Category: Politics

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Milkin’ It — Why Canada Won’t Be Cowed By Trump

By on Saturday, June 9, 2018

June 9th 2018

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

In the chaotic and insane presser Trump gave at the G6+1 summit in Québec he railed about the Canadian tariffs of 270% on American dairy products. He howled that this was a devastating blow to America’s brave, patriot dairy farmers, or words to that effect. Canada was screwing America inside out, an insult not to be borne!

Oh, those awful, awful Canucks. (Truth in Advertising time for those who didn’t already know: I’m a Canuck). Two hundred and seventy percent! No wonder America’s going down the tubes! It’s probably why the US budget will have an extra trillion deficit next year!

Well, it was almost lost in the avalanche of sheer nonsense that Pissmop uttered during that strange press conference, but what makes his whines about Canadian dairy pure nonsense is this one inconvenient fact: The US actually enjoys a trade surplus with Canada in dairy. It’s about a 5-1 trade surplus, at that. Granted, the market, in both directions, is minuscule—about $600 million US—but it still means that the US exports about a half billion in dairy to Canada while Canada exports about $100 million to the US. Now, in case Trump is reading this, I’ll type it very slowly: The US does not have a trade deficit with Canada over dairy, the stuff that comes from cows, and for some reason, hens. It actually sells more than it buys. Have someone with actual business experience explain it to you, Donald.

So why is Fearless Leader pissing and moaning about Canadian cows? The best reason anyone can think of is that Canada has a regulated, efficient and effective dairy industry, whereas the American one is in such an intense state of cutthroat competition that there is a huge oversupply of milk, with the result that the “gate price”–the price distributors are willing to pay to take it off farmers’ hands—is lower than what it cost the farmers to produce the milk. And that’s with the cows doing all the work.

American dairy farmers overproduce, hoping that having more to sell means that more will be bought, and they will thus get a bigger share of the market. Anyone who has taken Econ 101 in high school knows this is utter nonsense, and someone who knows anyone who took Econ 101 in high school will probably be able to explain it to Pissmop.

Milk is milk is milk; there isn’t a great variation in quality from one farm to the next, despite what the advertising says, so the market is free to select the lowest price, knowing the quality will be about equal to the stuff selling for a few pennies more per gallon or liter. Which further drives down prices.

What will happen is what is happening: small farms are being driven, and the big dairy companies are buying their stock, overproducing yet more to destroy the remaining small farmers, and eventually they will turn on one another, and classic economics suggest we’ll eventually end up with a consortium of three-to-five big companies that will collude to artificially raise milk prices and limit supply. This is known as “the free market”, a market in which suppliers, consumers, and the product are anything but free in any sense of the word.

Not only are American farmers going broke competing with one another, but last year they cumulatively threw away forty three million gallons of milk—literally dumped into holes in the ground.

In Canada, they have this thing called “Supply management.” The Canadian Dairy Commission (and doesn’t the name just scream “Nazi socialism”?) set national quotas on supply, and coordinate with the ten provinces to ensure a stable market in which supply very nearly matches demand. (I don’t know if it applies in the Territories, despite that being nearly half of Canadian real estate—I haven’t heard much about an Inuit dairy industry, and cows are notoriously unhappy on ice).

Now here’s the thing: It works. It works extremely well. Yes, it means higher prices for consumers, but since Canadians enjoy a higher level of disposable income, nobody minds much. They look at the madness of the American industry and realize that the extra fifty cents a liter is a wise investment.

American wants a dumping ground for the surpluses created by its overheated cutthroat industry, and Canada isn’t interested in destroying its own efficient and effective industry in order to oblige suicidally competitive American dairy farmers. Nor do they want a system that encourages such patently destructive competition. They are also suspicious of lax American regulations regarding the use of hormones and antibiotics in cattle, and GMOs. The wild-west approach to basic health and safety measures in America has led to a deepening mistrust of American food products.

Pissmop has to know he’s spewing nonsense when he attacks Canada over dairy trade imbalances, since it’s obvious the existing imbalance actually works in America’s favor. (Part of the reason for that is that Canada doesn’t limit imports on cheese, and the American standards for cheese, which include permitting a certain amount of animal parts in the cheese, is much lower—as are the prices.)

Trump is taking a similar approach to trade with the rest of the world: American can’t compete because standards are low for their products, so Trump is demanding the rest of the world lower their health and safety regulations to let America compete “on a level playing field.”

The problem is the rest of the world, including Canada, perhaps America’s best friend, are looking at the US the way is is right now and muttering to themselves, “Don’t be that guy.”

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Barring Roseanne — Even Deplorables Should Have Rights

By on Thursday, May 31, 2018

Barring Roseanne

Even Deplorables Should Have Rights

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

May 31st 2018

It’s really hard to scrape up a lot of sympathy for Roseann Barr. She has a long history of saying despicable things, and embraces conspiracy theories that seem geared toward hurting innocent people. She really is a swine.

And I’ll be the first to admit I felt a certain amount of schadenfreude when I watched the deplorables of the far right, from the President on up, who had been cheering with glee at the NFL’s decision to fine players for silent and respectful protest who now were consumed in fury at ABC’s trampling of Roseanne’s first amendment rights. Most of them didn’t even notice any inconsistency there.

