This was not in the briefing

generated via ChatGPT

Secret Service reportedly fed-up with VP Vance and family. {MS NOW 15 July}

https://www.ms.now/news/veeps-security-detail-fed-up-with-hastily-arranged-personal-and-family-travel-requests

Blatantly entitled, brazenly so, and only a heartbeat away from the presidency. Taking a young boy to a golf lesson aboard a military helicopter at taxpayer expense, reportedly costing more than $24,000. Meanwhile, JD Vance and his wife — ever the natalists — are expecting their fourth child soon. 

Vance is not fit for the office he holds, and certainly not the presidency: too young, too self-assured, too many contradictions about him, and too aloof in nature. Alas, thanks largely to his boss, standards no longer apply to most Republican office-holders, provided they remain in Trump's good graces.

White Americans and much of the mainstream media — generally speaking, of course — do not hold Republicans to the same standards they apply to Democrats. I believe this has been true for decades, beginning with the political realignment that followed the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964, but more acutely so since 2016, when a third or so of the overall American population decided what a wonderful idea it would be to join a political cult led by a foul-mouthed real estate mogul and ‘reality television’ star with closets full of skeletons. 

At the dawn of his political career, Donald Trump could have attempted to run as a Democrat. After all, he spent roughly a decade registered with the party in the 2000s. Yet he understood that his chances of success were far greater as a Republican. He needed the white working-class vote, and that constituency had been drifting away from the Democratic Party since the 1960s, a process completed with the election of Barack Obama as president in 2008.

Just look at the number of state legislative seats Democrats lost during Obama's presidency, particularly across the South. The scale of the decline is staggering. Trump was taking note. Trump could not have won as a Democrat, nor could he have gotten away with everything he has gotten away with as a Republican. No demographic group has proven more willing to overlook — or even embrace — his corruption, incompetence, and ethical failings than the coalition that now comprises #MAGA. 

So long as JD Vance remains Trump’s trusted VP, he shall be Teflon. Ask Mike Pence what happens, however, when one falls out of good graces. The best thing that can happen between now and the scheduled presidential election of 2028 (and I use the word ‘scheduled’ as there is no guarantee there will be any election in 2028) is for Trump to throw Vance under the bus and fire him, for he would be a horrible president (yes, worse).

linktr.ee/arthurnewhook

🪐💔 #QueSeraSera 𓅨 🕈

Copyright 2026, Arthur Newhook.

The breaking of the torchbearer

generated via Grok

Evangelical con man, one of so damn many, says the opening of the Obama Presidential Library is ‘an intentional slight to God’. And the Trump presidency is not? Oh well, of course not. Not with the version of Christ recognised in #Murica. {Right Wing Watch 10 June}

https://www.peoplefor.org/rightwingwatch/right-wing-pastor-todd-friel-says-obamas-presidential-library-intentional-slight-god

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🪐💔 #QueSeraSera 𓅨 🕈

Copyright 2026, Arthur Newhook.

Inflation has climbed to its highest level since 2022, and the same nation that screamed bloody murder over it under Joe Biden now looks the other way even as it bears the cost

generated via ChatGPT

{Yahoo! Finance 10 April} “Consumer prices in March saw the largest monthly gain since 2022 as the US-Israel war against Iran sent gas prices skyrocketing past $4 a gallon”

A surge attributable almost entirely to Donald Trump’s humiliating and utterly futile adventure in Iran. Yet where, I pray, is the indignation from the American people that was so freely directed at President Joe Biden during his term of office? For Mr Biden, at the least, did endeavour to bridle inflation and uphold essential government services, whereas we now have Trump bellowing about cutting Medicare and Medicaid because the United States must pay for wars before anything else (at the same time declaring himself a peacemaker and demanding a Nobel Prize for it). And all the while, Trump is blatantly and shamelessly lying about the cost of gas, food, etc., and the media and general public shrug their shoulders (‘Trump being Trump’). James Carville’s oft-quoted maxim — ‘It’s the economy, stupid’ — no longer applies in post-Obama #Murica: its poor, white, rural denizens hath decided, time and again, that their resentments and grievances outweigh every other consideration, including their own financial survival. Thus they, and the rest of us in this polyglot empire who never wanted this madness and did what we could to prevent it, are being shunned and left behind by the wider world. For that, there shall be no redemption. Y'all done f**ked' up.

Copyright 2026, Arthur Newhook.

No more pretences: the majority of the American people either rejoice or shrug their shoulders as the POTUS justifies murder of anyone opposed to him

Imagine but for a moment, if Barack Obama had so much as hinted—let alone declared outright—that a notable conservative or Republican figure had been murdered because his or her deranged slayer had been driven to distraction by the victim’s anti-Obama rhetoric, irrespective of the actual motives or tragic circumstances involved. Imagine, further, one’s disbelief had greater than half the American public responded with a gleeful ‘amen’, or with a shrug of chilly indifference, whilst those who were justly outraged were mocked, dismissed, and threatened with violence. Even a decade ago, in what now feels a more sober age, such a spectacle would have been unthinkable: that an American president would exploit another’s private grief so nakedly in order to menace the roughly forty per cent of the population who oppose him.

