The International Far Right Denial of Democracy

So there I am trying to edit the non-fiction book of blog articles when news comes down the pipe that Brazil - which had just rejected Jair Bolsonaro, a bullying trump-lite President in last year's election - suffered their own insurrection riot of that SOB's supporters. Government buildings - especially the Presidential Palace and the nation's Supreme Court - raided and destroyed. I jumped to the Guardian's coverage for more details (via Tom Phillips and Andrew Downie):

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has ordered the federal government to take control of policing in Brazil’s capital, Brasília, after hundreds of hardcore supporters of the former president Jair Bolsonaro stormed the country’s congress, presidential palace and supreme court.

The massed attack was a stunning security breach that was immediately compared to the 6 January invasion of the US Capitol by followers of Donald Trump in 2021.

“What we are witnessing is a terrorist attack,” the news anchor Erick Bang announced on the GloboNews television network as word of the upheaval spread. “The three buildings have been invaded by coup-mongering terrorists.”

Shocking video footage showed the pro-Bolsonaro militants sprinting up the ramp into the Palácio do Planalto, the presidential offices, roaming the building’s corridors and vandalizing the nearby supreme court, whose windows had been smashed.

Lula, a veteran leftist, was sworn in as Brazil’s new president last Sunday in celebrations attended by hundreds of thousands of Brazilians.

But thousands of pro-Bolsonaro extremists have refused to accept Lula’s narrow victory in October’s election, spending recent weeks camping outside army bases across the country and calling for a military coup.

Lula was not in Brasília on Sunday but he gave an angry speech blaming Bolsonaro for the chaos and promising that “anyone involved will be punished”.

It's interesting the rioters waited for Lula to be outside of the capitol - he was in Sao Paulo - to pull off this coup attempt. Also interesting that the organizers did not get any military support in this, relying instead on the state police to guide the protestors instead of stopping them. There's been calls to arrest a security official who may have aided in the staging, who has ties to Bolsonaro and was reportedly seen in Orlando where the ex-President fled to exile (via Adriano Machado with Reuters):

By 6:30 p.m. local time (2130 GMT), some three hours after initial reports of the invasion, security forces had managed to retake the capital's most iconic three buildings.

Brasilia Governor Ibaneis Rocha, a longtime Bolsonaro ally facing tough questions after Sunday's security lapses, said on Twitter more than 400 people had been arrested and authorities were working to identify more...

Rocha, the Brasilia governor, said he had fired his top security official, Anderson Torres, previously Bolsonaro's justice minister. The solicitor general's office said it had filed a request for the arrest of Torres.

Torres told website UOL he was with his family on holiday in the United States and had not met with Bolsonaro. UOL reported he was in Orlando, where Bolsonaro is now staying...

It's too much of a coincidence for Torres and Bolsonaro to be in the same city when all of this went down.

Bolsonaro may be denouncing the violence in public, but he's spent the last months since losing the election acting out the trumpian playbook of refusing to accept electoral defeat, claiming rigged elections, and stomping off in a snit before the changing of the guard to discredit the traditional display of peaceful transfers of power.

Much like how it played out here in the US with trump's MAGA believers, Bolsonaro's supporters - overwhelmed by years of pro-authoritarian Far Right bleating - bought into the lies and reacted with violence.

We now have a January 8th Insurrection to bookend with the January 6th Insurrection.

We shouldn't have been surprised by this. The links between these acts of violence - separated between two nations - made this inevitable. As mentioned before, Bolsonaro and trump consider each other allies, trump in particular happy that a fellow dictator wanna-be won Brazil's election back in 2018. Of course, trump made an open pitch for his buddy in this election cycle. Of course, trumpian handlers like Jason Miller and Steve Bannon were claiming the winning results for Lula were false, and worked with Bolsonaro behind the scenes for whatever purpose. 

This riot in Brazil is part of the overall attempt by the Far Right forces interlinked across the globe - from Russia to Hungary to Iran to Syria to trump in the United States and now Bolsonaro with Brazil - to discredit democratic institutions - installed as liberal methods of forming governments answerable to the people and the law - as weak, broken, and deserving of overthrow.

It's to those wingnuts' discredit that the democratic institutions are pushing back now, defending the system of fair elections against these rioters who are protesting out of fear - that they've been told to fear and hate by their instigators - instead of justice.

