tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19032354830688629402024-03-14T22:57:51.189-07:00Green Eagle'Blest if I believe such a Poll Parrot as you was ever learned to speak!'
-Roger RiderhoodGreen Eaglehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13477132834757467690noreply@blogger.comBlogger5473125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1903235483068862940.post-16268533175044691732024-03-14T16:02:00.000-07:002024-03-14T22:57:16.469-07:00Open Judicial Corruption<p> Well, here is the sorry state to which our justice system has declined,<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/03/14/trump-cannon-hearing-espionage-act-pra/"> from the <i>Washington Post</i></a> today:</p><p><br /></p><p><span style="color: #990000;">"U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon heard two hours of legal jousting between prosecutor Jay Bratt and defense lawyer Emil Bove, who argued the language of the World War I-era Espionage Act that Trump is charged with breaking is too unclear to be the basis of an indictment against the 45th president of the United States. For most of the morning session, Cannon seemed to take the argument seriously...</span></p><p><span style="color: #990000;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="color: #990000;">Cannon is set to hold the second part of the hearing Thursday afternoon, to discuss Trump’s claim that the Presidential Records Act should be grounds for the dismissal of charges that he mishandled national defense information. Trump insists that the law, which governs historical papers, means that he can declare even highly classified documents to be his own personal property."</span></p><p><br /></p><p>You do not have to be a lawyer to see that this claim is utter rubbish:</p><p><br /></p><p><span style="color: #990000;">"The 1978 Presidential Records Act was passed after President Richard M. Nixon sought to destroy White House tapes during the Watergate scandal. It says presidential records belong to the public and are to be turned over to the National Archives and Records Administration at the end of a presidency."</span></p><p><br /></p><p>And yet we are forced to watch as a thoroughly corrupt perversion of a judge seeks not to throw Trump and his lawyers out on their rear ends, as they deserve, but to find some pathetic excuse to accept their utterly nonsensical arguments. She is seeking not to enforce the law, but to destroy it, and we are helpless to stop her as she ravages our judiciary.</p><p><br /></p><p>And let us be clear: Aileen Cannon and her many equivalents on the Federal bench around the country, including six of the nine Supreme Court Justices, are not ignorant of the law, nor are they ruling based on some supposed "conservative" principles. They are utterly corrupt, seeking to unapologetically benefit the party that placed them on the bench, in open defiance of the law and common human decency.</p><p><br /></p><p>Let me add that this is hardly the only specimen of this sickening behavior. Consider the Georgia case, where Trump is unquestionably guilty of attempting to fraudulently force the State to award its electors to him- a blatant attempt to overthrow the legal government of the country. This ironclad case is in major risk of being destroyed by a Republican judge deciding that an utterly irrelevant personal relationship of the prosecutor is an excuse to remove the entire prosecutorial staff just before the trial, at which point a Republican attorney general will be able to name a corrupt replacement, who will allow the charges to die despite overwhelming evidence of Trump's guilt. </p><p><br /></p><p>And this is the result of sixty years of Republican perfidy and of Democrats averting their gaze from what was openly happening- a judiciary poisoned, maybe fatally so, by utter contempt for the law, from people who constantly lecture us on "original intent" and their laughable claims of being faithful to the will of our nation's founders. </p><p><br /></p><p>And would that it were only Aileen Cannon. This has become the standard way we are forced to endure the Federal Judiciary today: in fear at the likelihood that somewhere in the process a corrupt Republican appointee is going to ignore any vestige of justice, when it benefits his or her masters. Aileen Cannon, just one of many Republican appointed judges, will do anything she can get away with to grease the skids to put Trump back in office, in the clear hope that (God forbid) he will put her up there on the Supreme Court with Alito, Thomas, Kavanaugh and the rest of these Republican criminals. Aileen Cannon's insane lust to hold a position for which she is grotesquely unfit is now more important to this country's future than all the laws and all the history that we have. And that is what happens when we avert our gaze from open corruption. Maybe it's time to put a stop to this fecklessness.</p>Green Eaglehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13477132834757467690noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1903235483068862940.post-53920958746733044022024-03-12T23:11:00.000-07:002024-03-12T23:11:30.613-07:00Our Miserable Mainstream Press- Chapter about one million and ten: "...did not exonerate..."<p>So the corrupt Republicans in the house today put together another sham "hearing" designed to damage Democrats, in this case, President Biden. The sole witness" today was a dishonest Republican hatchet man named Robert Hur, a former Trump stooge who was unforgivably appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland to manufacture a smear against Biden.</p><p><br /></p><p>Now, it is tempting at this point to dwell on the single worst mistake Biden has made in his time as President: the appointment of the hapless coward Garland to safeguard this country against the Republican assault on popular government. Let us just note that Hur is only the latest in a long history of Republican attempts to fabricate a phony case against Democrats. These include, in reverse order, the criminal attempt by John Durham to accuse Biden of taking foreign bribes, which took three years and cost untold tens of millions of dollars, resulting in absolutely no charges but fueled an unending campaign of smears and lies against Biden, the twisting of the Mueller report by the most corrupt Attorney General in our history, William Barr, to deny the clear results of Mueller's findings, the witch hunt over "Hillary's e-mails," which produced no evidence whatsoever, the phony outrage over the Benghazi incident, the "swift boat" smears against military hero John Kerry, character assasination attempts against Al Gore and Jimmy Carter, which were key in denying both of them the Presidency in favor of terminally corrupt Republicans, and on and on. However, that was then, and now is now, so let's get on with what happened today.</p><p><br /></p><p>So we were treated to another Republican attempt at a show trial in the House today, a multi-hour hearing with the aforementioned partisan hack, Robert Hur, in which Hur was able to produce absolutely no evidence that Joe Biden had done a thing wrong, but where he did manage to provide Republicans with a few dishonest ramblings that they can use in their campaign to prove that Biden is a doddering, senile old fool. If you are at all interested in the actual content of that hearing, I suggest you read <a href="https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/3/12/2228994/-Live-coverage-House-GOP-hearing-on-just-how-old-Biden-is">this article from Daily Kos,</a> which briefly covers the questioning of every single member of the committee. This was the usual spectacle of Republican lies and Democratic truths that we have come to expect from Republican control of the House, and did not change the fact that Hur found absolutely nothing to charge Biden with, and had to resort to a massively unethical and groundless attack on Biden's mental capacity. So, now to the point of this comment.</p><p><br /></p><p>How did the <i>Washington Post</i> report this hearing? Well, here is the headline from their article, which was the top story in the <i>Post</i> today:</p><p><br /></p><p><b>"Ex-special counsel Hur tells Congress in testy exchange: ‘I did not exonerate’ Biden"</b></p><p><br /></p><p>That was their takeaway from this entire sorry spectacle. Now, let me point out to you that Hur also did not exonerate Biden of murdering the Lindberg baby, or of giving the secret of the atom bomb to the Soviets. In fact, Hur, as a prosecutor, knows perfectly well that it is not the place of prosecutors to exonerate anyone of anything; their job is to either find criminal culpability or shut up and go home. Hur's statement shows that he knows perfectly well that he found nothing of substance that Biden did, but he was hired (in something for which we should never forgive Merrick Garland) in complete knowledge that he would produce a lying, partisan hit job. </p><p><br /></p><p>If you followed the hearing, you know that this headline should have read "Another Republican smear job falls flat," but instead, the <i>Post</i> deliberately published a story implying that Biden was not "exonerated" of wrongdoing, i.e. is guilty of something.</p><p><br /></p><p>Today we learned belatedly that the traitor Donald Trump took a dozen boxes of documents from Mar-a-Lago and flew away with them, just before US agents raided the place. What was in those documents, and what did Trump do with them? We may never know, and that is a truly horrible prospect, given his frequent betrayal of our national security interests. That seems to be of little interest to the Washington Post, but they are ready to collaborate with Republicans in conveying the impression that Joe Biden is deeply mentally compromised. The mainstream press will simply not give up the program of their owners- to destroy Democrats and put Republicans in total control, despite their knowing perfectly well what the result will be. Their short term profits are far more important to them than turning half the world over to violent dictators, or even the prospect of wiping out the entire human race through failure to deal with climate change. We are in the hands of monsters, and at this point it is hard to have much confidence that we can free ourselves.</p><p><br /></p>Green Eaglehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13477132834757467690noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1903235483068862940.post-12035167376244107512024-03-01T16:10:00.000-08:002024-03-01T16:10:40.932-08:00What Can an 81 Year Old Man Do?<p> This:</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NcJvi5TYEk</p>Green Eaglehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13477132834757467690noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1903235483068862940.post-81403697476055014332024-02-26T11:44:00.000-08:002024-02-26T11:44:42.911-08:00Who Won South Carolina<p> The short answer: Nobody.</p><p><br /></p><p>Nikki Haley lost by failing to get 40% of the vote in her home State, essentially sealing the tomb on her obviously lost campaign for President.</p><p><br /></p><p>But Trump lost just as badly. The absolute leader and dictator of his party, running (in Republicans' minds) as an incumbent, couldn't get 60% of his own party's vote. Regardless of the in-the-tank-for-Republicans reporting in the mainstream press, this is not a crushing victory by Trump, but in fact a humiliating repudiation. </p><p><br /></p><p>Contrast that outcome to a real winner, Joe Biden, who got 96% of the Democratic vote. The truth is that Trump can barely win an election in his own party. Of course, the press will go on declaring him to be a mighty colossus, striding toward victory, because that is what the rich owners of the press want to happen. But the truth remains: this is a character who, barring massive vote rigging in November, appears to be riding toward an incredible humiliation.</p>Green Eaglehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13477132834757467690noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1903235483068862940.post-23733193913746418622024-02-25T13:32:00.000-08:002024-02-25T13:32:10.943-08:00Just Trying to Help Out Here<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCGgBcP5wFqQqSyUgNYAGztuvSu5Wk8thGmikwUV_U8shyphenhyphenYSEMm84IAc0hpitpD1gfsqOVeZYbPF7YcPRTu0vDMPih8NA7dkPHXoAdqICc9zc83TM9XDpq1e1l9Y1JcG_Yw314n8hMjvmfJRLdovDBXKgLMUxssyiMis2SdswByeqxst5IiRrCikFbLJaK/s1026/Melania%20Mercedes.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="646" data-original-width="1026" height="251" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCGgBcP5wFqQqSyUgNYAGztuvSu5Wk8thGmikwUV_U8shyphenhyphenYSEMm84IAc0hpitpD1gfsqOVeZYbPF7YcPRTu0vDMPih8NA7dkPHXoAdqICc9zc83TM9XDpq1e1l9Y1JcG_Yw314n8hMjvmfJRLdovDBXKgLMUxssyiMis2SdswByeqxst5IiRrCikFbLJaK/w400-h251/Melania%20Mercedes.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p>https://www.independent.co.uk/tv/news/donald-trump-melania-wife-cpac-live-b2502010.html</p>Green Eaglehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13477132834757467690noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1903235483068862940.post-82339973467896163732024-02-19T11:49:00.000-08:002024-02-19T22:39:52.238-08:00<p> At the time of peak Taylor Swift frenzy, I collected a number of screen captures of right wing posts relating to her and the issues surrounding her. Usually, when I ridicule wingnuts, it is about things they have said, but I think it is important to realize that a large part of their audience is, apparently, only remotely literate. Visual images or videos have far more effect on them than any sort of reasoning, so I thought I would post a few of them here.