trump Twitter in Twilight

Things have been hectic since Wednesday, when our government almost fell to a seditious riot by trumpian Brownshirts, but one major development since then has been Twitter - the social media app trump used the most to stir up rage and madness the last five years - finally banning trump for his ongoing hate-filled rhetoric. 

They first suspended his account for 12 hours because of a Tweet he posted post-riot that called for more "protests" (hint hint, more violence), with the promise he could get back online once he removed the offending Tweet. So he deleted it, and he got back on...

And pretty much posted a more rage-filled Tweet that proved he didn't learn his lesson to behave by Twitter User Agreement policy.

After all that drama, Twitter suspended his account permanently (they may recover it later, after January 20, because of national archival reasons) and then had to give a public statement to why they had to do this:

After close review of recent Tweets from the @realDonaldTrump account and the context around them — specifically how they are being received and interpreted on and off Twitter — we have permanently suspended the account due to the risk of further incitement of violence. 

In the context of horrific events this week, we made it clear on Wednesday that additional violations of the Twitter Rules would potentially result in this very course of action. Our public interest framework exists to enable the public to hear from elected officials and world leaders directly. It is built on a principle that the people have a right to hold power to account in the open. 

However, we made it clear going back years that these accounts are not above our rules entirely and cannot use Twitter to incite violence, among other things. We will continue to be transparent around our policies and their enforcement...

I've gotten in a few debates about Free Speech before, regarding how Hate Speech was - and still is - a serious violation of what Free Speech stands for. We have to remember the First Amendment is NOT an absolute right. For example, shouting "FIRE" in a crowded theater to cause a panic will get you arrested. Threating to kill someone will get you arrested for harassment/verbal assault. Standing before a mob encouraging them to go storming into a government building to disrupt an election count should get you arrested for incitement to riot.

This is all trump's public speeches have been, ever since he rolled down that escalator in 2015 and launched his campaign on a diatribe against Mexicans and the Chinese. trump has been crossing the line of decency on social media for years, throughout every call to Twitter's ownership and internal security that trump was violating their code nearly every day.

It had to take an actual coup attempt with people wounded and killed in the Capitol building for Twitter (and Facebook) to realize they couldn't pander to trump's hate anymore.

What is happening now with shutting down trump's main pipeline to his rabid fanbase are arguments from trump's still-pandering Republican allies whining about how Twitter's shutdown is a threat to Free Speech. No, it is not.

This is about Hate Speech. This is about speech designed to enrage others and drive them to madness and violence. We've watched that Hate Speech roll out and infest our national psyche. We've just seen the results of all that Hate: Our nation's Capitol raided and vandalized, rioters and now a police officer dead from the violence, our global prestige degraded by trump's words (and the deeds he's driven others to commit in his "honor").

Words have power. It's one of the few things trump - the eternal lying bullshitter, the constantly grifting con artist - understands all too well. It's a power he's used to drive this nation apart.

And while trump's been cut off from his Twitter feed, he will find a way to keep lashing out at the fate that awaits him on January 20, 2021.

Gods help us, how far into madness and the void trump's Hate will drive us.

Posse Incompetence

Over at Balloon Juice, Adam L. Silverman - who does a lot of professional review of military/foreign intelligence and has been aware of trump as a national security threat for some time - sent up a red flare about the bigger red flare just sent up by 10 former Defense Department senior officials (including former Secs of Defense):  

There is no way this letter is put together and then pushed for publication unless someone senior, most likely either senior uniformed personnel (general officers/flag officers) and/or senior executive service personnel at the Department of Defense or one of the Services unless someone got a message out to one or more of their former bosses...

Silverman then quotes the letter (viewed directly through the WaPo link if you can afford to pay the firewall):

As former secretaries of defense, we hold a common view of the solemn obligations of the U.S. armed forces and the Defense Department. Each of us swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. We did not swear it to an individual or a party.

American elections and the peaceful transfers of power that result are hallmarks of our democracy. With one singular and tragic exception that cost the lives of more Americans than all of our other wars combined, the United States has had an unbroken record of such transitions since 1789, including in times of partisan strife, war, epidemics and economic depression. This year should be no exception.

Our elections have occurred. Recounts and audits have been conducted. Appropriate challenges have been addressed by the courts. Governors have certified the results. And the electoral college has voted. The time for questioning the results has passed; the time for the formal counting of the electoral college votes, as prescribed in the Constitution and statute, has arrived.

As senior Defense Department leaders have noted, “there’s no role for the U.S. military in determining the outcome of a U.S. election.” Efforts to involve the U.S. armed forces in resolving election disputes would take us into dangerous, unlawful and unconstitutional territory. Civilian and military officials who direct or carry out such measures would be accountable, including potentially facing criminal penalties, for the grave consequences of their actions on our republic...

This is essentially a reminder to the military at large, from the top brass down to the grunts working KP duty - that any attempt by trump to call the armed forces to him and enforce martial law is a big damn HELL NO.

Thing is there is a matter of protocol - tradition, Good Faith as it were - that the military leadership made up of general and admirals cannot publicly criticize the civilian leadership (the Presidency) they answer to. The Joint Chiefs, the ones who work directly with the White House, could arguably go as one onto the major cable networks - even Fox - to make a shared statement aimed against trump's attempts to overturn a legal election. However, that would destroy any future controls a civilian government could hold over our military, which is necessary to keep the United States the democracy it's supposed to be. It would, in some respects even with good intent, come across as a coup against the current government (trump is still in office until January 20), and it would disrupt any authority any future administration - even Biden's - would need to regain the control and trust of our nation's first, second, third, fourth, AND fifth lines of defense (screw the sixth line, Space Force is just an empty office selling marketing merch).

