Green Eagle

Once again, nobody wants to state the obvious fact.  Listen, I've become a fan of Joe Biden, who I think has handled the Presidency better than anyone thought he would, but it is a mistake to think that the resolution of the debt ceiling crisis was in any way a master act of negotiation on his part.  Here is what I am confident really happened: The Republicans would have loved to cut a huge chunk of red meat out of our economy and throw it to their stupid, ignorant, hate filled base, to keep them in line for the 2024 election, and that is exactly what Kevin McCarthy had set out to do.  But then, the Republican party's real masters, their rich financial backers, stepped in.  These people have had it pretty good under Biden- their profits rising as the millions of new workers created by his economy spend money on their products, and as they have been left unmolested to mine hundreds of billions in undeserved profits through price gouging passed off as inflation. And don't for

 Well, Trump and the abominable excuse for a mainstream press that we have in our country. Two days ago, Donald Trump was found by a jury to have been committed sexual battery, the most degraded act that any President in the entire history of our country has ever engaged in. Yesterday, Trump, with the cooperation of the "far left" CNN, spent an hour on national TV, spreading the most loathsome collection of lies, smears and threats ever heard in this country, all to the screaming adulation of a hand-picked audience of his followers, interviewed by a former employee of uber-fascist Tucker Carlson.  This was enough for the mainstream press to absolutely drop any coverage* of the fact that Trump has now been found guilty of a crime that should disqualify any human being from serving in our government. I looked at the Washington Post today (I've long since given up expecting any decent commentary from the Times.)  There was not one single story or opinion piece on their websi

I have made this comment before.  Do not expect that, in the aftermath of Donald Trump being decisively convicted by a jury of sexual assault, his base is suddenly going to realize that this savage criminal traitor is just a little too disgusting to be our President.  In fact, this verdict is only going to increase his popularity among these barbarians, and here is why. It has been obvious to anyone paying attention, since the 1980's at the latest, that the Republican party, in turning itself into the champions of white Americans only, was setting off a demographic time bomb that would eventually lead to them being a permanent minority with no ability to win elections except in the most unreconstructed racist parts of the country. An answer to that might have been to attempt to build a coalition that drew more people in, while still maintaining the covert white favoritism which has been the party's main appeal since the time of Nixon's "southern strategy."  But no

 From the Washington Post: Jury in civil trial finds that Trump sexually abused and defamed E. Jean Carroll The dominos are finally beginning to fall.  Now, on to Georgia, and then finally, Merrick Garland, get off of your ass and enforce the law. I hate hearing everything that the criminal traitor has to say, but it will be kind of fun to hear the vicious smears and attacks that he launches toward E. Jean Carroll, the judge and the entire judicial system in response to this.   Can I note that it took the jury three hours to reach its verdict, an extremely short time for a civil case like this, and indicating that there was no doubt that Trump was guilty.  

 If you follow the news, you will have seen images like this: It features an alleged Ukranian drone attack on the Kremlin, according to Putin.   Given that such an act is totally out of character with the entire way Ukraine has conducted the war, I want to suggest two far more likely scenarios: 1.  This is an attack by some internal Russian dissident group, perhaps financed by an oligarch sick of seeing his horde of wealth dissipated by Putin's egomania.   2.  And this is far more frightening:  It is a false flag event, intended to justify attempts by Russia to kill Zelenskyy, perhaps on his upcoming trip to Finland.   We will just have to see what develops from this.

 A couple of times over the years, I have featured extended excerpts from a bizarre sort of wingnut fan fiction, which I believe has no equivalent on the left:  Purported accounts of the execution of their enemies, complete with lots of imaginary details.  In fact, one I related having to do with Hillary Clinton's execution was one of my most read posts of all time, until, for some unknown reason, Facebook removed it, years after I posted it.  Anyway, here is one about Liz Cheney, which provides a sad insight into the dementia that seems to be an essential part of right wing thinking: Military Sentences Liz Cheney to Hang to Death? It is being reported that Vice Admiral Darse E. Crandall of the U.S. Navy Judge Advocate General’s Corps asked an all-female panel to find Liz Cheney guilty of treason after she all but confessed to betraying her oath of office and threatened to have her people murder the admiral and his family. He delivered a scorching statement painting Cheney as a dep

