Category Archives: corrupt motherfuckers

pick a side

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We all knew this was coming. I wrote about it back in August of last year. Now it’s official. Comrade Trump has been indicted, formally accused of violating the national security laws he was sworn to protect.

There’s already a fuck-ton of bullshit being hurled at great force into various social media and news outlets. Some of that bullshit is important; most isn’t. Even though the indictments are sealed at present, we can make a fairly accurate guess at what’s in them. Here’s the thing: down at the bone, this is a pretty simple criminal case.

I’m going to make a terribly flawed analogy here. I’m telling you up front that it’s a flawed analogy, so don’t wast time telling me it’s a flawed analogy. It’s flawed, but it’s still pretty accurate. Right, here we go.

Let’s say you got fired from your job as a…I don’t know, a warehouse worker. You got fired, so when he left on your last day, you also decided to take the forklift you drove at the warehouse. The warehouse manager calls you, says, “Dude, that wasn’t your forklift. We need that forklift back.” You say, “Forklift? What forklift?” The manager says, “You were seen driving away in the forklift and hey, it’s parked outside your garage right now. It’s got the warehouse logo on it. We want it back, please.” You remove the logo from the forklift, park the forklift inside the garage, and send the manager the logo with a note saying, “There you go.” The manager says, “Yeah, no. We want the whole forklift. C’mon, dude.” You say, “It’s my forklift; we bonded during the months we worked together.” The manager says, “Just give us the goddamn forklift. We don’t want to send the cops.” You say, “Okay, I’ll give you the forklift.” You don’t give them the forklift. The manager loses patience and sends the cops. The cops find the forklift in your garage; parts of it are missing. You claim you have no idea how the forklift got into your garage and no idea what happened to those missing parts.

Then you ask to be rehired for your job at the warehouse.

It’s a flawed analogy, but it’s still basically accurate. Trump took shit that didn’t belong to him — shit that put our national security at risk, shit that has very likely caused intelligence agents and assets in China and Iran to flee or, in some cases, to be captured and killed. He refused to return that shit when asked. He eventually gave some shit back, but kept other shit. He lied about having that other shit, both to the government and even to his own lawyers. Later he claimed the shit belonged to him. Now some of that shit is missing.

Again, the basic facts are simple and easy to understand. The implications, however, are neither simple nor easily understood. I’m talking about the political implications, and the social implications, and the national security implications.

There’s a thing called graymail. It’s like blackmail for spies. How does the government accuse somebody of illegally handling secret documents when the documents are secret? Graymail involves a person accused of mishandling (or stealing) secret information threatening to reveal the contents of those secrets in open court if they’re brought to trial.

You know Trump will try to graymail his way out of this. And he’ll succeed, at least in part. We’ll never hear about the very worst things he’s probably done, because it would reveal national security issues.

But there’s good news — or something like good news. Some of the secret material Trump stole will be low level intel that the government is willing to burn in order to get a conviction. The punishment for mishandling a low level secret document is the same as mishandling a really critically important document.

At this point, some 12-14 hours after we learned about the indictments, we’re mostly operating on assumptions. We’re told there will be seven indictments and we assume that’s true. We can make some intelligent guesses about the actual crimes Trump is being charged with, but we don’t actually know. We have no idea how many counts of each indictment–how many separate acts are being charged.

All we have at the moment are broad outlines based on widely reported facts. But we do know this: The indictments will be labeled The United States of America v. Donald J. Trump.

And there it is. The United States versus Trump. Pick a side.

fox news bullshit

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15

I’m something of a news junkie. Every morning, first thing, I read the news (well, among the first things–I mean, there’s coffee to be made and all that). I want to know what’s happening in the world. And that brings me to Filipino journalist Maria Ressa, who said this:

“If you don’t have facts, you can’t have truth. If you don’t have truth, you can’t have trust. Without these three, we have no shared reality. We can’t solve any problems. We have no democracy.”

This is pretty basic stuff. A society ought to be able to trust news journalists to present reliable facts. Beyond that, we ought to be able to trust news commentators to present opinions they actually hold. We should be able to assume that any person employed to present facts or opinions are NOT LYING.

