Meditations After The Death

I AM NOT SURPRISED that the death of my beloved 18-year-old, little black cat leaves me feeling the kind of bereavement that I have felt when my nearest and most loved relations and friends have died.  She was my friend and daily companion for a very significant part of my life.   I've only had one other pet who I lived with almost as long, a parrot whose long line of "owners" started with the mother-in-law of one of my great aunts.  After her Paul lived with, to my knowledge, two of my great aunts, my grandmother and grandfather and then with us.  I think he died about 16 years after we took him in and I felt very sad but he wasn't nearly as much of a friend as my last cat.  

Like David Bentley Hart, I have no time or respect for theologians or others who claim that animals do not have immortal souls.    Such as that fat-headed genius Thomas Aquinas, whose most interesting act was not writing his voluminous would-be systematic theological masterwork but when he stopped writing it after he had a profound mystical experience that led him to declare all of his previous work to be "straw."  I find him, someone who was certainly steeped in a deep knowledge of the Latin translation of the Scriptures, Jerome's Vulgate (from what I understand he didn't read either Hebrew or Greek) using that language interesting because of the verses in Isaiah that proclaim that all flesh will see the glory of God while comparing human bodies to grass that withers and is no more.   

Which leads me to think about the verses in the Scripture I most dislike and discount,  Ecclesiastes, which says that human beings and animals end up with the same fate which, in that book, ends at death.   For the life of me, I don't see how anyone ever, when they were choosing from the many, many books to include in the Jewish and Christian Scriptures included that cynical sourpuss who provides so much of the contradiction of so much of the far more inspiring Scripture, certainly in both the Jewish Scriptures but ever more so the Christian Scriptures.   I have little to no use for Aquinas so I haven't looked up to see how he may have squared that with his other claims.   David Bentley Hart points out that he was quite able to contradict himself on any number of things, including the claim that effective change of spiritual status was impossible in spirit when he believed in the story of the fallen angels.   I don't know how the Church squared such an idea with the inspired idea of purgatory.  

And all that leads me to what I understand was the first Pope to make a quasi-dogmatic declaration that Animals do not have immortal souls,  one of the worst of the modern Popes,  the odious Pius IX.  Among other things he is infamous for refusing to endorse the Italian society to prevent cruelty to Animals because to endorse kindness to Animals would contradict his vile conception of such things, probably based on the offically official theology of Aquinas. 

The traditional view that Animals have no immortal souls gives, among its reasons, that Animals can't reason so Animals can't have immortal souls.   I have to conclude that anyone who believes they can't reason has never spent much time with Animals because it's often far clearer than it is with many People that mammals, birds, and other Animals demonstrate reasoning abilities when they are presented with novel situations which they figure out far, far, faster than they could learn from trial and error unaided by reason.   Even in her last week my cat was figuring out, almost immediately, the novel means that I gave her for getting up on her favorite perch, of me, for the first time in her life, moving it into the sun for her (it didn't take two days of me doing that, for the first times, for her to make it clear to me it was time to do that).    I've seen cats do that, I've seen dogs do that,  I've seen chickens do it,  I've seen squirrels do it and chipmunks are even faster.  And with the many, many wildlife camera feeds and videos that have been posted online in the last quarter of a century, anyone who thinks wild animals can't reason has to be an amazingly stupid and clueless Person.  

An even stupider reason that I understand was shared by a number of Catholic theologians, was that Animals and plants have no immortal soul was because they were made for human beings to use and there would be no use for them in heaven so they have no immortal souls.    What, I would have asked them, were we to make of the very large majority of Animals who are never encountered by any human beings and who live out their lives unmolested and unexploited by the only animals known to be capable of intentional sin and evil?   You might forgive an Augustine or Aquinas or those whose ideological commitment insisted that their opinions had a weight that was, supposedly, reserved for the words of Jesus but, certainly, now that we know how long the line of life on Earth has been, the idea that all of those trillions of living beings and creatures (plants being creatures as well as animals - human beings, too) who lived for the vast majority of the history of known life before there were any humans, the large majority of them having no contribution made to the eventual emergence of human beings, anyone who depends on that idea today is stupider than a young-earth-creationist who is also a flat earther and a Republican-fascist dispensationalist, antisemitic Zionist. 

I know for an observed, experienced fact that many Animals, I would say most of those I've known intimately, are morally superior to most of the People I've known.  And what evils they do exhibit come with an innocence that all but the youngest or least intelligent People can be believed to share with them.  I have never known animals to show cruelty or evil actions that can, by any measure, come up to the tsunami of evil that can come from People acting in concert or, as we can see before us right now, small groups of those given enormous power through the combined forces of evil with cruel and evil intent.   And those who are the most cruel and hateful among us are presented as paragons of moral righteousness,  moral authority (religious as well as civil) and "legitmate" exercisers of power who others are morally depraved enough to believe they and others are morally obligated to follow.   No wild dog pack hunting down a deer to inflict such fear and pain as their nature as wolves hunting for food compels them to do are as cruel as the majority voting in the last American election and those they empowered to do such enormous evil - which the secular civil stand-ins for religious authority, the Constitution, the law, the judges and, worst of all, the "justices" give their would-be moral approval of.  And the would-be religious authorities, in so many cases, most of whom I'm sure would hold with the superstition that Animals are not loved enough by God for him to give them immortal souls, are all the evidence anyone would need to know that Animals are our moral superiors.  

I am of the opinion that one of the most important figures in Christianity,  Paul, had his life changed by a near death experience,  or likely two of them.  First there was the experience on the road to Damascus where he intended to do evil to the disciples of Jesus which led to his conversion.  The second one was when he was stoned by those who didn't like his preaching and was left for dead by them, only for him to survive and be rescued by his friends.   I think his entire and enormously effective career is based on that near death experience, about which, more in a minute.   I think his experience led him to believe he had a direct connection to Jesus and which seems to have given him a radically expansive view of the Gospel and the good news (so I'll give you this relevant passage from the Good News translation).  

8 I consider that what we suffer at this present time cannot be compared at all with the glory that is going to be revealed to us. 19 All of creation waits with eager longing for God to reveal his children. 20 For creation was condemned to lose its purpose, not of its own will, but because God willed it to be so. Yet there was the hope 21 that creation itself would one day be set free from its slavery to decay and would share the glorious freedom of the children of God. 22 For we know that up to the present time all of creation groans with pain, like the pain of childbirth. 23 But it is not just creation alone which groans; we who have the Spirit as the first of God's gifts also groan within ourselves as we wait for God to make us his children and[c] set our whole being free. 24 For it was by hope that we were saved; but if we see what we hope for, then it is not really hope. For who of us hopes for something we see? 25 But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.