 Just from my personal experience.  I have spent most of my working life (about 37 years at this point) in motion picture and TV production. This was admittedly in dramatic TV, not news, but here is what I saw.  In virtually every case I was familiar with where a regular cast member left a show, it was because of one of two things: either they asked for a lot more money, or else they were assholes that nobody wanted to deal with any more.  Their departure essentially never stemmed from the dramatic needs of the show.  So, here, based on that, is what I think happened here.  Tucker Carlson is one of the most loathsome people you could ever imagine knowing, but he knew how to pander to the MAGA base.  He knew he could throw his weight around and there was not a lot Fox could do about it.  In the aftermath of the Dominion debacle, I think the Murdochs had just reached the end of their toleration of the little maggot, and used the confusion as an excuse to kick him off the bus.  It had, I

 Well, that was a surprise, huh?  And now, Green Eagle will explain exactly what Tucker's disappearance means: NOTHING. For evidence, let me cite one precedent: Rush Limbaugh.  At his height, Limbaugh was far more powerful that this egomaniacal little rich boy could even dream of being, but who remembers him now?  There are ten thousand others just waiting to take his place, just as there were with Limbaugh, and as long as the billionaires' message is trumpeted out to the masses day in and day out, they don't give a damn who gets paid to do it.  A little while and Tucker will be as forgotten as Father Coughlin and Gerald L. K. Smith.  And as for why it happened, I don't know any more than you do, but here is my guess: it has very little to do with the Dominion settlement.  Tucker has been (inevitably) becoming more and more of an insufferable, self-important jerk, and this is a perfect opportunity for Rupert to send him back to the barn.  To paraphrase Bishop Berkeley,

People still think of the true catastrophe of global warming as being decades away.  I fear they may be cataclysmically wrong. These people see the threats of global warming in desertification of agricultural areas like the Southern great plains, loss of coastland due to ocean levels rising, or more and more destructive weather events.  They may well be overlooking a far more serious, and far more immediate threat, which goes by the name of "wet-bulb temperature."  Wet-bulb temperature is a measure of the combined effects of temperature and humidity.  A wet-bulb temperature over 100 degrees Fahrenheit is on the threshold of being lethal to huge swathes of humanity.  And that is what we are approaching now in many areas. I have compiled the following map.  I am not a meteorologist, so it is prepared from the works of others, but it shows countries around the globe where very little more warming will be needed to render large parts of their territory uninhabitable. I repeat aga

One of the most amusing chapters in the ongoing revelations about the endless corruption of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, is the purchase of his mother's house by right wing billionaire and Nazi fetishist Harlan Crow, at considerable profit to Thomas himself.  My favorite part of the story was Thomas' claim that there was nothing wrong with this arrangement, or the tens of thousands of dollars Crow spent fixing the place up so Thomas' mother could continue living there, because the whole purpose of the acquisition of the property was so that it could be turned into a museum(!) after Thomas' mother died; a museum lovingly memorializing Thomas' massive contribution to our nation's judicial history.* This claim reminded me of something I saw long ago on the TV show COPS.  The police in this episode had found some sodden, drunk old derelict half passed out on the sidewalk, and rather than arrest him, they decided to just take him to his home and let him sle

There used to be a time when people could wake up in the morning, and think, "What good could I accomplish today- what could our nation's people do by coming together, to make this a better country?  Not that long ago, there was a reason to approach politics as one of the great ways to make this world better. No more.  Not in this country, anyway. The Republican party has seen to that.  They have destroyed the ability of government to do a single good thing.  Today, we wake up every day to face nothing but the latest in an endless string of Republican atrocities; to face an unending struggle to undo the latest abomination perpetrated on the American people by the Republican party.   Consider just a few examples from the last week: Texas Judge corruptly rules that an abortion pill is harmful:  Despite all the scientific evidence and despite a 23 year history of safe use of this drug, he claimed corruptly, and without a shred of evidence, that he had the right to ban it.  This i

This is really only for the hard core, but I am presenting here a link to a video posted today at Before It's News, with the following title: "Breaking! Trump Just ReTruthed, Covfefe: The Simplicity, Complexity & Genius of The Q Plan, in a Word!" Those who remember the origin of this pseudo-word will know that it was actually a misspelling of the word "coffee" by the stupid, nearly illiterate thug that Republicans saw fit to place in the White House.  But years after its occurrence, here are wingnuts trying to infuse it with some cosmic meaning.  When I used the word psychosis above, I did not mean to use the term as a synonym for "crazy," but to refer to literal psychotic delusion.  If you can bring yourself to listen to any significant part of this sickening nonsense, you will understand how impossible it is to hope to penetrate the mental fog that the Republican party has generated, and hope to reach these people with any shred of the truth. Th

 Here's a chart from an article by Paul Krugman.  I'm stealing it from Daily Kos.   As you can see, there is now close to a 20 year difference in life expectancy between strongly Democratic and strongly Republican areas. Republicans, this is what you have fought like rabid dogs for, for decades, and you are getting just what we liberals said you would.  I hope it is worth 15 or 20 years of your life to bask in the glory of Donald Trump, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Ron DeSantis and your other Republican heroes. Daily Kos has a lot more about the subject, but this is all I have to say.  Have a nice day!