In my lifetime, in the awareness I've had of previous transitions between Presidents and parties - Carter to Reagan, Bush the Elder to Clinton, Clinton to Bush the Lesser, Bush II to Obama, even Obama to trump - I have never seen or read anything from former officials of such key office like the Secretaries of Defense make such a direct plea to the military as a whole about "respecting the electoral process" and avoiding "election disputes (that) would take us into dangerous, unlawful and unconstitutional territory."

But something has to be going on behind the scenes for such a letter to go public. The generals and Joint Chiefs may not be able to go public about their concerns, but they can talk in private to their retired colleagues and bosses, and those guys - like Dick "Go Fuck Yourself" Cheney, for God's sake, even HE co-signed this letter - could then go public with these concerns to let someone (cough trump cough) know that illegal use of military power will be resisted.

If trump's been desperately calling state governors to try and nullify the election results, he sure as hell been trying to call the generals and admirals to see about using martial law to suspend everything so trump can stay in power.

January 6 is going to be a chaotic day.

This trumpian Winter of Discontent

(Update: Thanks again to Batocchio for sharing this blog on Crooks&Liars' Mike's Blog Round-Up! Io Saturnalia to you all, and stay safe for 2021!)

In this past week or so - after the Electoral College performed its duty and officially confirmed Joe Biden as our next President and Kamala Harris our next Vice President this January 2021 - I felt the need to apologize in some way. I was looking back at all the things I'd been blogging since before Election Day, taking note of all the times I was raising alarm at some of the more unsettling and violent things donald trump and his fervent Far Right voting base were plotting to do. 

I looked at some of the stuff I was posting and I'd come to a shameful understanding that I seemed to be fearmongering much in the way the wingnuts had been fearmongering about Dems and Progressives. I'd kept posting stuff like "Oh SHIT they're arming and marching stay alert America" at every trumpian outburst, and it didn't look good. I mean, fear is a rational response to an irrational situation, but I might have been overdoing it.

And then THIS SHIT happens - like an ex-cop on a wingnut payroll kidnapping a repairman and his truck in a desperate attempt to prove thousands of ballots had been "stolen" - and I retract my apology, because CHRIST ALMIGHTY it's getting crazier out there. Here's the statement from the Harris County DA office:

According to a court document describing probable cause for the charge, Aguirre told police shortly after the Oct. 19 incident, that he was part of a group of private citizens called, “Liberty Center,” who were conducting a civilian investigation into the alleged ballot scheme.

According to Aguirre, he had been conducting surveillance on the victim for four days under a theory the victim was the mastermind of a giant fraud, and there were 750,000 fraudulent ballots in a truck he was driving. Instead, the victim turned out to be an innocent and ordinary air conditioner repairman.

Aguirre ran his SUV into the back of the truck to get the technician to stop and get out, according to the document. When the technician got out of the truck, Aguirre, pointed a handgun at the technician, forced him to the ground and put his knee on the man’s back – an image captured on the body-worn camera of a police officer.

Aguirre directed police to a parking lot nearby where another suspect, who has not been identified, took the truck. There were no ballots in the truck. It was filled with air conditioning parts and tools.

Aguirre never told police that he had been paid a total of $266,400 by the Houston-based Liberty Center for God and Country, with $211,400 of that amount being deposited into his account the day after the incident...

It's that last paragraph where I think the media is burying the lede. Aguirre was on a payroll for this obscure but obviously well-funded organization focused on proving voter fraud that no one has been able to prove. This ex-cop was getting paid a handsome sum - few people are paid six-figure wages like that! - to prove a lie. Results were expected for that kind of money, you'd think. There's a saying from Upton Sinclair: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” There should be a related saying to that: "When a man is getting paid to prove a lie, expect that man to commit crimes to make that lie come true."

There are hundreds of political operatives and consultants - there is an army of trump lawyers charging back and forth across every courthouse - trying to force trump's lie of a "stolen election" to come true. There's millions of dollars floating out there paying every single one of them to subvert any morality and commit any sin, just to gain a foothold somewhere to keep trump happy.

But the courtrooms - despite all the partisan hackery that trump and Mitch have pushed through the Senate to fill those benches - are crucibles, in them we burn away irrelevancies until we are left with a pure product: The Truth, for all time. (Yes I am quoting Picard, actually the screenwriter is Melinda Snodgrass). trump's lies about voter fraud can find no safe haven in the legal system, and so any legitimate excuse for trump to seize and remain in power cannot exist.

It doesn't mean trump won't stop trying. Which is why this past Friday when word got out about trump plotting with some of his crazier allies about seizing the ballot machines and declaring martial law, it should have activated every DEFCON-1 warning among Americans that shit is getting real:

SCOOP - Sidney Powell was in Oval Office last night as POTUS discussed making her special counsel for election fraud. @KannoYoungs and me https://t.co/wUB8ZMrPxp

— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) December 19, 2020

If we can go to Jonathan Chait at New York Magazine for more details:

At the White House on Friday, President Trump held what may have been his most deranged meeting yet. In it, the president raged at his loyalists for betraying him, and discussed taking extralegal measures to overturn the election.

The meeting, first reported by the New York Times, included lawyer and conspiracy theorist Sidney Powell, convicted felon Michael Flynn, and Rudy Giuliani. One plan floated at the meeting was for Trump to appoint Powell as a “special counsel” overseeing allegations of voter fraud. Powell’s voter fraud claims are so fantastical she has been mocked even by other far-right legal conspiracy theorists. Andrew McCarthy, a former birther and author of one book titled How Obama Embraces Islam’s Sharia Agenda and another calling for his impeachment on multiple counts, has described Powell’s vote-fraud claims as “loopy.”

Trump also reportedly brought up Flynn’s proposal, which he has expounded on cable news, to impose martial law and direct the military to hold a new election. “At one point in the meeting on Friday, Mr. Trump asked about that idea,” reports the Times...

