Give Me a Minute Here to Rant And Panic about trump... AGAIN

Just to get this bit out of the way (from the Daily Beast):

President Trump on Saturday predicted a stock market crash “the likes of which has not been seen before” if he doesn’t win re-election in 2020. “The Trump Economy is setting records, and has a long way up to go,” Trump wrote on Twitter. “However, if anyone but me takes over in 2020 (I know the competition very well), there will be a Market Crash the likes of which has not been seen before! KEEP AMERICA GREAT.” The president’s comments came shortly after he hyped up the upcoming launch of his campaign at a Florida rally on Tuesday. Trump has repeatedly claimed that the success of the U.S. stock market depends on him remaining in the White House, though data from Macrotrends suggests the performance of the Dow Jones Industrial Average has been about average under him compared to its performance under former presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, according to Bloomberg.

Scaremongering motherfucker. The stock markets keep crashing every time trump launches another reckless tariff. The Dow is gonna crash if trump stays in the White House.

Does the Shitgibbon believe that if he's kicked out and a Democrat comes in, every billionaire and investment firm is going to have a conniption and commit financial suicide? HELL NO. They didn't do that when Clinton entered office in 1993 and the markets were already coping with their self-inflicted Great Recession by 2009 when Obama took the oath.

That's because the REAL BILLIONAIRES aren't that petty. Even if a Warren or Sanders wins in 2020, much of Wall Street knows they've got enough going on to keep themselves racking up more millions. Anything a Democratic President can whip up towards regulating their industry, they can delay in the courts long enough to figure out new loopholes.

This is just trump bluffing and bullying... AGAIN.

Because the 2020 campaigning is starting up... AGAIN.

And the internal polling numbers are not favoring trump... AGAIN (Via Raw Story's Matt Chapman):

On Saturday, The Nation writer John Nichols told MSNBC that President Donald Trump’s new internal polls showing him losing key states are “devastating” — and show why his path to re-election may be slipping out of his grasp.

“I would just emphasize these polls are more than a wake-up call. They’re pretty devastating numbers,” said Nichols. “We can get excited about a close race in Texas or even some good numbers out of Florida. But remember that for Donald Trump, the key is the Great Lakes states.”

“What these internal polls tell us parallels what we’re seeing from publicly done polling in those regions,” said Nichols. “Two things very significant. Number one, there is an energized Democratic base, more energized, it appears, than 2016. And additionally one subset of this that’s a really big deal, major issue for Trump, and that is that in the rural areas where Democrats severely underperformed in 2016, it’s what we are seeing in the public polls and I suspect top line numbers from what we’re seeing in other places suggest we’re seeing rural areas begin to tick back up for Democrats going to that 40 percent number.”

The Blue Wave of 2018 - Democrats voting in sheer anger over the travesty of 2016's results - shows no sign of abating. Voter projections suggest the biggest turnout in 40 years, with about two-thirds of registered voters (67 percent) showing up at the ballot box. (Psst, larger voter turnout favors Dems)

Combine this with the consistent negative polling trump has generated - never cracking 50 percent popularity, mostly hovering above 40 percent like clinging to a lifeline - combined with the reality that the top Democratic candidates are more likable than Hillary - dammit, you haters - and there's a solid chance that trump will be another One-Termer like Carter and Bush the Lesser.

NOTE: I did write in 2017 about the only polling number that mattered was the insanely - and artificially - high positive numbers trump was getting from the GOP voters. But that was over whether or not the rest of the Republican leadership would rein in or punish trump for his follies. Now we're going into an election cycle, where everybody - especially Independent voters who've soured on trump's rule - is in play.

This sort of good news HAS to be tempered by certain realities: 1) Polling is still not an exact science, 2) This doesn't reflect the realities of GOP Voter Suppression efforts, 3) Putin and Russia are primed to hack the 2020 Elections... AGAIN, 4) Never underestimate the Democratic Party's ability to rend itself over the Far Left's obsession with perfection (yes I am looking at you again, BernieBros) 5) The Electoral College is still fucking broken.

Let's just say that in spite of all the bad possibilities, trump loses in 2020. That trump still gets at best the 42 percent of voters from 2016, while the popular Democrat - Biden, or Sanders, or Harris (squee), or Warren (squee) - gets close to 50 percent. That 8 percent difference in voters HAS to translate into winning battleground states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin that Hillary lost (in some cases by less than .01 of the votes).

I mean, here's a 2020 map from 270towin.com that has the Democratic candidate winning most of the closest-contested states:

What 2016 should have been...

If we want to include the states where trump eked out wins within 2 to 5 percent, have them flip to the Democrats, the map might look like this:

I grant the likelihood of other close states like Missouri staying Red, I just want to feel better
about Florida flipping back to Blue...

At the furthest extreme, where it's a Hell Yes Blowout with Democrats winning as many states as possible, the map will look like this:

And no, I'm not going to go crazy about thinking EVERY state will flip Blue. This isn't 1984 or 1972 or 1936 where a combination of factors led to such Electoral blowouts. We're too partisan in geographic areas now. What that third map reflects is the most likely result of both the oncoming demographic shifts that terrify the Republicans into voter suppression AND the growing evidence that trump is scaring off the suburban voters. One or two of these states might be wrong - you could trade Georgia perhaps with Missouri, Kansas may still be tribalistic in supporting the GOP, stuff like that - but there's a legitimate trend for Texas and Georgia slipping away, and it's only a matter of time (Republican voters are older and dying, Democratic voters are younger and registering to vote) with the possibility trump is accelerating the demographic shifts.

So, in all three scenarios, how do you think trump will react?

We already know how he was going to react in 2016 if he had lost: He was openly campaigning he would decry the results, claim Hillary cheated, refuse to concede.

In 2020, trump would be worse.

It wouldn't matter if the elections were close or a blowout, trump would never accept it because trump can never admit losing. He'll do everything before - like arresting candidates, disrupting Democratic campaigns, straight up attacks - and after the election - bullying the states into recounting ballots to HIS satisfaction, more arrests, more attacks - to get the results he wants.

What happens then depends mostly on the rest of the Republican Party leadership (and any Red state GOP leaders who are able to do the dirty work). The guys like Mitch McConnell, who by the by is facing re-election in 2020. If they win, they can afford to let trump wither on the vine, because McConnell will retain his Senate powers (it may be unlikely the Republicans retake the House, but if they do... Gods help us) and be free of the headache trump has been. If they lose, they have nothing else to lose but join in his fight to overthrow the voters' wishes.

Even if the unlikely happens - every state votes Democratic, every Electoral College vote goes Blue - trump and the Republicans will never accept it. A combination of denial - they genuinely believe they represent the majority when in fact they're not - and lust for power - the Republicans fear a dominant Democratic government and worry they can't keep obstructing forever.

It's vital that every American vote. It's important that enough Americans vote AGAINST the corruption of the Republican Party and the disaster that is trump.

But don't think this will be a clean fight. The Republicans have been mudslinging for decades now, dragged everything into the mudpit, and willing to commit even worse sins in order to seize power that has never been theirs.

trump is threatening to make this 2020 Election a bloody affair. THAT'S probably the most honest thing he ever says.

Some Days of the Darkest Timeline Are Just Packed

So Kellyanne Conway violated the Hatch Act...

trump's chickenhawks are accusing Iran of attacking Japanese oil tankers...

House Republicans are STILL claiming "No Collusion"...

Just to note how fucked up the world is right now, Boris Johnson is lining up to be the next Prime Minister of Brexit...

There's an ongoing civil war in Syria, bloodshed in Sudan, and Ebola plagues in Africa...

And Sarah Huckabee Sanders is leaving the White House by the end of the month.

Did I miss anything?

Oh, right.

trump argued that he doesn't have to report any foreign offers of support to his re-election campaign essentially claiming he'll collude (again), prompting the chair of the Federal Elections Commission to issue a rebuke (which is still toothless without arresting trump for the shit he's already pulled in 2016! /headdesk)

I swear, O Lord, You better have angels coming down to fix all this shit, 'cause we're fucked and nobody else is coming to help.