</p><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgg_rlld9hqVaHq_LEa8fCFj73U2frHwOfqJR4vM239OgsDEETDThS_FElKJ-YwGDovUp022jEaH5KWoVHD1zj-xa4on7LwAIwzG2TG1yskoA_Nijrr1NXBzS_SVTAng8cTz-ZwiL_jtbmMPubXJ-mYvuZ2ulLDQzm5U5iJHYSXeR1TOlTxLtouwA8gZyDA/s698/Taylor%20Swift%20NFL%20drop.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="540" data-original-width="698" height="248" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgg_rlld9hqVaHq_LEa8fCFj73U2frHwOfqJR4vM239OgsDEETDThS_FElKJ-YwGDovUp022jEaH5KWoVHD1zj-xa4on7LwAIwzG2TG1yskoA_Nijrr1NXBzS_SVTAng8cTz-ZwiL_jtbmMPubXJ-mYvuZ2ulLDQzm5U5iJHYSXeR1TOlTxLtouwA8gZyDA/s320/Taylor%20Swift%20NFL%20drop.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div><br /></div>Of course, a preposterous lie. <div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHyigrTa-2M03doN28XR6WcZJXp9HxUhtw6_6vidCz3ZJOXxPPVRZ9oZsgIzCOf8jbMQgR2mzzxKsmNtnsge1YO76bOEv5NlcSPFJlpmZQc9_JyLX5WeJEYepfAippCawxjFh0esQflhO2rzh3iQvYP5UyQnLuFI0DZUkNyG2saBb2W6BV38IQ9SNAs3EN/s552/Taylor%20Swift%20Murdered%20Fan.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="501" data-original-width="552" height="290" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHyigrTa-2M03doN28XR6WcZJXp9HxUhtw6_6vidCz3ZJOXxPPVRZ9oZsgIzCOf8jbMQgR2mzzxKsmNtnsge1YO76bOEv5NlcSPFJlpmZQc9_JyLX5WeJEYepfAippCawxjFh0esQflhO2rzh3iQvYP5UyQnLuFI0DZUkNyG2saBb2W6BV38IQ9SNAs3EN/s320/Taylor%20Swift%20Murdered%20Fan.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div><br /></div>"Insider claims."</div><div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSEmSPJXx6iaIjF5RQiTPJO-IGyTMqIE345NwjUgODZoI5fVHQZ56EpESu-EXBZUKqy4mLALyoa9p7mx2-uZ_eJsyKAodbo6FjMK9i3WC0LV8q_SbENFWhmI_FkfgIL5p-cxmOYXEFwXKCAG5DSF1FF-VTUriwzTjMKX56YXzU1JkzRG62rRJkfu0_I7en/s698/nfl%20bans%20taylor.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="540" data-original-width="698" height="248" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSEmSPJXx6iaIjF5RQiTPJO-IGyTMqIE345NwjUgODZoI5fVHQZ56EpESu-EXBZUKqy4mLALyoa9p7mx2-uZ_eJsyKAodbo6FjMK9i3WC0LV8q_SbENFWhmI_FkfgIL5p-cxmOYXEFwXKCAG5DSF1FF-VTUriwzTjMKX56YXzU1JkzRG62rRJkfu0_I7en/s320/nfl%20bans%20taylor.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div><br /></div>She brought in millions of new fans, so they banned her. Right.</div><div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0iQlP8P5Jcoc2yll4bhG7Z5PgW5qt36dN0LFtOel7EPZRJIZj0aVMRv7sXl_O2dzzjVIX-iELkBzpDSMTkq8TG0YqmV2pzy-5pmJjbhubc8Hq2eG3aZfs5NyeMr9Mr_HVh5fDbz96tCRMBDdoq160WcCLa78pJeTSfu7hQ3NUF1sqKgL7P5i70PvbBYvc/s600/Taylor%20Swift%20grandson.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="507" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0iQlP8P5Jcoc2yll4bhG7Z5PgW5qt36dN0LFtOel7EPZRJIZj0aVMRv7sXl_O2dzzjVIX-iELkBzpDSMTkq8TG0YqmV2pzy-5pmJjbhubc8Hq2eG3aZfs5NyeMr9Mr_HVh5fDbz96tCRMBDdoq160WcCLa78pJeTSfu7hQ3NUF1sqKgL7P5i70PvbBYvc/s320/Taylor%20Swift%20grandson.jpg" width="270" /></a></div><div><br /></div>Okay, now we are deep into the weeds. Not only is Taylor Swift a satanist, she is, of course, actually a transvestite. Never could have predicted that one, huh?</div><div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhY8YLQRXHDuZZIM5w2bCnLWlCzm5Q4vES3nDsnmpeW_IPDGHDV7YJNwpWdLT1mkOoRw6Cx2BCCoAMgFSEOj3iqYcPooBWIMN8Lwl07MzGswq9iefnnP50Z3gFd2gPrBf39kryw6DVUyhaYLsNSBC4yINEa51v24Kf8apQve2gXDR0BXhqrEeAUn5pwuJFl/s680/Acqademy%20of%20Music%20bans%20Taylor.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="526" data-original-width="680" height="248" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhY8YLQRXHDuZZIM5w2bCnLWlCzm5Q4vES3nDsnmpeW_IPDGHDV7YJNwpWdLT1mkOoRw6Cx2BCCoAMgFSEOj3iqYcPooBWIMN8Lwl07MzGswq9iefnnP50Z3gFd2gPrBf39kryw6DVUyhaYLsNSBC4yINEa51v24Kf8apQve2gXDR0BXhqrEeAUn5pwuJFl/s320/Acqademy%20of%20Music%20bans%20Taylor.jpg" width="320" /></a></div> </div><div>As far as I can tell, there is no such thing as the "Academy of Music." But they banned poor Taylor for life. That will hurt.</div><div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5M_31m73d1iNRjmE1bVCeqrHYZ024Ics5ojK2kcSmOETMu_iBAM1b4r1WtyOecjD4FSKD3DHGKiEz-Z2pX73CNyYaHv8HvHSXHGYYBAMpY73t9N9xFk5ZvPTSHdaJBoCvRZwfsZvnLAE8gWk1pfH65k3ts_v-I4d11QDhlppUdYfLaiXjhepCt0DbSTJw/s838/Biden%20Rigged%20Super%20Bowl.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="559" data-original-width="838" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5M_31m73d1iNRjmE1bVCeqrHYZ024Ics5ojK2kcSmOETMu_iBAM1b4r1WtyOecjD4FSKD3DHGKiEz-Z2pX73CNyYaHv8HvHSXHGYYBAMpY73t9N9xFk5ZvPTSHdaJBoCvRZwfsZvnLAE8gWk1pfH65k3ts_v-I4d11QDhlppUdYfLaiXjhepCt0DbSTJw/s320/Biden%20Rigged%20Super%20Bowl.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div><br /></div>"Creepy tweet." A little projection there, Trump idiots?</div><div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkh-86avI1ZqAmVPsXqDgTdLx_4yBe9hDgAPR-xYNOZ5FeYoBrYoLIM0N-lBxMcCl268LSwkzHaolyGluteV7lpXKuoIwA3FpMawBpHGD2KeR52MRsVvEIL5d86kPiCPdb0cxFZpWalMH3truUtAsomDtViycdP1-3tK100RYUHTiTwJHNJbxsMe03t05S/s604/JLo%20Penis.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="407" data-original-width="604" height="216" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkh-86avI1ZqAmVPsXqDgTdLx_4yBe9hDgAPR-xYNOZ5FeYoBrYoLIM0N-lBxMcCl268LSwkzHaolyGluteV7lpXKuoIwA3FpMawBpHGD2KeR52MRsVvEIL5d86kPiCPdb0cxFZpWalMH3truUtAsomDtViycdP1-3tK100RYUHTiTwJHNJbxsMe03t05S/s320/JLo%20Penis.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div><br /></div>Well, I shouldn't let Taylor have all the fun now, should I?</div><div><br /></div><div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxKa6iY8kamGUETi0vyfeGsNX0yf1SkS-QazA-LrvtrD3Vi7ZceWOqdkxK0a6JgWF8-n0z80K7mJeG22uoeq_CYjg-4HSvglD2fOT2rzs8TmSrb6m1dnWA6xs6uXfoln4bLYqo0jewof1bY8FqtfJU9LXvjMTiheP-ow00xstDUKlJbcn2ipxlTE3MIaXt/s841/Taylor%20Swift%20Super%20Witch.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="560" data-original-width="841" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxKa6iY8kamGUETi0vyfeGsNX0yf1SkS-QazA-LrvtrD3Vi7ZceWOqdkxK0a6JgWF8-n0z80K7mJeG22uoeq_CYjg-4HSvglD2fOT2rzs8TmSrb6m1dnWA6xs6uXfoln4bLYqo0jewof1bY8FqtfJU9LXvjMTiheP-ow00xstDUKlJbcn2ipxlTE3MIaXt/s320/Taylor%20Swift%20Super%20Witch.jpg" width="320" /></a></div> </div><div>Super witch of the world. Right.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEeJKlu0dKyEFo5cRWIJTb4YJfgpx2gEPsa3heiCswie6raQmUZvtCnQPJTmp0jtwdlFv1Ug9elreL3elKafXAf9akSLW4H0a5eJWmbHBYdpoEe0D3xw2xpxQeVuIBrtlLehapBS_puQ5uP4KrxfBF3m2pu5xoQsfwaHu7PAVVj_bljqt96det7vyfUiFG/s724/Superbowl%20prophecy.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="411" data-original-width="724" height="182" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEeJKlu0dKyEFo5cRWIJTb4YJfgpx2gEPsa3heiCswie6raQmUZvtCnQPJTmp0jtwdlFv1Ug9elreL3elKafXAf9akSLW4H0a5eJWmbHBYdpoEe0D3xw2xpxQeVuIBrtlLehapBS_puQ5uP4KrxfBF3m2pu5xoQsfwaHu7PAVVj_bljqt96det7vyfUiFG/s320/Superbowl%20prophecy.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>A billion soul harvest? At the Super Bowl? I just want to note that the Bo guy referred to here is actually named Bo Polny. They can't even spell their own names right.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjy0WZcJF9tsuuqwMXkm9xDrqNy9k_TO3AAx13s0qyzJCluVU1ze8quAfcsCCaVkfvsNmYDDFrDJzSJghRNaJz6Ew7q8zpILPaRk7GSE7_1fZjMie9q-K_fcTZZ8hyx_CFYqfCTGKnZMGXP8CzDnjZKVk3WGgBNC3hFXTXN3HNNaJR53vP6Bp7rxfceG3lR/s835/Super%20Bowl%20Illuminati%20Ritual.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="471" data-original-width="835" height="181" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjy0WZcJF9tsuuqwMXkm9xDrqNy9k_TO3AAx13s0qyzJCluVU1ze8quAfcsCCaVkfvsNmYDDFrDJzSJghRNaJz6Ew7q8zpILPaRk7GSE7_1fZjMie9q-K_fcTZZ8hyx_CFYqfCTGKnZMGXP8CzDnjZKVk3WGgBNC3hFXTXN3HNNaJR53vP6Bp7rxfceG3lR/s320/Super%20Bowl%20Illuminati%20Ritual.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p>And we will go out here with the illuminati. Of course, it's the Illuminati. Anyway, this is the sort of thing, more than anything in words, that the masters of right wing propaganda use to influence their mentally deficient base. No argument we ever make can stand up in their minds to the effect these graphics and videos have on them. They are mesmerized by this sort of garbage. This is one reason why it is so hard to reach them with the truth.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><i>Update:</i> sorry, I just found this one and couldn't resist including it:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNMPGab_U1WNFQUHMYZqsX3s7ennqd2E84cYZMCGtQdIN-P9e-7jfEGCscD3rzvU-yjkF3oAq59cbHgyLBj1xtZI0OWdfP9JRqo-b946T4SyxRAG2R1QddoU8LeAOi1UrvalSfmYo07QzHoYtFfuvdm8eKgVcyXZRMXQ_DFzKI6OeoNvnxM8wtODGjywW9/s900/Nugent%20SSwift.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="900" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNMPGab_U1WNFQUHMYZqsX3s7ennqd2E84cYZMCGtQdIN-P9e-7jfEGCscD3rzvU-yjkF3oAq59cbHgyLBj1xtZI0OWdfP9JRqo-b946T4SyxRAG2R1QddoU8LeAOi1UrvalSfmYo07QzHoYtFfuvdm8eKgVcyXZRMXQ_DFzKI6OeoNvnxM8wtODGjywW9/s320/Nugent%20SSwift.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p>What a pack of dicks, huh?</p></div>Green Eaglehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13477132834757467690noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1903235483068862940.post-87892150644597690632024-02-06T13:43:00.000-08:002024-02-06T13:43:47.029-08:00What Could Go Wrong<p> Or, another massive Trump victory in Federal Court today.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqXxTlzeyABlwSfWsXehFxQZnJQgBYmnEPzjylKh5U6VSqfoWprpECMManxjA7JP1YCHXnGu3g5n3cjNP7yJu4JSAjvdOPME1XWr-2DFUYmuygY1WjnrlnPPXkXjZxmuHRPkUd3l6AVUTNOyK9RpOUVSYGhbNZZKv7j6XMGVm8vNmqx5pOnWftLJH7R43x/s700/Wile%20E.%20Coyote.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="700" data-original-width="700" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqXxTlzeyABlwSfWsXehFxQZnJQgBYmnEPzjylKh5U6VSqfoWprpECMManxjA7JP1YCHXnGu3g5n3cjNP7yJu4JSAjvdOPME1XWr-2DFUYmuygY1WjnrlnPPXkXjZxmuHRPkUd3l6AVUTNOyK9RpOUVSYGhbNZZKv7j6XMGVm8vNmqx5pOnWftLJH7R43x/w400-h400/Wile%20E.%20Coyote.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><span style="font-size: x-small;"><div style="text-align: center;">Donald Trump's Brilliant Legal Strategy</div></span><p></p><p><br /></p><p>We hear from some sources that Donald Trump has already spent as much as $74 million dollars in legal fees to avoid the consequences of his multifaceted criminality, by clogging the justice system with idiotic appeals and other stall tactics, until he could run out the clock and postpone his reckoning past election day, when if re-elected he could crush any legal opposition to his rule. Well, here is a fantasy that I had a few months ago. When you look at Trump's adult life, it has consisted in an almost endless series of failures: six bankruptcies, two popular vote losses in Presidential politics, grotesque failures running the economy or the response to an epidemic, failures as a con man in his "university," his thieving charities and almost everything he ever tried to sell under his own name, and on and on. Why should this be any different? What I fantasized was that all of his stalling and all of his dirty legal tactics would end up by having charges that would have been settled two years ago and utterly forgotten by the majority of voters, end up in court, playing out every day on TV, right in the middle of the Presidential campaign. Perfect timing, if you are a Democrat. </p><p><br /></p><p>It looks like we have a fair chance of that actually happening at this point. Those of us who follow political affairs are undoubtedly dismayed to discover that, according to a poll from last week, that 47% of registered voters in this country are totally unaware that Trump has been indicted on a single one of the 91 charges against him. A large majority, if asked, "If you knew that Trump had been indicted for a crime, would you approve of his candidacy," replied "no." Well, nothing will help with that issue (which of course should be almost the only one this year- do you want an open criminal in the White House?) better than showing him being dragged in and out of courtrooms through the whole Presidential campaign, and presumably convicted on at least some of these charges.</p><p><br /></p><p>Now, you may well wonder, given that our mainstream press has done such a miserable job of informing the public that Trump is a rapist and a con man and a traitor, if even his conviction for serious crimes will make a real dent in popular ignorance. And that is a good question. As I have said for years, Democrats could crush the Republican party into oblivion without hardly trying; what they cannot do is crush the Republicans and the press working together. Still, Democrats, your task is to make damned sure that the American Public knows perfectly well who this man really is before they enter the voting booths next November. Please, get to it. </p>Green Eaglehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13477132834757467690noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1903235483068862940.post-84170405723506408282024-02-01T13:39:00.000-08:002024-02-01T13:39:25.136-08:00Still Weighing<p> A chryon I just saw on MSNBC: "Judges still weighing Trump immunity claim."