There is no reason to believe Trump commands the power to actually implement any of these wild ideas. Trump’s best chance to steal the election was to have the decisive voting margin in the Electoral College determined by the counting of mail-in ballots that were mailed before, but arrived after Election Day. This would have let him either persuade the Republican-controlled Supreme Court to invalidate those decisive ballots, or Republican-controlled state legislators to disregard their state’s voting results and appoint pro-Trump electors to represent their state...

They tried to force "competing Electors" last week in publicly-staged counter-votes during the Electoral College's actual count, as though these fake results could be presented in Congress to force a negation of the real thing. Problem is, there's no guarantee that Congress will overturn the voters and put trump back in office. At best it would still evict trump and Pence from office on January 20 and make Pelosi (as Speaker) promoted to the Presidency due to the succession rules of the 25th Amendment.

None of this is stopping trump or the Republicans from arguing that Biden is an "illegitimate" winner, although by all measures - legal voting results, no evidence of mass fraud, a verified Electoral College - Biden is indeed our President-Elect set to swear into office exactly one month from now.

None of this is going to stop trump and his cohorts - his rabid fanbase, the wingnuts paying themselves to perpetuate their own lies, the greedy and corrupt - from pursuing even more outlandish and likely violent reactions to the basic norms of political reality. The legal filings are going to get worse and the Freudian slips marginally funnier ("Plenty of perjury"? Don't they have these legal forms on a bloody template by now? Where's the damn Spell-Check on WordPerfect?!)

 

I am not apologizing one bit for fearmongering about trump's efforts to start up his coup and break the Constitution.

I am not going to relax until January 20th rolls around and the Secret Service drags him out of the White House by his feet.

Anything can happen in the next 30 days. Stay alert and stay safe. AND GODDAMMIT WEAR THE DAMN MASKS, COVID IS GETTING WORSE. /muttergrumble

 

So I Own a Copy of the Repo Man Soundtrack, I Play the Coup D'Etat Song A Lot

The government gets overthrown/
A sudden force, a major blow/
Over out, the new comes in

Coup d'état/
Give me a bomb/
A molotov/
It's a coup d'état!
- "Coup D'Etat," The Circle Jerks

Okay, technically what trump is trying to do with all of these lawsuits, all these attempts to nullify millions of votes in only the battleground states he lost, it's what's called an "autogolpe" for a self-coup when the current leader in power tries to overthrow the rest of government from within. But everyone understands what a coup d'etat is, so it's easier to call it a coup attempt.

Okay, not to scare anybody but Monday December 14 is when the Electoral College officially gathers to cast their votes to officially choose the next President of the United States starting January 2021. Once that happens, trump can whine all he wants about "fake voters" and "stolen election" but Biden becomes President. The only thing stopping that from happening is if enough of the 306 Electoral pledged to Biden turns Faithless, and votes for trump to get him past the 270 votes needed. There's still a chance - Gods help us - there's Electors who would turn against their own candidate of their own free will (so watch out for bribes, and YES "Saturday Night Live" did a skit of that back in 2016 about stopping trump), however most states have rules in effect to discourage that sort of flipping.

Okay, I did say "The only thing stopping that from happening," what I meant to say was "The only LEGAL thing stopping that from happening." We're talking about trump here, we're talking about a Republican Party abetting his attempts to break the democratic process of elections. We are facing the possibility that trump will try something ILLEGAL to avoid the official counting of his greatest loss.

Okay, there's good news that the Supreme Court tossed out Texas' blatantly unconstitutional attempt to nullify votes cast in other states, something the court decision noted "Texas had no legal standing" to do, with every Justice saying a big NO including the three Far Right Justices trump put on that bench (even with Alito and Thomas kind of saying they would have allowed the hearing because they ALWAYS want to hear a case conflict between states for the sake of posterity, but even then those two sided with the others noting Texas had no standing anyway). That pretty much means trump has no legal recourse left to nullify 81 million votes and steal a second term for himself.

Okay, I still point out "no legal recourse" for trump, because there's still an illegal recourse left to him.

Okay, I'm talking straight-up coup d'etat.

Calling up the National Guard to seize control of major cities, getting his Proud Boy Neo-Nazi Klansmen militias to set fire to the streets, anything like that.

Something he could do Monday morning is go to the cameras, announce that he has "absolute proof of massive voter fraud," and even without showing one whit of that proof proclaim a national emergency to prevent the College from gathering at all. He could then arrest the Electors, and/or the Democratic leadership from Biden and Harris on down to Pelosi and Schumer and some of the Governors he doesn't like (especially Whitmer in Michigan), trump might even try to arrest the Republican Governors like Georgia's Kemp who refused to break their own state laws to steal the election for trump.

Okay, if trump tries ANY of that, it's going to be probably the most chaotic Monday since (checks notes) December 17 1860 when South Carolina's secession conference voted unanimously to quit the Union.

Okay, tomorrow is going to be a pretty stressful day.

trump's Public Coup

trump is not winning at the polls.

trump is not going to win the Popular Vote.

trump is looking at the reality that he won't win enough states to trick the Electoral College.

trump is going to cheat.

And he's not even hiding it anymore.

From Barton Gellman at the Atlantic, with a serious look at how far trump is willing to go to destroy our voting rights:

If we are lucky, this fraught and dysfunctional election cycle will reach a conventional stopping point in time to meet crucial deadlines in December and January. The contest will be decided with sufficient authority that the losing candidate will be forced to yield. Collectively we will have made our choice—a messy one, no doubt, but clear enough to arm the president-elect with a mandate to govern.

As a nation, we have never failed to clear that bar. But in this election year of plague and recession and catastrophized politics, the mechanisms of decision are at meaningful risk of breaking down. Close students of election law and procedure are warning that conditions are ripe for a constitutional crisis that would leave the nation without an authoritative result. We have no fail-safe against that calamity. Thus the blinking red lights...