Justice should come soon for those (trump and his allies) who stirred up violence here in Washington DC, and justice should come soon for those (Bolsonaro and his allies) who stirred up violence in Brasilia.

Serious Stuff for Sunday Part Two: Escalation (w/Update)

It's not something on the front pages every day, but there's been a war going on between Saudi Arabia and Yemen that has direct ties - via military aid and God knows what else - to the United States.

It's been bloody, with UN and humanitarian groups condemning the worsening conditions in the war-torn nation of Yemen. While it's in action a border clash, it's also an escalation of hostilities between Saudi Arabia and Iran - which is backing the Houthi uprising - over which side - Sunni vs. Shia - is dominant in Middle East affairs.

Early this Saturday, the escalation bumped up a serious notch when a couple of major Saudi oil installations were struck by drones causing enough damage to shut down half the Saudi oil production (via Ben Hubbard, Palko Karasz, and Stanley Reed at the New York Times):

Drone attacks claimed by Yemen’s Houthi rebels struck two key oil installations inside Saudi Arabia on Saturday, damaging facilities that process the vast majority of the country’s crude output and raising the risk of a disruption in world oil supplies.

The attacks immediately escalated tensions in the Persian Gulf amid a standoff between the United States and Iran, even as key questions remained unanswered — where the drones were launched from, and how the Houthis could have managed to hit facilities deep in Saudi territory, some 500 miles from Yemeni soil...

The Houthis said they had launched the aerial attacks with 10 drones, which would amount to their most audacious strike on Saudi Arabia since the kingdom intervened in Yemen’s war more than four years ago. The Saudi-led bombing campaign has devastated the poor country and exacerbated the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

The Houthis are part of a regional network of militant groups aligned with and backed by Iran, Saudi Arabia’s regional rival, and U.S. and Saudi officials suspect that Iran has dispatched technicians to Yemen to train the Houthis. U.N. investigators have written that the Houthis have advanced drones that could have a range of up to 930 miles.

The targeted oil facilities can process 8.45 million barrels of crude oil a day between them, the bulk of production in Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest oil exporter. Saudi Aramco, the state-owned oil giant, said production of 5.7 million barrels a day — well over half of the nation’s overall daily output — was suspended...

These kind of attacks can have serious global repercussions. Saudi Arabia is one of - if not the biggest - the major suppliers of oil used in transportation, energy, industry, everything. There may be other sources of national revenue - the mining of iron and copper and gold, for example - but putting a dent in their major industry is going to sting.

I got a line memorized from the movie Risky Business. Guido the Killer Pimp telling Joel "In times of economic uncertainty, never EVER fuck with another man's livelihood." It's actually sound advice: It's not only our means of income, but that livelihood defines who we are, no matter how lowly it's a point of pride to any person. Even in good economic times you just don't mess with another person's job. You fuck with that, you piss us off.

Think of the Saudis as a person, more specifically the royal family who runs all of it. What the Houthis just did - fuck with Saudi oil exporting - will get the Saudi royals really pissed off.

Making this worse is the revelation of a new form of warfare: Drone bombing. It's been an advantage of the United States and other technically-advanced nations to use drones as a means of engaging war zones without loss of personnel. But now we're at the point of drones as weapons themselves, akin to the kamikaze pilots of Imperial Japan, only remote controlled and likely harder to stop. Given the range here - 900 plus miles - the Houthi can attack a lot of places in Saudi Arabia to "bring the war home".

Everything here is escalation. Houthi Yemeni escalating against the Saudis. The Saudis guaranteed to escalate against all of Yemen. A possible escalation against Iran by Saudi forces, turning the Straits of Hormuz into a straight-up war zone.

This is more than likely going to bring in the United States and a lot of the European nations (maybe even China and half of Asia).

Wars never end well. Wars can get bloodier in a heartbeat when the dynamics and objectives change.

Gods help us.

Update 9/15/19 9:13PM: I am starting to see tweets about trump promising the U.S. will support Saudi Arabia's military escalation with a "locked and loaded" boast.