Passages such as that, read directly in the original Greek, led many in the Eastern church to see the Resurrection of Jesus as having not only implications of glory for human beings (those who Paul and everyone else in the Scriptures were talking to and, mostly, about) but for the entirety of Creation, as Paul addressed in that passage in Romans.   I think that those universalist theologians such as Gregory of Nyssa, his sister Macrina, Issac of Syria, etc. get it far more than many in the Western European tradition, especially those who depended on Latin translations of the Greek that was the mother tongue of the Greeks.   I'm not familiar with the Aramaic Scriptures, so I can't relate those to the universalism that is far more often found in the Eastern Churches.   I am encouraged to read more and more Roman Catholic theologians, even some Popes are veering towards universalism, not only the limited and stunted universalism of Humans (why else would Catholics have the insight of purgatory if not for that) and also for Animals.  One of my favorite living theologians Elizabeth A. Johnson has explicitly said that and has the brilliant insight that it is a necessary understanding if we are to save the natural world from those who believe it is there for us to destroy in our exploitation of it.  Another I've just come to start reading and listening to is the Methodist David Clough who is very much worth listening to and who articulates a Christian veganism which I find about as convincing as I did the Chief Rabbi of Dublin who had such an influence on my adoption of veganism.  Though I didn't force my cat to convert, I lived with that moral ambiguity for her sake though if I could be convinced I could provide a cat or dog with an adequate vegan diet, I might try it.   Though at my age I think adopting another pet longer lived then a rat would be unfair.

Unlike, for example, the late great Catholic thinker and theologian Hans Kung,  I think the testimony of those who credibly report having had a near death experience is a valid thing to consider.   I don't mean those who have made talking about it and endlessly scribbling about it a career, I mean those who, by a change in their life for the better who say they have seen the other side.   From what I read, about a quarter of those who come back report having encountered their pets who are happy to see them and who, in at least some cases, let them know it's not their time to pass over.   Of course there's no way to know that, though there are reports of People saying that about pets they don't know died while they were held to be unconscious.   There are also reports of those who are near death and who die, having death bed experiences of seeing their loved ones, People and Animals, come to see them off.   I don't think those are of knowable reality, though I've been with dying People who clearly had those experiences, one of whom had their blood oxygen level and other vitals taken and who the nurse said were perfectly normal and who, otherwise, had all their marbles.  Unlike many, especially academic writers on such topics,  I think those provide valid evidence on which we can legitimately base our beliefs.    I think it's as knowable as any historical accounts, many of which we have only second or third hand reports - INCLUDING EVERYTHING IN SCRIPTURE.    I certainly think if you are going to take what Paul concluded from his vision of Jesus on the road to Damascus as the basis of a huge swath of Christian theology then contemporary near death experiences are validly taken as evidence.   

I will also say, since I know this will likely be read or mischaracterized by scoffing atheists, that what they claim about what happens after death is uniformly UNEVIDENCED.    When given the choice to draw conclusions about something I have not experienced or witnessed,  I'll always take what there is evidence for as producing validly held beliefs that totally unevidenced claims drawn from a priori ideological choices can't be held to have.   That is not unrelated to the theological positions I slam above which are, as well not based on any evidence but are based on commitments to ideological, philosophical authorities.   I think that the thinking of a David Bentley Hart, Elizabeth A. Johnson or David Clough are far more likely to produce good than the alternatives, atheist or religious.    I'll put my lot in with the radical universalism that holds out the hope I'll see my cat again, happy in eternity over the dismal dismissal of her goodness as existentially futile. 

Bret Stephens Says That America's Biggest Welfare Client, Israel, Is An "Equal Ally"

THAT IS THE COUNTRY which has had the largest amount of foreign and military aid from the United States of any country at least since WWII, before there was an Israeli state.  And that's only what we know of because a lot of it would seem to be hidden from the American public.  For a now drastically outdated example:

Unlike the United States’ publicly documented military aid to Ukraine, it was impossible to get the full details of what the U.S. has shipped Israel since last Oct. 7, so the $17.9 billion for the year is a partial figure, the researchers said.

They cited Biden administration “efforts to hide the full amounts of aid and types of systems through bureaucratic maneuvering.”

Funding for the key U.S. ally during a war that has exacted a heavy toll on civilians has divided Americans during the presidential campaign. But support for Israel has long carried weight in U.S. politics, and Biden said Friday that “no administration has helped Israel more than I have.”

And that's the year before the Biden administration increased that record-setting level the next year. 

An "Equal Ally."  

If I were doing that calculation I would certainly include the cost of the various wars that the Israeli government have,  through their American agents and supporters, gotten George W. Bush and, now Donald Trump to fight as part of their regional strategy.   The costs of Israel for the United States, realistically measured, would be in the trillions of dollars by the time the disaster Trump was talked into by Netanyahu (though to be fair the Saudi ruling crime family and others in the region bought it from Trump, as well) and other Israeli governments. 

Measured in terms of the terrible cost in lives,  Americans and others, the moral culpability for murders of innocent civilians which measure in the hundreds of thousands and likely the millions and, yes, the money, Bret Stephens has probably told the biggest whopper of a lie in the history of the New York Times.   And they aren't short of competing examples. 

And that doesn't even take into account the economic effects that were certainly known to come by the Israeli fascist leadership and even some in the Trump criminal regime which is already being paid by the distruction of oil fields and other facilities, other infrastructure and the stopping of shipping which was known would be the result of such an attack on Iran. 

An "Equal Ally" which, according to the Trump Sec. of State, Marco Rubio,  forced the Trump regime to start their war.  Though I think the Saudis and other oil oligarchies have probably been more persuasive to Trump through paying him and his family for bringing it on.   If Bret wants to laud them for being good allies to the US,  I'd only be too happy to go into that, though they are in no way as persuasive in the way the Israel lobby is. 

Personally, I can tell you one thing that this and related issues of the last quarter of a century related to this has done to me, it's convinced me that the United States needs to dump Israel.  

It's not a viable colonial project, it could never stand on its own, it can't ever support itself without American aid in all of those terms mentioned above after all of that support, after all of that blood and sacrifice.    We don't owe that project another day of support. 

We also have to admit that Israel has a large number of effective and dangerous propaganda operatives in the United States who are very influential in the media and elsewhere.    When the real costs of this Iran war become apparent and undeniable,  their role in leading us into yet another of these quagmires has to be honestly, accurately and seriously addressed.    No matter how uncomfortable that makes anyone feel and no matter how much those agents lie about the character of that questioning and criticism.   And, as mentioned the other day,  a very large number of those come in the form of antisemitic "christian" Zionists.   They are certainly more of a political danger than even the combined forces of the Israel lobby.  

If You Want To Honor St. Patrick The Escaped Slave

 work against slavery.  

