For the record, I am rabidly antisemantic.

But even under this humble bias, it's been so exasperating as even sophic semantics veer openly into blatant slander, as has been the case with Zohran Mamdani.  The most recent case was on this week's Real Time w/ Bill Maher, with guest James Kirchick stating as fact at least three easily-debunked falsehoods, all of which expressing less disdain for Mamdani as an individual or a candidate rather than bigotry against him as a Muslim and a so-called "socialist/communist", all boogyman constructions. none of which was corrected or even doubted by peer bigot Maher, content to give this absolute fudgesucker a platform.  (And, fwiw, "fudgesucker" is not a homophobic slur against the openly gay Kirchick.  I want to be very clear about that.  There's no double entendre intended here.  I mean it strictly and literally as a fatphobic slur, because this fat motherfucker clearly sucks a shit ton of fudge.  Like George Costanza, he'd guzzle it by the gallon if he could.)

Taken one at a time, Kirchick claims that Mamdani's policies involve "seizing property".  Nope.  Mamdani has made statements in the past expressing these more socialist ideals about private property (and he even once upon a time adocated the abolition of prisons and jais as well), but nowhere in his policy proposals as mayor has he made such arguments or promises.  These past comments appear to have been circulated by those same rich New Yorkers that Mamdani has proposed to raise their taxes considerably, so it's a time-honored scare tactic.  (If anything, I'd be more inclined to chalk this up to my only real concern about Mamdani - his inexperience.)

Kirchick made the hysterical claim that Mamdani wants to "give out free groceries".  I don't believe that's how that works.  A similar aspersion making the rounds, especially by Maher, is that Mamdani wants to "nationalize grocery stores", which plays precisely into the previous anxieties about his secret communist agenda.  Mamdani has proposed placing five public (or "state-run" if you must) grocery stores in each of NYC's boroughs to combat food deserts and as a means to lower, through competition (capitalism!), inflated grocery prices by private grocery corporations.  But, hey, I'll take some free food too. 

But the most insulting easily-disproved slander against Mamdani was Kirchick's claim that Mamdani has declared "globalize the intifada".  The opposite is true, that Mamdani has said that he does not use this phrase, nor has anyone found any evidence of him ever using it (and, don't worry, if it existed, they'd tell you about it).  Mamdani was non-committal about the phrase, he simply declined to outright condemn it, ala it means different things, etc.  "The role of the mayor is not to police language".  And as I pointed out in the previous post about this subject, I think this is an obvious example of Mamdani trying to walk the thin line between his pro-Palestinian protest voters and his liberal/progressive NY Jewish voters (not that these don't overlap to some degree), and without really saying anything too definite either way.  Besides, that ambiguity is now moot, as Mamdani has since then more forcefully disavowed the phrase, and has openly discouraged its use.  When Bill Maher's "blue" guest, Rep. Jason Crow, pointed out that Kirchick had, in fact, just lied on national television about Mamdani using and promoting the phrase - effectively accusing Mamdani of wanting to kill Jews worldwide - Kirchick simply shrugged as if it were a minor quibble.  (No time for apologies, this fat fuck's got fudge to suck!)  Unfortunately, even moderate Dems have taken the opportunity to join in on the slander, dishonestly, like this article a full week after Mamdani's disavowal, as if his disavowal never existed so they can continue painting him falsely as an antisemite.  Fact-checkers need to start cracking down on this shit.

The degree to which Mamdani is being accused of antisemitism should be more alarming than it has been.  Even the word "accusation" seems inaccurate, it's more like it's simply assumed, and an almost superstitious assumption being passed off as obvious fact, or at least the kind of folk-wisdom taken for granted.  This is despite the lack of any evidence to support it, outside of his being a Muslim, an Iranian (who's never lived in Iran), and an outspoken advocate for Palestinian civil rights and an end to the Israeli occupation.  The latter is frequently portrayed as sufficient evidence in our media which prefers to present the "pro-Paestinian" and "pro-Israeli" sides as some kind of zero-sum proposal.  So it's important to lay out the facts as we can determine them, setting aside the conspiratorial notion that Mamdani is not being forthroght about his true beliefs.

1) There is no evidence that Mamdani is anti-Zionist.  I have not found any instance of him using phrases like "End Zionism" or portraying it as an existential threat.  He has not called for the disestablishment of the state of Israel, has recognized their right to exist explicitly.  Now, some commentators try to take a 'gotcha' opportunity here by pointing out that he has not expressly recognized the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish state.  This is not even particularly clever semantics.  Israel is Jewish by definition.  If Mamdani didn't support the right of the "Jewish state", then he wouldn't call it Israel, he'd call it Palestine.  More to the point, Mamdani has shown support for a two-state solution, which is the liberal Zionist position.  And it's clear that, quite apart from a mission to combat Zionism, Mamdani's primary and fundamental concern is Palestinian autonomy, whether that's as a separate Palestinian state or given equal citizenship under the Israeli state: "No matter whether you are speaking of one-state or two-state, it has to be something that has that equality as the bedrock of it."  The only thing that Mamdani wants to eradicate is the Occupation.  It's telling how our media cannot (or are not willing to) discern the difference between these stances.

