October 26, 2018, More milestones
And so as I come to that day, two score and sixteen years after the Cuban missile crisis on which somehow I was born, a day 15 years after Hillary Clinton was born, and so were other people like Pat Sajak (you see, Hillary was defeated by another game show host in 2016), apparently Seth McFarlane and other people I never heard of.
Still going. Somehow, like me, this blog hangs on, out of the same kind of stubbornness that, God willing, will get me through my 17th consecutive NYC Marathon (and 54th overall at that distance) in 9 days time, and otherwise gets me through life as an upper middle class resident of New York City. Most people have it harder, which is why people who have it even easier than me but still crap on others piss me off. You know who you are.
Strange times. Attempted simultaneous assassinations of two former American Presidents, along with a former vice-president, a former first lady/sec state/senator, a former attorney general, and at least three sitting members of Congress along with two civilians critical of the current regime in power... and mostly, barely a yawn, with the media literally giving credence to right-wing maniacs who, without evidence, shrilly scream "false flag" as if liberals would be clunky enough to try to blow up Robert Fucking DeNiro or to send John Brennan his bomb at the wrong t.v. network.
Anyway, we are really at a remarkable national low, and the fucking GOP will still likely hold the Senate, and do not count me shocked if somehow holds the House too, even as all "norms" have been flushed to pack the courts with right wing hacks, who can make sure that the rich can steal whatever they haven't already stolen from the rest of us. .
Anyway... another year shot to hell.The last year seems like... I don't know... 10? 20? Immense time distortions with an Orange Shithead in the White House... and probably will be for at least another two plus years, which will seem like another... 20? 30? I don't know. I try to lead an expemplary life, volunteering and shit, and you know, trying to do a good person and shit. What else can you do? Try to live the best micro you can. Because for the foreseeable future, the macro seems to be fucked. Although... hope dies last.
September 22, 2018, oops... almost forgot...
Since it was more or less the start of Yom Kippur, the highest of the Jewish High Holidays, and right after a number of family events very close to each other in time, I overlooked the 17th anniversary of the first post on this here blog (way back when, one week after September 11th, when the bucolic air of this part of Brooklyn was still heavy with whatever toxic shit was airborne as a result of the burning "pile" in lower Manhattan, around a mile from here as the crow flies.) Seventeen years on, all members of the household here at Stately Dog Manor appear to be alive and well and in good health, even if this here blog is not as frequently updated (or read) as it might have once been. We lost TD Dad along the way, and a number of others, because, let's face it: 1/6 of a century is a pretty long time, actually.
And what have we learned (other than, dog people should marry dog people and cat people should marry cat people)?
"Don't get me started." It was Mrs. TD who said, on September 11th itself, "well, now lots of people who don't deserve it are going to die." And that was where we started. For months after the event, (which, btw, resulted in, aside from the deaths of a New York City firefighter who was a legal client of mine and a college acquaintance and quite a few close friends and relatives of people I knew, the loss of my own job), during my lengthy commute to Westchester County to my post 9-11 temp job, I tortured myself by reading the New York Times "Portraits of Grief" series, snap obituaries of over 2,000 of the people killed on September 11th, most of whom would not ordinarily get obituaries in the New York Times under any other circumstances.
And we can stop right there, because the last sentence tells me everything I have learned in the last seventeen years. WTF, you say? To be fair, it is a long sentence-- indeed, probably a run-on sentence, of the kind with which this blog is replete. So let me rewind. WTF?
Well, among the elements I mean to incorporate include man's inhumanity to man, which has certainly shown itself a very potent force on so many levels, starting with 9-11 itself and of course, moving on with "the post 9-11 world," mostly driven by the United States itself and its open-ended-never-ending-no-limits "War on Terror," which involved major shooting wars in Afghanistan (still going), Iraq, apparently large parts of Africa, and God knows where, including "black sites," "extraordinary renditions," Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, torture, the total security state featuring universal surveillance of everything and everyone on Earth, our proxy wars in Libya, Syria, Yemen, our efforts to destabilize Brazil, Venezuela and pretty much every country on Earth that doesn't have nuclear weapons. With a fuck of a lot of dead and wounded (including quite a few Americans along the way). And mind you, this is just what the United States has been up to. Other players have also been misbehaving, and right now, something like 60 million people are refugees, obviously the largest number ever (even accounting for World Wars). Just in time for the United States to announce that it will accept the lowest number of refugees... ever.
Of course, all of this happens at the same moment (because, in part, the events are related) to the impacts of climate change, as dramatic shifts in climate and weather pattern lead to insane storms (such as the one currently being "enjoyed" by the Carolinas). The response of the United States to all of this was to elect a curiously-orange-colored circus clown who promised to put his fingers in his ears and say "NYA NYA NYA NYA" loud enough so that Americans stupid enough to vote for him (not quite a majority, but still way too high a number) could enjoy his ravings as he merrily isolated the United States by pulling out of the Paris Climate accord, the Iran nuclear deal, the Trans-Pacific partnership, and, at the urging of his mortgage holders and blackmailers in Moscow, maybe one of these days, NATO and NAFTA.