We all know precisely what would have followed had this been Obama—or Biden, or Clinton, or even George W. Bush, who long ago fell from favour with the very voters who once rallied behind him in the aftermath of 9/11. But most of all, had it been the black guy. The same #MAGA partisans who now rush to defend Donald Trump’s grotesque exploitation of the deaths of Rob and Michelle Reiner—using their passings as a blunt cudgel to chill political dissent—would be marching through the streets with torches and pitchforks, bellowing (rightly, in that hypothetical) of tyranny and persecution. They know it; we know it; the hypocrisy is so brazen it scarcely troubles itself to counterfeit disguise.

Nay, now it doth not hide at all. Beginning in earnest with the January 6 insurrection, accelerating through the 2024 presidential election and the rise of the ‘manosphere’ that presently poisoneth the hearts and minds of young men at scale, and culminating in Trump’s return to office, #MAGA hath cast off any remaining pretences. What remains is an unambiguous supremacist movement: racial, gendered, and theocratic in equal measure. Roughly sixty per cent of the population is being mobilised—a fair number actively, but more commonly by enforcing passivity and apathy—against the approximate forty per cent of us who resist this nation-killing and soul-killing frenzy. I should like to claim some residue of optimism, yet truthfully I cannot summon the least glimmer of it.

We inhabit a profoundly dark chapter of national life when a majority of the public either tolerates or actively revels in a president willing to rationalise the killing of individuals on account of their political persuasions (or, more to the point, that they hurt his little feelings). We are no longer poised at the brink of the abyss; we have passed within its gate. Trump and his coterie manipulate the American populace with the effortless virtuosity of a master fiddler, and mass bloodshed—spontaneous and orchestrated—is not hypothetical, but imminent.

Most disquieting of all is the truth that remains largely unspoken—though I shall articulate it plainly: many of you reading this are not dreading what comes next. NO… you eagerly await it! For forty-eight humiliating years upon this benighted planet I have sensed, however dimly, that most of you are, at your core, rotten and malign; yet I lacked the vocabulary, the conceptual framework, to name the malignancy. Now I can. And I know, with no small measure of grim consolation, that many others have come to the same conclusion regarding people in general… yet I am entirely alone in my recognition and pain.

Copyright 2025, Arthur Newhook.

Trump posts AI-generated video of himself wearing a crown and defecating upon #NoKings protesters, then insists, “I’m not a king”

image generated via ChatGPT

{NYT 19 October} ‘Trump Posts Fake Video of Himself Flying a ‘King Trump’ Jet Over Protesters’

A grotesque spectacle, and the act of a petulant man-child masquerading as a statesman—an overgrown bully and gaslighting autocrat who yet occupies the highest office in the land. If the President of the United States cannot conduct himself with a modicum of dignity and extend respect to all Americans, including those who dissent from him, as each of his predecessors managed to do, then he has no business holding that office.

The current GOP base is defined by a startling deficit of respect for those beyond its own tribal orbit—a moral decay that, if not arrested forthwith, will culminate in widespread atrocity. We already inhabit the danger zone of dehumanisation. Yet it was not always thus. Richard Nixon, for all his paranoia and moral blemish, never descended to such belligerent indecency; nor did any other Republican president or aspirant within living memory—from Eisenhower through to Mitt Romney—stoop to the dehumanisation of political adversaries or ordinary citizens.

Nor, indeed, have our Democratic presidents done so. Barack Obama, at his most incautious, made his now-infamous remark concerning rural Americans who “cling to guns and religion”—a comment that drew sharp rebuke, yet was expressed within a thoughtful, analytical frame and contained more than a measure of truth (and nothing offends such types more than hearing hard truths about themselves). Obama did not, however, produce puerile videos depicting his critics as yokels being drenched in filth, nor indulge in crude name-calling and mockery.

Manners matter. The current president and his acolytes would do well to rediscover that elementary precept of civil society. They have already learnt that millions of their countrymen are neither cowed nor compliant, and that we will not simply lie down and die to humour their authoritarian fantasies.

President Trump ought, at the very least, to issue a public apology to those he hath insulted—but of course he will not. Neither his party, nor the pliant media apparatus that shields him, nor the cultish fervour of his followers, will exert the slightest pressure upon him to do so. On the contrary, they are collectively manufacturing a civil war—and they shall have it, unless they remember, and swiftly, how to behave like human beings once more. But they won’t. —Arthur Newhook, 19 October 2025.

Copyright 2025, Arthur Newhook. 

Cruelty enthroned as creed: the Supreme Court rejects Alex Jones’ appeal, but the permission to be vile is sacrosanct in Trump’s #Murica and he will never be compelled to pay a single penny to the Sandy Hook families

image generated via Google Gemini

{USA Today 14 October} ‘Supreme Court rejects Alex Jones' appeal of $1.4 billion Sandy Hook judgment’

The Supreme Court of the former United States hath declined to hear broadcaster Alex Jones’s final appeal, thereby upholding the $1.4 billion judgement against him for his monstrous defamation of the Sandy Hook families. One might have hoped this would mark the end of his grotesque spectacle—but Alex Jones holds no intention of paying a penny to those he so cruelly tormented for profit, attention, and the hollow currency of infamy. Bankruptcy merely another pageant upon his stage.

