and I was just thinking, like, this is the most disgraceful thing I have ever seen in my life,” he said.

At his court martial, the panel heard evidence that Gallagher had emailed a photograph to a friend in the US containing a photograph of him holding up the dead captive’s head with the words: “Good story behind this, got him with my hunting knife.”

Another platoon member, medic Corey Scott, said: “You could tell he was perfectly OK with killing anybody that was moving.”

That makes it seem an awful lot like Trump pardoned war crimes because they seemed really cool to him, and that the context didn't really matter to him at all.  Maybe because he doesn't understand what war crimes are at all, or how things like right and wrong work.

I've more or less expected as much.

Absent Good Order or Discipline

Not for nothing, but Richard Spencer’s* “yes, I understand you just fired me” letter makes Mattis’ resignation missive look like a polite Christmas card.

It’s as close to a double-barreled f**k you as one can get in this genre of official correspondence.

*not the Nazi one pic.twitter.com/rDfVre9y7T

— Andrew Feinberg (@AndrewFeinberg) November 25, 2019

There are multiple stories about regarding the "resigfiring" (the term for when one has been advised to resign in a way that is clearly getting canned) of Secretary of the Navy Richard Spencer, but I think it's pretty clear from this letter that he is acknowledging that he has in fact been fired: "I acknowledge my termination...." but is acknowledging it because he differs from the Commander in Chief (Trump) on what constitutes "good order and discipline" and what is best for the morale, conduct, and obligations of military code in general.

There is a good aphorism that a fish rots from the head down. An efficient manager or line officer wants to maintain a good standard of conduct among their personnel as an example to one another. When the conduct of any person become so noxious that their own co-workers (or comrades in arms) are frankly alarmed by that person's performance that they report it, it is an issue that is best handled by those who understand that a failure to address poor behavior is tantamount to a reward for bad behavior--it does not broadcast good values, and suggests that comradery is equal to covering up one another's dirt. It makes favorites and scapegoats. It makes a hero of people who do wrong shit and assigns blame to people who point out wrong-doing. It is, in a way, the big dog beats little dog world of Trumpism.

I understand why Trump wanted to pardon the telegenic little girl killer, because this is that kind of swaggering horseshit that passes for machismo in his world. And I guess I understand how go-along-to-get-along humps are going to clap like monkeys that Trump asserted his will. Maybe he doesn't give a damn about why such codes of conduct even exist, anymore than he understands why things like torture and brutality count against the side that uses them. Our first president understood the responsibility he bore for what was committed under his command. I do not think Trump understands that leadership is responsibility: to him, it is a postponement of his own responsibilities and an ability to confer an escape from responsibility or culpability to others. He certainly has people around him who reinforce this view.

He will be dealt an acknowledgement of his own, and I hope soon. He is absent order or discipline.