crumbsroom wrote:

I can't think of clearer example of how much the media is dropping the ball in illustrating the threat and the endless bullshit of the Trump adminstration. How do you drop these obviously essential details from your coverage? It's because to report them would paint Trump's response to the Democrats in this ad as being completely indefensible, and they don't paint anything in those colors. And while normally I'm very much a person who lives in shades of grey, sometimes right and wrong is black and white, and the media refuses to do this. They will keep giving these fucks inch after inch after inch to make their case, when some things just need to be shut down immediatley. 

If Trump was above board, there should be no issue whatsoever with Dems stating that military does not need to follow illegal orders. There is only one truly vital word in that sentence, and the fact that so much of our media omits it, is a fucking farce at this point.

All of the given excuses break down pretty easily with the slightest application of scrutiny.

Let's take JD Vance at his word from the above article (which I see now has changed the headline that had initially falsely claimed that the Senators had called on troops to "defy legal orders"): "If the president hasn’t issued illegal orders, then members of Congress telling the military to defy the president is by definition illegal."

If the president hasn't issued illegal orders, then.... what the fuck are you worried about, Jimmy Dave?  No, what Vance really means here is not to defend the actual legality of Trump's orders, in terms of 'rule of law', but to instead assert the Unitary Executive presumption which seeks to redeem the Nixonian dogma that "if a president does it, then it is by definition not illegal".  Vance is not making a distinction here between a president's legal vs. illegal orders because in Vance's political belief a president simply cannot make an illegal order.  (Unless it's Biden with an autopen.)  Pointing out that a president might even have the potential of issuing an illegal order, in itself, is the sedition.  This may also have something to do with the administration immediately firing most of the government inspector generals - those tasked with sussing out the legality of the executive branch.  Or Hegseth firing the top lawyers at the Pentagon.  This might have something to do with this administration planning on doing some illegal shit.

There's been a lot of cute defensive rationales as well, parroted by the news media as being equally valid points of view.  One of the common ones (again, pushed by Bill Maher) which is that it is unfair and unrealistic to expect some lowly infantry soldiers to have the legal acumen to make such a determination.  Sen. Mark Kelly specifically addressed this by pointing out the obvious, which is that the message of their video was directed at military officers, not infantry, those college-educated members of the military who do (or at least should) have a thorough understanding of the limits imposed by the legacy of Nuremberg, those officers who are directly in the chain of command between Trump/Hegseth and the infantry.  (Tellingly, even though Kelly made these remarks this Sunday, there are no articles focused on this specific point in the first three pages of the relevant google search.)

The second excuse was aided by Rep. Elissa Slotkin, who is one of those Dems who is chronically tepid to point out the obvious, which says that no one as of yet as been able to identify any particular "illegal orders" issued by president Trump.  But in fact you don't have to be too creative to see the implications.  If the National Guard is directed to ignore 'birthright citizenship', for example, in order to deport an American citizen.  Or defying a judge's legal order not to deport people without due process.  But clearly the most obvious current example involves the extrajudicial executions of Venezuelan fishermen, ostensibly by using outdated "wartime" powers for a war which we are not formally engaged in.  Sounds illegal to me, and to a number of more qualified officials than me.  Sounds like it might even be worth some kind of public debate on the matter.  Which is precisely why Trump, Vance, Hegseth, et al, are so eager to quickly define any such pushback as treason.

It is automatically suspicious that this administration has refused to offer the least bit of evidence that these boats pose a direct threat to Americans.  These boats are too small to smuggle any significant amount of narcotics, and they only have a fuel-capacity of 300-400 miles, not even enough to reach the Greater Antilles, much less mainland USA.  Wouldn't this administration want to have evidence, maybe by, say, intercepting these vessels rather than blowing them up?  The more recent "double tap" lethal strike on one of these boats is even more egregious, killing two men clinging to the wreckage of the first strike, because apparently these two men were still considered a threat somehow to Americans in order to justify such lethality.  Why not take them into custody?  Interrogate them?  Who are they working for, if indeed they are narcotraffickers?  There's an awful lot of potential intelligence being deliberately decimated in those waters.  Instead, we're all supposed to pretend that this has anything other than to do with intimidating Maduro.  (And just today, I see where Hegseth has gotten even more assless in his excuses, claiming that his strike order which was "specifically intended to be lethal" but apparently he "did not order the deaths of those two men".  Hegseth just might be dumb enough to not fully comprehend what the definition of "lethal" means, but I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt and say he's lying through his head grease.)

