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Showing posts from 2019

US Embassy Attacked- Shut up about Benghazi!

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So here's an item that, I suspect, will be pushed out of the news as fast as possible.  From the Washington Post: "Protesters chanting ‘Death to America’ break into U.S. Embassy compound in Baghdad... Hundreds of angry supporters of an Iranian-backed militia shouting "Death to America" broke into the U.S. Embassy compound in Baghdad on Tuesday, trapping diplomats inside in response to U.S. airstrikes that killed or wounded scores of militia fighters." No, this is not Benghazi under Obama, it is Baghdad under Trump. And this further information is, I think, hardly comforting: "Supporters of an Iranian-backed militia besieged the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad on Tuesday in retaliation for U.S. airstrikes, breaking through the first layer of security at the embassy compound and damaging a reception area before being expelled by Iraqi security forces." Yes, the mighty United States military, so strong under Trump's wise leadership, was impotent

They Still Don't Get It

The press, I mean, even as liberal a news source as Daily Kos: " Oddly committed to normalizing Trump by scrubbing off his hateful and dangerous rough edges, many in the Beltway press continue to play a strange game in which they refuse to describe what they clearly see in front of them. Whether it's the fear of Trump Twitter attacks or the nearly five-decade-long GOP campaign to demonize the "liberal media," newsrooms today nearly uniformly  refuse to address  the mounting, obvious signs that Trump is a deeply unstable man." No, it is not either of these things that cause the press to continue to minimize the criminality of the worst President in history.  It is because, due to Republican "deregulation," virtually the entire mainstream press has fallen into the hands of the rich, who see their possession as nothing but a way to continue their stranglehold on the country. And no, thankfully, sites like Daily Kos do not participate in this malign

The Republican Lie Machine Fires a New Cannon

Glancing at the wingnut web yesterday, I saw a story that I had missed entirely: Diamond and Silk:  "BOMBSHELL: AG Barr Indicts 8 For Funneling Millions In Foreign Donations To Schiff, Clinton and Top Democrats" Catholic Answers:  "Barr Indicts 8 for illegally funneling foreign money to Schiff, Hillary and several Dem senators" State Department Watch:  "JUST LAST WEEK DOJ INDICTED 8 FOR FUNNELING MILLIONS IN FOREIGN DONATIONS TO ADAM SCHIFF AND DEMOCRATS… BUT SCHIFF HAS GALL TO ACCUSE TRUMP OF USING FOREIGN NATION TO CHEAT?" Lucianne.com:  "Bill Barr Indicts 8 Including Mueller...Top Witness for Funneling Millions in  Foreign Donations to Adam Schiff,  Hillary Clinton and Top Senate Democrats" Ace of Spades:  "Bill Barr's DOJ Indicts Pedophile/Mueller Source George Nader and Seven Others For Conspiring to Make Illegal Donations to Democrats, Including Adam Schiff...Bill Barr just broke up a massive scheme to illegally funnel fo

Green Eagle's Traditional Holiday Greeting

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I post it every year. And I hope you are all having as nice a holiday season as Cthulhu is.

The Ultimate Degradation?

From the Independent, courtesy of my friend Curt, the following almost unbelievable news: "China approves Donald Trump-branded spas, escort services, hotels and massage parlours without US Congress permission... The 38 trademarks include new hotels, spas, escort and concierge services, massage parlors, personal security services and insurance, according to public documents." Escort services and massage parlors.  Donald Trump has now reverted to his grandfather's business, which formed the basis of the family fortune, whore houses. Trump is now running Chinese whore houses out of the White House.  If this wasn't Donald Trump we are talking about here, this would be totally unbelievable, but unfortunately it is all too easy to believe with him. When is enough enough for the Republican party?  Do they really believe that running whore houses while President of the United States is not enough of a misdemeanor to throw this miserable excuse for a human being, who

Wingnut Wrapup- Impeachment Edition

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Yes, an abbreviated Wingnut Wrapup devoted to the reaction from the right to Trump's impeachment, on the day after it happened.  They usually have a lag of two or three days before they really get up to speed on things like this, so there will certainly be more, and worse, but here's  a pretty good sample of the graciousness with which they have accepted the current application of the will of their blessed founding fathers: Katie Pavlich, Town Hall:  "Mark Levin: Nancy Pelosi's Latest Impeachment Stunt Is Brazenly Unconstitutional..."Nancy Pelosi was apparently advised by leftwing Harvard law professor Lawrence Tribe to delay sending the impeachment to the Senate. So she’s unilaterally sitting on the impeachment. This is another brazen unconstitutional act," Levin wrote Thursday morning on his Facebook page." Ha ha, Constitutional law scholar, and the most vicious right wing talk show host out there, Mark Levin, telling us that the greatest expert on

...Aaand...