Maybe A Third "AI" Generated Fake "Proof of Life" Only Proves There Is No Real Proof Of LIfe - Question And Response

Q: Do You Think That Bibi Netanyahu Is Dead?

R: I DON'T KNOW but I have to say that it should be a rule of thumb that when the Israelis release a third "proof of life" video that has weird "AI" like elements in it, there aren't may more nails to be put in that coffin.  Each one of them has had obvious "AI" slop in it, like six fingers on one hand, the weirdness with the differences in numbers of teeth in the second one, the disappearing ring in the latest one. . . 

Of course, he could dispel any question by an indisputable appearance in public.  For example, in a televised appearance before the Israeli parliarment attested to by his political enemies or, better, in a court to answer for his crimes.   I mean the ones that the corrupt Israeli system would prosecute him for.   Or he could answer the international court's indictment of him in public.   If, in that regard, those who think he's alive and has fled Israel to save his criminal ass are right, it might be the most appropriate way for him to prove he's not dead.

Do I think the Trumpzis would try to drag out the length of time a dead Trump was held to be alive so that Thiel and his bitch, Vance wouldn't take over and start throwing disposable members of the Trump gang to the wolves as I expect them to do like immediately?   Geesh, has anyone lost a bet on them not doing anything and everything to maintain power over the crime syndicate the US government is controlled by under the Republicans?    

RMJ Has A Good Post Up Talking About Some Of The "Christian" Theological Theories Influencing Trump's Diasterous Policy

BEFORE GOING ON,  I'll point out that when I wrote about this last week I consistently typed the Bible annotating con-man's name "Schofield" which is how the family I grew up with spelled it, he didn't use the "H."    Which I mention in passing and in case anyone used what I typed to look up the topic.  I usually look up the spelling of names, there being so much variation but I've been busy, it's planting season and I've got a sick 18-year-old-cat to nurse. 

RMJ knows a lot more about that than I do, it being about as foreign from Catholicism as it's possible for something deputed to be "Christian" to be.   But it is enormously influential with tens of millions of those "white evangelicals" who are white supremacist-fascists in the Republican Party.   There are, though, other evangelicals of all identities it's not true of.  Especially when it comes to anabaptists and others who split into new denominations over a verse here and there,  it gets really complicated really fast.   

RMJ's post starts out by the news that that noted theologian,  the gay, capitalist libertarian, at times reportedly fascist-trad catho-convert Peter Thiel* giving a series of lectures in Rome - which the Catholic Church is disassociating themselves from.   Trad-cath converts, whether those who are trying to repeal Vatican II and want the liturgy to be mumured in Latin or  the wave of supposedly ex-evangelicals who are also polluting the Orthodox church in America are the worst.  Or, at least, they are supplementing the worst that was there.   Though some have accused the Catholic Church of taking Thiel in along with such as Gingrich and a host of other shady Republican-fascists,  he would apparently be posing as some kind of informal "orthodox"  for the moment.   So I'll address that part of it here. 

Peter Thiel, the MAGA-friendly tech billionaire and devout Christian, began a run of religious meetings close to the Vatican on Sunday, raising concerns among Catholics.

Lets get one thing straight,  Thiel isn't any kind of a Christian, he clearly is a worshiper of Mammon,  that is wealth, he opposes every word Jesus ever said approaching the topics of economics, justice, equality, and pretty much everything else.  He's, of course, not alone in that, a very large percentage of those who profess "Christianity" are as little believing or professing The Gospel, the Epistles, the faithful Christian tradition in favor of some perversion of all of those.  Those of us who aspire to follow Jesus had better start denouncing these Mammonist worshipers of the world and its riches or we have no one to blame when those whose knowledge of Christianity is anything from lacking to totally tacit believe that evil is what Christianity is.   Every one of the right-wing converts who I complain of above, see the Catholic Church as a large, influential, perhaps even powerful and wealthy operation that they want to take control of just as they have the government of the United States,  that's all it is to them.  And I would include many members of the Catholic hierarchy as promoting that perversion of Christianity as well as, for example, the current Patriarch of Moscow. 

Thiel, 58, has brought his series of lectures on the Antichrist to Rome. He first held these talks in San Francisco last fall, pushing the idea that a figure opposing Christ would soon emerge to create a “totalitarian one-world government.”

In his speeches, Thiel has harped against the dangers of woke policy such as environmental protections and tech industry regulations. During his San Francisco run, he called Gen Z environmental activist Greta Thunberg one of the “legionnaires of the Antichrist” and slammed Pope Leo XIV as a “woke American pope,” according to The Guardian.

LET ME ALSO ANNOUNCE HERE THAT IF I AM NOT YET WOKE I HOPE I AM WOKE VERY SOON AND PLEDGE THE REST OF MY LIFE TO WAKING EVERYONE I ENCOUNTER UP.  If Leo is "woke" HURRAY!   "Woke" is an entirely admirable thing to aspire to being,  the opposite is what the Thiels and his fellow fascist tech-bro fascists want everyone to be, a semi-conscious object to use, exploit, mark as an object of hate to organize the haters and harness them (the old-line "Southern strategy" of the Republican right's use for them) as a means of taking power and lording it over us all. 

Now, the former evangelical and self-described “small-o orthodox Christian” has taken his teachings to the Catholic Church’s backyard. Thiel reportedly partnered with Catholic universities in Rome to bring his invite-only series to the city, although two institutions alleged to be involved have denied this.

“With reference to several articles that have appeared in the press in recent days regarding an alleged event with Peter Thiel at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas (Angelicum), we would like to clarify that this event is not organized by the University, will not take place at the Angelicum, and is not part of any of our institutional initiatives,” shared the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas in a statement on its website.

The Associated Press reported that Thiel’s event was “jointly organized” by the Vincenzo Gioberti Cultural Association, an Italian Christian political organization, and the Cluny Institute at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. While cultural association confirmed its involvement, the Catholic University of America told the outlet it was “not sponsoring or hosting an event featuring Peter Thiel this month in Rome.”

As the U.S.T.A. happens to be one of the institutions which produced Pope Leo, (1984 Licentiate of Canon Law and 1987 Doctor of Canon Law)  I would think they would be unlikely to want to sponsor or be associated with a set of screeds from Thiel, who clearly hates Leo as much as he hated Francis.  So, as Buffy might put it,  survey says, LIAR.    

I would be interested to know just who made that claim to start with and if anyone at the university was in contact with Thiel and his fellow fascists.  

It’s unclear where the lectures, which will take place between March 15 and 18, are being held.

