A Wounded Narcissist Leading Us to Ruin

If there's any solid evidence that the United States as a nation, as a global power, as a beacon of political stability is no more, the recent letter from donald trump to Norway's prime minister should be the big fucking clue we've finally gone over the cliffs (via Robbie Griffiths at NPR): 

President Trump says his controversial push for U.S. control of Greenland comes after he failed to win the Nobel Peace Prize last year, adding he no longer feels obliged to think only of peace.

In a message to Norway's prime minister Jonas Gahr Støre on Sunday night, Trump criticized the European country for not giving him the prize.

"Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace, although it will always be predominant, but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America," Trump said in the message.

"The World is not secure unless we have Complete and Total Control of Greenland," Trump added. The message was reported by PBS NewsHour, and was later confirmed by Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre in a statement.

Gahr Støre said he received the message on Sunday in response to a text he and Finland's President Alexander Stubb had sent to Trump, in which they had conveyed opposition to Trump's proposed tariff increases on eight European countries over the recent Greenland dispute.

There are images floating around of a physical letter, but I fear they are mock-ups instead of the real thing so I'm not going to post it here. But given how too many reputable news outlets have verified the contents of that letter, we should expect the messaging is correct... and clear.

For all of trump's bluster that Greenland is necessary for America's national security, the truth is that trump wants Greenland to satisfy his own broken ego. The truth is that the current occupant of the White House - I refuse to identify him otherwise - is a bratty five-year-old throwing a tantrum and lashing out in anger towards everyone he feels has insulted him.

As Anne Applebaum clarifies at the Atlantic:

One could observe many things about this document. One is the childish grammar, including the strange capitalizations (“Complete and Total Control”). Another is the loose grasp of history. Donald Trump did not end eight wars. Greenland has been Danish territory for centuries. Its residents are Danish citizens who vote in Danish elections. There are many “written documents” establishing Danish sovereignty in Greenland, including some signed by the United States. In his second term, Trump has done nothing for NATO—an organization that the U.S. created and theoretically leads, and that has only ever been used in defense of American interests. If the European members of NATO have begun spending more on their own defense (budgets to which the U.S. never contributed), that’s because of the threat they feel from Russia.

Yet what matters isn’t the specific phrases, but the overall message: Donald Trump now genuinely lives in a different reality, one in which neither grammar nor history nor the normal rules of human interaction now affect him. Also, he really is maniacally, unhealthily obsessive about the Nobel Prize. The Norwegian Nobel Committee, not the Norwegian government and certainly not the Danish government, determines the winner of that prize. Yet Trump now not only blames Norway for failing to give it to him, but is using it as a justification for an invasion of Greenland.

For the past year, American allies around the world have tried very hard to find a theory that explains Trump’s behavior. Isolationism, neo-imperialism, and patrimonialism are all words that have been thrown around. But in the end, the president himself defeats all attempts to describe a “Trump doctrine.” He is locked into a world of his own, determined to “win” every encounter, whether in an imaginary competition for the Nobel Peace Prize or a protest from the mother of small children objecting to his masked, armed paramilitary in Minneapolis. These contests matter more to him than any long-term strategy. And of course, the need to appear victorious matters much more than Americans’ prosperity and well-being...

This is nothing new, by the way. Any rational observer of trump's world-view since 2016 saw this kind of self-serving mania coming. I remember what Adam L. Silverman wrote back then, and how it applies now:

...More than that, however, is that the Trump Doctrine is really the animating force or theme of the entire Trump campaign. The other candidates had better treat Donald Trump fairly, the Republican National Committee better treat Donald Trump fairly, the Republican establishment better treat Donald Trump fairly, the media better treat Donald Trump fairly, the state level parties that handle the primaries and all the delegates chosen better treat Donald Trump fairly. And Donald Trump will make them treat him fairly! And the only candidate, nay the only person in America who can ensure that you are treated fairly is Donald Trump. And if he isn’t treated fairly or the US isn’t treated fairly, then he will get even...!

It's not that America gets treated fairly - by whatever measurement anyone would use - it's that TRUMP gets treated fairly. And trump's idea of fair treatment is "Give me everything you have and worship me like a god."

trump doesn't get a Nobel Peace Prize? he'll force the soccer organization FIFA to create a brand-new Peace Award in order to keep the planned 2026 World Cup in the U.S. going. Even if everyone else on the planet saw it as the ego-boosting it was and mocked the award. Try to get the actual award winner María Corina Machado to gift trump the physical award as though he won it? The Nobel committee will go public with the reminder that the Peace Prize once given cannot be traded away.

We've seen this ever since trump stormed the public stage back in the 1980s: Denied any public display of success, trump had / is / will lash out however he can.

And with the powers of the office at his disposal, lashing out is arguably the only sadistic enjoyment he can feel.

The problem with this kind of absolutist leadership - the sins of tyrants and mad kings - is that it alienates far too many allies our nation relies relied on to remain a superpower. trump and his handlers haven't really thought this through: trump's threats to tariff most of Europe can backlash with those nations pulling out their investments in US Bonds and other financial markers. We're seeing another drop in the value of the dollar. The calls to relocate the World Cup away from the United States are increasing.

Even if trump pulls back on the tariffs threat, if he does follow through on sending US armed forces to seize Greenland any time soon (gods help us, it might be this week depending on where these airborne troops go) it will not only trigger the collapse of NATO - which benefits only Putin - but also turn far too many nations against us at one time. The US had a hard enough time fighting a War on Terror on two fronts in Afghanistan and Iraq. Trigger this kind of war and we're counting at least eight nations - including the bordering Canada - cutting off our overseas bases, shutting down our logistic capabilities, and arguably going toe-to-toe on a battlefield in multiple locations.

The Far Right - and a lot of the Alpha Male wannabes in trump's world drooling at the fantasy of war - may think we have the world's greatest military and we can take all comers, but they're dragging the rest of the nation into a fight that most Americans - even other Republicans - don't want. Our military may be the best-trained, the best-supplied, the best period, but even we have limits on both manpower and resources. Fighting most of NATO - which may drag in Mexico and various South American nations already pissed at trump, and with the likelihood of our Asian allies like Japan and Philippines refusing to side with us - is not going to be easy.

Everything the United States did over the decades to rise to become a global superpower is getting demolished and firebombed into ash all because of one man's demented ego, this hollow man donald trump who struts upon the stage like an unsatisfied fool.

The only way this ends well is if someone in a position to do anything - a cowering Republican Congress, a military command structure wary of pulling a coup that would still harbinger an end to the constitutional order - steps up and forces trump to step down.

The odds of that happening are less than the odds that trump will drive us into a ruinous war.

Stay safe, everyone.

The Bully Circus

There was a time when Teddy Roosevelt declared the presidency as a kind of "bully pulpit," a means of preaching and advocating for issues that mattered. As Taegan Goddard notes at his Political Dictionary site:

The bully pulpit in Roosevelt’s mind wasn’t about pummeling legislators with presidential authority; rather, he believed the president could encourage the public to push their legislators on behalf of his agenda.

In these times, however, bullying means something darker. Under donald trump, the bullying is a means to treat people not in his circle of power with cruel, insulting, threatening, and aggressive actions.

trump's assaults on Venezuela - not only killing boat crews on dubious accusations, but also seizing oil tankers and running an illegal military operation to capture that nation's president - is but one example of the aggression trump wants to inflict on others.

Here at home, trump's pumped-up immigration police in ICE/Border Patrol under the aegis of "Homeland Security" are committing acts of violence and attempts at intimidation towards the cities of DC, Los Angeles, Portland OR, Chicago, and lately Minneapolis-St. Paul where the escalation has turned bloody (via Edith Olmsted at New Republic):

Following the news that Minnesota and the Twin Cities were suing to stop the Trump administration’s “Operation Metro Surge,” the president took to Truth Social to air his frustration with his besieged constituents.

“Do the people of Minnesota really want to live in a community in which there are thousands of already convicted murderers, drug dealers and addicts, rapists, violent released and escaped prisoners, dangerous people from foreign mental institutions and insane asylums, and other deadly criminals too dangerous to even mention,” Trump wrote. (note: trump is gaslighting again to fearmonger to his flock) 

He claimed that all the “patriots of ICE” wanted was to “remove” these individuals. But last week, the residents of Minneapolis saw something entirely different: an ICE agent senselessly killed a U.S. citizen, Renee Good, and was then defended by every level of government.

Good’s death sparked civil unrest in Minneapolis (and nationwide), as well as requests for federal immigration forces to take their leave. But the Trump administration has doubled down on its occupation, deploying roughly 1,000 more U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers.

