Humint Events Online

Friday, January 01, 2100

Blog Overview (Permanent Top Post)

This blog explores politics from a liberal/left perspective but also deals heavily with conspiracy theories and various unusual topics. Although I started this blog to research 9/11, my most pressing issue of concern now is anthropogenic climate change.

If you have doubts about the science of climate change, this website is a very useful resource to get educated.

I'm happy to have people comment and contribute ideas here. I don't censor comments except in rare cases where there is abuse or private information. Google/Blogger does sometimes censor comments for reasons I don't understand and I have no control over. Lately, I am not able to even find comments that Google/Blogger has blocked. Sorry about that.

You can read about the history of this blog here. I post kind of irregularly in recent years but I try to keep this site active. Feel free to use the search engine on the side for older content. For expired links, try using the Wayback Machine.

I rarely ever check my email for this blog (see sidebar for my address). If you need to contact me, the best bet is to leave a comment. If you need to email me, let me know in a comment that you've emailed me.

Thank you for reading.



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Thursday, November 14, 2024

Nightmare Fascist Administration

Trump and his people have exhibited no interest in the legally required transition process. I suspect it's for two reasons: 1) As of 2019, they have to sign certain ethics pledges, AND reveal all conflicts of interest. I don't think they want to do that. 2) The purpose of the transition process is to teach the incoming Administration what it needs to know to run the 400+ federal agencies in the Executive Branch. 

Trump expects to dismantle nearly all of them, so doesn't care how to run them. I know I'm right about 1). If I'm also right about 2), we'll likely know late on Jan 20, or early morning Jan 21, because Trump would then sign a series of sweeping Executive Orders which would fire thousands of federal employees, including all the people who run virtually everything.

 I've heard Trump is also requiring personal loyalty oaths and NDA's from everyone who wants to remain employed. Including (wait for it).... all senior officials--generals, admirals, etc--in all the armed forces. I suspect most of them will be unemployed by Jan 22. He'll replace them all with toadies and sycophants who will do his bidding. 

 I could be wrong (and I hope I am), but I think on Trump's first two or three days, he will sign EOs intended to end most of the Exec Branch, and transfer all of what remains to his personal desk. I could be wrong (and I hope I am), but I'm convinced Trump intends to shock and terrify the world, and frighten us all into obedience, in his first forty-eight hours. 

 Do. Not. Comply. 

 I won't list what I think will be in those Exec Orders. 

Read Project 2025. All at once. 

 PS. People can say, "You're being silly. It would take an act of Congress to do what you're implying." It would. Or at least, it should. But if Trump orders it, who will dispute him? A Republican Congress won't.

 There will be lawsuits trying to stop it. Trump will ignore them. I'm not doomposting. The best minds in America are working on how to stop this destruction. They're smarter than I am. 

I'm just telling you what Trump voters have wrought, and the morons who stayed home rather than vote for Harris. • • •



--------------


"The entire panel of MSNBC's "The Weekend" was left speechless before dissolving into nervous laughter after a noted expert on authoritarianism detailed how Donald Trump managed to get himself re-elected and what to expect now that voters have handed him another four years in office. 

Co-host Michael Steele prompted historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat with, "I want to get your thoughts of what we can now say is the emerged, the realized form of American fascism that the American people, by some 50-plus percent decided, 'Yes, let's do that.'" 

 "I mean there is much to say," she began. "We are here now, you know, Donald Trump was very skilled at conditioning Americans to think that democracy and American democracy in particular was failing." "He called America a garbage can. He spread with his allies disinformation about the economy, said that America was failing and praised foreign dictators so he could bolster his own idea of leadership, which is 'I alone can fix it,'" she elaborated. 

"And all the slogans we have seen for years from him add up to this kind of strong men model of leadership which depends on having an enemy and an internal enemy, the enemy within," she continued. "So you can justify these kind of crackdowns on the vulnerable, these repressions," she predicted. 

"And so this is all very unfortunate but he did a good job of conditioning over and over. We've have had eight years of this, Americans to see democracy is inferior to something else. That something else would be strong men ruled by him."


--------------------

"It turns out that tragedy and farce are not mutually exclusive. With this week’s election, America has chosen to Groundhog Day its future through a past it can’t yet shake. 

 We’re face to face again with not just Trump but the peril of what he promises to do, and what an election will deliver to him. With all the talk of detention and deportation, I want to look at some parallels between today and the past, to see what they can tell us about what comes next, and to address what civilians can typically do in the face of the most likely threats. 