What is clear is that Catholics and Orthodox churches should be very, very careful about taking in right-wing, "ex-evangelicals" without a serious process of formation because, at the very least, they can give rise to a great deal of confusion and, at most, they are quite capable especially the billionaires and millionaires, of trying to mount a hostile takeover of it.   None of which is bound to produce anything good. 

I hope someone smuggles out recordings of what Thiel has to say,  I would expect that any Q&A wouldn't confront him about that thing which such "trads" seem to care about most these days, his sex life.  But I wouldn't count on any of that.   I wouldn't trust a "transcript" that was issued because, as can be seen above, they are liars and followers of the prince of liars.  

* Capitalist libertarianism being far more incompatible with the Gospel and Epistles than being gay, though I'm sure his fellow "christians" wouldn't see it that way.   I will say I would expect Thiel would give up gay libertarianism a lot faster than he'd give up the capitalism.  He knows that billionaires can always buy themselves liberties that governments, even theocratic ones, won't allow to the plebs.   

What About His Tattoo?

GRAHAM PLATNER has noted that when he got the tattoo in question he was young, stupid and drunk in the company of other young men (service members) who were also young, stupid and drunk and he had no idea what implications could be drawn from them.  

I have to say that most of those in Maine who have heard his explanation, as well as his decision in more sober adulthood to obliterate them are entirely OK with that explanation.   He has also noted that much of the flack from that seems to come from the corporate Democratic establishment who were so clueless and, obviously, so lacking in suitable alternatives that they had to talk the 77 year old Janet Mills into running  against him.   Don't get me wrong,  I have been thankful that Janet Mills was my governor instead of the Republican-fascist alternative, especially during Covid (her sister Dr. Dora was Maine's chief health official,  though not appointed by her sister) and in standing up to Trump.  But she has hardly been a progressive Democrat,  too much of a lawyer to be one of those, and if there is one thing that is obvious, at her age she is too old to elect as a first-time member of Congress.    Chuck Schumer drafting her TO RUN IN MAINE marks her as just another one of a series of establishment Democrats who have been selected to run for Senate and Governor only to lose to far worse Republicans.   Chuck knows about as much about Maine as he does about being an effective opposition to Trump, which is not enough to be demonstrable. 

I could give you a list of Democrats who the establishment supported but who those of us who keep track of Maine politics knew would be a diaster, James Tierney comes to mind as one who was a particularly bad choice forty years ago.   

I have followed Maine politics since the 1960s and remember them back into the 50s.   I have never seen a candidate for any office who has generated the kind of excitment that Graham Platner has.   I think his progressive populist, egalitarian, blue-collar appeal is responsible for that and it is exactly what most Democratic campaigns for higher an state-wide office have lacked.    While I can't predict what he will do if he gains the seat,  I know he'll be better than Susan Collins WHO THE DEMOCRATIC ESTABLISHMENT HAS NOT MANAGED TO DEFEAT EVEN WITH SOME GOOD CANDIDATES IN THE SAME VEIN AS JANET MILLS and I take his declaration that he has every intention to not be another Fetterman as showing he knows and disdains that kind of treason.  

I never entirely trust any politician,  having seen too many of the disappoint and a few who turned really bad but I am encouraged by Platner and those who support him.    He has my vote,  I hope he sets the pace for the beginning of the end of the Democratic establishment who have been blowing things in Maine since the 1970s,  especially the central-costal clique who have been a self-obsessed group of muddlers. 

Trump Voters Are The Approximately Over One Third Of The Country Who Are Stupid And Won't Even Learn From Hard Experience

 

I'm not making believe any more that there is any winning these white racist idiots over, WE HAVE TO CRUSH THEM, MAKE THEM UNPOPULAR, UNFASHIONABLE, WE HAVE TO MAKE BEING ONE OF THEM A STIGMA SO STRONG THOSE ON THE CUSP WILL LEARN NOT TO GO ALONG WITH THEM.   They have held far more power than their numbers for the entirety of American history, aside from the too brief period of Reconstruction, they have controlled a dangerous number of states for their entire history.   That is the terrible reality that we have to face,  there is no appealing to them, they must be defeated. 

Jim Hightower Gets It Right, Graham Platner Is Generating More Excitement Among Maine Voters Than I've Seen Since The 70s

 And Chuck Schumer is trying to put a wet blanket on it by bankrolling attacks on him.

It's time to replace Schumer, as Democratic leader and maybe as a Senator.   I wonder when the last time they had a candidate for Senate to be excited about was.  Hillary Clinton? 

More Of The White Bro Brains Forced To Display They Are As Stupid As They Are Hateful

Here's the arrogant, ignorant, likely illiterate pasty-faced white boy, Nathan Cavanaugh who teamed with the idiot Justin Fox to cancel NEH grants.  Note that challenged on his entire lack of credentials or experience, he claimed he could do that despite being an entirely inexperienced 20 something on the basis of books read and when he was asked to tell what books he'd read he said  "no books."   These white boys are so stupid they can say stupid stuff like that and not even realize how stupid they have demonstrated to the world that they are. 

Yesterday I almost claimed that Trump II was staffed by the "best and the brightest" and stopped myself and came up with "rich and the richest."   Today I'd say "worst and the whitest." 

Hate Mail

TP USA is a white supremacist, gun-violence excusing cult.  Charlie Kirk was a flaming, hate mongering racist,  his widder is a flaming, hate mongering racist amd a complete fake, phony money grubber.  Candice Owen is a total nutcase but, hey, guess what,  Charlie Kirk was the one who promoted her because she's is a Clarence Thomas level black white supremacist.  TP's alternative half-time show was a flaming racist lip-sync, everything about them is a flaming, hate mongering, white supremacist hate movement.   TP is an appropriate acronym because it's filthy with the shit it's full of. 

Charlie Kirk was more than just a racist, he was a supporter of mass gun deaths, he said:

You will never live in a society when you have an armed citizenry, and you won't have a single gun death. That is nonsense. It's drivel. But I am - I think it's worth it. I think it's worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year, so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God given rights. That is a prudent deal. It is rational.

He said that on April 5, 2023, days after a school shooting in Nashville that left three children and three adults dead, he said that after all of the school shootings that killed scores of children, he said that with full knowledge that it included the Sandy Hook shooting that murdered 20 six and seven year olds and six of their staff members,  he knew it included shootings in churches, in night clubs, in movie theaters at outdoor concerts.   

Kirk was on record as saying that all of those deaths, the six and seven year olds whose bodies were ripped apart by military guns provided to a psychopath by his gun-lovin' mother (who I expect went to hell for providing him with the guns he murdered children with) from a gun-lovin' family . . . KIRK SAID THOSE DEATHS WERE WORTH IT! 