And that brings me to this: tomorrow is the first day of the trial in the defamation lawsuit brought against Fox News by Dominion Voting Systems. Dominion is suing Fox News for allowing its commentators to tell lies about them. This is a big deal.

Look, we all know Fox News is bullshit. We all know the evening commentators act as the propaganda arm of the Republican Party. We all know Fox News ‘personalities’ like Maria Bartiromo, Tucker Carlson, Lou Dobbs, Jeanine Piro, and Sean Hannity aren’t journalists; Fox lawyers have admitted as much in court. But this case isn’t really about journalism. It’s about defamation.

Defamation is false information that harms the reputation of a person, business, or organization. Fox News commentators spent a big chunk of time after the 2020 election claiming that Dominion Voting Systems 1) was deeply involved in election fraud, 2) had developed an algorithm that somehow rigged vote counts, 3) was owned by a company founded in Venezuela to rig elections (for socialist dictator Hugo Chávez–seriously, I’m NOT making that up), and also 4) paid kickbacks to government officials.

Guess what? That was all bullshit. Also guess what? The people spreading that bullshit KNEW it was bullshit when they spread it. The judge in the case, Eric M. Davis, in pre-trial hearings, has already stated that those claims were all total bullshit (although, to be fair, he didn’t actually use the term ‘bullshit’). He wrote that it was “crystal clear that none of the statements relating to Dominion about the 2020 election are true.”

But wait, there’s more. Because it’s all bullshit, Judge Davis has also ruled that Fox News can’t argue their ‘contributors’ were simply covering the news (because bullshit ain’t legit news). He further ruled that Fox can’t argue the bullshit could be considered the First Amendment-protected opinions, because there’s plenty of pre-trial evidence demonstrating the hosts KNEW it was bullshit and they didn’t believe it themselves.

So cased closed, right? Fox News loses, right? Dominion wins, right?

Well, yes and no. The jury will have to listen to all the dreary facts; they’ll have to listen to the Fox News commentators testify under oath that they knew they were lying to their viewers (and reader, that testimony is going to be as sweet as Tupelo honey). And THEN the real meat of the case will be presented.

Just to be clear, let me say this again: there’s NO QUESTION that the Fox News commentators were lying sacks of shit. That’s not even at issue. What’s at issue is this: Damages. The jury has to decide if Fox News, by lying and spreading bullshit about Dominion Voting Systems, caused severe damage to the company’s reputation. IF they find Dominion was damaged, then the jury has to decide whether the damage was the result of actual malice.

Actual malice is a legal term of art. Back in 1964, in the case of New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, SCOTUS defined actual malice as a statement made “with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not.” That matters because this is where it all comes down to money.

There are two types of civil damages: compensatory and punitive. Compensatory damages are intended to help the victim; punitive damages, obviously, are intended to punish the offender.

Assuming the jury finds Fox News liable (which ought to be a safe assumption, but you never know when a jury is involved), they’ll first have to decide how much Fox should pay Dominion to compensate for the damage to their business. Then they’ll have to decide if Fox News should be punished financially for deliberately spreading bullshit to the public, and if so, how much.

And that brings us back once again to Maria Ressa. Because Fox News wasn’t just harming Dominion Voting Systems; they were–and still are–harming representative democracy. They’re harming this entire nation. If you don’t have facts, you can’t have truth. If you don’t have truth, you can’t have trust. If you lack trust and truth and facts, you can’t solve society’s problems and you can’t have representative democracy. If you allow a major media platform to deliberately and knowingly spread lies and bullshit to a wide audience, you shred the fabric of society.

And that’s really hard to mend. Compensation for the damage done isn’t enough; punishment is necessary.

not concerned

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I actually have appointments and things scheduled today, which is a rarity. But I wanted to say one thing about Comrade Trump’s indictment(s). No, that’s not true; there are a LOT of things I want to say about it, but I’m going to restrain myself because of all that appointment stuff. This is what I want to say:

I’m not concerned that the indictment(s) will spark violence.