Even with warmonger John Bolton kicked out of the White House last week, he's still getting his wish of a war with Iran. FFFFffffffuuuuuu---

A Real-Life X-File

(EDIT: as of 3/20, this is the most current finding.  The debris field IS in an area the plane could have reached...)
I have to admit the first few days I read up and chatted online about Malaysian Airlines Flight 370, it balanced between sadness - the most likely fate of a missing plane was an explosion or crash - and snark - making ill-advised comments about "aliens" or "that island from LOST".

The snark came from being a long-time aficionado of conspiracy theories and ghost stories.  Growing up, I read books in the 133 juvenile shelves rather than the standard fiction.  Getting into The X-Files TV show for me was easy, given my childhood interests in UFOs, Bigfoot, the Bell Witch, the Bermuda Triangle.

And here was Flight 370, disappearing off radar without a word.  Early searches for debris or a crash site turn up nothing.  The legendary black box(es), nowhere to be found.  Family and friends noting that their attempts to call their missing loved ones' cell phones were ringing: if the phones had been destroyed or completely cut off from cell signal, calls are known to revert immediately to voicemail.  Early research into the passengers and pilots didn't reveal warning signs outside of two illegal passports... except both passport users - Iranians - had no known terrorist ties, and one of them was following the standard behavior of someone seeking asylum.

But the last few days' revelations about what might have happened - that there was a deliberate switch-off of the plane's transponder and communications, that the plane changed course multiple times, that it avoided waypoints in such a way only a trained knowledgeable pilot could fly - has turned this mystery into a more serious and unsettling affair.  No more jokes.

There are now a ton of questions about Flight 370, above all: What the hell happened?

What was originally considered likely - mid-air explosion, or else mass decompression that froze/suffocated everyone on board - is no longer considered.  To be fair, if that had happened, we would have found wreckage by now.  That mid-flight course corrections were made, and that the Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System (ACARS) and transponder (comm link to air traffic controllers) were turned off before the last contact makes this more deliberate than accidental.

So, if someone - someones - hijacked the plane, this unlocks these questions: Who did it, Why did they do it, and Where the hell did they think they could go?

Those Iranians seeking asylum using stolen passports are suspects again.  But if it's not them, that leaves 230 or so people (I'm subtracting the poor kids who were on-board).  Even the pilot and co-pilot are suspects, considering whoever commandeered the flight knew how to avoid certain waypoints and stuck to radar dead zones.

One thing we do know: whoever did this either could not or did not make the effort to turn off other tracking data coming from the plane.  The engines, for example, gave off signal data of a sort to satellite tracking systems (which is why we've found out there was no crash when and where we thought it would be), and those signals are not accessible from within the plane.  This was rarely reported information, so even the most highly trained hijacker might not have known...

Why did someone hijack this flight?  Usually it's done as a kind of Propaganda of the Deed, a violent act drawing attention to the person(s) committing that deed.  But there haven't been any valid claims or statements from known terror cells, no-one standing up with video evidence or otherwise.  Even if there was a vast conspiracy between nations and media outlets to not broadcast any terrorist demands or claims, there's too many sources that would have leaked by now.

Other reasons to do this would cover:

• someone on the flight was a target, although it begs the question why was the whole plane taken to do that.
• someone wanted a plane, any plane, for a future terror plot.
• there was something valuable on the plane that was needed, and for some reason this was the only way someone could get to it.
• there IS no reason: someone's doing this for kicks or a bizarre rational none of us can comprehend.

The question most confounding is the Where?  Given the location and circumstances, there's not a lot of Where to cover.  I've linked to that map above, showing an orange trail of possible plane paths after the last known satellite report from the plane's engines.

You'd think the northern path over Asia makes the most sense, considering this was a hijack and the hijackers would want a place to land.  There's places in China and central Asia past the Himalayas where that type of plane - even relatively small airports, even flattened desert - could land.  And this hijacking - with a plane full of Chinese citizens - is happening at a time of serious turmoil and mass terror attacks in West China involving Uighur separatists.

The problem with this argument is that China - as well as India and Pakistan - are tightly protected airspaces.  Military radar and alert systems would have spotted the plane even at low altitudes, and those areas are well-populated areas.  People would have reported seeing a low-flying airliner by now.  And neither of these nations - China in particular - would have kept silent on the matter even if they shot down the plane.  They'd argue with good reason that a hijacked airliner is a flying weapon, and they'd have every right to shoot it down to avoid a bigger catastrophe.