Instead of toning down on the rhetoric - the agent who shot Good was caught on his own body cam calling her a "f-cking b-tch" - and violence towards our own communities, the government thugs are crowing and acting worse (from Ashley Vega at People (yes, they're covering this)):

A Minneapolis pastor said he was detained by ICE after heading toward protests near his church. Pastor Kenny Callaghan of All God’s Children MCC shared his account with Fox 9 Minneapolis, saying the encounter unfolded on the morning of Wednesday, Jan. 7.

Callaghan told the outlet he realized something was happening nearby when he heard whistles and car horns outside. He said he grabbed his own whistles and moved toward the commotion, only for the situation to escalate quickly.

He told Fox 9 he managed to take a few photos as the vehicle drove down Portland Avenue before pocketing his phone when he noticed agents surrounding a “brown-skinned woman.”

Callaghan said he joined in as a crowd chanted, “We are not afraid,” and tried to redirect attention toward himself, telling the agents to arrest him instead of the woman they were surrounding.

“Before I knew it, they were putting handcuffs on my arms and they asked me, ‘Are you afraid now?’ ” he recalled.

He said he answered, “No, I am not,” as agents continued detaining him. Callaghan told Fox 9 he was held in the SUV with two other detainees as agents returned multiple times to question him.

Callaghan said the message stayed the same during those check-ins, with agents repeatedly asking if he was afraid. He also said they asked for his ID and his phone while he remained in the back of the vehicle.

At one point, Callaghan said he asked whether he was under arrest and was left alone for a period of time afterward. He also told Fox 9 that an agent allegedly waved a gun in his face, and while fear flickered for a moment, it was quickly overtaken by outrage.

“And then they came back the last time and they said, ‘Are you afraid yet?’ ” he said. “And I said, ‘No.’”

Meanwhile, the ICE and Border thugs are firing tear gas canisters in nearly every crowd and sometimes right in people's faces.

This is what they want, what trump wants, what the Far Right has wanted for decades. They want the thrill and elation of making the rest of us terrified of them, of their authority and their potential for violence.

trump wants the violence to escalate: it will justify any plans he has of suspending the Constitution under "emergency powers" and make himself Dear Leader For Life. While the protesters will do everything proper and avoid conflict whenever possible, expect the armed and body-armored ICE gangs to reenact the worst of police violence that would make Chicago 1968 seem like a block party.

And this all happening here in the U.S. Outside our borders, trump is busy waving his big stick towards Iran (again), Syria, Cuba, and worst of all Denmark in a brazen attempt to seize Greenland from one of our NATO allies. If we do invade Greenland, it would break that alliance and drive Europe - already coping with a belligerent and desperate Russia - into chaos.

Instead of a bully pulpit, what we have is a bully circus. trump and his Far Right allies are running amok behaving like Alpha Male Wannabes, mistaking arrogance for leadership and violence for success. The problem is they don't show any genuine thought or planning into what they're actually doing. They kidnaped Maduro from Venezuela from the looks of things thinking it would immediately collapse that government. Instead, Maduro's party promoted his veep Delcy Rodríguez into acting presidency leaving trump on the outside threatening more attacks and demanding she bend to his will.

If trump thinks there won't be any consequences if he sends an invasion force into Greenland, he's ignoring the reality that the end of NATO would end our military presence across most of Europe: Our extensive overseas base network is a major reason why our logistics and military effectiveness is the best in the world, and if that goes so too goes our military dominance.

Instead of projecting themselves as Alpha Males, trump and his lackeys are posing as clowns... albeit clowns armed with assault weapons, flashbang grenades, and long-range missiles that can ruin anybody's day.

The world tonight is a circus of fear, stained with the blood of innocent lives and propped up by the violent fantasies of an aging, addled narcissist. 

Stay safe, America. Stay safe, people of Venezuela and Greenland and Iran and everywhere else trump is bullying us all.

Five Years Later: It Was STILL An Insurrection

I hate that January 6th is now known for the trump-led rioting at the nation's capitol, and won't be forgotten any time soon.

The damage done - engraving into a section of the American conspiracy mindset that "trump's victory was stolen" - still hasn't gone away, even after trump issued a blanket pardon his first day back in the White House, and even as the arc of time is proving trump's lie for what it is (via Alan Feuer and Dan Barrya through gift link to the New York Times): 

The pardon proclamation saved them, opening prison doors and ending all of the criminal prosecutions related to the Capitol attack. Even more, it gave a presidential stamp of approval to their inverted vision of Jan. 6, 2021: that those who assaulted the police and vandalized the historic building that day were victims, and those who spent the next four years using the criminal justice system to hold them accountable were villains.

But nearly a year after Mr. Trump’s sweeping proclamation asserted that he had cleared the way for “a process of national reconciliation,” many recipients of his clemency remain consumed by conspiracy theories, angry at the Trump administration for not validating their insistence that the Capitol attack was a deep-state setup and haunted by problems from both before and after the riot...

A lot of the rioters were "promised" some level of validation for their fear and hatred of the dirty libruls "ruining" their lives. And it didn't help a number of them were already troubled, criminally-minded bastards in the first place:

In the five years since the Capitol was stormed, no new facts have emerged to undermine the basic findings of congressional and Justice Department investigators that many of the rioters acted in the misguided belief, pushed relentlessly by Mr. Trump, that he had been robbed of victory in 2020 — and that in attacking the Capitol they not only injured about 140 police officers but also struck at a cornerstone of American democracy: the peaceful transfer of presidential power.

Even so, Mr. Trump has long maintained that the rioters endured horrible, even illegal, mistreatment during their prosecutions.

And yet if that is true, some pardoned rioters are now asking, then why haven’t their persecutors been thrown in jail? And if the rioters are martyrs to a righteous cause, as the president and his allies have often said, then why haven’t they been made whole through financial reparations?...

What J6ers rarely seem to acknowledge is the possibility that Mr. Trump’s government has failed to reveal the hidden truth about Jan. 6 because there is no hidden truth, no deep-state conspiracy, and therefore no legal reason to bring further charges related to the riot...

By feeding a steady diet of unfounded conspiracy theories not only to the J6ers but also to others in their base, Mr. Trump and his allies have spawned what some experts have likened to a zombie army of followers. And now, by failing to follow these theories to their logical conclusions, they are seeing that army begin to turn on them.

“When you’re told day after day that you’re a victim — when you’re told that for four years straight — it sinks in,” said Jon Lewis, a research fellow with the Program on Extremism at George Washington University. “They’ve become conspiratorial-minded people looking for the next thing to mobilize for...”

For many Jan. 6 defendants, clemency was not enough. From the moment Mr. Trump issued his proclamation, there came demands for more: deep-state actors held accountable, hidden truths revealed and reparations — some form of monetary apology — paid.

Nearly two months after Mr. Trump’s decree, lawyers representing Jan. 6 offenders were making plans to sue the Justice Department. They intended to argue that the cases stemming from the Capitol attack amounted to malicious prosecution and that many rioters had been grievously harmed by their own government.

Two lawyers were behind the effort: Mark McCloskey, known for brandishing a semiautomatic rifle in 2020 as Black Lives Matter protesters paraded past his home in St. Louis, and Peter Ticktin, a friend of Mr. Trump since their teenage years at the New York Military Academy.

The men had reason for hope. Asked in the spring about possible compensation for the rioters in an interview on the right-wing news channel Newsmax, Mr. Trump gave a typically opaque answer...

But there is a yawning chasm between talk and action — especially in Washington. And recognizing the hurdles to winning lawsuits against the government, Mr. McCloskey began pitching top Justice Department officials on a more audacious plan, establishing a panel to award damages to the rioters, similar to the special master who distributed money to victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks...

But as the first year of Mr. Trump’s second term drew to a close, Mr. McCloskey’s proposal was in limbo. It was not lost on many pardoned rioters that Mr. Trump himself had demanded that the Justice Department pay him up to $230 million in similar claims for the criminal inquiries it conducted into him...

The conspiracies all work only if trump is the one getting paid, understand? Anyone else thinking they're going to earn a windfall from a settlement payout isn't going to see a wooden nickel (because pennies are no longer minted).

It's not helping the case of the rioters that a number of their own who were pardoned are turning back up in prison on unrelated charges ranging from sexual child abuse to homicide. You all were troubled souls joining up for trump's rampage against law and order, and you all are going to get in trouble again because most of you still see yourselves above the law like your golden idol.

This is not a good anniversary for anyone. But at least these rioters are in a hell of their own making.

Waking Up to A War

trump just dialed up international outrage to 11 during last night (via Carrie Kahn and Scott Neuman at NPR): 

President Trump claimed overnight that the United States carried out airstrikes in Venezuela and "captured" President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, following a series of explosions and fires reported around Caracas in the early hours of the morning.