 This will be a long post, so pace yourself and digest it in pieces if you need to. [ed-- I've only posted about 1/3 of the piece here]

 Across the last century, demagogues worldwide have managed to acquire power through a variety of entry points: after election or appointment, by seizing control in a violent coup, by shifting from a quasi-conventional leader into a full-blown authoritarian one, or via some combination of the above. 

 Each path to power brings with it certain limitations and opportunities once the strongman begins exerting both legal and extralegal power. The setting for Trump's return to office borrows a little from each past authoritarian strain. And each one tells us a little bit about what could happen next in the U.S. 

 Three historical cases 

 The first category listed above—those who came to power through conventional mechanisms used legally or after bending the law—would include Adolf Hitler being appointed chancellor in January 1933 after the Nazi strength shown in multiple elections the previous year. The Nazis began brutalizing their political opponents immediately, and within weeks, were setting up ad hoc concentration camps. But Hitler's role as dictator would not be fully entrenched until the death of President Paul von Hindenburg. Five years of propaganda and legislation stripping German Jews of citizenship and rights would take place before the Nazis began rounding them up en masse to detain them in concentration camps, including a stint where Germany worked hard to host the 1936 Olympics and make everyday life appear to outsiders as if nothing were amiss. 

 An example of the second case—of seizing power through violent means—would be Chilean generals triggering a coup starting with using jets to bomb La Moneda, the office of the president, deposing the elected government in September 1973. Confident in the support of the U.S., they immediately began rounding up and detaining thousands of political opponents. Only after outcry around the globe did they have to dial the public violence back a little. It would take an assassination on U.S. soil by Chilean secret police in 1976 to create real pressure from Washington against the government to tamp down the worst abuses. Yet Pinochet would remain in power until 1990. 

 The third case would cover leaders like Vladimir Putin—who surrendered the presidency of Russia (though not his control of the country) in 2008 after two terms, as required by law, before returning to assume dictatorial powers. Given that he was a KGB agent early in his career, it's no surprise that he committed abuses from his first years as President. But it was after his return to power that he abandoned the economic reforms he'd once encouraged, massively expanded the Russian national guard to suppress political protests, ramped up his elimination of political opponents by assassination or imprisonment, seized Crimea, and launched a decade of war in Ukraine. 

 How these historical examples apply today 

 Trump’s return has some similarity to each case. On Tuesday [November 5th, 2024], he won the race for an office that U.S. courts should have disqualified him from after his role in spurring the January 6 insurrection.

 Hitler had tried to seize power years before, too, and had even gone to jail. But laws were stretched to give him access as a candidate before his appointment. Trump will likewise enter office with more legitimacy, because he outright won office after laws were ignored to make him a candidate. The system is now in place to deliver him more power than any president has ever wielded. 

 As for the Chilean case, Trump will not have to seize power in a coup, as the generals did. But his rhetoric and planning for his agenda after his January 2025 inauguration are framed as if he's overthrowing the existing limits on the presidency and the government itself—as if his January 6, 2020 coup has finally succeeded. Trump has mused about a third term, which is unconstitutional, and has repeated a frequently made promise to end birthright citizenship as guaranteed in the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. He has threatened to unleash the National Guard on immigrants, with Stephen Miller suggesting that where governors (who control the guard within each state) resist, troops could be sent from a Trump-supporting state into the unfriendly state against the will of the people and governor there: “You’re going to go in an unfriendly state like Maryland, well, there would just be Virginia doing the arrest in Maryland.” 

 Trump has threatened special prosecutor Jack Smith with deportation, and said that criminal charges should be brought against Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Nancy Pelosi, journalists, Hunter Biden, and countless others he believes have unfairly opposed him. 

What he will be able to accomplish is an open question, but he’s openly announcing plans to establish police powers and upend the constitution—the language of coups. Like Putin in the third example, Trump is returning to an office he left without ever really giving up control of his party. And his party is so thoroughly cowed that he can try to implement his plans without concessions to them. 

... Republicans are currently likely to hold the trifecta of power for the American government. Under these conditions, how does history suggest that his power might be furthered or constrained? 

Realistically, it appears that, like Putin, he will be more aggressively authoritarian than he was during his first stint in office. He’s already promised to be a dictator on day one. 

He will be less concerned with stocking his advisors and cabinets with people who will appease anyone in the Republican Party—he effectively is the Republican Party, and he has defeated those inside it who opposed him. 

 As for the Chilean case, a coup makes a show of force quickly and violently to demonstrate control and discourage opposition. There is little question at this point whether Trump will assume the presidency in January. 

But everything about how he's framing his arrival is presented as if he still needs to unleash widespread violence and punishment. The list of enemies he’s threatening to punish and the need to show he can do physical harm to vulnerable groups and to any protections offered by other branches of government are bad signs. They suggest he's gunning for powers beyond those held by prior presidents and aims to subvert our current system of government. 