The worst case, however, is not that Trump rejects the election outcome. The worst case is that he uses his power to prevent a decisive outcome against him. If Trump sheds all restraint, and if his Republican allies play the parts he assigns them, he could obstruct the emergence of a legally unambiguous victory for Biden in the Electoral College and then in Congress. He could prevent the formation of consensus about whether there is any outcome at all. He could seize on that un­certainty to hold on to power.

Trump’s state and national legal teams are already laying the groundwork for postelection maneuvers that would circumvent the results of the vote count in battleground states. Ambiguities in the Constitution and logic bombs in the Electoral Count Act make it possible to extend the dispute all the way to Inauguration Day, which would bring the nation to a precipice...

Let us not hedge about one thing. Donald Trump may win or lose, but he will never concede. Not under any circumstance. Not during the Interregnum and not afterward. If compelled in the end to vacate his office, Trump will insist from exile, as long as he draws breath, that the contest was rigged.

Trump’s invincible commitment to this stance will be the most important fact about the coming Interregnum. It will deform the proceedings from beginning to end. We have not experienced anything like it before...

Trump’s behavior and declared intent leave no room to suppose that he will accept the public’s verdict if the vote is going against him. He lies prodigiously—to manipulate events, to secure advantage, to dodge accountability, and to ward off injury to his pride. An election produces the perfect distillate of all those motives...

All of which is to say that there is no version of the Interregnum in which Trump congratulates Biden on his victory. He has told us so. “The only way they can take this election away from us is if this is a rigged election,” Trump said at the Republican National Convention on August 24. Unless he wins a bona fide victory in the Electoral College, Trump’s refusal to concede—his mere denial of defeat—will have cascading effects...

trump has already set the groundwork, laid the accusations of mass voter fraud that won't even stand up in court... and we have to contend with the possibility that a Republican-tilted Judiciary - packed the last four years by an eager McConnell - will twist the known law to fit trump's desires.

Just this afternoon, trump refused to answer any question about conceding the election if he loses to Biden this November (via Alana Wise at NPR):

President Trump on Wednesday suggested that he might not accept the election results if he is not declared the winner in November.

"We're going to have to see what happens. You know that. I've been complaining very strongly about the ballots. And the ballots are a disaster," Trump said, alluding to his unsubstantiated arguments about widespread mail-in ballot fraud.

"Get rid of the ballots and you'll have a very peaceful — there won't be a transfer, frankly, there'll be a continuation. The ballots are out of control. You know it. And you know who knows it better than anybody else? The Democrats know it better than anybody else."

trump is accusing the Democratic Party of cheating while he himself is preparing to send 50,000 paid "observers" nationwide to precincts in a likely attempt to intimidate minority voters into turning away from casting their ballots.

trump is openly refusing to play by the rules of our elective system. he's going to try to intimidate the voters into not voting in person, and then he's going to demand that the mail-in ballots for Democrats get tossed as "fakes". And even if trump loses to Biden by five points in the Popular, and even with Biden securing 332 Electoral College votes (basing this on the 2012 Obama results, which the current polling suggests is going for Biden as well, plus Arizona and maybe North Carolina), trump will lie about the results and convince the GOP-held state legislatures and district courts into denying Biden the win.

he's not hiding this anymore. This is no October Surprise getting unleashed. This is trump, exposed and revealed as the bullying con artist he's always been.

Except this time he's sitting in control of the Executive branches of the federal government - especially in control of Barr's corrupted Justice Dept. - willing and eager to bully and con his way through the 2020 results.

America, we dare not let him.

For the LOVE OF GOD, vote. If there's early voting in your state, do it now. If you're balloting by mail, use your county Elections' office drop-off box if you think the mail system is broken. If you have to vote in your precinct, go. Risk the coronavirus, and face the Republican-bought enforcers already threatening to hassle voters on Election Day.

Your vote is YOUR voice and YOUR power. Use it, spite trump's attempt to steal it away. Make the results so lopsided in Biden's and the Democrats favor that no amount of trumpian lies will hide his doom.

This is trump's War on our power. This is the Republicans' War on America, finally with battle lines drawn.

We must win, America, against trump's threat to steal our nation away.

Crooks Or Cowards? In the Age of trump for Republicans It Is Both

There was a bombshell today when the New York Times - still the "official paper" of record despite their many sins against journalism - issued an Op-Ed written by "A Senior Official within trump's White House," arguably someone within the inner circle (or on the Orient Express train during a snowstorm, if you want the list of suspects figured out) venting about the damage control the "sane" Republicans have had to do since Day One of the Shitgibbon Era.

To refer to the sanity patrol like Cheryl Rofer over at Balloon-Juice:

While I take a measure of relief that we now appear to be closer to the beginning of the end than to the end of the beginning, I have some big concerns about that New York Times op-ed by “a senior administration official.”

My concerns are very much like David Frum’s...

But the author is trying to preserve his/her reputation: I am being a good Republican, helping to execute good Republican policies. I am keeping the country safe from a dangerous president.

That’s a lot of responsibility to take on. The president is elected; the author has been appointed by that president and tells us that he is undermining that president. In the telling, the president is further undermined.

What did the author expect to be the next step? Donald Trump is reported to have freaked out over the Woodward revelations and have started searching for the leakers. This will turbocharge that search. James Jesus Angleton became convinced that there was a Russian mole in the CIA and practically destroyed the agency. Can the author of the op-ed protect us from a storm a couple of categories stronger..?

I'm with Cheryl on this regarding the Cover-Your-Ass aspect of this article: The person writing it is not doing so out of concern for the nation's well-being, it's a signal to other Republicans that there are people in trump's White House making sure the madman doesn't go on a Nuke Tirade. This isn't serving the Republic: This is protecting the Republicans.