In a post on Truth Social published early Saturday morning, Trump said the U.S. had "successfully carried out a large-scale strike against Venezuela and its leader, President Nicolas Maduro," adding that Maduro and his wife had been "captured" and flown out of the country. Trump said the operation was conducted "in conjunction with U.S. Law Enforcement" and announced a news conference for 11 a.m. EST at Mar-a-Lago.

U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a post on X that Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, have been indicted in the Southern District of New York on drug, arms and conspiracy charges...

The Venezuelan government swiftly accused the U.S. of launching what it called a "grave military aggression" against the country. In a statement posted on Telegram, the government said U.S. forces targeted civilian and military locations in Caracas as well as in the nearby states of Miranda, Aragua, and La Guaira, calling the attacks a "flagrant violation" of the United Nations Charter.

On state television, Venezuela's Vice President Delcy Rodriguez said government and military officials had been killed by U.S. strikes across Venezuela. She added the government does not know the whereabouts of President Maduro and his wife and demanded proof of life...

Many Venezuelans have been sharing videos — which NPR has not independently verified — showing multiple explosions across the metropolitan area, including near a military base close to the presidential palace, Miraflores.

This is a major escalation from the ongoing bombing strikes of various civilian boats over the past months where trump and his administration were claiming - but couldn't prove - as drug smugglers operating out of Venezuela.

This is a direct attack on another nation's soil, going against any number of treaties with our allies in the region if not the whole world. It's a legal gray area at best, at worst it's a signal to other dictators and warmongers - like say China towards Taiwan - that it's open season on anybody they want to "arrest".

This is a violation of our own Constitution, which specifically set the power to declare acts of war - and the capture of "enemy combatants" - to Congress under Article I Section 8:  To declare war, grant letters of marque and reprisal, and make rules concerning captures on land and water.

This is, above all, causing greater tension between a belligerent United States and the rest of Central and South America that trump keeping bullying. Colombia's president Gustav Pedro had earlier accused trump and his thugs of illegal strikes on his nation's fishermen, and is calling for an emergency UN session now to bring international pressure against the United States. Brazil's president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is on record that this attack "crosses an unacceptable line" violating Venezuela's sovereignty.

This is also yet another black mark on the United States' long and troubled history of meddling, interfering, outright destroying the rights and protections of our southern neighbors ever since the Monroe Doctrine gave us an excuse to do all that. 

This is also something a majority of Americans didn't want. Politico back in December reported on a Quinnipiac poll showing 63 percent didn't want any military action even as trump's administration beat the war drums and bombed fishing boats (via Gregory Svirnovskiy):

Americans are overwhelmingly opposed to military action in Venezuela, according to a Quinnipiac poll published on Wednesday amid an escalation of U.S. pressure on President Nicolás Maduro.

Sixty-three percent of respondents told Quinnipiac they are against military action against Caracas, which President Donald Trump has repeatedly declined to rule out, with just 25 percent expressing support. And 53 percent of respondents said they opposed the administration’s use of military strikes to kill alleged drug smugglers in international waters...

Americans also expressed concern with the president’s expanded executive authority, with 54 percent saying he has gone too far in wielding the power of the presidency, 37 percent saying he is handling it about right and 7 percent saying he has not been aggressive enough. The results were split along partisan lines: 96 percent of Democrats and only 11 percent of Republicans reported concerns regarding the president’s power.

If trump and his Republican buddies think that sparking an unwanted war is going to make most Americans line up and accept all the flag-waving and patriotic fervor, they're wrong. If anything this will divide the nation further, and spiral the Far Right demagogues into further anti-Latino hatred.

There are several reasons trump is doing is, not of them good (or lawful). This is trump doubling down on a questionable - and self-destructive - War On Drugs that's been in operation since the 1970s and solving nothing about our nation's drug habits; This is trump demonizing Latinos as criminals to justify escalating a mass deportation scheme that the courts keep finding as inhumane and illegal; This is trump seeking personal gratification as a "great military leader" to salve his wounded ego.

There is no sign that trump or his pro-war allies on this - Hegseth, Rubio, Miller, other chickenhawks among the GOP elite - have really thought out the long-term ramifications of this, of the global chaos this act of war will unleash and make worse.

Gods help us. Seriously. I know I keep saying this, but this is NOT GOING TO END WELL.

As the Year 2025 Ends

The thing about New Year's Eve is that it allows you to say farewell to the previous year - 2025 - while greeting the incoming year - 2026 - with a certain level of cheer and optimism. 

So the best I can say about 2025 - all of the damage and disaster and human rights violations and destruction of national norms (and buildings) - is "What that trip really necessary?"

And the best I can say about going into 2026 is "Are we all ready to fight our way out of the bullshit storm trump and his lackeys are about to overwhelm us with, as they escalate their war on everyone who's not Rich, White, and Male?" 

I don't have much optimism or cheer this evening. I do have resolve and a willingness to stand up for myself and others when the Far Right thugs are going to come for everything - our freedoms, our communities, our love of people - that makes us true Americans.

Come at us, 2026. We're not going anywhere without a fight.

Reading Between the Redacted Lines

Update: Many thanks to tengrain for including this article at Crooks & Liars' Mike's Blog Round-Up. A joyous Io Saturnalia to all and a safe Christmas and... and... is trump threatening Greenland again???

This weekend was meant to be a revelation about the scale and horror of the crimes Jeffrey Epstein committed as a sex trafficker of teen girls to the rich elites. Instead this weekend revealed just how inept and desperate trump and his lackeys are in trying to hide the depth of his involvement (via CK Smith at Salon): 

The initial chunk, made public Friday, includes thousands of pages of documents and photographs related to Epstein’s sex trafficking case. But large portions are heavily redacted, and officials have acknowledged that additional material is still under review, drawing criticism from lawmakers and victims’ advocates who say the disclosures fall short of promised transparency.

According to public records and investigative reporting over the years, complaints and law-enforcement awareness of Epstein’s conduct date to at least 1996, years before his first high-profile arrest in Florida in 2006. Advocates argue the newly released files underscore that Epstein was not operating unnoticed, raising fresh questions about why early warnings failed to trigger sustained investigations.

The Justice Department said redactions are necessary to protect victims’ identities and avoid releasing unverified or sensitive information. But critics contend that the scope of the blacked-out material makes it difficult to assess how authorities handled the case across multiple jurisdictions and decades.

The document dump arrives amid bipartisan pressure on the department to provide fuller disclosure and explain gaps in enforcement that allowed Epstein to maintain wealth, influence and access to young women for years. Lawmakers have also questioned whether the staggered release risks obscuring institutional responsibility rather than clarifying it...

Sarah Fitzpatrick over at the Atlantic makes the observation how these redactions are an injustice to the many women who were victimized over the decades:

Just over 24 hours earlier, on the eve of the deadline for the files’ release, Attorney General Pam Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche had placed a call to a group that supports survivors of Epstein’s abuse, according to multiple people briefed on the outreach. On the call, the officials previewed what would and wouldn’t be in the disclosure: photographs, yes; videos, no. Victims’ names would be redacted. At one point, according to a person familiar with the conversation, the officials suggested that if video exists, it may still be in the possession of the Epstein estate—an assertion that raised alarms among survivors who have long believed that recordings were used as leverage and blackmail.

(That) morning, the Justice Department indicated via email to the group that Bondi would try to speak with survivors and expressed support for them, according to people familiar with the correspondence. But soon after, they were told that the attorney general would not be available after all, due to a medical appointment. One DOJ official familiar with Bondi’s schedule told me the attorney general “was at Walter Reed today for a prescheduled routine appointment,” and emphasized that “no call was missed,” because “that meeting was never scheduled.”

Meanwhile, Blanche appeared on Fox News and announced that the administration wouldn’t be hitting its deadline from Congress. Some files would be released, but many would not—at least not yet. Survivors were left with familiar feelings of disappointment and disillusionment, as well as unresolved questions: Why did the Trump administration change course last month on its promise to release all of the Epstein files if it wasn’t going to actually follow through? What was the government holding back—and why?

The failure to schedule a call with victims was only one piece of a broader, frantic rush inside Donald Trump’s Justice Department as it approached the final hours of its congressionally mandated deadline. The Epstein Files Transparency Act, signed by Trump on November 19, requires the attorney general to make public, within 30 days, “all unclassified records, documents, communications, and investigative materials” in the DOJ’s possession that relate to Epstein and his associate Ghislaine Maxwell. The cache was believed to include flight logs, internal DOJ communications, and even records concerning the “destruction, deletion, alteration, misplacement, or concealment” of Epstein-related evidence.

