Crimes at Sea 🤡 😱 ✡️🌻😱 🤡

🦃  🦃  🦃:  The Thanksgiving weekend got off to a tragic start after two West Virginia National Guard members were shot in Washington DC where they shouldn’t have been stationed in the first place.  Sadly, one of them, Sarah Beckstrom, was killed.  The other, Andrew Wolfe, remains in critical condition.  The perpetrator was an apparently unhinged Afghan immigrant who had recently been granted asylum in the US, a reward for helping US troops during the Afghan war.  The ambush and murder were horrifying, Trump and his administration’s reaction, was pretty bad too. They blamed Biden for the deadly incident, holding him responsible for granting the shooter asylum even though the decisions that led to his being granted asylum in the US spanned both Biden and Trump’s administrations. Citing no evidence, the seriously dolled-up ICE Barbie Kristi Noem said that the shooter had been “radicalized” in the US, presumably her way of adding antifa and all Democrats to her list of those responsible for his actions. She made her assertion while also acknowledging that she was the one who gave the final order sending one of those migrant planes to El Salvador in violation of a court order by what she called an “activist” judge because admitting illegal actions is one of those things cabinet members do when they know they’ll eventually be pardoned.  For his part Trump, who spent his Thanksgiving weekend golfing at Mar a Lago, guided perhaps by junior Goebbels Stephen Miller,  took full advantage of the tragic moment.  He announced via Truth Social that he is “permanently pausing migration” from all “Third World Countries,” and will be “removing anyone who is not a net asset to the US or is incapable of loving our Country.”  He also said that he would be “denaturalizing migrants who undermine domestic tranquility.” If he follows through, he will be cancelling green cards and stripping the citizenship from lots of non-white people because he certainly doesn’t plan to take anything away from the white families he just admitted from South Africa. Keeping with that theme, he also specifically targeted Somali immigrants, while calling Governor Tim Walz, whose state has a large Somali population, seriously r*tarded, a slur likely chosen because Governor Walz has a son with developmental issues and also maybe a self-own, much the way older dad Trump’s jumping on RFK’s autism-vaccine link wagon seems to be? Trump’s use of the r*tard slur was so offensive to one Republican legislator from Indiana whose daughter has Down’s Syndrome that he announced that he will be voting against Trump’s redistricting plans. Lastly, Trump also said that he would be cancelling all orders and pardons that Joe Biden made via autopen. He keeps harping on the autopen probably because he too uses it frequently. While Trump was sputtering hate, a not so sleepy Biden was seen out and about with his family, taking selfies with fans, giving at least one street musician a $20 and looking pretty good despite his prostate cancer and “frailties.”      

War Crimes: On the subject of pardons, Secretary of War and Beer Pete Hegseth is likely to need one. The Washington Post reports that he committed a war crime when he ordered the US Navy to “double tap” one of the first fishing vessels that the administration targeted for alleged drug smuggling.  “Double tapping” doesn’t refer to a creative sports maneuver or IPA beer, rather it refers to his ordering a second strike on a fishing vessel to kill the few survivors who weren’t killed by the first strike he’d ordered.  Going after survivors in the water to intentionally kill them is a war crime but then again Hegseth had given the order to kill everyone on board the supposedly “narco-terrorist” boats and that wasn’t kosher either.  It’s probably not a coincidence that Admiral Alvin Holsey, the commander overseeing the operations in the Caribbean announced his resignation the same day as Hegseth’s “kill them all” strike took place.  Another indication that even Hegseth has been told and now believes that his orders constituted war crimes is that the few survivors of some subsequent strikes were flown home to their native countries rather than subjected to a “double tap.”  A group of former US military lawyers (JAGs) issued a statement over the weekend saying that both the giving and execution of the “double tap” orders, if true, “would constitute war crimes, murder, or both.” The Washington Post story goes far to explaining the over-the-top outrage that Hegseth and Trump expressed over the video that Senator Mark Kelly and five other Democratic members of Congress posted last week. Their advising members of the military that they shouldn’t carry out illegal orders clearly hit a nerve with Hegseth and his boss who, according to Miles Taylor who served Trump during his first term before outing himself as an anti-Trumper, was told that orders along those lines are illegal.  In Trump 1.0 there were people who served as guard rails against such crimes, now Trump only has likeminded cheerleaders who egg him on. The war crimes allegation is getting lots of attention.  Senators Roger Wicker of Mississippi, the Republican chairman of the Armed Services Committee, and Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the committee’s top Democrat, said on Friday night that they had “directed inquiries” to the Defense Department.  A bi-partisan group from the House says that they plan to do the same. As to the war against drugs, first of all for the most part fentanyl comes into the US from Mexico and China rather than Caribbean nations, secondly if eliminating drug smuggling is such a priority for Trump, than why did he just pardon Juan Orlando Hernández, the former Honduran president who once bragged that he’d “stuff the drugs up the gringos’ noses” and who accepted bribes from the notorious El Chapo to allow cocaine shipments to pass through Honduras to the US. Hernández was serving a 45-year sentence but now will be going free because drug smuggling is only a problem when Trump says so.  And because Trump is so into pardons, he quietly added another one this weekend, commuting a recently convicted Long Island based Ponzi schemer.             