And mark me: Trump will wade in—perhaps on the orders of the puppetmaster in Moscow—to absolve Jones of culpability. A pardon, a reprieve, some grotesque political gesture—nothing should astonish us. We are dealing with a cabal that hath proclaimed open war upon Reality herself, hellbent on turning Americans against one another, and therein they have triumphed beyond their wildest fantasy. These individuals do not merely distort the world; they unmake it, and demand applause for the wreck.

Long hath Jones sheltered behind the corruption of ‘free speech’, wielding the First Amendment as both shield and cudgel, whilst his retainers bleat about liberty even as they crush its very heart beneath their heels. If they cannot pardon him, they shall canonise him; if not canonise, they shall martyr him, à la Charlie Kirk, demanding again that homage be rendered at football games and flags be flown at half-staff in mock mourning. One way or the other, the next phase of the farce shall be redemption, not remorse. Millions will once more dutifully follow along, for this country—God deliver it—long since bartered sanity and decency for spectacle.

Indeed, a renewed campaign to ‘redeem’ Alex Jones is already underway this afternoon—a grotesque rehabilitation in the name of populist grievance. Observe how brazen in general the right-wing sphere hath waxed since Trump’s return to power; their confidence is absolute, their scorn unveiled. They know the nation’s fracture runs too deep to mend, that the peasants are itching to begin slaughtering each other en masse, and they lick their lips thereat. These be heady, halcyon days for American Fascists, theocrats, white supremacists, and the like.

The tragedy lieth not only in what was wrought upon the Sandy Hook families—hunted, exposed, and driven from their homes in Newtown—but in the cold indifference of the nation that beheld it. Who rose in their defence, in earnest? None. Barack Obama then sat upon the presidential throne, conjuring up a rather infamous tear, and the trembling voice, and the familiar elegy of ‘thoughts and prayers’—a pantomime of pity so practised it might have been writ in advance (and probably further encouraging malevolent fools in their conspiracism). Yet when the curtain fell, nothing changed.

I remember that dreadful day with nauseating clarity: even whilst the bodies of children lay cooling in their classrooms, the national conversation was already pivoting—not to grief, nor justice, but toward the largely phantasmal tyranny of gun control. In this land, the right to bear arms hath been elevated to a sacrament, sanctified above human life itself. School shootings are now so routine they scarcely interrupt the afternoon news cycle, each massacre met with the same weary shrug and constitutional catechism: ‘necessary evil, price of freedom’.

That any soul could gaze upon those parents, those tiny coffins, and pronounce them deserving of their woe is thought enough to curdle the spirit. Yet here we are, a republic whose moral arteries have calcified beyond cure—a nation that hath mistaken cruelty for conviction and named it liberty.

We stand upon the brink of that which, in my youth in the late 20th century, had been unspeakable: civil war, and a rot of conscience so absolute that compassion itself is spent. Would that I could summon hope—for the families of Sandy Hook, for the country—but the abyss hath already opened. What awaits is no mere politics, but total civil collapse: cruelty enthroned as creed. And Alex Jones shall yet be laughing all the way to the bank. —Arthur Newhook, 14 October 2025.

Copyright 2025, Arthur Newhook. FULL LIST OF LINKS - linktr.ee/arthurnewhook. DONATIONS GRATEFULLY ACCEPTED on Cash App ($ANewhook).

OBAMA DECLARES THE FORMER UNITED STATES IS ‘DANGEROUSLY CLOSE’ TO AUTOCRACY — NO, WE’RE ALREADY THERE

National Portrait Gallery

{The Hill 18 June} Obama: US ‘dangerously close’ to moving toward autocracy

And what is Obama’s legacy, anyway? Pushing moderates toward Trump, turning conservatives into nationalist populists, and costing the Democratic Party countless congressional and state legislative seats nationwide — thereby helping spawn today’s extremist movements — that is  his legacy. More recently, his grievous betrayal of President Biden, in backing the most hopelessly inept candidate imaginable — someone who, by circumstances of her birth, could not have won in America even had she been competent, and had not placed personal ambition above her boss and her country — confirms it: Barack Obama is a power-hungry autocrat with messianic fantasies, fortunate only that Trump has set the bar so low he appears downright humble by comparison.

Had someone told me in 2008 that the idol worship surrounding Obama — which repulsed me to a virulent degree at that time — would one day seem positively mild, I would have either laughed or shuddered. Furthermore, that it would be the Republican Party — the party of John McCain — enabling the next, even more insidious demagogue? Unthinkable. And yet here we are.

The country is now a lost cause, but still I pray we never face a tyrant who makes Donald Trump look modest by contrast. It seems almost impossible to imagine — but never doubt, things can always get worse. They usually do.