The law tries to preempt a possible work-around by the DOJ. It explicitly bars the department from withholding, delaying, or redacting records because of “embarrassment, reputational harm, or political sensitivity,” even for “any government official [or] public figure.”

Members of Congress and staff for the House Oversight Committee told me that they were alarmed by the DOJ’s silence in the days and hours before the release. Staff for Senator Jeff Merkley and Representatives Ro Khanna and Thomas Massie had repeatedly sought guidance from DOJ officials on what would be released and how the department was preparing. The lawmakers never got a response.

Victims said Bondi’s failure to talk with them prior to one of the most significant releases to date made them feel that those most harmed by Epstein’s crimes were just an afterthought. Marijke Chartouni was among the victims who had been hoping to talk with the attorney general before the files were made public. “Today marks a long-awaited moment for many of us,” Chartouni told me. “This is about truth, accountability, and confronting law-enforcement failure.”

Instead of truth, most of what the Justice Department released were blacked-out pages, entire paragraphs covered up to where you couldn't even tell what was being reported in the first place (via David Smith at the Guardian (US)):

Illustration: Guardian Design/Images via US Justice Department

But it soon became apparent that, once again, Donald Trump had over-promised and under-delivered. Many of the documents in the data dump were heavily redacted, with text blacked out so it was impossible to read. Norm Eisen, executive chair of Democracy Defenders Fund, said: “What they have released is clearly incomplete and appears to be over-redacted to boot.”

The documents extensively featured photos of former president Bill Clinton, a Democrat, and appeared to include few if any photos of Trump or documents mentioning him, despite Trump and Epstein’s well-publicized friendship in the 1990s and early 2000s.

The Far Right - not just trump - would like everyone to think the only one culpable in this scandal is Clinton, as though trying to get liberals to defend him as a way of making it easier for them to defend trump. Little realizing that nearly everyone on the Left knows Clinton is a sex pervert, came to terms with that years ago, and if Bill does get directly linked to anything criminal with Epstein's sex ring Democrats will be the first to throw him into the jail cell.

Moreover, Friday’s release was far from complete. US deputy attorney general Todd Blanche said “several hundred thousand” documents would be made public on Friday, but the need to protect the victims meant thousands more would be released over the next couple of weeks. The initial release also appeared to include far less than Blanche promised.

It smelled of a cover-up. And the rare reticence of Trump did little to dispel that notion... The president had spent much of this year resisting disclosure and denouncing the files as a “Democratic hoax”. But a rare bipartisan uprising in Congress forced him to cave and sign legislation last month mandating release of all unclassified Epstein records to be released by the end of 19 December in a searchable and downloadable format. His administration blew past that deadline and Democrats cried foul.

It's not the Democrats, though. At least one Republican in the House is upset by the delays and redactions and is teaming up with House Dems to bring Pam Bondi to account (via Andrea Hsu at NPR):

Two lawmakers are threatening a seldom-used congressional sanction against the Department of Justice over what they say is a failure to release all of its files on convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein by a deadline set in law.

Reps. Ro Khanna and Thomas Massie spearheaded the effort to force the Epstein files' release by co-sponsoring the Epstein Files Transparency Act, but both have said the release had too many redactions as well as missing information.

"I think the most expeditious way to get justice for these victims is to bring inherent contempt against Pam Bondi," Massie, a Republican from Kentucky, told CBS's Face the Nation on Sunday. "Basically Ro Khanna and I are talking about and drafting that right now."

It's questionable if anything to pressure Bondi is going to do anything to make trump relent on this cover-up. Don't forget, he brought in William Barr to be a replacement Attorney General just as the Mueller investigation into Russia's involvement in the 2016 election was getting closer to trump's sons, forcing a shutdown of that probe and a Mueller Report heavily redacted into uselessness.

We need to remember that after the first attempt by trump and his people to "release" the full Epstein Files turned into a debacle (because they basically rehashed everything already released) trump ordered the FBI to "flag any material mentioning trump in the Epstein Files" essentially for this moment when he's terrified of getting caught in acts he kept telling his MAGA base he never did.

With nearly every page blacked out - hidden behind more walls thrown up by trump and his lackeys - what else SHOULD we do? We can accept as fact: That every redacted line IS referring to donald trump and his good buddy Jeffrey Epstein committing illegal acts with young girls (and also possible money laundering). I mean, what can trump do, call us liars without exposing what's really behind those black lines?

There is one other thing we're able to read between all the redacted lines: This is all part of the horrifying culture among the political and wealthy elite that has existed for centuries abusing, molesting, destroying young women as part of a patriarchal mindset that they - rich, connected, untouchable - can do whatever they want without answering to any form of justice.

"If you're a star they let you do it" trump said in the moment he showed the whole world how vulgar he is, and it may be the only true thing he's ever said about the sordid world he and his fellow power elites live in.

We as a nation need to hold such corrupt people like trump to account. When the hell will any of those 77 million who voted for him in 2024 realize that and denounce that monster for the good of all?

Hit By the Shrapnel

Zaphod: Could be. I’m a pretty dangerous dude when I’m cornered.
Ford: Yeah. You go to pieces so fast people get hit by the shrapnel.
-- The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, Douglas Adams

donald trump gave a speech to the nation last night.

Well, not so much a speech as it was a full-tilt rant by an aging, rapacious, gaslighting freak.

I didn't watch it - I cannot handle that whining voice of his - but there were others who sacrificed their time and their brain cells to document the atrocity. And what they have to report is that it was a total disaster for a panicking and desperate trump (via Tom Sullivan at Digby's Hullabaloo): 

Criminal, murderous, and far less intelligent than Hans, the president of the United States Wednesday night delivered a jaw-dropping, ideological speech most notable for the red-alert pace of it. I haven’t spoken that fast since my first grade-school book report...

“Eleven months ago, I inherited a mess, and I’m fixing it,” Trump began. Nevertheless, whatever economic stress you feel, whatever grocery store sticker shock you experience, he didn’t do it, nobody saw him do it, you can’t prove anything.

America under Joe Biden, was “laughed at from all over the world. But they’re not laughing anymore,” Trump said, reprising one of his 40-year-old greatest-hit complaints. The world in fact “alternates between laughing and crying. Neither in a good way,” responded Ron Filipkowski.

“At times he seemed to be yelling,” reports The New York Times, “almost as if he didn’t believe he had to take the time to convince his audience of how well his first 11 months had gone.” The speech “included a long list of exaggerations and misleading statements” and no mention of consumers’ affordability concerns Trump has described as a Democratic “con job...”

It was a Gish gallop of lies that CNN’s Ana Navarro described as the “wah, wah, wah” teacher voice from Charlie Brown cartoons. CNN fact checker Daniel Dale, no stranger to rapid-fire debunking, had a go at Trump’s fictions and too little airtime to touch on them all...

Sullivan also gave a quick quote from Tom Nichols over at the Atlantic, but we need to read more of what Nichols observed:

The president of the United States just barged into America’s living rooms like an angry, confused grandfather to tell us all that we are ungrateful whelps.

When a president asks for network time, it’s usually to announce something important. But tonight, Donald Trump did not give anything like a normal speech or address. He was clearly working from a prepared text, but it sounded like one he’d written—or dictated angrily—himself, because it was full of bizarre howlers that even Trump’s second-rate speech-writing shop would probably have avoided, such as his assertion that inflation when he took office was the worst it had been in 48 years... He read the speech quickly, his voice rising in frustration as he hurled one lie after another into the camera.

We could take apart Trump’s fake facts, as checkers and pundits will do in the next few days. But perhaps more important than false statements—which for Trump are par for the course—was his demeanor. Americans saw a president drenched in panic as he tried to bully an entire nation into admitting he’s doing a great job. For 20 minutes, he vented his hurt feelings without a molecule of empathy or awareness. Economic concerns? Shut up, you fools, the economy is doing fine. (And if it isn’t, it’s not his fault—it’s Joe Biden’s.) Foreign-policy jitters? Zip it, you wimps, America is strong and respected.

In effect, Trump took to the airwaves, pointed his finger, and said: Quiet, piggy.

There were concerns - rumors among the Far Right media types - that trump was going to use this speech to declare open war on Venezuela, as a follow-up to his orders to blockade and seize any more oil tankers. Instead, trump spent the speech rehashing old grievances, demanding our fealty and fear, and posing himself as a strong bully instead of a desperate crook drenching in flop sweat.

trump may be panicking over the current poll numbers that have him sinking to historic lows, especially on economic issues that can doom a party's midterm chances. he may be panicking over the reality that the congressional order to release a trove of Epstein documents - that can expose even more unsettling scandals tying trump to a known child sex trafficker - is due to happen this Friday. trump may be panicking over the reality that his unpopular tariffs could well be overturned by a Supreme Court who will bend to the needs of the corporations over that of trump's fantasies.