</p><p><br /></p><p>Still weighing? Still weighing what? The claim that, unlike anyone else on earth, Donald Trump has the right to commit any crime he wants? How long does any judge have to "weigh" that claim before responding that he is full of bullshit, and malicious, criminal bullshit at that? </p><p><br /></p><p>I am not a lawyer, but I am not totally brain dead either, and I think I can figure out in about two seconds that it is not part of our legal system that one person is allowed to ride roughshod over the laws of this country and do whatever the hell he wants, no matter how it damages others. And no amount of legalese can hide this basic fact. This is obviously what the whole issue is all about: are some corrupt judges going to take their chance to license a would-be dictator to smash the legal structure of our whole country? </p><p><br /></p><p>I just don't see how any halfway decent person can have the slightest doubt about this. Trump is asking openly to be allowed to go on a lawless rampage like this country has never seen, and apparently some judges are "weighing" whether that is okay? What the hell has gone wrong with this country, where the normal course of our legal system for two and a half centuries can be measured against the "right" of a mentally defective bully to smash anything that gets in his way? Where legal decorum becomes an excuse to avert judges' gaze from what is openly going on here? How in the name of all that is holy can there be anything to "weigh" about this issue? </p>Green Eaglehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13477132834757467690noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1903235483068862940.post-78490699334173669872024-01-29T10:53:00.000-08:002024-01-29T11:13:39.561-08:00Five Years<p><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2024/01/29/irs-contractor-leak-trump-taxes-sentence/">This news</a> from the <i>Washington Post</i> this morning:</p><p><br /></p><p><span style="color: #990000;">"<span face="var(--wpds-fonts-headline)" style="font-size: var(--wpds-fontSizes-350);">Ex-IRS contractor who leaked Trump’s tax returns sentenced to 5 years"</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #990000;"><span face="var(--wpds-fonts-headline)" style="font-size: var(--wpds-fontSizes-350);"><br /></span></span></p><p><span><span face="var(--wpds-fonts-headline)" style="font-size: var(--wpds-fontSizes-350);">Five years in prison for daring to let the American people know that their sitting president was a common thief.</span></span></p><p><span color="var(--wpds-colors-gray20)" face="var(--wpds-fonts-headline)" style="font-size: var(--wpds-fontSizes-350);"><br /></span></p><p><span color="var(--wpds-colors-gray20)" face="var(--wpds-fonts-headline)" style="font-size: var(--wpds-fontSizes-350);">As to Trump himself, who, as this leaked information helped reveal, stole tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars from the IRS and the American people through a decades-long criminal scheme, well, no prison time for him, and so far he hasn't had to pay a penny in penalties for his theft.</span></p><p><span color="var(--wpds-colors-gray20)" face="var(--wpds-fonts-headline)" style="font-size: var(--wpds-fontSizes-350);"><br /></span></p><p><span color="var(--wpds-colors-gray20)" face="var(--wpds-fonts-headline)" style="font-size: var(--wpds-fontSizes-350);">Seems about right to me, I guess.</span></p><p><span color="var(--wpds-colors-gray20)" face="var(--wpds-fonts-headline)" style="font-size: var(--wpds-fontSizes-350);"><br /></span></p><p><span color="var(--wpds-colors-gray20)" face="var(--wpds-fonts-headline)" style="font-size: var(--wpds-fontSizes-350);">The judge in this case (unbelievably appointed by Joe Biden) had this to say:</span></p><p><span color="var(--wpds-colors-gray20)" face="var(--wpds-fonts-headline)" style="font-size: var(--wpds-fontSizes-350);"><br /></span></p><p><span color="var(--wpds-colors-gray20)" face="var(--wpds-fonts-headline)" style="font-size: var(--wpds-fontSizes-350);">"U.S. District Judge Ana C. Reyes said Littlejohn had “pulled off the biggest heist in IRS history”</span></p><p><span color="var(--wpds-colors-gray20)" face="var(--wpds-fonts-headline)" style="font-size: var(--wpds-fontSizes-350);"><br /></span></p><p>He stole some documents. Bigger than the hundreds of millions that Trump and his family stole, I guess.</p><p><br /></p><p><span style="color: #990000;">"Justice Department officials said Littlejohn’s disclosures were unprecedented in U.S. history."</span></p><p><br /></p><p>Not unprecedented, I guess was the theft of a vast sum of money by a billionaire. That happens almost every day, I guess, so it isn't worth the judge's outrage.</p><p><br /></p><p><span style="color: #990000;">"Littlejohn was deeply influenced by The Triumph of Injustice: <i>How the Rich Dodge Taxes and How to Make Them Pay,</i> by economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman.</span></p><p><span style="color: #990000;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="color: #990000;">“The 2019 book set forth a systematic analysis of the U.S. tax system, concluding that for the first time in a century, billionaires almost universally paid lower effective tax rates than the average American taxpayer,” attorneys Lisa Manning and Noah Cherry said in a court filing."</span></p><p><br /></p><p>Absolutely fine, but attempting to let the American people know about that? Off with his head. As to Mr. Saez and Mr. Zuchman, "how to make them pay?" Apparently there isn't any way to do that.</p>Green Eaglehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13477132834757467690noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1903235483068862940.post-24505254174517546792024-01-27T16:28:00.000-08:002024-01-27T16:30:11.088-08:00Wingnuts Slightly Annoyed about that $83 Million<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivKxy8JGdDCinJLVzFMovycTIMfngsbNXa4dKXhSGVmjkfRjWIC1EVe4aS67zxGRsBsSnueHuIPN-NJFgZMoC0QNdoxAdm1MA92KTQZxHXn0TFRs1Dtmsx4yrCdeCixFn2YGnU8wnTOD6e3xOvDD65i4SCvuvSUBywUS9NZZgFKvEwIFcJd9jXEOTlD1X4/s275/Trump%20in%20court.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="183" data-original-width="275" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivKxy8JGdDCinJLVzFMovycTIMfngsbNXa4dKXhSGVmjkfRjWIC1EVe4aS67zxGRsBsSnueHuIPN-NJFgZMoC0QNdoxAdm1MA92KTQZxHXn0TFRs1Dtmsx4yrCdeCixFn2YGnU8wnTOD6e3xOvDD65i4SCvuvSUBywUS9NZZgFKvEwIFcJd9jXEOTlD1X4/w400-h266/Trump%20in%20court.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">How can you look like a decrepit old geezer and an out of control two year old at the same time?</span></p><p><br /></p><p>I thought it might be nice to look in on wingnut world to see how they are taking yesterday's $83 million dollar Trump legal loss. You kind of know that they will decide it shouldn't affect their opinion of him in any way, but it might be helpful to see just how the Republican party has trained them to reject any fact they don't like. Not that surprisingly, a lot of the usual wingnut suspects didn't touch this loss at all, preferring to just ignore anything that interferes with their hateful daydreams, but here are a few excerpts from an article at Gateway Pundit, along with a sample of the hundreds of comments it received. Enjoy. Or not.</p><p><br /></p><p><span style="color: #990000;">"Trump attorney Alina Habba WENT OFF after the crooked New York City court slapped President Trump with an $83 million judgment for speaking out against the disgusting lies of a crazed woman who said he lured her into a Bergdorf Goodman store some 25 or 30 years ago and raped her in a dressing room where they were trying on lingerie."</span></p><p><br /></p><p>"Disgusting lies" that were found to be true by a jury of his peers in a previous court case, of course. I guess not only E. Jean Carroll, but two juries, two judges and the entire legal system are "crazed." Makes more sense than to believe that this open pervert who has said he does whatever he wants with women could have done what he was found guilty of.</p><p><br /></p><p><span style="color: #990000;">Today, the crooked court ordered President Trump to pay E. Jean Carroll $83 million for something he said about this crazy woman back when he was president in 2019."</span></p><p><br /></p><p>"Something." Something viciously hateful which he has repeated over and over again ever since, in a transparent effort to cause some crazy person to kill her, and to make the whole country hate her, a task at which he completely failed, or he wouldn't be so filled with rage now.</p><p><br /></p><p><span style="color: #990000;">"Free speech is no longer allowed in this country, especially for Republican lawmakers, Trump supporters, and conservative journalists."</span></p><p><br /></p><p>This refers to the normal rules in any courtroom: attorneys and defendants must restrict their statements in court to matters relevant to the charges, must not try to relitigate charges already decided by a jury, must not engage in personal attacks or unrelated political ravings, and must not engage in attempted character assassination of the victim, the jury, the judge or the prosecutor. That is the "free speech" that Trump was not allowed: the same restrictions that have always applied to anyone in a courtroom.</p><p><br /></p><p><span style="color: #990000;">"Today, the crooked court ordered President Trump to pay E. Jean Carroll $83 million for something he said about this crazy woman back when he was president in 2019"</span></p><p><br /></p><p>Yeah, right on, baby, and not a tenth of what he deserves, which is to be held in prison in solitary confinement until all of the 91 charges against him are resolved, to prevent his endless open attempts to incite violence if he is not allowed to engage in the basest of criminal behavior.</p><p><br /></p><p>Anyway, enough of this. On to some of the comments from readers of this garbage:</p><p><br /></p><p><span style="color: #990000;">"E. Jean Carroll is a mentally unwell woman who previously told CNN she fantasizes about rape."</span></p><p><br /></p><p><span style="color: #990000;">"That freak owes Trump hundreds of millions for falsifying a crime….and then at the very least- decades of jail time."</span></p><p><br /></p><p><span style="color: #990000;">"EJC needs a mental hospital for the criminally insane. Her social media sounds like she stalked him in the past before being coerced to strike."</span></p><p><br /></p><p>Criminal insanity for daring to hold their idol up to scrutiny. </p><p><br /></p><p><span style="color: #990000;">"He is going to absolutely destroy her when he becomes President. It won't be pretty, it will be under handed and quiet and I will laugh in her face the whole time."</span></p><p><br /></p><p>Using his position for personal revenge about a legal decision by a jury. Well, that is the sort of behavior we want from our President, yes sir.</p><p><br /></p><p><span style="color: #990000;">"The corrupted leftwing judge Lewis Kaplan, was being a partisan misogynist and sexist douchbag against Alina Habba."</span></p><p><br /></p><p>By making this ignorant, incompetent attorney follow the same rules every other attorney has to follow in court. For these people, Trump doesn't have to follow any rules, and neither do his tools.</p><p><br /></p><p><span style="color: #990000;">"The Leftist Judges are all in on destroying Trump. Obama is the top dog controlling Biden. He will soon off Biden and bring in Marshall Law just before the elections, watch!"</span></p><p><br /></p><p>"Marshall Law." </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnj1OYTn6Uq34lLVDvuVrH1b1CKfM2eJLkP_7vFMkoteROqo69TFJf1oUsyy3-12a2Ws_6f7Jx9zz4OBT4pk-2aiWR4c2qABHCNmyepwr27cMtzMU38JeNx-ZcMvtkZ3iMjFYwVseCpxb2AFcRtSbJQqCSPQk1Zr-I_AH33u4VChWGNf1BkYkeny4AYsJS/s600/Marshall-stack.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="460" data-original-width="600" height="306" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnj1OYTn6Uq34lLVDvuVrH1b1CKfM2eJLkP_7vFMkoteROqo69TFJf1oUsyy3-12a2Ws_6f7Jx9zz4OBT4pk-2aiWR4c2qABHCNmyepwr27cMtzMU38JeNx-ZcMvtkZ3iMjFYwVseCpxb2AFcRtSbJQqCSPQk1Zr-I_AH33u4VChWGNf1BkYkeny4AYsJS/w400-h306/Marshall-stack.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><p>Boy, that's going to hurt.</p><p><br /></p><p><span style="color: #990000;">"Gee. Another Amish judge from NY. Small hat Amish"</span></p><p><br /></p><p>Get what they mean by "small hat Amish?" If not, maybe this remark will help you understand:</p><p><br /></p><p><span style="color: #990000;">"Both the judge and plaintiff's attorney are named Kaplan."</span></p><p><br /></p><p>We knew it would all come down to that in the end, huh? </p><p><br /></p><p><span style="color: #990000;">"Kaplan looks like he gets into midgets and farm animals"</span></p><p><br /></p><p>And confronted with their own perverted leader, this is what they fall back on.</p><p><br /></p><p><span style="color: #990000;">"I'm thinking like I saw some other commenter stated, (the jury) have to be getting a cut of it, along with probably the judge. I wouldn't doubt it with the total corruption being displayed by the puppet potato regime."</span></p><p><br /></p><p>The jury is corrupt, the judge is corrupt, they are all corrupt, but Trump? Never, despite having been found to have engaged in criminal behavior during his entire adult life. </p><p><br /></p><p><span style="color: #990000;">"It's high treason, election interference, fraud, corruption, civil rights violations, judicial misconduct, conflicts of interest, campaign finance violations, etc. That's quite a list."</span></p><p><br /></p><p>And curiously, every one of those claims are things that Trump is actually guilty of. </p><p><br /></p><p><span style="color: #990000;">"I would recommend execution by firing squad. Lunatics like Lewis Kaplan have been set free to torture anyone who catches their fancy."</span></p><p><br /></p><p>Yeah! Kill the judge!</p><p><br /></p><p><span style="color: #990000;">"Trump should immediately sue E. Jean Carrol for 500 million for deformation of Character, plus false accusations!