I say that for a couple of reasons. First, this is happening in Manhattan. Trump is not generally popular in New York City. There will likely be angry people who show up in front of Trump Tower or at the DA’s office and raise a fuss, but it’s highly unlikely there’ll be any sort of serious violent confrontation. This isn’t like DC on January 6th. Even if MAGA fuckwits wanted to pull something on that order, the urban geography isn’t in their favor. It’s easier for police to kettle protesters in city streets. And the logistics of a large scale protest are a lot more daunting; MAGA fuckwits would have to arrange travel to NYC, and find a place to stay (hotels in NYC aren’t cheap), and figure out the subway system, and they’d have to do it quickly (unlike 1/6, in which Trump gave them plenty of notice). Large scale violence just isn’t as feasible in these circumstances.

Second, this is about money paid to a porn star to prevent her from exposing the fact that Trump cheated on his third wife who’d just delivered their baby. It’s a lot harder for MAGA fuckwits to justify violence and a possible jail sentence to support a president’s right to betray his marriage and pay hush money to porn stars. It’s a lot harder for conservative Christians to support violence to help a serial philanderer’s attempt to cover up yet another sexual affair. The Lord trieth the righteous: but the wicked and him that loveth violence his soul hateth and all that. (If I have to quote the Bible, I’ll always go with the King James version; it rumbles so well.)

The arrest we’ve all been waiting for.

Had any of the other crimes for which Trump is being investigated issued the first set of indictments, I’d be more concerned about violence. Those crimes are a lot more serious. Paying off porn stars is just tacky and sleazy.

And now I think of it, there’s a third reason large scale violence is unlikely. Trump has admitted he did it. He may deny (while not under oath) that he had sex with Stormy Daniels, but he’s admitted he paid her off. He has justified it as a business expense; cheaper to pay her off than to sue her for libel. It’s a variation of the What Happens in Vegas defense.

I could be wrong, of course. I mean, I was absolutely certain there was no way Trump would ever be elected president, so my track record is questionable. My assumption that there won’t be any large scale violence as a result of the indictment(s) may just be wishful thinking. Nonetheless, I find it hard to believe that there will be enough outrage even among hardcore MAGA fuckwits to get them to visit New York City and engage in street violence to defend Trump’s right to hand out cash to porn stars to keep them quiet about his sordid habit of cheating on his multiple wives.

club-headed

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A statistically significant number of US citizens have completely lost their fucking minds. It’s perfectly reasonable to think of them as victims of Cordyseps MAGA. For the few remaining people who haven’t either played the game or watched the HBO series The Last of Us, cordyseps is the mutated endoparasitoid fungus that turns humans into hideous zombies (which, now I think of it, is redundant; there are no attractive zombies, are there).

Although it’s just a plot device in The Last of Us, cordyceps is real. In fact, there are several hundred different cordyseps species. A small number of them are parasitoids actually capable of affecting the host insect’s (yeah, it’s limited to insects) decision-making and behavior control mechanisms. Making them zombies, in other words. One of the behavioral changes caused by that form of cordyceps they become increasingly careless, which makes the host insect vulnerable to predators. When the parasite-ridden victim is consumed by a predator, the cordyceps fungus starts feeding on the new host, allowing the fungus to spread even wider.

Post-mortem cordyseps-infested fruit fly (photo by faiz b.)

Cordyceps is a useful analogy for explaining the club-headed MAGA fuckwits who…wait. Damn it. Tangent Alert! Cordyseps comes from the Greek term kordýlē, meaning ‘club’ and the Latin suffix -ceps, meaning ‘–headed’. So basically, cordyceps means ‘club-headed.’

Right, back to the analogy. This is similar to what happened with the sort of club-headed MAGA fuckwits who stormed the Capitol on January 6th. Hell, it’s what is STILL happening. The ‘entertainment’ hosts on FOX News are effectively feeding viewers Cordyceps MAGA spores, which remodels their decision-making and behavior control mechanisms, making them easier prey for predatory fascist and authoritarian ideologies, which in turn allows the fungus to spread even more widely. The only meaningful difference is that the fungal parasitic FOX News hosts themselves are apparently NOT under the influence of Cordyseps MAGA. They’re deliberately and willfully spreading the fungus because it gives them power and a big paycheck.