History Repeats As Racist Tragedy

Jesus. Under trump's administration, we're not only doomed to repeat the worst parts of our nation's history, it's like trump and his cronies are intentionally going out of their way to be assholes. Look at what they're planning to do next to asylum-seeking families now (via Chelsia Rose Marcius at the Daily Beast):

The Trump administration plans to use an Oklahoma Army base that previously served as a Japanese internment camp to hold a growing number of migrant children, Time reports. About 1,400 children who are in U.S. custody will reportedly be placed at Fort Sill, a 150-year-old military base previously used to house hundreds of Japanese-Americans forced into internment camps during World War II. According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the base will be used “as a temporary emergency influx shelter” to alleviate the influx at other facilities. The U.S. government operates about 168 facilities and programs in 23 states. The Department of Health and Human Services said in a statement that it has detained approximately 40,900 children from the beginning of the year through April 30—a 57 percent increase from last year.

We're seeing an influx of immigrants and asylum-seekers at our borders because of various reasons: Growing gang violence in Central American nations, ongoing drought in Guatemala, problems that just make it unsafe/unhealthy for families to stay.

Yet here's the modern Republican Party showing absolutely no awareness, no sympathy, no realization that the last three years of vicious behavior hasn't scared off Latinos, no concern that there are more humane ways to handle the overflow than shoving thousands of honest-to-God families in need of help into cramped, lethal conditions.

We're basically jailing kids for being alive.

We're basically allowing the Republicans to bring back the internment camp horrors of the 1940s, to where Japanese Americans (some of them still alive from those years) are reacting in anger.

We're basically building our own version of concentration camps. Yeah, I went there. BECAUSE WE ARE, DAMN US.

Adam Serwer's article should be read every morning as a reminder of how sadistic the Republican Party has become.

The Cruelty IS the Point.

Personal News: The Latest Story Is Published!

On a personal note, Strangely Funny VI is now out, containing my latest short story "How a Vampire Gets a Tan." I got the print copy from the publishers today!

If you want, please do purchase a copy (also available as eBook!) through Amazon. Please also leave reviews because it will be nice to hear feedback not just for my story but all the other authors included in the anthology. Thanks!

What Florida Republicans Want: No More Voters

If we return our attention to the state level, we'll note that the Republicans have decided to give up on the people and take more power unto themselves.

For example: Passing legislation to make it harder for Florida voters to pass their own amendments. Via Lawrence Mower at the Tampa Bay Times:

 Gov. Ron DeSantis on Friday approved legislation that would crack down on citizen petitions, a move that is likely to quash future ballot initiatives disliked by Republican lawmakers and corporate donors.

The bill, which takes effect before the 2020 election, makes it drastically harder to collect enough signatures to make it onto voters’ ballots.

And it will solidify Republican control in Tallahassee by eliminating one of the last threats to their power: the ballot box...

The Republicans have garnered political control of the Sunshine State ever since the demographic/party shifts that changed everything in the 1990s. After the last elected Democratic governor in Lawton Chiles passed away, everything went to the GOP. Even though a solid majority of voters remain Democratic... even as the voter shifts of the last ten years away from Far Right dogma are causing cracks in GOP domination.

The clearest sign of those cracks was the Amendment referendum process. Unable to break the GOP's control of the legislature via gerrymandering, the center-left population have resorted to petition-driven referendums to create State Constitutional Amendments - like anti-gerrymander rules, medical marijuana, funding for clean water and wetlands protection, classroom size limits to stop overcrowding poorer schools - that the conservative legislators can't ignore (well, actually they do, but it stops them from passing laws that would hew further Right Wing). Back to Mower:

What the legislation is sure to do, however, is stifle the last area outside of statewide Republican control in Florida.

Republicans have dominated the Legislature, Cabinet and governor’s mansion for the last 20 years, and every member of the state Supreme Court has now been appointed by Republicans.

But liberal groups and others have seen some success getting their priorities into law by proposing amendments to the state Constitution.

Over the last several years, at least 60 percent of voters have changed the Constitution to require the Legislature adopt fair voter districts, allow medical marijuana, protect environmental lands and restore the right to vote for felons.

And more amendments are on the way — or were on the way before DeSantis signed the bill Friday...

Republicans have fought every measure that a supermajority of Florida voters supported - which has to include a sizable number of fellow Republicans - because they don't fit their agenda of tax cuts, social aid cuts, school funding cuts, and aggressive land development for their rich construction buddies.

Referendums proposed for the coming 2020 ballot included a Minimum Wage ballot to fight the 20-year-plus stagnation of wages for every non-CEO worker, an "Energy Choice" option to break the monopolistic practices of the regional utilities, a statewide ban on military-grade assault rifles commonly used in mass shootings, a separate Universal Background Check amendment, an Open Primary system similar to California's that had all parties as a primary choice (meaning a district could have TWO Republicans in the final election or TWO Democrats in the final, meaning the extremists don't have safe seats either way), a Medicaid Expansion (which the state GOP definitely doesn't want to do), and Taco Trucks On Every Corner okay I made that last one up, but the rest of them are real. Follow that link to Ballotpedia to see more.

Those are issues that matter to the voting public, and things that a supermajority - 60 percent of voters - might want the state government to do.

But none of them are things the Florida Republicans want. They openly refuse to pass laws supporting ANY of that already, because each one offends a lobby group they rely on for campaign funding and future cushy no-show jobs.

They're also terrified of some of the election reform amendments that could pass that would break the Minority Rule they now inflict on the state. Florida Republicans rule without accountability, refusing to answer to the cries of local residents screaming for financial aid to cover feeding their kids and paying for schools and keeping roofs over their heads. The state GOP doesn't want to do anything about regional ecological disasters like toxic algae that are clearly man-made from Big Sugar and overdevelopment consuming our wetlands. 

You see, Florida Republicans are making too much money off of all that. So rather than do what the majority (most Florida residents) wants - clean water, safe schools, healthy families - the state GOP will indulge the minority's (the Obscenely Rich) whims.

What Florida Republicans want is for Florida Voters to sit down and shut up, FOREVER.

This should be as obvious a sign to my fellow Floridians why we needed to stop voting Republican the last eleven years I've been screaming that, and why we all need to stop NOW on voting Republican ever again. Our rights are getting bled dry, one cut at a time, while Republicans feast on our bones and keep us caged. As of today, the only power we have left is the power to VOTE EVERY REPUBLICAN OUT OF OFFICE. For the LOVE of GOD and HUMANITY, that's the one thing WE NEED TO DO.

Anniversary: 75 Years After D-Day

On June 6, 1944, a Great Crusade by the Allies of World War II landed across the beaches of Normandy.

It was the official beginning of the Western front against Nazi Germany, an attempt to push out their occupation of France.

I've written about General Eisenhower's Second Letter before, but here's the one he issued to the troops, exhorting them to victory in the name of a free world.

So to the Free French forces who fought to liberate their home:

So to the British who fought to defend all bagpipers:

So to the Canadians who didn't get the glory but delivered the most ass-kicking:

And to the Americans who bore the heaviest brunt at Omaha Beach:

We the future generations after that war salute you.

Anniversary: Thirty Years Later, Tiananmen Remains a Unfulfilled Promise

Back in 1989, by this date June 4, the democracy protests in China had been going on for a month or so.

A combination of college-age, labor groups, and retired Chinese had gathered in key spots - eventually joining up in the major center of Beijing called Tiananmen Square - demanding political reforms to coincide with the economic reforms the post-Maoist government was trying to implement during the 1980s.

It went along with a growing protest movement in Eastern Europe, where Soviet Russian control was slipping away as Gorbachev's government could no longer afford the massive military and political buildup of the Soviet Bloc.

For a month, the Chinese leadership tried their best to keep a lid on it all, but international media coverage made that impossible, and the Communist regime itself had fissures between reformists and statists vying for control of the whole government.

By June 4, someone along the official chain of command decided "Fuck it," and unleashed the Army into Tiananmen Square.

The official accounts minimized the casualties. The unofficial accounts put the death toll in the thousands.

It led to the China we know today: An economic powerhouse that's also a massive prison for its own citizenry. The facts of that massacre are constantly whitewashed and censored (I bet this minor little blog has been blocked. My librarian blog, however, gets a lot of Chinese spam so who knows...). The few places in China that know the truth - Hong Kong, which was under British rule in 1989 for example - are forced to keep a lid on their outrage.

This is the world that China sees anymore (via AP News):

Dissidents silenced. Security tightened. References scrubbed from the internet.

China went into customary lockdown Tuesday for the 30th anniversary of the bloody military crackdown on pro-democracy protesters, a telling reminder of the ruling Communist Party’s emphasis in the ensuing three decades since on stability above all.

Extra checkpoints and street closures greeted tourists who showed up before 5 a.m. to watch the daily flag-raising ceremony at Tiananmen Square, the main gathering point for the 1989 protests. People overseas found themselves blocked from posting anything to a popular Chinese social media site.

