March 13 Open Thread: Rex T Follows T Rex Into Extinction
Rex Tillerson finally managed to get himself fired yesterday, apparently for telling the obvious truth that the Russians assassinate people in other countries, often England. His no-class piece of shit boss didn’t bother telling him, letting him find out at the same time the rest of the world did.
Hey, at least he didn’t get the Russian termination notice, which now seems to involve a deadly nerve agent devised by an illegal Soviet biowarfare program. Again, this is why Manafort won’t flip. These high-profile assassinations serve two purposes.
Buzzfeed’s profile of Trump business crony Felix Sater makes an interesting case for Sater’s continuing employ by U.S. intelligence agencies.
That special election in Pennsylvania today has Republicans shitting their pants. They’ve been relentlessly lowering expectations for a week now, mainly because they spent $8 million on ads that didn’t move the polls. Mudslinging isn’t working anymore, and neither is the link between a good economy and the party in power. Final pre-election polls show the Democrat in the lead.
Stormy Daniels isn’t known for her legs — her prime assets are right out front — but her story sure has them, mainly because Trump keeps denying anything happened when every other sentient being on the planet knows he’s lying. Why is he bothering, when sex with porn stars actually burnishes his brand? Josh Marshall has a theory: What if Trump enjoys, as Marshall so delicately puts it,women who don’t treat him nicely? Mr. Macho’s image might not survive if we found out he likes porn stars to spank him.
Sussex County politicians are good at selling off land for development, not so good at dealing with the infrastructure problems it brings — for instance, what to do when people in all those new homes flush their toilets. Rehoboth Beach’s answer was to pipe it out to sea and pretend that made it disappear, but the contractor digging the trench for the outflow pipe has run into problems that could cause cost overruns on the $50 million-plus project.
For anyone who missed Nancy’s comment on this on another thread, researchers have linked religious fundamentalism to damage or underdevelopment in the brain’s prefrontal cortex, particularly the areas involved in mental flexibility. In short, science has pinned down the source of evangelical stupidity.
Ah, splendid caustic writing for my wake-up this morning.
England were in a great position to finally advance far in the World Cup. Italy, the Netherlands and Ghana didn’t qualify. Plus they got drawn into a very manageable Group G with Belgium, Panama and Tunisia….
Now they should boycott the finals this summer in Russia. They likely won’t, but they should.
Headline Of The Year so far. Love it.
Josh Marshall has dug up another interesting angle to the Stormy Daniels saga, about the lawyer who represented her on the hush agreement. He’s the same lawyer who negotiated for Karen McDougal, the Playboy model who sold her story to the National Enquirer, which killed it, effectively silencing her.
“Rex Tillerson finally managed to get himself fired yesterday, apparently for telling the obvious truth that the Russians assassinate people in other countries,” – alby
With CIA spook Pompeo moving on to replace Tillerson, Pompeo is to be replaced by Gina Haspel.
It’s time to confront the obvious truth that the Americans torture people in other countries. The new CIA director “was up to her eyeballs in torture.” according to the ACLU.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2018/03/13/gina-haspel-trump-nominee-first-woman-leader-cia/419547002
Now if Obomba had Bush era torturers prosecuted for war crimes, would Trump have selected somewhat less malevolent? In fact, would Trump even have made POTUS, if Obomba had done anything to deserve the Nobel Peace prize.
Yes, Obama certainly wouldn’t have received any pushback had he done that. Because there’s so much precedent of American DOJ prosecuting Americans for war crimes.
You constantly put forward calls for actions that you know perfectly well would never take place under this system of government. You post these extremist positions as if you’re revealing great truths, when it’s stuff everybody here knows. Do you expect someone here to defend Obama? Ain’t happening. In a perfect world, Bush/Cheney would be prosecuted for those crimes at The Hague. Ain’t a perfect world, and you know it (though it’s not so imperfect that those two will travel to Europe).
So is it moral signaling? Political signaling? What purpose does it serve?
As long as we’re discussing obvious truths, I mean.
BTW, “if Obomba had Bush era torturers prosecuted for war crimes, would Trump have selected somewhat less malevolent?” is missing something. Why would something that happened to Bush have made Trump less malevolent? Where’s the evidence that somebody else’s punishment ever dissuaded Trump from anything?
“You constantly put forward calls for actions that you know perfectly well would never take place under this system of government.”
Actions which you assert “never take place under this system of government” took place under Nixon when Lt. William Calley was prosecuted for the My Lai massacre.
But Obomba preferred to prosecute Chelsea Manning for exposing war crimes, instead of Gina Haspel for committing war crimes.
USA Today link, you guys. This new one’s going be rough.
Tillerson should never have been Sec. of State. Exxon had deals with Russia to build a pipeline across Russia involving billions…Obama’s sanctions on Russia put a hold on Exxon/Tillerson. Tillerson was given Russia’s highest medal of “Freedom”…Get ready for war with Iran, cuz Pompeo is a huge right wing hawk.
@delacrat: Oh, you wanted a flunky prosecuted, then. Calley was an Army lieutenant. That’s a little different, don’t you think, from prosecuting the president and vice president, which is what you called for? Stop moving the goal posts. Oh, wait. That’s all you ever do.
@spk: The deal wasn’t for pipelines, it was for drilling the Arctic. The deal was worth $500 billion. With a B.