-In TEXAS"</span></p><p><br /></p><p>Go ahead...make my day. Make E. Jean Carroll's day, and have her end up with every penny this bastard owns, and the two billion his corrupt son got from the Saudis too.</p><p><br /></p><p><span style="color: #990000;">"You can be assured that every one in the jury was chosen specifically because they hate Trump."</span></p><p><br /></p><p>It would be impossible to find 12 honest jurors in this country that didn't hate Trump, after what he has done to our government.</p><p><br /></p><p><span style="color: #990000;">"You know, Trump didn't have to even go to a New York Court for this kangaroo trial. He could have just ignored the whole thing. What can they do? That's how Hunter does it. To Congress."</span></p><p><br /></p><p>Um, excuse me, but Hunter showed up and offered to testify in public. The Republicans wouldn't let him.</p><p><br /></p><p>Anyway, enough. This goes on and on, and shows pretty clearly why nothing that happens does a thing to cause these abominable anti-American monsters to change their minds about voting for Trump. We have allowed the Republican party to deeply wound the political and cultural fabric of this country, and it is not clear that we will survive even as patently malignant a figure as Donald J. Trump.</p><div><br /></div>Green Eaglehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13477132834757467690noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1903235483068862940.post-62923911610349673312024-01-24T23:35:00.000-08:002024-01-24T23:35:22.898-08:00My Analysis of the New Hampshire Vote<p>I'll make this brief. In Iowa, Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis got about 22% of the vote each. Trump got about 52%; i.e. he beat them by 30 points each.</p><p><br /></p><p>So, DeSantis dropped out. My guess at that point was that Trump and Haley would pretty much split DeSantis' 22 points, giving each 11 points, so the final result of the New Hampshire race should have been something like this: Haley: 33 points; Trump 63 points. Instead, of course, Haley got 44 points in New Hampshire, and Trump only managed to weakly pick off 2 points from DeSantis's voters, coming in around 54 points.</p><p><br /></p><p>To my mind, this is a colossal failure of momentum. It is not that this violent man and the hate-filled base that supports him could barely bully his own party's voters into giving him more than a bare majority, but that, as I think is obvious, something has gone seriously wrong with his march to the White House.</p><p><br /></p><p>As miserable as the mainstream press has been at even honestly presenting the horse race side of the contest, let alone the issues, still, more and more people are beginning to see this. Trump, I believe, can feel it too; thus his increasingly vicious outbursts in court and in public. And there is little doubt that the next eight months are going to be littered with more and more occasions that provoke his dementia. This seems to have no effect on his followers, but it has to effect somebody, and not to his benefit. </p><p><br /></p><p>Barring some cataclysmic change in things between now and November, I have a sense that Trump may be heading toward the largest electoral collapse in American history (if he makes it that far without being declared mentally incompetent.) At the rate he is going, by November, there may be hardly a person around who wants to be seen at his side. And I don't think he retains enough mental acuity to head this off. We are very possibly watching a collapse of monumental proportions, acted out in front of the world. </p>Green Eaglehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13477132834757467690noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1903235483068862940.post-36685120675592894692024-01-18T22:05:00.000-08:002024-01-18T22:05:21.075-08:00Staggering International Dishonesty about Hamas<p> Here's <a href="https://www.jns.org/un-no-indication-hamas-was-building-elaborate-tunnel-system/">an interesting bit of information</a> about the United Nations and Hamas:</p><p><br /></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p><span style="color: #990000;">"Despite the presence of a Hamas terror tunnel system in the Gaza Strip now thought to be larger in scale than the London Underground, the United Nations insists it had no idea the tunnels were being built.</span></p><p><span style="color: #990000;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="color: #990000;">UNRWA alone has 13,000 employees in more than 300 facilities across Gaza. At least a dozen other U.N. agencies operate in Gaza. It has been well-documented that many U.N. employees in Gaza have professional and personal ties to Hamas."</span></p></blockquote><p><br /></p><p>This is one of the most grotesque lies ever told. It is clear that various UN agencies both knew perfectly well about these tunnels, and collaborated with the genocidal killers of Hamas to hide the fact. Just keep this in mind when you are subjected to the inevitable, endless smears of Israel that come from UNRWA and other UN agencies which have been totally corrupted, and now support the most evil groups in modern history.</p><p><br /></p><p>And it is not just the UN. Amnesty International and numerous other aid agencies have long ago decided to support malignant religious dictatorships and attack the only democracy in the Middle East, with endless lies and far more contemptible forms of assistance. What do they expect to gain from collaboration with these monsters? It is pretty much beyond my understanding to see how people tell themselves that they are decent humans and engage in this behavior. I just don't get where they think this will end.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>Green Eaglehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13477132834757467690noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1903235483068862940.post-32439943587112147612024-01-10T13:34:00.000-08:002024-01-10T13:36:43.728-08:00MISTER Trump<p> I'll tell you a little thing that drives me crazy. The way Trump has intimidated or conned reporters, politicians, just about everyone, into calling him MISTER Trump. I hear this almost every time he is mentioned on the news or anywhere else. Nobody ever called Barack Obama "Mister Obama," or called Bill Clinton "Mister Clinton." We rarely ever heard of Mister McCain or Mister Bush or Mister anyone else, but somehow, this subhuman maggot has to be dignified by always being called Mister. It's just one more example of him bullying everyone in sight, demanding respectful treatment that he is the last person in the country to have earned.</p><p><br /></p><p>Well, enough of it already. I know the press doesn't have the honesty to refer to him as a raping, thieving traitor every time they speak about him, but stop with the "Mister" already. Just calling him Trump grants him more honor than he has ever earned.</p><p><br /></p>Green Eaglehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13477132834757467690noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1903235483068862940.post-71220134772312181952024-01-08T11:40:00.000-08:002024-01-08T11:40:44.791-08:00Gallery of AI Insanity- Part One: Fat Muslim Ladies on Scooters<p>I once lived in Israel (for a job, not out of any religious belief) and consequently I follow what is going on there pretty closely. I get a lot of stuff about the Middle East online, from both sides of the conflict Among this material, for some unknown reason, I have been bombarded lately with endless AI images of one sort and another on Facebook. Many are political fabrications, many are intended humorously, but there are some others that have me totally puzzled. I would like to show some of these images and ask if anyone out there can really explain them, other than as specimens of a culture steeped in some really hateful form of perversion, and totally out of control. What I am going to post here is a tiny fraction of what you get if you make the mistake of hovering over any of them for more than a second. The first group is of morbidly obese women in some sort of burkas, riding on motor scooters, usually carrying baskets of eggs. Here they are:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWg3eOaOX1jj3qNNtwe_x-Vz-BMT2AqOP_2gbXKkSM_gTvYtMJXPijUtWgAociu4MMm6FEjWclT7YKA_5YsPIR8TwJmn7B1Y-NZ-anRx1Wb0lX-wUaKzkDKuHClRdwuVZltj0j5HUrvPYNt2cTQ6s0ecpaEmDqe6XagiGjF0nRBZZIESgLNPAozcfwIxpj/s526/Fat%20lady%2010.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="526" data-original-width="526" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWg3eOaOX1jj3qNNtwe_x-Vz-BMT2AqOP_2gbXKkSM_gTvYtMJXPijUtWgAociu4MMm6FEjWclT7YKA_5YsPIR8TwJmn7B1Y-NZ-anRx1Wb0lX-wUaKzkDKuHClRdwuVZltj0j5HUrvPYNt2cTQ6s0ecpaEmDqe6XagiGjF0nRBZZIESgLNPAozcfwIxpj/s320/Fat%20lady%2010.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh83rxiEJRkHE4LzFIlyzgCpLaTKTYFAGUP3b_4ToC7KBqPa_VzKa6cGsOz5RiHXZaDKwajtsyPmKg1f-o7tlhyphenhyphencbsqBnFN3Ro8mA-u2GjRGHt5mYZaQ9EsAYbdmJkvdWxuGv86KT6CkDw2bvSQzS6cjLjKzxfjoX8y0ksT-qJojV90gOHQI1oDcQ5gtlAI/s526/Fat%20lady%207.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="526" data-original-width="526" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh83rxiEJRkHE4LzFIlyzgCpLaTKTYFAGUP3b_4ToC7KBqPa_VzKa6cGsOz5RiHXZaDKwajtsyPmKg1f-o7tlhyphenhyphencbsqBnFN3Ro8mA-u2GjRGHt5mYZaQ9EsAYbdmJkvdWxuGv86KT6CkDw2bvSQzS6cjLjKzxfjoX8y0ksT-qJojV90gOHQI1oDcQ5gtlAI/s320/Fat%20lady%207.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div><br /></div>Some contain other things than eggs. Here is an example with cats:<br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5fFnnLb1AOgX9ORMFShPs-Ivl4g2gmM8rDO_q5nobPuiNsZpJg6_End7uH2wyPwL8Tyr45IXdkPg3nh9E1-I2O5aDH19eWK5DNycCyFPLug_YkCdx7G_vsJUDafNKYBlqwkWfPPImZMmkkMxccgqyvg0GEHuYX119LvyvaK_xbhm_W9CVrisLkibXWVUH/s526/Fat%20lady%209.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="526" data-original-width="526" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5fFnnLb1AOgX9ORMFShPs-Ivl4g2gmM8rDO_q5nobPuiNsZpJg6_End7uH2wyPwL8Tyr45IXdkPg3nh9E1-I2O5aDH19eWK5DNycCyFPLug_YkCdx7G_vsJUDafNKYBlqwkWfPPImZMmkkMxccgqyvg0GEHuYX119LvyvaK_xbhm_W9CVrisLkibXWVUH/s320/Fat%20lady%209.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p>Or one whose cargo seems to be piles of shiny gold bags:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIPD2P7FzfFDHkPDtxzmNLzecUyVHR_a9Zu3AoyjrnEfBa4oUpDR4PuauxlUyrNSmdkYTQyc3jbyN0tirBNK0StU3hld17EeKjV9jhV-kPOO553RNosr9nJdgYxdGZzd8h6SHiMhbPl1bJzXaz1yiKVKUg5JRKgtwiIIO15P77lyNhIMjePDMC_cTZZe_O/s526/Fat%20lady%2011.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="526" data-original-width="526" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIPD2P7FzfFDHkPDtxzmNLzecUyVHR_a9Zu3AoyjrnEfBa4oUpDR4PuauxlUyrNSmdkYTQyc3jbyN0tirBNK0StU3hld17EeKjV9jhV-kPOO553RNosr9nJdgYxdGZzd8h6SHiMhbPl1bJzXaz1yiKVKUg5JRKgtwiIIO15P77lyNhIMjePDMC_cTZZe_O/s320/Fat%20lady%2011.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>I tell you, there seem to be hundreds of these AI generated images, with captions and comments indicating that people find the women very attractive. What the hell is going on here?<div><br /></div><div>Well, when I started collecting these images, I found another group of related ones, which all seemed to feature screaming children being attacked by bugs or snakes or the like, which the posters and commenters also found very cute:</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwPWB-12K8sCm4Xn48ghOZ95z_e_20HzKlPrQMwjs_8pWbMl_rY01YRGM-IV4VVLqKBh9MRefUEiMKiyQWpxcbsNR4oYZ6lpIR5VJHnFEKbYpeM_8WaBWuZXkw42dAaFVf4u44o8xQjmIArNA040AMA7OVZYVkKtNfXmmPpI7WQUClbn5N_VSfnhu_KN2U/s526/Crying%20boy%20with%20snakes.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="526" data-original-width="526" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwPWB-12K8sCm4Xn48ghOZ95z_e_20HzKlPrQMwjs_8pWbMl_rY01YRGM-IV4VVLqKBh9MRefUEiMKiyQWpxcbsNR4oYZ6lpIR5VJHnFEKbYpeM_8WaBWuZXkw42dAaFVf4u44o8xQjmIArNA040AMA7OVZYVkKtNfXmmPpI7WQUClbn5N_VSfnhu_KN2U/s320/Crying%20boy%20with%20snakes.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyo3qK2bRtcpibzH2rHaM5GFv0CyjAeju71_qf2WJE6j8M-HwJ87H41FSx9MCQws1_IQJ2UcvxH5o2KFPy1gj5MgbwUcoD-vnWjDz5XWi-ZvZ8vSQMk-7iFOjVdjisCZwJTzcHNTqxXd4v7sQ-3q5DItkBydoGwDs7I8yB_Q0LebzovMSDTMlAAElRniBr/s526/Kid%20scared%20by%20bugs.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="526" data-original-width="526" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyo3qK2bRtcpibzH2rHaM5GFv0CyjAeju71_qf2WJE6j8M-HwJ87H41FSx9MCQws1_IQJ2UcvxH5o2KFPy1gj5MgbwUcoD-vnWjDz5XWi-ZvZ8vSQMk-7iFOjVdjisCZwJTzcHNTqxXd4v7sQ-3q5DItkBydoGwDs7I8yB_Q0LebzovMSDTMlAAElRniBr/s320/Kid%20scared%20by%20bugs.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh28g9ODybe1jr-LnqVVIp9x5OZDOIvRdk9PtQhwaDn0zM4bSDSdhHWvs83XbAJsdQSjpe_S-aZNz9LSzB2upvrIGkGmFNLBj1Lp9BtnnNZeRfgECepSLHHAb2dEk2JuIJ3XpoBWHRNO4bsVzRX_ZH1OLfNKwsz51qP7ZFOFkip17gsL01C5aOyuicew6GW/s526/Girl%20with%20crocs.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="526" data-original-width="526" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh28g9ODybe1jr-LnqVVIp9x5OZDOIvRdk9PtQhwaDn0zM4bSDSdhHWvs83XbAJsdQSjpe_S-aZNz9LSzB2upvrIGkGmFNLBj1Lp9BtnnNZeRfgECepSLHHAb2dEk2JuIJ3XpoBWHRNO4bsVzRX_ZH1OLfNKwsz51qP7ZFOFkip17gsL01C5aOyuicew6GW/s320/Girl%20with%20crocs.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div>Well, you've got me. What the hell is this about? Has half the world just gone mad? Anyone who thinks they understand this, please help me out, because I am at a loss.</div><div><br /></div><div>For my next installment: a collection of images from right wing America about things that never happened. Don't think it's only over there that people have gone off the deep end.