 As for the German example, Trump will enter office a second time with more power than Hitler had in his first months. Meanwhile, a Supreme Court unwilling to rein him in has effectively given him carte blanche for unlawful acts. It's possible that he will act so egregiously that it will shock the country enough to make the Court respond, but he already has a bedrock of public support for mass deportations. It's what he ran on. And a national propaganda system has already captured his supporters and remains dedicated to any agenda he chooses. He’s starting out on third base in terms of mobilizing the potential for repression. 

 With so much talk of mass deportations, I think it’s helpful to look at examples of foreign countries that have endured (and sometimes embraced) authoritarians or concentration camps. Sometimes it’s easier to understand a situation you can look at from the perspective of an outsider. 

 But make no mistake, the U.S. already has its own history with these kinds of camps. And remember that most Japanese Americans rounded up and detained during World War II were American citizens, stripped of the rights of citizenship by the president, with the tiptoeing approval of the Supreme Court. 

 In addition, the kind of repression Trump is threatening other groups with is very much the kind of reactionary use of police powers in the segregated South and elsewhere in America, then and even after desegregation. It’s important to recognize the preexisting domestic variant of what has likewise happened around the world. 

A little good news 

 The biggest news in America’s favor is that rarely in history does something like this happen in such a way that those who would oppose the despot have more than two months to plan and prepare. That is a precious gift. People who want to make a difference or put up roadblocks can use that time wisely to build networks and prepare. There [sic] still time to get over grief and being stunned and to act. 

 The second piece of good news is that Trump at this point doesn’t have control over the military (recall his earlier alleged whining about wanting generals like Hitler’s). This is extremely unusual when dealing with a wannabe tyrant. While various parts of domestic and border law enforcement are already fully backing him, and while there are surely Trump fans and extremists at every rank in every branch, the U.S. military is built to move slowly, to respect walls that have been established for a long time about the use of force domestically, and to resist overtly political activity. It will take time to break that down across the board, and he may not be able to do it quickly enough to hinder future elections. 

 The third piece of good news is that elected officials are preemptively standing up against Trump’s plans, announcing that they will refuse to help carry out his illegitimate deportation effort. Among them are Governor Maura Healy of Massachusetts, Attorney General Letitia James in New York, and Governor JB Pritzker in Illinois. This kind of regional and local resistance will be very difficult to continue for any extended period, especially if federal funds are withheld. But it will be critical for as long as it lasts. 

 Fourth, we still have a partially functioning court system and a massive bureaucracy that currently helps a lot of people in this country. They will face destructive forces and be used to do harm, but it will take time to dismantle that bureaucracy and to circumvent or replace more independent judges. 

Disruption of the bureaucracy that helps a huge percentage of the population will be the hardest thing to get House Republicans to go along with, because representatives will lose their seats in two years if benefits are substantially interrupted. 

In the meantime, people will still get help, and some courts will still stall or slow down the worst of Trump’s plans. 

 The fifth piece of good news is that the Trump team isn’t actually very smart. Selling hate and ignorance is easy. Smashing things is easy. Instilling fear is easy. Using a playbook of hatemongers and infinite money from billionaires to poison people's minds is easy. Many of the people running things and appointed to carry out tasks will be incompetent. 

In addition, the interests of the billionaires is sometimes going to conflict with the goals of those who want to wreck the economy through tariffs and deportations. There will be infighting, they will bungle things—sometimes in ways that do additional harm, but more often in ways that trip them up. Given this mixed picture, let's look at what Trump has said he'll do. I want to consider four key issues, and then move on to what people can do to help, if anyone is interested in thoughts on that."

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Trump Elected as 47th President... Where To Begin...

I thought I lived in a country where a candidate for public office could never be elected who was (or did) ALL of the following:

-- a convicted felon

-- indicted in multiple states and out on bail

-- long time friends with America's most notorious pedophile and sex trafficker

-- an adjudicated rapist

-- credibly accused of sexual assault against dozens of women

-- praised Hitler and wanted to have Hitler's generals

-- repeatedly disrespected US troops and veterans 

-- unable to get most of the people who had previously worked for him to endorse him

-- was described as a fascist by 2 high level Generals who worked for him

-- tried to overthrow a national election and incited an attack on the US Capitol

-- lied about the severity of and mishandled a massive pandemic leading to the unnecessary deaths of 100,000s of Americans

-- openly admired and praised all of the world's current most brutal genocidal dictators

-- a repeated purveyor of blatant racist rhetoric

-- vowed to use military force to go after his domestic enemies

-- vowed to weaponize the justice system against his political opponents

-- used vile insulting language to describe his political opponents

-- America's most documented and prolific liar

-- used his previous time in office to personally enrich himself

-- used the power of his previous time as president to pardon his cronies who had committed crimes for him