Charlie Kirk was an evil piece of racist, sexist, LGBTQ hating shit and I expect he's having his sins burned out of him in hell.    He is no saint, he is no hero, he isn't even someone anyone should feel any ambivilance about,  he and the hate cult he started to rake in millionaire, billionaire and hateful sucker money are shear evil.   His trampy widow can join him there, as far as I'm concerned. 

Someone has to say it. 

The Reality TV Presidency That The Rich And Richest Bought Us

HEARING TRUMP'S stream of semi-consciousness before but evermoreso during his war of whim on Iran, the stream of nonsense in which he really seems to believe he can just will his history changing diaster into a victory made me wonder this morning if someone hasn't done one of those Hitler Is Told videos using the performace of Bruno Ganz as Hitler trying to will divisions of his army, either destroyed or unavailable, to fight off the advance of the Soviet Army as it was on the outskirts of Berlin, only to be told, finally,  that his dream was impossible.  Ganz's performance of Hitler forced to face reality was brilliant.   Trump's in reality when only a few reporters have hinted at reality to him, is not.  And, even told of reality,  he still claims and seems to believe that the war will end on his terms and on his timeline. 

THAT IS THE STAGE THAT AMERICA'S LIBERAL DEMOCRACY IN THE AGE OF MEDIA ADDLED AMERICA HAS ACHIEVED.    Hitler had some sane but evil and competent men around him who would, finally, tell him what was real and what was impossible,  Trump has surrounded himself with As Seen On TV idiots as big as himself or lying  Republicans such as Marco Rubio who are proving to be even more cravenly and cowardly corrupt than those who Hitler surrounded himself with.  

That it turns out that liberal democracy can, under the eutrophic elite that we have, in politics, in the law, in the media, in academia, etc.  produce such a spectacle is certainly one of the hardest lessons to be learned from the downfall of the ill-advised American empire.  Only I think most of us facing that reality will be harder than Hitlers subordinates making him face it. 

I take it as an indication that my analysis of this is at least on the right track that America's "classical liberal" liberal democracy has been constructed on destroying what I see as the last great hope of American democracy, the hard struggle to turn it from liberal democracy to egalitarian democracy, democracy based on doing to others what we would have the do to us.    THAT HAS BEEN THE MAJOR THRUST OF ALMOST ALL OF THOSE POWERS IN AMERICAN LIFE FOR THE PAST HALF A CENTURY,  the media, the law, politics and not an inconsiderable amount of academia,* as the backlash against the great struggle for racial, sexual, etc. equality that reached its peak just as Republican-fascism started to get going with the election of Nixon, started and increasingly got the upper hand.  I started noticing it by the late 1970s as the "anti-political correctness" stuff started in shock-jock radio, Andrew Dice Clay style comedy and in other venues of show business, including, of course "happy-talk news."   Though it is certain that its most potent form was in the ever ascendent "entertainment division" of the corporate and, then, "public" media was far, far more watched and consumed than anything deputed to be "news."  

I heard in listening to Lawrence O'Donnell's opening monlogue on his show last night, that he has begun to notice what I noticed and warned about decades ago, that the horrors of Trump's Iran war are seen by him, those around him and those who still believe in him in the most crude of Hollywood and game show and sports terms.  He played several videos that the Whitehouse has put out promoting Trump's Iran war, which is already a humanitarian, ecological, geo-political, economic and financial diaster (I list those in term of rising concern to Trump and his kind,  in descending order in terms of morality) as even some on his team in the Congress are beginning to admit.  

I will repeat what I said yesterday or the day before, Americans who want to have something like a decent legitimate government have to face a horrible truth that Lawrence O'Donnell hasn't yet faced,  that we have about a third or more of the citizens of the United States who are so TV and Hollywood and entertainment media addled (the kind who believed that the "Apprentics" franchise documented reality and they wanted a fascist CEO) and that they are concentrated in enough states to produce a minority-vote president, even one who, under the corrupt Constitution can become president even though he loses the vote.   After Bush II, after Trump I and, if the poll are at all to be taken seriously, EVEN NOW IN TRUMP II that third of the criminally-fascist inclined American voters seems to be a permanent feature of American life.   NO ONE WHO IS A RATIONAL PERSON OF GOOD WILL CAN MORALLY RISK THEM DETERMINING OUR GOVERNMENT EVER AGAIN.   

One of the early blog posts I wrote about this condemned what I then called the "process liberal," the kind of liberal who "only wants a level playing field" but who regularly pretend that that will mean that egalitarian democracy wins.  In current terms it is the kind of media liberal, often a lawyer who will bask in the Sorkinesque fantasy that if only things could return to some past in American political life then we could rest easy.  That is and always has been a fantasy, the kind of fantasy that is peddled by the high-brow, conventional view of American history and society.   One which can pretend that the worst of us isn't given a boost in its power by the anti-democracy features of the Constitution, worst of those the Electoral College and anti-equality constitution of the Senate, along with the enhanced power of the Senate to confirm "justices" and judges and other executive branch appointees,  judge AND ALMOST ALWAYS STOP impeachment proceedings, to act as the killing field of democratic progress, etc.   That the highest concentrations of our stupidest and cruelest are found in enough states, most with small populations though some in states such as Texas and Florida, has driven our aspiring democracy into the death of it in Trump.   

On top of that, the ever more consolidated mass media, freed to lie with impunity about, not only politicians and other public figures, but about reality itself, by a combination of the idiocy of those who wrote the First Amendment and the criminals and idiots on Supreme Courts of the past sixty years, is the engine that has driven us to catastrophe, yet again.  

O'Donnell rightly considers Trump and his goons to be stupid, they are the stupidest regime in our history and considering the stupidity of Trump I and Bush II, that is saying a mouthful.   But he is wrong in trying to use ridicule to dminish them and their thinking beause in the United States of 2026,  stupid rules as does cruelty as do do its even more dangerously potent cousins, cynicism and indifference.   That his own medium, THE MEDIA,  has been the thing that both created Trump as a public and political figue, that thwarted the person who won the 2016 vote and lost the presidency due to the corruption built into our Constitution by lying about her for decades, it is also what has created the conditions that made Trump I AND II possible, perhaps inevitable. 

And over all,  American capitalism is what has brought us here.   It bought the American imperial system that created the American empire, the American hegemony,  "The American Century, "  and it was also what contained the gradual poisons that would destroy all of that and the aspirations that American democracy might be forced to evolve into egalitarian democracy, a real democracy, a democracy with the informed, well-meaning consent of those governed under it,  in short the only really legitimate kind of goverment that is possible.   Instead, our entire past under the Constitution, in the period in which the most liberty through legalization of personal and corporate behavior in our history has been the milieu in which that history played out, has brought us to Trump II and what is either our Waterloo or the end of the world in his attack on Iran.  