No, this post isn't about him. It's about the conditions that gave us him. Which takes us back to the emotional games that the New York Times was playing with me and everyone else by presenting snapshots of hundreds and hundreds of people who went to work, or got on a plane that morning and never made it home. BTW, I should note that there is approximately one mass shooting in the United States every day, and American gun deaths exceed 33,000 per year of people who also don't make it home-- but with rare exceptions (such as when victims are journalists or "notable" people), they don't get obituaries in the pages of tne New York Times.
I am not suggesting that life is not full of tragedy; there is a case to be made that it is full of little else. Indeed, despite the United States being the richest society that has ever existed, that wealth is actually in comparatively few hands, and for the most part, something like 4 out of 5 Americans live from paycheck to paycheck, which may be how it is, but is by now means "how it has to be."
So what am I trying to say, other than that the shlubs living paycheck to paycheck ain't making the pages of the Times unless they commit a heinous crime, or die in an event that the powerful want to use to fuck with the populace on an emotional scale like, say, September 11th? Oh yeah... that. And yes, although the entire media (overall, a schlock "entertainment business" that is also responsible for providing us with our "news") I actually kind of do mean to pick on my hometown's "paper of record," because fucking Judith Miler and Michael Gordon and their oh so important role in peddling the Saddam-has-WMDs-bullshit that led to the Iraq war which in turn pretty much probably finished off the future.And I mean very probably the future of humanity as we know it, not just the United States. Sorry to be a downer.
Because, as awful a cliche as it is, the United States was actually the indispensable country, the last, best hope, because, despite our bullshit (such as refusing to acknowledge that we even are an empire, despite our military presence in well over 100 other countries on every continent making us by far the largest empire that ever existed), we actually practiced general tolerance within our borders, actually tried to promote human rights and international order. Seriously: we did these things, albeit a while ago. As I said. 1/6 of a century is a really long time (btw, my friend Candace's client Razak Ali of Algeria has been gratuitously held in an American prison in Guantanamo for just about the last 17 years himself, despite never being charged with a crime, and he never will be charged. Candace has represented him-- and her client al-Ghizzawi, who now thankfully is at home in Libya-- diligently (and dare I say, heroically) over the years, but our legal system has, all too often, not proven up to do anything except the will of the powerful.)
Most of which moral authority Dubya flushed at GTMO, Abu Ghraib and the assorted black sites, my Columbia '83 classmate Barack Obama pretty much ratified by refusing to even investigate the war crimes of his predecessor, and the Orange Clown is mopping up whatever moral authority hasn't already been trashed by his two predecessors (as well, as of course adding "being a dick" to the face of all American policies foreign and domestic). I believe we start with the human soul and move outward. And that is not a pretty picture. Because after that, we get to the insane income and wealth disparities, that just keep getting worse (as a result of deliberate taxation, monetary and regulatory policies), and of course, environmental issues such as the aforementioned climate change, along with attendant storms, loss of arable land, species devastation, population disruption, ocean devastation, etc. I haven't even mentioned anti-biotic resistance, which I think is going to be really important soon, even as we continue to shoot up piggies and cows with said anti-biotics so that we can supply McDonalds cheaply from factory farms, even as that only hastens the day of anti-biotic resistance.
Boy, am I a freaking downer. And yet. And yet. Fast forward (or something) to 2016, when said entertainment-business-masquerading-as-news took it upon itself to tell us who "our leaders" would be. You see, it was our media that decided that a dozen or so Republican clowns would share a stage with the Orange Clown, but he would get to be in the middle and he would get all the interesting questions. And they decided to cover his outrageous statements, and not call him on the fact that virtually every word out of his mouth was a slander or a lie. And then the media decided to cancel the California primary so that Hillary Clinton could defeat Bernie Sanders, because Wall Street and Hollywood could just not live with a self-avowed "socialist". And then, of course, all we heard about until November were "Hillary's emails" and not the fact that a man who had never served in the military or held public office and owed hundreds of millions of dollars to Russian and Chinese banks and had decades of suspicious contacts with organized crime figures, etc.... got a complete pass because, you know, Hillary's emails. And here we are.
Because, you know, "he was good for ratings." Although not so good for political ad buying, a major profit center. But as I said, this post isn't about him.