2) Speaking of the Occupation, Mamdani has accused Israel of perpetuating an apartheid state and conducting a genocide.  I, myself, held back on the term "genocide" for several months after Oct. 7th, but I think it's fairly clear the term applies, when you have multiple members of Netanyahu's cabinet (as well as our own ambassador Mike Hukabee) openly, happily, denying the very existence of a "Palestinian" as either a distinct people or culture, which is genocide by definition.  These terms may hurt some people's feelings, but at this point they're either in denial or they're culpable.

3) There is no evidence of Mamdani celebrating the terrorist attack on Oct. 7th, or for Hamas more generally.  In fact, he immediately and publicly rebuked those anti-Zionist groups, like Within Our Lifetimes, who did celebrate this terrorist violence with their hang-glider memes and their red triangle paint.  "My support for Palestinian liberation should never be confused for a celebration of the loss of civilian life.  I condemn the killing of civilians and rhetoric at a rally seeking to make light of such deaths."  Mamdani has similarly condemned the recent antisemitic attacks in DC and Boulder.  "We have to make clear there’s no room for it in this city, in this country."  But Mamdani did apparently spit fire in a rap song back in 2017 where he gave a shout out to the "Holy Land 5", a group who was convicted for channeling funds to Hamas.  "Look 'em up" indeed, and decide for yourself how much a half-verse in one half-assed rap should figure towards his accusations of antisemitism.

4) Mamdani has engaged in the "Boycott Divestment Solidarity" movement.  It should be repeated that the overall point of this movement is to coerce economically the end of the Occupation.  It is not to disestablish the state of Israel.  They are not boycotting Israeli industry because they're Jews, but because Palestinians are not afforded citizenship and self-determination.  "I think that it is a legitimate movement when you are seeking to find compliance with international law."  Again, it's sad that this even needs to be clarified.  Either way, Mamdani has explicated that as mayor he will not force NYC divestment from Israel, except regarding "NY funding for settler violence" specifically.  Sounds good to me.

5) Mamdani did a podcast with Hasan Piker.  Quite honestly, who gives a shit?  Piker's just a rich Turk cunt, living on his family's trust fund, streaming himself on Twitch for 10 hours a day from his West Hollywood mansion where he clearly spends more money on hot swag than books, spraying hot takes with a mumbled mouth full of his prepackaged prepared meals.  (Some have called Piker the "Joe Rogan of the Left" and, unfortunately and unironically, they're not far off.)  I don't have time for this asshole woke-bro, so unless somebody can show me a transcript of Mamdani cosigning any of Piker's bullshit, this is the non-est of issues.

6) Mamdani has held out the possibility of arresting Netanyahu on NYC soil under the arrest warrent for war crimes by the UN-ICC.  And more happier I could not be to see that day.  "My answer is the same whether we are speaking about Vladimir Putin or Netanyahu.  I think that this should be a city that is in compliance with international law."  Some people actually find this scandalous.


I still believe that Mamdani has an uphill battle to actually win the mayor's seat, although with a four-way race (technically five, but whatever), it does give him an advantage while Cuomo and Adams split the centrist/financial elite vote, and Siwa siphoning off enough right-wing and working class (ie, Staten Island) votes could prove decisive.  Thankfully, there does seem to be plenty of visible support in NYC's liberal Jewish community, which will hopefully prove immune to such immersive slander and fear-mongering.  I wish more moderate-left Dems would take note and step aside from engaging in such rhetoric.  If John Fetterman wants to go cry alone, well, he probably will anyway.  He can take Bill Maher with him and have the saddest Club Random ever.
 

Well, damn.

Turns out there is a strong faction within the BDS movement who are quite hostile to the two-state solution, basically advocating for a backdoor disestablishment of Israel through demographics.  (The comma is fucking with the hyperlink - go to the Wiki article on  Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions # Critique of liberal Zionism.)

This seems nonsensical to me, at best a motivated tautology.  Basically they say that the two-state solution is "impossible" because they're not really interested in making it possible.  Try to make sense of this:

Wiki wrote:

BDS criticizes liberal Zionists who oppose the occupation but also the right of return for the Palestinian refugees.  According to liberal Zionists, both right-wing Zionists and BDS risk "destroying Israel", defined as turning Israel into a Palestinian-majority state, BDS by demanding equal citizenship for Arab-Palestinians and the right of return of the Palestinian refugees, and right-wing Zionists by insisting on building more settlements, eventually making a two-state solution impossible.  With the two-state solution off the table, Israel would either have to grant citizenship to the Palestinians living under occupation, thus destroying Israel, or become an apartheid state.