<br /><p><br /></p></div>Green Eaglehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13477132834757467690noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1903235483068862940.post-58517309988351708562023-12-30T14:38:00.000-08:002023-12-30T14:38:27.322-08:00Nikki Haley is Right<blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0 0 0 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #990000;">"<span style="background-color: white; font-family: TiemposText;">Government doesn't need to tell you how to live your life. They don't need to tell you what you can and can't do. They don't need to be a part of your life. They need to make sure that you have freedom.”- Nikki Haley</span></span></p></blockquote><p><span style="background-color: white; font-family: TiemposText;"><br /></span></p><p>The Civil War <i>was</i> about freedom. Nikki Haley was absolutely right about that. She only got one thing wrong. It was about the freedom of black people not to be owned by white people, not the freedom of white people to own black people.</p><p><br /></p><p>Apparently, to people like Nikki Haley, freedom and slavery were not inconsistent. Just as long as the right people were free and the right people were slaves.</p><p><br /></p><p>Freedom. Well, that's what she called it.</p>Green Eaglehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13477132834757467690noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1903235483068862940.post-70392561713094122632023-12-24T18:14:00.000-08:002023-12-24T18:14:07.369-08:00Merry...<p> Green Eagle's usual wishes for a happy holiday:</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiTw2VTNwUI8Bh1xqUscSJUjEGxv1zipgmaGRM2R6bBtfDIOiWtDmMBLmKiPHkE5nuUaZrljRjW2gB9ElWtj5Y32KwBi2w3JK-8L3EyHmhDqVIVix78PkrtWtpKZGTl4AcF3gfh_sKsf4eOvIIzBG1JxNcSivXAXzaBnjshAo2r6pHoB3p_FvVG-XzcvekK" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="351" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiTw2VTNwUI8Bh1xqUscSJUjEGxv1zipgmaGRM2R6bBtfDIOiWtDmMBLmKiPHkE5nuUaZrljRjW2gB9ElWtj5Y32KwBi2w3JK-8L3EyHmhDqVIVix78PkrtWtpKZGTl4AcF3gfh_sKsf4eOvIIzBG1JxNcSivXAXzaBnjshAo2r6pHoB3p_FvVG-XzcvekK=w352-h400" width="352" /></a></div><br /><br /><p></p>Green Eaglehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13477132834757467690noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1903235483068862940.post-37414506778540057722023-12-20T12:18:00.000-08:002023-12-20T12:18:30.775-08:00One Court in the Whole Country<p> Apparently, the Colorado Supreme Court (and not all of them either) is the only judicial body in the entire United States willing to read the plain text of the Constitution and apply it; all of the rest of our courts consisting either in corrupt Republican judges or of others so afraid of right wing violence that they won't follow a simply written section of the Constitution.</p><p><br /></p><p>And here it is, from the 14th amendment:</p><p><br /></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0 0 0 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #990000;">"<span style="background-color: white; font-family: AP;">No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof."</span></span></p></blockquote><p><span style="background-color: white; font-family: AP;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; font-family: AP;">There is no confusion about what this amendment says. Despite the laughable arguments made by Republicans that the President is not "an officer of the United States," it is clear that Donald Trump did indeed support an insurrection against the country, while he was an officer of the United States. It is 100% obvious that he has no Constitutional right to hold any office in our government ever again. The language is totally clear. As we all know, Republicans' endless screaming about the sanctity of the Constitution does not mean a damned thing when the Constitution stands in their way. Their "legal" arguments to the contrary are patent nonsense designed openly to frustrate the pursuit of justice in the face of their leader Trump's seemingly endless crimes.</span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; font-family: AP;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; font-family: AP;">And while I am on the subject, we all know that defendants are provided large latitude in this country to determine the scope of the defense they present. That is as it should be, but should we really allow a patent criminal to spend fifty million dollars of other people's money in a frantic attempt to prevent justice from being done? Is there not some limit to the "right" of a monstrous deviant to mobilize corruption, hatred and violence, and the vast financial resources of sociopathic billionaires who stand to profit massively if he is re-elected, to evade responsibility for his behavior? This reminds me of Oliver Wendell Holmes' observation the freedom of speech does not extend to yelling fire in a crowded theater; is there not some limit, long demolished in this case, to a hateful, degenerate defendant's ability to destroy the possibility of our ever seeing justice done, even when he can spend fifty million dollars to accomplish that purpose?</span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; font-family: AP;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; font-family: AP;">I know, hard cases make bad law and all that, but maybe dealing properly with this hard case is somewhat preferable to seeing a replay of Nazi Germany in our own country.</span></p>Green Eaglehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13477132834757467690noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1903235483068862940.post-2411302949487390882023-11-29T21:52:00.000-08:002023-11-29T21:52:33.469-08:00God, Finally.<p> Henry Kissinger is dead at age 100.</p>Green Eaglehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13477132834757467690noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1903235483068862940.post-12433596062742240062023-11-24T21:24:00.000-08:002023-11-24T21:24:42.705-08:00Replace Hamas? With What?<p> What we have been hearing for weeks now is that it is necessary for Israel to replace Hamas as the government of Gaza. A very laudable goal, seeing as how Hamas is at the same time a group of genocidal madmen and and among the most corrupt thieves on the face of the earth. It's hard to think of a worse government than Hamas, but what will come along if Hamas vanishes?</p><p><br /></p><p>What follows below is a long series of excerpts from the<a href="https://www.state.gov/reports/2022-country-reports-on-human-rights-practices/"> State Department's annual report on the human rights behavior</a> of the world's governments. These are quotes from their evaluation of every Arab government. I don't expect anyone to read it all, but try skimming some of them. You will discover that every single one of them is a sinkhole of dictatorship, utter disregard for the rights of any opposition group, violent oppression and crushing of dissent. This is the reality of government in the 460 million person strong Arab world. Can you find a single one of these governments that you would like to see in charge in Gaza? Can you see a single one of them that would offer Gaza's people a deal in life significantly better than they have now? What hope could you possibly muster that this new Arab government would be any different than all the other ones?</p><p><br /></p><p>In my mind, the thought that Hamas would be replaced with a decent government which would use the massive foreign aid that comes to Gaza to benefit its own people is a ludicrous delusion. The truth is that it is going to take far more than eliminating Hamas to render Gaza a fit place to live for its 2 million inhabitants, or a decent neighbor to any country not as crazed as Hamas is. Tell me I'm wrong, but look at the evidence first:</p><p><br /></p><p>_________________________________________</p><p>Algeria: "Observers characterized the elections as well organized and conducted without significant problems or irregularities, but they noted restrictions on civil liberties during the election period and lack of transparency in vote-counting procedures." i.e. it's a dictatorship. "Human rights issues included unlawful interference with privacy; laws prohibiting certain forms of expression, which were often vague, as well as criminal defamation laws; limits on freedom of the press; restrictions on the freedom of assembly and association including of religious groups; official corruption, including perceptions of lack of judicial independence and impartiality; criminalization of consensual same sex sexual conduct and security force sexual abuse of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (LGBTI) persons; and trafficking in persons."</p><p><br /></p><p>Bahrain: A dictatorship. "Human rights issues included allegations of torture; arbitrary detention; political prisoners; arbitrary or unlawful interference with privacy; restrictions on freedom of expression, the press, and the internet, including censorship, site blocking, and criminal libel; substantial interference with the rights of peaceful assembly and freedom of association, including restrictions on independent nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) from freely operating in the country; significant restrictions on freedom of movement, including bans on international travel and revocation of citizenship; and restrictions on political participation, including the banning of former members of al-Wifaq and Wa’ad from standing as candidates in the elections."</p><p><br /></p><p>the Comoros Islands: "The 2019 presidential elections were not free and fair, and international and domestic observers noted the elections were marked by significant irregularities. The opposition did not recognize the results due to allegations of ballot stuffing, intimidation, and harassment." i.e. a dictatorship thinly disguised as a democracy. "Human rights issues included torture; harsh and life-threatening prison conditions; political prisoners; use of excessive force against detainees; restrictions on freedom of movement; corruption; criminalization of same-sex sexual conduct, trafficking in persons, and ineffective enforcement of laws protecting workers’ rights. Impunity for violations of human rights was widespread."</p><p><br /></p><p>Djibouti: "Human rights issues included arbitrary treatment by government agents; harsh and life-threatening prison conditions; arbitrary or unlawful interference with privacy; criminal libel; restrictions on free assembly and association; abusing and detaining government critics; government abridgement of the ability of citizens to choose or influence significantly their government; government corruption; violence against women with inadequate government action for prosecution and accountability, including female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C); restrictions on worker rights; and child labor.</p><p>Impunity was a problem. The government seldom took steps to prosecute or punish officials who committed abuses"</p><p><br /></p><p>Egypt: "Presidential elections in 2018 saw challengers to incumbent President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi withdraw ahead of the election, citing personal decisions, political pressure, legal troubles, and unfair competition, and in some cases, they were arrested for alleged abuses of candidacy rules. Domestic and international organizations expressed concern that government limitations on freedoms of association, peaceful assembly, and expression severely constrained broad participation in the political process" i.e. a dictatorship thinly disguised as a representative government. "Human rights issues included unlawful or arbitrary killings by the government or its agents and terrorist groups; forced disappearances; torture; arbitrary detention; harsh and life-threatening prison conditions; arbitrary arrest and detention; political prisoners; arbitrary or unlawful interference with privacy; undue restrictions on free expression, the press, and the internet, including censorship, site blocking, and criminal libel; substantial interference with the rights of peaceful assembly and freedom of association, including government control over registration and financing of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs); restrictions on political participation; use of the law to arbitrarily arrest and prosecute lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (LGBTI) persons; violence targeting LGBTI persons and members of other minority groups, and use of forced or compulsory child labor. Attacks by terrorist organizations caused arbitrary and unlawful deprivation of life. Terrorist groups conducted deadly attacks on government, civilian, and security targets throughout the country, including places of worship."</p><p><br /></p><p>Iraq: "Civilian authorities did not maintain effective control over some elements of the security forces, particularly certain units of the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) that were aligned with Iran.