While the Handlers in the West Wing keep trump under control (barely), the Republicans in Congress can happily continue their own agendas of tax cuts, filling judicial seats with arch-conservatives who can serve for another 30-40 years, and suppressing voters rights to ensure gerrymandered control of the House for another decade. Neither the House nor the Senate ever have to fear facing the political consequences of doing SOMETHING to investigate trump with their oversight powers.

This is where the cowardice of the Republicans hiding in the shadows become criminal. The Republicans indulge as crooks with unearned and unjustified political power they do not deserve to wield. Like all crooks, they're taking for themselves and leaving the suckers (U.S. voters) in the dust.

And in this cowardice they are committing the greatest crime of all: violating their Oaths of Office to serve the public trust and save us from unfit leaders.

Referring to Frum's article in The Atlantic:

If the president’s closest advisers believe that he is morally and intellectually unfit for his high office, they have a duty to do their utmost to remove him from it, by the lawful means at hand. That duty may be risky to their careers in government or afterward. But on their first day at work, they swore an oath to defend the Constitution—and there were no “riskiness” exemptions in the text of that oath.

But what the author has just done is throw the government of the United States into even more dangerous turmoil. He or she has enflamed the paranoia of the president and empowered the president’s willfulness.

What happens the next time a staffer seeks to dissuade the president from, say, purging the Justice Department to shut down the Mueller investigation? The author of the Times op-ed has explicitly told the president that those who offer such advice do not have the president’s best interests at heart, and are, in fact, actively subverting his best interests as he understands them on behalf of ideas of their own.

He’ll grow more defiant, more reckless, more anti-constitutional, and more dangerous...

There is an honest debate right now if that was the writer's intent: Force trump into a rash action, create a crisis beyond anyone's control...

What would be better?

Speak in your own name. Resign in a way that will count. Present the evidence that will justify an invocation of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment, or an impeachment, or at the very least, the first necessary step toward either outcome, a Democratic Congress after the November elections...

Until a Republican leader - one with genuine gravitas and political power that can withstand the ruthless attacks of the trump voter base that is bound to hit him - steps up like that and FINALLY calls out not just trump but every GODDAMN ENABLER responsible for the disaster we are now in, this is not going to help.

For all the times I dreaded a full meltdown and never really got one, I think this time... this is it.

GODS HELP US.

Why Turkey Changed It I Can't Say... (w/ Update)

(see Update below):

Oh man, this is crazy beyond crazy:

For the Sixth Time in Its Modern History the Turkish Military Has Seized Control.

OH SHHHHHHHIIIIIIIIIII---

Istanbul had just suffered a serious terror attack a few weeks ago when their airport was shot up. I don't know if the situation around that, along with the ongoing fighting against ISIL and fractuous dealings with the Russian military, had pushed the military to turn against Edrogan.

From The Atlantic:

The Turkish military says it is taking over Turkey in order to restore democracy. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who was on vacation, said those who attempted the coup would face the “highest price.”

The situation is so fluid at the moment that posting anything more than this - that Erdogan called on the mosques to rise up and the military called for a curfew - would be foolish. Your best bet is to click on those two links and keep up with the official news channels.

As for my two cents:

Never a huge fan of coups. Uprising by the populace, I'm mostly in favor of that because it's the people who are having their say. Military coups have a nasty habit of killing too many innocent people. Unfortunately, in some situations where the political situation has logjammed, a coup could be the only sane response by people in those straits. Could, not always...

This is tricky, and messy, and you don't ever want to encourage this sort of thing.

The key to this is Erdogan. He's been an autocrat in power: Pushing out rivals at an alarming rate, violating various civil liberties, and establishing a more theocratic government that was at odds with a secularized military.

Back to that Atlantic article:

Erdogan served as mayor of Istanbul in the 1990s as part of an Islamist party, but was barred from politics and imprisoned in 1998, a victim of the periodic crackdowns on religious parties that have characterized the Turkish state since its founding. He returned to politics with the AKP, or Freedom and Justice Party, a more moderate party that melded Islamism with modernizing impulses. Erdogan became prime minister in 2003. The rise of the AKP initially fed speculation that the military, a staunchly secular institution loyal to the precepts of the founder of modern Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, might launch a coup, as it had done many times in the past.

But Erdogan managed to strike a middle path, drawing in some liberals who applauded his modernizing steps, as well as more conservative and religious voters. He kept the military at bay, in some cases prosecuting generals for alleged coups. His “Turkish model” was highly lauded abroad, with Western leaders and analysts hoping it might represent a successful fusion of Islamist politics with liberal democratic principles—a fusion that came to be seen as ever more necessary as Islamism became entrenched across the Middle East. President Obama in particular grew close to Erdogan, holding up him as a model.

But Erdogan’s liberalism only went so far. As his tenure lengthened, he broke with the enigmatic religious leader Fethullah Gülen, a longstanding ally who is now exiled in Pennsylvania. It soon became apparent that his goal was not a liberal democracy but a sort of revival of Ottomanism. Erdogan grew increasingly autocratic, cracking down on the media and drawing power to himself, working to transform the Turkish presidency—traditionally a relatively weak position, compared to the prime ministership—into a strong one. He became president in 2014, but the civil war in neighboring Syria and increasing tensions with Kurds encouraged him to grab even more power. By earlier this year, reporters were referring to Erdogan as being “on a march to dictatorship.” Even if Erdogan is able to survive the coup and reassert control, the Turkish model is dead—and so are any hopes that Erdogan might be a liberalizer or a democrat.

If Erdogan wins this fight, it's more than likely he will crack down even further: a guy on the path to dictatorship rarely backs up and lessens his need for control. If the military coup wins, there's every likelihood they won't relinquish control until they've stabilized their own issues regarding the Syrian Civil War, ISIL, and Kurdish separatism (which will be particularly messy as the Kurds in Iraq are one of the U.S.'s staunchest battlefield allies versus the very dangerous ISIL).