We could also be witnessing the mental breakdown of an unwell, aging, dementia-addled sociopath who needs to feel powerful and in control of everything around him, even though he's not.

The more trump panics, the more likely he's going to lash out in painful and dangerous ways.

Stay safe, people. We are going to deal with even nastier shit from this administration soon.

Playing Calvinball, Uh trumpball, With Kilmar Abrego Garcia's Life

I hadn't been following up on this case from April, as the situation surrounding it was in flux and under serious legal review. But a major step happened last week when the judge overseeing the deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia ordered the man released from custody as well as ripping into trump's corrupted Justice Department for blatant lies and stonewalling (via Edith Olmsted at the New Republic): 

In a 31-page opinion, U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis granted Abrego Garcia’s request to be released from ICE custody. In her ruling, she torched the prosecutors’ efforts to deport Abrego Garcia to Liberia, after they claimed they could not deport him to the country of his choice, Costa Rica.

“This time, when the Court sought information about Liberia and Costa Rica so to fairly assess the validity of Abrego Garcia’s claims, Respondents did not just stonewall. They affirmatively misled the tribunal,” Xinis wrote.

“They announced that Liberia is the only viable removal option because Costa Rica ‘does not wish to receive him,’ … and that Costa Rica will no longer ‘accept the transfer’ of him,” she wrote. “But Costa Rica had never wavered in its commitment to receive Abrego Garcia, just as Abrego Garcia never wavered in his commitment to resettle there.”

Costa Rican officials had previously put in writing that they had no intention to remove Abrego Garcia back to El Salvador once he was in their custody—while Liberia had made no such assurances. Xinis wrote that the government’s continued lies made clear that Abrego Garcia’s lengthy detention was not for the basic purpose of a timely removal to the third country.

Xinis saw what a lot of others saw: there wasn't much legal foundation to what trump and his lawyers were doing in the first place.

Xinis also found that there was never any order for Abrego Garcia’s removal in the first place. “Indeed, Respondents twice sponsored the testimony of ICE officials whose job it is to effectuate removal orders, and who candidly admitted to having never seen one for Abrego Garcia,” she wrote.

Instead, the government argued that the court should take an October 10 “withholding decision” as evidence that an original order existed—but Xinis didn’t buy it. “The October 10 withholding decision is unambiguously not an order of removal,” she wrote.

Continued detention without a removal order violates Abrego Garcia’s rights under the Immigration and Nationality Act, as well as due process.

Of course, given the bullying and vengeful mindset of trump and his entire administration, DOJ lawyers tried to pull a runaround to Xinis' ruling by manufacturing a last-minute "removal order" from an immigration judge as though it would supersede the original order six years ago (something even enraging Andrew C McCarthy over at the National Review (yeah, I know!)):

In a nutshell, after months of playing “hide the ball” (or is it, “hide the lack of a ball”?) about whether there exists an order of removal authorizing Abrego’s detention and deportation, the Trump Justice Department has attempted to cure the absence of an order by what appears to be a blatantly illegal process: To wit, without notice to Abrego, the DOJ went ex parte to a DOJ immigration judge who lacks jurisdiction over the case, but who nevertheless dutifully issued a “sua sponte order correcting scrivener’s error” order, under which everyone is now supposed to pretend — Abracadabra! — that there was an order of removal all along.

I'm not a lawyer but I know a couple of them via Ta-Nehisi's Horde. Every single one of them were screaming (Upper Case Text) in the chat channels "THAT'S NOT WHAT A SCRIVENER'S ERROR DOES!" Along with their utter disgust at how trump's people are idiots with the legal system. Meanwhile:

The entire labyrinthine Abrego litigation — featuring immigration removal actions, habeas corpus claims, and a criminal prosecution that have collectively burdened the DOJ’s immigration tribunals, the district courts of Maryland and Tennessee, the Fourth Circuit, and the Supreme Court — has been pursued by the Trump DOJ on the premise that there was an order of removal, that had been issued in 2019 conterminously with IJ Jones’s order of withholding of removal to El Salvador.

The assumption was that the order of removal authorized Abrego’s expulsion from the United States, and that the order of withholding of removal was just a caveat that Abrego, a Salvadoran, could not be repatriated to his native country. That caveat was in place because (a) Abrego had convinced Jones that he reasonably feared persecution in El Salvador, (b) the DOJ, in the first Trump administration, did not appeal that dubious ruling (it allowed Abrego to be released to live and work in Maryland), and (c) the current Trump DOJ did not (as far as is publicly known) attempt to get the caveat removed based on, among other things, changed conditions in El Salvador...

But as Judge Xinis found, no order of removal was ever issued. The court asked the government to produce it for months; prosecutors neither produced it nor provided a straightforward explanation for its absence from the record – to say nothing of an explanation why, in the absence of the order, they would suddenly arrest Abrego without notice six years after releasing him and then controversially send him to a notorious counterterrorism prison in El Salvador — the one country to which it was explicitly forbidden to deport him...

Yet, as Xinis concluded, if there is no order of removal, then the case Abrego filed against the government cannot properly be deemed a removal proceeding. Rather, it is a habeas proceeding – a challenge claiming that, in the absence of a removal order, the government’s detention and removal of Abrego are illegal. While Xinis would have no jurisdiction to act in a removal proceeding under immigration law, federal district courts do have jurisdiction over habeas and related claims...

To repeat what I argued Friday, that’s an offer (Garcia agreeing to deport to Costa Rica) the DOJ should have leapt at. It would have drawn the curtain on this sorry saga. Instead, the DOJ tried to use Abrego’s desire to go to Costa Rica as leverage in plea negotiations in connection with the dubious criminal prosecution the DOJ brought in Tennessee. The DOJ’s refusal was also vindictive: The Abrego case has been an embarrassment, so rather than accommodate the Costa Rica transfer and end it, Abrego was kept in custody while the administration unsuccessfully tried to arrange his removal to African countries – which didn’t want to take Abrego and to which he didn’t want to go.

In any event, once the DOJ lost the case on Thursday, when Xinis ordered Abrego’s release, Attorney General Bondi and her subordinates apparently decided it was futile to continue resisting a concession that there never was a removal order. But rather than just beginning a new removal proceeding — for which there is a basis since there is no doubt that Abrego entered the country illegally and never obtained lawful status — the DOJ opted for chicanery.

On Thursday evening, without giving notice to Abrego’s counsel, prosecutors went to the aforementioned IJ Phillip Taylor. At a little after 7 p.m., Taylor issued an “Order of the Immigration Judge” with the subheading “Immigration Court’s Sua Sponte Order Correcting Scrivener’s Error...”

Essentially, Taylor has tried to insert a previously absent order of removal into the 2019 document (the order of withholding of removal), label the prior absence a “scrivener’s error” (i.e., a mere clerical mistake of negligible substantive importance), and backdate the whole thing by six years (the “nunc pro tunc” provision, as if what was not there had been there all along.

Perhaps most hilarious is the assertion that this was done “sua sponte” (i.e., of the judge’s own accord). It’s as if IJ Taylor just happened to be sitting in his office on a Thursday evening, thinking about IJ Jones’s six-year-old orders (as I guess IJs are wont to do), and suddenly decided, on his own, to correct what seemed to him to be a clerical error — as opposed to being induced by Trump DOJ officials to make a substantive addition to an order, the absence of which had caused them to lose a high-profile case earlier in the day...

The following Friday, Xinis reinforced her order to release Abrego Garcia and warned the federal government to not arrest him under any pretense. One hopes that when hearings resume during the work week that Xinis shreds the Justice Department lawyers for this circus and starts issuing sanctions and contempt charges.

Out of all of the immigration battles being waged in the United States right now - the mass deportation roundups, the violations of civil rights committed by ICE and Border Patrol goons, the decimation of an honest migrant workforce that's contributing to a growing economic recession - this one person's legal fight is representative of trump and the Far Right's entire war. But it's a little bit more because of one thing: trump made this personal.

Out of the hundreds of Latino - and African, and Asian, and non-White - men - and women and children(!) - getting detained, trump himself seemed to focus on Abrego Garcia as his perfect poster child of "criminal gang-related" stuff he and his staff want to paint in broad strokes across that entire population. By late April as the case gained national attention - and warnings from legal experts that the Justice and Homeland departments were on thin ice with this one - trump went on a media offensive that was offensive (via Julia Conley at Common Dreams):

The White House’s public response on Friday to an image of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland father who the Trump administration sent to a notorious prison in El Salvador last month, was to mock the migrant and the U.S. senator who successfully urged Salvadoran President Nayim Bukele to allow a visit with him—and critics said officials may come to regret that decision.