So what is it about? Candace always reminds me that the late, great Studs Turkel wrote a book called Hope Dies Last. Much as things look, well, crappy, there is hope. And the hope has to be at a micro-level. Because, quite frankly, what we know of the "macro" is in the hands of said media (even though things like this blog allegedly "democratized" media, that is a load of bullshit, as money came in and bought up this media a long time ago, and made sure that cranks like me are on the fringes of everything where they want us... but I digress). For example, the Loquacious Pup is at college now, but, among her studies, devotes considerable time to "good works" of various kinds, such as work at a food pantry over the summer (among whose clients are recent immigrants). I am trying to do good works myself, particularly for those most under the heel of the Orange Clown's jackboots, those trapped in our immigration system. And I help "my good friend" Donald J. Putin with his twitter thing..And, you know, being nice, wherever possible.
And that's what we can do. I will leave the post in the hands of a New York native far more eloquent than me, Henry James: Henry James — 'Three things in human life are important: the first is to be kind; the second is to be kind; and the third is to be kind.'
September 11, 2018, And here we go... again
Step right up and enjoy the September 11th festivities; has it been only 17 years? I'll start with this wonderful "meta-" piece by Brother Dmitry, who asks, among other things, "what is truth?", a peculiarly relevant question concerning the events of September 11th where, for example, we are asked to believe that three skyscrapers were brought down by the crash of two airliners, among numerous other "curiosities" (my favorite still being the recovery of an intact highjacker's passport on the ground after a crash supposedly so hot that it melted an aircraft's black box and steel beams supporting a building of 110 stories causing it to implode). Many such "curiosities" made their way into my hypothetical rant of Zaccarias Moussaoui (who? you don't remember "the 20th highjacker"?)
Interestingly, it is the Jewish Holiday of Rosh Hashanah now, the celebration of the new year, which also marked the first post on this blog 17 years ago (which was a week after Sept. 11th); the cycle of time, the circular nature of our year, coupled with the fact that we age and die and do not get an infinite number of them, always seem to loom over us. Although we have created the myth of "Homeland Security" (not to mention a massive and obscenely expensive bureaucracy called the Department of that), none of us are, or will ever be, "safe" from this fact. We can, of course, make ourselves less safe, as we have been doing consistently since, creating the sort of metaphysical angst that leads to an actual decline in life expectancy at least in some demographics. So much for the myth of progress... on to other myths!
I don't mean to open a debate about what numerous people who were not there that day, unlike me insist actually happened (it is undisputed that large structures were destroyed, aircraft crashed and nearly 3,000 people dead), so much as the certainty in events led to a certainty in assigning blame for it and supposedly in how to thwart future similar events that have led to our longest running war (yes, 17 years on, we are still officially at war in Afghanistan, if for no other purpose, to justify holding (currently) 40 men at Guantanamo Bay, including Candace's client, an Algerian named Saeed Bakhouche, who had the misfortune of staying in the wrong guesthouse and nothing else). And to justify a surveillance state that would have made George Orwell gag. And to justify Cold War levels of military spending (including maintaining garrisons in well over 100, maybe over 150 foreign countries). And so many other aspects of modern life. BTW... for a brilliant meta-take, this from Foreign Polcy, titled simply (and accurately), Al Qaeda Won.
An entire generation has now grown up in the "post-9-11 world," taking completely for granted "the new normal" that seems so dissonant to many of us whose formative years were earlier. This generation includes the Loquacious Pup, who was not quite two years old as of 9-11. It is difficult to tell them that there was a time when you did not have to take your shoes off at airports (or risk cancer from the full-body scanner), or that there was a time when you would not expect all of your internet or telephone communications to be monitored, or have military aircraft fly over football half-time shows (or indeed, have faux patriotism be such a big thing).
Of course, the irony of it all is that it was the pre-9-11 generation who decided to vote for an orange colored Neanderthal to bring us through the logical culmination of where the post-9-11 world was taking us. As George W. Bush determined that international institutions were not going to tell the United States what it was going to do, and got us into the aforementioned war in Afghanistan, and a much bigger one in Iraq, so it seems that a big enough plurality of Americans believed a Russian-sponsored career criminal who promised to "make America great again" and to "put America first." Or at least they hated Hillary Clinton (and Barack Obama) enough not to give a crap about the consequences of same.
Anyway, here we go again.
The Judge who wrote the decision permanently condemning Candace's client is now up for the Supreme Court himself (neither Candace nor I am pleased about that). The Orange Poseur has tossed around the term "fake news" to refer to any news coverage that he believes is insufficiently favorable to himself, but he is on to something nonetheless: how rigorously to treat and assess information to accept into our consciousness is, of course, based on the degree the information supports (or does not support) the story that we have been programmed to believe is "reality." What has happened in the last 30, 40, 50 years or so is that we no longer need to have top-notch, cutting age American workers; machines now do most of the heavy lifting in our economy, our society and in our individual lives (detecting the effects of Alzheimers disease might be harder as the use of GPS devices, for example, prevents people from "forgetting directions," once a sure-fire sign that something was wrong). And so, what is left for our aging population is to "manage it". Technical work could be handled by foreign imports, or mostly by the machines themselves, and actual work... well, there's less of it relative to the population as reflected in labor force participation.