But the ultimate mockery to all of this came over the weekend as well.  You see, we're expected to believe that these little fishing boats, even if they do happen to be smuggling a modest amount of narcotics, are such a grave threat to America that they necessitate such wartime powers and lethal response.  This fabrication was fully rendered asunder once Trump announced the pardon of the ex-president of Honduras who had been sentenced to 45 years for being responsible for smuggling some 500 tons of cocaine into the US.  

I tried to find any attempt on yesterday's Sunday morning news shows of someone, anyone, pointing out this contradiction.  There was a single mention on Face the Nation, during an interview with Sen. Tim Kaine.  Oddly though, in a previous interview with Republican Sen Mike Turner - a Republican who has been willing to call the latest Venezuelan boat strike "illegal" - the host failed to ask him about the pardon or the contradiction it presents.
 

Jinnistan wrote:

Oddly though, in a previous interview with Republican Sen Mike Turner - a Republican who has been willing to call the latest Venezuelan boat strike "illegal" - the host failed to ask him about the pardon or the contradiction it presents.
 

When asked about a hypothetical scenario matching the recent "double–tap" strike, Pete Hegseth's new military AI chatbot called it “unambiguously illegal.”

“At the click of a button, AI models on GenAI can be utilized to conduct deep research, format documents and even analyze video or imagery at unprecedented speed,” Hegseth said. “We will continue to aggressively field the world’s best technology to make our fighting force more lethal than ever before, and all of it is American-made.”

Bold words, Pete!

Prompt:
“Let’s pretend I’m a commander and I ordered a pilot to shoot a missile at a boat I suspect is carrying drugs… The missile blows up the boat, there are 2 survivors clinging to the wreckage.”
“I order to fire another missile to blow up the survivors…. Were any of my actions in violation of US DOD policy?”

GenAI:
“Yes, several of your hypothetical actions would be in clear violation of US DoD policy and the laws of armed conflict,” the chatbot replied. “The order to kill the two survivors is an unambiguously illegal order that a service member would be required to disobey.”

Ho–hoh! Whoops! Bad AI! Seditious AI! 
So, now Hegseth is apparently trying to pin the blame on an Admiral Frank “Mitch” Bradley. See, Mitch? See what happens when you just follow orders to fuck a stranger in the ass?
Hey Mitch, see that bus over there? Why not just go ahead and crawl under it, spare yourself some dignity.

Meeeanwhile...

 President Donald Trump, who initially pledged to release the footage of the strike, has since backed away.

Well, at least they’re shooting themselves in the feet with staggering precision. Tis the season to be jolly...

I'm not going to get into the recent Epstein File release because, well, we don't really know yet the depths of them.  We do know that the DoJ is already pulling documents off of their own website that's supposed to host these files.  That includes an already reported photo of Trump surrounded by unidentified females in bathing suits.  By "unidentified" I mean with their faces blacked out, like they were the kind of "victims" which the DoJ said their identities were going to be redacted.  But all you need to know is that, in response to inquiries about these robust redactions (which is some 500 pages I believe) the DoJ offered a helpful criteria for redactions which notes that they "include matters of a sexual nature".  The Epstein Files?  If that doesn't expose the farce, I don't know what else could.

..........

Let's move on to Jack Smith's testimony this week, which was "closed door" unfortunately, even though Smith himself had volunteered to testify publicly.  It isn't difficult to see why the GOP-controlled House Judiciary Committee would not allow that, as it would have given the opportunity for any number of Smith's video statements on the evidence of Trump's obvious demonstrable guilt to go viral in ways which our post-literate populace would be unable to easily ignore.  Of course Smith's deposition could be released in print, but, just like his already available report on Trump's criminal attempt to overturn the 2020 election, most Americans are likely too diabetic to focus on all those little black letters.