Here’s an example. Tucker Carlson recently made these claims about the insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol on January 6th, assaulted police officers, defaced and desecrated the building itself, and attempted to disrupt the historically peaceful transfer of presidential power.

“They were orderly and meek. These were not insurrectionists, they were sightseers. Footage from inside the Capitol overturns the story you’ve heard about January 6. Protesters queue up in neat little lines. They give each other tours outside the speaker’s office. They take cheerful selfies and they smile. They’re not destroying the Capitol, they obviously revere the Capitol. They’re there because they believe the election was stolen from them. They believe in the system.” — Tucker Carlson.

Nine sentences, eight of which are direct, intentional lies. The ONLY true statement is that the insurrectionists believe the election was stolen. But club-headed MAGA assholes only believe that bullshit because predatory pricks like Tucker Carlson have been feeding them spore-lies for a couple of decades. That’s how parasitic fungi work.

Speaker Pro Tempore of the House of Representatives

The larger problem is that parasitic fungi benefit and thrive to the detriment (and sometimes death) of their host. When FOX News deliberately spreads lies and misinformation, they pose a serious, no-shit risk to the host, which is representative democracy in the US. Even though it sounds far-fetched, they could end up destroying democracy in the United States.

As it is, the GOP-controlled House of Representatives shows very clear symptoms of being zombiefied. Just yesterday, Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy appointed Marjorie Taylor Greene as Speaker Pro-tempore. The GOP decision-making and behavior control mechanisms have been severely diminished. This is zombie behavior. This makes them easier prey for predatory fascists. This makes the entire US vulnerable.

Far-fetched? Yes. But not far enough. This could be the last of us.

actual conspiracies

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Conspiracy theorists aren’t afraid of hard work.They’ll cheerfully concoct massively complicated theories with multiple interacting elements that require flow charts to understand how and why Hillary Clinton was responsible for the murder-by-plane crash of some obscure businessperson in Arkansas. But one of the many many problems with conspiracy theorists is they prefer fantasy theories that fit their worldview over actual theories that may contradict it.

Let’s take a very quick look at the arrest last weekend of former FBI big hat, Charles McGonigal (which is a lovely patronymic name, by the way; from the Gaelic Mac Conghaile, meaning the son of Conghaile which basically means ‘brave as a hound’). Your man McGonigal had what appeared to be a stellar FBI career, dealing with counter-espionage primarily. He joined the FBI in 1996 and was initially assigned to the New York Field Office, where he worked on Russian foreign counterintelligence and organized crime matters. When he retired in 2018, he was the Special Agent in Charge of the Counter-intelligence Division for the New York Field Office.

Why was McGonigal arrested? For money laundering and for helping Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska–a close friend and ally of Vlad Putin–dodge US sanctions imposed against him.

Right now, the MAGA crowd likes to depict the FBI as Trump-haters, largely because they searched Mar-a-Lago and found a hoard of classified documents that Trump had illegally taken and refused to release to the National Archives. But back in 2015-2016, when Trump was running for president, Trump supporters celebrated how much the FBI loved him. The New York Field Office in particular (and remember, McGonigal was in charge of a major FBI section of that office) was openly referred to as Trumplandia. It was the NY Field Office that got FBI Director James Comey to inform Congress (and therefore the news media) of the possible existence of new information that might lead to re-opening the closed investigation of Hillary Clinton’s e-mail server. Comey’s letter to Congress, which was written even before the FBI obtained a warrant to explore the possible new information, was made public ten days before the 2016 election. It almost certainly influenced the election result in Trump’s favor. And, of course, it turned out there was no new information.

It was McGonigal’s Counter-intelligence unit that handled the investigation of Donald Trump’s ties to Russia. Remember, Trump and most of his presidential campaign’s inner circle–his sons and daughter, Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort, Roger Stone, Rick Gates, and others–had major business interests in Russia. Many of them had business dealings with Oleg Deripaska. In fact, in 2016 Deripaska was suing Trump’s campaign manager, Manafort, for US$25 million over a failed business deal in…wait for it…Ukraine. Manafort was instrumental in changing the 2016 Republican Presidential Platform to remove support for supplying defensive weapons to Ukraine. Why was the US giving weapons to Ukraine in 2016? Because in 2014, Russia (on orders from Putin) invaded and “annexed” the Crimean peninsula and a big chunk of eastern Ukraine.