 I am so filled with disgust at the sight of the press- both the mainstream press and liberal sites like Daily Kos and Crooks and Liars - being totally manipulated by Donald Trump for two weeks now, into spending at least half of all their time obsessing over Trump's abominable behavior, and allowing him once again to be the center of national attention, all for a relatively petty criminal act he committed.  When is he going to be held responsible for the sedition and treason that are his real crimes, let alone for the lifetime of financial criminality he has engaged in?  If Merrick Garland, et. al. don't wake up and deal with the reality of Trump's massive criminality, this whole thing, which would be a gigantic humiliation for any normal person, will end up being a public victory for this sociopath. And by the way, who wrote the legal rule that Democrats can only accuse Republicans of wrongdoing after having several of those Republicans admit in public that it happened,

 From the Washington Post: I suspect I will not be the only one to carry this story today.  We all know it is not one percent of what he deserves, but it is a start.  I can hardly wait to see the screaming and yelling from the "patriots" in our country.  

I think anyone from 20 years ago who was transfered to today's American political scene, whether they were a Democrat or a Republican, would be stunned by what has become of our political discourse.  The crudity, the contempt for the truth, the open criminality and incitement to violence that radiate from virtually every Republican leader would not have seemed possible even a decade or two ago, but here we are. However, even with the press and the Republican party tolerating or often embracing this degenerate behavior, one thing still has the power to shock me: the open acceptance when the party's top leaders exercise their fifth amendment rights, not once but literally thousands of times, rather than admit to the American people how they have conducted themselves in their positions of power.  Pleading the fifth amendment is tantamount to admitting that you are a criminal; how can people like this be casually tolerated in government? Here is my suggestion to this problem.  In a

If you have ever heard the phrase "banality of evil" and wondered what it means, here is its face. Many people on the left have been justly concerned about an impending "ruling" by a Trump appointed, Federalist Society groomed "judge," Matthew J. Kacsmaryk , in a case where he has a chance to decide, in his infinite wisdom and knowledge, that the 20 year old CDC decision approving, on the scientific evidence, of the drug mifepristone, the most common abortion pill, was "wrongly" decided, and banning this drug from the United States.   Let us be clear here.  This guy is an ignorant cracker who is about to put his will above all the scientific evidence on which the pill was approved, and the twenty year history of its safe use.  He was placed on the bench exactly to make decisions like this, and has become a go-to judge for hardcore right wingers, who are able to file cases in his district, where he is the only Federal judge.   In all of the volumi

That is, when (as now seems likely, despite Trump's skill in damaging the legal system at every step) the indictments (I think there will be several, sooner or later) start coming in. Well, this is based on Green Eagle's experience, going back 15 years or so, reporting on threatened wingnut uprisings, and what actually transpired, but I think you have to look at that record.  I have seen constant predictions of as many as 2 million furious right wingers that were supposed to show up to kick Obama out of the White House, shut down Congress, overturn election results in a number of States,  riot over Terry Schiavo, or the fact that the Bush administration didn't kill enough people in Iraq, etc.  These have almost inevitably resulted in crowds numbering in, at most, a few hundred, who stood around for a couple of hours while lower level Conservative operatives tried to swindle them out of their money, and then went home, proud of their stand for patriotism. Yeah, we had Januar

Yeah, I know, I promised to stop driving you crazy with all of this turgid garbage, now that the leaders of the Republican party have gone just as nuts as the online purveyors of wingnut nonsense, but I think it might be helpful to check in once in a while, to see what a thorough fantasy world Republicans have created for their followers, in which every single issue is turned on its head to make a seamless wall of delusion covering everything on earth. Today, I am going to draw from only two sources.  The first is Gateway Pundit, one of the most frequented right wing websites, that sees literally hundreds of thousands of viewers every day- over 666 million unique visits in 2021 (by their own claim, at least.)  This appears to be a great deal more than, let's say, Daily Kos, the number one liberal website in the country.  The other site is "Before it's News," a major aggregator of QAnon and right wing lunacy, which also receives millions of hits each month.  So, let

A story from Crooks and Liars about a bill in Kansas seeking to make it a criminal offense to be homeless: "Arganbright, now the director of community engagement for the Kansas Statewide Homeless Coalition, and dozens of other Kansans who have direct knowledge of homelessness offered a rebuke to House Bill 2430. The only supporter of the bill was Judge Glock, senior fellow at the Texas-based Cicero Institute, which has advocated for the same legislation in other states." Judge Glock?  What the fuck?  Judge Glock...can this really be true?  Have we really entered the Twilight Zone?