The southern path into the Indian Ocean is the other likely direction... except that's mostly water.  There are no known island or landstrip locations that way.  If the plane circled back over Australia, again that's an airspace with a solid radar net protecting it.  And why hijack a plane to fly it out into an ocean when blowing it up is just as easy, if not easier to pull off?

One other question remains: What has happened to the passengers and crew?

This is the most terrifying part.  While it wasn't a comfortable thought if there had been an explosion or crash, the best that could have been said was that the deaths would have most likely been quick.

This as a hijacking is infinitely worse.  Some passengers were families.  Some were kids.  If they're taken as hostages, why aren't we hearing demands from the party responsible (even in a massive media lockdown, someone would have leaked by now)?  If someone on that flight was a target, what is happening to that person (or persons)?  What's happened to the poor victims deemed expendable...

This is a global mystery with a ton of clues and almost no solid leads.  This is scary and wrong and I'm afraid it's not gonna end well for everyone...

To Tunisa... To Egypt... To Where

This all started over a fruit cart in Tunisa.

A poor man, struggling to earn some money for his family and for his sisters' educations, unable to get any other work other than selling fruit in the marketplace.  Tunisian economy is pretty rough: rampant unemployment, and political corruption from the top on down where only the powerful get jobs.

Like in a lot of places, you need a permit to sell in the marketplace.  Mohamed Bouazizi couldn't afford either the permit nor the bribes that corrupt local police wanted, and so they kept shutting him down.  On Dec. 17th 2010, they did more than that: they humiliated him.  It drove him to an act of self-immolation: burning himself in front of the government offices that denied him any justice or recourse (He died early January).  To a nation seething under the 23-year rule of a corrupt President-for-life, it was the final straw.

It took a few days, and almost no international notice (outside of the social media sources Twitter, Facebook and others), but the Tunisians overthrew the dictator and are currently in the throes of rebuilding a nation.  God help them and may they succeed in making a more open, less corrupt Tunisa work.

But once President Ben Ali fled to exile, the rest of the Arab world... and the rest of the world period... sat up and took notice.  Because if there's one thing about politics in the Middle East... it's that a lot of the nations are one-person, one-party places.  Places like Egypt, Yemen, Syria, Jordan, Oman, Saudi Arabia... I'd mention Iran, but you might notice they've had their own uprising attempt a few years ago and their government is most likely keeping all this stuff off their news as much as possible...

The American understanding of the Middle East has been "there are guys who side with us and those who don't," with our key allies being Israel (with our alliance part of the political turmoil in the Middle East to begin with, and that would take a whole book to discuss), Turkey, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia.  Turkey is democratic and for the most part solid allies (just don't talk about the Kurds or Armenians).  But it's the protests in Egypt and Saudi Arabia that are gaining U.S. attention... and our concerns.

Especially as the Egyptian protests ratchet up and as President Mubarak is doing what he can to clamp down.

The problem is Islamic fundamentalism.  Primarily the reactionary elements that oppose Westernized culture (the openness of sex, vulgarity, and jazz/blues/rap/country music) and values (gender equality).  They also have a few issues with Israel (basically its right to even exist), and a few geopolitical extremists who are still upset about how the spread of Islam stopped at the Spanish and Bosnian borders.

Most of our allies in the Arab world are led by Westernized Muslims (that is, they're willing to do business with us and allow American tourists to take snapshots of everybody).  Problem is, those nations have small but very-well-organized extremist terror groups who would love nothing more than to blow everybody up, drive out the non-Muslims, take over their governments, install religious law (based on a twisted reading of the Quran, and not on actual justice or human rights), and pretty much become as corrupt as the one-party rulers they're trying to throw out (SEE Iran 1979 to now).  As a result, those American allies tended to rule by fiat, becoming dictators and staging rigging elections to maintain the status quo.  You get extremes at both ends, with the majority population screwed by both sides.  It's been quiet until now: the global economic meltdown of the last decade has hurt, with a lot of Arab nations suffering high unemployment and food prices inflation.  Now, the masses of the Middle East are out of money and beginning to starve: they have nothing to lose if they take to the streets...