Let me cut to the chase: as a people, we are stupider, and more easily fed bullshit which we more easily digest. Donald Trump is an obvious manifestation of that, to be sure. But then, so is the fact that 17 years on we still treat September 11th as if it were a religious holiday, rather than a still not understood national tragedy that was promptly used to bring on still greater tragedies (which have not finished playing out, even as war on terror still seems to seek out new venues to trot out new excuses to bring American drones, troops and violence). Not to mention violence brought by others in places American action (in the name of "fighting terrorism") has already destabilized. But as I said, a stupider population will be willing to put up with it (especially as fewer and fewer of its actual members will bear the heavy lifting of being the tip of the spear, as it were).
As individuals, all I can suggest is to try to maximize your acts of gratuitous kindness. If enough of us do this, perhaps the overall ethos of nastiness will change, and the powerful might start responding to things differently. I have no particular expectation that this will not be a long and painful thing to develop, but it's all I got. September 11th is as good a time as any to think about this, and bring about the world we would like to have, rather than the one we apparently have.
September 6, 2018, And we're off
While the nation amuses itself in today's version of the Neo-P.T. Barnum Circus known as the Trump Administration, specifically trying to guess which "senior official" wrote "the Op Ed" in the NY Times, the latest machinations of Bob Woodward's coming book (i.e. "Trump is a mentally disturbed moron"), it seems that there is a second stolen Supreme Court nomination at issue, that of one Brett Kavanaugh.
I had the privilege, once, of watching Candace argue before a panel on which Judge Kavanaugh was the presiding judge. Prior to that, she moved for his recusal, on the basis of his refusal to disclose the extent he worked on issues concerning Guantanamo detention policies while an official at the Bush White House.
Candace recently wrote a
letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee raising the same concerns.
Your mileage may vary.
Perhaps you, unlike me, are enjoying the circus?
August 19, 2018, Dog Days of August
I am pleased to say that Familia TD spent a pleasant (if frenetic) week outside of the jurisdiction of the Trump Administration in the (quite literally) great White North... nay, even further north, where I ran in the 35th Reykjavik Marathon (the plus/minus six hour finishing time consistent with what I've come to expect as a heavier than I'd like to be man in my mid-50's). Mrs. TD and the soon-returning-to-college Loquacious Pup and I all enjoyed some fabulously clean, brisk air and amazingly good food amidst one of the world's most fascinating landscapes (including volcanos and geothermal emanations that often result in... spas!!!)
During the marathon race portion of the adventure, I encountered a pair of runners (in the half portion of the event) dressed in togas, as a god and goddess to be determined. The goddess appears to also be a proprietor of a fascinating web-site.
But after a somewhat stressful time with a low-end rental car that I found difficult to drive (and impossible on all but paved roads, of which Iceland has many, but still many more unpaved roads) at least we got a week of relief from the national circus of a press corps forever waiting with baited breath on the ravings of a huckster and circus ringmaster who, if he is not an outright traitor in service of Russia, maybe even scarier, because then he can only be explained as pathologically stupid (as well as amoral). Hey TD... why can't he be ALL OF THOSE? Well, the evidence certainly supports it.
Alrighty then. I will continue the little I can to provide comfort to those afflicted with our deliberately cruel immigration system, especially those held in detention by it, and to do good deeds in general. And I will check in on my vegetables after a long hiatus (which I understand included rain here in the New York area while we were gone).
I was about to try to get into some news items, and actually stressed myself out as I was typing them... nope. We'll leave it there. Bad enough to be greeted to this country by an endless line just to get through passport control, because. you know, why should our government provide services to anyone except billionaires?
Enjoy the rest of your summer, and don't feed the trolls (especially the orange clown).
August 4, 2018, Happy birthday, Barack
Regular readers (thank you, whomever you are... Lord knows I don't post enough to warrant your continued interest, so thanks again! Although feel free to check out my "good friend" Donald J. Putin, who posts dozens of times a day) are aware that among my illustrious college classmates at Columbia University's final all-male class in 1983 were lawyer and failed judicial candidate Miguel Estrada, master of the universe Daniel Loeb, and an obscure fellow named Barack H. Obama, who went on to become the 44th President of the United States. Barack, like me, was a political science major concentrating in international politics, and who did not enter in the class of '83 (he transferred from Occidental College, I entered with the class of '84 and graduated in three years). You say tomato...