Green Eagle's new BFF, with (apparently) a close relative Coming together to solve the nation's problems!  We've all heard Marjorie's latest rants about dissolving the United States into Red and Blue States; i.e. Confederate secession 2023 style.  Of course, we know perfectly well that this ignorant jackass will say anything to keep her rapidly aging* face in the news, so we shouldn't believe she means a thing she says, but assuming that she is serious, what should we be doing about this?  Here is my suggestion: Green Eagle is going to appeal to his Senators and Congress person (a character by the name of Adam Schiff, whom you may have heard of) to introduce legislation to require that, for say the next ten years, every State in the union receive exactly as much back from the Federal government as it pays in taxes.  Then each State can spend its own residents' money in the manner they feel is appropriate.  That seems fair, right?  And this eminently sensible rul

  Governor Mike DeWine of Ohio, clearly trying to unseat Mitch McConnell for the title of Official Turtle of the Republican Party.

 I saw the following campaign promise from Donald Trump yesterday, and it encouraged me to write a little about something I have said before, but as we are forced once again into a two year obsession with the next Presidential election, is worth repeating.  I think that any American a decade ago would be appalled by this kind of talk from an ex-President, but no more: "The former president, if re-elected, is still committed to expanding the use of the federal death penalty and bringing back banned methods of execution, the sources say. He has even, one of the sources recounts, mused about televising footage of executions, including showing condemned prisoners in the final moments of their lives. Specifically, Trump has talked about bringing back death by firing squad, by hanging, and, according to two of the sources, possibly even by guillotine. He has also, sources say, discussed group executions...Trump privately mused about the possibility of creating a flashy, government-back

That would be one Anna Paulina Luna, a recent Republican winner of a seat in the current House.  There seems to be a chance that this woman's supposed history is pretty much as phony as Santos's.  Here's an amusing story from the Washington Post detailing her claims about her life, with some interesting comment from people who knew her.  "Twelve years before she was elected as the first Mexican American woman to represent Florida in Congress, Anna Paulina Luna was serving at Whiteman Air Force Base in Warrensburg, Mo., where friends said she described herself as alternately Middle Eastern, Jewish or Eastern European. Known then by her given last name of Mayerhofer, Luna sported designer clothing and expressed support for then-President Barack Obama. By the time she ran for Congress as a Republican, she had changed her last name to Luna..."  Lots more giggles at the linked article.  I guess when they elected a President who had massively deluded people about his

 From the Washington Post today: "Amish country farmers say George Santos took puppies" Stealing puppies. They really are beneath humiliation.   I didn't spend too long looking, but I couldn't find a single person on the right who says "enough, already." Who can believe that there is any path to redemption for these people?  

 I accidentally came across this article from a UPI news feed from 1973, when I was looking at an unrelated article on the same page.  I thought you'd get a laugh out of it. They may have gotten a little slicker at what they say in public, but really, the substance is pretty much the same as ever.  The Bible.  Lesson three billion in why religion needs to be crushed out of our political life.

Why will nobody say this?  What was hanging from that balloon was not spy equipment, it was clearly Hunter Biden's laptop.   China was clearly attempting to steer the balloon so the laptop could be dropped directly into the blind man's repair shop, in an attempt to hide the fact that the Republicans have been unable to produce a shred of evidence that the laptop actually exists, despite over a year of screeching about it.  Now Republicans can blame Joe Biden for caring nothing about our nation's defense, but using an F-22 to destroy evidence of the Biden family's crimes.   Anyone who doubts that some Republicans will do this clearly hasn't been paying attention to things the last few years.

