Getting handsy

 

Unreported by our Epstein-obsessed media Russia's war on Ukraine continues.  While Trump cuddled with Jamal Khashoggi's murderer, Volodymyr Zelenskyy was in Madrid, viewing "Guernica" with Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez.  Picasso's response to fascist aggression in 1937 never seems to become less relevant, unfortunately.  On Sunday saboteurs destroyed a rail line in Poland which leads to the Ukrainian border and attempted to blow up a train.  This follows months of drone incursions into other NATO countries including Germany and Denmark.  

Trump doesn't like NATO because he thinks they should pay him like the craven universities, media and tech companies, and everyone in search of a government contract.  But he loves Saudi Arabia and has formally designated it a "major non-NATO ally."  They shower him with gifts, they're investing (according to him) a trillion dollars in the US (out of a GNP of $1.1 trillion), they stepped up with a couple billion when Jared decided it would be fun to run an investment company, so they get to buy some F-35 fighters.  The Defense Intelligence Agency pointed out that the Saudis share intelligence with China and would be able to give them a peek at our advanced technology, but Donny's such a good host he didn't let that harsh the good times:  "Trump doesn't give a fist bump.  I grab that hand.  I don't care where the hell that hand's been.  I grab that hand," he chortled, playing handsies with the prince and describing himself in the third person, which is getting more frequent.  America gagged, beginning with Khashoggi's widow.  Even the Washington Post editorial board called his behavior "weak, crass and of no strategic benefit to America."  It looks like Bezos has more firing to do.

Also beneath the media radar the ethnic cleansing of Gaza has begun.  Hundreds of people from Gaza have arrived on charter flights to South Africa, which says it will not accept any more until they know more about their origins.  Palestine's embassy in South Africa says an "unregistered and misleading organization" has "deceived families, collected money from them and facilitated their travel in an illegal and irresponsible manner."  What Haaretz calls a shadowy firm run by an Israeli-Estonian with the cooperation of the Israeli Defense Ministry is charging people $2,000 (crypto only) for a seat on a charter flight to places like Indonesia and South Africa.  The latter filed a case with the ICC in 2023 accusing Israel of genocide, but I'm sure that's pure coincidence.

Did I call Scott Bessent "dumb"?  I meant to say "Holy shit, this guy is box-of-rocks dumb."  In addition to the big DOGE check nobody got (representing the savings from all that "waste"), the Usual Gang of Idiots now promises to send every American a check for $2,000 just in time for the midterm elections, the proceeds from all the amazing tariffs which fluctuate based on what kind of bowel movement Dear Leader experienced this morning.  For "working families," with income restrictions, the parameters change every day.  Wouldn't all that extra cash floating around fuel inflation?  Not if people don't spend it, replied the billionaire secretary.  They can deposit it in another magical solution, "Trump accounts."  You know, for kids.  What about people who don't have kids?  Crickets.  Conservatives think it makes more sense (and requires less legislation and bureaucracy) to pay down the national debt instead.  Didn't you hear me?  Midterm elections.  With so much shameless bribery going on, it's a hard habit to break.  

Speaking of bad habits, Eli Weinstein did it again.  Weinstein, alias Mike Konig, is the New Jersey man who defrauded investors of $230 million and was sentenced to 24 years in prison for a real estate Ponzi scheme and some additional fraud he committed while on pretrial release.  Trump commuted his sentence in 2021 and now he's been convicted again -- for promising investors access to deals on medical supplies intended for Ukraine.  He's supposed to pay back over $44 million to the people he defrauded this time.  Warm up the autopen -- this guy belongs on the Federal Reserve Board.

How many of the peaceful, patriotic tourists of January 6 have been re-arrested?  There must be a database somewhere.  The latest is Andrew Paul Johnson of Hernando County, Florida, charged in Tennessee with molesting a child under 12.  He allegedly told this child he would give them some of the $10 million he would receive as reparations for the J6 arrest.  His trial starts next year.

Not much Trump can do for Austin Smith of Turning Point USA, who pleaded guilty to election fraud in Arizona.  The former state legislator and 2020 election denier signed a dead woman's name on a petition and admitted to other forgeries in return for probation.  

"If the Republic is saved just because the people trying to steal it are dumb, I'll take it," Charlie Pierce wrote during Trump 45.  He must be happy about Trump's propensity for hiring underqualified lawyers he sees on television.  Jeanine Pirro amused millions with her inability to indict a ham sandwich or convict someone of hurling it.  Now comes Lindsey Halligan, the pageant contestant and Florida insurance lawyer he found to prosecute his revenge boner against James Comey.  Under questioning by Judge Michael Nachmanoff she had to admit that the full grand jury never saw the indictment before returning a true bill on one of its counts.  She more or less admitted that internal memos support the charge of malicious prosecution before Comey's lawyer pointed out that the statute of limitations made the whole business moot.  Next up:  Letitia James.  Save me some popcorn.

While we were encouraged to panic about Antifa, it's lucky someone was paying attention to Maniac Murder Cult.  Sounds like a punk band but actually a neo-Nazi outfit with offices in Russia and Ukraine.  Its leader Michail Chkhikvishvili (you may know him as Commander Butcher) was planning to dress as Santa Claus and distribute poisoned candy to Jewish and minority children in New York City.  He has pleaded guilty to soliciting hate crimes and sending instructions for making ricin and bombs.  This radical right lunatic is eligible for a presidential pardon.  We'll see.

The Constitution calls for a census to be taken every ten years but suddenly that's not enough.  Panicking in advance about the midterm elections, with polls saying they're shackled to a big orange corpse and courts throwing out their gerrymandering (most recently in Texas), the House Subcommittee on the Constitution is demanding that a census be taken every five years.  "The 2020 census should be called the sanctuary census," complains chairman Chip Roy, because it "put illegal aliens ahead of American citizens," whatever that means.  It's the Age of AI, Chipper, why not a census every year until it comes out right?  Like the way Florida counted ballots in 2000.

In what could be a glimpse of our future, one city is moving into the barter system.  Chickasha, Oklahoma, allows people to donate food in return for reduction or cancellation of traffic fines and overdue library book charges.  The Food for Fines program runs to the end of December, with all food directed to the Chickasha Emergency Food Pantry.  It's modeled on a similar program St. Johns County, Florida, has run since 2009.

Put down that copy of Bloodlands or The Destruction of the European Jews, you're reading it wrong.  According to Sarah Hurwitz, students of the Holocaust are being led to sympathize with "weak, skinny Palestinians" instead of "powerful Israelis."  At a Jewish Federations of North America conference Hurwitz, who was a speechwriter for Barack Obama, lamented the "huge shifts in America on how people think about Jews and Israel" since October 7, 2023, failing to understand that Jews are always right or at least justified in whatever they do.  Blaming TikTok, she says young people think "the lesson of the Holocaust...is you fight big powerful people hurting the weak people."  Isn't that exactly what's driving the debate about the Epstein files -- powerful men taking gross advantage of vulnerable teenagers knowing that other powerful men will protect them?  I don't want to live in a world where the powerful make all the rules.  That's the world as Hitler saw it, where no one has an ethical obligation to anyone outside his own tribe.  Maybe those "huge shifts" in Americans' view of Israel are just instinctive revulsion, and Hurwitz chooses to see it as antisemitism.  Sympathy for "weak, skinny Palestinians" is widespread among American Jews as well as Israelis.  I think it's Sarah Hurwitz who has the problem.