In fairness, there were plenty on the left who were equally inconsistent, only in the opposite direction. A lot of people have a territorial approach to civil rights, one of the reasons those rights have been degrading in recent decades.

Back in my Usenet days, we had this one troll who used to brag that he owned a factory, and that he would, from time to time, stroll through the employee parking lot, and any vehicle displaying a bumper sticker for any candidate or cause he didn’t support would result in that employee being fired.

Now this guy was just a troll, a nobody who just liked to annoy folks, but the fact is in many parts of the country, an employer can do exactly that. Most states have “at will” employment laws, which allow a employer to dismiss an employee for no stated reason. This allows employers to fire someone for having a Bernie sticker on their car, or for being black, or gay, or speaking Spanish in the break room. It makes all those feel-good fair employment practices laws utterly useless, and leaves employers free to punish any viewpoint they don’t like.

There are a lot of jobs where someone being racist should be fired, because they are in positions where their racism can hurt people, even kill them. Teachers. Police. Firemen. Medical personnel. Politicians. That list doesn’t include entertainers such as football players or TV actors. It doesn’t include line workers with Bernie (or Trump) decals on their cars.

The dividing line should be: can this person’s assholery cause them to infringe on the right of others as part of their jobs? If it can, the employer is justified in firing them. If it doesn’t, but they are trying to involve the employer in their deplorability (“I work for Greasy Spoon restaurants and I think all gays should be castrated” on Facebook) that would be reasonable cause for termination).

Outfits that try to deny others their rights should be subject to civil suits. Nobody needs to care if the owner of Greasy Spoon Restaurants is a nasty little bigot, as long as that doesn’t translate to discrimination in the restaurants. If it does, Greasy Spoon needs to suffer grievously in court.

Roseanne Barr is just a television entertainer. Her opinions might disgust people, but they don’t deprive them of their rights. She’s just another asshole on Twitter. Her employer should not have the power to destroy her career just because she’s a jackass on her own time. Just as football players should not be fined by their employers for quietly protesting injustice. You can’t support one and not the other.

But employers should, by law, have to account for terminations. There’s a lot they need to account for that they don’t, and as a result, while Americans still have a vestige of civil rights, American workers have less rights than the lowest beggar in Calcutta, often only fractionally above that of American slaves.

Liberals love to push for legislation that protects people from discrimination but turn a blind eye to the ability of employers to discriminate pretty much at will, making the rights they fight for meaningless.

American fascists love to pretend that liberalism is leftist (at least when it suits their purposes, as in smearing a liberal though red-baiting) but the fact is they are usually two different things.

It’s in the interest of liberals to fight vociferously for worker’s rights, consumer rights, and curbs on banks, churches, corporations and the government. People’s rights are much easier to defend when the people involved have some actual economic clout. A person without income security has no rights.

This includes not making people’s first amendment rights subject to caprice on the part of employers. You have a right to make an obnoxious fool of yourself—or make a principled stand, demonstrating dignity and courage. Both are usually in the eye of the beholder, and that beholder shouldn’t be able to make or break you for being a human. Either way, your employer should not have any say in the matter, so long as you aren’t involving them directly.

People gain by defending the rights of everyone, and remembering that having rights doesn’t include stripping others of their rights. It doesn’t matter if you think Roseanne Barr is full of it, or Colin Kaepernick; either way, they shouldn’t be subject to penalization in their work by employers. What ABC and the NFL did was the equivalent of that Usenet troll, strolling through the parking lot of his imaginary factory and capriciously firing people for the crime of having opinions. Only these are real people, losing real jobs, for bullshit reasons.

Until you have power in the workplace, you don’t have rights; you barely have a life.

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So How Would You Like Your Fascism? Secular or Religious?

By on Thursday, May 24, 2018

May 24th 2018

A lot of people are puzzling over the fact that 80% of Christian evangelicals in America support the Trumpenfuhrer. After all, with his swindling, cheating, lying, whoring and corruption, isn’t he the very antithesis of the values that evangelicals claim as their own personal turf?

It reveals a dark and dirty facet of religiosity that most people either don’t notice or refuse to acknowledge: all fundamentalist religions are deeply authoritarian in nature, and they are attracted to any powerful political figure whose aims correlate with their own, or at least might work to their advantage.

Trump knows this because he is a student of Hitler’s “New World Order”, which is a collection of the German tyrant’s speeches and a how-to manual on how to manipulate diverse groups to his ends. He knows that Hitler got support before and even during the war from the Roman Catholic hierarchy, and widespread support from Lutherans and other German protestant groups. I

t’s not by mistake that the unofficial slogan of the German military, emblazoned on their uniform belt buckles, was “Got Mit Uns” (God is With Us). Hitler’s speeches are littered with religious invocations that were designed (successfully) to leave his religious followers dewy-eyed and damp with patriotic religious lust.

All religious fundamentalists are authoritarian. The ones that state that they have no formal religious hierarchy but instead answer directly to God tend to be more socially dangerous than the regular kind, because Bishops and Imans are human can can be swayed by social needs, but God is an obliging doormat who is willing to lend his name to any cause espoused by his followers, no matter how horrible.