Today is Barack's 57th birthday (now a holiday in Illinois!). It's one of those things; since we have stumbled onto the "side B" or the forgotten time-line, it becomes hard to remember that Barack was still President maybe a little more than year and a half ago (eons in Trump time). It is hard not to come to the conclusion that the current President (may it not be too much longer, please God) can only be construed as Barack's legacy. He (Barack) could have arguably pointed to some serious accomplishments, such as being the first Black man to be elected President, or to the massive expansion of the stock prices of private health insurers, or saving the banking system at the expense of financial integrity or accountability of people who should be in jail and so forth (we won't even talk about the drones or the surveillance state or his inability even to close Guantanamo). And I'd rather not talk about the fact that had he not foolishly chosen Hillary Clinton to be his Secretary of State, she would almost certainly be the President of the United States right now, and "Obamacare" would not have effectively been gutted.
No, because I want to talk about the most obvious living legacy of Presidents: the lifetime judges that we are stuck with for years (and sadly these days, decades). I had suggested somewhat tongue in cheek (BUT ONLY PARTIALLY) that Barack could have chosen Maryanne Trump Barry, sister of the current President and herself a federal appeals judge, instead of Merrick Garland, and force the Republicans to block the sister of their own nominee (if they wanted to). Somewhere along the line, my friend Mr. Crabcakes suggested that a woman of color-- to add to the Sonia Sotomayor legacy-- was the way to go (I suggested, perhaps, a judge in New York named Laura Taylor Swain who would have been perfect in every conceivable way, plus I have appeared before Judge Swain and she is a good judge AND REALLY NICE.) So instead, Barack put up Merrick Garland, a 60-something White man, and Dick Turtle McConnell and Chuck Skeletor Grassley pushed him around, and yada yada yada, Jim Comey (YET ANOTHER OBAMA PERSONNEL MISTAKE) with Vladimir Putin's hacking assistance handed the election to Donald Trump, and yada yada yada, Neil Gorsuch (another proud mistake of my college) and quite possibly Brett Kavanaugh (a long story I could tell you some time) may be haunting us for decades.
At the end of the day, I understand "No Drama" Obama didn't want to push things too far, although "No Record" Obama would have been more accurate. Comparisons to the current criminal buffoon will obviously go favorably for Barack, who is neither a criminal nor a buffoon, but Bro, but for your awful personnel choices (and your decision to let your buddy Jon Corzine walk scot free from the clearest grand larceny in history), Hillary is the President and adding to your legacy, instead of, basically, your kind of not really having one (other than America's first White President coming on the heels of the first Black one).
I'm sure things are just fine for you and Michelle and Sasha and Malia (I certainly hope they are), so I'll just leave you to your birthday, Barack.
July 4, 2018, America, fuck yeah!
So it's July 4th. And You Know Who is President of the United States, and doing what he does. Meanwhile, a whole lot of Republican Senators and members of Congress are celebrating it in Moscow, presumably because securing Russian cooperation in their upcoming elections is more important than pitching to voters.
Meanwhile, something like 14,000 new citizens took their oath of citizenship today. At the same oment that the You -Know-Who Administration plans on launching Space Force a task force devoted to stripping naturalized citizens of their citizenship (read "from NON-WHITES").
And on this 242nd anniversary of a group of elite White men declaring independence from another group of elite White men, a friend whom I have been visiting for some months at one of our nation's involuntary guest facilities, in this case, in New Jersey, was abruptly deported, even before the ink on a decision denying him asylum had time to dry. A fine July 4th he (and his friends) had.
Meanwhile, Candace has a number of things on her blog, including that her client Razak Ali has started his 17th year of indefinite detention, despite never having been charged with, let alone convicted of, a crime or anything else, and that the GTMO project has hit 6,000 days. There is a court hearing coming up next week in D.C. as to a new motion brought by a number of detainees to challenge their endless detention in the face of a President who is not even pretending to consider whether the men are still detainable... and the same government lawyers who have carried on through Bush, Obama and You-Know-Who carry on some more, this time arguing that they lack the facilities to even broadcast proceedings to the men (at GTMO) effected by them. Sigh.
We won't even talk about the fact that just five days ago, Loquacious Pup and I meandered over to Brooklyn's Cadman Plaza for a rally to protest the separation of immigrant families including thousands of small children, which in turn, was part of numerous similar rallies all over the country.
I don't know. Things are not moving in a good direction. Fuck it. Happy Fourth. Fuck Yeah.
June 13, 2018, A chink in the armor?
For various reasons, I haven't been blogging much since You Know Who took the oath of office, replacing my college classmate Barack. I've also spent a lot of time with my good friend Donald J. Putin, laughing at You Know Who 280 characters at a time.
In our usual theme, Candace observes things are taking a depressing turn as the Pentagon is seeking funding to turn GTMO into an old folks home and hospice, i.e. removing any pretense that the thing will not hold its occupants for the rest of their natural lives. Certainly, You Know Who promised not to release anyone and to "fill up the place with bad dudes." He has only released one man (as a result of the completion of a commissions sentence) and has otherwise kept that awful promise of not releasing anyone (40 left), but so far at least, he hasn't added anyone to the census.