Just one more Gordian Knot re-tying itself back into an unbreakable mess again.

I really really don't like this year 2016 right now.

Update (7/16): The coup failed within hours of the attempt, although there's still reports of resistance and there's still people missing. The death toll is in the hundreds - 161 so far, with thousands wounded - and the cleanup process will likely reveal more casualties.

This coup and the aftermath will have adverse effects on the war effort against ISIL, the ongoing Syrian civil war and refugee crisis, and Turkey's relationships with NATO and their attempt to join the EU.

For myself, I'm still conflicted over this. As I said above, Erdogan was already turning himself into a dictator, and he's going to be in the mood to assume even more control and punish far more people than he needs to... which basically ensures there'll be another attempt because people who know it's possible will inevitably push back.

That Guardian update is already reporting Erdogan has dismissed nearly every judge in Turkey. There's no evidence the judicial system was involved in the coup - all the news reports has only a faction of the military committing it - yet Erdogan is striking out at any group in an attempt to establish who's loyal or disloyal no matter what. There are news reports Erdogan was pushing to dismantle an independent judiciary back in June, so this move stinks of autocratic power-grab.

Losing Egypt

I wrote earlier this year during the early stages of the Morsi ouster that no one - not the U.S., not NATO, not the Middle East, not the Egyptian general, not the Egyptian politicians, not the Muslim Brotherhood, not the Egyptian people - was "winning" Egypt.  Winning in terms of Egypt becoming a stable, self-sustaining republic/democracy.

Yesterday, sh-t got worse:

Egypt's military-installed government crossed a Rubicon on Wednesday by sending in the security forces to clear the camps of demonstrators demanding the reinstatement of President Mohamed Morsi. Within hours, the contours of the landscape the country had entered became brutally clear: 235 confirmed deaths and the possibility of many more; running battles breaking out in cities around the country; a state of emergency; night-time curfews imposed on 10 provinces. The bloodshed caused by interior ministry troops opening fire with shotguns, machine guns and rooftop snipers on largely peaceful sit-ins took its first major political casualty on Wednesday evening. The leading liberal who had supported the military coup, Mohamed ElBaradei, resigned as acting vice-president. The streets around Rabaah al-Adawiya became Egypt's Tienanmen Square.

The Rubicon being crossed is clear: before Wednesday, there had been the possibility, however faint, that cooler counsel would prevail in the Egyptian military mind – that, with the release of Muslim Brotherhood leaders arrested on phony charges, a way could be found to announce a national unity government pending fresh parliamentary and presidential elections. Formidable obstacles remained, not least the undoubted unpopularity of Mr Morsi's rule among a large section of the population and his non-negotiable demand to put the constitutional clock back to the eve of the coup that toppled him. The prospect of an early reconciliation between the two camps has now disappeared...

Egypt is now coping with a full-on coup, with the generals on their own.  They own this, including the damn bloodshed.  And they're now losing Egypt: they may hold on through brute force, but that is all they will have, fear bordering on hatred.  And you can't rule a people that hate you.

And the United States and the Western powers are going to be losing this too, real quick, if they don't go public to denounce the violence and above all cut off military aid to Egypt.  If we don't, we'll be back to the days of the Cold War when the U.S. owned every conservative military coup across South America, Africa and the Middle East, and was (still are) hated for it decades later.  All the anti-American hyperbole floating out there?  That's our payment due for all the sh-t we allowed in Iran (1953) Chile (1973), Guatemala (1954), Vietnam, Panama...

We own the Egyptian generals.  The Egyptian generals own this current (and ongoing) massacre.  We're losing Egypt.  We're losing the Middle East.  We ought to be looking at taking care of, you know, the ACTUAL PEOPLE in these Middle Eastern countries struggling for open societies rather than playing with puppets wielding guns...

Nobody's Winning Egypt

It's pretty harsh to say it, but so far this has been a no-win scenario for all parties concerned.

For Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood party, it's a clear loss because he's been kicked out of office.  There were valid reasons for it: there were no check/balance mechanisms in place to make Morsi more responsive to the needs of the people; Morsi had done nothing to clean up the corruption that existed under Mubarak and in fact it was getting worse; the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) may have been better organized than any other coalition in the nation, but they simply weren't designed to make decisions and compromises that high office requires.  And consider the origins of the MB as a radical, occasionally violent opposition: by ousting them like this, they won't see any incentive in taking democracy seriously as a means to power.  They may well fall back into their old bad (and violent) habits, as demonstrated by the outbreak of violence between the pro-Morsi forces and the protesters last night.

The Army may look like the winners (again), but in truth this coup has hurt their position as well.  Rather than being unbiased players in the game, they've re-inserted themselves into the democratic process in a way that weakens said democratic process.

The foreign policy wonks pushing for democracy aren't happy: while Morsi was a terrible President he was democratically elected.  This coup discredits the validity of elected leadership across the Middle East, especially at a time when nations shrugging off decades of dictatorship - Algeria, Libya, Iraq - are struggling to forge new governments.  Tossing him out in a coup merely sets up the possibility of any future Egyptian President getting tossed out even if said President is actually doing his job.

The people protesting in the streets may have gained their primary objective - ousting Morsi - but there's no guarantee his replacement will fare any better.  Egypt's economy is in the tank alongside half the planet thanks to this global recession: tourism is also suffering, and being an unstable nation two steps away from open rioting doesn't market well at the AAA travel agency.  The corruption hurting Egypt's ability to provide even basic services like trash pick-up is deep rot: it will take years to flush it out even for a principled reformist.  The protesters may just be back out in the streets within another year.

The more liberal and moderate parties in Egypt may benefit from this, but there was a good reason why the MB won elections: the liberal and moderate groups in Egypt are not that well organized and in some cases unwelcome to a populace that may benefit from liberal reforms but in practice aren't fond of liberal ideas.  There's no sign of anyone in any position to step up and provide a moderate alternative.