The religions that are “non-authoritarian” often are the worst of all, since while they won’t officially interpret God’s will for their followers, they carefully “assist” followers in “understanding” the holy writings. And literalistic religions are the worst of all. You have to be an intellectual train wreck to be a bible literalist, with its contradictions, absurdities, and talking snakes, but utter belief is demanded, and as Voltaire acidly observed, “Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.” Got Mit Uns.

Theocracies are all authoritarian in nature, as political entities purporting to represent the will of God must be. Dissent is Blasphemy. There hasn’t been a theocracy in the history of the world that wasn’t an utterly shite place to live, and pay attention, you Dominionists: A “Handsmaid’s Tale” type of America would include most of you as Jesus fodder. You wouldn’t like it, no matter how god-struck you are right now.

Fascism itself is best defined as government by corporation. Mussolini, one of the original fascists, said that you might as well call fascists corporatists, because that was where they wanted the power to lie.

Anyone who thinks businessmen should be running the country is a fascist. Authoritarian corporatists have spent billions over the years trying to dress it up as conservatism or libertarianism, but it is, at its very foundation, fascist. When was the last time a “conservative” in America sided with American workers against their bosses? American consumers against corporations? Environmental or safety concerns ahead of corporate convenience?

People who look to business leaders expecting to find John Galt are far more likely to find, at best, the dodgey characters flogging questionable junk on late-night TV, and at worst Donald Trump.

Libertarians are great at assuming that all public servants are endlessly corrupt and inept, whereas businessmen are paragons of integrity and competence because Invisible Hand, but the fact is business is simply better at hiding stupidity and criminality. The Mueller probe will be shining a light on the vast corruption and cover up of the vaunted private sector, much of it revolving around the poster children for gangsterism, Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. Both of whom, of course, are fascists.

Fascism has a bad name, and not just because people conflate it with Hitler (who, ironically, wasn’t much of a fascist). Like theocracies and for similar reasons, it tends to be authoritarian, because its goals and objectives not only don’t dovetail with the public good, but often are diametrically opposed.

So there’s two flavors of fascism: the one’s that hide their corruption behind God, and the ones who hide it behind lawyers. One purports to worship God, the other Economic Growth, but in the end, both the means and the ends conjoin, and so it’s not surprising to see Donald Trump appealing to Evangelicals: both worship the same thing: Power. And they will stop at nothing to do it.

Americans are glassy-eyed and supine from decades of propaganda, and despite all evidence, believe “business leaders” have their best interest at heart and should be running the country.

As Trump and his cartel implode, hopefully that delusion will die with them.

But don’t hold your breath.

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War Games — Bribery, Corruption, Land Grabs and Swindles, Oh My!

By on Saturday, May 12, 2018

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

May 12th, 2018

 

I had been treating the whole Stormy Daniels thing as an amusing sideshow. Anyone who ever watched “The Sopranos” knew that Trump was just a real-life version of Tony Soprano, and knew that he spent a lot of this spare time banging porn stars, hookers, and any woman unlucky enough to catch his attention. I didn’t have any reason to want to contemplate Trump’s sex life (ewwww…) but after nearly thirty years of listening to Republican whining and hypocritical, pious moaning over Bill Clinton, it was fun watching these same proctors of public morality proclaim that Trumps self-whoring and harassing was Different, somehow.

Even better was seeing the despicable Evangelical movement implode over Trump. Franklin, son of Dead Billy, asserted that it was nobody’s business who Trump was banging, and finished off the little credibility that sanctimonious pack of Mrs Grundies possessed.

With Trump enjoying an approval rating from these Falangists who wish to assert Dominion over us once and for all of 80%, it marked the absolute end of the reputation of evangelical Christianity as any sort of ethical or moral force, to the delight of everyone sick of their pious mewlings and scared of their designs to take over the country.

Against the background of the Mueller investigation and the sheer vicious criminality of the Trump regime, it seemed like small beans. I thought the prime effect would be the self-destruction of the puritans.

Then Avenatti started talking about the ‘fees’ that were pouring into Michael Cohen’s shell company for explications from Cohen on how the mind of America’s first RICO-American president actually worked. That had to be pretty tawdry, but was not, in itself, particularly illegal. While the intent (‘pay to play) was illegal, the fiction behind the fees was not. So it didn’t take any of the entities named, such as AT&T long to admit that they had, in fact, paid such fees to Cohen. In AT&Ts case, they stated they paid roughly double what Michael Avenatti knew about.

The media was aghast; it was a major story they had entirely missed. They were, of course, presuming that because they hadn’t noticed it, it probably didn’t exist, and of course the GOP ratfuckers went right to work, triumphantly announcing that the Avenatti claims where riddled with errors, including payments made to another Michael Cohen altogether.

It was that which sealed Cohen’s fate; examination showed that while there were some errors on his list, Avenatti had an accuracy rate of some 97%. What was worse was that more and more payees were coming forward (remember, they faced no legal jeopardy for this) and the pay-for-play system Cohen had erected was even bigger than Avenatti had discovered.