A big reason for this of course is the drone program, a means for the United States intelligence and military services to target "terrorists" or "insurgents" or "enemies" or whatever they would like to call people that are targeted for death at the hands of killer robots operated by remote control. How many have died in the drone program? Kind of hard to say, but it's fairly safe to say, a lot more than the 800 or so men who cycled through Guantanamo over the years.
It had seemed that just as declaring someone an enemy could justify holding them in a dungeon for life, that it could also justify targeting them for death. A prior litigation brought by the family of Yemeni-American dual national Anwar al-Awlaki was thrown out by the courts before it got anywhere (the court finding that al-Awlaki's family and the ACLUlacked standing to bring it, among other issues).
Fast forward to today, where U.S. District Court Judge Rosemary Collyer, an appointee of George W. Bush, held that a suit by American citizen Bilal Kareem, could proceed, finding that, as an American citizen (wait for it) he is entitled to due process of law before the government targets him for death. Judge Collyer did dismiss the complaint of former Al Jazeera Islamabad bureau chief Ahmad Zaidan, a Syrian/Pakistani dual national, and dismissed President You Know Who as a defendant, though she left, among others, the CIA and DOD as defendants.
It is a significant restriction on governmental power, at least as it has been practiced under the last three presidents, to restrict the government's right to liquidate enemies of the state even when U.S. citizens. This possible chink in the armor of the unitary executive absolute war powers to kill us all at the whim of government officials is pretty, pretty big, all things told.
May 12, 2018, Yada Yada Yada... World War III ?
What to make of the President (sigh) and his decision to abruptly withdraw from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action better known as the Iran nuclear deal? The obvious reason, and frankly, not to be taken too lightly for a "leader" whose views of the world appear to be shaped solely by comic books and their cable news equivalent on Fox, is that he wanted to just un-do everything Barack Obama did, because, well, Trump is like that. A narrow-minded racist asshole. All true, but...
Of course, there is the simple geo-political reality that there is an Israel/Saudi axis of power developing in the Middle East whose principal interest seems to be checking Iranian power, damn all other interests (such as millions of displaced and injured and hundreds of thousands killed in Yemen, Syria and perhaps points beyond), with the United States supporting that axis, Russia supporting Syria, with Iran also notionally supporting Syria and opposing Saudi Arabia (at least sixteen different powers have apparently bombed Syria since that shit show started.) And of course, Yemen and Syrian refugees are subject to the Trump travel ban (duly blessed by the U.S. Supreme Court). This appears to be the ultimate proxy war situation as the great powers (China is notionally on the side of Syria and Iran, though very quietly, with the European powers such as Britain and France notionally on the American/Israeli/Saudi side with NATO member Turkey seemingly on its own side) maneuver in the Middle East theater (with the slaughter of the locals a secondary concern).
But then there is this out of the box analysis that suggests that the United States scotched the Iran deal for brazen financial reasons. Simply put, the dollar is essentially close to its death throes, and the prospect of between $100 billion and $200 billion in Iranian dollar assets frozen in the United States under longstanding sanctions being suddenly (or even gradually) returned to Iran as the nuclear deal goes on and then dumped into the financial markets at the very moment that a variety of sources were putting upward pressure on oil prices would throw the American economy into chaos.
We're over 25 years past the publication of Francis Fukuyama's "the End of History," which was a little bit premature, because history kept right on, as Karl Marx, who recently celebrated his 200th birthday (or would have if he weren't dead) said "History repeats itself, first as tragedy and then as farce." Or something. And if, ahem, "President Donald Trump" is not the definition of farce, I clearly got nothing.
What the "all of the above" amount to are variations on good old resource wars; even though Yemen and Syria probably have less oil than anyone else in the Middle East except maybe Israel, they are in the way of other places that have oil and gas and might want, you know, pipelines or ports or shipping lanes to get the hell out of their way and let them make money. And of course, Russia, thought to have the world's largest oil and gas reserves, if still largely unexploited, would rather those pipelines not be built. And the USA needs Saudi oil as a stabilizer. And Iran is an all around pain the ass, with a whole lot of oil in its own right. And... You get the idea.
Which is why this whole thing is such a (literally) bloody freaking mess. Where does it end? Somehow, human kindness has to step up, somewhere. I don't know where; it seems the comically stupid and cruel Donald Trump, the competently authoritarian Vladimir Putin, the genocidally brutal Bashar al-Assad, the pathologically tenacious Bibi Netanyahu, the cunningly vicious crown prince Mohammad bin Salman, and the nasty Supreme Leader Ali Khamanei, are not exactly going to be the best examplars for human niceness. So I'm afraid it's going to have to come from the rest of us, in whatever small or not so small ways we can, to try to help our fellow humans.
It's all I got. Because we are perilously close to something much bigger and nastier than the multiple conflicts that have already killed hundreds of thousands and caused the biggest refugee crisis since World War II.