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And the Republicans' reply? Again, from the Washington Post: The GOP’s closing impeachment argument: Denying basic facts And that is pretty much how this entire episode in American history will be remembered.  There is absolutely nothing the Democrats can do to stop the criminal Republicans from collaborating with this malignant traitor, but what they did today and what Senate Republicans will do now will never be forgotten.

‘Our time there ended up being worthless’: Voices from the war in Afghanistan

This is the headline at the Washington Post website right now. At the risk of being accused of gloating, I wish to point out that, early in the history of my blog, I stated that the first thing Obama should do upon becoming President was to declare that Bush and Cheney, in turning their attention to the American aggression against Iraq, had so irredeemably destroyed the American effort in Afghanistan that our war there was hopelessly lost, and he was withdrawing all American troops before any more lives could be lost in this miserably botched endeavor. Just to show that speaking the obvious truth has not only with Trump become grounds for dismissal from the conversation.

Look to Kavanaugh

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Boy, wouldn't you love to come up in front of this judge. If anyone has any doubt what the Senate Republicans have in store for the trial of the patently guilty Donald Trump, they only have to look at the way that those same Republicans handled the investigation into the appointment of the grotesquely unfit Brett Kavanaugh to serve on the Supreme Court. This sham investigation included: Tens of thousands of pages of information about Kavanaugh's history that the White House refused to turn over, with the collaboration of Senate Republicans. Multiple vital witnesses to the accusations which were never even talked to, let alone allowed to testify, at the behest of the White House. Vicious, lying attacks on the limited witnesses that were allowed to testify, both from the White House and Senate Republicans. Massive synthetic outrage from Senate Republicans, designed to obscure the facts in a maelstrom of anger and distortion. And finally, a party-line vote to plac

Wingnut Wrapup

I want to start here with a comment a Republican Senator made during the Horowitz hearings today: "Isn't the lack of evidence in itself evidence? The lack of evidence of bias is not evidence that there was no bias."    No, and it's not evidence that Santa Claus does not exist, or that Obama is not the antichrist, either.  It is, however, evidence that a massive Inspector General investigation could find no bias in the efforts to unmask Trump's treason. Now, before beginning today, I feel it necessary to make a comment.  As some of my readers may know, I have been following the right wing in this country for about half a century now.  When I first started, the sort of thing that might make it into Wingnut Wrapup was little more than an irrational curiosity that existed only on the very fringes of our political world. That has all changed now.  At this point, the entire Republican party has given itself up to a unified, and utterly false, view of reality in w

The Future of Evangelical America

I want to quote from this extremely frightening article today in the Washington Post:  ‘Soldiers of Jesus’: Armed neo-Pentecostals torment Brazil’s religious minorities DUQUE DE CAXIAS, Brazil — There was a pounding at the door. Strange, the priest thought: He wasn’t expecting anyone. Marcos Figueiredo hurried to the entrance of his home temple and opened it. Guns. Three of them. All pointing at him. The “Soldiers of Jesus” had arrived — three members of a gang of extremist evangelical Christians who’d seized control of the impoverished Parque Paulista neighborhood in Duque de Caxias. First, they erected roadblocks to keep away cops and create a narcotics haven an hour’s drive from Rio de Janeiro. Now they were targeting anyone whose faith didn’t align with their own...Priests have been killed. Children have been stoned. An elderly woman was seriously injured. Death threats and taunts are common." This is the end game of the phony religion of Evangelical Christianity,