The seven-week-long Tiananmen Square protests and their bloody end — hundreds if not thousands of people are believed to have died — snuffed out a tentative shift toward political liberalization. Thirty years later, social restrictions such as family size and where people can live have been loosened, but political freedom remains for the most part strictly controlled with little prospect for change...

There is a terrible conflict at play here. China's international role is growing - unavoidable due to being the largest populated nation on the planet, its military strength, its economic engines - but its accountability to the world hampered by its own paranoia and sadism.

China's failures at openness makes it difficult to be trusted as an economic partner, even as other Pacific Rim and Asian countries - Japan, Australia, Canada, South American nations, India - are forced to deal with them to keep their own trade deals and economies running well. (I'd include the United States in this argument but trump's tariffs make that a joke)

The leadership fears the truth of Tiananmen, and fears its own citizenry as part of that. But they can't imprison everyone... so they imprison just enough to keep the rest terrified and in line. That leads to the problems of Fear and Hate: Machiavelli's warning to not rely too much on Fear because that drives victims into Hating you, and once that happens you lose control.

This paranoia forces China into massive human rights abuses against entire groups like the Uighurs in western China, a Muslim population forced into "reeducation camps" and forced to renounce their religion through humiliating acts of torture. The authoritarian leadership won't stop there, a nation as big and diverse as China has tens of ethnic and religious minorities that the bosses can't trust, have to correct, need to put down...

The sad thing, there's little the international community can do. Our own protests and government sanctions can only go so far. The best we can do on the sidelines is cheer on the protesters and hope they don't get killed again. Any change in China is going to have to come from within (the very thing the Chinese Communist Party fears the most).

In the meantime, it's been thirty years since we've seen this man, and once again we need a reminder that this brave soul stood up for freedom at a terrible personal price:

Tank Man is my brother. I hope he's still alive even after thirty years. I hope I can meet him some day. So I can ask him what it was like. So I can buy him a cup of tea and drink it in Tiananmen Square.

Quick! While trump Is Gone, Lock All The Doors And Move The Country Before Air Force One Flies Back

Due to the significance of the 75th anniversary of the D-Day landings this year (!), the allied nations of that era are gathering this week to celebrate and honor those who fought, lived and died in that battle.

Which means donald trump is on a foreign trip to the UK to crash in London, annoy the Royals, cause massive protests (planned for Tuesday, kids!), and invite the return of the Baby Trump.

It has its own Wikipedia page. *I* don't have my own Wikipedia page...

Wanna know how unpopular trump IS in the United Kingdom?

They can show these adverts and get away with it. Ouch.

And it seems the Brits understood that if they showed up for trump's arrival at Buckingham Palace today he'd misinterpret it as fandom turnout, they decided - wisely - to avoid him altogether and save their anger for tomorrow. As seen from this Twitter feed:

Seriously, trump's Inauguration wasn't THIS empty...

So far, trump's done a good job of humiliating the United States, meddling in the upcoming Tory leadership vote - more on that later - and keeping us on the edge of our seats waiting for a member of the Royal Family to just give up civility and knee the Shitgibbon in the groin. I still got good money on Prince Harry.

Tomorrow there's something else I wanna discuss instead. Another key anniversary. Sleep well.

The Trade Bully (w/Update)

How the hell is our national economy even keeping its head above water when trump is intentionally trying to drown everybody???

This past week he made the decision to expand his tariff wars - no longer content to smash against the Chinese market and the Euro market and the Canadian market - by interrupting an ongoing trade deal with Mexico with a plan to up tariffs with Mexico by five percent every month until Mexico "stops sending illegals across the border."

trump is pretty much rolling two of his signature issues into one big mess: Convinced Mexico is intentionally sending families and asylum seekers into the United States, trump wants to punish them for it by nuking the multi-billion dollar business we've got going with our closest trading partner. As David A. Graham notes at the Atlantic:

Now comes Trump’s latest move, the 5 percent tariff, which could rise over time if Mexico doesn’t comply. It’s a more modest version of an earlier threat to levy a 25 percent tariff on all Mexican goods, but it has still created chaos. U.S. companies are scrambling to figure out how to deal with the tariff, Republican lawmakers are critical, and Mexico is responding with anger and defiance...

There is the chance that the tariff (or some other trick) will actually succeed, but the prospects seem dim. Agreeing to Trump’s demands would likely be politically untenable for Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Even if it were not, it’s unclear how much ability López Obrador has to stop illegal immigration through Mexico. After all, the American experience shows that border security is not so easy—especially without resorting to violence or inhumane tactics. It’s not even clear what would count as success in Trump’s view; his declaration says that Mexico must “dramatically reduce or eliminate the number of illegal aliens crossing its territory into the United States,” without naming quantitative targets...

This is merely trump at his most basic: An ignorant bully who thinks all he has to do is humiliate his opponents to achieve his success. But he keeps exposing his ignorance when it comes to immigration, and he's showing no understanding of the economic realities of trade and tariff that he's supposed to be good at.

For starters, look back at the first paragraph I quote from Graham. The thing about tariffs is that they are fees (taxes) imposed by companies here in the United States. The foreign countries at the other end are not taxed, they are merely hampered from dealing more openly with U.S. businesses. They'll lose some business and profits... but they can - and have - move on to trading partners in other countries (Hi, Brazil!).

What trump is doing is punishing US, people here at home, which shows up in higher costs for goods that go towards agriculture and manufacturing. Our auto industry in particular is getting killed by trump's tariffs. Like I said, I'm amazed our economy hasn't collapsed yet in the year since trump started his trade wars.

And as always, trump is doing this purely on impulse (or with Stephen Miller whispering his racist agenda into trump's ear) (via CNBC's Kayla Tausche and Tusker Higgins):

President Donald Trump’s Treasury secretary and top trade advisor opposed his surprise plan to impose new tariffs on Mexican imports, according to a source close to the White House who said the idea was pushed by immigration hawk Stephen Miller.

The announcement came as Trump was “riled up” by conservative radio commentary about the recent surge in border crossings, according to the source...

trump is not doing this based on research or the recommendation of informed advisors and experts: he's doing this out of pure rage stoked by those who know how to - and enjoy - pushing trump's buttons.

There is no thought into the consequences. There is no long-term assessment of damages done by these moves. Only the satisfaction of trying to hurt other people.

Problem is, trump and his lackeys are hurting more people than they realize. The impact of many of the border states - on a lot of Red States, period - is pretty severe. Via Andy Kiersz at Business Insider:

Friday morning, stocks were falling in industries like auto manufacturing, which has supply chains distributed across North America that could be seriously interrupted by increased trade barriers between the US and Mexico. Chipotle, which relies on imports of avocados and other produce from Mexico, also saw a drop in its stock price...

If the proposed tariffs come into effect, certain states where trade with Mexico makes up a big part of the economy could be hardest hit.

Big state economies that border Mexico exported a large volume of goods to that country in 2017. Texas had nearly $98 billion in exports, and California had nearly $27 billion. While it doesn't border Mexico, auto-industry supply chains contribute to Michigan's $12.5 billion in exports in that year...

Kiersz' article has two maps showing the imports and exports between Mexico and the states. Texas is the biggest partner on both maps, with other Red States Arizona, Louisiana, and Florida as the next hardest hit (with Ohio, Georgia, Tennessee and Kentucky in that grouping). The Blue state hit the hardest would be California... which is still not good for the nation overall because that state is one of our biggest money-makers. Hurting Cali's economy hurts us all no matter what.

But does trump truly care?

No.

All trump wants is political wins, in order to back up - even if he lies about it all, he still wants to show off - his ongoing rally cries to his angry racist base.

It doesn't matter if a trade war with Mexico will hit seven or eight Red States. It doesn't matter if none of this stops illegal immigration the way trump wants (Jesus. He's been caging babies in jails for two years, and families are still THAT desperate to get here).

All that matters is that trump wants to think he's winning, wants to force a fight he can't win on the hopes the other side - Mexico again - will flinch. Even when Mexico's smartest move is to let trump self-immolate and try to wait this storm out for a new saner President in 2021.

Gods help us. The way trump is managing things, the illusion of a strong economy is going to end soon. Farmers are still going bankrupt, auto makers are cutting jobs, the stimulus of job creation will dry up, the tax cuts aren't going into families' bank accounts like the GOP promised, personal debts are still scaling upward... something's going to collapse soon and take this all down.