That's an interesting sleight of hand there.  First of all, a two-state solution would preclude "building more settlements", but rather than fathom any kind of cracking down on the whole settler-terrorist effort, preventing new and even reducing existing settlements in the West Bank as prerequisite for any future Palestinian state, they just take for granted that these two forces are on an inevitable mutually assured conflict.  This scenario starts to become more reasonable if one presumes that those BDS members making this preemptive case of the two-state impossibility might just not want an Israeli state to survive.  And there's the hypocrisy, accusing Israel of being an "ethnostate", while ignoring that allowing the 'right of refugee return' would necessitate a future Palestinian ethnostate.  So it isn't about whether or not it is an ethnostate, it isn't about equality so much as who gets to be the majority party.  In Israel - proper, not the occupied territories - there's approx 20% Arab Israeli citizens.  In a future two-stete solution, there's no reason to suspect this minority to decrease.  And in a future Palestinian state, they may also cover a similar Israeli minority.  And with any 'right of return', whether in one or two states, the question of capacity is unavoidable, because we're talking about far too many people for either state.  This is a question that will require some complicated logistics, but one thing seems clear: it most certainly does not take the two state solution off of the table, unless you just don't want it there.

And "colonialist" gets further into the antisemitic weeds as well, as ironic as that is.  This only makes sense if you buy into the notion - laid out in Hamas' charter -  that Ashkenazi Jews are fraudulent (the Elders of Zion) and have no historic claim to the region.  These "white Jews" are emissaries of the evil West, going back to the Crusades, while ignoring the existence of Palestinian and West Asian Jews, the Mizrahi, who make up nearly half of Israel's Jewish population, rendering the idea of Israel as a "white colony" a farce.  Unless one subscibes to the conspiratorial nonsense laid out in the Hamas charter, none of this makes any sense at all.  Unfortunately, too many so-called progressives are buying into this bullshit.

And getting deeper - who are the indigenous people of Palestine?  How far back are we willing to unravel perhaps the most ethnically trafficked parcel of land in the fertile cradle of civilization?  Can we get some haplo-genetic tests to find some Canaanites?  The Palestinian Arabs deserve autonomy and liberation, and possible restitution for crimes committed during the Nakba, when Israelis used prior resentments to justify atrocities in the name of Zionism.  Such Zionist terrorist groups, like the Haganah and the Irgun, existed long before the state of Israel, even committing violence against the Turks and British.  There were also Palestinian/Arab terrorist groups during this time as well, also committing atrocities against civilians.  The precision of "justice" gets really foggy the further back we go into these crimes against humanity.

The focus should be on efficacious peace, not the vengence of resentments.

And there's another unfortunate video clip of Zohran Mamdani, from some podcast, where he makes his stance on the two-state solution even more blurry:  "They [American politicians] pledge fealty to the idea of a two-state solution, irrespective of the fact that a second state for Palestinians is physically impossible because it's not even a contiguous piece of land at this moment between where Palestinians live."  Well, there's lots to hammer out in the deal.  The question is whether or not you support going to the table to do so.

Maybe it would be in Mamdani's best interest to sit down with an objective, but sympathetc, interviewer and answer just a few questions, which, I know, not really directly relevant to New York City, but relevant to its Jewish community.

1) Would you support a two-state solution?
2) Would you support a Palestinian state governed by Hamas?

These are the issues which seem most slippery among those particular anti-Zionist protesters who I suspect are trying to launder in some dubious antisemitism.
 

crumbsroom wrote:

He's going to arrest Clinton, isn't he?

There's a non-zero chance, of course, but I think it would be extremely difficult to hold her behind bars without something a lot more explosive coming to the surface.

So far the facts are clearly on her side.  As I pointed out earlier, I would strongly recommend Obama, and Clinton too if she wants, to pre-emptively go on the offense and sue Tulsi Gabbard personally for defamation of character.  You want to go to court with this?  Let's go to court, sooner than later.  Where I come from "treason" is not a casual accusation.  Tulsi is clearly playing with a weak hand so call her bluff.  Go all in.  Even conservative commentators have lost interest in supporting this story.  I've already pointed out in detail why the exact evidence she has presented contradicts her claims.  Enough fun and games.  Put her on the stand under oath.

crumbsroom wrote:

Is it possible Maxwell is to be used, not simply to exonerate Trump, but to give him the leverage to arrest enemies?

Again, unless there's something more explosive that we haven't seen yet, I can't imagine anything Maxwell could say about Hillary Clinton, without corroborating evidence, that could warrant her arrest.  And I imagine if the feds had any such evidence, they would have used it already.  And no one is gong to care if there's video or photos of Bill   I mean, they'll care, it'll further tarnish his legacy, but I think most people already have an idea about that.  All it will do is inflame the call to release the names of all of the other participants, which probably isn't in Trump's interest.

There's a thin but clear line where the sophic political messaging from one party crosses a line with the mainstream media from credulity into dishonestly, and complicity.

We're seeing this right now with the political arguments around Trump's attempt at nationalizing our domestic law enforcement.  By "political", I mean those arguments which clearly have no objective basis, and which are designed to coerce and persuade.  Trump has claimed a "national emergency" as his justification for taking federal control of the D.C. police department, and has strongly insinuated to potentially have the authority to do the same with other cities on his discretion alone.  There are objective measures to which we could and should be able to determine the scale of this "emergency", whether such extreme measures are warranted, and whether there may be some kind of political bias in the overall scheme (like how all of the cities Trump is citing as potential targets of this federalization happen to be those currently led by Black Democrat mayors, almost as if that's a crucial element of the perceived problem he's trying to correct).