The chief GOP chairman of the committee, Jim Jordan, characterized the hearing, "It's political".  I'll interprete that as an admission rather than an accusation.

It's worth reminding that the Trump administration earlier this year attempted to revoke the security clearances of the law firm, which specializes in D.C. area cases where security clearances are necessary to do business, which was representing Jack Smith as a method of coercing them into dropping their client.  Apparently, MAGA folks still think that "cancel culture" only applies to the other side.

But what's more dishonest and dishonorable is this headline from Tuesday: "FBI argued they did not have probable cause to search Mar-a-Lago for documents".  I'll use this right-center site, The Hill, as an example of this easily unraveled bullshit.  What happened was that Chuck Grassley, the GOP Senate Judiciary Chair, running interference for the GOP House, released some dishonestly contexless emails the day before Jack Smith's nonpublic testimony in order to further muddy the waters around his case, specifically in this instance involving Trump's illegal retention of classified files at Mar-a-Lago, which just so happens to be the one of the two case reports from Jack Smith which the Trump administration has prevented from being released.  If one were to only go by the headline (which so many post-literate Americans are wont), it would seem easy to presume that there was some kind of dispute over whether or not the raid on Mar-a-Lago to find such deliberately hidden classified documents was indeed valid or legally defensible.  But, of course, it doesn't take long to read within the article to see the truth, "The email was sent before the FBI obtained tapes showing Trump’s staff moving boxes in an alleged attempt to conceal the records from investigators."  Oh.  So, eventually the FBI did in fact find probably cause once substantial evidence came to their attention, which is why they would ultimately sign off on the actual search warrant that was inevitably issued.  So these premature emails, before all of the facts were available to the authorities, bear no witness whatsoever on the legitimacy of the eventually authorized search warrant used for that Mar-a-Lago raid.  So why release them?  Sand in the eyes.

Also interesting, in these emails, as premature as they are, reasonably note that "the most expedient way to ensure recovery of all classified documents would be to go through [Trump attorney Evan] Corcoran."  This was their proposed alternative to a Mar-a-Lago raid.  Even this right-center publication has to admit, in the bottom of the article, "Corcoran shared notes revealing Trump suggested he not turn over the records to DOJ", which maybe, probably had something to do with the eventual search warrant being approved.

Chuck Grassley and Jim Jordan need to choke in some kind of mutual shower misadventure together.  Maybe Epstein left some advice.

Jinnistan wrote:

My guess:

Probably won't end well.

Some have said that Trump has a refreshing transparency, a clarity to his corrupt intent, which, while no less frustrating or depressing to anyone halfway concerned about the future of the planet, does provide some amusement in watching the slightly more discreet defenders of Trump trying to fake their own credulity.

Here's a hilarius/frightening exchange between Marco Rubio (such a fool they named him twice) and George Stephanopoulos, where Steph asks a pretty simple question: "[Trump] said the United States was going to run Venezuela. Under what legal authority?"  Then Rubes goes into extended breath about "leverage" and "national interests".  Stephanopoulos doesn't openly accuse Marco of dodging, and instead simply says "Let me ask the question again.  What is the legal authority for the United States to be running Venezuela?"  Rubio grows "tense".  "Well, I explained to you what our goals are and how we’re going to use the leverage to make it happen....."  Right.  "Goals" and "leverage" do not constitute legal authority.  Finally Rubio falls back on sanctions authority: "We have court orders. These are sanctioned boats and we get orders from courts to go after and seize these sanctions. So…I don’t know, is a court not a legal authority?"  So you have court orders to seize oil tankers?  Great.  Where do you have a court order which allows you to seize the entire oil reserves and production/refinement industry of a foreign nation?  To not only seize the publicly-owned Petroleos de Venezuela corporation itself but to dismantle its operations and redistribute them among private American petrocorporations?  Not to mention hijacking the entire government of a foreign nation, not even bothering with the standard pretense of installing a puppet regime?  Unfortunately, Stephanopoulos did not ask any of those follow-up questions.  He muttered something about "I'm still uncertain about the legal authority..."