</p><p><br /></p><p>Violence continued throughout the year, largely fueled by the actions of ISIS. The government declared victory over ISIS in December 2017 after drastically reducing the group’s ability to commit abuses and atrocities, but members of the group continued to carry out deadly attacks and kidnappings. Human rights issues included reports of unlawful or arbitrary killings by some members of the Iraq Security Forces (ISF), particularly Iran-aligned elements of the PMF; forced disappearances; torture; arbitrary detention; harsh and life-threatening prison and detention center conditions; arbitrary or unlawful interference with privacy; restrictions on free expression, the press, and the internet, including censorship, site blocking, and criminal libel; legal restrictions on freedom of movement of women; widespread official corruption; unlawful recruitment or use of child soldiers by Iran-aligned elements of the PMF that operate outside government control; trafficking in persons; criminalization of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (LGBTI) status or conduct; violence targeting LGBTI persons; threats of violence against internally displaced persons (IDPs) and returnee populations perceived to have been affiliated with ISIS; and restrictions on worker rights, including restrictions on formation of independent unions and reports of child labor."</p><p><br /></p><p>Jordan: a "constitutional monarchy," i.e. a dictatorship. "Human rights issues included allegations of torture by security officials, including at least one death in custody; arbitrary arrest and detention, including of activists and journalists; infringements on citizens’ privacy rights; undue restrictions on free expression and the press, including criminalization of libel, censorship, and internet site blocking; restrictions on freedom of association and assembly; reports of refoulement of Syrian and Palestinian refugees to Syria without adjudication of whether they had a well-founded fear of persecution; allegations of corruption, including in the judiciary; “honor” killings of women; violence against lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (LGBTI) persons; and conditions amounting to forced labor in some sectors. Impunity remained widespread"</p><p><br /></p><p>Kuwait: a "constitutional, hereditary emirate", i.e. a dictatorship. "Human rights issues included reports of torture; arbitrary detention; political prisoners; arbitrary or unlawful interference with privacy; restrictions on free expression, the press, and the internet, including criminalization of libel, censorship, and internet site blocking; interference with the rights of peaceful assembly and freedom of association; restrictions on freedom of movement; trafficking in persons; criminalization of consensual adult male same-sex sexual conduct; and reports of forced labor, principally among foreign workers."</p><p><br /></p><p>Lebanon, "Significant human rights issues included credible reports of: unlawful or arbitrary killing; torture; arbitrary arrests and detentions; serious problems with the independence of the judiciary; serious restrictions on freedom of expression, including violence, threats of violence or unjustified arrests or prosecutions against journalists, censorship, and enforcement of or threat to enforce criminal libel laws to limit expression; serious restrictions on internet freedom; threats of refoulement of refugees to a country where they could face torture or persecution; serious high-level and widespread official corruption; crimes involving violence or threats of violence targeting lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, or intersex persons; existence and enforcement of laws criminalizing consensual same-sex sexual conduct between adults; and existence of the worst forms of child labor.</p><p><br /></p><p>The country suffered from endemic corruption. Although the law provides for prosecution and punishment of officials who committed human rights abuses or engaged in corruption, enforcement remained a significant problem, with perpetrators benefiting from widespread impunity for human rights abuses, including evading or interfering in judicial processes.</p><p><br /></p><p>Nonstate armed groups, including Hizballah and Palestinian militias, operated with relative impunity, using intimidation, harassment, and occasionally violence against perceived critics and opponents. Armed members of these forces controlled access to certain neighborhoods, camps, and other areas where they effectively operated outside the reach and authority of the government. These organizations allegedly also operated unofficial detention facilities in which they unlawfully detained individuals, sometimes incommunicado, for indefinite periods of time."</p><p><br /></p><p>Libya: A sham democracy, chosen in corrupt elections. "Significant human rights problems included credible reports of: unlawful or arbitrary killings; enforced disappearance; torture or other physical abuses perpetrated by armed groups on all sides; harsh and life-threatening conditions in prison and detention facilities; arbitrary arrest or detention; political prisoners or detainees; serious problems with the independence of the judiciary; arbitrary or unlawful interference with privacy; serious abuses in a conflict, including widespread civilian deaths or harm; serious restrictions on free expression and media, including violence against journalists and enforcement of or threat to enforce criminal libel laws to limit expression; substantial interference with freedom of association and peaceable assembly; refoulement of refugees and asylum seekers to a country where they would face torture or persecution; serious government corruption; lack of investigation of and accountability for gender-based violence; threats of violence targeting members of ethnic minority groups and foreigners; trafficking in persons, including forced labor; enforcement of or threat to enforce laws criminalizing consensual same-sex sexual conduct between adults; and significant restrictions on workers’ freedom of association, including limits on collective bargaining and the right to strike.</p><p><br /></p><p>Human rights abuses, by groups aligned with the government and the Libyan National army, nonstate and foreign actors including mercenaries from various countries, and terrorist organizations, were widespread throughout the year. These included killings, indiscriminate attacks on civilians, arbitrary detention, and torture</p><p><br /></p><p>Morocco: "Significant human rights issues included credible reports of: torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment by some members of the security forces; political prisoners; serious problems with the independence of the judiciary; arbitrary or unlawful interference with privacy; serious restrictions on free expression and media, including unjustified arrests or prosecutions of journalists; censorship and enforcement of or threat to enforce criminal libel to limit expression; substantial interference with the freedom of assembly and freedom of association; serious government corruption; lack of investigation of and accountability for gender-based violence; crimes involving violence or threats of violence targeting lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, or intersex persons; and the enforcement of laws criminalizing consensual same-sex sexual conduct between adults." </p><p><br /></p><p>Mauritania: Mauritania is an Islamic Republic with a constitution grounded in French civil law and sharia. "Significant human rights issues included credible reports of: harsh and life-threatening prison conditions; arbitrary arrests; serious restrictions on free expression and media, including criminal blasphemy laws; serious government corruption; lack of investigation and accountability for gender-based violence including rape, domestic violence, female genital mutilation/cutting, sexual exploitation and abuse, and other forms of such violence; trafficking in persons, including continued existence of slavery and slavery-related practices; crimes involving violence against lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, or intersex persons; and some of the worst forms of child labor."</p><p> </p><p>Oman: "Significant human rights issues included credible reports of: arbitrary arrest or detention; arbitrary or unlawful interference with privacy; serious restrictions on freedom of expression and media, including censorship and criminal libel and blasphemy laws; serious restrictions on internet freedom; substantial interference with the rights of peaceful assembly and freedom of association; serious restrictions on political participation; laws criminalizing consensual same-sex sexual conduct that were not widely enforced; and labor exploitation of foreign migrants."</p><p><br /></p><p>Qatar: "Significant human rights issues included credible reports of: serious restrictions on free expression, including the existence of criminal libel laws; substantial interference with the freedom of peaceful assembly and freedom of association, including overly restrictive laws on the organization, funding, or operation of nongovernmental organizations and civil society organizations; restrictions on migrant workers’ freedom of movement, access to justice, and vulnerability to abuses, including forced labor; inability of citizens to change their government peacefully in free and fair elections; serious and unreasonable restrictions on political participation, including a complete prohibition on political parties; lack of investigation and accountability for gender-based violence; existence of laws criminalizing consensual same-sex sexual conduct; and prohibitions on independent trade unions."</p><p><br /></p><p>Saudi Arabia: "Significant human rights issues included credible reports of: unlawful or arbitrary killings, including extrajudicial killings; enforced disappearances; torture and cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment by government agents; harsh and life-threatening prison conditions; arbitrary arrest and detention; political prisoners or detainees; transnational repression against individuals in another country; serious problems with the independence of the judiciary; arbitrary or unlawful interference with privacy; punishment of family members for alleged offenses by a relative; serious abuses in a conflict, including related to civilian casualties and damage to civilian infrastructure as a result of airstrikes in Yemen; serious restrictions on freedom of expression and media, including unjustified arrests or prosecutions against journalists and others, and censorship; serious restrictions on internet freedom; substantial interference with the freedom of peaceful assembly and freedom of association, including overly restrictive laws on the organization, funding, or operation of nongovernmental organizations and civil society organizations; particularly severe restrictions of religious freedom; restrictions on freedom of movement and residence within the territory of a state and on the right to leave the country; inability of citizens to choose their government peacefully through free and fair elections; serious and unreasonable restrictions on political participation; serious government restrictions on domestic and international human rights organizations; lack of investigation of and accountability for gender-based violence, including but not limited to domestic and intimate partner violence; criminalization of consensual same-sex sexual activity; and outlawing of independent trade unions or significant restrictions on workers’ freedom of association.</p><p>In several cases the government did not investigate, prosecute, or punish officials accused of committing human rights abuses, contributing to an environment of impunity.</p><p><br /></p><p>Somalia: "Significant human rights issues included credible reports of: unlawful or arbitrary killings, including extrajudicial killings; torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment by the government; harsh and life-threatening prison conditions; arbitrary arrest or detention; political prisoners or detainees; serious problems with the independence of the judiciary; serious abuses in a conflict, including reportedly unlawful or widespread civilian deaths or harm, enforced disappearances or abductions, torture and physical abuses or punishment, and unlawful recruitment or use of child soldiers; serious restrictions on freedom of expression and media, including violence or threats of violence against journalists, unjustified arrests or prosecutions of journalists, censorship, and the enforcement of criminal libel laws; substantial interference with the freedom of peaceful assembly and freedom of association; inability of citizens to change their government peacefully through free and fair elections; serious and unreasonable restrictions on political participation; serious government corruption; lack of investigation of and accountability for gender-based violence; crimes involving violence or threats of violence targeting members of national/racial/ethnic minority groups; existence of laws criminalizing consensual same-sex sexual conduct between adults, although information regarding their enforcement was unclear; and existence of the worst forms of child labor.</p><p>Impunity generally remained the norm...</p><p>Conflict involving the government, militias, and al-Shabaab resulted in death, injury, and displacement of civilians. Al-Shabaab committed most of the severe human rights abuses, particularly terrorist attacks on civilians and targeted killings, including summary executions and religiously and politically motivated killings; forced disappearances; physical abuses and other inhuman treatment; rape; and attacks on employees of nongovernmental organizations and the United Nations. Al-Shabaab also blocked humanitarian assistance, conscripted child soldiers, and restricted freedoms of expression, including for the press, peaceful assembly, and movement.