The facts are clear enough - violent crime in D.C. is currently down by over 30% since its recent peak in 2023.  And all of these figures are far from the peaks we saw in the '80s and '90s when D.C. was considered the "murder capital" of the country. 

The political scheme from Trump and Republicans is that they feel that those who will push back against the very notion of an "emergency" situation which would require a rare, unprecedented and openly unconstitutional federalization of local law enforcement basically amounts to a claim that no crime exists at all.  This is the logical fallacy of the absolute extreme, all or nothing, of the "false dilemma".  The argument goes, either crime is completely out of control, as the Trump administration maintains, or there's no crime happening at all.  There is no in-between, there is no alternative or nuance here.  I don't find it unbelievable that the Trump camp would try to roll out such an obviously dishonest argument.  Hey. they've done worse.  What's more disheartening is how eagerly the so-called mainstream (aka corporate centrist) news media has been to adopt such an obviously dishonest narrative and attempt to use it to quell any resistance to this clearly unconstitutional power domestic power grab.  All of these people supporting this line of thinking deserve nothing less than our hostile scorn.

Examples: The NYT's Maggie Haberman unquestioningly adopting this position:

The New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman warned Democrats run a risk of alienating voters if they push back on President Trump’s attempt to crack down in crime in Washington and other large cities Democrats run.

“I think you see that in terms of [D.C.] Mayor [Muriel] Bowser, how she has reacted,” said Haberman, who is also a contributor to CNN, during an appearance on the network Tuesday. “There is a crime problem everywhere, in multiple cities. Big cities have traditionally had crime problems.”

“There are a lot of people who feel unsafe in big cities,” she continued. “And so if the mayor pushes back on the president, she sounds like she’s not addressing concerns of constituents.”

Are these the same constituents out in the streets protesting this exact same take over?  Are these the people's concerns that Haberman is so worried about?

We saw such wisdom repeated by former Trump administration official, and now newly designated sooth-sayer, Alyssa Farah Griffin: "He’s really trying to goad Democrats into arguing ‘there’s no crime in D.C. D.C. is great....he is begging and goading Democrats into saying it’s actually much better than you think, because crime is an issue Trump has generally performed very well on."

We see this in even reasonable coverage, where it is being repeated uncritically as if t'were objective wisdom "Some analysts believe the president is using the rhetoric to lure Democrats into alleging there’s no crime in major cities."

I hope there remain some adults in this country who might be capable of asking themselves: "surely there must some middle-ground between anarchy on the streets and complete civil placidity?"  Yes, of course there is, and it's quite disturbing that this reasonable option is being completely ignored by those who happen to be profiting off of this partisan anxiety.  DC crime is down from its high in 2023 (which is far below its high from 30 years prior).  This suggests that current law enforcement measures, conducted by the current DC administration under Mayor Bowser, are effective in causing these declines.  Clearly there remains concerning amounts of violent crime in DC, as well as other major cities.  The question relevant to this situation, directly involving the constitutionally-aberrant policy of federalizing local law enforcement, is to what degree does the current violent crime in DC necessitate an emergency situation requiring Trump to invoke these rare powers of intervention.  This is the question which is most alarming that Haberman and Farah Griffin - allegedly educated women - have failed to or simply refused to address.  The context with which Trump is operating here, specifically orchestrating the kind of authoritarian police state which he has openly fantasized in the past, and only targeting those cities with Black Democrat mayors under Democratic governors, is being completely ignored by these so-called news pundits in order to posit their own theories of why Democrats should maybe tuck-tail and further hide under their respective desks, rather than fight back with any kind of legal fervor.  Because, the alternative-of-the-extremes, which is that challenging the scale of "emergency" necessitated by this power grab equals a complete denial of any crime being committed in these cities whatsoever.  What kind of demented child is this kind of argument intended to appeal to?

No, these centrist bitches are complicit, and openly advocating for our collective abdication for action.  Don't believe them.  Or rather do believe them now so you don't have to take them seriously in the future.


 

There's an awful lot of the kind of "false dilemma" either/or, all/nothing logical fallacies which seem to just be taken for granted by those in the news media who presumably should know better and, maybe I'm being generous, are probably just revealing their own contempt for the intelligence of their audiences.  We're stupid, you see.  We can't help it.  Lord knows we certainly can't rely on some kind of objective information arbiter to provide us with any kind of perspective or context.  So just stimulate us with refried drama.

One example: CNN's "chief data analyst" Harry Enten claims that Americans no longer care about the Jeffery Epstein story because.....Epstein "is no longer the top term searched alongside Donald Trump‘s name" and "when asked to name the nation’s top issue, only a single respondent said it was the Epstein case".  You see?  All or nothing.  If Jeffery Epstein is not the "top term" being googled or "the top issue" in the admitted garden of fubar in which we find our nation today, if it isn't everything to all voters, then it must be a "nothingburger".  God forbid any sore American brain could handle more than a single issue at a time.  It's either the top or it's nothing.  "So yes, there used to be a lot of interest in this story.  But the bottom line is that even amongst those who had a high interest in this story, it wasn‘t something that they thought was all that important."  Enten then proceeded to compliment Trump's "political instincts". 