Copyright 2025, Arthur Newhook. @Sunking278 on X-TWITTER, and at the same handle on FACEBOOK. BLUESKY - @arthurnewhook.bsky.social. REDDIT - https://www.reddit.com/r/StopTheIdiocracy/new/. DONATIONS GRATEFULLY ACCEPTED at https://tinyurl.com/ArthurNewhook.

ALL AMERICANS NEED TO READ THIS: NEW REVELATIONS FROM BOB WOODWARD UNEQUIVOCALLY SHOW TRUMP IS PUTIN’S PUPPET: HE ARRANGED TO HAVE COVID TESTS SENT TO RUSSIA FOR PUTIN’S PERSONAL USE, AND HAS CONTACTED THE RUSSIAN TYRANT AFTER LEAVING OFFICE

Photo: Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP

Trump secretly sent COVID tests to Putin during 2020 shortage, new book says. {WP 8 October}

The orange motherf**ker stole from the American people at the height of a deadly pandemic to keep a foreign dictator—an adversary of the United States—healthy. Yet most Americans will simply shrug or cry ‘fake news’ when they should be demanding that Trump be sent to the gallows. It is no wonder #Murica is in such a sorry state. But I digress, for the story gets even more interesting.

Bob Woodward reveals that President Biden regrets choosing Merrick Garland as Attorney General (though why he hasn’t simply fired Garland remains a mystery). Kamala Harris is portrayed as having limited influence on the administration’s foreign policy, although she did reach out to both French President Macron and President Zelensky in the lead-up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Another interesting anecdote: George W. Bush expressed sympathy for President Biden’s ordeal in withdrawing US troops from Afghanistan, telling him, ‘I can understand what you’re going through. I got [expletive] by my intel people, too.’ As for Barrack Obama, Mr Biden is quoted as saying, ‘Barack never took Putin seriously’—which is true. Remember how Obama mocked Mitt Romney for warning about Putin during the 2012 election? Not so funny now, is it, Barry? Bob Woodward is one of the last true journalists, and I am grateful he remains at the top of his game, even at this late stage in his life.

Recent headlines:

Trump takes 8.6% lead in Polymarket betting odds - Not an absolute indicator, but there are more signs out there Kamala Harris and Tim Walz are fading fast. I keep trying to tell everyone, this nation is hellbent on national suicide. If Trump was ever going to be rejected by the not-so silent majority in #Murica, it would have happened long before now. Trump is going to win in a relative landslide. We are in deep s**t.

Don’t shoot the messenger: Kamala's lead over Trump in the Reuters/Ipsos poll narrows to three points, with a plurality believing Trump is stronger on economy and immigration - When pointing out facts is met with hostility, name-calling, and baseless accusations of being a ‘traitor’, it becomes clear that far too many of Kamala’s supporters are now simply the flip side of the same coin as the Trumpers. A political cult. It also further confirms why I have never, and will never, find a home in the Democratic Party. American politics are broken beyond repair, because the American people are, by and large, broken individuals. I despise myself for not having fully foreseen all of this twenty-five or thirty years ago, as I would have done everything differently and prepared myself to leave this s**thole. (I did have some vague inkling, but I was still young and quite damaged from a not-so-happy childhood, and made a million bad decisions in spite of what my gut would tell me, but no matter). No chance of being able to settle anywhere else now; I am forced to wallow in the blood and mud with all the other pigs (to paraphrase a great song from better times).

Elon Musk tells Tucker Carlson that he believes Kamala will put him in prison: ‘I’m f**ked’ (if Trump loses) – This is called projection, as the fascist cabal Musk sold his soul to plans to imprison millions of political enemies. {Daily Mail 7 October}

At a Trump rally, Elon Musk, jumping around like a toddler, declares that Trump will ‘save’ (read: destroy) American democracy. {AP 6 October}

FWIW: in contrast to 2016 and 2020, leftist filmmaker Michael Moore predicts that Trump is ‘toast’ in 2024 - To be fair, this is the man who predicted Trump’s win in 2016 when everyone thought he was crazy. However, four years ago, he predicted another Trump win and was wrong. I strongly suspect he is wrong again and underestimates just how hateful and self-destructive the people of this dying nation are. (If anyone disagrees, prove me wrong on 5th November!)

Trump and co. swindling gullible #Cult45 followers out of their life savings on TruthSocial with various nefarious schemes. {Rolling Stone 6 October}

Kim Jong Un sends a love note to Putin on the Russian dictator’s 72nd birthday, calling him his ‘closest comrade’. {BBC 8 October}

Project 2025 shall ‘unequivocally’ lead to more deaths from hurricanes and other natural disasters - Red State #Murica is voting for their own demise. {The Guardian 8 October}

The non-partisan Committee for a Responsible Budget estimates that Trump’s economic plans ‘would increase budget deficits’ by twice as much as Harris’s plans – a shame that Americans are convinced we are still in an economic recession and have, for decades, been brainwashed to believe that Republicans are better for the economy. {WSJ 7 October}

US Civil War (1861-65) reenactors reveal they are worried a new civil war in America is imminent. {TNR 6 October} 