The next question was, “Why hasn’t Mueller acted on this?” Leaving aside the issue of whether any actual laws were broken (in Citizens United States, bribery is basically legal) it came to light that several of the biggest donors had already been quietly interviewed by Mueller’s people several months ago. Mueller runs an incredibly tight ship, and nobody in the media was bright enough to realize that rather than asking Mueller’s people what they asked various donors, they should ask the donors themselves, since they were under no obligation not to discuss the questions and answers.

In most countries, Trump and Cohen would be facing massive criminal charges and decades in prison.

In the roiling sewer of capitalist America, it’s not clear that they broke any laws. Financially, America is a bit like Deadwood, where the only consequence to murder is to make sure the victim didn’t have any buddies who might come looking for you for killing him.

Meanwhile, Trump unilaterally reneged on the Iran agreement, and Israel promptly began strafing some of the remaining Arab population on the Golan Heights under the guise of “attacking Iran outposts”. Syria fired their own rockets, promoting howls that they had attacked Israeli territory.

They hit the Golan Heights, which is Syrian. For decades, Israeli land thieves, squatters calling themselves “settlers” had been infiltrating the occupied area (never referred to as such by Israel because occupation is illegal under UN treaty, although occupation is exactly what it is) and stealing land and displacing the residents. That Israel was attacked is a lie.

Netanyahu and Saudi Arabia wants to see Iran embroiled in a major war, but neither see any need to spend money and manpower themselves: they have a perfectly good puppet state, America, willing to spend hundreds of billions of dollars and uncountable lives to fight the war for them.

And Trump desperately needs a major war to save his presidency. The ginned-up war in Iraq got the undeserving Bush reelected, and even though thousands of Americans died and it has cost nearly a trillion dollars, Americans didn’t mind because the economy stayed stable and they weren’t rationed.

Iran is far more powerful than Saddam’s Iraq. And far far more powerful than Afghanistan, a third-world country that has had America locked in a hopeless, expensive struggle for 17 years now.

There’s also the fact that outside of the evangelical community and Wall Street, nobody likes or trusts Trump, and won’t go all glassy-eyed and patriotic when he starts waving the flag and getting Americans killed.

But it’s the only thing he has left to save his presidency.

Expect the most disastrous war in America’s history to ensue.

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Nutzis in the Noos: NRA goes North, rest of world goes South

By on Monday, May 7, 2018

May 8th 2018

It’s official: the NRA picked former Marine and national disgrace Ollie North to be their next president. An admitted illegal arms dealer with a deep contempt for the law or any consequences, he’ll be a perfect match for that terrorist outfit. His first project will probably be continuing to convert rubles to Congressmen.

Naturally there was a mass shooting at nearly the same time in Brookeville, Maryland. No details beyond “multiple fatalities”. This sort of thing is the NRA version of fireworks. Of course there was a another mass shooting because freedumb.

Even as rumors swirl of Trump sympathizers engaging in rat-fucking of anyone involved with the Mueller investigation, the New Yorker broke a story of four women stepping forward to allege abusive and injurious actions against them when in relationships with Erich Schneiderman, state Attorney-General for the State of New York and head of state level (and pardon-exempt) complaints against Trump and his people that are pending.

Like a lot of other people, my initial reaction was this was this was just another GOP ratfucking, but after reading the article, I came away with the strong feeling that despite the lack of physical evidence, the complaints were quite probably true. At least two of the women are fairly well known liberal activists, and no friend to Trump. Their stories are very plausible.

Schneiderman apparently felt the same way, and resigned about an hour ago.

In other news: “If you are smuggling a child then we will prosecute you, and that child will be separated from you as required by law,” Attorney General Jeff Sessions said Monday at a law enforcement conference in Scottsdale, Arizona. “If you don’t like that, then don’t smuggle children over our border.”

Getting harder and harder to see any difference between Jeff Sessions and the Nazis. Yeah, go ahead, Beauregard; sue me.

German, Russia, the UK and France tag-teamed Trump, fighting like hell to get him to not break the agreement with Iran. Nothing good can come of that, and Trump is probably too stupid to realize that if he attacks Iran (which Netanyahu and Bolton want) he risks a wider war with Russia and China, both of whom have plans for influence and access to southern ports and an American attack would definitely threaten.

Speaking of Russia, Vladimir Putin was elected President of Russia, despite a poor showing amongst Russians who sit in middle counties park benches and inhale nerve gas, or blunder into bumbershoots with ricin tips, or like a little polonium in their tea. No doubt hundreds of journalists will launch themselves off fifth-storey balconies by way of celebrating.

He released a video which consists of a four minute continuous shot of him walking to work, where a surprise party awaited. “Six more years? For little old me? Oh, you guys!”

Rudy Guiliani, who unfortunately was not in the twin towers the day the planes hit, has done such a shambolic and chaotic job of defending Trump that even Trump is reportedly considering banning Guiliani from any more live TV appearances on his behalf. Bad move, Donnie: much safer getting between a momma grizzly and her cubs than between Rudy Guiliani and a TV camera.