This brigs up a number of immediate questions - "What's the bar for CNN's chief data analyst?", "Harry Enten was definitely fucking kids with Jeffery Epstein, right?" - but mostly it should serve as a reminder for how fundamentally myopic the corporate news media is, has become, or how myopic they're attempting to train their audiences to expect themselves to be.  Because a lot of this kind of "wisdom", the conventional folk-assumptions about what people care about or are even capable of caring about, sounds like some kind of jedi mind trick effort at reinforcing our most distracted tendencies.  And this is new in the lifespan of American news media, a specific product of the cable media news-cycle era.  It used to be about the "front page news", what stories did or didn't make it on there, or even "above the fold", but generally speaking if a story made the front page it was news.  For an average American newspaper, the front page could consist of 8-12 headlines.  An "A" section could feature 3 or 4 dozen.  In today's cable news environment, you'd be lucky if they cover more than 5 stories in an hour.  And that hour simply repeats, hour after hour, all day long, or until some "breaking news" dislodges one of these stories.  It's the perverse irony of perceived abundance, you have a 24-hour schedule but you only get coverage of a small fraction of the stories you'd normally be provided in a daily newspaper.  (Like cable generally, you can have 500 channels, and it'll still be about 65% Law and Order reruns, 20% Office reruns and 15% Christian lifestyle programming which for some reason includes documentaries about spousal murder and child abductions.)

They think you're stupid, and at times I appreciate the reminder and not-well-veiled antipathy, not because I am stupid, but because it's crucial to remember how worthless it is for me, or anyone, to deceive ourselves into thinking that they care.  'Democracy Dies in Diapers', so keep eating them spicy wings and slurping the plastic sugar water, pop some dyskinesia meds (*sideeffectsdontcareaboutyourfeelings*) and downlaod the app which allows you to flush the toilet without having to move your fat ass.

.......


But let me get back to the earlier all-or-nothing story which we apparently have no wiggle room to negootiate - Trump's DC police takeover.  Everybody's trolling, and some Dems are dumb enough to take the bait.  "If we resist, they'll say we want to Defund the Police!" 

Look, the left has said some straight up stupid stuff, especially in that confused covid summer of 2020.  "Defund" was retarded, "looting" should not be defended as a political act, "cashless bail" is only a good idea for non-violent offenses and maybe some people need to sit in jail for a while.  Decriminalizing carjacking is also not going to help a single person ever.  I think it's also worth pointing out that, outside of a few far pockets on the left, these have never been seen as actual policy proposals in the Democrat party platform.

Here's something interesting that the Dems might want to look into employing in their messaging on this issue - who defunded the DC police again?  Oh, right.  It was Trump and Republicans:

Politico wrote:

Republican hard-liners say a bill to restore the District of Columbia local budget and forestall planned layoffs doesn’t have votes to pass the House without conservative policy add-ons...

District officials say they’re facing a $1 billion funding shortfall after House Republicans inadvertently reverted city spending to prior-year spending levels in the latest government funding bill.

NBC wrote:

Federal bill would cut DC budget by $1 billion, force layoffs, officials say ....

Washington, D.C., could be forced to lay off a significant number of first responders, police officers, teachers and bus and rail service employees if a GOP-proposed spending bill calling for drastic cuts to D.C.'s budget is approved.

WTOP News wrote:

The cuts are significant, impacting several D.C. government agencies.

They include a freeze on hiring new employees, a freeze on the authorization of overtime pay for work performed after April 27 and a freeze on pay raises, bonuses and promotions...

Bowser spearheaded an intense congressional lobbying campaign to prevent the change, saying it would result in immediate, across-the-board cuts to staffing and programs - including layoffs of teachers and police officers.

Bowser’s government is unveiling a series of preliminary belt-tightening steps. A mayoral order last week established a spending freeze that paused all new hires, promotions, bonuses and new contracts. A freeze on all overtime starts Sunday. That includes police officers...

Also axed by the Trump Department of Justice was funding for DC-area community anti-violence organizations. 

Marcus Ellis wrote:

The funding cuts are devastating.  We have people across the country, because of these cuts, that are closing the doors. They’re letting people go.

We’re trying to do preventative measures - to get that gun out of someone’s hand, convincing them there’s another way to live life.

Cities United wants communities to be safe, healthy, and hopeful.  When you remove violence interruption - which is a huge part of the work - you’re making communities less safe.

But even still with these challenges, the violent crime rate in DC has fallen precipitously in the last two years from its post-pandemic high in 2023, by 26% in the past year alone.  A more sober analysis of crime statistics in DC.  Crime continues to be a problem needed to be addressed, but the rates have been going in the right direction for over 18 months.  In other words, the current MPD policing efforts have been effective and successful even in spite of DC's congressionally imposed budget cuts, and therefore there is no reasonable pretext for Trump to exert his federal reins.  There is no emergency, and saying this, truthfully, is not equivalent to denying the urgency of combating the current crime rate.

........