Continuing her longstanding fascination with (‘Jewish space’) lasers, Marjorie Taylor Greene refuses to back down on Hurricane Helene conspiracy theories, even after officials plead with the tin-foil hat crowd to stop spreading lies. {Daily Beast, 7 October}

Who wants to live forever, anyway? ‘Humanity is reaching the upper limit of life expectancy, according to a new study’. - The US doesn’t rank among the top forty nations with the highest life expectancies. {AP 7 October}

A most urgent headline that #Murica will ignore: the largest supplier of US drinking water falls victim to a cyberattack. {Fast Company 7 October}

Copyright 2024, Arthur Newhook. @Sunking278 and @FloydEtcetera on X, and at the same handles on FACEBOOK. MASTODON - @ArthurNewhook@mastodon.world, BLUESKY - @arthurnewhook.bsky.social. DONATIONS GRATEFULLY ACCEPTED at https://tinyurl.com/ArthurNewhook.

Vladimir Putin’s hubris and tragic miscalculations bring Russia to its knees, and cements Ukrainian resistance to Russian influence and aggression for decades to come

Alexei Nikolsky/Kremlin

Putin has only succeeded in hardening anti-Russian sentiment in Ukraine. He saw there was a small number of anti-Russian extremist elements - ‘Nazis,’ whatever we call them; every country has their extremists, including Russia and the U.S., as we’re all too aware – and used that as an excuse to butcher the Ukrainian people. He is a snake who will take advantage of any situation to put his venomous fangs into his prey, in this case by grossly exaggerating the threat these extremist elements posed in order to achieve his actual goals of conquering and plundering. Vladimir Putin does not even bother hiding his ambitions of restoring the Russian Empire, and in his Machiavellian mind he may really have convinced himself that he is saving Ukraine by forcing it back into Russia’s orbit. 

Pray tell, why should Russia’s various neuroticisms and its never-ending inferiority/superiority complex – all of this embodied in Putin – be the rest of the world’s problem? Ukraine suffered long enough under Russian domination and decided, upon the fall of the Soviet Union, to move into the future. While still honoring their traditions and national character, they chose to go their own way in the world and strive for a better life. Putin makes no bones about wanting to stop the future, and restore a glorious past that never was quite so glorious for the hundreds of millions who suffered for it for so long, continuing today. 

In the future, elected lawmakers in Ukraine are only going to be more stridently pro-Western and anti-Moscow, all across the political spectrum. Those small militias and such that Putin has scapegoated all of Ukraine for are now going to grow much larger, and more dangerous to Russia. Government-sanctioned or working in rogue capacity, vengeance-minded Ukrainian militias will conduct attacks on Russian cities for several years to come. And that’s all on top of the crippling sanctions placed upon Russia by most of the world. Russia is now isolated, its military is decimated and has been exposed as a paper tiger, its people will grow increasingly restless, and the prospect of revolution and civil war grows in likelihood with each day Putin continues this ‘special operation.’ Even most ethnic Russian speakers in Ukraine are enraged, and will increasingly identify as purely Ukrainian in the years to come. Vladimir Putin, in his quest to restore Russian greatness, has destroyed Russia. And glory is now Ukraine’s to be had. The Russian people will be divided as Ukraine's people, beaten and bloodied as they are, stand united. But, just as with a wounded snake, Putin is going to cause more terror and grow more desperate in the days ahead, so stay on guard. Слава Україні

Alexander Ermochenko/Reuters

(VIDEO) Putin’s ‘yes men’ misled him on Ukraine invasion prospects - Anytime a leader creates such an overwhelming atmosphere of fear and conformity, critical thinking is going to go out the window and only what the leader wants to hear will be permissible. And what always results are tragic incompetence and worse, never success. (France 24 3/31)

'Residents of Mariupol, Ukraine, described how Russian forces use hunger as a weapon of war in a monthlong siege of the southern port. “No roof, no food and no water,” survivors texted relatives who escaped.' (New York Times 3/29)

Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Sen. Mitt Romney: NATO would be likely to reconsider U.S. membership if Trump is returned to the presidency in 2024 - The stakes have never been higher. If America goes all-out Fascist, which is the goal of Trump and nationalist populists, none of you want to know what is going to happen to us. The Russian people have no one to protect them from their tyrant, and if America does not have friends in the world, nobody will be coming to our aid when the ongoing coup attempt is complete. America foolishly disregarded Sen. Romney’s warning about Putin in 2012, including being mocked by the sitting president at that moment (‘the 80s called and we didn’t answer.’) The past three administrations did not take Vladimir Putin seriously, and other world leaders were complicit in that regard (looking at you, Gerhard Schröder.)  We’re paying the price now - and Ukraine most of all. So, heed what Sen. Romney has to say. (Yahoo! News 3/29)

Copyright 2022, Sunking278. Stay up-to-date: Twitter – @Sunking278 and Facebook – click here. DONATIONS - click here.