April 25, 2018, What'd I miss?
As those of you intrepid (or curious) enough to keep checking back in here are aware, there was an "account suspended" message up for a couple of weeks, while you pondered "Has the talking dog gone the way of oh so many of those other old blogs?" The answer was "maybe," but is now a resounding "hell no." We have resolved our technical issues, and are back, preaching to our millions thousands hundreds dozens of loyal readers.
Preaching what? Damned if I know. It's once again way too late in spring coming, and my vegetable garden is not installed (although last week afforded ONE DAY during which I could at least clear last year's overgrowth, though it did not afford a SECOND DAY for seed planting or compost installation). Oh, and we're over 15 months into... you know what For those who think that Mr. Mueller,or perhaps the likely Democratic Congressional majorities, will "save us," just color me highly skeptical. Anyway, enough about the macro: what happens to the affairs of state is likely beyond our individual control, sadly.
What IS within our individual control are our own actions. I am trying to devote myself to "immigrant friendly" activities. I am trying to write letters, visit persons in immigration detention (btw, OUTSTANDING NPR piece on that subject for those interested), and trying to help new arrivals with their English. Baby steps: we can't fix the world. We can certainly hope that the courts help us, and take heart when we see such eents such as our old friend Judge John Bates of Washington. D.C. shoving DACA up you know who's you know what, and the Supreme Court will take up Travel Ban 3 in argument (and the pundits feel it will uphold it..sigh...).
Well... enough about what's beyond our control. Try to find some way that you can help. Little things count-- maybe more than big things, because the big money guns are out there trying to take credit for the big things, while the little things desperately need to get done.
What can I tell you... anyway. FWIW... I'm back...
April 1, 2018, Happy Easter
And A zissen Pesach to those who understand. April Fool's Day had been one of the cherished days here at TTD. The all-time most viewed post was our interview with Donald Rumsfeld in 2007; other such 1st of April interviews included Dick "go fuck yourself" Cheney, and of course, the current (ahem) so-called President. It's as every bit relevant today as it was when first posted in 2016.
But it's now 14 months and 11 days or so into our national nightmare, with no end in sight (apologies to Mr. Mueller, but I just don't see this ending before January of 2021, or even 2025 if Hillary won't actually drop out), and so, when the country (even via the atavistic disaster known as the "electoral college," which structurally empowers people who didn't go to college) decides that a bullshit-spewing sexual predator unnaturally-connected-to-the Russian-mob gameshow host who has never held any public office (or even a job employed by someone not named "Trump") is superior to a woman- any woman- even one who has served as a Senator and Secretary of State, no matter what her flaws might have been, I have to concede that parody or irony or even humor itself just doesn't pack the punch it once did.
So, I kind of don't really know what to do with this spot. Most of my satiric creative energy has been devoted to helping my good friend Donald J. Putin over on Twitter, which seems to have captured the zeitgeist by limiting discourse to 140 280 characters, and you can at least be snarky in that confined space. I had hoped to put up more interviews, and hopefully I will, but by and large, the long-form anything format is getting harder and harder to do in a world where "news" is what an emotionally and intellectually challenged 71 year old man spews forth at 3 a.m. while fighting constipation brought on by a diet of aspertame-ridden soda, McDonald's "cuisine," burnt steak and vanilla ice cream... as I said... irony, if not dead, clearly on life-support.
I don't know. Maybe, like that miraculous event-- a betrayal, a death and a resurrection-- celebrated by Christians today-- maybe public discourse (and, please God, the American experiment) will rise above the worst elements to which they are presently subjected again. But I do think it might take a miracle.
In the meantime, I still think the Rumsfeld thing is pretty funny.
March 12, 2018, Another day in the denouement
Today, as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom concluded that a former Russian spy and his daughter were attacked with a deadly nerve agent that originated in Russia and that it was likely the handiwork of the Russian state, and warned of reprisals by the U.K., but... for its part... as with all things Russia, the White House refused to acknowledge Russian involvement in the Sergei Skirpal poisoning.Perhaps still having not recovered from an illness acquired on his trip to Africa, Secretary of State Rex Tilllerson did seem to acknowledge a Russian link. Rex will be spoken to, I'm sure.
Meanwhile, the House Intelligence Committee (our House of Representatives and Intelligence being an oxymoron, or at least mutually exclusive), at least the GOP majority thereof, just decided to say there was no collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, because, well, what the fuck, right?
Meanwhile, the pornographic film star who alleges that the President paid her $130,000 shortly before the 2016 election for her to remain silent on the details of their alleged year-long affair at the time his third wife was giving birth to his fifth child (including, apparently, that he liked being spanked with a rolled up Forbes magazine, liked to watch shows about sharks, and his sexual prowess was "generic") has decided she wants out of the non-disclosure and is demanding to return said $130,000. Will her interview with 60-Minutes air next Sunday? Stay tuned!