But this is roughly analogous to what's happening with trade and tariffs.  There is also no emergency in our international trade economy which would validate Trump's invocation of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which he is (illegaly) using to usurp Congress' constitutionally mandated powers of the purse.  And, typically, Trump's own rationale for what this "emergency" is even about (some days it's fentanyl, others it's immigration, still others it's a vague sense of being taken advantage of by the world) is grossly uncertain.  Yet, neither Congress nor our corporate media has found much enthusiasm in delineating this obvious corruption for the non-lawyers and non-economists among us.

And immigration, perhaps most obviously, a completely made up "emergency" over a nonsensically fabulist "invasion".

This is the obvious playbook for Trump's rapid seizure of powers not afforded to him under the law.  And the SCOTUS, with its decisive cadre of nutcase Christians, are allowing him to do it, for as long as they can avoid having to embarrass themselves trying to justify these actions with a straight face.

..........

I'm aware of the threat of potentially overusing certain well-worn rhetoric to the point of banality.  So I pointed out the coincidence of Trump's objectives which just happen to be exclusively focused on cities with Black Mayors, as well as his use of dehumanized stereotypes familiar among, say, fans of Rush Limbaugh in the '90s.  And, you know, it might even be a little more helpful for those wanting to think that this is a rash, reflexive overreaction to all of that, if only the Pentagon spokeswoman currently leading the news media tours of Trump's Big Beautiful Militarized Crime Sweep in DC didn't happen to be an avowed white supremacist and antisemite who didn't once refer to Robert E. Lee as :one of the greatest Americans to ever live".  Is it my fault for pointing this out?

 

crumbsroom wrote:

Please continue.

Christ, man.  I'm mortal.

I had one extra thing about Tulsi's latest shenanigans, but I think I need a meal first.

At the very least, I'm glad I'm not the only one making fun of the red carpet.  That would be bad enough, if only Trump didn't also give him a round of applause, or embracing his hands like a prom date, or, due to the revelations of the documents somehow left in a hotel printer, the administration's insistence on referring to Putin as "His Excellency".

So anyway, what happened?  Who knows?  Why was this urgent meeting so necessary?  So necessary that they couldn't afford the time to coordinated schedules with Zelensky and NATO?  So necessary that it was worth the optics of granting a war criminal - the unambiguous aggressor in the conflict supposedly being settled - on American soil in defiance of international law? 

Since Trump is shameless, he immediately shifted the blame and responsibility back to Zelenzky: "It's ultimately up to them. They're going to have to agree...."  "Agree" to what?  The deal you didn't actually achieve at this summit?  The summit which you didn't bother to invite them to participate in?  Trump elaborated on the point in a FOX appearance: "Gotta make a deal. Yeah. Look, Russia is a very big power, and they're not."  That says it pretty clearly I think.  "Now it is really up to President Zelensky to get it done.  I would also say the European nations have to get involved a little bit."  Oh, "a little bit"?  You mean more than they have been involved already through NATO's efforts?  Or do you mean, like, involved in the peace talks that you just had with Putin where they weren't invited to participate?  Is that the kind of "involvement" you mean?  Because this past week, while Zelensky was in Berlin, the EU and NATO were very much involved in laying the groundwork for a peace settlement.

But Zelensky and EU/NATO leaders have just met with Trump today, so after I review that material, aside from the instant headlines coming out, we'll see how productive all of that will come out.

One other thing worth noting though.  It may have been noticed that Russia is actually the sole country which Trump has not imposed trade tariffs.  This isn't so unusual, as trade between the US and Russia is largely non-existent at this point.  But a factor from the post-summit press conference which has received very little attention has been the comments made from both sides which appear to be specifically focused on a burgeoning trade relationship between these two countries, and raises some intriguing questions about, in light of a peace or ceasefire deal fizzling out, exactly what deals did get done in Alaska?  Putin pointed out, "when the new administration came to power, bilateral trade started to grow....we have a growth of 20%"; "the U.S. and Russian investment and business cooperation has tremendous potential....can offer each other so much in trade, digital, high tech and in space exploration."  He said he wants to "bring back business-like and pragmatic relations" and noted the "very good business-like and trustworthy contact" with the Trump administration.

No tariffs, but also no new sanctions, and I honestly wouldn't be surprised to see some major rollback of the sanctions already currently in place.  Trump, btw, agrees with all of this "potential": "We also have some tremendous Russian business representatives here. And I think, you know, everybody wants to deal with us...We look forward to dealing." Who could Trump be referring to?  Probably Yuri Ushakov, Putin's "Aid for Foreign Policy" but specifically tasked with the solicitation of foreign investment in Russian industry.  Seems like an odd figure to include for so-called peace talks.  Simply put, it appears that Putin is making a wise wager to try to buy Trump's support for Putin's preferred settlement outcomes.

Trump, because he couldn't help himself, then blasted into his "Russia Russia Russia hoax" refrain, and noting Tulsi Gabbard's failed attempts at creating evidence for such a hoax or any legal repercussions from that.  So to remind everyone, Tulsi Gabbard's main claim of this "conspiracy" is based on what she feels was the "manufactured" accusation that Putin's meddling in the 2016 election was to supoort the Trump administration.  Gabbard says that there is no evidence for this, and only that Putin wanted to "sow chaos".  The problem with this story is that Putin has already publicly admitted that he supported Trump's 2016 election victory:

Reuters: "President Putin, did you want President Trump to win the election and did you direct any of your officials to help him do that?"