“I suspect this is going to show up in a variety of court pleadings,” said former U.S. Attorney Joyce White Vance, who is now a law professor. “Whoever thought this was cute at the time may be less giddy when this becomes evidence of intent to disobey a court order...”

The story headline read, “Senator Meets With Wrongly Deported Maryland Man in El Salvador”—but the White House crossed out the word “wrongly,” replaced “Maryland Man” with “MS-13 Illegal Alien,” and scrawled, “who’s never coming back” on the article about the father and sheet metal worker.

The digital graffiti was shared with the White House’s 1.6 million followers even though, as software engineer and writer Lakshya Jain said, “the White House admitted in court that they deported the wrong guy.”

Journalist David Leavitt added that the White House had given a federal court “more evidence of contempt,” two days after Chief Judge James Boasberg of the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. warned that there was “probable cause... to find the government in criminal contempt”—punishable by fines or prison time...

The administration has also flouted the U.S. Supreme Court’s unanimous ruling last week that found the White House must facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return to the United States. Officials have admitted he was sent to El Salvador due to an “administrative error.” Although officials including Vice President JD Vance have called him a “convicted” gang member and Bukele repeatedly called him a “terrorist” in the White House earlier this week, Abrego Garcia has not been convicted of any crimes...

trump even took the time on social media to display a photo - later proved manufactured - of Abrego Garcia's "tattoos" as proof he was a major MS-13 gang leader. The whole thing was fake (via Louis Jacobson at PolitiFact):

"This is the hand of the man that the Democrats feel should be brought back to the United States, because he is such ‘a fine and innocent person,’" Trump’s post says. "They said he is not a member of MS-13, even though he’s got MS-13 tattooed onto his knuckles."

The figures M, S, 1 and 3 and the words below the symbols don’t appear in other photographs of Abrego Garcia’s hand, including the one taken by Salvadoran government officials (and shared on X by El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele) when Abrego Garcia met with Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., on April 17.

We asked the White House whether "MS-13" is tattooed on Abrego Garcia’s hand or whether the photo had been altered, perhaps to show that each of the pictorial tattoos represented one of those letters or numbers. The White House did not respond to our inquiry.

Several gang crime experts urged caution about assuming that any of the tattoos provide proof of MS-13 ties. MS-13 experts said the tattoos’ iconography was unfamiliar, and that those symbols have common meanings in mainstream tattooing...

Marijuana leaves, crosses and skulls are widely used as tattoos by people who do not belong to gangs. Gang crime experts said they did not stand out to them as MS-13 markers.

"I don’t believe a ‘dangerous individual’ would have such anodyne and farcically generic tattoos on his hand," said Liliana Castañeda Rossmann, a California State University San Marcos emerita professor of communication and author of the book "Transcending Gangs: Latinas Story Their Experience."

Sean Kennedy, a former federal public defender in California and now a Loyola Law School professor, said that in his experience representing and interacting with current and former MS-13 members, "The tattoos in the photo don't look familiar to me."

This is a burden on Abrego Garcia, not that he's facing legal challenges and deportation, but that trump has targeted Abrego Garcia for his racist ire.

Always remember: trump never admits to being in the wrong, he never will admit he lost anything (a legal challenge, a fight, an election, etc). In that, trump will blame others, he will claim he really won but his victory was "stolen," he will claim "vindication" even as he's forced to pay his victims in legal settlements. trump can never lose, ergo everyone else must.

This means that trump will never admit he was wrong regarding Abrego Garcia's situation. trump will double down on the lies and gaslighting, and he will enforce his underlings to do the same. he will insist the Justice Department pursue "every avenue" - i.e. manufacture any evidence - to ensure this one man gets convicted as a gang member criminal.

trump's DOJ lawyers are going to play fast, loose, and false with the legal system to twist reality to fit trump's fantasies. But the legal system - for all its faults - doesn't work like that. trump's going to run out of lawyers to do his bidding before he will shatter the American judiciary against his will.

In the meantime, here's hoping Kilmar Abrego Garcia and his family can rest - even for a brief moment - in the middle of this chaos.

"Like a Thoughtless Child, Just Wandering by a Garden Yanking Leaves Along the Way..."

We not only live in the Darkest Timeline, also we live in the DUMBEST Timeline.

"Third Place" Marco Rubio just declared war on typography (via Humeyra Pamuk at Reuters):

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Tuesday ordered diplomats to return to using Times New Roman font in official communications, calling his predecessor Antony Blinken's decision to adopt Calibri a "wasteful" diversity move, according to an internal department cable seen by Reuters.

What the... The default font in Microsoft Word is WOKE?

The department under Blinken in early January 2023 had switched to Calibri, a modern sans-serif font, saying this was a more accessible font for people with disabilities because it did not have the decorative angular features and was the default in Microsoft products.

Anything positive for disabled people apparently triggers the Far Right...

Some studies suggest that sans-serif fonts, such as Calibri, are easier to read for those with certain visual disabilities.

Trump, a Republican, moved quickly after taking office in January to eradicate federal DEI programs and discourage them in the private sector and education, including by directing the firing of diversity officers at federal agencies and pulling grant funding for a wide range of programs.

DEI policies became more widespread after nationwide protests in 2020 against police killings of unarmed Black people, spurring a conservative backlash. Trump and other critics of diversity initiatives say they are discriminatory against white people and men and have eroded merit-based decision making.

All of the things that should matter in these dark times - ending Russia's invasion of Ukraine, ending Israel's devastation of both Gaza and the West Bank, stopping the war in Sudan, pulling back on trump's hostility towards Venezuela and most of Central/South America - Rubio is going after font usage because certain fonts offends the Far Right Male sensibilities.

I swear, I've seen this before in a Saturday Night Live skit:

You can just picture poor Marco suffering the way Ryan Gosling did:

Yeah. He just highlighted Avatar, he clicked the drop down menu and then he randomly selected Papyrus. Like a thoughtless child, just wandering by a garden yanking leaves along the way...

He just got away with it. This man, this professional graphic designer. Was it laziness? Was it cruelty...?

And now, here I am doing what I vowed to never do again, sitting outside his house, hoping to catch a glimpse of him to see him doing his little things, live his insane little life...

Ryan: Do you remember the Avatar logo?

Heidi: Um, yeah. It was tribal, yet futuristic.

Ryan: Papyrus!!!

(He sees the graphic designer glaring at him through a window)

Ryan: I know what you did! I... KNOW... WHAT... YOU... DID!!!

Seriously, if the Alpha Male Wannabes in the trump inner circle are obsessed with manliness, they should have gone with Trajan, a more accurate Roman based font.

Just one more thing that makes us THINK ABOUT ROME!!!

I can finally say Io Saturnalia, peeps!

The Corruption of Abusing Times

Update: Again, many thanks to Batocchio for including this blog article with Crooks & Liars' Mike's Blog Round-Up! Please keep an eye out for Batocchio's annual Jon Swift blog share! Also please take the time to view the rest of the blog site, and consider ordering a copy of the story anthology Funny Locations off of Bookshop.org for the Saturnalia gift-giving season!

Now is the winter of our discontent...
(beat)
That's it. That's all I got.
-- modern day Will Shakespeare

You can see trump's corruption in plain view as he pardons everyone who can pay him off now or in the future (via Alex Woodward at the Independent (UK)): 

Within the first year of his second term in office, after campaigning on ending what he called the “politicization” of the Justice Department under his predecessor, Donald Trump has issued a historic number of pardons for white-collar criminals and political allies accused of fraud, bribery and corruption.

In more than a dozen cases, Trump even issued pardons for people who were prosecuted or convicted within his first and second terms, only to unravel those cases entirely this year. An entertainment executive accused of public corruption was pardoned this week only four months after he was indicted for conspiracy.

Trump’s pardon of former president of Honduras Juan Orlando Hernández, who the Justice Department once said was at the center of the “largest and most violent drug-trafficking conspiracies in the world,” has not only raised questions about what’s fueling Trump’s lethal campaign against alleged drug traffickers but has also erased the work of Emil Bove, Trump’s former criminal defense attorney who was once a federal prosecutor leading the case against Hernández...

Trump’s wave of pardons — largely targeting charges that he has similarly faced — have relied on the sweeping powers of the executive branch to effectively redefine what is criminal, from bailing out dozens of people who support his agenda to “normalizing public corruption” and downplaying the crimes of convicted fraudsters who stripped millions of dollars from victims, according to former Pardon Attorney Liz Oyer.