Melania Trump launched her doomed crusade against cyberbullying. Normally this would be a good cause for a first lady to pursue, and Michelle Obama did. As did Laura Bush. Which would be fine, except they made a pamplet for it, this “Be Best” campaign, and it was pinched directly from one released early in the Obama administration with only the title, the intro, and an image of a cell phone updated to look like it was from this decade. Oops.

It came just as Sessions was saying he would cheerfully rip apart the families of unpapered immigrants, deporting the parents and sending the kids into America’s foster-care maw.

You know what, Jeff? I changed my mind. You aren’t really ‘like a Nazi’.

You are a Nazi.

But cheer up, Jeff. I see where Don Blankenship is leading in the polls in the West Virginia GOP primary for the Senate. Blankenship is a real piece of work. He’s out of jail, where he served a year for conspiracy to violate mandatory federal mine safety and health standards and conspiracy to impede federal mine safety officials. It resulted in the deaths of 29 miners.

The GOP had two other candidates, but apparently they weren’t big enough dirtbags to appeal to Republican voters. Not a single kiddy diddler or traitor amongst them. But someone who killed 29 people through greed and negligence? Well, it ain’t as good as Roy Moore or Paul Manafort, but it will have to do.

So Jeff, if you can get GOP voters to believe you are a Nazi, they’ll vote for you.

It annoys the grown-ups, you see.

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Comics and Commies — When the jokes are serious and the serious are jokes

By on Sunday, April 29, 2018

April 29th, 2014

First off, I watched Michelle Wolf’s performance at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, and I wasn’t impressed. She shouted her lines, had no sense of timing, and in general reminded me of a nervous eighth grader giving a speech for the first time. As a result, a lot of lines that could have been funny fell flat. Not all of them, of course; and some hit home to judge from the howls from the far right and their lunatic leader.

Anyone who didn’t see it is going to be surprised to learn that she never did criticize Sarah Huckabee Sanders for her personal appearance. That’s a media meme started by Maggie Haberman, and Haberman is full of shit. Wolf compared Sanders to a character from “Handmaid’s Tale” but it had more to do with the dishonest and fascistic deportment of the character than how the character looked.

Wolf called Sanders a liar three times in a minute half, which neatly matches the number of lies per minute that Sanders often utters during her ‘press briefings’. It’s impossible to watch her and not think of Baghdad Bob, or Tokyo Rose, or Lord Haw Haw. She is a propagandist, a paid liar for a demented president, and that’s all she is. Indeed, some of the reporters on the cable stations who are flapping and twittering over how a comedian could be so mean have called Trump and Sanders liars on their own shows.

So why the faux outrage? Consider this quote from Wolf from the routine at the dinner:

“I think what no one in this room wants to admit is that Trump has helped all of you,” she added. “He couldn’t sell steaks or vodka or water or college or ties or Eric. But he has helped you. He’s helped you sell your papers and your books and your TV. You helped create this monster and now you’re profiting off of him. And if you’re going to profit off of Trump, you should at least give him some money because he doesn’t have any.”

She pointed out the incestuous relationship between Trump and the commercial media. He may be destroying the country, and may kill us all, but gawd, he is just so fucking PROFITABLE! For corporate stooges posing as reporters, he’s just too good to pass up. He’s their meal ticket, and all Wolf did was point that out.

So where was the Coward-in-chief during all this? Out in the boonies, whipping a pack of MAGAts into an anti-media frenzy, of course. One Gary Busey wannabee was screaming at reporters, calling them filthy degenerates after the rally. In the name of America, of course. Because screaming epithets at the free press is so all-American.

By the way, the latest ratings of countries by freedom of the press just came out. America was 45th. They were ahead of Russia and China (both south of 175) and North Korea.

Forty fifth. Land of the free, folks. Land of the free. Have you noticed you never hear patriots yelling about how great America is because it has freedom any more? Now it’s because America fights the most wars, or has the most billionaires, or has rock and roll. The explanations for what makes America great are getting increasingly idiotic as the people who actually made America great have died off and been replaced by Trumpkins.

Meanwhile, Natalia Veselnitskaya, the Russian ‘lawyer’ who met with Donald Trump Junior to discuss adopting orphans (an important source of protein for Trumps, one assumes) came out and said she was actually a government operative, which basically means she is a Russian spy. It was out of the blue. Trump’s lawyers (and the word ‘lawyer’ should be in quotes when discussing either Trump or Putin, since so many seem to be incompetent, spies, mob torpedoes, or all of the above) promptly told Mueller’s people they were blocking information about a mysterious call Don Junior got before that meeting. Mueller, no doubt, was wearing an expression identical to that of a child regarding the particular shape of the largest present under the Christmas tree. I’m guessing that between the self-immolation Trump performed during that lunatic call to Fox and Friends and that little tidbit of information, Mueller’s office is going to be even busier this week. I’m sure Mueller will make those poor orphans his top priority.

You heard about Trump being nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, of course. Granted, anyone can be nominated, and past nominees include Rush Limbaugh and George W. Bush, which shows the bar can be set very low.