In The Republican-fascist Haze Of War I Think It Would Be Irresponsible For Me To Not Speculate

I HAVEN'T YET heard anyone wonder if the shocking effectiveness of Iran's weaponry, much of it appaently had with the suspected help of Russia and China,  might not have been aided by Trump selling or trading America's most serious secrets of the kind he stole and stored at his vulgar Florida palace and New Jersey golf club.   I suspect that treason started almost immediately as he first took office in 2017 if not even earlier as he started getting confidential briefings. 

Did Trump and his crime family and gang sell or trade the information that, indirectly, may have led to Iran being able to target American, Israeli, Saudi, etc. targets with inexpensive drones?   Would anyone want to make a bet with heavy odds set against me that that question is known to be outrageous?    I'd bet a hundred bucks that I can't afford on the possibility that my speculation may prove to be right. 

The Republicans starting with the Newt Gingrich period have been on a track to be the most dangerous traitors to the country,  perhaps even more dangerous than the confederate traitors.   The billionaires and millionaires are traitors who, like Trump, care only about their wealth.  

America's Free Press Peddling Wars Of Choice Pretty Much Since The Start

 

Leon Barritt 1898

I was reminded of this famous cartoon of the two giants of the American free press fighting over which ones' tabloids sold the American People that shameful war.   Considering the two biggest disasters so far in American history have been brought to us in the past quarter of a century, and there is credible talk that this one is being considered as a nuclear war, it's time to face the horrible fact that the First Amendment could turn out to be even more dangerous than the Second one and very fast.  

There is no right to lie by a Person,  there is certainly even less of one for corporations like FOX to lie us into a Trump, into an Iran War, into a nuclear war.   Or even into financing an Israei government proving that they, in fact DO HAVE NUCLEAR WEAPONS DISPITE THEM AND THEIR SUPPORTERS LYING ABOUT THAT FOR MORE THAN HALF A CENTURY BY USING THEM AGAINST REAL HUMAN BEINGS. 

A Specimen Of The Best White Boy Brains That Elon And Trump Could Assemble To Attack DEI - You have to hear how stupid he is to believe it.

This is Justin Fox, DOGE member assigned to make the National Endowment For The Humanities remove anything that isn't white-suprmacist-male-supremacist-etc. propaganda.    Considering how they targeted grants and projects with Jewish subject matter,  you can imagine  those dealing with Black People and their history in the United States and elsewhere.   Notice that these cyber-cretins apparently couldn't read any better than this one can talk THEY HAD TO RELY ON "AI" TO DO THEIR READING FOR THEM. 

In a filing on Friday, attorneys for the plaintiffs said Fox specified that he considered Jewish grants, including those focusing on the Holocaust, part of DEI.  

“For a different grant about violence against women during the Holocaust, Fox testified that ChatGPT properly classified the grants as involving DEI, and thus slated it for termination, because it was ‘specifically focused on Jewish cultures’ (as in, it was about the Holocaust) and the ‘voices of the females in that culture,’” reads the filing.

“More generally, Fox stated that he identified as DEI any grant about a specific ‘minority group,’ meaning any particular ‘ethnicity, culture . . . race or gender or religion,’” the filing went on.

“It’s a Jewish — specifically focused on Jewish culture and amplifying the marginalized voices of the females in that culture,” Fox stated about one canceled grant for a project about “violence against women during the Holocaust,” as the latest court filing described it. Fox continued, “It’s inherently related to DEI for that reason.”

When asked in a deposition about the criteria for cancellation, the NEH’s acting chair Michael McDonald said he hadn’t known that DOGE used ChatGPT in its selection process, while also noting that he didn’t agree with the assessment that the Holocaust constituted DEI. The final authority for canceling the grants rested with DOGE, not McDonald, depositions indicated.
Fox, the suit alleges, had created his own “Detection List” of identity-based traits, with separate categories for “Craziest Grants” and “Other Bad Grants,” before running the databases through the generative AI software.

His prompt, according to the lawsuit: “Does the following relate at all to DEI? Respond factually in less than 120 characters. Begin with ‘Yes.’ or ‘No.’ followed by a brief explanation. Do not use ‘this initiative’ or ‘this description’ in your response.” The grants that turned up were all terminated, with only a few exceptions.

Many Jewish-themed projects were among the NEH cancellations, including a grant for “In the Shadow of the Holocaust: Short Fiction by Jewish Writers from the Soviet Union,” a translation project that was published in book form last month. The book was singled out during the lawsuit’s discovery phase, which noted, “ChatGPT classified this grant as DEI because ‘[t]his anthology explores Jewish writers’ engagement with the Holocaust in the USSR.’”

“I find it annoyingly amusing that they weren’t bothering to read the grants themselves — that they needed a machine to give them some sense,” Sasha Senderovich, a University of Washington professor who co-translated the volume with University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign professor Harriet Murav, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. Three-quarters of their NEH grant had already been paid out, Senderovich said. He believes the NEH’s decision to cancel his grant was an example of “authoritarian logic.”

This is taken from  from the Detroit Jewish News for which, for some reason,  I can't seem to get a URL to link to it. 

Why Should We Be Slaves To The Thinking Of The Framers?

THE OBJECTION TO me admitting the most obvious of truths,  that when it comes to what has legal and political potency, THE CONSTITUTION MEANS NOTHING EXCEPT WHAT IT IS MADE TO MEAN IN REALITY, asks us to lie and to pretend to believe transparent lies, to pretend that Hollywood and Broadway, Aaron Sorkin-Ken Burns, high school civics fantasy is reality when we must live under something entirely at horrific odds with that fictitious fairy tale..   

The Roberts Court lied when in  SNYDER v. UNITED STATES, claimed that the Constitution as it was concieved of by those who wrote the thing made blatant,  quid pro quo selling of politicians decisions and,  BY THEIR OWN, KNOWN BEHAVIOR, decisions by Supreme Court members legal so long as the payment followed the delivery of what was being bought.  

While, as something of a scholar on the real history of the slave-holders, crooked financiers and Indian murderers who wrote the Constitution, I have every faith that a lot of them would have done exactly that, themselves, NONE OF THEM WOULD HAVE BEEN SO CORRUPT AS TO PUT THAT INTO THE DOCUMENT, ITSELF.   To do so would have been for them to reproduce some of the worst aspects of the monarchy they had just thrown off and those in Europe which they certainly knew the real workings of.  

If you have read much of what I've written about this you would know that despite having studied the history of this I HOLD THERE IS NO REASON FOR US TO BE THE SLAVES OF THAT HISTORY OR THE LEGAL NECROMANCY OF THOSE PRETENDING WE OR THEY CAN DISCERN THE INTENT OF THOSE WHO WROTE THE DAMNED CONSTITUTION.   

