You Need Some Good News Don't You?
Plus: Missing the point on Pete Hegseth.
Except for that one thing1 Putin’s run of horribly bad luck continues; Bashar al-Assad’s reign of terror is over; Neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes is busted; Alex Jones has to pay; and we are served up one of the greatest moments in recent legal history.
I’ll save the scary stuff for later.
Happy Sunday.
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Let’s start with V. Putin’s crappy weekend, shall we? The fall of Vlad’s Syrian bitch extends a remarkable run of reverses for the Russian czar-manque.
Phillips P. OBrien notes that since his invasion of Ukraine, Putin’s actions have “caused Sweden and Finland to join NATO and it looks like Russia [is going] to lose its base in Syria because it can’t keep enough forces in the area.” And since we’re toting up the butcher’s bill, Putin has managed to seize only “a relatively small part of Ukraine,” while Russia has “suffered more than 750k casualties and seen millions of young, educated people flee the country. Oh, and they squandered billions and billions of dollars and dislocated their economy.”
Another commenter put this into context: Since invading Ukraine, Putin has lost:
1. Black Sea Fleet, and Sevastopol;
2. Kursk region;
3.Finland and Sweden ending neutrality, joining NATO;
4. Syria, navy port in Tartus;
5. Georgia in process of decoupling;
6. Romania drifting away.
And yet, Vlad always has Donald, Tulsi, and Pete… (we’ll get back to that later).
Monty Python has entered the chat
ICYMI: Donald Trump told NBC that he thinks that every member of the committee that investigated the January 6 Insurrection should “go to jail.”
Which, of course, is a reminder of why he named the goggle-eyed nubbin, Kash Patel, to head up the FBI. Did I mention that the paranoid Patel is also remarkably thin-skinned?
In the past, Patel has threatened to go after members of the “deep state” and the media. But he is also apparently rather touchy about any sort of criticism. Which brings us to L’affaire Troye.
Olivia Troye is a former national security advisor to VP Mike Pence, who has emerged as a powerful Trump critic. During a recent appearance on cable television, she (quite accurately), called Patel a liar who should never be entrusted with the FBI. And she brought the receipts.
"Kash Patel is a delusional liar," she said. "Let me just be very clear about that. And he would lie about intelligence. He would like about making things up on operations. I think Mark Esper has talked about that as well, where he put the lives of Navy Seals at risk in an operation when it came to Nigeria. …
At some point I realized I needed to check Kash's work to make sure that I wasn't misinforming Mike Pence by relying on is word. So, I had to go around him. And this is a guy who openly has contempt for people in national security - for people especially at DOJ and the FBI."
Last Wednesday, Jesse Binnall, a lawyer for Patel, sent a letter to Troye demanding that she retract her “defamatory statements about Mr. Patel.”
On Friday, Troye’s lawyer, Mark Zaid, responded, noting that Troye’s statements have been echoed “by a wide swath of the knowledgeable population.”
And then he addressed Patel’s demand.
“But to answer your specific question as to Ms. Troye’s intentions as to a retraction,” Zaid wrote, “I think Monty Python expresses it best” — inserting this iconic picture of the Taunting French Knight:
Chef’s kiss. A great moment in legal history.
**
And, in yet more good news: “Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’s $965 million verdict over Sandy Hook lies upheld by appeals court.”
Meanwhile…
“Nick Fuentes faces battery charge after confrontation with woman over his misogynistic X post.”
“Far-right provocateur and white nationalist Nick Fuentes is facing a misdemeanor battery charge after a confrontation with a woman who showed up at his home after he posted the now-viral misogynistic phrase ‘Your body, my choice’ on social media in November.”
Quick poll:
Are we missing the point about Pete Hegseth?
Let me offer a bit of contrarian caution.
The real problem with Trump’s SecDef appointee is not merely that he is a drunk, a lech, and a chode: It’s the crazy-ass ideology. Cathy Young writes in the Unpopulist:
Hegseth is an ideological extremist who views political opponents as “the enemy” and political differences as war by another name.
Worse, he’s a Christian nationalist of the stridently militaristic kind, which raises disturbing questions about his potential willingness to misuse the U.S. military for political purposes.
This is not a characterization pieced together from the odd soundbite or two—Hegseth himself tells us who he is in his books. The image of Hegseth that emerges from The War on Warriors (2024), Battle for the American Mind (2022), and American Crusade (2020), is of a militant Christian extremist who is obsessed with the Crusades and whose highest aspiration is redesigning the U.S. military into his ideological mold.