And 62 million trump voters will cheer as they drown in the ashes.

We are so very royally extravagantly fucked.

Update 6/8/19: So at the last minute trump was able to wrangle out a deal with Mexico to avert his threat to issue tariffs. Thing is, it seems the agreed-to deal was settled months ago, and trump's claim that he is forcing Mexico to buy more American grain from farmers is a goddamn lie. So of course trump is going to run with this for another month as a "victory" until he causes another goddamn controversy.

Blood On the Streets of Virginia Beach

A gunman - apparently a long-time employee of the city - attacked the municipal center in Virginia Beach VA this afternoon. Eleven dead so far, more wounded, entire community in shock.

Another goddamn angry guy with another goddamn gun.

And this one hits close to home.

My family lived in that area when I was five, six years old. Dad was still in the Navy then, got assigned to Norfolk until he retired in 1976, and we moved down to Florida after that. I have some fond memories of growing up in the Kempsville area, and those beaches were the first ones I remember going and learning to swim. I remember riding the car past all the beach venues, an amusement park with bright lights, the deep tunnels under the Bay wherever Mom drove us, the sand-filled air and sea-salt scent...

Goddammit, America.

God DAMN YOU, National Rifle Body Count Association.

We are ALL dying one mass shooting at a time.

Our homes, past present and future, all at risk.

All because angry guys have easy access to weapons like this.

I want my childhood homes safe again, America. When? When will this war on our neighborhoods end?

The Pettiness of a Tiny Man

So yesterday was a crazy day - ain't it always down this Darkest Timeline - but this was something that stood out. Via the Navy Times but based on a report from the Wall Street Journal (firewalled):

The Navy was reportedly directed by the White House to keep the destroyer John S. McCain hidden during a Memorial Day visit by President Donald Trump to U.S. Fleet Activities Yokosuka.

A May 15 email obtained by the Wall Street Journal revealed instructions from White House staff in preparation for the president’s planned speech to about 800 sailors and Marines aboard the Japan-based amphibious assault ship Wasp, which is based in the same port as the McCain.

The email, which was reportedly shared between a U.S. Indo-Pacific Command official, Air Force officials and the U.S. Navy’s Seventh Fleet, featured two instructions pertaining to the logistics of the president’s speaking engagement.

It was the third and final instruction that came as a surprise.

“USS John McCain needs to be out of sight,” the email stated, according to the WSJ. “Please confirm #3 will be satisfied.”

The orders may not have come directly from trump, but I'm willing to bet he's expressed enough anger towards John McCain the person to make it clear to trump's handlers that the Navy vet/POW hero/Congressman/Senator was persona non grata and it included the ship named in McCain's honor. And that led to trump's people going out of their way to be as petty and vindictive as their bad boss.

I'm not angry at the Navy for how they handled this - by blocking McCain crewmembers from even attending trump's appearances if they wanted to - I'm angry at trump. I'm angry at the environment he creates around himself, one of vanity and arrogance and petty viciousness. I'm angry at his lackeys, all so eager and willing to suck up to a man whose hatred for other people is on constant display.

What was it about McCain that seems to drive trump to such vindictive acts? trump had insulted and dismissed McCain for years ever since trump's campaigning in 2015. trump mocked the fact that McCain's heroism was mostly due to getting shot down and caught as a POW during Vietnam.

trump continually acts as though he honestly doesn't understand why everyone else revered McCain in ways they will never worship himself.

A lot of it has to do with trump's World View. To him, everything is Winners and Losers. And trump himself must never be a Loser, he must always project himself as a Winner because that's how people will admire you.

And yet there's McCain. Not the top of his graduation class from the Naval Academy, who got much of his early breaks because - like trump - his family was connected (Admirals all). Not the best politician, who got caught up in the S&L scandals of the 1980s. Someone who tried to run for President in 2000 and got stomped by Dubya. Someone who ran for President as the Republican nominee and got stomped by Obama.

And yet everybody loved him, revered him. McCain was a darling of the Beltway media. Even Centrist Democrats (and even a few Progressives) applauded him from time to time for any "honorable" stances he would commit every so often to keep his statesman cred going.

That was the thing, what trump could never comprehend. The thing about McCain that drives him mad to this day.

McCain, for all his political partisanship, was still a genuinely honorable American. Given an opportunity as a POW to leave the prison - as a PR stunt by the North Vietnamese - McCain refused because his honor told him the prisoners ahead of him should go first. Given opportunities when campaigning for President, McCain always played to a broad consensus, trying to present himself as a reformer and bipartisan figure (he still voted the GOP line more often than not, obviously).

And above all, McCain showed respect to others. I wrote about this when he died:

But there will be moments that stick out for me, the moments when he tried to speak to our better angels during a bitter 2008 campaign, when the Far Right media was going out of its way to fearmonger about Obama. In a place and in front of people who could have turned against him, McCain spoke well of his Democratic opponent, tried to speak to a "respectful" position that tried to make it clear that while Republican and Democrat may be on opposite sides of an argument we were all still Americans...

McCain campaigned against Obama as a liberal, McCain campaigned against Obama as a "weak and inexperienced" figure, but McCain NEVER campaigned against Obama as a human being.

That was something trump will never, can never do. trump simply can't comprehend "honor" as a personal habit. There has never been anything honorable in trump's entire career as a bankrupt businessman, con artist, and foreign stooge.

And so McCain sticks like a spur under trump's skin, probably far more than anyone else save for Hillary and Obama.

And so trying to hide McCain's very memory becomes the only thing trump's lackeys can do.

If trump were an honest man, he would express his displeasure at the things McCain did to hamper trump's plan to nuke Obamacare but then move on. (trump also wouldn't have cheated with Russia's help to steal the 2016 elections) If trump were merely calculating, he'd figure out more subtle ways to commit his revenge in less public ways. If trump were savvy, he'd play the role of respectful rival, try to co-opt some of McCain's personal touch to gain support among those who still honor him.

But trump is none of those things. trump is a vain, petty, insufferable bully who can never respect anyone who can lose and roll on to other accomplishments in life. trump is an unthinking mite who thinks himself mighty because he cheats and steals his way to victory.

It will be telling to history that the USS McCain will continue sailing on while the best trump can hope for is getting a garbage scow named after himself.

Acts of Hypocrisy From America's Greatest Monster

While trump is a nightmarish monster rampaging across the countryside, I would argue that Mitch McConnell is the greatest evil our nation has known since the 1800s.

Because McConnell knows exactly what he's doing: Obstructing and breaking the political system to where it favors only himself and his party, and to Hell with the rest of the world.

The most obvious sin Mitch committed in his tenure as Senate Majority Leader was to block President Obama's nomination for the Supreme Court in 2016, when Justice Scalia suddenly died to leave a vacancy. Mitch's excuse for SCOTUS-blocking Obama was "Well, it's an election year and we should let the American People decide who should fill that judicial vacancy" even though there was no written law or legal code proscribing such a move. The GOP tried pointing the blame onto then Vice President Biden, who during his Senate career in 1992 blocked Bush the Elder from filling lower court vacancies under the same excuse. Problem was (and still is), Mitch and the Republicans were the ones pulling the trigger on this particular scheme. They had no genuine legal excuse to pull that stunt.

As I wrote back then:

He's essentially arguing that President Obama no longer has any political authority to fill a Supreme Court vacancy. Even though - by law - Obama is still President of the United States until January 2017 when his successor gets sworn in.

Dear Mitch McConnell, let this amateur historian of the American Constitution explain a little thing: The American people ALREADY HAVE A VOICE in the selection of the next SCOTUS Justice. THEY VOTED BARACK OBAMA TO DO THE JOB BACK IN 2008 AND AGAIN IN 2012 TO DO THIS VERY THING. Nothing in the Constitution says the President should be prevented from doing his job the last year of his tenure. There. Done. Explained to you, you obstructionist bastard...

But it didn't matter in the end, did it? For all my hopes that McConnell would waver or that the voters would reject him and the Republicans in 2016, in the end that sonofabitch won: He got what he wanted in a trump electoral victory, which ensured the Supreme Court would remain under Far Right Conservative control.

So here we are, three years later coming into another Presidential Election Cycle, only this time the President Loser of the Popular Vote is donald trump and a Republican. So what does Mitch think should happen if there's a Supreme Court vacancy during 2020?