‘(T)he worst form of government – except for all the others that have been tried.’ President Biden versus an American public that has lost faith in its own country, its institutions, and in truth, common sense, and empathy for oppressed peoples

John Farallo/Deviant Art

No reason to wonder why many Americans hate Joe Biden, and no need to identify who those Americans are, we all know. Obviously, there is the matter of Mr. Biden having served as second-in-command to the black guy for eight years (never have been a fan of the latter myself.) More to the point, Joe Biden is committed to a liberal democratic global order that these people feel has oppressed and failed them (not that any of them know what life would be under the alternative, having forgotten the words of Churchill - ‘democracy is the worst form of government – except for all the others that have been tried.’) Joe Biden will not kiss Vladimir Putin’s ass as his predecessors did, and nationalist populists see Putin as a symbol of lost manhood and Christian virtue (I see neither in the s.o.b., but behold the power of propaganda and gaslighting.) The radical left merely sees Putin as a bulwark against American imperialism and predatory capitalism, and turn a blind eye to the corruption, the human rights abuses, and so forth (what a sad lot they are, the flip side of the same coin as the nationalist populists.) And Joe Biden removed the precious orange god from power – which is why the mainstream media has so viciously turned-on Joe Biden; they want Trump back because he is better for their bottom line, and the welfare of the country be damned. 

And Trump’s fans simply cannot comprehend that millions of fellow Americans were (and remain) disgusted by Donald Trump’s words, actions, and overall lack of integrity and humanity. It really is kind of baffling how devoted they are to this guy, until one considers that they see him as their protection against the rest of us. After all that has been said and done, there really is no point any longer in any other explanation for popular discontent. We are being reminded that human beings are tribal creatures, and will reject the evidence of their own eyes and ears. Instead, they stand with those offering (false) comfort and reassurance of their natural instincts when they feel threatened by the world around them. The very essence of populism, and an example of why I hate populism. The German people rallied behind Hitler in the ‘30s, and tribalism is why Russians are rallying behind Putin now and are not questioning his motives for invading Ukraine. Reason and evidence are never going to penetrate this wall. There is no point in trying to convince anyone to change their minds, and any pretense I ever had of being able to change minds - about anything at all – disappeared a long time ago.  Many years. Nothing I post is with the intention of reaching the unreachable, but rather to help those invested in truth, reality, and sanity (or relative sanity; hey, we all lose our s**t sometimes, lol.) One can ‘lead a horse to water, but one cannot make him drink.’ As long as the earth turns and as long as human beings live on it, these maladies will remain. And as long as I’m cursed to be here, I will stand in opposition to all forces – far-left, far-right, anywhere in between – who believe they will achieve their given ideas of paradise on earth by bringing Hell upon the earth. President Joe Biden is a relic of a better time and place, an unlikely leader for this strange era in American life, and I am grateful we have him, for however long we have him. Once he is gone, well, let’s not even contemplate any further right at this moment.

‘Russia’s deputy defense minister says Moscow has decided to “fundamentally… cut back” operations near the capital and another major city to “increase mutual trust” at talks aimed at ending the fighting.’ Translation: They got their asses kicked. (AP 3/29)

At least 5,000 dead in Mariupol, including over 200 children. (Ukrinform 3/28)

Copyright 2022, Sunking278. Stay up-to-date: Twitter – @Sunking278 and Facebook – click here. DONATIONS - click here.

Слава Україні - Ukraine: Defending humanity when the rest of the world will not

Olha Solodenko/Shutterstock

I have never been more in awe and appreciation of any group of people – and, in particular, their military who are the kicking the Russians’ asses hardcore - than I am of the Ukrainian people right now. We Americans are field mice compared to their lions.So as it turns out, are the Russians field mice as well. Let the Chinese, Indians, and Iranians try, none of the nations that constitute the modern Axis of Evil will succeed – and we in America are very much on the fence as to which side we will eventually settle on. Should we re-elect Donald Trump, or another GOP Fascist, in 2024, we then prove ourselves firmly in said Axis of Evil. Millions of Americans are begging to be part of such. So, we’re not counted out of that Axis in spite of having a great and humane leader in Joe Biden. But he is embattled, and much of the American people hates Ukraine – yes, a majority; a slim majority, but a majority - sympathizes with Putin, and hates humanity. I am now convinced the majority of Americans have embraced hate and there is going to be major reckonings due to such. The Democrats are not going to win the mid-term elections, and Joe Biden – should he run again – will not be re-elected. But no matter how much #Murcia hates him, he has proven for all time that he is the man for this moment, and one of America’s greatest presidents in our history. It is not his fault his country has grown cold and has embraced madness. #Ukraine, defenders of all humanity. They are fighting to protect Europe, and should Europe fall then the rest of the world will fall with it. Either be part of the solution, or keep on playing victim to imaginary enemies and grossly exaggerated grievances. American life is difficult, far from the paradise some in foreign lands may imagine, but keep your heads about you and learn some perspective. We have been blessed, but the country is determined to give up that blessing in place of pure hate. God help us, and I really mean that. Слава Україні ...

Getty Images

‘Mila Kunis left Ukraine for the US as a child. Now she’s helping Ukrainian refugees’ - I've long thought this woman is gorgeous, and she remains so. Young Ukrainian women, in general, are just beautiful. They age in a strange way, but then they earned that right, or privilege, or burden, or whatever that is. They're stronger than us. I care nothing about the '70s Show or the talking teddy bear movie, but bless Mila Kunis. (The Independent 3/27)

Poll: Nuclear fears in US amid Russia-Ukraine war - Not that I put any stock whatsoever in any poll, but it is fair to say that nuclear anxiety is probably running higher now than it has for a good while. As a kid in the ‘80s, of course, it was just a part of life - the nuclear threat from the East - and apparently that has now once again become the case. None of us realize how good we all had it during that period of grace in the ‘90s. I want to go back. (AP 3/28)

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Finally - after 30 long years - America has a president who stands for American values and promotes peace across the universe, and he is met with nothing but universal hatred and unwarranted distrust from the American people. I am ashamed to even be living here. We were sold a bill of goods - LIES - that we were somehow better than the rest of the world. And the malevolent among us - which is 90% or more - took that to heart, and have decided to be bullies and tyrants upon the earth. Donald Trump gave them explicit permission to do so in 2016, and it’s been all downhill since then. When Trump retakes the office on January 20, 2025, it’s all over for us; we will officially have earned our place as the single most evil, tyrannical, genocidal nation in all of world history. Yeah, congratulations, motherf**kers on making that happen. Good grief ...

Barack Obama would have been nothing and would never have been elected without our current leader, Joe Biden. John McCain deserved to win that election and deserved to have served us, and I will never forgive that other guy for that. But that is not Joe Biden’s doing - Joe Biden stood beside that imbecile for eight years for the sake of his country, yet was always John McCain’s friend to the end.

Even though I like and even admire George W. Bush as a man, he failed as a president. And the other bastards, post-Reagan and not including Mr. Carter, all failed - most of all, Donald J. Trump. Joe Biden is restoring our honor, and nearly all of us are too blind to see it. His predecessors must admit their guilt in degrading America and blinding us to true leadership. We were once the greatest country on earth, now are blatant and deliberate s**t. No better than the world's biggest s**thole and the world's worst human beings, Russia and the Russians. I am so deeply ashamed, and so sad for President Biden, who is doing his best. We have a president who is trying to restore us, and 80% or more of this country hates him for it. I hate this country, that is until I love it again. Make me love it again.

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Far-right propagandist and Trump enabler Steve Bannon turns himself in on contempt charges

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Long past due - 

WASHINGTON (AP) — Steve Bannon, a longtime ally of former President Donald Trump, surrendered to federal authorities on Monday to face contempt charges after defying a subpoena from a House committee investigating January’s insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. 

Bannon was taken into custody Monday morning and is expected to appear in court later in the afternoon. The 67-year-old was indicted on Friday on two counts of criminal contempt – one for refusing to appear for a congressional deposition and the other for refusing to provide documents in response to the committee’s subpoena. 

The indictment came as a second expected witness, former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, defied his own subpoena from the committee on Friday and as Trump has escalated his legal battles to withhold documents and testimony about the insurrection. 

If the House votes to hold Meadows in contempt, that recommendation would also be sent to the Justice Department for a possible indictment. 

Officials in both Democratic and Republican administrations have been held in contempt by Congress, but criminal indictments for contempt are exceedingly rare. 

The indictment against Bannon comes after a slew of Trump administration officials – including Bannon – defied requests and demands from Congress over the past five years with little consequence, including during an impeachment inquiry. President Barack Obama’s administration also declined to charge two of its officials who defied congressional demands. (Read more)

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Are American diplomats and intelligence officials being targeted with a mysterious illness by a foreign adversary?

Bianca Bagnarelli

Falls under the category of conspiracy theory, as nothing has been proven outright; but it’s also entirely plausible and the bio-terrorist threat must be taken seriously. The Russians, in particular, are not above this sort of thing. And that is putting it kindly. Jerusalem Post -  

A suspected case of "Havana syndrome" was detected in Colombia last week, the most recent in a series of suspicious attacks that appear to target US diplomatic and intelligence personnel. This latest incident appeared to happen just days before the visit of the US secretary of state. What this means is that these attacks may be targeted and timed – that they are not random and that a powerful adversary of the US is using them systematically.   

“US embassy staff in Bogota may have been injured by the mysterious illness, which causes a painful sound in the ears, fatigue and dizziness,” the BBC reports. “First reported in Cuba in 2016, US diplomats around the world have since reported cases of the syndrome. Its origins are unknown, with some speculating it is a type of weapon.”  

The Wall Street Journal reported the most recent attack, which included “unexplained health incidents,” according to an email sent by US Ambassador to Colombia Philip Goldberg. Secretary of State Antony Blinken was supposed to visit this month.   

In August, US officials said “the Vietnam leg of US Vice President Kamala Harris' South Asia trip had to be delayed by a few hours due to reports of two US diplomatic personnel coming down with the mysterious combination of ailments that have come to be known as Havana Syndrome.” 

The embassy said that there had been a "possible anomalous health incident in Hanoi," a phrase Washington has used to describe the syndrome. The incidents began in Cuba in 2016 but have also been identified in Germany, Austria, Russia and China, according to reports. 

EARLIER THIS year it was reported that the US State Department would gather more information on the health of diplomats after complaints they were not taking this seriously. According to The Independent, “US diplomats who have suffered from the mysterious “Havana Syndrome” tore into Secretary of State Antony Blinken during a recent meeting, arguing that the government hasn’t done enough to help victims and has brushed off their concerns as vague unexplained health incidents (UHIs).”  

There is some dispute within the US government and between recent administrations about what is happening. Some 200 diplomats and intelligence members have been affected. Although details are classified, there is a question over whether these are random "incidents" or targeted attacks. According to a New York Times report, more than half the victims of the syndrome are CIA officers. That report on October 1 said there are 100 CIA officer victims. According to another Times report, the CIA even recalled its Vienna station chief over the handling of the incidents. US lawmakers have backed changes to address the syndrome's victims, and the CIA is trying to increase attempts to confront the incidents. (Read more)

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Supremacy is the only guiding principle of the GOP and their supporters

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Supremacy is the only guiding principle of the GOP and their supporters, who know full well they are outnumbered and therefore must establish a South African-style apartheid system of minority rule in America. Lucian Truscott, Salon -  

(Republicans are) a white party and they're forming a white country with white laws and white companies and white jobs where white votes count and others don't. They can live in the states that comprise that country, but they can't survive there without our money. It was the same way with the South before the Civil War. They lived in their states with slavery, but they couldn't survive without the economy of the North, so they started a war. They never intended to "secede." They intended to win, and run the new country, which would be the South writ large, with slave-owners in power and slavery everywhere.  

That's what Republicans and Donald Trump are doing right now. They know they can't win legitimate elections. There aren't enough of them. So they are engaged in a war, with the aim not of winning elections, but of taking over and exercising the power that, at least until now, came from winning elections. Republicans can't rely on doing that, so they have transformed their party from one that participates in democracy to a fascist party engaged in a takeover of the United States of America.  

Democrats may or may not "win" in 2022 and 2024, but the elections are already over. Republicans have declared that only their votes count. Unless we get together and stay together and use our numbers to protect our democracy, we will end up living in their fascist country ruled by their dictator. (Read more)

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Writer Tom Nichols: The American people bear responsibility for the fall of Afghanistan

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All the caterwauling going on today over Afghanistan is proof that it’s ‘damned if you do, damned if you don’t’ with a fickle, self-centered, ungrateful, unthinking, and proudly ignorant American populace. Tom Nichols lays his case out very well: This is your fault, America ... 

Kabul has fallen. Americans will now exercise their usual partisan outrage for a few weeks, and then Afghanistan, like everything else in a nation with an attention span not much longer than a fast-food commercial, will be forgotten. In the meantime, American citizens will separate into their usual camps and identify all of the obvious causes and culprits except for one: themselves. 

Many Americans will bristle at the idea that this defeat overseas can be laid at their feet. When U.S. forces had to endure the misery of the retreat from North Korea back to the 38th parallel, no one made the argument that it had happened because of the voters. No one turned to the American people during the fall of Saigon and said, “This is on you.” 

So why would I do that now? 

Much of what happened in Korea and Vietnam—ultimately constituting a tie and a loss, if we are to be accurate—was beyond the control of the American public. Boys were drafted and sent into battle, sometimes in missions never intended to be revealed to the public. 

Afghanistan was different. This was a war that was immensely popular at the outset and mostly conducted in full view of the American public. The problem was that, once the initial euphoria wore off, the public wasn’t much interested in it. Coverage in print media remained solid, but cable-news coverage of Afghanistan dropped off quickly, especially once a new adventure was launched in Iraq. 

In post-2001 America, it became fashionable to speak of “war weariness,” but citizens who were not in the military or part of a military family or community did not have to endure even minor inconveniences, much less shoulder major burdens such as a draft, a war tax, or resource shortages. The soldiers who served overseas in those first years of major operations soon felt forgotten. “America’s not at war” was a common refrain among the troops. “We’re at war. America’s at the mall.” 

And now those same Americans have the full withdrawal from Afghanistan they apparently want: Some 70 percent of the public supports a pullout. Not that they care that intensely about it; as the foreign-policy scholar Stephen Biddle recently observed, the war is practically an afterthought in U.S. politics. “You would need an electron microscope to detect the effect of Afghanistan on any congressional race in the last decade,” Biddle said early this year. “It’s been invisible.” But Presidents Obama, Trump, and Biden all ran on getting out of the war, and now we’re out. 

What the public does care about, however, is using Afghanistan as raw material for cheap patriotism and partisan attacks (some right and some wrong, but few of them in good faith) on every president since 2001. After the worst attack on U.S. soil, Americans had no real interest in adult conversation about the reality of anti-terrorist operations in so harsh an environment as Afghanistan (which might have entailed a presence there long beyond 20 years), nor did they want to think about whether “draining the swamp” and modernizing and developing Afghanistan (which would mean a lot more than a few elections) was worth the cost and effort. (Read more)

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