Trump is trying to take credit for the talks between the two Koreas, which mostly occurred despite him, rather than because of any diplomatic brilliance his people in Korea, which he doesn’t have, might have shown. Unless you count Mike Pompeo, who traveled as a private citizen and quite illegally to suggest to the two sides that they do what they were planning to do anyway.

Trump, of course, took credit for it, and his mindless followers adulated that this truly was a worshipful event, and Trump must be given the Nobel Peace Prize, the Steinbeck Award, a place on Mount Rushmore, and a baby’s arm, holding an apple. Republicans love that kind of shit; they’re a lot like the Communists during the Stalin era that way.

But then John Bolton lifted his porn ‘stache and said that the US was considering the “Libya option” with North Korea. That was a US incursion that overthrew the Ghaddafi regime (which was already toppling) and resulted in the lynching of Ghaddafi. It was quite nasty, as most lynchings are.

I don’t imagine Kim Jong Un was too amused to hear this, and he would be well within his rights if he made having Bolton hanged by his mustache a provision for the disarmament talks going forward. Of course, since he accidentally destroyed his nuclear testing facility, causing it to cave in, maybe he’ll just ignore John. It’s something the rest of us try to do, so he needn’t feel so alone.

Maybe Trump will send him some orphans and Michelle Wolf as sex slaves to make up for John’s little gaffe. Oh, and Rachel Maddow, because fake media.

It’s the all-American way, you know.

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Stormy Weather — Trumping the Elements

By on Monday, April 16, 2018

April 16th 2018

We got through a weekend that I had been awaiting with a fair old bit of dread. Yes, we attacked Syria, but apparently managed to do so in a way that didn’t spark a general regional war, let alone a thermonuclear war with Russia. Tactically, at least, the missile strikes apparently hit the intended targets, resulted in no casualties, and of America propaganda is to be believed, set the Syrian chemical production of such weapons back by months.

That the US exercised such restraint is down to a fellow named Mad Dog Mattis. If that alone doesn’t illuminate what lunatic times we live in, I don’t know what would. The Hunter S. Thompson Memorial Temperance Society, perhaps?

Trump, like far too many Americans, believes the way to earn respect and cooperation from people is by bombing the shit out of them. History has endless examples of how well this worked: Britain’s surrender to Germany in 1941, North Vietnam’s surrender to the US in 1967, and Iraq’s decision to abhor and abjure any fanatical Islamic groups in 2005.

We managed to get through the week without the world’s two main nuclear powers deciding to show us their love and concern by incinerating us. We aren’t out of the woods, of course, but we managed to step past a land mine in an awfully big mine field.

But as Kathleen Parker over at the Washington Post noted, “The Dogs of War are Howling.” Trump is still frantically searching for a way out of his scandals and know Americans go all glassy-eyed and subservient if there is a good-sized war to distract them. Israel and Saudi Arabia still want the US to come in and destroy countries they don’t like so they don’t look like the bad guys. And Putin is still playing his long game, backing Assad and Iran and very much aware that his puppet president in Washington is imploding.

There’s a lot of people who are skeptical that Assad conducted the gas attacks earlier this month, and they make a good case. Assad simply has nothing to gain from such attacks, and a fair bit to lose. There’s no sensible set of events that could result in a positive outcome for him.

Nonetheless, we know the attacks did occur. The most obvious evidence is the victims themselves; 43 dead and several hundred hospitalized. Because it is easy to detect and can be done so with ammonia, we know for sure that chlorine gas was used. We suspect Sarin as well, but UN and other western agencies have been blocked from testing by Assad and the Russians.

Why the Russians? They have nothing to gain other than weakening an ally who was already a political liability (Assad) and strengthening the hand of their other ally in the area, Iran. And we know Putin doesn’t hesitate to use chemical weapons to further his aims. While making pro forma denials, Putin is usually pretty cavalier about such use, because while he doesn’t want to take responsibility for such ploys, he doesn’t mind reminding Putin’s enemies that Russia will be coming for them one day. Wipe your door knob before turning, beware people in London with umbrellas, and don’t drink the tea.

I think Putin was behind the attacks. He stands to gain, and it matches his MO. He needs to be careful, though: despite what American and Israeli propaganda claim, Iran is steadfastly opposed to the use of such weapons and he needs Iran.

On the home front, things were equally chaotic, although with the redeeming feature of being a whole lot loonier.

It’s a helluva note when you have one scandal in which a presidential candidate’s fixer paid off a porn star to keep her mouth shut and that’s just kind of a sideshow. Another scandal has the president in a public pissing match with the FBI director that he fired for refusing to obstruct justice on his behalf, and each are calling the other morally unfit and stopping just short of calling one another traitors to their country. In today’s America, that’s a side show, too. The two, combined, sound like a bad 1950s torch song by some night club knock-off: “Stormy Daniels” by James Comey. Thank you, folks, I’ll be here all week.

In the background, the Mueller investigation is ticking away quietly. Think of the scene in “A Quiet Place” where the egg timer begins ticking. That’s what it feels like, and you just know something interesting is going to happen when the ticking stops.

The main event this week is the Michael Cohen saga. Cohen is described as Trump’s ‘personal lawyer’ although he matches the description in much the same way as Godzilla is a Formula One racer. He’s often described as Trump’s ‘fixer’, and he fixes things in much the same way that the Vet fixed your cat.