Via Russell Berman at The Atlantic:

With four words and a proud smile, the Senate majority leader this week confirmed what those who have watched him closely have long understood to be true: If a vacancy on the high court occurs in the election year of 2020, the Republican majority that McConnell leads would vote to confirm President Donald Trump’s nominee. “Oh, we’d fill it,” McConnell said in response to a what-if question about the Supreme Court during an appearance in his home state of Kentucky.

Mitch is grinning over this because THIS time if there's a sudden vacancy it'll likely be a Democratic-nominated jurist, giving the Republicans a chance to make the Court a 6-to-3 supermajority. Because THIS time he doesn't have to worry about Obama's legacy, only his own.

McConnell’s longer-term goal—indeed, his bid for a lasting legacy as Senate leader—is no secret. His aim is to install as many conservatives to lifetime federal judgeships, and in particular on the Supreme Court, as possible. He is well on his way to success in this area, having prioritized judicial nominations over legislation during Trump’s first two years in office. Key to the effort has been McConnell’s embrace of shrewd, arguably ruthless tactics. After blocking Garland in 2016, he didn’t bat an eye in swiftly deciding to nuke the Senate’s 60-vote threshold for judicial nominations in the face of a Democratic filibuster of Judge Neil Gorsuch a year later. In 2018, McConnell steered Brett Kavanaugh to confirmation despite multiple accusations of sexual misconduct  against the appellate judge; the majority leader held the vote weeks before a midterm election that could have handed control of the Senate to the Democrats.

This is all that matters to McConnell: Skewing as much of the federal system to a conservative ideology even at the expense of needed legislation and Congressional action. He has burned every in-house courtesy, he has rewritten every legislative norm, he has mocked the entire nation in this quest to leave a Far Right legacy for an era that will likely skew more Progressive Left.

Mitch is essentially making sure our nation remains in a state of social/economic/political civil war for the next 40 years.

This should be carved into his tombstone no matter how many times his family tries to repair the vandalism: The Deepest Pit of Hell Is Not Enough For Mitch McConnell.

Short Description of Mueller's Public Speech

Best interpretation of Robert Mueller's public appearance today to explain his closing down/resigning from the Special Prosecutor's office (there's a ton of opinion pieces out there but for now the Daily Beast link to Olivia Messer will suffice):

JESUS FUCKING CHRIST, AMERICA, READ THE GODDAMN REPORT. I SPENT ONE WHOLE SECTION EXPLAINING HOW RUSSIA INTERFERED IN THE ELECTIONS, AND THE SECOND SECTION I SPELLED OUT LIKE FIVE SPECIFIC PLACES WHERE TRUMP COMMITTED OBSTRUCTION, AND EVERYBODY'S TAKING BARR'S WORD THAT TRUMP IS "EXONERATED"? WILL YOU GET OFF YOUR ASSES AND CALL CONGRESS TO START IMPEACHMENT PROCEEDINGS ALREADY. THERE'S NOTHING ELSE I CAN DO, PEOPLE, THE GODDAMN DOJ IS RIGGED TO BLOCK EVERYBODY BUT CONGRESS TO STOP A CROOKED PRESIDENT. OKAY, PELOSI? STOP WAFFLING AND START CHARGING TRUMP'S LACKEYS FOR LYING TO CONGRESS AT LEAST, HOLD THEM IN CONTEMPT LIKE THEY DID IN THE OLD DAYS, GODDAMMIT. I MAY BE A DECORATED MARINE BUT I CAN'T SAVE THE WHOLE GODDAMN PLANET, THAT'S YOUR JOB. AND WILL YOU START BITCH-SLAPPING MITCH MCCONNELL UNTIL HE AGREES TO PASS LAWS TO STOP THE RUSSIANS FROM HACKING US AGAIN! CHRIST, I FEEL LIKE I'M TAKING CRAZY PILLS!

Well, at least, that's how *I* heard it.

Every Violent Man trump Will Set Free

I dread this year's Memorial Day - usually meant as a moment for Americans to honor war veterans (albeit slightly different from Veterans Day) - because of the way the Shitgibbon-in-Chief is going to desecrate the purpose of today.

For some background, let's refer to Aaron Rupar's article at Vox.com:

Taking cues from Fox News, President Donald Trump is reportedly considering commemorating Memorial Day by pardoning several American troops accused of war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan...

On Monday, the Daily Beast reported that Trump’s interest in the pardons is in part a result of “a months-long lobbying campaign” by Iraq War veteran Pete Hegseth, a Fox & Friends weekend co-host who doubles as an informal adviser to the president.

Hegseth reacted to the Daily Beast’s report by tweeting it with hashtags calling for pardons for Chief Petty Officer Edward Gallagher, a Navy SEAL leader who is awaiting court-martial on charges he shot unarmed civilians and stabbed a defenseless teenager while deployed to help Iraqi forces fight ISIS in 2017; Mathew Golsteyn, a Silver Star recipient (the honor was later stripped) who admitted to killing a Taliban bombmaker in Afghanistan in February 2010 and is scheduled to be tried on charges of premeditated murder; and Clint Lorance, who is serving a 19-year sentence following his conviction on murder charges stemming from the shooting of three Afghan men in July 2012...

But it is not “the left” that has accused the troops in question of war crimes — it is the military justice system. While Trump seems to view the pardons as a gift to the military, it’s actually the military that has decided to prosecute Gallagher and Golsteyn. Pardons, in short, would interfere in prosecution instigated by the military, which is an extremely unusual thing for the president to do.

“Absent evidence of innocence or injustice the wholesale pardon of US servicemembers accused of war crimes signals our troops and allies that we don’t take the Law of Armed Conflict seriously,” Gen. Martin Dempsey, who served as President Barack Obama’s senior military adviser, tweeted on Wednesday. “Bad message. Bad precedent. Abdication of moral responsibility. Risk to us.”

These violent men - who'd have been charged with serial murder and other acts of violence if they did any of this as civilians - are going to get pardoned by a well-documented draft dodger (Google "President Bone Spurs") who seems to think that regular soldiers - our best soldiers - go around like pumped-up Rambos shooting everything in sight.

trump is openly interfering with ongoing military trials - Gallagher hasn't been convicted yet making his possible pardon an unjustifiable preemptive move - all to score political points with a voting base who eagerly cheer on any act of violence against anyone not of their tribe (and Iraqi and Afghani civilians fit that definition).

And if trump thinks this will mollify or encourage greater acts of violence from our troops, he's only stirring more intraservice dread and disunity. If you read the reports on Gallagher, his fellow Navy SEALs were horrified by his blood-thirst and kept reporting him up a chain of command that didn't want to hear any of it. That his own unit turned him in and are willing to testify shows how twisted Gallagher got... and now trump's planned pardon will mock their honor in doing so. As John Cole - a battlefield Iraqi War veteran - notes at Balloon-Juice: 

...pardoning war criminals doesn’t honor our troops regardless what fucking day of the year it is done. It’s a spit in the face of every man and woman who served honorably in the military. It’s saying “hey- you’re all murderers anyway.” It’s fucking disgusting.

There is a genuine threat to discipline here: Commanding officers will find it harder to keep the more violent soldiers on a leash if those men believe trump will issue them a "Get Out of Jail Free" card. The troops who don't agree with that violence will realize their military legal system is useless and take matters into their own hands. We'd be bringing back the worst traits and behaviors of Vietnam...

Despite what trump and his Fox Not-News buddies think, our military takes the status of "Noncombatant" civilians seriously nowadays. They want to avoid random acts of bloodshed against innocents, and not because we've been there before with atrocities like My Lai. 

It's because of the very nature of the ongoing War on Terror we're in right now. The enemy we're fighting isn't troops on a battlefield, it's mad bombers and snipers hiding among the civilians using them as human shields and daring us to kill 'em all in order to make their war zone a quagmire to trap us until we're broken. Every time our side commits an atrocity the terrorists win. It makes it harder for the United States to justify its actions overseas, alienating our allies on the ground and converting more people to side with a devil they know (the terrorists).

But trump doesn't care about any of that. he's all about appeasing his base and rewarding those he thinks will serve himself.

An honest Commander-in-Chief would never go this low.

And GODS HELP US how these pardoned killers will get feted and honored by the Far Right when those pardons clear.

We are so very royally violently fucked.

Okay, So There's ONE Republican Who Calls It Right

It took awhile, but at last one Republican Congresscritter read the redacted Mueller Report and realized "Holy Shit, trump obstructed justice and we need to hold him accountable through the impeachment process!"