-- corruptly sold pardons

-- refused to release his medical records despite showing signs of cognitive impairment and severe delusion

-- denied the reality of climate change, the most pressing crisis facing the world 

-- kept his taxes and personal finances opaque, likely covering up foreign payments

-- groomed by Russian intelligence

-- a long history of immorality and extra-marital affairs 

-- no clear understanding of government programs and policy

— no clear understanding of US or world history 

-- was easily and obviously manipulated by flattery

-- promoted extreme conspiracy theories and cultivated a cult-like following

-- sold scam products throughout his life including while running for president 

-- turned the Republican party into a family-run nepotistic enterprise

-- said the US constitution should be "terminated" after he lost the 2020 presidential election

-- vowed to be a dictator on day 1 of being president. 


But I guess I was wrong.


-----------------------------------


Apparently, Nothing Matters


Charlie Sykes: “Whatever the final margin, the American people have returned this blatantly, dangerously unfit man to power. In the end, nothing mattered. Not the sexual assaults, the frauds, the lies, or the felonies. Not the raw bigotry of his campaign; not the insults, nor the threats. In the most graphic terms imaginable, the American people were warned of the danger. His previously loyal vice president refused to endorse him; his top general called him a ‘total fascist’; some of his closes aides and cabinet members described in detail his erratic character and his indifference to the Constitution.”


“But in the end, Trump was right. He could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot someone and still win a presidential election. But, we know now that it was worse. Trump never fired a weapon on a New York City street, but he stood at the center of our politics and incited a violent mob to attack the U.S. Capitol. And it didn’t matter. And it didn’t matter that he tried to overturn a free and fair election…”


“This is the hardest part about today: realizing that our fellow Americans saw all of that; watched all of that; listened to all of that, and still said, ‘Yes, that’s what we want.’ That’s who we are.”


https://politicalwire.com/2024/11/06/apparently-nothing-matters/



-----------------------



One thing for sure is that the oligarchs, the billionaires, won. They pushed Biden out via the media and by vowing to cut off funding to Dems. They made sure the media wouldn't focus on Trump's treason and his crimes. The poured huge amounts of dark money into Trump. They spread endless disinformation that confused the fuck out of the electorate. That ensured Dems would be fighting uphill the whole way. I feel bad for Kamala. She was really screwed despite doing a great job with what she had.


Quite likely that weird assassination op was a big factor in swinging the election.


One big thing that happened this last election was way too many liberals who were well-versed in all things Trump, had convinced themselves that Trump was too terrible, too toxic, too criminal for enough people to vote for him and convinced themselves that Harris would win. Some people I listen to were saying over and over way too confidently that Harris will definitely win or even win in a landslide. I was relatively confident that Harris would win but at the same time, held out the possibility of that creature winning.  


I really didn't like people being overly confident in Harris winning because I was superstitious that it would jinx it. Possibly a lot of people let their foot off the gas in the election thinking he wasn't going to win and they didn't need to spend much effort. Personally I donated as much as I could and sent letters and made some calls. But I'm sure was there some over-confidence (despite the Harris campaign many times saying they were the underdog). 

Everyone I know who follows the orange turd found it hard to believe he would be elected. 

Well, now we know exactly how insane Republicans are, how badly they have been misled at best and how deranged at worst. 


Still we need to get back in the game. I certainly don't feel now as freaked out as I did on Tuesday and really do want to continue to fight this conservative regime. 



—-


I’m not gonna participate in the Democrat circular firing squad. 

We got massively outspent by dark money. 

Russia fucked with us again. 

I understand black women feeling betrayed. 

The rest of us need to pick up the slack. 

The country didn’t change, we just have worse people at the top. 

We know exactly who Republicans are and they have completely beclowned themselves. 

There’s absolutely no way a Trump presidency ends successfully.



I'm hoping that while the first time was a tragedy, this second time will be a farce (as opposed to a bigger tragedy). There are some reasons for optimism. Most notably it is highly likely the White House will be completely dysfunctional, with a truly mentally incompetent POTUS. The House of Representatives will be either have a very tiny GOP majority and thus will be completely dysfunctional or have Dem control and thus be able to block a huge part of the GOP agenda.


— 


Lawrence O'Donnell has an interesting question tonight-- who is really going to be president? Because it's clear that Trump has no interest in the job, he simply can't do the job, he can't even form a coherent statement on any policy.