There is a chance this could all still work out.  The Army has set up for emergency elections, and depending on the results a sensible moderate leader could be found.  But then the Army has to step back to let that President do his job.  There has to be serious reform efforts in both service and in the legal system (and in local law enforcement) to crack down on the corruption (and provide security against any violent reaction from the far right).  And whoever gets elected President has to make good-faith efforts to keep the Brotherhood engaged... and the Brotherhood has to make good-faith efforts to learn from this and change their methods to be more compromising and amenable to criticism.

It's a very thin needle eye to thread.

The Chicken Little Scenario

Not so much along the lines of "The sky is falling" but more along the lines of "OMG the country is falling apart!"

I mean, first off, in the beginning of the year as Obama took his oath of office, we had the Drudge Report and the Wall Street Journal pick up on some obscure Russian professor predicting for the last 10 years that the United States will break apart Balkans-style by 2010. Complete with color-coded map showing just how ridiculous the idea is (Texas will join other states in seceding? HA! South Carolina in the same economic dominion as New England where there are few economic reasons and absolutely NO social and political reasons to do so? Headthump).

Then we got that jackass from NewsMax yapping about the Obama Problem and how a nice clean non-violent military coup would solve everything.

This morning I get on to view The Moderate Voice blog and the top article for the hour was this piece of hysteria titled "Could the U.S. See a Military Coup?":

...Are the nation’s fiscal, economic, military, political and social challenges
setting us up for a Military Coup? Will the U.S. Military Industrial Complex,
acting through our Joint Chiefs of Staff or some other high-level corps of U.S.
Military officers, and supported by a variety of angry business leaders and
extreme conservatives be so resentful of any changes to our national priorities
that they would encourage a complete removal of our elected civilian federal
government, save the Department of Defense?
If the President and Congress decided to actually reduce or freeze Military spending over the next 4 years in real dollars, eliminate some programs to build or acquire various types of military hardware, close more domestic and foreign bases and remove troops from Europe and Asia, and veto any escalation of and start deep reductions in our military presences in Afghanistan and Iraq, will the conservatives in our Military be outraged enough to take action? This consideration might make
President Obama a bit skittish about not following his generals’ current
recommendations to escalate our national and NATO presence in Afghanistan. His
decision on this matter and other domestic issues might be viewed as the
precipitating events for actions that could significantly alter the U.S. and
global history.
If a direct physical removal of civilian government by military force is not in the cards, perhaps some generals and strong military supporters could defeat President Obama and the Democrats in 2010 and 2012. This peaceful mechanism is constitutionally-protected and these political campaigns could be well-financed by the many large international arms manufacturers and other parts of President Eisenhower’s vast military-industrial complex...

Facepalm

Nearly everything in those first three paragraphs drip with paranoid freak-out crazy juice. The writer skittishly terrified that if Obama dares jump one way or another on military budget issues (that btw has already happened, anyone notice the outrage over the F-22? *cricket chirp* Thought so...) that the Far Right Wingnuts and their DoD cronies will stage a Seven Days In May takeover, or perform some underhanded vote stealing during the upcoming midterms...

Okay. Everyone take a chill pill and SETTLE. Except, I suppose, from the wingnuts who'll worry said pill is poison. Sigh.

I suppose an effort needs to be made about why there's this anxiety among the Villagers.

The most likely explanation is that all this sound and fury over possible coup attempts is that the Village (no, not THAT one) made up of the DC Beltway elites is feeling, well, unhappy and out of sorts. The Villagers - the ones who keep making all these pronouncements about this scandal and that outrage, and almost always proven wrong or uninformed about how the rest of the nation is really acting - have been spending the last nine months trying to fit the new White House regime into their perfectly easy-to-label ideological plot points, only to keep having said attempts fail. Sometimes with hilarious results. The Villagers in the media circles are watching their newspaper revenues drop to dangerous, might-be-out-of-jobs levels, all the while FOX Not-News' rating go up because they gleefully sell their Obama-Hate to those who scarf it up like candy... even as FOX Not-News gets absolutely EVERYTHING wrong to the point where any day now someone, FINALLY, will sue them for libel/defamation in an airtight case.

That link to the Digby article about Beltway elites itself links to earlier articles written back in the day when Clinton was caught in an affair with Lewinsky. And where the most outrage about it came from that Beltway circle who felt absolutely "betrayed" by a man who turned out to be doing exactly what every other guy in DC was doing (hi, Newt!). It was truly that incident where the Beltway found itself isolated from the rest of the nation: where the Villagers saw criminal action that had to be punished by their own 'righteous' anger, the rest of the country was more willing to forgive, and was actually taking the Villagers themselves to task for overhyping matters to where BLOWJOBS were impeachable offenses (forget the whole 'lying to the public' and 'lying to the civil court' issue. People in the real world know people lie about affairs, and more Americans realized the whole Paula Jones case was an excuse for a 'fishing expedition' than the Villagers did). The Villagers, for what I see, still haven't forgotten or forgiven about the Lewinsky scandal, and still can't understand why A) Clinton survived the impeachment with decent public polling, B) the nation's voters threw out more Republicans during the 1998 midterms when the Villagers believed the GOP would have gained more seats due to the scandal, and C) why people outside of their circles started tuning them out.

So you get this disconnect between the Real World and the Villager World. And inside the Villager World there's apparently truckloads of paranoia about what's going on: what they see as a massive Hate-Obama Fest when in fact it's overhyped staged events led by FOX and mere handfuls of teabaggers; military leaders that live within said Village expressing their 'disgruntled' disagreements with the White House over how to handle Afghanistan, when in fact a majority of actual troops and officers are serious about their oaths of office, will follow orders regarding Afghan/Iraq deployments, and will never engage in a coup; fears that Obama's 'socialist' agenda will anger enough rednecks to have them rioting in the streets, when in fact said rednecks are really few, not fully organized, and under better surveillance by law enforcement than the Villagers expect.

