Thursday, January 9, 2025. Donald Chump can't stop disgusting all of the US allies, Cenk has been masturbating the dead ghost of centrist David Broder and sadly some are picking up the same talking points, Senator Patty Murray remembers January 6,. 2021, and much more.
When Joe Biden leaves office on January 20, he’ll retire from public
life having notched one unequivocal foreign policy victory. Shortly
after becoming president, Biden drastically scaled down America’s global
drone war. For years, drone aircraft operated by both the U.S. armed
forces and the CIA have carried out targeted strikes all across the
constantly shifting “global war on terror” theater. Biden’s policy was a
sharp reversal from his predecessor, who expanded the drone war to its
highest level, all while covering up details on the number of strikes
and how many people were killed. And it’s all but guaranteed that
Biden’s biggest foreign policy success will be quickly undone when Trump
regains power.
The fault lies with Congress. Washington lawmakers have shown
little urgency in repealing the underlying laws and authorizations that
have enabled and expanded the “war on terror.” Now they’re soon to be
used by Trump, who has promised “retribution” at home and the
continuation of unilateral military action abroad, with little to no
transparency. Trump will take office fully aware of the challenges he
faces and the leeway that inattentive Capitol Hill lawmakers—content to
either bask in the “success” of our foreign policy or, more often, serve
as courtier-critics amid its failures—have granted the executive
branch. Trump is stacking his Cabinet with the kind of true believers
who will take advantage of the lack of legislative pushback and who will
be more radical than those who served in his first term.
Despite the high stakes of war powers potentially reverting to
MAGA’s hands, and Biden’s effort to scale back some of the wretched
excesses of the “war on terror” era, Democrats spent the last four years
doing little to rescind the power that the executive branch accrued
since 9/11. Instead, they dutifully upheld a broken status quo in which
two decades of American policy treated the post-9/11 security state’s
legal structure as sacrosanct. They will come to regret their passivity.
I know this question will confuse anti-social people like
Marjorie Taylor Greene who never grew up with friends but we need to
ask it: What happens in the next four years if the US needs friends?
Our southern neighbor is Mexico. We've had good relations with Mexico for decades so we know they'll help us if -- Oh. Wait. Maya Averbuch (BLOOMBERG NEWS) reports:
Mexico’s
president responded in kind to Donald Trump’s latest jibes, suggesting
part of the US be renamed instead of the Gulf of Mexico.
A
day after the incoming US president said the body of water between his
country, Mexico and the Caribbean should be called the “Gulf of
America,” Claudia Sheinbaum presented early maps of the Americas at her daily press briefing.
The
Gulf of Mexico’s name has held since the early 17th century and is
recognized by the United Nations, she said. Sheinbaum also joked that
states including California and Texas could revert to their former name,
“America Mexicana.”
“It sounds good, doesn’t it?” Sheinbaum quipped to reporters Wednesday in Mexico City.
Trump escalated the feud with
his southern neighbor at a press conference Tuesday at his Mar-a-Lago
resort. In addition to saying he would rename the gulf, he claimed
Mexico was “run by the cartels,” argued it cannot continue to serve as a
transit point for millions of undocumented migrants heading to the US,
and reiterated his threat to impose 25% tariffs on Mexican goods.
Oh.
Okay.
Well don't lose hope. We've got a northern border as well.
Canada.
We can count on Canada. Since 1815, when The War of 1812 ended, we've
had solid relations with Canada. So we can surely count on them if we
--
A
prominent Canadian politician shot back at U.S. President-elect Donald
Trump’s suggestion that the two countries should merge by suggesting
that his nation could purchase two American border states instead.
Ontario
Premier Doug Ford, the leader of Canada’s most populous province since
2018, joked on Monday that Canada could instead purchase Alaska and
Minnesota as a counteroffer.
“I
know under my watch, in Ontario, we would never be for that at all,”
Ford said of Trump’s threats to acquire its northern neighbor on
Canada’s CTV News. “We have the greatest country in the world. We have the greatest province anywhere.”
Uh.
Okay. Well, fences make good neighbors, right? Don't they say that?