— 


After the initial massive panic attack Tuesday subsided and I got some rest, I'm feeling so much more optimistic and ready to push back against this new evil regime. At first on Tuesday night, I just was honestly scared and felt like the future was destroyed. But I was reminded how similar this felt to 2004 which was also a shock, where the horrible GWBush was re-elected in a  bit of an upset, with full Congressional control and all kinds of fears that hew would be a dictator and a Hitler and enact martial law. But he quickly frittered his power on a failed attempt to privatize Social Security and revelations about illegal wiretapping and doing torture (a war crime) in Iraq and on 9/11 suspects. And then in just two years, Dems won the House big and then 2 years later, elected Barack Obama. 

While I very much would rather not have to deal with this horrible man and his gang of crooks and freaks, I feel like I know better know how to live and fight back under another Trump term. There are very real threats but I am oddly optimistic. Maybe too optimistic and I know I'm not as affected by what they could do as so many women and minorities, but still I feel like we can stop the worst from happening and get back to a much better place in not too far into the future.


All that being said, I still don't know what exactly happened to the Roe vote and the women's vote. 

And I'm really pissed that trump's massive history of utter criminality was basically ignored in this campaign.

Finally, I would feel so much better about doing political work if I didn't have to spend so much fucking time deleting endless emails and texts asking for money.


————————


The thing that pisses me off about the MOST about this election is Trump getting away with EVERYTHING.


He got away with not just all his well-documented crimes, but also all the horrible stuff he did as president, like all the people that died unnecessarily from Covid, all the deep corruption, the corrupt pardons, the Russian collusion.


But most acutely for me is that he got away with just endless lies and truly gross insults in this campaign. He got away with horrible racism. He got away with treating Americans like suckers and losers and treating the US constitution like garbage.


His win fucking legitimized ALL the lies and racism and bigotry, so now anyone can same the same things and feel like it's OK.


No matter who is to blame for all of this, I will never not be mad about this and absolutely NEVER FORGIVE what he did to us.


———————


Wajahat Ali


@WajahatAli


As the collective freak out continues, Harris will lose by about 2 points. Trump will get about 50.3% of the vote. Across the Rust Belt swing states Harris would have lost by less than 150K votes it seems. 


So... Trump isn't some wizard or genius. It seems 3 factors determined this election. 


1) Post pandemic reality where nearly every incumbent party lost. 


2) Racism and misogyny that many white colleagues still refuse to acknowledge as a major factor. 


3) Right-wing media domination and disinformation.

1:22 PM · Nov 10, 2024

·



SO MUCH Disinfo


https://www.dataforprogress.org/insights/2024/11/14/what-political-news-engagement-tells-us-about-donald-trumps-victory


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Monday, October 21, 2024

Trump's former Director of National Intelligence, Dan Coats, suspects Putin has kompromat on Trump

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Wednesday, October 16, 2024

Trump's Metamorphosis Into America's Hitler Is Just About Complete

By Evan Hurst, Via Wonkette


Another day, another revelation about what somebody who worked closely with Donald Trump really thinks about him. This one is particularly timely, though, as Trump enters the homestretch of the campaign by fully completing his transition into America’s Hitler. 


It’s no secret that Mark Milley, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, can’t stand Trump, or that he thinks Trump is dangerously unfit. Trump has been lashing out at Milley and accusing him of treason for years now. 

In Milley’s retirement speech, he called Trump a “tyrant or dictator or wannabe dictator,” without using his name. 

 Now, in Bob Woodward’s new book War, Milley has some of his most unreserved words for Trump yet, about how rotten and evil the man trying to regain power in America really is. 

 Retired Gen. Mark A. Milley warned that former president Donald Trump is a “fascist to the core” and “the most dangerous person to this country” in new comments voicing his mounting alarm at the prospect of the Republican nominee’s election to another term, according to a forthcoming book by Washington Post associate editor Bob Woodward. 

 “A fascist to the core.” “The most dangerous person to this country.” 

 Here’s a fuller version of that: “No one has ever been as dangerous to this country as Donald Trump,” the general told Woodward. “Now I realize he’s a total fascist. He is the most dangerous person to this country.” 

 Milley told Trump that he has legitimate fears that if Trump wins, Trump will recall him to uniform to be court-martialed for “disloyalty,” based on previous threats he witnessed Trump make about doing that to former Gen. Stanley McChrystal and former Admiral William McRaven, who had spoken out against Trump. (We first learned about those in former Trump Defense Secretary Mark Esper’s book.) 

 “I will order them back to active duty and then I will court-martial them!” Trump yelled, according to Woodward. Esper wrote a similar account of the meeting in his own 2022 book. “He’s saying it and it’s not just him, it’s the people around him,” Milley told colleagues.