2016 is also apparently the year in which McGonigal began secretly working with/for Deripaska. That same year, his unit investigated allegations that Russia was interfering with the US election process in support of Donald Trump. Although that investigation was later conducted under the aegis of Robert Mueller as Special Counsel, it was McGonigal’s agents who continued to investigate the matter. Mueller’s report concluded the Trump campaign DID welcome Russian interference in the election and they expected to benefit from it, The report also noted that pervasive obstruction of justice by witnesses made it impossible for McGonigal’s agents to obtain sufficient evidence to claim Trump committed a criminal conspiracy. In addition, there was/is a policy against charging a sitting president with a crime. Mueller did, however, note that Trump could be charged with obstruction of justice (or other crimes) after he left office.

“Rabbits are ruining your garden!” shout the crows.

So just to recap. 1) Putin/Russia seizes parts of Ukraine, 2) Russia leans on the Trump campaign to resist helping Ukraine, 3) the campaign complies, 4) Russia interferes with the election to help Trump, 5) the FBI investigation into that interference is conducted by McGonigal, who 6) is secretly being paid by an ally to Trump, and 7) the investigation fails to find any criminality. Also? 8) in 2019, President Trump lifts most of the sanctions against Deripaska.

This is all well documented in several public news sources. This is an actual conspiracy, a broad and wide-ranging criminal conspiracy.

Can we expect Congress to investigate? Nope. They’ll be too busy trying to figure out how Hunter Biden’s laptop was used by Bill Gates to create a secret Satanic community of cannibalistic pedophiles by secretly releasing a phony ‘plague’ manufactured in China by the Deep State Uniparty to weaken the rights of parents to decide which books their children should avoid to keep them from being groomed by drag queens and harvested for the lymph nodes celebrities need to stay young.

Let’s give the next-to-last word to William Gibson:

People find conspiracy theories fantastically comforting not because they’re more frightening than reality, but because they’re less frightening than reality.

We have nothing (aside from dick pics) to fear from Hunter Biden’s laptop. We have a great deal to fear from people willing to undermine democracy in return for wealth and power.

workin’ in the house of maga

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It’s the fourth day of the new Republican-controlled House of Representatives, and it’s astonishing to witness just how much stupid, horrific shit they’ve managed to spread in that short time. There’s the big, obvious stupid, horrific shit–like the stupid, horrific new House Committee on the Weaponization of Government, or the stupid, horrific way they’ve gutted the Office of Congressional Ethics just as they’re examining the Members of Congress who refused to honor the subpoenas issued by the Jan. 6 committee. But the House of MAGA has also given some attention to smaller and less obvious stupid, horrific shit.

For example, they went to the bother of changing the name of the House Committee on Education and Labor. It’s now called the House Committee on Education and the Workforce. Why, you ask, would they change ‘labor’ to ‘workforce’? Because changing the name complies with the House of MAGA’s prime directive: piss off the libs.

“Hey, good news! We’re no longer laborers! Now we’re part of a workforce!”

The Chair of the new House Committee on Education & the Workforce is Virginia Foxx of North Carolina. Rep. Foxx has a long Congressional history of being stupid and horrific. Back in 2005, she voted against the aid package for the victims of Hurricane Katrina. She claimed the murder of Matthew Shepard was “a very unfortunate incident” but not a hate crime (“We know that that young man was killed in the commitment of a robbery. It wasn’t because he was gay“). She opposed Obamacare, saying “We have more to fear from the potential of the Affordable Health Care Act passing than we do from any terrorist right now in any country.” She voted against Comrade Trump’s impeachment twice. She was one of the Members of Congress who opposed the certification of the 2020 vote. And she opposes all abortion, even in the case of rape, incest, or the health of the mother.

The House of MAGA; The Intersection of Stupid and Horrific.

Rep. Foxx, in her role as Chair of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, offered an explanation for the change in name.