Even if the founders and framers were as corrupt in their explicit intent as John Roberts, Amy Coney Barrett, etc. pretend to belive they are IN ORDER FOR THEM TO GET TO THE RESULT THAT THEY FAVOR, why should we be governed by that when the evil consequences for us are what those liar-lawyers in black robes claim we must live with because of their occult reading of the two-century dead minds of those corrupt slave-holders, genocidalists and crooks was?    

Even if the corrupt results that the Roberts Court gets were the consequences of well-meaning mistakes by the framers in coming up with the right words,  WE STILL ARE UNDER NO OBLIGATION TO PUT UP WITH THE CORRUPTIONS THAT ARE A RESULT OF SUCH "ERRORS."  

We, the ones who must live under the Constitution until its catastrophic consequences force us to either change it or live under those catastrophic conditions are under no intellectual, ethical or, most of all, moral obligations to put up with it.   We who live in states where there is not a reliable American-fascist majority, that is, white supremacist majority are not under any obligation to live under it because of a current inability to muster the votes in the Congress or among the often corrupt state legislatures to reform or change the damned thing.   I have said before that if it becomes obvious that it is now impossible for those of us living in less corrupt states will never have control of the federal government again, or even a good hope of that, we should break the country apart, there is nothing about the United States as an artificial entity that obligates anyone living in it to sentence their children, their great-grand-children or, as in my case, nieces and nephews, to live under the tyranny of white spremacy or, as is the case in many of the TV and social media addled in so many places, under their stupidity.  

There is nothing in the Constitution, no, not even in the Bill of Rights, that means we can not learn the hard lessons forced on us living under it, whether from Bush II or Trump I and II that there is a dangerous and politically concentrated and dangerous coalition between the media-made-stupid and the white-spremacist-haters FUELED WITH BILLIONAIRE AND MILLIONAIRE MONEY that has produce the Satyricon levels of stupid corruption that we have lived under for going on sixteen years into this quarter over century.  

If, as it is now obvious that there is somewhat over a third of the country that can force a Trump on us AND REELECT HIM DESPITE HIS DEMONSTRATED CRIMINALITY, INCOMPETENCE AND DESIRE TO SADDLE US WITH A CORRUPT MONARCH - WITH THE PERMISSION OF THE MOST CORRUPT SUPREME COURT IN OUR HISTORY* the only moral course is for the rest of us to take that as a given and face the horrible fact that much, most of what the framers based their structure of government on is not only wrong, it is fatally, dangerously wrong.   Every means of reducing the political power of the states and their voters who send dangerous criminals to the Congress, especially the Senate,  everything that leads to dangerous people like Bush II and Trump gaining the presidency EVERY MEANS OF PREVENTING THE RIGGING OF THE SUPREME COURT BY REPUBLICAN-FASCISTS AND THE MILLIONAIRES AND ILLIONAIRES THEY SERVE,  must be taken, despite what the Constitution says, either as honestly read or as corruptly distorted by entities like the Roberts Court. 

We have a moral obligation to face the terrible truth that free-speech-press absolutism AS DEFINED BY COURTS SINCE THE WARREN COURT have led us to the real life reality of what our country has become, A NATION RULED NOT BY LAWS BUT BY THE CORRUPT CRIMINALS THAT BELIEVED IN MEDIA FED LIES PRODUCES.   The Warren Court made the first and most fatal decision in that line of corruption enabling rulings in 1964, things have been going steadily down since Nixon did what he couldn't do four years before that,  win an election with media lying on his behalf.  The media, the free press as it existed then was still doing that in 1972 even as his then unprecedented criminality was becoming known.  The "justices" proved to be rather stupid about that, even though Warren, himself, as a former politician, certainly should have known better.  Lawyering and the professional habits of them lying can make even the smartest among them total idiots.  

So long as liberals and moderates and, well, I'll imagine I believe that such unicorns are real, principled conservatives buy into the nonsense that we are forever bound by whatever can be pretended the framers and founders intended we will never be safe under the Constitution.  That is the foremost lesson for the future of our present catastrophe.   We have been brought here under the rulings of the most corrupt branch of the government in American history,  the Supreme Court, through their lines of "First Amendment" and "Second Amendment" rulings.  Sullivan, Buckley v Valeo, Citizens United, Heller, and those ultimate and clearly anti-constitutional rulings, Snyder and Trump v USA.  Despite the anodyne words of the MS-Now, online-liberal lawyers,  that is the real meaning of the Constitution so long as we put up with it and the corruption that we now know is included under its framing of governance. 

* The Roberts Court is a direct result of the corrupt decision of the framers to give the almost entirely anti-democratically constituted Senate the ability, such as was made clear, under Mitch McConnel and with the connivance of Republican members of the Court, that they can pack the Court to come up with those corruptions that the Roberts Court and the Rehnquist Court before it have brought us to.  Since Bush v Gore, the Court has been as corrupt as it was since the Taney Court, and I would argue even more corrupt.  That is a direct result of the anti-democratic atrocities embedded in the Constitution and the form of government it invented.   We are under no obligation to pretend otherwise or to live with it. 

I'm Asked What I Think Of The Anti-Defamation League Saying

that bringing up the Trump regimes' use of the Israeli-Trumpzi war on Iran having a use for them to distract from the Epstein scandal,  the scandal being much enhanced by the clear cover-up, is "antisemtic."  Well, to the extent Epstein and Maxwell and Wexners' ethnicity has nothing to do with their crimes, and other than them being reported to be racist, classist, believers in the superiority of their shared ethnicity, that might be a valid complaint, though one which is about as valid as a complaint that someone noticed that IRA members tended to be Catholics or the KKK tended to be white evangelicals.  As to how you are supposed to ignore those things, I'd like an explanation. 

I would be perfectly happy to say that that trio of sex traffickers seemed to take The Law and the Prophets about as seriously as the Mafia took the Gospel and Epistles and so certainy Judaism had nothing to do with their crimes. 

I looked at the . . . well, they're calling it a study at the ADL which looks more like an hysterical screed to me.  They took the opportunity to go after a list of dissimilar groups and individuals, tarring those who are certainly not antisemites with same tar they're tarring the fascists with.  It's dragging in everything from the Nazi and Trumpzi right (you know, Israel's partner in this war) to the middle, to the left, really left and play left and a host of other things, such as those who are pointing out the utility of the war Trump and the Israeli government started to Trump's Epstein cover-up.   In the tweet that was sent my way from Oren Segal, it would seem that he considers anyone bringing up that use of the war by Trump, who has used everything up to and including acts of war - for example his Venezuela adventures- for that purpse, is an instance of "antisemitism."  What is, of course, a self-evident truth about that is that many of those who have pointed that out are as Jewish as anyone and everyone at the ADL.  