Putin: "Yes, I did. Yes, I did. Because he talked about bringing the U.S.–Russia relationship back to normal."

Days later, and we still don't have a very clear idea of what (if anything) was actually accomplished with Trump's recent summits.  This has a lot to do with Trump's own use of terms and phrases like "maybe", "possibly", "especially probably", "you never know".  News outlets still optimistically cite things like Trump's "floating" ideas about security guarantees or air support, but that's because these news outlets still haven't learned how unserious Trump is when he's shooting from the hip like this.

One thing is for sure, and this is that Putin is clearly not enthused at any expedited peace process, content to let it drag on in ambiguities while he continues escalations on the front lines, grabbing what he can in the meantime.  (Notice the complete absence of criticism from Trump over Putin's post-summit aggressions.)  And Trump had to run to the, I'm presuming, bathroom to talk to dear Pooty, in private so as not to offend him, before even concluding his meeting with Zelensky and the soldified European leadership.  Putin is not sweating any of this.

I am glad to see the turnout and solidarity of the Europeans though.  It sent a signal, given the hastily arranged nature of the meeting, that they were all willing to make the time and effort, and, fwiw, Trump seemed to register the message, being much more cordial than his last WH meeting with Zelensky.  And then Marco Rubio went on ABC and lied about it when asked about the message of Europe's solidarity behind Zelensky, claiming that, "no not at all, in fact we invited the Europeans."  Utter horseshit.  There's no evidence of such an invitation, and EU's Ursula von der Leyen explicitly said that they arrived "at the request of Zelensky", and Zelensky said that "the leaders personally came to support Ukraine", with the emphasis on "personally" showing the voluntary nature of their decision.  Rubio also claims any future sanctions on Russia will not have an effect, which is repeating Putin's own propaganda, a kind of "briar patch" bluff in order to avoid them.  Also apparently from Putin's lips to Trump's ears is the 180-degree pivot from pursuing a ceasefire deal, forgoing such a ceasefire in lieu of a full peace settlement.  Trump begin touting this "short-cut" immediately after meeting with Putin, even as the European leadership is clearly still looking for a ceasefire in the interim of negotiations.  It's in Putin's interest to keep up his military aggressions in the short term, which a ceasefire would freeze.
 

Jinnistan wrote:

More revealing is which departments she's aiming to dismantle.....  "a team monitoring for cyberattacks".

For a woman who is tasked with coordinating intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard has an unfortunate sense of timing.

Immediately after she announced her intention to shutter the ODNI office devoted to monitoring cyberattacks (as payback against those agents who accurately accused Russia of their 2016 email hacking), the FBI pointed out that Russia has been busy this year cyberattacking Cisco networking devices used by the US government.  Ewps.  Maybe Tulsi has more important matters to concern herself with than trying to frame Obama.

......

John Bolton got a wake-up call this morning.  I think most people are assuming that this was purely an intimidation tactic, because Bolton has been having a good time this week on cable news talking about how badly Putin has Trump wrapped around his finger.  I don't really care that much about John Bolton.  I haven't even eaten his cereal in years.  Although Bolton clearly has some things for which he deserves legal scrutiny, like the illegal 2018 Bolivian coup which had Bolton's fingerprints all over it, orchestrated while he was Trump's National Security Advisor, I doubt that's what this is about, because Trump himself would be complicit in an operation he approved of.  Instead of making a martyr of Bolton, I prefer to take a wider view of this as blatant tyranny, and a shot across the bow of any and all of those Trump critics who may not happen to be international criminals.  This is a pretty disturbing development.

.......

Putin's got a brand new excuse to back out of any negotiations for peace with Zelensky, by claiming that Zelensky is not the legitimate president of Ukraine and therefore someone without the authority to make the peace deal.  But there's still no sign that Trump is willing to apply any further pressure to move Putin to the table, so this week has amounted to a lot of jacking off.  (Maybe why Trump looks so tired.)  The narrative remains the same.  Trump has never really placed any blame on Putin for his aggressions.  It was Obama who "gave" Putin Crimea in 2014.  It was Sleepy Joe who allowed the invasion to occur.  It is Zelensky who insisted on fighting back.  Poor Pooty.

.........

Putin's not the only one who knows that butter is Trump's sweet spot.

.........

It's funny how defensive these Tech CEOs get when anyone mentions how devastating their A.I. products are going to be to the labor market.  They're too busy selling these tools to worry about the consequences, even as their sales pitch is exactly that these tools will save these corporations a whole lot of money.....in labor costs.  So it is refreshing when you can find one of these guys who can be a little more honest, like Anthopic CEO Dario Amodei who has described the oncoming A.I. adaptation as a "white-collar bloodbath", that it will "wipe out half of all entry-level white-collar jobs and spike unemployment to 10-20% in the next one to five years".  That's tens of millions of newly prospective Uber drivers (or at least until Uber starts introducing self-driving cars).  "CEOs are afraid to talk about it".  Wonder why?  Because there might be some more Luigis out there?  And for workers, "most of them are unaware that this is about to happen.....people just don't believe it."  They don't want to believe it.