I don't I agree with Justin Amash on everything, but at least one Far Right sociopath is sticking to honest-to-God constitutional conviction (until his deep-pocket backers insist he change his tune).

So who had Amash as TBD?

To quote from Digby at Hullabaloo:

As it turns out, Amash is literally the only member of the Freedom Caucus who took any of that stuff seriously. The rest have become the most sycophantic of Donald Trump's toadies, acting as his most loyal henchmen. Their dedication to the Constitution and fiscal rectitude seems to have evaporated on the day Barack Obama left office. The Tea Party itself has morphed into the Donald Trump base, gleefully abandoning all the principles it claimed to hold dear and instead cheering on Trump's endless betrayal of constitutional principles.

Amash, on the other hand, seems to have believed what he said. He took to Twitter over the weekend, becoming the first major elected Republican to have the guts to state the obvious. He had read the Mueller report and recognized that President Trump has committed impeachable offenses. Anyone who has read it and acting in good faith would say the same thing but so far Amash stands alone among Republican members of Congress.

His fellow Republicans are not happy about it. Trump called Amash a "loser" and a "lightweight." Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said, “I don’t think anybody is going to follow his lead." House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy declared that Amash was "just looking for attention" and is "out of step with America." Amash's longtime buddies in the Freedom Caucus formally condemned him on Monday night.

I don't agree with most of Amash's libertarian philosophy. But he is a champion of civil liberties and a harsh critic of government surveillance overreach. I've often admired his willingness to stand up to his party on those issues in the past, and it's telling that he never signed onto their "deep state" conspiracy theory to protect Donald Trump. Given Amash's record, if there was the slightest granule of plausibility to those theories, he'd be on board. Now he's gone further and called for the president's impeachment, based on the fact that Trump committed crimes while in office, a genuine affront to the constitutional order...

Amash is already facing a primary challenger, which is no surprise when this is a standard response from the GOP when one of their own goes Full Apostate. But the Republicans have to be terrified of the situation.

It's not that Amash is giving other Republicans the opportunity to quit on #Teamtrump. It's that Amash is giving Democrats the political cover to openly pursue impeachment proceedings.

The Dem leadership under Pelosi has been putting the brakes on the Impeach The SOB movement among their ranks. It falls under the "Democrats Are Cowards" public meme but Pelosi has legitimate concerns about overreach. There are fears that trump could use the media circus of an impeachment hearing to regain voter support (which IMHO is an overrated fear because trump's clowning won't be able to hide the facts of trump's crimes).

But Amash makes it harder for Pelosi to stay quiet. If even a Republican - with a reputation for civil libertarian consistency - is openly calling for impeachment, it's going to make the Democrats look weaker and self-defeating (again). At some point, Pelosi is going to have to let the dogs out. Amash is making that sooner rather than later.

We're watching in real time politicians trying to find moral conviction to uphold the Constitution and the system of Checks and Balances.

This is the moment the Democrats have to grow a spine and hold trump - and the corrupt Republican Party - accountable.

I Don't Even Know How Milkshakes Got Worked Into This Brexit Mess, But Somehow It Makes Sense

There's a lot of other things to write about regarding Brexit and the self-immolation of the entire United Kingdom over an issue that could be easily solved by CANCELLING THE DAMN THING and reconsidering just how to fucking do it properly.

But in the meantime, watching one of the main villains of the Brexit drama get his just desserts is too good to ignore (via Amy Walker at the Guardian):

Nigel Farage has been forced to seek refuge on his campaign bus after being stalked by people carrying milkshakes in Kent, according to reports.

The Brexit party leader and his campaign team seemed keen to avoid a repeat of events in Newcastle on Monday, when he was doused in banana and salted caramel milkshake after making a speech.

Okay, I can remember a time when people got doused in animal blood by activists, sometimes stale beer (but only at sporting events), oil during any energy/climate change protests, eggs for the standard meme of "having egg on your face", stuff like that. But milkshakes?!

I'm also a bit distraught that they wasted a perfectly good banana caramel milkshake. I can only hope the protesters got two, one for Farage and one for themselves to enjoy later.

Anyway, back to the drama.

Following a tour of Dartford and Gravesend before Thursday’s EU elections, things took an unfortunate turn for Farage in Rochester, where three young men wearing balaclavas with their hoods up were spotted by a supporter.

He was then told to stay on the bus. Its driver, Michael Bolton, told the Kent Live website: “There are a couple of guys standing over there with milkshakes, they were going to throw them over him. But the police are there, we’ve spotted them and now Nigel isn’t getting off the bus.”

You know something?

A real man does not fear the milkshake.

A real man would drink the milkshake.

I DRINK IT UP!

Do they have shamrock shakes in Ireland, by the by?

Seven Reasons NOT To Invade Iran (w/ 2020 Update)

(Update: Thanks to Tengrain for promoting this entry on Crooks & Liars and Mike's Blog Round Up! Please do stay awhile and read the latest entries especially today's memorial for the 30th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre)

(Update 06/17/2020: Well, I submitted this article to the Florida Writers Association's 2020 Royal Palm Literary Awards in their Non-Fiction/Blog category, and good news tonight it's received Semi-Finalist status!)


(Update 07/25/2020: Follow-up on the RPLA for 2020, this article is now a FINALIST in the Non-Fiction/Blog category! Which comes with another GIF to upload. On a serious note, this qualifies to be a First, Second, or Third Place winner by late October (not guaranteed however, there may be more than three finalists in most Royal Palm categories)).

(Update 10/18/2020: The RPLA awards ceremony was last night, and this article received Silver (Second Place) in the Non-Fiction/Blog category! Thank you, judges!) 


Now, back to the article:

So trump - through his war-hungry advisor John Bolton and other proxies - has been saber-rattling towards Iran lately.

This after he and Bolton saber-rattled at Venezuela before backing off, and after saber-rattling at North Korea before Jong Il figured out how to turn trump into a gushing fanboy.

But this is serious. trump's committed harsh acts towards Iran: Dissing the nuclear deal Obama made with them, re-issuing the hard sanctions Obama relaxed, adding more sanctions towards nations still working with Iran on limiting their nuclear program to non-weapon levels, and essentially threatening to turn the whole country into his next parking lot.

And in the past week, trump's people had been laying the groundwork for a full-out invasion, talking up 120,000 troops getting deployed, a carrier fleet heading to the area, everything they can think of to make the Iranian government freak out. There's been sudden and unconfirmed reports of Saudi shipping getting attacked with mines. A ton of "Gulf of Tonkin" style setup.

And while trump is now showing signs of backing off - that he's suddenly aware that throwing a punch in this schoolyard standoff might mean getting punched back - there's just too many reasons in trump's head - and in the heads of all his neocon war-happy lackeys - to avoid the reality that sooner or later trump wants his goddamn war so he can play Commander-in-Chief. And like it or not, Iran remains at the top of the neocon Wish List.

However, for all the fantasy reasons trump (and Bolton) have for invading Iran, there's a lot of reasons in the real world we shouldn't be eager to start yet another land war in the Middle East.

Starting with 1) The United States will be going into a land war with Iran all on its own.

This is the first thing trump needs to understand: Thanks to all his bluster and bullying on the global stage, most of our natural allies (Hi, NATO!) are in no mood to help us anymore. Unlike 1991 in the first Iraqi War where we formed an international coalition over specific goals (end Iraq's invasion of Kuwait), and unlike 2003 in the second Iraqi War where we formed a smaller but dedicated coalition over questionable goals (end Saddam's attempts to gain WMDs that turned out not to exist), we are not going to find a lot of teammates for this one. The United States has no specific causus belli on this. While Iran's got a lot of ties to terror organizations across the Middle East (especially in Lebanon) they're not enough of a threat to U.S. interests to the area. Despite claims, Iran's been keeping up with their end of their nonproliferation deal with the other nations. The majority of nations prefer keeping the peace now, and are coping with their own problems at home (some of them can even profit dealing with Iran if/when trump's sanctions end).

The only nations that could ally with the U.S. in an invasion would be Saudi Arabia - Iran's primary competitor for regional influence - and the United Arab Emirates. Also Israel, which has been in a war of sorts against Iranian-backed terror groups. However, Saudi forces are tied down fighting a war in Yemen, the UAE's not much of a military, and if Israel joins in on any invasion of a Muslim nation we're basically talking World War III involving half a dozen African/Middle Eastern nations attacking Israel. The other nations in the region with U.S. military presence - Kuwait and Iraq and Afghanistan - are bogged down with their own issues (Iraq in particular is still coping with ISIL and the overflow from the Syrian Civil War) to be of any help. Turkey, our closest NATO ally, is too busy with Syria as well.