Not sure how fences can help us out in an attack or how they can help us
in a disaster. Maybe Europe?
Elon Musk’s recent obsession with UK politics is being fuelled by a
series of popular accounts on his social media platform X, which the
billionaire appears to be turning to for information on the grooming
gangs scandal and Sir Keir Starmer’s track record as a prosecutor.
An
analysis of the entrepreneur’s feed by the Financial Times found that
Musk — whose attacks on the British prime minister and senior
politicians have become more scathing over the past week — has amplified
or responded to a handful of X accounts that have posted extensively
about the handling of historic sex crimes in the country.
They
include Viségrad 24 — an account with more than 1.2mn followers run by
British-born South African-Pole Stefan Tompson — social media
personality Mario Nawfal, and Malaysian influencer Ian Miles Cheong,
alongside several less popular right-leaning accounts purportedly based
in the UK.
O.K. So
Mexico's out, Canada's out, the UK's out. Alright. Well we've got
France. We've got our friends France and Germany and we can always
count on them. So that's good, that's --
Germany
and France have warned Donald Trump against threatening Greenland,
after the US president-elect refused to rule out using military force to
seize Denmark's autonomous territory.
German
Chancellor Olaf Scholz said "the principle of the inviolability of
borders applies to every country... no matter whether it's a very small
one or a very powerful one".
French
Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said "there is obviously no question
that the European Union would let other nations of the world attack its
sovereign borders".
So rule out Germany, France, Greenland, the UK, Canada and Mexico. Well . . . okay. It's a big world.
President-elect Donald Trump on
Tuesday declined to rule out using the U.S. military to acquire
Greenland or the Panama Canal, ideas he has repeatedly floated since
winning the election.
[. . .]
Panama’s
president has said that the Panama Canal is also not for sale. Trump
has suggested that he might seek to regain control of the waterway,
which was handed over to Panama in 1999 under a treaty brokered by then-President Jimmy Carter,
who passed away Dec. 29. Trump has long criticized the agreement,
claiming that Panama has “overcharged” the U.S. for access to the canal
and that the country’s control of such a critical global chokepoint is
harmful to American interests.
Wait!!!
Down under. Australia. Australia's always there for the US -- like a
tag along. Look at the Iraq War. So there's Australia that we can --
Oops. Writing for Australia's non-partisan think tank Lowey Institute, Michael Fullilove noted
ahead of the US presidential election, "There is no evidence that
Donald Trump’s beliefs have altered over the past four years. Indeed,
Trump 2.0 may be less restrained than Trump 1.0. If he returns to the
White House in January, US allies should neither turn away from Trump
nor hug him too tight. Rather, Australia should engage a second Trump
administration pragmatically, build up its own national capabilities,
and work with like-minded nations to reinforce the liberal international
order that Trump disparages."
Despite
three Trump-Kim meetings, face-to-face diplomacy failed to produce
anything over the long-term. While Trump managed to get North Korea to suspend missile tests for a year — no small accomplishment given its past activity — the flashy summitry ultimately crashed and burned. In the end, Trump and Kim, their personal chemistry notwithstanding, were unable to come to terms —
Trump, pushed by his hawkish advisors, advocated for North Korea’s
complete denuclearization; Kim, meanwhile, was only willing to
demobilize his main plutonium research facility at Yongbyon.
[. . .]
First,
Kim hasn’t forgotten his previous meetings with Trump. He sees the
summitry of 2018 and 2019 as a waste of time at best and a personal
humiliation at worst. This shouldn’t be a surprise; the North Korean
dictator staked significant capital on negotiating an agreement to lift
U.S. sanctions and to normalize Pyongyang-U.S. relations. His entreaties
failed on both accounts. Three summits later, U.S. sanctions remained
intact and U.S.-North Korea relations remained in their usual acrimony.
Chump's become a leper on the world stage.
Maybe Bette Midler can remind him that . . . you've got to have friends . . .
. . .