In Tunisa, the ruling party was relatively successful in exiling their extremists, which was why U.S. interests in what happened there were meager.  And why, even with all the chaos ongoing there, Tunisa is viewed as gaining some moderate stability soon.  But Egypt is a different story: they have groups like the Muslim Brotherhood (who openly renounce violence but clearly oppose womens' rights and want to place Egypt under Sharia law), and worse groups like Islamic Jihad with ties to Al-Qaeda.  If the protests do succeed in ousting Mubarak, the fear is (SEE AGAIN Iran 1979 to now) that the extremists will be the only organized group to take over Egypt and start their reign of terror.

An Islam extremist Egypt will certainly break all treaties with Israel, their agreements having been the keystone to Middle East peace efforts over the last 30 years.  They'd also expel most of the tourists, arrest every Coptic, and place their women in Third-Class status (think Taliban but in hotter climes).  What's worse - Iran fell to extremists in 1979 but they were Shiite by faith, and they are a minority of Muslim followers and thus had little influence across the Islam world: Egypt is mostly Sunni, and if they fall to extremists the Sunni extremists in other nations will have a rallying cry and a base of support. 

All of the rising protests in the Middle East should bring concerns to the rest of the world.  If even one of these nations - Egypt, Jordan, Algeria, Saudi Arabia - falls to an extremist government, no matter if the others become solid democracies they will still have a poisonous asp sitting in their midst looking to spread their violent jihad everywhere they think their faith should be (which starts with their Sunni neighbors, then every nation ever touched by Muslim rule, then the rest of the world).

There's little the United States can do with regards to these uprisings: like the recent Iranian protests, a heavy U.S. presence will do the exact opposite of what our nation would like.  We'd like a pro-Western Iran to have risen from the anger of the Green Revolution of 2009... but any U.S. public support would have been used by the corrupt regime to justify their crackdown of "foreign-influenced rioters".  We'd like a pro-Western Egypt (and Jordan, and Saudi Arabia, and Algeria) to remain ticking along like a reliable clock, but we can neither public upbraid Mubarak to have him open up his government (which would humiliate and weaken him), nor back any violent crackdowns that would keep the extremists from power (but would also harm a ton of honest Egyptians in the process).

The best we can do is hope that saner heads remain in control of the uprisings.  That the extremists are viewed as obstacles and not allies by the protesters.  That we do get to see genuine democratic nations in the Middle East when this is all over.  And that as few people as possible are harmed in the chaos befalling their nations.  There's been too many deaths already...


Best we can do is pray.

The Nobel Prize for Not Being Dubya

I've got this thing about complaining how the Far Right has this "Obama Problem" via my Shoelace Hypothesis, because they'll complain about EVERY little thing he does up to and including how he'll tie his shoelaces. Follow the labels for shoelace hypothesis to follow the trend...

But I wake up this morning to pretty unusual headlines. This morning it seems we're getting the perfect example of how the Far LEFT obsesses over Obama with overt praise, sometimes excluding all reason and evidence that Obama hasn't really done as much as he ought to (JOBS, OBAMA WE NEED JOBS, ahem)...

The Norway-based Nobel Prize Committee has awarded this year's Peace Prize (sorta the "They Like Me! They REALLY LIKE ME!" Award for global leaders) to Barack Obama.

That noise you just heard was the entire Right Wingnut faction from Limbaugh to Malkin and the entire FOX News Zombie Force screaming "SOCIALIST!" But I digress. This isn't about them. This is about Obama.

Even though he's only been on the job nine months. Even though he's STILL overseeing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (and might even increase troops there!). Even though he's a bit... reluctant to pursue war crimes investigations into the torture-lovers from the previous administration (pretty much everyone from Cheney on down the roll call). Even though a lot of the things he's really done on the global stage - dropping the missile shield projects for Europe, talking to Iran to comply with international nuclear treaties and oversight, following through on pre-set troop stand-downs in Iraq - are pretty much proposed actions rather than actual accomplishments.

To wit: he hasn't really DONE anything. The only thing he's really really done is... show respect to other nations. That's officially it.

Unofficially, there's an even better explanation, and a good number of observers (even Greenwald) have picked up on it right away: Obama won the Peace Prize because HE'S NOT GEORGE W. BUSH.

Let me remind you seven readers: I'm not a huge fan of Dubya to begin with. And I'm not defending him either. I can understand PERFECTLY why the Nobel committee would want to snub and insult Bush the Lesser any and every way they can.