In today's troubled times, we have to take drastic measures, start looking into unorthodox nooks for our answers, and so we have to salve ourselves in the wisdom of that immaculate layman, Bill Burr:

Do you know what's fuck up?  Is how many people, regular people right now, are going on TV and social media and everthing and just talking about how amazing A.I. is.....  I feel like A.I. is the end of the human race.  And it's going to be the billionaires and they're going to have these robot slaves that they've always wanted, to do whatever they want them to do, they can have sex with them, they can yell at them and they'll always show up and put the widgets in the knick-knack, whatever they need them to do, and they're going to get rid of us.

So what they have to do is to have regular people just saying, "Oh my god, my life is so much easier now that I don't have to think."  It all goes back to when they finally got rid of the Civics class, that basically describes your rights as a citizen, so nobody understands what their rights are.  "Do I have to give in to this search?" or whatever.  I feel like all of this stuff....  There is a war out there for your brain.  And they want your brain flatlined, not thinking, so the day they need you to walk into whatever oven they just turned on, you're going to go "OK!"

After about 2 1/2 months, it looks like there's finally some attention being paid to a pretty important story which had previously been buried, first over the Easter holiday, and then over the post-Memorial Day weekend.  I wrote about it back in June, but then I also haven't lost my attention span.

To recap, in April, a whistleblower, Daniel Berukis, "an IT staffer at the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB)", said in a sworn affidavit that there had been a "significant cybersecurity breach" caused by DOGE officials and "offered evidence that DOGE exported large amounts of data from the agency’s systems" and that he "became concerned when he saw peculiar spikes in data leaving the agency after DOGE staffers—who insisted that their actions not be tracked in the system—gained access. He also observed suspicious log-in attempts from an IP address in Russia using DOGE’s new accounts."  This story dropped a couple of days before Easter and, as far as our corporate news media was concerned, swiftly forgotten.

In May, WaPo noted that DOGE officials were deliberately deactivating the tracking software in the government systems they were accessing, rendering it impossible for any future investigators after the fact to determine who, when and from where these systems' data was being accessed.  (Note that WaPo has been severely resticting access to these full articles - when I linked this 2 months ago, the article was completely available.)

In June, WaPo again reported (and again has since blocked the full article) that "Musk had his Starlink set up a secret WiFi network for the White House", specifically on the roof of the adjacent Eisenhower office building, which "allows you to transmit data without any kind of record or tracking", all without first informing the WH cybersecurity staff or the Secret Service.  This story was sourced from three government employees speaking on background.

The next day (on a Saturday) the Daily Beast followed up this story with more details: "the Department of Government Efficiency transmitted a large amount of data—all of it undetected—using a Starlink Wi-Fi terminal they installed on top of the White House"; "The officials in charge of protecting the White House’s communications were not informed of the installation ahead of time"; "the move was intended to bypass White House systems that track the transmission of data—with names and time stamps—and secure it from spies".  So where was this exfiltrated data transmitted to?  An off-site server, apparently somewhere in Virginia, but nothing has been confirmed, and there has been no oversight as to this server's security.

So this week, we get a second whistleblower, Social Security Administration Chief Data Officer Chuck Borges, who's sworn affidavit confirms the story and adds yet more detail:

NYT wrote:

Members of the Department of Government Efficiency uploaded a copy of a crucial Social Security database in June to a vulnerable cloud server, putting the personal information of hundreds of millions of Americans at risk of being leaked or hacked....

The database contains records of all Social Security numbers issued by the federal government. It includes individuals’ full names, addresses and birth dates, among other details that could be used to steal their identities, making it one of the nation’s most sensitive repositories of personal information....

In his complaint, Mr. Borges said DOGE members copied the data to an internal agency server that only DOGE could access, forgoing the type of “independent security monitoring” normally required under agency policy for such sensitive data and creating “enormous vulnerabilities.”

his disclosure stated that as of late June, “no verified audit or oversight mechanisms” existed to monitor what DOGE was using the data for or whether it was being shared outside the agency....

"What has not been reported are DOGE’s actions, in violation of SSA protocols and policies....to create a live copy of the country’s Social Security information in a cloud environment that circumvents oversight."

"This vulnerable cloud environment is effectively a live copy of the entire country’s Social Security information from the Numerical Identification System (NUMIDENT) database, that apparently lacks any security oversight from SSA or tracking to determine who is accessing or has accessed the copy of this data."

Current Trump Stooge in charge of Social Security, Frank Bisignano, has tried to reassure, "The data referenced in the complaint is stored in a long-standing environment used by SSA and walled off from the internet."  But if it were walled off from the internet, how could it have been transmitted over a Starlink WiFi signal?  (It isn't clear if Bisignano is confused about whether or not he's referring to the original SS data or the copy of the data which Borge is describing, or whether he simply hopes that American rubes won't be able to tell the difference.)

That's two on-the-record whistleblowers for this story.  We'll see if that's enough to get our placated news media excited enough to do their jobs.  Of course, it may already be too late.  Maybe once enough Trump critics start getting their identities stolen....or maybe that's why they're being so quiet about it.