The Leaders of the Congress Can Go Eat a Bag of Dicks.

They'll let Billy Graham lie in state in the Capitol Rotunda.

Which is an honor that they denied the the last American veteran of the First World War.

China "Disappears" Relatives of American Reporters

If you're an American reporter with relatives back in China, writing critical reports on China will lead to your relatives being arrested and disappeared.

Hostage-taking in order to pressure those who have emigrated is a time-worn tactic of totalitarian states and criminal gangs.

Shorter CNN: "We Big He-Men Know You Wimminfolk Can't Handle Guns."

What a blithering MCP is Tom Fuentes.

H/T with some good links

A Real Non-Shocker

A top national security official told lawmakers on Tuesday he had not been directed by Donald Trump to disrupt Russian efforts to meddle in US elections, and that Vladimir Putin had come to the conclusion there was “little price to pay” for such actions.

Adm Mike Rogers, director of the National Security Agency and chief of US Cyber Command, told the Senate armed services committee: “Clearly, what we’ve done hasn’t been enough.”

Asked if he had been granted the authority by Trump to counter Russian cyber-attacks at source, Rogers said: “No, I have not.”

Gee, remember when the Right called Obama "timid"?

Well, Dear Reader, here is a situation where a hostile nation has been caught attacking our electoral system, has continued to do that, and the response from Our Glorious Commandante is utter silence.

So it would seem to be reasonable to posit that Putin has Trump by the balls. Why else would Trump refuse to defend this country from cyber attacks? You can bet your next paycheck that if the very same cyber attack was coming from an adherent of Islam, that Trump would be exhausting the inventory of ordnance that is droppable from Predators and manned aircraft.

But not a peep out of Trump when the perpetrators are Russians.

Maybe it's time that we impeach this traitor and lock him up! Lock him up! Lock him up!

It's Like the Menendez Brothers Bleating About Being Orphans

The White House on Tuesday slammed Senate Democrats for what it claimed to be “historic obstruction” to President Trump’s nominees compared to previous administrations.

Were they in a fucking coma from `09 through `16?

The article notes that one of the reasons why the Trumpists have had so few appointees confirmed is that they're not nominating people. That's because Donnie thinks he can do it all by himself, in between his eight hours of TV a day.

To Conservatives: Toljaso

I've been telling you guys for nearly three years that Donald J. Trump's word is not worth a pile of cooling shit. But no, you would not believe that. Almost a year ago, the NRA magazines proclaimed that they "had Trump's back".




Well, guess what, sports fans? The NRA may say that, but Trump won't return the favor. He is a completely untrustworthy fuck. His word, his promises, are not worth a goddamned thing. He will shiv you right in the back on a whim.

That's how he has run his business empire, as the piano guy found out. He fucks everybody he ever deals with.

You'd have to damn near be an anacephalic to expect otherwise.

Except for Those Pesky Bone Spurs

President* Trump on Monday claimed he would have run into a Florida high school to prevent a gunman from carrying out this month's mass shooting.

"I really believe I'd run in there even if I didn't have a weapon,” Trump told a gathering of governors at the White House.

So give him a parade.

I know of no episode in Trump's life to indicate that he would have the courage to go charging in, even if he was fully-kitted out with body armor and a carbine. His only known acts of physical violence in his adult life have been allegedly sexually assaulting women.

Meanwhile, in Florida, the Sheriff of Broward County says that he's an amazing leader, even though (a) his department refused to take the warnings about the Asswipe of Parkland High School seriously and (b) his deputies allegedly hid out behind their squad cars and effectively let Asswipe kill as many kids as he could.

So I guess we could call the Broward County Sheriff a "mini-Trump".

Officer Safety Refuses to March Toward the Sound of the Guns

You've probably heard, by now, that some cops sat outside the Parkland high school in Florida and did nothing. One of them was the "school resource officer", the guy who's supposed to be Johnnie-On-the-Spot in the event of a school shooting.

The tactic for dealing with school shootings has been known since Columbine: Go in, find the shooter, and kill him. March toward the sound of the guns. School shootings start and end in a handful of minutes. Each minute the cops dither means that more kids and more teachers die. There's no time to gather intel or wait for SWAT. It's an emergency pickup game: Whoever is there has to cowboy up and go in immediately. The one who should be the first in is the cop who is already there, the "school resource officer".

When it comes to dealing with an active school shooter, to paraphrase the old Coast Guard saying: You have to go in. You don't have to come back.

The cops may like to talk about how officer safety is all, that their goal is to go home at the end of their shift. But there are times when being a cop isn't only running speed traps, hassling kids, shooting Black folk and scarfing down coffee and donuts. There are times when they have to take their guns and go into harm's way.

If they can't do that, they need to find another line of work.

Dictators Gotta Keep Dictating

China's governing Communist Party has proposed removing a clause in the constitution which limits presidencies to two five-year terms.

The move would allow the current President Xi Jinping to remain as leader after he is due to step down.

There had been widespread speculation that Mr. Xi would seek to extend his presidency beyond 2023.

Past 2043 is more like it.

This bodes well, in the long run, for those nations antagonistic to China. Cults of personality tend to lead to stagnation and risk-aversion. Making bold decisions are terribly risky things to do when the Big Daddy may not agree, or may use you as a scapegoat if the project doesn't pan out.

NORK Talks?

A North Korean envoy making a rare visit to South Korea said Sunday that his country was willing to open talks with the United States, a rare step toward diplomacy between enemies after a year of North Korean missile and nuclear tests and direct threats of war from both Pyongyang and Washington.

You might ask yourself why the North Koreans are now so interested in talking.

Well, it's not because of Trump's bluster and sanctions. Nobody, outside of his base, takes that tweeting poltroon seriously.

It's more likely because of an intelligence coup that North Korean hackers pulled off last year. They hacked into South Korean military computers and stole a bunch of operational plans for a war with North Korea. Apparently, what they then read and analyzed scared the shit out of them.

Is that really the truth? Beats me.