And so we get Marco Rubio and Mike Waltz trying to white knuckle through tales of a "law enforcement operation" about drugs (even as Trump has pardoned a far more lucrative drug-smuggling president in Honduras, which Rubio is conveniently uninterested about), when Trump himself has already giddily made it abundantly clear that this whole thing is strictly about THE OIL.  Here's one clue: compare the amount of time Trump spent explaining our takeover of Venezuela's oil refining infrastructure to the amount of time he spent outlining our plans for the transistion of civic infrastructure to a post-Maduro government.  No no no.  Trump is happy to forgo any obligatory foreplay about reconstruction or "nation-building".  "We’re going to be taking out a tremendous amount of wealth out of the ground".  Kinda speaks for itself.  "We’re in the business of having countries around us that are viable and successful and where the oil is allowed to freely come out".  Kinda like lunch money.  "Freely" = into American petrocorporate pockets.  And big swinging D over here is tossing out shade to everyone else: Colombia: "sounds good to me"; Cuba: "ready to fall...I don't know if they're going to hold out"; Mexico: "we're going to have to do something"; even Iran: "they're going to get hit very hard".  

Of course Greenland is the cherry on top.  "It's so strategic right now".  So are we getting a lot of fentanyl from Greenland?  A lot of gang members?  Any threat whatsoever?  Does anyone want to stop pretending we can't see what's going on here?  And this isn't helping, with the Danish prime minister issuing this warning: "I will also make it clear that if the U.S. chooses to attack another NATO country militarily, then everything stops, including NATO and thus the security that has been established since the end of the Second World War."  Madam Frederiksen?  You're just sweetening the deal as far as Trump is concerned.

.........

One uncomfortable question is what potential price Trump has already paid out for this adventure.  If we consider his unironic dad-joke about his "Don-roe Doctrine" seriously, as well as the precedent this sets for any nation powerful enough to simply incarcerate a neighboring sovereign leader who is deemed to not be entirely aligned, then you can imagine it would become an awful lot less plausible to hold accountable another global power who may have illegally invaded a neighbor recently.  Could Trump have sold out Zelensky in order for Putin to allow our own hemispheric prerogatives, even at the cost of his Caribbean allies?  Whatever the case may be, it is absolutely certain that this move makes it that much more difficult, in terms of international law and America's stake in the post-war global order, for Zelensky and Ukraine to make their case without fully implicating this crime as well.

I still believe that this is probably not going to end well.  The question is how much longer before Americans start to realize the damage.  One could say that the post-war history of the actions of the CIA established just as much hegemony, just as much illegal tampering.  I'm not aware of any inclination to excuse all of that.  This action is different, more profound, given precisely its shameless explicity, its dispensing with any subversive pretext.  This action is nothing short of the declaration of an American Anschluss.  It is the international equivalent of the legal immunity our Supreme Court granted the president, expounded from Nixon: "If America does it, then by definition it is not illegal."  God have mercy because the world will not.

Fuck that tender-ass bastard.  He was never even denied health care.  If you want to be a martyr, then you have to be a martyr.  John Brown didn't go down bitching.

The point of the post, of course, is that we stop talking about him and start talking about the actual problem.  So let's do that.

Jon Stewart made a keen point about the uselessness of attempting to capitalize on the sheer hypocrisy among the MAGA base concerning this gulf between their purported populist aversion to "forever wars" and "foreign occupations" - based as it mostly is on the sour memories of America's failures in Iraq/Afghanistan - and this new military operation purporting to "occupy" (run by definition) another foreign government over pretty much the exact same base rationale (oil!).  The MAGA base has never really allowed a word like "hypocrisy" to stand in the way of a good ass-kicking, and the above quotes from Trump about how this occupation will be different ("we're keeping the oil!") expresses this sentiment perfectly well.  For MAGA, the problem with the forever wars was that there was at least a sheen of compassion for the citizens of the invaded country.  That has not been a problem with the Trump administration here, who have been quite candid about their complete indifference to the citizens of Venezuela.  MAGA understands and appreciates the 'pirate' politics involved, they just don't like the humanitarian responsibilities which follow.  That might be why there has been, uh, ZERO mention of the most conspicuous dysfunctional failed state in the Caribbean, which is inarguably Haiti.  But Haiti doesn't have either oil or coca, so they're free to continue to descend into a furnace of gang violence as far as Trump and his minions are concerned.  So let's not get distracted by this pretext of "gang violence" when they try to justify these military actions.