"Alt-right" (some might prefer "Neo-Nazi") activist Richard Spencer says that, with all the counter-violence and all, his rallies just aren't any fun anymore.
The Secretary of Education, a rich dilettante who has never attended public schools, nor sent her children to them, and who knows next to nothing about them can't be bothered to learn anything, as shown in a rather unpleasant performance on 60-Minutes that makes the White House unhappy.
Two people in Austin , Texas are dead as a result of parcel bombs, and others are injured.
Hillary Clinton suggests that White women- a majority of whom voted for her opponent- did so because their husbands told them to, notwithstanding that her own vaunted "political experience" consisted primarily of being married to Bill Clinton, nor did she see the irony of the first female major party presidential candidate who wanted to have "break the glass ceiling" as the theme of her victory party is nonetheless perpetuating a stereotype about women.
It's only Monday, of course, and we are only 13 months and 20 days or so into... you know.
But the denouement of our constitutional republic continues apace, even as the illusion of normalcy is so desperately impressed on us by our "media," so desperate not to recognize their own complicity in setting up a system whereby "we must give equal time" to propositions and people no matter how absurd, simply because they are positioned in a box demanding equal attention, and, well, here we are.
Nothing to see here folks. Move along.
February 20, 2018, Happy birthday
To TD Mom.
February 5, 2018, WTFF?
TD law school classmate Harvey Rishikoff has just been summarily sacked as the Guantanamo "convening authority" (i.e. civilian official in charge of the military commissions).
Mr. Rishikoff had intervened to stop the absurd "contempt" jailing of the chief defense attorney for the (absurd) Guantanamo military commissions, and tried to have a new facility built because of accusations that defense attorney-client conversations were monitored at existing facilities ... anyway, now that the President has reversed the last President's executive order to close Guantanamo, it seems open season on reason, and so, Harvey is out, as is another Pentagon official associated with the military commissions named Gary Brown.
The commissions, of course, are an absurdity, whose sole purpose is to whitewash American torture of prisoners in the years following September 11th, while still trying to use "evidence" obtained as a result of that torture. Most prisoners at Guantanamo will never face charges of any kind, of course, even as this President insists that they will never be released if he has anything to do with it.
Damned if I can figure out any of this.
*** Candace has more.***
February 2, 2018, Groundhog Day
And so, at long last, the infamous "Nunes Memo" is publicly disseminated, which will, if you are a partisan Trump loyalist, lead you to the conclusion that based upon a Rube Goldberg-like series of events, a series of Republican officials (some of them appointed by Trump himself) have conspired to undermine the rule of law by engaging in a witch-hunt against "poor Carter Page"... how was he to know that innocent contacts with Russian operatives while serving in the Trump campaign could possibly make him a subject of interest... demonstrating that the Mueller investigation is hopelessly biased and Rod Rosenstein (Deputy Attorney General and in charge of the Mueller investigation because Atttorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself
Or, of course, if you don't have your head up your ass, you realize that a good deal about highly sensitive procedure about how our law enforcement agencies gather intelligence has just been exposed to the public solely in order for a Congressman who is supposed to be entirely recused from the investigation into Trump campaign contacts with Russia because he may well be implicated in such investigation has, entirely on party line votes, taken it upon itself to throw something out there just to distract from that investigation.
And this just a day or two after an abortion called "The state of the union" speech, in which a "call for unity" promised to deport more people, build a wall, and just for the hell of it, rescind the Obama era (and not quite fully implemented) order to close Guantanamo, and not only keep it open, but send his political enemies there. All while the cowed media pretends that the whole shit-show is all perfectly normal.
And this after a month that had dozens of insane news stories, where a revelation of a payoff of $130,000 in hush money to a porn star to keep her affair with the President secret was no better than the fourth biggest story of that day.
And mind you, we are now only up to day 379 or so of the Trump era. Because every day seems the same now: as the at-one-time-funny Woody Allen observed, life is divided into the horrible and the miserable. And in the Trump era, we get both. Every day. In fact, several times a day. Every day. Over and over. And wake up again, and it's the same shit. Like... that movie.
Don't know. I'm trying to "do good," with an emphasis on trying to help new immigrants (particularly detained immigrants). Plus I spend way too much time with my friend Donald J. Putin. Maybe I should lay off trying to keep up with anything. It would make me happier, anyway. As for the rest of you, I implore you to try to do good on whatever micro-scale you can. Because we are in a shitload of evil right now. SO MUCH fucking evil. And so many of our countrymen not only pretend it's normal, but around 35%-40% of the country has never been happier now that racism and gratuitous cruelty is out in the open and official. So try to do good. Just try.
Sigh. And while the sun will come out tomorrow, so will the darkness. A lumine, people. A lumine. It's all I got.