 What would Trump want Milley court-martialed for? Among other disloyalties, Trump is still steaming over the fact that after January 6, Milley reassured his counterpart in China that no, the outgoing loser president was not going to try to start a nuke war with them. It unfortunately had to be said, because China was actually getting worried. 

 Milley’s warning comes against a backdrop of a Donald Trump who has, as we said above, almost completed his full turning into America’s Hitler. 

 He sent this tweet Friday, vowing to use the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to target “vicious and bloodthirsty criminals” — don’t fool yourself, this is just a pretext, he means immigrants in general — to jail them and/or remove them from this country. (Would that include immigrants who are American citizens? Yes. Did he likely get this idea from his Nazi poolboy Stephen Miller? Yes.) 

 He added, “No person who has inflicted the violence and terror that Kamala Harris has inflicted on this community can EVER be allowed to become President of the United States.”

 Does he think Kamala Harris is part of the criminal gangs? Unclear. Trump repeated the promise at his rally in Aurora, Colorado, that day — all his rallies in the final stretch are in states he’ll never win in a million years — to invoke this wartime authority to target immigrants for deportation, without hearings, based on their nationality/race. 

We guess this would mean that all countries where the populations aren’t white would now be enemy nations with whom we’re at war, according to the Hitler-in-Chief. Moreover, in Trump’s sick pudding brain, the lines have disappeared between “everybody who opposes me” and the alleged criminal gangs Trump believes are taking over all the American cities and eating the cats and occupying America and causing all its white women to be both murdered AND mortally wounded. (He’s so breathtakingly stupid.) 

 He told Fox Business rage muppet Maria Bartiromo yesterday that the true threat to America’s election on November is “sick people, radical-left lunatics,” AKA the enemies “from within.” “I think the bigger problem is the enemy from within, not even the people that have come in and destroying our country, by the way, totally destroying our country, the towns, the villages, they’re being inundated, but I don’t think they’re the problem in terms of Election Day, I think the bigger problem are the people from within, we have some very bad people, we have some sick people, radical-left lunatics. And it should be easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard, or if really necessary, by the military.” 

 It sounds to us like he’s saying that people who don’t support him are the enemies “from within,” and that they should be “handled” by the military. 

 A number of articles are out the past few days about how sharply Trump’s eliminationist Hitler rhetoric toward all his enemies, real, perceived or hallucinated, has risen in recent weeks. 

Politico had this headline this weekend: “We watched 20 Trump rallies. His racist, anti-immigrant messaging is getting darker.” An example, from his Aurora speech: “Kamala [Harris] has imported an army of illegal alien gang members and migrant criminals from the dungeons of the third world … from prisons and jails and insane asylums and mental institutions, and she has had them resettled beautifully into your community to prey upon innocent American citizens,” he said. 

 A new article from NBC News shows how much more prone Trump is these days to declaring that any words uttered against him are, or should be, illegal. 

On Friday, he called Kamala Harris a “criminal” during his Aurora rally. (He in fact has been convicted of 34 felonies, so far.) 

He wants CBS News put in jail for editing one of Harris’s answers in a way he feels made her look better than she deserved. 

 He wants to criminalize people criticizing the (illegitimate partisan hack fucking loser) Supreme Court justices he installed. 

 Historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat put it in context: “This is out of the autocratic playbook. As autocrats consolidate their power once they’re in office, anything that threatens their power, or exposes their corruption, or releases information that’s harmful to them in any way becomes illegal,” said Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a historian and professor at New York University who wrote the 2020 book “Strongmen: From Mussolini to the Present.” 

 “He’s actually rehearsing, in a sense, what he would be doing as head of state, which is what Orban does, Modi is doing, Putin has long done,” she said, referring to the leaders of Hungary, India and Russia, respectively. 

“Just as there’s a divide now because of this brainwashing about who is a patriot and who is a criminal about Jan. 6, right? In the same way, telling the truth in any area — journalists, scientists, even people like me, anybody who is engaged in objective inquiry, prosecutors, of course — they become criminal elements and they need to be shut down.” 

 Heather Cox Richardson has more in her column today about how this is all Authoritarianism 101. 

He’s even doing a rally in a couple weeks at Madison Square Garden, which Cox Richardson explains is “an echo of a February 1939 rally held there by American Nazis in honor of President George Washington’s birthday.” 

 So this is Trump in the final few weeks of the 2024 campaign. If he wins, it’s almost certainly a preview of the dictator he wants to be on day one. 

 People have been freaking out the past week about the polls, but it’s entirely possible that part of what we’re watching right now is a Trump who is absolutely panicking because Republican internal polling shows him in deep fucking shit, so he’s lashing out and betting it all on driving up turnout from the most easily frightened elements of his pantshitting Nazi MAGA base. 