Fog of War:  All things Ukraine and Russia continue to get murkier.  Over the weekend, Andriy Yermak, President Zelenskyy’s top aide and peace negotiator resigned as a result of the corruption scandal now embroiling Ukraine politics.  That’s a loss for Zelenskyy and Ukraine at such a fraught time.  The peace negotiations with Russia continue, this weekend they took place in Florida.  Secretary of State, AID, and whatever Rubio reports that while there was progress, more needs to be done because it’s “complicated.” To that end, son in law Kushner and real estate guy/Putin admirer Witkoff are off to Moscow for further discussions with the Putin crowd.  According to the Wall Street Journal, to date those discussions have included how the two “investors,” Trump and some of their friends can personally benefit financially from throwing Ukraine under the bus because building more buildings, getting access to oil, and other business opportunities appear to have dominated a lot of their “negotiations” to date.  Keeping with that theme, Trump announced the closing of air space around Venezuela, an indication that his efforts to oust Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro could involve US boots on the ground.  Maduro is not a good guy; he stole his last election though that’s typically not the kind of thing that Trump cares much about, after all he tried to steal one and his now jailed bestie Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro tried too.  What Trump does care about is getting control of Venezuela’s vast oil reserves. Israel’s Netanyahu hasn’t stolen an election but been embroiled in what appears to be a never-ending corruption scandal and trial.  Over the weekend it was reported that he’s asked Israel’s President Isaac Herzog, rather than Trump who’d gladly give him one if he could, for a pardon. If Bibi agrees to leave politics for ever and ever, maybe not such a bad thing? In any case, Israeli trials drag on and on so even without a pardon, Bibi won’t be going to jail anytime soon.    

Viral Musings: Last week RFK Jr snuck in the appointment of Dr. Ralph Abraham to serve as the second in command of the CDC. As Louisiana’s surgeon general, Abraham ordered the state health department to stop promoting vaccinations and called COVID vaccines “dangerous.”  In addition, Politico reports that RFK is planning to overhaul the Vaccine Injury Compensation program, expanding coverage to include people with autism.  That would make it riskier for companies to develop vaccines in the US. Also, no progress on extending health insurance subsidies and now Trump denies that ever considered doing so even though he was supposed to announce a plan to extend them last week before he pulled his announcement.     

And:  Tomorrow is special election day in Tennessee for the House seat vacated by Republican Mark Green. It would be a stretch for the Democratic candidate Aftyn Behn to pull off an upset victory against her Trump endorsed Republican opponent Matt Van Epps but just closing a lot of the gap in what was a plus 20-point Trump district will be very telling and concerning for Speaker Mike Johnson, Trump, and their crowd.