“‘Labor’ is an antiquated term that excludes individuals who contribute to the American workforce but aren’t classified as conventional employees. ‘Labor’ also carries a negative connotation that ignores the dignity of work; the term is something out of a Marxist textbook…. The Left prefers the term labor because it creates a sense of enmity between employees and employers which union bosses and left-wing activists seek to stoke for political gain…. Though the Left likes to treat employers like predators, we know that most job creators have their employees’ best interests in mind”

See, the ‘Left’ is only interested in workers the workforce for political gain, which is unAmerican and unpatriotic and therefore wrong. Employers, on the other hand, are only interested in financial gain, which is very American and patriotic and therefore right. Okay, maybe worker productivity rose more than 60% over the last forty years while worker workforce pay rose less than 18% (after adjusting for inflation). But hey, they’ve still got plenty of that ‘dignity of work’ to keep them happy, right? Where’s the dignity in ‘labor‘?

Also? Workforce sounds like they could be a team of Marvel superheroes. Isn’t that as good as money? Would Workforce America! ™ ask for safe working conditions? Hah!

Over the next two years we can expect to see much more stupid, horrific stuff across every scale of government. They hope we will be numbed by the barrage of stupid, horrific stuff. There’s a danger they could be right.

fractally awful

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In a few short days, Republicans will assume control of the House of Representatives. That guarantees the next two years are going to be a colossal shit-show.

It’s going to be fucking awful. Worse, it’s going to be fractally awful. I mean it’s going to be awful in the same way on every scale. Individual GOP members of Congress will be awful, Congressional committees will be awful, the GOP majority in the House itself will be awful, and they’ll all be awful in a self-similar way.

Individual Republican members of Congress will lie. They’ll lie in committee meetings. The GOP led committees will build investigations around those lies. They’ll amplify the lies on GOP-friendly ‘news’ channels. They’ll use the existence of those investigations based on lies as evidence that the lies must be legit (if Congress is investigating it, there MUST be a reason for that investigation). They’ll use those lies and investigations as a mask to distract the public from their policies, many of which actively harm the US and our allies. Traditional news media will report those lies and lie-based investigations as if they’re legitimate Congressional inquiries. When it comes time for the next election, they’ll use those investigations as evidence that they were doing the will of the people.

We know they’ll do this because they’ve said they’ll do it. We know they’ll do it because they’ve done it before. When Republicans controlled the House during the Obama administration, they spent two years investigating the terrorist attack on the State Department’s unfinished diplomatic compound in Benghazi. There were eleven Congressional investigations which held as least thirty-three Congressional hearings, most of which were public.

Each of those investigations published a report. Each report concluded that nobody in the Obama administration officials had acted improperly. Each report concluded that the State Department’s security at the unfinished Benghazi compound was ‘inadequate’. None of the reports acknowledged that the security was inadequate because for two years prior to the attack, House Republicans had reduced the Obama administration’s budget request for improved diplomatic security.

The two-year-long Benghazi investigation was a political stunt. We know it was a political stunt because they basically admitted it. Kevin McCarthy, who was running to be named the Speaker of the House (just as he is now–stupid history repeats itself stupidly) basically admitted it on a Fox News interview. He said:

“Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, right? But we put together a Benghazi special committee, a select committee. What are her numbers today? Her numbers are dropping.”

By the way, three months after the attack on Benghazi left four members of the State Department dead, an attack on the Sandy Hook Elementary School killed six adults and twenty children (six and seven-year-old children). How many special committees did the GOP create? None. How many Congressional hearings did they hold? None. How many investigations did they launch? None.

Congress, the next two years.

That was almost exactly a decade ago, when radical Republicans in Congress were just a fringe element of the GOP. A decade later, that element is no longer the fringe; now they control the entire Republican Party. Ten years ago they ignored the murder of school kids and focused on a political stunt grounded in a legitimate tragedy. Now they’re planning to do the same, but instead of an actual tragedy, they have–and this is so fucking stupid and shameful I’m almost too embarrassed to say it–they have Hunter Biden’s laptop.

I said it was going to be a colossal shit-show. I probably understated the reality. It will almost certainly be a shit-show of Biblical proportions.