Bush is pretty much the ur-example of how NOT to work towards winning a Peace Prize:

• A questionable invasion of Iraq and years-long occupation of that country;
• Mismanagement of a global intervention and rebuilding effort in Afghanistan in response to 9/11 and Taliban human rights abuses to where Afghanistan is an even worse place to live than before;
• Pushing an inane missile defense system that did little but put money into defense contractors' pockets and also cheese off the Russians;
• Hampering international efforts across the board on things such as climate change issues;
• A massive criminal enterprise of torture, illegal detentions, more torture, and deaths of innocents;
• Basic personal cluelessness regarding personal protocol. You do NOT give any woman an unsolicited backrub.

Basically, Dubya's Reign of Error presided over America's slipping in international prestige from Number One to Number... well, somewhere below Brazil. This was, in some respects, why Obama won the election in 2008, why Obama's overseas trips get crowds the size of a U2 or Springsteen stadium performance: Obama is not Bush.

Obama is NOT Bush in terms of demeanor, and especially in terms of sincerity. When Obama talks of wanting peace, wanting other nations to join in efforts to end war and threats of terrorism, he says it like he means it. Unlike Bush the Lesser, who seemed to be going through the motions, making the gestures, acting solemn but not actually achieving the resolute stature you need to pull it off, and also pushing the issue with phrases like "You're with us or against us."

That's pretty much the only reason Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize. To piss off the Far Right still worshipping the Worst President Ever.

I can vaguely recall when the Far Right wingnuts promoted certain individuals as "nominees" for the Peace Prize when the people doing the nominating weren't on the Nobel Committee, making the distinction worthless. It was during the build-up to the Iraq invasion, to have these war proponents argue for bloodshed under cover of "peaceful" intent. BS. I'm pretty sure after Al Gore got the Peace Prize in 2007 for also Not Being George W. Bush that the wingnuts stopped pushing the Nobels as a worthy resume add-on. This is going to go over well at the Weekly Standard.

And I'm pretty sure Obama would want to trade the award in to get the 2016 Olympics back. I mean, Japan or Cuba vs. USA in Wrigley Field??? AWESOME.

Update: Linkage to Sullivan's linkage to prominent reactions to Obama's win. And the Volokh Conspiracy is starting a Top-10 list of Reasons Why Obama Won. The best one so far: "The Norwegians wanted to honor one of their own, and the committee discovered that Obama was born in Oslo, Norway, the son of a Volvo factory worker."

Update pt.2: It always helps after a few hours to try and gain perspective of what happened, and I found this bit by Steve Benen on Washington Monthly apt:

For all the recognition of George W. Bush's unpopularity, it's easy to overlook the ways in which the international community was truly mortified by the U.S. leadership during the Bush era. The irreplaceable leading nation could no longer be trusted to do the right thing -- on use of force, torture, rule of law, international cooperation, democratic norms, even climate change. We'd reached a point at which much of the world was poised to simply give up on America's role as a global leader.
And, love him or hate him, President Obama changed this. I doubt anyone on the Nobel committee would admit it, but the Peace Prize is, to a certain extent, an implicit "thank you" to the United States for reclaiming its rightful place on the global stage.
It's indicative of a degree of relief. Much of the world has wanted America to take the lead again, and they're rightly encouraged to see the U.S. president stepping up in the ways they hoped he would. It's hard to overstate the significance, for example, of seeing a U.S. president chair a meeting of the United Nations Security Council and making strides on a nuclear deal.
This is not to say Obama was honored simply because he's not Bush. The president really has committed himself to promoting counter-proliferation, reversing policies on torture, embracing a new approach to international engagement, and recommitting the U.S. to the Middle East peace process. But charting a new course for American leadership, breaking with the recent past, no doubt played a role.
As outraged as American conservatives are this morning, notice the international reactions. Praise was not universal, but Mohamed Elbaradei, for example, said, "I cannot think of anyone today more deserving of this honor. In less than a year in office, he has transformed the way we look at ourselves and the world we live in and rekindled hope for a world at peace with itself." Mandela, Tutu, and Gorbachev, among others, also praised the announcement.
The most angry international responses came from Hamas and the Taliban.

Rush Limbaugh made an explicit comparison that he and the Far Right are on the same page as the Taliban. Um, you sure that's the right comparison to make there...?
Oooh, I just noticed I got a comment! Lemme go read it!