Philip Elliott (TIME) points out,
"Only on the globe of Trump’s imagination does this Godzilla-esque
trampling of sovereignty make any rational sense. It’s like the incoming
Leader of the Free World is treating the map like a real-life Monopoly
board to be dominated. Trump’s boasts may be as reliable as play money,
but that does not mean the world beyond his gilded Florida club can
treat his pronouncements as musings meant to be ignored."
Here's Tabitha with more on Chump's attacks on our allies.
Ben Meiselas has a strong commentary on Canada's response to Chump's endless attacks and threats
Or, and hear me out, we could treat this "America should take Greenland" bulls**t as the rantings of a tyrannical loon who'll be the f**king President in a few weeks, someone who will never expand government services in the slightest.
"Having Greenland would be good if we got single-payer heath care and free college out of it" The f**k makes you think Trump would do either of those things?
Trump even had his own "college". It wasn't free, it swindled the morons dumb enough to go there!
Overall some strong points but there are a few areas of needed improvement.
Have a beer with whomever?
Zac and Gavin are too young to get it. They didn't vote in 2000. They don't realize how old and moldy Cenk's stupid 'advice' and slogan (passed off as a plan) actually is.
A friend born in 1963 loves to yell "Corn on the Boomers!" (I think it's building on something in one of those CHILDREN OF THE CORN movies.) He's upset because he is a Boomer. But he doesn't consider himself one. And for decades has been calling the Baby Boom generation out for various misdeeds he feels that they have committed.
But let's all yell with him right now, "CORN ON THE BOOMERS!"
Please, Zac and Gavin, stop the nonsense of have a beer with someone.
There are logical reasons for stopping it but the most needed reason is that's what the airhead chattering class that sold out in 2000 would say on TV over and over. That really took hold -- have a beer with -- when Al Gore was running against Bully Boy Bush and centrists columnists at NYT and THE WASHINGTON POST -- especially in their TV appearances, would insist that you vote by who you'd like to have a beer with. Often followed by an attack on Al Gore because he would talk your ear off about this or that and Bully Boy Bush would just be the perfect get-drunk companion.
Cenk's 'plan' was not developed by him. It's 'conventional wisdom' -- decades old -- that was never accurate but did allow the press corps to spend time on that nonsense when supposedly covering the 2000 presidential race instead of dealing with actual issues.
Second.
Do you want to spit on your female listeners?
Because that segment also does that.
Do women not exist in the world of that video?
Oh, one did. She fed the homeless and good for her.
However, it was talk to your dad, talk your nephew, talk to --- And it was all men.
Women aren't political? They can't talk to MAGAs? And women aren't a part of MAGA? On both sides of that supposedly desired conversation, women exist. But all the examples are males and it's not once in the video, it's over and over.
Third, I would never tell anyone to have a beer with someone for a huge variety of reasons. But I especially would never tell someone to go have a beer with someone whose side carried out an insurrection. I would never put anyone in that situation.
That's not safe. I don't care if it's 'family' or not -- and news stories make it clear about the violence MAGAs have exhibited towards their families and there is the insurrection about to be released whose son in Texas has been in the news about how he fears for his own life now that his father is getting out of prison.
I would never say, "Go get intoxicated with someone so delusional that they will verbally defend an attack on democracy."
That's a recipe for disaster.
But the main thing for me again goes to Cenk is an old man and his old -- failed -- ideas are being seen as something he came up with (he didn't) and that he just came up with when, in fact, over two decades ago this sloganeering was being utilized to sell a move to the right.
That's all it was about then.
And, again, they didn't live through it -- Zac and Gavin -- but by taking Cenk's nonsense as serious and worthy of consideration, they are taking the roots of that nonsense on as well -- the whole 'we can all get along' which has consistently meant, 'As mature leftists we have to understand and reach out to the right and we have to compromise our core beliefs.'
Zac and Gavin clearly do not believe in selling out your core beliefs.
But they've accepted the decades old nonsense and it's not advancing anything. It's only making me take time to explain that it's nonsense and why it's nonsense.
In the meantime, people who don't know better are like, "Yeah, let's have a beer!"