Crimes involving public corruption — especially among elected officials, like Texas congressman Henry Cuellar, who was pardoned this week after he was federally charged last year with bribery, money laundering and conspiracy — are rarely considered for pardons.

But Trump is now “liberally pardoning corrupt public officials who are charged with offenses that involve abusing their political offices to enrich themselves,” Oyer told PBS.

Oyer, who was fired by the Trump administration in March, has called the president’s pardon streak a “crisis” that imperils democracy by using his vast pardoning power to potentially enrich himself and his allies...

You can see trump's corruption in plain view as he accepts a made-up "Peace Prize" by an organization - FIFA (aka the World Cup overseers) - that has a horrific history of scandal and corruption of their own (via Sophia Kai at Politico):

President Donald Trump’s appearance on the Kennedy Center stage will be at least his seventh encounter this year with FIFA President Gianni Infantino, who has logged more face time with Trump this year than any world leader. Infantino’s savvy navigation of the American political scene has helped FIFA build institutional support for a tournament facing unprecedented logistical complications.

But that success is beginning to weaken Infantino, as the third-term FIFA president faces newfound internal opposition for his over-the-top courtship of Trump. Our interviews with six international soccer officials across three continents reveal widespread frustration with Infantino’s decision to side with Trump even as White House policies cause chaos for World Cup-bound teams, fans and local organizers, clashing with Infantino’s promise to have a tournament that welcomes the world...

Our reporting found that Infantino did not inform his 37-member FIFA Council before creating the FIFA Peace Prize this year, three people familiar with the matter told POLITICO. Over the past year, at least three of FIFA’s eight vice presidents have publicly or privately expressed their concerns about the lengths Infantino is willing to go to please Trump...

Other appearances with Trump placed Infantino squarely between a president intent on solving overseas conflicts and punishing foes, while closing American borders to visitors and trade, and FIFA member nations who may hold starkly different views, or worse.

Infantino stood quietly in the Oval Office as he said he would not rule out strikes against fellow World Cup co-host Mexico to target drug cartels, and joined Trump’s entourage on a trip designed to cultivate investment opportunities in the Persian Gulf.

When FIFA had to delay the opening of its annual congress in Asuncion, Paraguay, to accommodate Infantino’s travel from a Saudi-U.S. Investment Forum in Riyadh, two FIFA vice presidents were among those who joined English Football Association chairwoman Debbie Hewitt and other federation heads exiting in protest. European confederation UEFA — with 55 member nations, FIFA’s largest — attacked him with unusually pointed language...

Nothing threatens to awaken opposition to Infantino as much as his decision to invent a FIFA Peace Prize just as Trump began to complain in October about being passed over for one from the Norwegian Nobel Committee. According to a draft run-of-show for Friday’s draw, Trump is scheduled to speak for two minutes today after receiving the Peace Prize.

“He is just implementing what he said he would do,” Infantino said at an American Business Forum in Miami, also attended by Trump, on the day news of the prize was made public. “So I think we should all support what he’s doing because I think it’s looking pretty good.”

According to FIFA rules, the organization’s president needs sign-off from the 37-member FIFA council on certain items like the international match calendar, host designations for upcoming FIFA tournaments, and financial matters. FIFA’s charter does not contemplate the creation of a new prize specifically to award a world leader, but those familiar with the organization’s governance say it may violate an ethics policy that requires officers “remain politically neutral...”

You can see trump's corruption in plain view as he violates the letter and spirit of the Emolument Clause as he vacuums up more money to himself and his inner circle with acts that make Teapot Dome seem tame (via Robert Reich at Inequality Media):

But as soon as Trump won, money started pouring in. 

And then just days before returning to office, Trump launched a separate crypto scheme, selling TRUMP and MELANIA memecoins. Memecoins are a type of cryptocurrency based on an image or online joke.

But this is no joke: The Trump family has made about $3 billion from crypto so far — with many purchases by foreign buyers. Forbes now estimates that over half of Trump’s entire net worth is crypto-based.

And with Trump acting as both the President of the United States and as his own crypto brand ambassador, it’s hard to tell which job he’s doing at any given moment. 

Around the time that Trump made a state visit to the United Arab Emirates, a UAE firm announced it would buy $2 billion of Trump’s World Liberty Financial currency. 

Do Trump crypto buyers get presidential favors in return? Well, one US company said it explicitly purchased $2 million of Trump’s memecoins to influence trade policy. 

And then there’s Chinese billionaire Justin Sun. You might have heard of him because he spent $6.2 million buying an avant garde art installation that was a banana duct taped to a wall — which he then ate. 

What you might not have not heard was that Sun was charged with crypto-related fraud. But after Trump was elected, Sun invested more than $115 million into various Trump crypto products.

Guess what happened next? Trump’s SEC suddenly stopped prosecuting Sun. How curious and bizarre...!

We as a nation are facing a massive crisis, where the decision-making at the highest levels of our government are bought and sold - by an elite few, and by foreign powers in opposition to the United States - at the expense of millions of Americans facing threats to their wallets, their livelihoods, and their families.

I've been screaming this about trump - his greed, his twisted passions, his destructive ways - for years now. It's just that now he's so open and reckless about it that nobody can deny it or look away (of course, the MAGAts will try to anyway).

This is one of the reasons I haven't been in the mood to celebrate Saturnalia for awhile.

May the gods damn trump and his enablers forever.

The Price of Arrogance Is the Blood of Others

"They're not confessing."
"They're bragging."
-- from The Big Short movie

Update: Many thanks to Steve in Manhattan for including this article at Crooks & Liars Mike's Blog Round-Up! I'd like to say Io Saturnalia but this is not a festive time is it. /rage

It's been reported earlier how our United States military is committing war crimes in the Caribbean by bombing civilian fishing boats claiming they're drug smuggling as part of trump's - and Hegseth's - desire to turn the War on Drugs into a hot war against half of Central and South America.

The horror of what they're doing came into sharper focus this weekend when the Washington Post picked up on how the decision-making into those boat strikes went, including the point where Hegseth pushed to "kill them all" including any survivors (via Alex Horton and Ellen Nakashima, there is a paywall):

The longer the U.S. surveillance aircraft followed the boat, the more confident intelligence analysts watching from command centers became that the 11 people on board were ferrying drugs.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave a spoken directive, according to two people with direct knowledge of the operation. “The order was to kill everybody,” one of them said.

A missile screamed off the Trinidad coast, striking the vessel and igniting a blaze from bow to stern. For minutes, commanders watched the boat burning on a live drone feed. As the smoke cleared, they got a jolt: Two survivors were clinging to the smoldering wreck.

The Special Operations commander overseeing the Sept. 2 attack — the opening salvo in the Trump administration’s war on suspected drug traffickers in the Western Hemisphere — ordered a second strike to comply with Hegseth’s instructions, two people familiar with the matter said. The two men were blown apart in the water.

Hegseth’s order, which has not been previously reported, adds another dimension to the campaign against suspected drug traffickers. Some current and former U.S. officials and law-of-war experts have said that the Pentagon’s lethal campaign — which has killed more than 80 people to date — is unlawful and may expose those most directly involved to future prosecution.

What's at issue here are both the constitutional ideal of due process and the right of criminal suspects to face their charges in courts of law, and also the international laws protecting civilians from questionable military strikes. Summarily killing these boaters - and in spite of the analysts vibes, there's no viable proof they are smuggling drugs - increases the likelihood our nation is killing innocent people.

We're witnessing an escalation of war being pushed by unserious people obsessed - yet again - with body counts and the appearance of "rugged manly leadership". Hegseth and trump's behavior throughout this nightmare has gotten to the point where the partisan sides of the Senate are joining forces to condemn what's happening (via Jacob Wendler at Politico):

Sens. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) and Tim Kaine (D-Va.) — both of whom sit on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee — said Sunday that, if accurate, such orders would rise to the level of war crimes.

“If that reporting is true, it’s a clear violation of the DOD’s own laws of war, as well as international laws about the way you treat people who are in that circumstance. And so this rises to the level of a war crime if it’s true,” Kaine said in an interview with CBS’ Nancy Cordes on “Face the Nation...”

Bipartisan leadership of the Armed Services Committees in both chambers vowed to probe the matter, with Sens. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) and Jack Reed (D-R.I.) promising “vigorous oversight to determine the facts related to these circumstances” on Friday.

Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio) told Cordes on Sunday that “if that occurred, that would be very serious, and I agree that would be an illegal act,” and Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) said on ABC’s “This Week” that “if it was as if the article said, that is a violation of the law of war.”