It is high on accusations and entirely lite on actual cited examples of antisemtism.   I have to wonder if they did that it would show that what they're lumping in all together is nothing like homogenous. 

As for the genuine antisemites citing THE FACT that this is a war the Israeli government has been peddling to the United States for four decades and that Trump's own Secretary of State is the one who cited the old charges of Zionists running the US government in regard to the middle-east, what the hell does anyone expect?    I don't pay attention to Fuentes, Owen, Carlson, etc. but if they want to make that accusation all they have to do is cite the facts and the claims of Marco Rubio and, at times, Trump, himself.   IS EVERYONE TO PRETEND THAT ISREAL IS NOT INVOLVED? 

I don't consider the ADL or any entity that bought into the IHRA definition of antisemitism as honest dealers because it was a transparent effort to shield criticism of Israel and Zionism and such thugs as AIPAC from the level of criticism that any country and its ideological supporters and lobbyists that is entirely legitimate,  by using what, unfortunately, through that kind of extravagant overuse and over-extension, has become an increasingly impotent accusation, antisemitism.   Which is, indeed, unfortunate because genuine antisemitism AS CAN BE SEEN IN THE EXAMPLES OF THE GENUINE THING IN THE "STUDY" ARE REAL AND A POTENT VENUE OF SPREADING HATRED.   That they, as is typical, nowadays of the universal adoption of the IHRA "definition" slander groups and individuals who are in no way haters of Jews, certainly only serves to weaken the potency of what should be an accurately and honestly used label.  But it generally isn't, these days. 

The ADL has discredited itself,  I don't trust them anymore.  I take anti-Zionist Jews entirely more seriously than I do those old standbys of a bygone era.

Update: I don't know why they asked me, maybe it's the post I did a couple of days ago about Marco Rubio's invoking of old antisemitic tropes to cover his and Trump's asses.  Odd, I don't see the ADL noticing that though it's right in line with that old Czarist forgery or the subsequent uses made of it. 

Ah, Yes, That Is Actually A Thing

 TRY GOOGLING "men who brag about not cleaning their assholes" and see what comes up.   They think wiping is too gay, or something.   

But don't feel too bad about not knowing about how puerile and putrescent they were,  the devotees of "septic masculinity," I didn't know about it till my brother recently told me about that.  He monitors the stupid fascist web a lot more than I do.   He complained to me that Trumpian surreal fascism had ruined "beforeitsnews" for him.   I couldn't stomach it to start with and I tried to avoid places where I thought I could pick up an STD from looking at the screen. 

I'll bet the intersection of the set of them and Incel-boys is nearly 100%.  

MY BROTHER CALLS THEM THE "DIRTY ASSHOLE FRAT BROS"

I DON'T KNOW IF TRUMP'S degenerat, drunk "Secretary of War,"  Kegbreath has officially announced he's one of those online real he-men who proudly announces that don't wash their anus but we have him on video from his only kept job, so far, on FOX Lies claiming he hadn't washed his hands in ten years.   It's not a stretch to think that a Trumpian he-man who would claim that wouldn't be one of the "dirty asshole bros."   You know, the kind whose younger members wonder why they can't attract Women or, those who they do attract can't get away from them fast enough. 

The most obvious thing about them is their pathological masculine fixation,  it would qualify as hilariously funny if so many of them weren't so dangerous.  

But that's a minor thing, it's now becoming clearer that after Pete Kegbreath bombed that girl's school, killing a reported 175 children and adults at that school, was an Israeli Gaza genocide style "double tap" in which after the first bomb destroys a site,  a second one is sent in to kill those who survive or are rushing to save lives.  In this case, killing many surviving children and teachers and those who went to save lives. 

The Nazi type war criminal Hegseth, and the rest of the Trump regime, among their hundreds if not thousands of crimes against humanity dismantled the Pentagon's civilian mitigation units,  those who used to be given the responsibility to try to minimize the numbers of civilians killed in bombing and missile strikes by the United States.   Apparently the As Seen On TV,  FOX Lies, piece of shit thought it was too sissy or woke to try to prevent the kinds of crimes that he is now guilty of before the entire world,  murdering school girls and their teachers and those who went to save survivors.   It is a classic war crime of the kind the United States and the allied victors against the Nazi and fascist regimes and the Japanese Imperial war machine hanged war criminals for. 

I am just about totally opposed to capital punishment, but if someday Hegseth and the rest of these criminals were hanged for their crimes against humanity,  their punishment wouldn't be at the head of my list of concerns.  

Oh, and, by the way, now that they're admitting to what that department is, again,  I have no problem with it being called what it is,  the Department of War with the head of it being the Secretary of War.  America's military hasn't done much in the way of defense since the name change was made, it's mostly attacked other places, often siding with the most homicidal of murdering, enslaving dictators on behalf of American corporations and oligarchs,  exactly what this war is all about.   

And while we're at it

 # SendKaiToo

Little Donnies daughter Kai Trump has a Youtube channel where she does videos like "I Brought My Secret Service To Erewhon" where she, I guess, has her Secret Service protection videoing her buying stuff in "the most expensive grocery store in Los Angeles" to take home and try out for the camera.   Keith Edwards asks if they're trying to bring on a French Revolution style Revoloution.  

She also has herself doing video selfies in front of fighter jets and in other places an elite brat like her can go and other such content.  

Kai Trump is 18, the age of many of those who Trump is planning on sending to die in his Iran war.   Whose death he says is blithly is just something that happens in war.   The other day an American journalist, addressing Trump floating the idea of sending in "boots on the ground" in his war of whim (His lying skank Leavitt based it on his "feeling" so that's what I'm going with) pointed out that with Kai grandfather's grandfather coming to America to dodge the draft in Bavaria to become a pimp in the old west, the foundation of the Trump fortune.   He would seem to also be the source of the Trump family's typical avoidence of serving in the military that Trump considers cannon fodder in wars he wants but doesn't want to fight for himself.  And who he has called "losers" and "suckers."  

Why does this clueless rich bitch have Secret Service protection and does she have them acting as videographers for her Youtubes?   

Send the Trump spawn, Trump.  Send the spawn of those in his regime of that age.   It's reported Trump might be considering a draft if this goes on.  I hope he does, it would sink the goddamned Republicans, especially among Republicans.  NO DEFERMENTS, THIS TIME.  None.  As we can see from Trump's draft dodging,  the rich can buy a doctor to lie for them to keep them out.  Let the military decide who is medically unfit for service once they're there.  Though I'm sure Trump would order them to exclude his spawn and that of the rich.  

We have got to get rid of the goddamned presidential system, it has reached its most typical corrupt form in Trump. 

Seen Online

 A Man, No Plan, Iran