Blackwater's Threat to the State Dept.: "If You Investigate Us, We Will Kill You."

That is essentially what the top manager for Blackwater in Iraq, a thug named David Carroll told the State Department's chief investigator, Jean Richter and his co-worker, Donald Thomas in 2007. Mr. Richter reported the threat and Mr. Thomas corroborated it.

Embassy officials, including a goon named Ricardo Colon, the "acting regional security officer", sided with Blackwater and ordered Richter and Thomas to leave the country. Because even hinting that there would be any accountability for Blackwater's actions created what Colon called "a hostile work environment" for Blackwater.

Yep, being held accountable for war crimes is akin to being sexually harassed, if you worked for Blackwater,

The State Department, all the way up to Condoleeza Rice, did nothing. Blackwter was indeed well-protected.

Blackwater is now part of Constellis Holdings.

Why Isn't Bobby Jindal in Jail Right Now?

Saying shit like this is skating pretty close to breaking the law: 18 USC 2385

Whoever knowingly or willfully advocates, abets, advises, or teaches the duty, necessity, desirability, or propriety of overthrowing or destroying the government of the United States or the government of any State, Territory, District or Possession thereof, or the government of any political subdivision therein, by force or violence, or by the assassination of any officer of any such government; or

Whoever, with intent to cause the overthrow or destruction of any such government, prints, publishes, edits, issues, circulates, sells, distributes, or publicly displays any written or printed matter advocating, advising, or teaching the duty, necessity, desirability, or propriety of overthrowing or destroying any government in the United States by force or violence, or attempts to do so; or

Whoever organizes or helps or attempts to organize any society, group, or assembly of persons who teach, advocate, or encourage the overthrow or destruction of any such government by force or violence; or becomes or is a member of, or affiliates with, any such society, group, or assembly of persons, knowing the purposes thereof—

Shall be fined under this title [$250,000- me] or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both, and shall be ineligible for employment by the United States or any department or agency thereof, for the five years next following his conviction.

This is exactly correct:

This is why we’re seeing a pronounced uptick in violence committed by right wing “sovereign citizens” — because even the Republicans elected to our highest offices are spouting incredibly irresponsible evil bullshit like this.

Jindal is a tool. To borrow a 19th Century phrase, he's smoking a cigar inside a powder magazine. But he is of a piece, for he is operating in the same area that similar seditious tools were operating 154 years ago. Then as now, they are nothing more than bitter fucks who cannot abide by the results of fee and fair elections.

I once thought that Lincoln had the right of it, that the way to 'bind up the nation's wounds was to have courteously and lightly administer the defeated Souh. but I'm coming to the idea that maybe the Romans had the right idea. The problem with the South is, like the Germans after the First World War, we didn't beat them badly enough. They keep nattering away about the failed doctrine of state's rights (one of the reasons why the Confederacy was not able to sufficiently mobilize it s economy) and the "lost cause" and all of the other bullshit they spew to cover up the historical fact that the war was fought for the rights of slave owners.

These seditious fools have never gone away.

The Anti-Vaxxer Body Count

Here's where these anti-vaccination clowns have brought this country: Twice as many children are dying from diseases that can be prevented by vaccination than are dying from accidental gunshot wounds.

Speaking of anti-vaccine nonsense, this sign is in some airports:

We are not "this close" to ending polio. We might have been. Hell, it might have even been eradicated. But the fucking CIA used a vaccination campaign as a cover to try and find bin Ladin, the vaccine teams are being chased off or killed as suspected CIA spies and now polio is spreading again.

I've heard the Loyal Defenders of the CIA lament that "we never hear of their successes, only their failures". Other than the odd presidential assassination*, it sure seems that they have enough failures to fill up a large library. From the fucking up of Iran to being blindsided by one event after another, one has to wonder if we'd be better off razing the CIA's HQ in Langley and converting it to something more useful, such as a radioactive waste dump.
______________________________
* Just kidding.

Your Sunday Morning Jet Noise

F-100, the first of the "Century" fighters and the first American fighter capable of supersonic flight (other than in a dive):

That airplane used so much runway that one would have thought that Republic had made F-100s.

Caturday

Jake the Concealment Cat naps under the covers on my bed.

Smoking Cigars in the Powder-Magazine of Europe

100 years ago today, a teenaged nationalistic imbecile named Gavrilo Princip assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and the Archduke's wife, Sophie. Princip was one of several Serbian assassins who were in Sarajevo that day on a mission to kill the Archduke.

While it could be argued that a war would have started over some other bit of butthurt, Princip and his co-conspirators dropped a match onto the slow-fuse that ignited the Great War. In just over four years, tens of millions of people would die as a result. Millions more would die as a result of the geopolitical upheaval caused by the aftereffects of the war.

Clinton Lies (Yawn)

The Clintons were nowhere near 'dead broke" when they left the White House. People who are "dead broke" don't buy $1.7 million dollar houses in a tony area of Westchester County, NY.

Bill says that they were "dead broke" because they owed a bunch of money.

Bullshit.

"Dead broke" is you have no money in the bank and no cash in your wallet. The Clintons might have been insolvent, on paper, but they were far from broke. The only reason that Bill didn't have cash in his pocket was that presidents don't need walking-around money.

Claiming to have been dead broke is right up there with Chimpy's obsessive brush-clearing on his ranchette in Midland. Actually, it's probably worse, for Bush was engaging in a bit of "monkey see, monkey do" because Saint Ronnie did that on his ranch in California. Clinton's lies about being 'dead broke" were more fanciful.

Because It's Friday

Edaville RR:

I visited Edaville with my family when I was six years old. I never went back, for I learned that childhood memories of a place are best left to that time.

My family's first house was a Colonial style house. My memory as a child was that the house had a long driveway that was really steep. When I was in my late thirties, I was back in that town for some reason and I drove by the house. The driveway was slightly sloped and was maybe long enough to put three cars, end to end.

That taught me that not only can you not go back, you shouldn't even try.

World Cup Report

Sorry, can't do it. I fell asleep of boredom, just trying to read about it.

Watching it would have been fatal.

Sail Ho!

Charles W. Morgan, underway.

She is now making a port call to her original home port of New Bedford.