A Minor Statistic

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A few days ago, three US military personnel were murdered on an air base in Florida, by a Saudi pilot who was there for flight training. Including 9/11, this brings the number of Americans murdered by Saudi pilots in the United States to 2980, or over 97% of the total number of Americans murdered by all Islamists in this country since 1980.  This has produced a decades-long campaign of vilification against Iran and a war of aggression which killed a million civilians in Iraq, neither of which countries has ever been found guilty of a terrorist act on US soil. The action taken against Saudi Arabia?  None.  In fact, the last Republican President maintained his close family ties with the family of the leader of the 9/11 attack, and the current Republican President has had extensive business dealings with the Saudis, and wants to send thousands of American troops to aid the Saudi dictators. What kind of fucked up country, what kind of fucked up party does such a thing?  Couldn&#

Green Eagle's Pocket Impeachment History

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There have, as we all know, been four impeachment attempts directed at American Presidents.  As the impeachment of Donald Trump draws near, I hear more and more narratives that imply that, as with Trump, these impeachments revolved around Presidential corruption.  That false narrative is one more specimen of Republican spin intended to excuse the behavior of one of their own, but like all Republican spin, it is being happily gobbled up by a large part of the mainstream press.  I would, therefore, like to briefly consider the three previous impeachments and what they were really about. 1.  Andrew Johnson Impeachment of Andrew Johnson There were no accusations of corruption surrounding Johnson.  Here is what he did after becoming President when Lincoln was assassinated, which resulted in his impeachment:  I do not want to get too long winded here, but Johnson conspired with unrepentant former Southern slave owners to pass legislation that would effectively have reintroduced sla

A British Electoral Tragedy

I am not English, but I am going to presume on my having been a research student at Cambridge to make my opinion known about the upcoming general election there. It is an absolutely abysmal act of political malfeasance that, given that the Tories have pushed Britain to the brink of complete political and economic collapse, that the left could not find a better candidate to run against them than the utterly useless Jeremy Corbyn.  Britain and the world are going to pay a massive price for this act of partisan irresponsibility. Well, that's my feeling anyway.  I don't think I need say any more.

Just a thought

When narwhal tusks are illegal, only criminals will have narwhal tusks.

The Deal Maker Strikes Again

The world's Greatest Deal Maker has done it again- made one of the most consequential diplomatic deals of the century. No, not between the United States and another country; the deal he has brought about is between two other countries. Here are the details of this epochal agreement, which has been almost totally ignored by the mainstream press, while they have been busy declaring the impeachment of the President for extortion and bribery a boring snooze fest.  From the Telegraph (yes, people in England do seem to have noticed this story:) "China signs defence agreement with South Korea as US angers Seoul with demand for $5bn troop payment...   The defence ministers of South Korea and China have agreed to develop their security ties to ensure stability in north-east Asia, the latest indication that Washington’s long-standing alliances in the region are fraying.    An editorial in Monday’s edition of The Korea Times warned that the security alliance between (the US a

Removing Trump

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The new oval office? We hear over and over again that, if the Democratic House impeaches Trump, he cannot be removed from office, because it would be impossible to get 20 Republican Senators to stop cowering in fear of the deranged base they spent decades creating, in order to provide the two thirds majority needed to ditch him. This is almost certainly true, but all is not lost.  As usual, this argument comes from people who talk about the Constitution without having really read it very thoroughly. Here is what the Constitution actually says about the Senate trial that follows impeachment: Article I, Section 3, Clauses 6 and 7: The Senate shall have the sole Power to try all Impeachments. When sitting for that Purpose, they shall be on Oath or Affirmation. When the President of the United States is tried, the Chief Justice shall preside: And no Person shall be convicted without the Concurrence of two-thirds of the Members present" Note that the vote required is no

Separated at Birth?

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By sheer coincidence yesterday I came across one of those clickbait stories at the bottom of a post, about Schlitzie the Pinhead. Schlitzie was one of the most famous sideshow attractions in his day, appearing at the top circuses, and having a featured role in Tod Browning's cult film, "freaks." He had the mentality of about a four year old, and loved being in the circus. Well, just saying:

Taking Us Down the Road to Hell

The mainstream press, which has apparently made up their minds how they want the 2020 elections to work out. From the Washington Post (passed off as a paragon of the liberal press) today: "On eve of open hearings, GOP and Democrats lay out competing cases The memos show the parties are fundamentally at odds over everything from key pieces of evidence to the legitimacy of the process." I heard the same thing on NPR this morning, which did a long segment on the "competing narratives" about impeachment coming from our two political parties. Neither one of these miserable excuses for journalists thought it worth mentioning that one of these "narratives" is true and the other, as they all know damned well, is a compendium of vicious lies.  And that is what we are going to get this time around, just as we have had stuffed down our throats every election for decades.  One side is telling the truth and the other side is lying; but that is of no signific