Before Donald J. Trump picked him to lead the Department of Defense, Pete Hegseth spoke often about a medieval military campaign that he saw as a model for today: the Crusades, in which Christian warriors from Western Europe embarked on ruthless missions to wrest control of Jerusalem and other areas under Muslim rule.
As he embraced a combative brand of Christianity in recent years, he wrote that people who enjoy the benefits of Western civilization should “thank a Crusader.” On his arm, he has a tattoo with the words “Deus Vult,” which he has described as a “battle cry” of the Crusades.
**
Given all of this, it is not surprising that military leaders are alarmed not only by Hegseth’s sloppy dipsomania, but also by what he might do in the unlikely event that he is stone-cold sober. Via AP:
WASHINGTON (AP) — Military leaders are rattled by a list of “woke” senior officers that a conservative group urged Pete Hegseth to dismiss for promoting diversity in the ranks if he is confirmed to lead the Pentagon.
The list compiled by the American Accountability Foundation includes 20 general officers or senior admirals and a disproportionate number of female officers. It has had a chilling effect on the Pentagon’s often frank discussions as leaders try to figure out how to address the potential firings and diversity issues under President-elect Donald Trump.
Those on the list in many cases seem to be targeted for public comments they made either in interviews or at events on diversity, and in some cases for retweeting posts that promote diversity.
Now for the really scary stuff
After the abortive declaration of martial law in Korea, David French asked the vital question: Could this happen here?
“Can an American president — or any other American leader — create a similar political emergency?”
French writes that the “short answer is no,” but the “longer answer is yes — if a president (or a governor) exploits ambiguities in American law…” (And has loyal toadies in place to do his bidding.)
There is, in fact, is a legal basis for deploying the military in domestic affairs, and the statute — called the Insurrection Act —French writes, “is so poorly drafted that I have come to call it America’s most dangerous law…”
The Insurrection Act is almost as old as the United States itself. The law dates to 1792, and it permits the president to deploy American troops on American streets to impose order and maintain government control.
…
Section 252 of the act gives the president the authority to deploy troops domestically “whenever the president considers that unlawful obstructions, combinations, or assemblages, or rebellion against the authority of the United States, make it impracticable to enforce the laws of the United States in any state by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings.”
Section 253 has similar language, granting the president the power to “take such measures as he considers necessary” to suppress “any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination or conspiracy.”
Note the extreme trust placed in the president. He can call out troops when he considers it necessary. There is no congressional oversight. If he believes he needs troops in the streets, he can order troops in the streets.
French reminds us that Trump has been itching to invoke the Insurrection Act. “In the summer of 2020, he considered ordering federal troops to suppress the urban unrest that exploded after the murder of George Floyd, but he ultimately backed down after his secretary of defense, Mark Esper, publicly stated his opposition to Trump’s plan….”
Neither Hegseth or Ron DeSantis — or anyone that Trump will put in charge of the Pentagon — will tell him “no” the next time. The bottomline:
Trump can still use the Insurrection Act to call out the troops when he wants to call out the troops. He can declare an invasion and dare the courts to disagree. Neither power is as broad as a South Korean president’s power to declare martial law, but they are dangerous to American democracy.
This is not resistance. It is despair.
The urgent question we now face is: What is to be done? My short answer: Not this. Here is one of the responses to my argument about the Biden pardon.
“Fuck the rule of law…”
But here again is my contrarian take:
It is not fighting back to accept the moral premise of the other side; it’s an abject surrender.
No matter how tempting it may seem at the moment, we should not abandon our principles — or the defense of the rule of law — because 49.79 percent of the electorate voted for Trump. They do not get to decide what we believe or what we defend.
Populism: An update
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the party of the working class.
Donald Trump's cabinet is 2,881 times richer than Joe Biden's - The Economic Times
Via Axios: “Trump's billionaires set to take government by storm.”
Three buddies
Finally
The election of Donald Trump. But you knew that.
“No matter how tempting it may seem at the moment, we should not abandon our principles — or the defense of the rule of law — because 49.79 percent of the electorate voted for Trump. They do not get to decide what we believe or what we defend.”
Bravo. Fighting hard does not mean abandoning our principles. I want to defeat these people, not become them.
Thank you, Charlie.
By the way, when we see this: "ICYMI: Donald Trump told NBC that he thinks that every member of the committee that investigated the January 6 Insurrection should “go to jail.” .... why would Biden leave his son to the wolves. After all - it is not like he killed someone, or defrauded millions ala Enron.