We'd be facing a likelihood of nations helping Iran against us. Primarily China, who would have an interest in gaining more Persian/Arabic oil as well as spit in trump's face for his tariffs war. Hilariously enough, Iran is a client nation with Russia - military and regional economic deals - meaning Russia at best will sit on the sidelines eating popcorn while their BFF trump sweats this out alone.

IF the United States enters into a war with Iran, we will be doing so with the fewest number of allies we've ever committed since the Spanish-American War.

2) Rolling Into Iran Will NOT Be Easy.

Unlike Iraq in 2003 - which had been battered not only by international sanctions but by constant military strikes since the First Iraqi War, along with genuine demoralized troops Saddam treated like cannon fodder - going into Iran will not take days, it will take weeks or even months.

Geographically, Iran is bigger than Iraq and with harsher terrain. It'd be similar to fighting in Afghanistan with vast mountainous ranges. A direct strike at the capital - Tehran - would do nothing to quell the rest of the nation, and is far enough inland that supply routes are necessary between any US bases (likely from Iraq) and the front lines, requiring occupation of a lot of major cities between the coast and inland.

Leading up to:

3) We Will NOT Be Greeted As Liberators.

That was one particular fantasy from the 2003-2009 Iraqi occupation that died a quick death. Cheney's assertion back then about Iraqis wanting new leadership was based on genuine hatred of Saddam... but ignored the reality that Iraqis hated getting invaded in the first place. They saw the U.S. trying to impose rule by a hand-picked toady (Hi, Chalabi!) and refused to accept him. Tied into the overall failure of the U.S. occupiers to organize and function to create a new political infrastructure to succeed Saddam's dark rule, and you got a nation full of resentful residents who allowed insurgency and opposition to turn Iraq into another Quagmire for America.

And that was with a nation that wanted independence from a despot. With Iran...?

Granted, the Iranians are oppressed as well - the recent history of uprisings and protests prove that - but they've seen the damage done to Iraq and aren't too impressed with the mess the U.S. is leaving in Afghanistan. The Iranian people know that if the Americans come knocking we aren't going to be all smiles and chocolate bars, we're going to be bombing the shit out of everyone and let God sort em out. They'd rather side with the despots they know than deal with whatever crooked puppet we'd put in office (remember the Shah? That was us putting him on the throne back in the 1950s!)

4) We Do NOT Have the Troops For a Prolonged War Effort.

Especially considering we're STILL active in Afghanistan, with forces in Iraq and Syria coping with ISIL, as well as keeping ourselves deployed in South Korea and Japan to deter North Korea/China, and Gods help us the crap trump is forcing our military to commit to along the Mexican border.

Bolton and others are talking up sending in 120,000 troops if/when we get serious about Iran, which is a smaller number than the 150,000 troops sent into Iraq in 2003... and even then we had retired generals warning us that was half of what was needed to make the occupation work. If trump were serious, he ought to be calling up for volunteers to kick that number into the 300,000 troop range... and the way recruiting is suffering, that's not likely.

We're going into a larger nation, with tougher terrain, more cities to siege. They have roughly 500,000 active service personnel. We may have technological advantages that can shut down things like their own Air Force and communications, but they have advantages of watching us in action the last 15 years and knowing how to counter all that (not to mention getting cyberwar help from Russia).

Remember Millennium Challenge 2002? That war game after 9/11 where the U.S. tried out their game plan against an unnamed country that they later revealed was Iran? The Marine general playing as Iran used crafty asymmetrical methods and "sank" a carrier fleet, and the only way the U.S. side won was by "resetting" the whole thing and ordering that general to not use the methods he deployed. Do you think Iran is going to play by OUR rules if we invade? This is the real world: YOU DO NOT GET TO RESET WARS.

Iran can, arguably, bloody our military's nose early enough in any invasion attempt to make Americans recoil at the losses. And we won't have the troops to recover quick enough.

And it's definitely not going to look good for "the boss" because trump wants his victories pretty like him...

5) We Do NOT Have A Unified And Supportive Home Front.

When 9/11 happened, the entire nation mourned and stood united against a terror threat. When we sent troops into Afghanistan where the threat was, there was near agreement from all Americans that it was the right thing to do.

When Dubya wanted to invade Iraq as part of his Global War on Terror, the unity faded. A lot of Americans argued it was the wrong war at the wrong time (we hadn't captured Bin Laden, we were still nation-building in Afghanistan).

When Obama wanted to do something about Syria or Libya, he was constrained by a GOP-leaning Congress and by general public apathy, and so left it to minimal efforts that left both nations deep into their own civil wars.

So here comes trump, likely claiming (and believing) a majority of Americans want this war in Iran. he probably thinks ANY war effort will force his critics to shut up to avoid getting labeled "unpatriotic" and "treasonous" (which he and his GOP worshipers are doing anyway). he's ignoring the facts that A) he's still unpopular across the general population and B) the likelihood of a bad opening attack wave would make him over-react in public to cause more Americans to distrust his leadership.

6) Don't Forget: Everything trump Touches Turns to Shit.

As a war-time leader, trump will be all over the place. Meddling in military affairs when he shouldn't, ignoring all warning signs when he should. his point men on Iran - Bolton most of all - will only care for the results they want, not what they'll get, meaning worse decisions will follow after bad. Considering how trump may rely on a private merc army - hi Erik! - to beef up his forces could cause confusion and mayhem on the ground in ways our legitimate military won't be able to control.

In short: We're dealing with a White House that won't cope well with any early setbacks, that can well over-react and cause more damage not only in Iran but also here at home.

With the likely bonus of trump selling off billion-dollar contracts to his corporate buddies that can siphon off much needed funding and supplies while the invasion quickly sours. It's Lose-Lose for the nation when this happens.

trump is not serious about going to actual war. Bolton and Sec of State Pompeo and maybe a lot of other neocons are, but trump is going to treat this as a photo op, a chance for him to perform his immigrant-bashing tirades in front of soldiers who won't enjoy being used as props. The whole thing will be over-managed and under-planned, with money going the wrong way while the troops get sent into death traps.

7) Any war is a bad idea when diplomacy is possible and ought to be pursued.

That's just goddamned common sense. trump and the neocons just want this war to prove diplomacy - at least the way it's been done since the Second World War - doesn't work and that they have better ways to resolve everything. It's trump's Id at play again: Every deal he doesn't make is a bad deal, so he'll blow things up and force people to deal his way (where he gets all the credit and probably all the money).

And yet... trump's saber-rattling continues on.

Sorry, Middle East, we're heading into another decade without any goddamn peace again.

Back In the Day, Counting Down to Phantom Menace

By 1999 I was in my fifth year working at Broward North Regional Library. One year away from turning thirty. In some respects I still hadn't grown up, my mentality was still feeling like I was in college, was still goofing off... but in terms of being into comic books - weekly trips to the comic book stores on University Avenue - and video gaming - getting into the Myst series - and geekery - totally dedicated to my X-Files fandom - and all that jazz.

By 1999 I was totally waiting for the return of a major piece of my childhood geekdom.

Star Wars was going to come out with a prequel film series. Episode One. The Phantom Menace.

See, back in 1983 we had known George Lucas wanted to tell a generation-spanning science fiction series, which started with Star Wars itself in 1977. When he planned it out, however, he realized he needed to tell the early history of how the Empire rose and the Old Republic fell, so he retconned the original into Episode IV and broke the series down into three parts of trilogies: the Original Series - IV then V then VI - then the prequels - I II and III - before completing the whole thing with Episodes VII VIII and IX.

Problem was, after all the hassles Lucas had getting Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi made, he got tired of it and held off making the rest of the series. As a result... the fanbase for Star Wars kind of withered on the vine, keeping up with the occasional book series and spinoffs like cartoon shows and video games (X-Wing series in particular was an industry-changing trendsetter).

Until advancements in visual effects in the early 1990s seemed to change Lucas' mind. The near-real quality of computer graphic effects (CGI) that made Terminators into liquid metal and dinosaurs look really alive seemed to convince him he could make the movies fit the vision he had for the series: a lush, David Lean-esque galaxy of marvelous vistas and epic scales.

After updating the Original series with revamped visual effects and adding deleted scenes - some successful, some not (HAN SHOT FIRST!) - in 1997, Lucas made the announcement that he was ready to make his prequels, the epic telling of the Fall of The Republic through the rise of Anakin Skywalker, the father of Luke and Leia and fated to become Darth Vader Lord of the Sith.

