Sacco and Vanzetti, represent!

 

Jeezalou, I take the weekend off and miss an entire trade war.  And it turns out the president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, also knows how to use social media.  I'm going to suggest that Colombia was singled out for abuse because it's the birthplace of Judge Juan Merchan, but what do I know?  It's up at the top of South America and it probably caught The Leader's eye because it's not Venezuela.

He claims America is "respected again," but it doesn't sound like it.  Not his America, at any rate.  If he read the president's post he probably gave up after the references to people he never heard of, like Walt Whitman.  You want respect?  After two earlier flights arrived, Mexico denied landing permission to a third, while Brazil was outraged when deportees arrived in handcuffs after being denied even water on the plane.  Colombia accepted 124 such flights last year, when the passengers were treated humanely, but no more.  Hence the big tariff tantrum.  Eggs are harder to find than hand sanitizer in the first weeks of covid, and now the price of coffee has gone into orbit.  So much for breakfast.  When is lunch?

I hope you're not thinking of yummy Danish ham.  The Leader had a telephonic screaming fit with Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen over the future of Greenland because he hates women in power and yelling is the way real men teach them their place.  Denmark is not alone in this fight, though -- if he threatens big scary tariffs, the entire European Union would feel obliged to respond.  Then Americans couldn't afford anything from Europe but Scotch eggs and Swiss cheeses.  All that respect is hard on the grocery budget.  

In other respect news, steelmakers in Canada and Mexico are refusing to accept new orders from American manufacturers until this tariff bullshit ends.  That should crash the auto and construction industries.  Don't worry, they're only the first- and third-largest exporters of steel to the US.  Now where did I put that estimate on how long it would take The Leader to tank the Biden-Harris economy?  Was it weeks, days or hours?

Jordan doesn't have to worry about The Leader's wrath -- if they follow orders.  Eager to turn the area into another playground for the oligarchs, he strongarmed King Abdullah about accepting a million Palestinians from Gaza, which he describes as "a mess" after more than a year of Israeli bombardment.  "You're talking about a million and a half people, and we just clean out that whole thing," said the geopolitical expert, who regards a lot of people as wretched refuse (and not in the Emma Lazarus sense).  He also expects Egypt to take some of them, which might be why Israel and Egypt are the only recipients of US foreign aid (military only) as of today.  The wishes of Palestinians are, as always, irrelevant.  And don't even think of coming here.  

Also not coming here:  Nearly 1,700 Afghan refugees, including families of American troops, who were cleared to enter the US, a long and laborious process ended with a monkey-scrawl signature on an executive order.  They are what The Leader calls "large and unsustainable populations of migrants" and what advocates call the people who risked their lives to work alongside US troops.

Strangely, he has yet to chat with Prime Minister Starmer, whose election last July he may consider "rigged."  Co-leader Musk has devoted much effort to promoting the "People's Vote" (or "Losers' Do-Over," if you like) and offering to pay the legal fees of Reform Party thug Tommy Robinson.  Maybe someone showed him this article in the Independent about how his calls with previous prime ministers left their staffs "crying with laughter."  

Fortunately our military is better and badder than ever.  Transgender troops will be banned today as a first step toward banning women (yes, the greasy rapist and blackout drunk was confirmed despite a "no" vote by Lisa Murkowski).  No more DEI, unless a MAGA senator complains.  The Air Force Academy, obeying in advance, deleted videos of the legendary Tuskeegee Airmen from its training materials but put them back after Katie Britt (R-AL) objected.  Now West Point doesn't have to pretend Colin Powell, Russel Honore and Lloyd Austin never existed.  

"Our job is lethality and readiness and warfighting," Hegseth told reporters as he announced -- wait, warfighting?  Is that a word? -- a new "iron dome" to keep out bad missiles.  We already have quite a sophisticated system of missile defense including satellites, but The Leader wants an iron dome because it sounds cool and he thinks it's an actual dome.  Like Space Force, which he thinks he invented.  

Today is the eightieth anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau by Soviet troops, but I can't find the name of a Russian representative at the ceremony.  Putin sent a message:  "We will always remember that it was the Soviet soldier who crushed this dreadful, total evil and won the victory..."  He hews to the Soviet practice of refusing to single out Jewish citizens of the USSR as victims of genocide.  On the other hand Trump sent an all-Jewish delegation, including Boris Epshteyn, who charges job-seekers to promote them to the transition team.  I'm not sure which is more disgraceful.

At least he didn't send Musk, who spent the weekend telling Germany's AfD Party, "It's good to be proud of German culture, German values," and that "children should not be guilty of the sins of their parents, let alone their great grandparents."  His comments on "'the need to forget German guilt for Nazi crimes' sounded all too familiar and ominous," said the Polish prime minister Donald Tusk.  It's the same impulse that cripples the teaching of history in all countries, the spread of school curricula that emphasize the good things about America while erasing slavery, Native American genocide and the internment of Japanese-Americans, among other things.  Fascists in all countries hope we won't know we've been here before.

The gathering darkness is not from an iron dome.