 Either way, he has to be stopped in his tracks by voters on November 5, so, as Kamala Harris likes to say, we can “turn the page” on this motherfucker once and for all.
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Saturday, September 28, 2024

Donald Trump: The Most Despicable, Treasonous and Dishonest Politician Ever

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Fox News: The Engine of Disinformation That Shaped and Shattered America

 Really, they are worse than any terror group in the damage they've done to the US.



In the summer of 2001, while President George W. Bush was enjoying a break at his Texas ranch, America’s future was buried in a stack of ignored intelligence reports. Among them, the now-infamous “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.” memo. The negligence was catastrophic, leading to 9/11—a tragedy that would forever alter the world. But as the dust settled from the Twin Towers, another kind of threat was taking shape—not through terror, but through information, or rather, disinformation. 

Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News wasn’t merely informing the public; it was systematically bending reality, reshaping the world one half-truth at a time. From the moment it launched, Fox News wasn’t interested in being a conservative counterweight to the so-called liberal media. It set out to create an alternate universe where facts were malleable, and the truth was whatever kept its audience hooked. Think of it as a political reality show, except instead of roses, viewers were handed fear, outrage, and lies. It wasn’t about keeping the public informed; it was about keeping them addicted. 

 

The WMD Lie: Fox’s Role in Selling a War 

Fox News wasn’t just reporting a war—it was crafting one. Doubt the WMD narrative? Question the invasion’s morality? You weren’t just wrong—you were unpatriotic, even traitorous. Anchors like Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly weren’t journalists; they were war salesmen, packaging an invasion as a righteous crusade against evil. Fox’s “Countdown to Iraq” segments, complete with ominous music and dramatic flag imagery, reduced a complex geopolitical conflict into a high-stakes episode of 24. Saddam Hussein wasn’t just a dictator—he was the villain America had to vanquish. And the viewers? They weren’t asked to think; they were told to feel. Fear. Anger. Patriotism. The results were as predictable as they were deadly. Research confirmed that regions with heavy Fox News consumption saw disproportionately higher support for the Iraq War, a direct result of the network’s uncritical amplification of flawed intelligence. But these aren’t just numbers on a page. These are human lives—neighbors, family members—lost to an ideological war where ratings mattered more than responsibility. Over 4,000 American soldiers died. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis perished. And the war, a ratings bonanza for Fox, became one of the most disastrous foreign policy decisions in American history. And the cost? A destabilized Middle East, the birth of ISIS, and a war on terror that left deep scars on the global stage. Fox didn’t stop at reporting—it manufactured consent. As former producer Alex Bronkowski admitted, “We weren’t in the business of informing. We were in the business of fear. Fear sells.” And sell, it did—like a dark rerun of America’s longest-running horror show. 

 

COVID-19: The Deadly Cost of Disinformation 

With lessons learned from Iraq, Fox turned its attention to a new battlefield: the global pandemic. In 2020, as the world locked down to fight COVID-19, Fox was busy opening the floodgates of misinformation. This time, the enemy wasn’t a foreign dictator—it was science. Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham, the network’s stars, led the charge against masks, vaccines, and lockdowns. Carlson, with his trademark smirk, called lockdowns “the greatest infringement on personal liberty since slavery” (yes, really), while Ingraham downplayed the efficacy of vaccines, even as body counts rose. Behind the scenes, Fox’s hypocrisy was breathtaking. Inside their own offices, strict COVID protocols were enforced. Rupert Murdoch quietly got vaccinated—one of the first to do so. The very people spreading vaccine skepticism to millions of Americans were protecting themselves, leaving their viewers to roll the dice with their lives. The result? The regions most loyal to Fox News saw higher COVID-19 deaths, with vaccine hesitancy rampant. Take Joe Joyce, a Brooklyn bar owner who took Fox at its word, dismissed COVID as media hype, and refused to wear a mask. He died from the virus not long after. His daughter said, “He trusted them. Now he’s gone.” Stories like Joe’s never made it to air. Instead, Fox promoted figures like Robert LaMay, a Washington state trooper who refused the vaccine and became a folk hero for defying mandates—until COVID took his life. After he died, Fox moved on. His defiance was useful; his death, not so much. But these aren’t just tragic anecdotes. Research confirmed that COVID death rates were higher in counties dominated by Fox News viewers. Once again, Fox had blood on its hands—not because of bombs, but because of lies.