Trump’s other lawyers, many of whom are actual lawyers, are fighting like hell to keep Cohen’s records (including, supposedly, tape recordings) out of the hands of investigators.

The court overseeing this had some reservations about whether Cohen was acting in the capacity of a real, actual lawyer, or that of a Mafia torpedo, so they asked him if, since he was a lawyer and presumably had a client list, he might produce it.

Consternation ensued.

Cohen’s lawyers admitted he had three clients. Three. Just three. One was Donald Trump, a client he shelled out $130,000 for, mortgaging his house in the process, in order to shut Stormy Daniels up. I don’t think they taught that in law school. They sure don’t teach it in business school. Mike, the client is supposed to give you the money for your services, and not the other way around.

Another client was Elliott Broidy, a real jewel who had an affair with a Playboy Bunny, knocked her up, and gave her $1.6 million to take care of the matter as she saw fit. Oh, and to shut her up. Guess who the money funneled through.

The third client didn’t want to be identified, but the Judge in the case promised Cohen a lollipop if he showed the District Attorney where the third client touched him, and he fessed up. It was Sean Hannity, Moral Oligarch of Faux News.

If they ever make a movie about Cohen’s life (with an abridged, “R” rated version for commercial sales) they are going to have to call it “Dances with Douchebags”.

In the meantime, it’s believed that the State of NY, as a result of the Cohen raid, now has, among other things, Trump’s tax returns. And his nuts, assuming he has any.

Yes, we survived this week. But swirling chaos continues.

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Operation Wag the Dog

By on Friday, April 13, 2018

Operation Wag the Dog

Is Syria being Bombed Because Trump has Bombed?

April 13th, 2018

Events transpired today that mean the Mueller investigation matters much less than yesterday; Trump’s fate is sealed even if he fires Mueller tomorrow. He will face criminal charges, and in all likelihood will go to prison.

The State of New York announced that a criminal investigation is ongoing against Trump’s fixer, the very criminal lawyer Michael Cohen. Evidence came out today among other things, that Cohen was lying when he said he never went to Prague to negotiate with the Russians about the so-called “Pee Pee Tape”-he snuck in over the open German border so it didn’t show up on his passport. Why would he lie about it if not to try to make the urinating hookers go away?

Apparently he recorded a lot of his conversations with Trump, an Alexander Butterfield moment like the one that effectively destroyed the Nixon presidency.

Oh, and we’re bombing Damascus. Trump went on TV, looking and sounding really presidential, a baboon in a tuxedo, and talked about how Assad was an awful, awful man who gassed his own people, men, women and children.

Assad is an awful, awful man who gassed his own people, men, women and children. That’s pretty hard to dispute. But then, our old ally Saddam Hussein Assad was an awful, awful man who gassed his own people, men, women and children, and look how the American response to that turned out. American reactions by both Bushes killed more Kurds (note: NOT “Saddam’s own people” and they get quite pissed when you pretend that they are) than Saddam could manage, even armed with the very best poison gases America could make. As Mark Russell noted, “We know Saddam has weapons of mass destruction. We kept the receipts.”

The atrocities were real. The American response was hypocritical, violent, and counter productive. They were even greater atrocities. Is was a crime against humanity under George HW Bush (“Highway of Death”? That ring a bell?) and even worse under George W. Bush, who staged a mass carpet bombing of a major civilian center so it would look impressive on CNN (“Shock and Awe”).

Did killing over half a million people bring back a single one of the Kurds that Saddam gassed? Remember, more of them died from American policies than Saddam could ever imagine.

It’s not going to be any different this time. In fact, it may be far worse.

You might give either of the Bushes credit for at least having some human reservations about what they were doing, and simply didn’t imagine how bad attacking a weak desert country 6,000 miles away could be, both for the country in question and America. Maybe they did think they could get rid of Saddam somewhat bloodlessly. They may have been vicious and corrupt, but they were at least human.

We don’t have any such assurances with this President, soi-disant, who is an utter sociopath.

I felt a chill watching him emote about the horror of chemical attacks—he doesn’t care. He wouldn’t hesitate to conduct such attacks himself, given the opportunity, I’m sure of that.

Trump just sees this as a last ditch way of avoiding the final collapse of his presidency and his long criminal career.

The most immediate concern is the Russian response. There’s 8,500 Russian troops in Syria, staunchly supporting the Assad regime. Iran has people in there, and they, too, are Russian allies.

Are Putin and his stooge Trump exchanging knowing winks as America spends a few billion dollars on what amounts to Kabuki warfare (now with real casualties!), or is Putin taking this in in a cold rage, wondering how his monkey on a stick got so out of control?

The UK and France got roped into this. Prime Minister Theresa May is an imbecile, and the Tories need a crisis to keep their minority rule in Parliament going, but their hatred of chemical warfare is real, and valid. Emmanuel Macron considers the use of chemical weapons in Syria a “red line”, a crime against humanity. He also may be a strong force to avoid escalation, since he is actively coordinating with the Russians.