 I occasionally recommend a post from someone else here, which I think gets to the heart of the issue so well that there is no point in my rewriting it.  This is one of those times.  The post deals with the crusade of John Durham, selected to preside over an "investigation" of Obama, Biden and Hillary, which as I have reported on a number of occasions was nothing but an attempt to trump up a bogus right wing smear of all of them.  Durham revealed himself to be a crude, lying right wing hack just like the President who appointed him. Well, here is an article from Mark Sumner at Daily Kos, entitled "Behind the scenes of Durham investigation reveals special counsel engaged in serious abuse of power" which will bring people up to date on what we now know about this serious misuse of prosecutorial power from Durham, former Attorney General Barr and Trump.  Much of it seems to be based on reporting at the New York Times, which is of course behind a paywall; in any even

I have been following the development of Trans ideology for the last few years.  Much of it is built on a notion of gender that I have come to believe is very misguided.  Without this, a great deal of the assertions of the Trans movement, I believe, collapse.  Well, here are my thoughts on the subject. I want to start out with an attack on someone whose blog I have read for years, and who, I believe, is one of the most important figures in the fight against pseudoscience and the falsification of scientific fact for political purposes, P. Z. Myers.  Myers is a professor of evolutionary biology in Minnesota, and has done tremendous work unmasking the pathetic ignorance that lies behind young earth creationism and other forms of evolutionary denialsim.  Myers is often savagely contemptuous of creationist figures like Ken Ham, correctly pointing out that they are utterly ignorant of evolutionary biology, and that they spout views that any marginally educated person knows to be nonsense.  L

 And as usual, Green Eagle will go where nobody else will.  After my decades of watching politics, I want to tell you something that I am virtually convinced is true.  If we ever get to know the real origin of the classified documents that have been found in Biden's Vice Presidential papers, it will turn out that they were planted there by Republican operatives.  This is the overwhelmingly most likely explanation of all of this.  And don't even try to argue with me about this.  It is so clear that only a fool could believe otherwise. And let's note that the disgusting coward Merrick Garland, who lives in constant fear that Donald Trump might say Boo to him, took only a few days to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate his boss; this after two years of being afraid to do a damned thing in public about Trump's open criminality and treason. So, when we allocate blame for the disaster that is taking place in front of our eyes, don't forget to include Garland, and

 So, a lot of people seem to be freaked out by Kevin McCarthy's craven capitulation to the wingnut right wing members of Congress in agreeing to reinstate an old rule allowing any member of the House to demand a vote of confidence in the speaker, bringing the workings of the House to a crashing halt any time they were threatened with legislation they didn't like, and potentially destroying the ability of the House to accomplish anything outside of the piggish actions they have promised. Things can have unexpected consequences, however. As far as I have heard, nobody had considered the fact that this rule would be available to Democrats too. Consider this scenario:  McCarthy has threatened to strip the greatest member of the current House, Adam Schiff, of all his committee assignments, in an act of revenge for the House doing the same thing (for very justified reasons) to the execrable traitor, Marjorie Taylor Greene.  In return, I would suggest, Schiff might decide to demand a

I am enjoying the spectacle of House Republicans making absolute fools of themselves, failing to pick a speaker, as much as anyone.  However, please remember this: In a few days or a couple of weeks, the Republicans will find some way out of this mess and will pick a speaker who will, incidentally, almost certainly be more intransigent and right wing than Kevin McCarthy.  From that moment on, we are going to be treated to the sickening spectacle of our Federal government being ravaged by elected representatives of the American people.  We are going to be subject to an orgy of piggishness and corruption the likes of which has never been seen in this country. So get ready for it.  This current clown show is just the calm before a very ugly storm.

With the Republicans in the House degenerating into complete chaos, several people have pointed out that nothing in the Constitution requires that the Speaker be a member of the House.  This is not actually a new idea among Republicans- over the last two years, a number of right wingers have suggested making Donald Trump the Speaker, presumably to be followed by a huge competition among the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers to see who could murder Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, making Trump the President, this being the current state of Republican respect for the Constitution. Anyway, I have another suggestion- a person who has a long history as a Republican, yet who has the respect of many Democrats, and who is an experienced former member of the House:  Liz Cheney. Note: this is not a serious suggestion, because Liz is a hard core right winger whose legislative priorities would be worse than Kevin McCarthy's.  But boy would it be a great way to own the Cons, the way they think they are a

 I am sure I have enjoyed the spectacle of grotesque Republican incompetence that is playing out in the House right now, as their new House majority tries to pick a speaker, as much as anyone.  It is a thrill to see CNN referring to "Republicans in disarray" for once, instead of the usual "Democrats in Disarray" which accompanies virtually every thing the Democrats ever try to do.  I must remind you though that for Republicans, even this monumental display of ineptitude serves a purpose.   For decades, Republicans, whose true mandate from their billionaire benefactors is to prevent the will of the people from ever impeding the insatiable hunger of the rich.  One of their favorite methods to accomplish this is to convince voters that our government is a gigantic clown show.  For this purpose, given the both siderism surgically grafted onto our mainstream press by the Republican party, it makes no difference that the clowns are all on their side of the aisle.  If they