The Star Wars fanbase, geeked up by the Special Editions, went crazy.

A lot of us who were kids when the Original trilogy came out were now adults, some of us parents, all of us still nostalgic for the toys and gameplay and costuming of our youth. All of a sudden, a lot of twenty- and thirty-somethings were breaking out lightsabers and Jedi robes and building droid units to play with.

And we were all doing this now in the era of the Internet. Before, geeks had to keep up with fanzines and newsletters. By 1997, we had Usenet forums and AOL chats and emails and early stages of photo/video sharing (was MySpace up yet?). Everyone was plugged in.

It felt like the geek universe had quadrupled into itself. Science Fiction and fantasy fandom had been kept alive through Star Trek and the early stirrings of newer shows - X-Files already mentioned, also Babylon 5 and dozens more - but Star Wars was the Big One. The Blockbuster. EVERYONE knew what it meant.

The anticipation for the first episode was high when Lucas announced the title and previewed the first trailer:

Before YouTube, people had to see these trailers in the movie theaters. People bought tickets to see the newest movie release that weekend and then left the movie.

People were a little underwhelmed by the title - The Phantom Menace - but were jazzed by seeing the clips. Mass speculation abounded. The new villain - Darth Maul - was deemed impressively scary-looking and became a sought-after action figure. Toy stores stocked like mad.

Someone carved out a website called CountingDown dot com (the link has aged out) where all it was had a timer ticking down by minute, hour and day until the official release in theaters.

People camped out weeks ahead of the release, dressed up. They bought the books. They bought the music CDs - it was JohnWilliams doing Star Wars, shut up! - and "Duel of the Fates" was on heavy rotation on a lot of players.

And then the movie came out.

...

Well, it was pretty to look at...

Okay, I'll step back a little. NO movie, not even a Star Wars, could live up to the anticipation and hype that this one got. And when I left my first viewing of the movie - with my library co-workers - I had few complaints. I even went back several times to view it, having promised to see it with my high school friends back in Pinellas County. I can remember their youngest boys, about four or five years old, were entirely pumped during the Jedi duels and were out of their seats hopping up and down. I was spiritually with them on that: the lightsaber duels were the highlight of the film.

But it was a few months later that the dread settled in, the worrying realization that Menace was... off. It wasn't as much fun as the Original series as I remembered.

I found myself doing the worst thing a fan does: Nitpick.

I focused on the one thing most critics of the Prequel pick on: the character of Jar-Jar Binks. A clear attempt by Lucas to create a kid-friendly sidekick alien for the Jedi main leads, who nonetheless acted / behaved too clumsily and awkward to be believable as someone who could have survived on his own without tripping over his own shoelaces (if he had any). I read other people's criticisms of the character, where they pointed to how Jar-Jar was a callback to early film blackface, a caricature of minstrel shows, and I cringed at the realizations. I know the actor Amhed Best did what he could to make Jar-Jar likable, but it all boiled down to whatever the hell Lucas was thinking when he made Jar-Jar to be slapstick comic relief. In the Original trilogy, Lucas had comic characters like R2-D2 and C3PO, but he made them with a little more care and character, more than the flat, one-note character that Jar-Jar turned out to be.

Alongside the Jar-Jar problem, Lucas had made the other new alien races - the Trade Federation, and Watto, Anakin's slave owner - into painfully clear stereotypes as well. The up-front bad guys of the Prequels, the Trade Federation talked and dressed in Oriental, almost Japanese fashion. And Watto... ouch. An almost Elizabethan caricature of the Jewish figure in British theater.

I also wasn't too wowed by the poor kid they got to play young Anakin. He looked to be five years younger than Natalie Portman - whose character Princess Amidala was getting set up as Anakin's future lover/wife - and he behaved ten years younger than he should have. I can't even remember his name right now - had to check IMDB, it was Jake Lloyd - but I heard years later the poor kid went through a lot of abuse from fans who hated him for Anakin. I didn't blame the actors - not Amhed, not Jake - but for how their characters were written/created. It was like Lucas didn't know what he was doing drawing them up from his plot ideas.

The final thing that finally got me upset was trying to reconcile my understanding of the Jedi faith in the Force with the prequel revelation of bacterial midichlorians that turned out to be a symbiotic lifeform that gave the Jedi (and the Sith) their links to mystical powers. I got the feeling Lucas was responding to criticisms of not grounding the Force upon any scientific rationale, so he went with "superpowered bacteria" as an excuse rather than a character's innate ability to connect from the Force and learn/live from it. It felt clunky, like a last-minute excuse, and noticeably a lot of post-Prequel stories avoid going into any further detail.

By the end of 1999, I felt regret and maybe some shame from having like Phantom Menace. I realized I got more out of The Matrix film that year, along with enjoying other big movies that surprisingly made it one of the better years in film history.

Twenty years later, Biblo, it still hurts...

I think what really bummed me was when I came across a fan-made retelling of the movie called The Phantom Edit. At the time an anonymous creation - later identified as a film editor (Mike Nichols) and named on the Wiki page - the film cut out a lot of the slapstick, redid Jar-Jar's and other Gungan dialog as alien speak to make them sound more like a Proud Warrior race, dropped the midichlorian subplot, edited in deleted scenes to make the plot more sensible, and essentially tightened the film with crisper cutscenes. It essentially made me realize what had been wrong with Episode I... and it haunted me all through the following movies Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith.

It made me realize an unconstrained George Lucas was a danger to his own visionary work.

When I looked back at Episodes IV through VI, Lucas was under creative limits: He answered to other Producers - in particular Gary Kurtz - and had other people working on his scripts - Lawrence Kasdan in particular. He had others direct Empire and Return. When I looked at Episodes I through III, Lucas had no co-creators (there may have been a Producer Rick McCallum, and there was a co-screenwriter for Clones in Jonathan Hales, but Lucas was clearly in control).

Granted, an artist has a right to create as he or she sees fit. A poem can't be made by committee, a sculpture never looks good if there's twenty different people carving out the marble twenty different ways.

But sometimes, there has to be some kind of input and feedback. Someone standing off to the side saying "Okay, why is this speech about sand so romantic, George? Why is Obi-Wan's facial expression so flat in this scene, can't Ewen emote just a little for the fans to see the whimsy that Alec Guinness provided? Is there any way to make it feasible to have these characters NOT be so racist...?"

I think without that kind of feedback, without some kind of editorial control, George indulged in ALL his ideas and didn't weed them down to the good ones, the ones that made the Original trilogy so good. He made serious efforts to create good films, and in hindsight the pictures themselves are on a grand, epic scale and impressive to see. He didn't underplay the political drama that made the Originals genuinely subversive tracts for their era (yes, I got the politics of how the Republic fell). He did make a few memorable new characters among the handful that were one-note and perfunctory (although Jango Fett, Boba's father, was a bit of a disappointment. Good actor, but underdeveloped).

But Lucas was terrible at writing romance. The scenes between Anakin and Amidala were awkward at best. Portman is a good actress and the older Anakin played by Hayden Christensen was suitably imposing and yearning, but the romantic plot was just... who talked like that? I know I have no social skills, but half the dialog between them had little emotional impact, and yet they hooked up anyway. Bleh.

If Lucas just had someone who had a better ear for dialog, for building up character relationships, the key element of the prequels - how Anakin fell in love and betrayed everything good in the process, becoming the haunted man-machine Vader - would have gone over a lot better, and I'd be able to rewatch them the way I rewatch the Originals.

I know it sounds very nitpicky, but I'm a writer meself. I've dabbled in the craft. And my best work that got published by others had gone through a tough editorial process with other eyes critiquing me. It didn't curb my output or my artistic intentions: It sometimes made me a better writer. It created better-received stories.

So when the Final Trilogy was announced, after Disney had bought up Lucasfilm rights and reset the franchise (clearing out some popular novelizations but also a lot of chaff), I was very much relieved to find out that Lucas ceded most of the creative control this time to other writers and directors (much like he did with the Originals). I'm sure he still had input and some creative control, but the films were going to have other hands and as long as the fun was there.

And yes, I loved The Force Awakens and yes I liked The Last Jedi (oh Good God, the incel hate towards that movie, I will never understand).

We'll just see how Episode IX wraps this saga up. Hopefully as true to Lucas' vision as possible... with better dialog dammit... (ow stop Force Choking me, George)