Chutzpah

Donald Trump was today fined two million dollars because his "charity" diverted a large part of the money it gathered (some, for example, supposedly for kids with cancer) into the pockets of himself and his family.  The judge in the case determined that the money should go to a number of charities, which were selected as part of the court process. Trump's statement about this humiliation? "I am therefore happy to donate $2 million to the following worthy charities..." He donated the money!  Not, he was fined two million dollars for criminal activity; he donated the money!  It was a noble thing that he did, getting fined two million dollars for an abominable criminal act.  And he's happy to be fined the two million dollars.  He's proud of his generosity! Was there ever a more degraded human?

Wingnut Wrapup

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So Gordon Sondland, Trump's only defender that we know of in the impeachment hearings, suddenly changed his story today, and instead of denying that there was a quid pro quo demanded of Ukraine, admitted that there was.  Enough, finally, for Republicans to admit that maybe something was wrong with Trump's behavior? Of course not; they just have to amp up the lying: Julio Rosas, Town Hall:  "Mark Meadows: Gordon Sondland's Testimony Does NOT Confirm Quid Pro Quo"  I have gone back to writing Wingnut Wrapups because the level of right wing deceit that is going to be necessary to counter the truth, which is beginning to spill out like water over Niagara Falls, is staggering.  Yet tens of millions are going to at least claim they believe this malignant nonsense; this is going to form the foundation of Trump's campaign to be elected, and we had better be ready for it. Beth Baumann, Town Hall:  "WATCH: Project Veritas Confronts CNN President on His Person

How About This as an Impeachment Count?

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From Daily Kos today: "Nearly 5,500 migrant kids were stolen by Trump admin since 2017, according to new count" Don't crimes against humanity count as real crimes, if they are committed by Republicans?  Or will it just be too confusing to ordinary Americans if they are confused by adding this act of bestial brutality to the charges of extortion and treason? Let Senate Republicans vote against holding him responsible for this atrocity.

A Week to Remember, Indeed

That's their story and they are sticking to it.  Kimberley Guilfoyle at Town Hall, assessing the last week's political news: "In 365 Days, It’s Weeks Like This One That Voters Will Remember" That's for sure, what with the impeachment vote, and the release of transcripts conclusively demonstrating that Trump is a criminal.  No, that's not what Kimberley was talking about? "The week started in the morning of Sunday, October 27th, as President Trump took to the podium in the White House’s Diplomatic Reception Room to announce that ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi had been killed in an American-led military operation...However, even more disappointing than the media twisting themselves in knots to avoid saying anything that might be interpreted as praise for President Trump was the deafening silence from Democrats. They were seemingly unable to acknowledge that the Commander-in-Chief — even in this just one specific instance — made the world safer."

An Electoral Solution

We all know that the electoral college tilts the balance of power in the selection of the President in favor of small States, and consequently in favor of the Republican party.  We are living through the disaster that this undemocratic feature of the Constitution has created.  I hardly need tell anyone that this is true.  And yet, we all know that it would prove virtually impossible in our current political environment to change the Constitution to allow Presidents to be selected by popular vote. What is this flaw in the Constitution that allows Republicans to maintain an unfair advantage? Well, here is the text, from Article 2, section 1: "Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress" The problem is that representatives are apportioned according to population, while Senators are not; resulting in, for exa

Wingnut Wrapup

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Before I begin, I would like to mention the following fact:  Most of you have heard of the abominable driving of freshman Congresswoman Katie Hill from the House by the publication of revenge porn pictures of her supplied by a bastard of an ex-husband.  I just want to tell you that these pictures were originally published by Red State, a blog whose lies and hate have made it a staple of Wingnut Wrapup throughout its entire existence.  Anyway, on we go: Cortney O'Brien, Town Hall: "Here's When the Nats Stadium Stopped Booing Trump at World Series Game 5" See, that's what is important.  They booed him- that means nothing.  That they stopped, well... "But, as you can see and hear, when the jumbotron revealed who Trump's guests were, the crowd quieted. The president invited five wounded veterans to sit with him in his suite." So he used wounded veterans as human shields, which proves what a great patriot he is. "Booing the president of the