All of this is happening because a Far Right Supreme Court gave their seal of approval to the Unitary Executive theory where presidents can wield extensive and unstoppable powers to do whatever they want. They've granted these powers to a bullying, gaslighting sociopath in trump who's allowing the sociopaths among his lackeys to indulge in acts of cruelty towards everyone they fear and hate.

The arrogance of Hegseth is how he views the entire idea of War: That rather than play by rules and regulations designed to reduce risk of civilian casualties and even loss of our own troops to reckless acts, Hegseth prefers to grant soldiers full license to use excessive force (meaning "kill 'em all" and declare victory).

Hegseth is the kind of person who wouldn't have seen the ethical conflict surrounding My Lai. The need to avoid more bloodshed in war is meaningless to him. The concept of maintaining order through soft power is alien to the likes of him. He wants a body count and he wants to revel in it.

Hegseth's desire to "strike fast, strike hard, kill them all" echoes in the trumpian agenda of inflicting that firepower on our own communities, be it hunting down immigrants or threatening "woke" cities with occupation while militarizing our police into thugs.

The cruelty remains the point. Not only as policy but as an attempt to keep themselves in power through brutality and lawless indulgence.

This arrogance will turn allies into enemies soon enough. And the downward spiral into violence will speed up some more.

Gods help us.

Revenge Tour Collapsing Into Farce (Again)

When trump secured that ungodly re-election in 2024, one of the things we all knew - supporters and opponents alike - was that he would seek to punish the people perceived to have humiliated trump by exposing his scandals, his fraudulent acts, and his sexual assaults.

As much an open secret as anything else, hell the media called it "Trump's Revenge Tour" and documented the atrocities (via Quinta Jurecic at The Atlantic):

When Donald Trump appointed Lindsey Halligan to act as the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, critics worried that he had tapped her specifically to bring prosecutions against his enemies. It didn’t take long for Halligan to prove the critics right. On September 25, she successfully persuaded a Virginia grand jury to indict former FBI Director James Comey. Yesterday, she secured an indictment against New York Attorney General Letitia James. Whether those prosecutions will actually hold up under the scrutiny of judges and juries, however, is a different matter.

Presenting the case against Comey to a grand jury was the first time Halligan had acted as a prosecutor. Trump installed her at the U.S. Attorney’s Office after her predecessor, Erik Siebert, reportedly refused to move forward with the case against James and raised concerns about a potential prosecution of Comey. “There is a GREAT CASE, and many lawyers, and legal pundits, say so,” Trump wrote on September 20 in a Truth Social post addressed to “Pam”—which, The Wall Street Journal reported, was intended to be a private note for Attorney General Pam Bondi, not a public message on social media. After that post, the Justice Department began moving quickly against Comey and James. Other criminal cases, including one against Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton, are in the works...

Just to note, whenever trump claims "many people say so" without providing actual names of who's saying so is him gaslighting (again) that whatever he's arguing for is perfect and legal... when it isn't.

So since that September, how have the persecutions of Comey and James progressed?

Welp. Turns out trump and his "many lawyers and legal pundits" were absolutely wrong as the judge threw both cases out due to serious procedural errors, namely Halligan's appointment was illegal to begin with (via Ryan Lucas at NPR):

A federal judge on Monday dismissed the Justice Department's criminal cases against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, finding that the acting U.S. attorney who secured the indictments against the two prominent critics of President Trump was unlawfully appointed.

The decision from U.S. District Judge Cameron McGowan Currie on the appointment of Lindsey Halligan as the top prosecutor in the Eastern District of Virginia marks a significant setback to efforts to go after the president's perceived political enemies.

In dual rulings, Judge Currie said "all actions flowing from Ms. Halligan's defective appointment," including the indictments against Comey and James, "were unlawful exercises of executive power and are hereby set aside..."

Trump tapped Halligan to serve as acting U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia after he pushed out the previous top prosecutor, who had expressed doubts about bringing charges against both Comey and James.

Halligan is a former insurance attorney who once served as Trump's personal lawyer before his return to office, when she joined his administration as a White House aide.

Halligan, who has no previous prosecutorial experience, was sworn in as acting U.S. attorney on Sept. 22. Three days later, she secured a two-count criminal indictment against Comey—just days before the statute of limitations expired...

Judge Currie dismissed these cases on a simple point of law that Congress set limits on when and how Presidents can appoint US Attorneys, but throughout the proceedings the courts exposed a series of errors, miscues, and illegal decisions from Halligan's office - as well as screw-ups from the rest of the Justice Department under AG Bondi - that could have easily shut down the prosecutions due to sheer ineptitude.

Marcy Wheeler over at Emptywheel has kept track of all the screw-ups, highlighting a few weeks back how the magistrate overseeing the evidence slammed the DOJ for mishandling the grand jury involved in Comey's indictments:

As Fitzpatrick describes, there were several errors. DOJ didn’t scope most of the communications seized in 2019 and 2020 (that is, a Bill Barr fuck-up). And then, they chose not to obtain a new warrant to access the materials for a totally different investigation...

Second, after being exposed to privileged communications, Miles Starr nevertheless still presented the case to the grand jury.

Third, Lindsey Halligan fundamentally mis-informed the jury, first by suggesting that Comey would have to testify at trial, and second by implying there was a bunch more evidence that would be used at trial (which might reflect taint from the privileged comms Starr knew of).

Fourth, she apparently did not re-present the charges the grand jury approved...

The way Wheeler and other legal pundits described it, these were mental errors from Halligan and her crew that even first-year law students learn not to commit when dealing with grand juries. But even Bondi - who does have experience as a state-level attorney general and a number of years as a prosecutor - should have known better, and even she screwed up adding her seal of approval to this entire clown show.

All of this is happening because trump cannot accept certain facts. The criminal and civil cases that he has railed against ever since the 2016 campaign - the investigation in Russia's involvement in US elections (what trump keeps denying as "the Russian Hoax"); the investigations into trump's questionable tax returns at the federal and state levels; the allegations of sexual assault/harassment of women; the matter of trump's illegal taking and mishandling of classified documents; trump's unproven allegations of the 2020 election results being "stolen"; the incitement to insurrection on January 6th - remains a thorn in trump's pride. he continues to deny any and all of those cases were legal, that he's innocent and everything he did/does is "perfect".

In order to play to his gaslighting narrative of innocence, trump has to sell the narrative that all of those cases were themselves illegal in the first place: the "Russian Hoax" was a Hillary Clinton scam; the fraud and tax evasions cases were partisan hack jobs; he has total ownership of government documents, those classified documents belonged to him; his behavior towards women was "normal" and "everybody who's a celebrity" does it; he "won" in 2020 because he never loses; the riot at Capitol Hill was "peaceful and legal".

To flip the narrative that he's the hero (and victim), trump has to accuse everyone else of being the real criminals.

We saw this before: trump's desire to whitewash his ties to Russia during the 2016 elections required him to push for a special prosecutor investigation into Hillary Clinton and her campaign, trying to sell the narrative that she and her cronies faked the entire thing. trump got his replacement AG William Barr - the previous AG Jeff Sessions refused to play along - to find a federal prosecutor John Durham to pursue the matter as special prosecutor. Durham proceeded to follow every conspiracy theory and half-baked lead trying to indict and convict various Clinton campaign officials... all of which either led to misdemeanor plea deals and lost court cases.

Durham's case was doomed to fail because trump's narrative - based on trump's own delusions of greatness and weave of lies he casts around himself - was all a lie. As Marcy Wheeler noted as Durham's investigation collapsed, there was no crime. Just trump's desire to deflect, deny, and denounce everyone else.

It was an Underpants Gnomes kind of case: 

1) Indict people to force them to plea deal and flip on bigger fish, 

2) ? ? ?, 

3) Profit!

Except there's no profit because there's nothing there to begin with.

We're getting the same thing now as trump pursues baseless charges against Comey, James, and even John Bolton - his own former National Security Advisor - all because they made trump look criminal (or worse, a loser). This is how trump views the entire legal system: a weapon only he can deploy against anyone who dares crosses him.

The only good news about all of this is that trump - and his lackeys like Bondi and Halligan, and other wingnuts in the Justice Dept. - is obsessing over the twisted reflections in his own addled mind. The courts - in spite of what the Far Right thinks of the law - require proof and relevancy to work, not rumor hearsay or fake accusation.

The bad news is that trump - and his lackeys Bondi, Halligan, and dozens of other wingnuts - will never admit he is in the wrong, and will double-down on these attacks and fake allegations until all he has left is to burn the entire judiciary to the ground for failing to uphold his lies.

Keep resisting, America. Keep to the facts. 

And Happy Thanksgiving, if you can enjoy that at least this harsh year.