</p><p><br /></p><p>Sudan: "Significant human rights issues included credible reports of: unlawful or arbitrary killings; cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment by the government; harsh and life-threatening prison conditions; arbitrary arrest or detention; political prisoners or detainees; arbitrary or unlawful interference with privacy; serious abuses in a conflict, including killings, abductions, physical abuse or punishment, and unlawful recruitment or use of child soldiers; serious restrictions on free expression and media, including threats of violence and acts of violence against journalists, censorship, and enforcement of criminal libel and slander laws; serious restrictions on internet freedom; substantial interference with the freedom of association, including overly restrictive laws on the organization, funding, or operation of nongovernmental and civil society organizations; serious government corruption; lack of investigation of and accountability for gender-based violence, including domestic and intimate partner violence, sexual violence, child, early and forced marriage, female genital mutilation/cutting, and conflict-related sexual violence; laws criminalizing lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, or intersex persons; and existence of the worst forms of child labor.</p><p>In Darfur and the Two Areas, paramilitary forces and rebel groups reportedly continued sporadically to commit killings, rape, and other physical abuses and mistreatment of civilians. Local militias maintained substantial influence due to lack of deployment of the Joint Security-Keeping Force and widespread impunity. Intercommunal violence originating from land-tenure disputes and resource scarcity continued to result in civilian deaths, particularly in East, South, and North Darfur, as well as Blue Nile State. There were also human rights abuses reported in Abyei, a region that Sudan and South Sudan both claimed. These abuses generally stemmed from local clashes regarding cattle and land between the Ngok Dinka and Misseriya Indigenous groups. Reports were difficult to verify due to access challenges. Weak rule of law persisted in Darfur, and banditry, criminality, and intercommunal violence were the main causes of insecurity."</p><p> </p><p>Syria: "The regime’s multiple security branches operated autonomously with wide-ranging and overlapping areas of jurisdiction. Regime-affiliated militias, such as the National Defense Forces, integrated and performed similar roles without defined jurisdiction...There were credible reports that members of the security forces committed numerous abuses, some of which the UN Commission of Inquiry for Syria considered to be war crimes. Civilian authorities possessed limited influence over foreign military or paramilitary organizations operating in the country, including proregime forces such as the Russian armed forces, Iran-affiliated Hizballah, and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, members of which also committed numerous abuses.</p><p>Significant human rights issues included credible reports of: unlawful or arbitrary killings; forced disappearance; torture and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment by the regime and other actors, including torture involving sexual violence, harsh and life-threatening prison conditions, including denial of medical care; arbitrary detention; political prisoners and detainees; transnational repression against individuals in another country; serious problems with the independence of the judiciary; arbitrary or unlawful interference with privacy; punishment of family members for alleged offenses by a relative; serious abuses in a conflict, including unlawful and widespread civilian deaths and harm, enforced disappearances and abductions, torture, physical abuses and punishment, unlawful recruitment and use of child soldiers by the regime and other armed actors; serious restrictions on freedom of expression and media, including violence and threats of violence against journalists, unjustified arrests and prosecutions of journalists, censorship, and the enforcement of and the threat to enforce criminal libel laws and blasphemy laws to limit expression; serious restrictions on internet freedom; substantial interference with the freedom of peaceful assembly and freedom of association, including overly restrictive laws on the organization, funding, or operation of nongovernmental and civil society organizations; restrictions on freedom of movement and residence within the territory of a state and on the right to leave the country; inability of citizens to change their government peacefully through free and fair elections; serious and unreasonable restrictions on political participation; serious government corruption; serious government restrictions on and harassment of domestic and international human rights organizations; lack of investigation of and accountability for gender-based violence including domestic or intimate partner violence, sexual violence, workplace violence, child, early, and forced marriage, femicide, and other forms of such violence crimes involving violence or threats of violence targeting members of ethnic groups and indigenous peoples including Kurdish and Yezidi residents; trafficking in persons; crimes involving violence, threats of violence, and severe discrimination targeting lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and intersex persons; existence and enforcement of laws criminalizing consensual same-sex sexual conduct between adults; and severe restrictions on workers’ freedom of association and other rights.</p><p><br /></p><p>The regime took no steps to identify, investigate, prosecute, or punish officials who committed human rights violations or abuses or who engaged in corruption.</p><p><br /></p><p>Regime-linked paramilitary groups reportedly engaged in frequent abuses, including massacres; indiscriminate killings; kidnapping of civilians; physical abuse, including sexual violence; and unlawful detentions. Regime-aligned militias reportedly launched numerous attacks that killed and injured civilians."</p><p><br /></p><p>Tunisia: "Significant human rights issues included credible reports of: torture by government agents; arbitrary arrests or detentions; serious problems with the independence of the judiciary; serious restrictions on freedom of expression and media, including arrests or prosecutions of journalists, censorship, or enforcement of or threat to enforce criminal libel laws to limit expression; government corruption; discrimination and societal abuses; crimes involving violence or threats of violence targeting lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and intersex persons; laws criminalizing consensual same-sex sexual conduct between adults and the enforcement of those laws; and the worst forms of child labor.</p><p><br /></p><p>...investigations into abuses by police, security forces, and detention center officials lacked transparency and frequently encountered long delays and procedural obstacles. High-profile investigations into former government officials, members of parliament, and businesspersons on corruption charges also lacked transparency.</p><p><br /></p><p>the United Arab Emirates: "Significant human rights issues included credible reports of: arbitrary arrest and detention, including those involving hostile prison conditions such as incommunicado detention, by government officials; political prisoners; transnational repression against individuals in another country; unlawful government interference with privacy; serious restrictions on free expression and media, including censorship and enforcement of or threat to enforce criminal libel laws; serious restrictions on internet freedom; substantial interference with the freedom of peaceful assembly and freedom of association, including overly restrictive laws on the organization, funding, or operation of nongovernmental organizations and civil society organizations; inability of citizens to change their government peacefully through free and fair elections; serious and unreasonable restrictions on political participation; serious government restrictions or harassment of domestic and international human rights organizations; laws criminalizing consensual same-sex sexual conduct between adults; and outlawing of independent trade unions and significant restrictions on workers’ freedom of association."</p><p><br /></p><p> Yemen: "Significant human rights issues by all parties to the conflict included credible reports of: unlawful or arbitrary killings; enforced disappearances; torture or other cases of cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment; harsh and life-threatening prison conditions; arbitrary arrest and detention; political prisoners and detainees; serious problems with the independence of the judiciary; arbitrary or unlawful interference with privacy; serious abuses in a conflict, including widespread civilian harm and unlawful recruitment or use of child soldiers by all parties to the conflict, particularly the Houthis; serious restrictions on freedom of expression and media, including violence, threats of violence, unjustified arrests or prosecutions against journalists, censorship, and the existence of criminal libel laws; serious restrictions on internet freedom; substantial interference with the freedom of peaceful assembly and freedom of association; severe restrictions of religious freedom; restrictions on freedom of movement; inability of citizens to choose their government peacefully through free and fair elections; serious and unreasonable restrictions on political participation; serious government corruption; serious government restrictions on international human rights organizations; lack of investigation of and accountability for gender-based violence, including but not limited to domestic, intimate partner violence or both, as well as sexual violence; and child, early, and forced marriage and female genital mutilation. There were significant barriers to accessing reproductive health; existence of laws criminalizing consensual same-sex sexual conduct between adults; and existence of the worst forms of child labor.</p><p><br /></p><p>Impunity for security officials remained a problem, in part because the government exercised limited authority and failed to investigate and prosecute abuse and corruption. Houthi control over former government institutions in the north severely reduced the government’s capacity to conduct investigations. The Houthis continued to benefit from confiscation of state resources, taxes on the business sector, and diversion of humanitarian assistance. The government did not undertake any significant anticorruption activities, while the Houthis continued to misuse former anticorruption authorities to stifle dissent and repress political opponents.</p><p><br /></p><p>Nongovernmental actors, including the Houthis, tribal militias, and terrorist groups (including al-Qa’ida in the Arabian Peninsula and a local branch of ISIS), committed significant abuses with impunity."</p>Green Eaglehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13477132834757467690noreply@blogger.com17tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1903235483068862940.post-1053613395887441842023-11-19T21:50:00.000-08:002023-11-19T21:50:14.757-08:00How Do You Combat Lies Like This?<p> Or the people that tell them? Here is something that showed up on my Facebook feed today:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaG-rVWs0yYsx4AsjigL88NsbZ4g29hiu5Kirp-9ISbHQNc2kvAbpefXXTgzohB6Ixsve3PISD8oZrizXYUqYHB_4hh_xbFCknFRMjQRZvUDtKA96DS6E-NPmor9TiqH4YI37gHYPVGMhMO6-87cPDaBHL8GJyG-D7fKHiJIbxdDQmSKx_GvQuYjiql5Bg/s398/Israel%20is%20skinning%20Palestinians.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="325" data-original-width="398" height="326" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaG-rVWs0yYsx4AsjigL88NsbZ4g29hiu5Kirp-9ISbHQNc2kvAbpefXXTgzohB6Ixsve3PISD8oZrizXYUqYHB_4hh_xbFCknFRMjQRZvUDtKA96DS6E-NPmor9TiqH4YI37gHYPVGMhMO6-87cPDaBHL8GJyG-D7fKHiJIbxdDQmSKx_GvQuYjiql5Bg/w400-h326/Israel%20is%20skinning%20Palestinians.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><p>The malignance that is within scum who are willing to tell and repeat lies like this is utterly beyond the ability of decent people to penetrate. What can anyone even possibly do to combat hatred and contempt for the truth on this magnitude?</p>Green Eaglehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13477132834757467690noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1903235483068862940.post-45669205032488741932023-11-13T22:21:00.000-08:002023-11-13T22:21:15.243-08:00A Familiar Story<p>I'd like to relate to you an incident that I heard about today. I can't say it is being totally ignored by the mainstream press, as I got this story from CNN, but you can be sure that it will be little covered and soon forgotten. <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/13/africa/eu-says-around-100-civilians-reportedly-killed-in-burkina-faso-village-massacre/index.html?Date=20231113&Profile=CNN%20International&utm_content=1699905616&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook&fbclid=IwAR3OxqLlx_fzSzreyEQLeLkwgZEIWRY2sraGdcbKgCJL_qtyb1smlNg5swk"> Here it is:</a></p><p><br /></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0 0 0 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #990000;">"EU says around 100 civilians reportedly killed in Burkina Faso village massacre...</span></p></blockquote><p><br /></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p><span style="color: #990000;">“Nearly a hundred civilians, including women and children, are reported to have been killed in a massacre in the village of Zaongo, in the north-central region of Burkina Faso,” the EU External Action (EEAS) said in a statement.