 

The Big Lie: How Fox Fueled an Insurrection 

From weaponizing fear during wartime to stoking deadly pandemics, Fox’s disinformation machine was far from finished. Its most dangerous act of all was perpetuating the Big Lie following the 2020 election. As Donald Trump railed against the results, Fox amplified his baseless claims of voter fraud. Internal communications revealed during the Dominion lawsuit showed that Fox knew the election wasn’t stolen. But truth? That didn’t matter. Ratings did. Rupert Murdoch said it himself: “It’s not about red or blue—it’s about green.” Fox turned Trump’s lie into its central narrative, legitimizing conspiracy theories and whipping up anger among Trump’s base. They weren’t just reporting on the election—they were laying the groundwork for the January 6th insurrection. Trump supporters, radicalized by months of disinformation, stormed the Capitol in a desperate attempt to overturn the results. And Fox? They had the audacity to report on it as if they hadn’t been complicit in inciting it. Former Fox News analyst Chris Stirewalt later testified, “Fox didn’t just mislead the public—they weaponized the truth, and we all saw the result on January 6th.” This wasn’t just a crisis of political legitimacy—it was a reality crisis.

 

Undermining America: Fox’s Legacy of Mistrust 

Fox News isn’t just a media outlet—it’s the sharpest cultural weapon ever wielded in American politics. It didn’t just fracture families; it reshaped the very DNA of the nation, turning neighbors into enemies and citizens into foot soldiers for disinformation. Fox News has left an indelible mark on America’s psyche, undermining trust in the very institutions that hold the country together. Scientists? They’re shills. The government? Corrupt. The media? The enemy of the people. Fox has turned collective action—whether it’s tackling climate change or improving healthcare—into a dirty word, equating it with government overreach and the loss of personal liberty. And here’s the thing: Fox knows exactly what it’s doing. It has conditioned an entire segment of the population to live in a state of perpetual grievance and distrust, tuning in night after night for their daily fix of outrage. America’s real problems—like wealth inequality, systemic racism, and the existential threat of climate change—take a back seat to the latest culture war Fox chooses to manufacture. And for what? As Rupert Murdoch himself admitted during the Dominion lawsuit: “It’s not about what’s true—it’s about what sells.” And Fox, in the end, is in the business of selling fear. Conclusion: The Fight for Truth The fight for truth in America isn’t just a political battle—it’s an existential one. Fox News, from its earliest days, has waged a war on reality itself. It has turned half-truths into profits and misinformation into power. The stakes couldn’t be higher. Stronger fact-checking, transparency, and accountability for those who knowingly spread lies are the bare minimum steps forward. Rupert Murdoch’s legacy isn’t that of a media mogul. It’s that of an architect of a disinformation empire, a man who wielded the power of the press not to inform, but to deceive. And the fallout? We’re only beginning to see the full cost. The next battlefield won’t just be in Washington or Baghdad—it will be in the minds of Americans, where the line between truth and fiction grows ever thinner.

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Saturday, August 24, 2024

20 Years Blogging Here

 What a journey... 


I started here with the goal of trying to stop GW Bush to get a 2nd term and 20 years later, I'm trying to keep an even worse president from getting a 2nd term (yes, the orange turd himself, Donald J Dickface)...


I know I have almost no readers here at this point, but I have enjoyed posting here and interacting with various people along the way.... and TRYING to sort out the biggest crime of my life, the 9/11 attacks.

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Thursday, August 15, 2024

Key anomalies for the official flight 93 story

1) lack of major plane debris around crash crater 
2) one engine found one mile away, very unlikely for it to fly that far on impact
3) strange phone calls
4) discrepancies for time of crash (10:03 vs 10:06) 
5) evidence for a 2nd flight 93
6) plane debris found up to 8 miles away from official crash site
7) incomprehensible official story for how plane exploded upon impact but also completely burrowed into the ground and shredded at the same time
8) ACARS evidence showing flight 93 continued flying after crash
9) missing human remains (supposedly all official people accounted for but only tiny amounts of each body found)
10) geometry of official crater doesn't make sense for official story of inverted Boeing 757 crash
11) pristine bandana shown as evidence, supposedly worn by one of the hijackers, supposedly survived burning crash.
12) plane tail and wingtips should have broken off in large pieces but are completely absent from the debris field

Ultimately none of the official story makes sense and we can only speculate what really happened with the public evidence presented. 

My best guess is that there was a second flight 93 and two crash sites. One flight involved a hijacking "drill" or exercise with the hijackers and a few passengers and the other flight was the regular commercial flight with the other passengers. How the crash crater in Shanksville was formed is hard to understand but certainly doesn't fit the official story of a Boeing 757 crash. I have tried very hard to make the official crash story make sense to me but I just can't. On the other hand, it's impossible to know exactly how it would have been faked. Absent new evidence, the public will never know the true story or be able to make sense of the crash site.
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