Here's the truth: Obama's polling relatively as well as any other President under these circumstances. If Obama's failing at anything it's failing to make job-creation a higher priority. The majority of Americans WANT health care reform, and there's not going to be rioting in the streets because of it (even if it fails). Our military efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan currently are wobbly, at best, but everyone (even the Generals who AREN'T griping to their fellow Villagers) involved know it's not going to be solved by overreaction, flooding the war zone with more troops we barely have on hand, and prolonging quagmires that can only truly be solved by calmer, more diplomatic efforts.

We're not facing any coups. And if we were, they would be most likely carried out by fanatical misfits so completely out of tune with reality that the reaction against them would be swift, merciless, and painful for all involved.

As for the other thing, this whole 'OMG states are seceding' thing. For starters, that Russian Expert has the worst idea of how America's regions truly operate. Lemme see if I can get that map pasted here:


Like I mentioned earlier, anyone notice anything wrong with how that Russian professor thinks America will break apart?

• For starters, he has Texas going along with other states under a 'Texas Republic' banner. Bull. Texas is large enough population-wise and economically to completely break away as its own nation-state, and in fact that's how Texas started. It didn't become a state until annexed by John Tyler (yes, that jerkoff), and that's one of the reasons why Texas has a noticeably large secession movement. And the other thing? None of those other states - I can guarantee you Florida for certain - would want to join those damn arrogant Texans in ANYTHING.
• He's got an Atlantic-Coast merger that has South Carolina joining the New England states, mostly by his arguments for economic reasons. Um, no: there are very few economic reasons for SC to hang around with the Northeastern states (seaports/trading is the only thing I can think of). And there is no way, given South Carolina's history, that they would even consider being allied with those damn Yankees.
• Even if we do consider that the United States could break apart due to massive economic collapse (which seems to be how he's dividing this map), the paradox is that the states right now are facing bankruptcy and near-financial collapse themselves and can't even think about removing themselves from a more solvent Federal government. Just look at California! Without that stimulus package from the Federal government earlier this year, half of the states would be completely failed right now. They'd be in no condition to attempt secessions in the first place.

The more likely scenario for secession right now is mostly social-political: if enough wingnut crazies took over any state/local governments to force the issue. If that does happen, the more likely scenarios are that:

• The largest states - Texas obviously, California, New York and Florida next possibles - will break off to form their own nation-states. But given the current economic crisis in California, expect that state to balkanize even further into metro regions (San Francisco and the Northern Cali, Los Angeles, Orange County/San Diego, all other points in-between) due to that state's inability to resolve their tax code issues and the near-certain strife that will erupt between the DFHs and the Prop-13 worshipers.
• The states that made up the sides of the Civil War to basically divide along the same lines, but with variations. Because New York will divide the NE corridor, the New England states will form their own coalition and forced to cater to Massachussetts' power structure. The MidAtlantic states from Pennsylvania to Virginia, or maybe even North Carolina (which may finally shake of the old political dominance of South Carolina due to their growing and more diversified population) would forge their own power structure.
• South Carolina would probably WANT to form their own, but won't have the economic or political strength to pull it off, and will merge with George, Alabama, Mississippi and possibly Tennessee into their own group. It could well include Louisiana and Arkansas (making it, sans Florida, the SEC made political). North Carolina could join if it can't fit into the MidAtlantic structure.
• Kentucky would most likely go with the Great Lakes states, throwing in with Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan and Minnesota. West Virginia could go in if it feels more in common with Ohio than Pennsylvania/Maryland/Virginia, but unlikely.
• The Midwest would comprise of Oklahoma up to the Dakotas, with Missouri added to the mix. Arkansas and Louisiana could go along with this powerset, mostly if to keep control of the Mississippi River as a trading route/source of income. This is why Arkansas and Louisiana are true wild cards in this: the Grain States and the SEC States will vie for those two unlike any other states in the potential breakup.
• The mountain states will revolve mostly around Colorado as Denver is the most dominant metro in the region. They can pull to them Montana, New Mexico, and Wyoming. Utah and Idaho, both dominated by Mormons socially and/or politically, could be part of this group but could also separate and form their own Mormon nation-state (very unlikely though). Arizona could become part of this faction, but it all depends on how Nevada reacts to California.
• Nevada will be in a huge pickle. Their largest metro, Las Vegas, is tied to Cali as a major tourist attraction (remember all the wingnut complaints about high-speed rail between LA and Vegas?). Given the otherwise sparse nature of their state, they may be compeled to join in with California... depending on if Cali can solve their tax issues and don't fall into their own civil war. If Nevada falls in with California, so too would Arizona.
• That leaves the Northwest. Washington and Oregon would have little choice anyway but to merge forces. Odds are very good, however, that they could pull Northern Cali to them especially if that state falls into chaos. They could also include Alaska, but don't be surprised if Alaska and Hawaii - physically separated from the continental states - go their own ways (probably the only thing that professor gets right, although Alaska would make serious efforts to come under Canada's sphere of influence to prevent the Russians from gaining influence).

Now. Take a long good look at everything I just wrote. See how I've divided things up? See how *wrong* I can be on absolutely nearly every point? And yet my reasonings/explanations/theories on secession could be just as valid as that Russian professor's... and given how Texas and South Carolina would act/react, I'm probably more accurate.

And here's the thing: I'm STILL WRONG. Secession in the United States won't happen, certainly not now: too much pride regarding the matter, for one. The historical resolution of the matter back in the 1860s, for another.

So will EVERYONE calm down? We are NOT dying as a nation. We are NOT at each others' throats no matter how much the wingnuts WANT us to be. EVERYONE CHILL!

...Yeah, I thought so...

Facepalm