</span></p><p><span style="color: #990000;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="color: #990000;">In early April, authorities blamed terrorists for the killing of at least 44 people in separate attacks on villages in northern Burkina Faso.</span></p><p><span style="color: #990000;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="color: #990000;">Later that month, 136 others, including babies were killed in a similar onslaught on a village in the same region by armed men in military uniform. Authorities condemned the attack and opened an investigation.</span></p><p><span style="color: #990000;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="color: #990000;">Burkina Faso has been the epicenter of violence that has spread across the vast Sahel region by Islamist groups linked to al Qaeda and the Islamic State."</span></p></blockquote><p><br /></p><p>Three barbaric slaughters in the last year, in one small country, totaling nearly 300 dead. And as noted, this is not the total account of the carnage. Similar atrocities have been perpetrated over recent years by Boko Haram in Nigeria, Al Shabab in Eastern Africa, and other Islamic groups. </p><p><br /></p><p>Do these monstrous acts, all perpetrated in the name of Islam, all in the service of forcing Islam on the world, remind you of any other recent event? And Africa is hardly the only place where things like this take place. In fact, the world has become so inured to these horrors perpetrated in the name of one single religion, that they are virtually ignored.</p><p><br /></p><p>Can you name any incident of such savagery perpetrated without cause by Jews? And yet a monstrous campaign has been mounted in the last month to force the world to treat Israelis as the real evildoers, after they suffered 1200 slaughtered by Islamist killers exactly like the ones we see in Africa and other countries. </p><p><br /></p><p>It is an atrocity that anyone could confuse perpetrator and victim like this. It is long past time that the world recognize who the truly evil side is in not just the Israeli conflict, but in all of these slaughters that happen over and over again, around the world.</p><p><br /></p><p> </p>Green Eaglehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13477132834757467690noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1903235483068862940.post-81926221514281807022023-11-10T18:31:00.002-08:002023-11-10T18:31:38.629-08:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfl6iL2QIBTPt-V4eyc9LnvBGnybKLm7gTz5-N50B2XDSJWX1Y5rT0LAXrCOlwC75Qg9qoRJp31hDhj1ZxhfH_yQ8Jhl8mg5i25EDKd4Sc4MHjW5GAo6Ir_9kvC1fM9gAQ52qfNu1Kk05_pJp51P_sz3qxFlWANiaI8feOh10nJXcqsGsuR9X4E8FnPGlJ/s1741/Beer%20Hall%20Putsch.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1741" height="276" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfl6iL2QIBTPt-V4eyc9LnvBGnybKLm7gTz5-N50B2XDSJWX1Y5rT0LAXrCOlwC75Qg9qoRJp31hDhj1ZxhfH_yQ8Jhl8mg5i25EDKd4Sc4MHjW5GAo6Ir_9kvC1fM9gAQ52qfNu1Kk05_pJp51P_sz3qxFlWANiaI8feOh10nJXcqsGsuR9X4E8FnPGlJ/w400-h276/Beer%20Hall%20Putsch.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p><br /></p><p>Yesterday was quite a historic day- the 100th anniversary of the Beer Hall Putsch, the first open attempt by the Nazis to take control of Germany. I'm sure most of you have heard of this event, but I think it is important to remember what it was about. From the United States Memorial Holocaust Museum, <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/beer-hall-putsch-munich-putsch">here is a bit of an account:</a></p><p><br /></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p><span style="color: #990000;">"On November 8–9, 1923, Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party led a coalition group in an attempt to overthrow the German government. This attempted coup d'état came to be known as the Beer Hall Putsch.</span></p><p><span style="color: #990000;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="color: #990000;">They began at the Bürgerbräu Keller, a beer hall in the Bavarian city of Munich. Hitler and the Nazi Party aimed to seize control of the state government, march on Berlin, and overthrow the German federal government. They sought to establish a new government to oversee the creation of a unified Greater German Reich. In this new government, citizenship would be based on race.</span></p><p><span style="color: #990000;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="color: #990000;">The putsch failed and Bavarian authorities prosecuted nine participants, including Hitler. Despite its failure, the leaders ultimately redefined the putsch as a heroic effort to save the nation."</span></p></blockquote><p><br /></p><p>I hardly think I need to point out the similarities with the january 6th coup attempt, except that in 1923, Hitler was far from the head of the government. Of course, he was given the lightest possible sentence:</p><p><br /></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0 0 0 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #990000;">"Like the majority of judges during the Weimar period, (Judge) Neithardt tended, in cases of high treason, to show leniency towards right-wing defendants who claimed to have acted out of sincere, patriotic motives"</span></p></blockquote><p><br /></p><p>Hitler ended up spending little more than a year in prison for this act of treason, thanks to a court system packed with right wing judges. Had this not been the case, the Nazi party could have been stopped in the 1920's, and World War II, with its 50 million dead, would likely never have happened.</p><p><br /></p><p>Well, I guess Germans could ask us to remember that they had no idea of what was to follow from their failure to rein in right wing hatred; we do not have that excuse. We all know what our country is risking by refusing to react appropriately to the abomination of Republican anti-democratic violence. And let us remember that Trump, should he come back to power, will have something that Hitler never had: 5,000 nuclear weapons to threaten the world.</p><p><br /></p><p>This is not a paranoid delusion; it is a real possibility which millions of Americans, incited by appeals to their hatred, seem ready to countenance. Hitler included, there may never have been a greater threat to the continued existence of civilization, and yet these people toy with this danger, in order to sate their worst instincts. I am sorry, but nobody can predict how this will end.</p>Green Eaglehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13477132834757467690noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1903235483068862940.post-56922575966217841012023-10-27T13:25:00.002-07:002023-10-28T11:26:57.940-07:00Israel's Hopeless Choices<br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div>Whatever the answer is, this isn't it.<br /><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_ZVo6U8h3SiF-4UX5FWpxL4XlwQizGnjwli3b2THK2XHo37Jyn4sPG57_9gJXuKbalIZuvfrx_Q-rS068cKJJBVwwX0rKXKRcbxf-c6lXC3MeOA3hjLdoA3Ac4m8cfxgFh5iaDpZ78pQmojcXkj77BrDGOn9o5JPlifgfO1aoSvTgpdllnYCAi4w7WrfK/s1000/Gaza%20destruction.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="562" data-original-width="1000" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_ZVo6U8h3SiF-4UX5FWpxL4XlwQizGnjwli3b2THK2XHo37Jyn4sPG57_9gJXuKbalIZuvfrx_Q-rS068cKJJBVwwX0rKXKRcbxf-c6lXC3MeOA3hjLdoA3Ac4m8cfxgFh5iaDpZ78pQmojcXkj77BrDGOn9o5JPlifgfO1aoSvTgpdllnYCAi4w7WrfK/w400-h225/Gaza%20destruction.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p></p><p><br /></p><p>We now have one more in an endless repetition of the same thing: Arab forces launch a vicious, murderous sneak attack on Israel, and then Israel tries to decide how to react. The Arab atrocities are already history, but Israel has not responded, as any country would, to a foreign attack. So, right on cue, the voices start screaming out, "cease fire!...Collective punishment!" Imagine if people had demanded the same thing in 1945, when allied forces moved into Germany. But of course, with the Jews, everything is different. Pressure is mounted around the world, with the result that Arab terrorists get to attack Israel over and over again, with Israel being demonized for responding with anything other than rolling over and just taking it. 1400 innocent lives down the drain, and any response is portrayed as an inhuman abomination.</p><p><br /></p><p>Here is an awful truth, but it is the truth nevertheless: Hamas has managed to embed its military assets so thoroughly in the civilian infrastructure of Gaza that there is absolutely no way to strike back at Hamas without killing many civilians. This situation is a massive war crime on the part of Hamas, but nobody seems to care about that- and all Hamas wants are the civilian deaths it creates, which its dupes around the world blame on Israel. What's more, we all know the leaders do not even live in Gaza- they are all in their mansions in Qatar, etc, where Israel cannot strike at them without creating a truly horrible international crisis. Hamas is like a grotesque cancer which has eaten its way so thoroughly through Gaza that there is no way to eliminate it without effectively killing the patient. Israelis, and the rest of the world, for that matter, have never found a way to deal with this problem, without the support of the surrounding Arab governments, and we know that in fact they are doing the exact opposite- enabling Hamas to continue its monstrous behavior.</p><p><br /></p><p>The true masters of these atrocities are the oil dictators in Saudi Arabia and Iran, and there is no way to induce them to behave in a civilized manner. Instead, they have each fabricated versions of Islam which justify open barbarism, and enable outrages like that perpetrated by the Gaza government to exist unpunished.</p><p><br /></p><p>What is the answer to this horror? I don't have a clue, really, but I am just a guy online. The current government of Israel was elected primarily on a promise to solve this problem, and they obviously don't have a clue either. They can invade Gaza and cause untold damage, and it will not do one thing to dislodge Hamas, as long as it is supported by the Saudis and Iranians; all that it will accomplish is to provide more ammunition for the malignant supporters of Hamas to claim that it is the Israelis that are the murderous monsters, a claim that so many anti-Semites around the world are just waiting to amplify. I sure wish someone would come up with an answer, because it has become really tedious to see people hailing subhuman murderers as sainted, oppressed freedom fighters. </p>Green Eaglehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13477132834757467690noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1903235483068862940.post-47353803112713471252023-10-27T12:35:00.003-07:002023-10-28T11:35:23.887-07:00Why I Hate the Mainstream Press- Updated<p> This article is currently<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/10/27/mike-johnson-gaetz-speaker/"> the lead story</a> at the<i> Washington Post</i> today:</p><p><br /></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #990000;">"Republicans and Democrats share blame for the speaker fiasco"</span></p></blockquote><p><br /></p><p>The article is written by Megan McArdle, a known habitual right wing liar who is nevertheless allowed to publish her malicious falsehoods in the Post.</p><p><br /></p><p>And that sort of journalism is why a criminal, rapist traitor is running neck and neck with a Democratic President who is presiding over incredible economic growth and foreign policy success.</p><p>_________________________________________</p><p>And<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/10/28/dean-phillips-biden-age/"> here we go again.</a> From Today's <i>Washington Post:</i></p><p><i><br /></i></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0 0 0 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #990000;">"Dean Phillips’s challenge to Biden makes Democrats ask if 80 is too old"</span></p></blockquote><p><br /></p><p>Will it surprise you to learn that this article does not quote one single Democrat who believes that this "challenge" from an attention-seeking rich guy that nobody has ever heard of before is affecting their thinking? Nothing but sourceless fearmongering, clearly designed to distract from the fact that the Republicans are running with a criminal rapist traitor. And there you go.</p>Green Eaglehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13477132834757467690noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1903235483068862940.post-56204341841004913682023-10-26T11:16:00.002-07:002023-10-26T11:16:22.545-07:00Lewiston, Maine<p>Until last night, I bet hardly anyone could tell you a thing about Lewiston, Maine, population 36,600, or slightly smaller than Studio City, CA. Well, here is a photo of probably the only other significant thing that ever happened in Lewiston, Maine, which curiously seems to have occurred exactly 50 years ago today:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg99owCCEV5If4LbaA8Kia86qiJxkNdXAtioEUrFLZfu44v68_pZOELp-q1Bei8vDeFo8aNDQQgZsF5GXQYfmumLay9WxR3xvTUufm9-pIWhOrToXpgA-jaogq00cfSXem26G9tEm73i6FC3FzZyovWUakgMS_lWH2jwQ6EqJAOgRcWTEGFJAZB9H4vLhQ0/s1195/Ali%20Liston.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="820" data-original-width="1195" height="275" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg99owCCEV5If4LbaA8Kia86qiJxkNdXAtioEUrFLZfu44v68_pZOELp-q1Bei8vDeFo8aNDQQgZsF5GXQYfmumLay9WxR3xvTUufm9-pIWhOrToXpgA-jaogq00cfSXem26G9tEm73i6FC3FzZyovWUakgMS_lWH2jwQ6EqJAOgRcWTEGFJAZB9H4vLhQ0/w400-h275/Ali%20Liston.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p>Green Eaglehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13477132834757467690noreply@blogger.com0