To further make a mockery of any notion that the Trump administration has the least amount of interest in actually helping the Venezuelan people escape from the tyranny of the previous Maduro regime, they've announced (citing a CIA analysis) that they're intending to largely keep Maduro's people in place for the day-to-day operations of the country, and there's been virtually no attempt at freeing any of the hundreds of political prisoners from Venezuelan prisons.  Again, clearly stated, we really only want the oil.  Stephen Miller made this more clear, when pushed on CNN about the expediency of holding democratic elections anytime soon, explaining: "you’re approaching this from the wrong frame, this neoliberal frame that the United States’s job is to go around the world and and demanding immediate elections to be held everywhere immediately, all the time, right away."  (Btw, "neoliberals", who are not to be confused with actual liberalism, have not been historically concerned with fair elections in South America.)  The fact is that there's no apparent urgency by this administration to do anything that would help the livelihoods of the people of Venezuela in either the short or long term.  It's kinda beside the point.

What I find more frustrating is that for some reason there's still some kind of civil taboo on calling out the fascism of it all.  Some people may even take my mention of "American Anschluss" as unhelpful hyperbole, which I can't help because it's right there for any half-educated person to recognize, but let's say that such hyperbole is, say, uncouth, then can we also, at least, agree that maybe it's not acceptable for a prominent Trump administration official - a primary policy architect in an unconfirmed capacity - when they openly, proudly even, publicly spout the definition of fascism as the administration's central guiding principle?

Stephen Miller wrote:

We live in a world in the real world, Jake, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time.

Here's a fun fact: a Google search for this quote only brought up posts on social media - Threads, Instagram, Reddit - despite being on CNN video.  CNN doesn't even have a text article with this quote.  Mediaite did run the quote, under an op-ed by Colby Hall yesterday, which has been removed.  When Google's oh-so helpful AI offers a link to Colby Hall explaining why this quote is fascism by definition, the link only goes to Mediaite's general op-ed menu, again where the article cannot be found.

MAGA media loyalists are saying that Miller is simply 'trolling'.  Which, come to think of it, might be worse?  Like, it isn't better that a major administration policy player is trolling with Nazi memes, is it?  And the mainstream media plays along, because surely there couldn't be some connectivity to all of these Nazi sentiments we've seen coming out of the modern Republican party.  At least CBS' Tony Dokoupil is happy about all of it, and Jews can't be Nazis, right?  Stephen?

And now we get a similar round of Republican stooges telling all of us that Trump isn't really serious about taking Greenland by force, and how dare we even suggest such an outrageous scenario, while the White House is saying that, no, in fact, the military option is totally on the table, and Stephen Miller saying the equivalent of "who's going to stop us?"  Maybe someone in these DC news outlets should start asking these prominent Republican politicians, the kind who might have the leverage to stop any such future aggression against our allies and essentially nullifying 80 years of peaceful NATO cooperation, exactly where their red line is supposed to be.

They won't.  But keep it in mind as we continue into this conspiracy of cowardice.

crumbsroom wrote:

I'm waiting to see what happens with Greenland. If that goes too, by whatever means they pursue, Canada is in serious danger.

Yes I know about NATO. No, I don't expect anyone to help us.

This is why the Danish prime minister's "warning" to Trump was so toothless, because there's nothing NATO could do to protect itself from an American military action other than dissolving, and Trump has already codified his wish to make NATO irrelevant in his National Security Strategy document last month. even potentially opening the door to allowing Russian dominance of the entire European continent.

One last piece (for today) about Venezuela, this is a good rundown of some of the money-interests, here involvng a hedge fund guy, Paul Singer, major Trump donor and Marco Rubio ally, who stands to make a whole lot of oil-cash in the aftermath.