Given their own history with such weapons, Britain and France are probably honest in their response. And may work with Mad Dog Maddis to try and keep Trump and the Porn ‘Stache from Hell from blowing things up into WW3 under the notion that American actions don’t have consequences. Both have the notion that bombing people will make them respect them, a notion of which any Londoner can disabuse them.

The Pentagon says that they are being careful to let the Russian know what areas they might target, so there’s that, at least. Of course, the Russians might be passing that information along to Assad immediately, but then, we’re trying to avoid an armed confrontation between the world’s two biggest nuclear powers. This presents little risk to American bombers, as Syria has negligible air defenses. Trump wouldn’t be attacking them if he thought they could hit back; that’s just not his style. It’s what he does through sheer incompetence and a desire to move the focus off his myriad scandals that scares me.

I predicted major crisis by the weekend, which required absolutely no clairvoyance on my part. Any person with a three digit IQ saw it coming.

What none of us know is what comes next.

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Paulie Five Fingers As President — Holy Crap

By on Thursday, April 12, 2018

April 12th 2018

Back around the turn of the century, I did a series of humor essays revolving around a character named “Paulie Five Fingers.” Paulie, not to put it too indirectly, was a mob boss, a Tony Soprano. He was sleek, vicious, and engaging.

I actually did know someone who referred to himself as “Paulie Five Fingers”, but the reality is a bit disappointing; the real-life Paulie is a model of probity, a paragon of virtue. I wrote the pieces in the first person, and I was a lot more noble and courageous than I am in real life: the real Zepp would be whimpering and wetting his pants wondering why Tony Soprano had decided, not only to befriend him, but to bestow lavish gifts upon him.

I hit on the notion of Paulie suborning the legal system by becoming a part of it. In “Paulie, DA” I had the following occur:

Paulie: “There is business requiring my attention here. I am about to become the new DA of your illustrious county.”

Me: “DA? District Attorney? You’re about to become the District Attorney?”

“You should not take such a tone of voice. If you were not my friend, I would think that perhaps you were questioning my qualifications for the position.”

“Well, I know you know court procedure like a Dershowitz. But aren’t you usually, um, facing the district attorney in those cases?”

“That is often the case. But it came to pass that I observed trials of several petty larcenists and other minor players in the world of crime lately, and I observed a most interesting thing.

“In this low-level courtroom in New Jersey, I noticed that the state-appointed defense attorney was a drab, a pitiful, cringing little guy who clearly was some hippy liberal type who just barely beat the bar exam and clings to existence in a low-paying, dead-end job. Scuttling and brow-beaten, he all but apologized to the court for wasting their time on defending clients such as his.

“The Assistant District Attorney was sleek and well-fed, serene, confident, exchanging understanding amused glances with the judge as the defense attorney went about his menial tasks, barely bothering to learn the name of the accused, but merely reciting the crimes, secure in the knowledge that little of his time would have to be devoted to presenting actual evidence. It was like watching a polling station where a ten-term incumbent congressman is facing a challenge from some unknown third party weirdo.”

OK, the story was funny, and it was a lot of fun to write.

But for fuck’s sake. I was joking! It was meant to be satire! I didn’t mean for it to become a guide for Donald Trump!

James Comey’s book, “A Higher Loyalty,” leaked today, and amongst all the stunning claims in the book according to the Guardian, “The former FBI director James Comey denounces Donald Trump as ‘untethered to truth’ and likens the president to a mafia boss.”

“Holy crap,” Comey writes, “they are trying to make each of us an ‘amica nostra’ – a friend of ours. To draw us in. As crazy as it sounds, I suddenly had the feeling that, in the blink of an eye, the president-elect was trying to make us all part of the same family.”

The White House as “Our Thing”. The mind reels.

Or at least, it would, if we already hadn’t been exposed to 16 months of criminal bullshit and a mafia mentality from this White House.

I can only hope, in the cold light of reality, that this son-of-a-bitch of a president ends up rotting in prison, and soon.

Comey writes, “I once again was having flashbacks to my earlier career as a prosecutor against the Mob. The silent circle of assent. The boss in complete control. The loyalty oaths. The us-versus-them worldview. The lying about all things, large and small, in service to some code of loyalty that put the organization above morality and the truth.”

Of Trump’s now famous demand over dinner at the White House in January 2017, “I need loyalty”, Comey writes: “To my mind, the demand was like Sammy the Bull’s Cosa Nostra induction ceremony – with Trump in the role of the family boss, asking me if I have what it takes to be a ‘made man’.”

Yeah. “Holy Crap.” That about covers it.

I concluded “Paulie DA” like this:

“Paulie, given your career…”

“Please do not be vocally explicit.”

“Given your career, don’t you see this as a travesty?”

“Travesty? Zepp, you treat me so poorly sometimes, what am I going to do with you? You heard my description of the present dynamics of our judicial system. It is what the people want. It is what the people need. It is, one way or another, what the people will get.

“Believe me, my friend, given the present state of American justice, there is nobody in the country better qualified to administer it than me.

“I’ll be the best district attorney you ever saw, and exactly what the people deserve.”

Fucking Hell. I was being a sarcastic asshole. I didn’t mean it!

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