For those of us who lived through the nonsense in real time, we are fully aware that nothing David Broder and his ilk did helped the country in any way, shape or form. Their gas baggery led to Bully Boy Bush in the White House which led to attacks on Muslims in this country and around the world, which led to the Iraq War, which led . . .
So many of us see through Cenk right away when he starts talking that garbage.
Let's wind down with this from Senator Patty Murray's office:
ICYMI: Senator Murray recounts her experience locking down inside the Capitol on January 6th, 2021
ICYMI: Senator Murray Calls Out Tucker Carlson and Fox News for Spreading Lies About 2020 Election and January 6th Insurrection
Murray: “As we will certify today—Donald Trump
has been re-elected President. It’s already painfully clear he hopes he
can paper over the dark chapter he wrote in our nation’s history. But no
action he takes can erase the past, unless we let it—and as long as I
can stand, as long as I can speak, as long as I am here, I will not let
him, or anyone, rewrite the history of the January 6th Insurrection, or
erase the important lessons we must learn from it.”
Washington, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), released the following statement on the anniversary of the January 6th Insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.
“Today, we will certify the results of the last election, a
process we must never take for granted. We saw four years ago, just how
fragile democracy can be. We saw our nation pushed to the edge of
tyranny when a leader who didn’t get his way attacked the very
foundations of our democracy by inflaming tensions with falsehoods, and
cheering those who would use violence to overthrow the will of the
American people.
“It was a dark day. One that
must always be remembered clearly. Yet partisan voices have tried—and
are trying still—to rewrite history that played out in broad daylight.
We all have a responsibility to call such efforts out, and to drown out
the falsehoods with the truth of that day.
“I was here, in the Capitol—even after most members were
evacuated, I was locked down in my office. I heard the insurrectionists
storming the building, shouting ‘kill the infidels,’ and banging on my
door trying to get in.
“And I am not the only one with a firsthand account, many of
our Capitol police have shared their stories of that day. We had
officers seriously injured keeping us safe—insurrectionists beat and
attacked them. Officers suffered cracked ribs and severe brain injuries.
One officer lost an eye. Officers injured in the line of duty died in
the aftermath, including those who took their own lives. They sacrificed
to keep us safe—we cannot forget that. And it is shameful House
Republicans have yet to put up the plaque to honor the brave officers
who kept us safe. “What’s more, the history of January 6th,
2021 is not just recorded in our memories—there is footage we can show
every time Trump and Republicans try to deny it. Anyone who doubts, or
questions what happened, need simply watch as rioters and
insurrectionists charge past gates, barricades, blaring alarms, and
police lines. We can all see them climbing through windows they smashed
in, going where it was abundantly clear they should not, and fighting
the Capitol police.
“We have the footage, photos, and police reports that show
the crimes and violence committed. Insurrectionists brought gas masks,
pepper spray, bats, knives, tasers, zip ties—and more. They beat
officers with the American flag. They stole documents and laptops. They
smeared feces inside the building and built a gallows out front.
“And all the while, Donald Trump, the man who spread the lies
that inflamed the crowd, sat by—even as they called to kill his own
Vice President. The violence delayed the certification for several dark
hours, but in the end, insurrection failed and democracy won.
“For me, the lesson of that day is clear. Democracy—the idea
that we are a country where we can debate and have our voices peacefully
heard through free and fair elections—is the core principle of America.
But democracy doesn’t just happen—we have to work for it. Our democracy
is only as strong as our commitment to it. If we want to stay a country
where our voices and our votes—not brute force—determine our future,
then we have to defend the right to vote and our democratic
institutions.
“As we will certify today—Donald Trump has been re-elected
President. It’s already painfully clear he hopes he can paper over the
dark chapter he wrote in our nation’s history. But no action he takes
can erase the past, unless we let it—and as long as I can stand, as long
as I can speak, as long as I am here, I will not let him, or anyone,
rewrite the history of the January 6th Insurrection, or erase the
important lessons we must learn from it.”
###
Isaiah's THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS "The Ugly Rudy G" went up last night. He's got two more ready to go. If he wants them both up today, we'll do that. Otherwise, it will be one tonight and one tomorrow night. The following sites updated:
