Showing posts with label Thomas Massie. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Thomas Massie. Show all posts

Friday, September 18, 2026

A role call in shadow

A darkly sumptuous editorial illustration depicts a solemn brunette woman as an allegorical military figure overlooking Washington in a violent nocturnal storm. Wearing provocative black-and-gold military-inspired couture, stockings, gloves and thigh-high boots, she carries an open dossier from which documents and identification tags spill. Behind her, an aircraft carrier battles mountainous seas as warplanes cross the sky. Memorial walls, helmets, boots, candles, folded flags and white roses evoke military deaths, while a balance weighs medals against concealed files. The Pentagon and Washington monuments below reinforce themes of war, secrecy, institutional accountability and disputed casualty reporting.
image generated via ChatGPT

‘More American service members have died in the Middle East during the ongoing Iran war than the Pentagon has disclosed publicly’. {Washington Post 18 September}

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/ar-AA2cwmIj

Pete Hegseth must be impeached for high crimes and misdemeanours and removed from office. His stewardship of the United States Armed Forces hath proved an utter disgrace, and even thus do I speak mildly. The plight of the USS Abraham Lincoln alone ought, in mine own judgement, to furnish sufficient grounds for impeachment. 

In truth, this punk finds himself fortunate indeed that the American people have not presently their wits fully about them; for, were it otherwise, they should be marching upon Washington and Arlington, bearing pitchforks and torches, and demanding that the ‘Secretary of War’ be called to account. —

FTA: According to a document reviewed by The Washington Post, U.S. Central Command, which oversees operations in the Middle East, has estimated that the Iran war has cost about $43.6 billion through early September. The total includes $28 billion in munitions expended during the conflict but does not account for the damage to U.S. bases.

As The Post reported last month, several top U.S. military officials have warned Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth that prolonging large-scale operations against Iran is unsustainable and risks weakening their ability to confront threats elsewhere, including the U.S. homeland.

According to a September Reuters-Ipsos poll, 28 percent of Americans support Trump’s approach to Iran, whereas 62 percent disapprove.

On Tuesday, a record seven GOP lawmakers joined Democrats and helped pass a largely symbolic measure intended to halt the war — the latest of several war powers resolutions to advance in Congress.

All war deaths and injuries are supposed to be publicly reported on the Pentagon’s public DCAS system, where the military accounts for personnel lost or injured in its conflicts.

Over the summer, when the four combat deaths were temporarily excluded from the casualty database, the Trump administration reclassified renewed hostilities with Iran as Overseas Operations instead of being tied to Operation Epic Fury.

The change, which occurred as U.S. negotiators struggled to broker a permanent peace deal with Tehran, coincided with efforts by the administration to portray the war as a success even as Iran continued to fire on American forces and continued to target shipping in the Strait of Hormuz.

Senate Democrats have pledged to investigate the Pentagon’s handling of casualty notifications if they retake the majority after the midterms.

Rep. Jason Crow (Colorado) and 11 other House Democrats, all of them military veterans, on Friday said they were introducing a bill that would prevent the Pentagon from manipulating government data on troop casualties.

One Republican, Rep. Thomas Massie (Kentucky), moved this week to force a House vote on impeaching Hegseth over the war, alleging the defense secretary violated provisions of the War Powers Resolution of 1973 by pursuing hostilities without congressional authorization.

linktr.ee/arthurnewhook

🪐💔 #QueSeraSera 𓅨 🕈

Copyright 2026, Arthur Newhook.

Wednesday, September 16, 2026

'The order to cover it up came from Trump. I asked him why. And he gave me this long, very emotional explanation that this was all a plot against him, like Russiagate.'

A tightly framed colour portrait shows a middle-aged man seated indoors and looking directly into the camera with a composed, neutral expression. He has neatly parted dark brown hair touched with grey and wears a dark navy suit jacket over a pale blue-and-white checked shirt and diagonally striped burgundy-and-navy tie. Warm, diffuse lighting illuminates his face, while the softly blurred background suggests a domestic or studio interior furnished in subdued brown and beige tones. A small vertical photographic credit appears at the upper-right edge.

Tucker Carlson: the directive to throttle the release of the Epstein Files came directly from Trump himself. {Daily Mail 16 September}

https://www.dailymail.com/news/article-16136233/Tucker-Carlsons-stunning-claim-order-cover-Epstein-files-came-Trump-directly.html

Guilty as sin. —

FTA: President Donald Trump directly ordered the cover-up of the government's Jeffrey Epstein files, ex-Fox News host Tucker Carlson claimed in a stunning interview. 

Speaking with Vanity Fair, Carlson, 57, said that he warned the president about the political ramifications of withholding the files in the summer of 2025 when Trump was facing overwhelming scrutiny for his administration's handling of the late pedophile's files. 

'My position from the beginning with Trump, I said it to Trump, was, 'I don't understand why you would ever keep any of this stuff secret.' And I got like a bunch of different answers,' Carlson told the outlet. 

'I don't feel any need to cover for Epstein,' the pundit and podcaster said, recounting his conversation with the president. 'So I said, 'You shouldn't either.' In the end, it came from Trump directly.'

Though a deluge of reports has detailed the West Wing's reaction to the Epstein fallout, including meetings on the topic in the Situation Room, Carlson is the first to claim the order to throttle the release of the files came from Trump.   

'The order to cover it up came from Trump,' the former Fox News host said. 'I asked him why. And he gave me this long, very emotional explanation that this was all a plot against him, like Russiagate.'

linktr.ee/arthurnewhook

🪐💔 #QueSeraSera 𓅨 🕈

Copyright 2026, Arthur Newhook.

Tuesday, July 28, 2026

The bookkeeping of bloodshed

A dramatic allegorical digital illustration of a dark-haired woman standing barefoot upon a cracked ledger whose pages spill into long curling ribbons that wind around her wrists and ankles before drifting across the landscape. She wears a dramatically distressed olive-drab garment with silver dog tags, her windswept hair and solemn expression conveying resilience amid turmoil. Torn operational maps and administrative papers whirl through the air around her beneath the immense ringed planet Saturn dominating the night sky. The barren ground and distant horizon reinforce the atmosphere of desolation, while the symbolic military attire, fractured records, and swirling documents create an evocative meditation on bureaucracy, sacrifice, memory, and the weight of institutional decisions.
image generated via ChatGPT

Veteran groups express outrage after the Trump regime makes controversial revision to Iran war casualty numbers. {The Guardian 27 July}

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jul/27/trump-administration-iran-war-casualties-veterans

FTA: The department’s reclassification of Iran war casualties has faced criticism in Washington, including from Thomas Massie, a Republican House member from Kentucky, ousted in a primary earlier this year after repeatedly breaking with the president.

“Let me explain this absurd ruse: The Pentagon is pretending there have been two Iran wars separated by a brief cease-fire,” Massie wrote on X on Friday. “The reality: By going more than 90 days without congressional authorization,” the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, “IS BREAKING THE LAW and must be held accountable”.

linktr.ee/arthurnewhook

🪐💔 #QueSeraSera 𓅨 🕈

Copyright 2026, Arthur Newhook.

Tuesday, July 14, 2026

Steaks, sermons, and socialism

generated via ChatGPT

Ron Paul: Trump polices ‘just as, if not more, dangerous to liberty and prosperity as anything proposed by Mamdani or Sanders’. {Ron Paul Institute 13 July}

https://ronpaulinstitute.org/congressional-ratification-of-president-trumps-corporatism/

Ron Paul: yes, he is still alive, and not at all wrong in the following assessment. I wish more folks would start making this point: 

“Despite regularly denouncing the rising socialist menace, President Trump has been pursuing a policy arguably just as, if not more, dangerous to liberty and prosperity as anything proposed by Zohran Mamdani or Bernie Sanders: using government funds to purchase partial ownership of private companies.” 

Here is a little secret that many people do not wish to admit: Trump's voters are perfectly comfortable with socialism, provided it is not openly labelled ‘socialism’ and provided its benefits flow primarily to them rather than to the ‘wrong’ people. They will tolerate endless wars and reckless government spending so long as Daddy Trump tells them society's problems are the fault of liberals, immigrants, and LGBT people, and gives them permission to hate. They will tolerate it so long as their churches continue telling them that Jesus supports Trump and therefore they must as well.

So long as social and cultural grievances remain foremost in these people's minds, they will continue running back to Daddy Trump — and to whatever demagogue eventually follows in his wake.

Ron Paul, Thomas Massie, and only a scant few others represent the remnants of a strain of uncompromising libertarianism that is now nearly extinct. One need not agree with all of their views or policy prescriptions — I certainly do not — but when they call a spade a spade and sound the alarm about what government ownership of previously private companies means for both the economy and individual liberty, fair people ought to give them a fair hearing.

linktr.ee/arthurnewhook

🪐💔 #QueSeraSera 𓅨 🕈

Copyright 2026, Arthur Newhook.

Tuesday, May 26, 2026

Sycophancy in the deep red: the #MAGA base proves yet again they shall never abandon Trump

Political and civilisational collapse rendered operatic, almost liturgical. Four women in flowing crimson gather amid ruins like priestesses or mourners presiding over empire’s end. Their intertwined poses yield ecstatic grief—sensual, devotional, catastrophic. Red dominateth: blood, revolution, empire, sacrifice. Ribbons snake like torn banners binding them as one symbolic entity. Behind, classical columns collapse, maps rupture, crowds surge, spiral voids open—one vortex holding a silhouetted authoritarian. The women, glamorous yet exhausted, show yearning and surrender. The central red-haired figure tilteth her face skyward in exaltation and despair. Dense linework, fractured debris, swirling cosmos—medieval and futuristic. Beauty and collapse are one. Apocalypse is theatrical, erotic, human—meaning sought even as the world fractur'th beneath.
generated via Gemini

{Texas Tribune 26 May} Ken Paxton defeats John Cornyn for US Senate GOP nomination

Sen. Cornyn's primary defeat this evening in Texas, and Rep. Thomas Massie's last week in Kentucky, reinforces that voters in these deep-red states and regions are, more so than ever, sheep — pathetically sycophantic, doing whatever Daddy Trump tells them, with no critical thought whatsoever. It is the #MAGA rank and file, above all others, who have condemned this country to catastrophe, and who must be held to account, starting ten years ago. They did not have to fall for the world's most transparent conman in 2016, then double down, triple down, and quadruple down on their support over the course of a bloody decade. Roughly a third of the population wants the rest of us dead, and now has the country by the proverbial throat; this is why they will never abandon Trump, not even if he murders their own children and grandchildren. These malevolents may yet get their ultimate wish. Abandon all hope: it is only getting worse with each passing day, as I always knew it would from the moment this long national, and global, nightmare began. 

Copyright 2026, Arthur Newhook

Saturday, April 25, 2026

Grand Old Pedophile-enablers: Only eight of the twenty-six Republicans on the House Oversight Committee are willing to go on the record over any prospect of leniency for Ghislaine Maxwell

Photograph of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell at a dimly lit social gathering. Epstein, in a navy blazer and pale blue shirt, stands with a reserved, closed-mouth expression, his arm draped around Maxwell’s shoulders. Maxwell, wearing a fitted, light-toned top and dark skirt, leans into him and smiles broadly towards the camera. Behind them, other guests mingle with drinks in hand, their figures softly blurred against a dark interior backdrop. The composition conveys an atmosphere of casual affluence and intimacy, typical of a private evening event.
NYT

{Forbes 25 April} ‘Only 8 Of 26 GOP Committee Members Say Ghislaine Maxwell Shouldn’t Be Pardoned’

As ever, these Republicans live in sheer terror of alienating Trump’s acolytes amongst the masses, and they know that the American people, in general, are giving the convicted felon a pass for his multitude crimes (Epstein, collusion with Russia, the attempt to overturn legitimate election results, January 6, the criminal mishandling of the COVID pandemic, betraying our allies, and so much more). We know that the likes of Representative Thomas Massie are risking their careers — and far more besides — in trying to do the right thing in the face of mass indifference and, in many quarters, outright hostility from the public. Remember, Maxwell made it known some weeks ago that she would speak only if Trump granted her a full pardon. And she is going to receive one, I stand by that. 

Copyright 2026, Arthur Newhook.