America's autocratic kakistocracy has at last swung into Senate-blessed action, cracking down on internal competence and integrity wherever found. Overseeing this important task are, in part, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., secretary of the highly dubious Health and Human Services Department; Tulsi Gabbard, director of national intelligence, friend of international foes; and Kash Patel, character assassin, QAnon conspiracy theorist, diet-supplement hawker and ... let's see ... oh yes, FBI director.
Filling out though not completely the kakistocracy's mission of competence-evacuation is the newly renamed Secretary of Defensiveness, Pete Hegseth. He acquired the revamped title at the Munich Security Conference in Brussels this week, first saying that he sees no Ukrainian membership in NATO, no enforcement of its sovereignty by non-European troops (that would be ours), and for that matter, no reclaiming of its sovereign territory.
About that, Senate Armed Services Chairman Roger Wicker said "I don’t know who wrote [Hegseth's] speech — it is the kind of thing Tucker Carlson could have written, and Carlson is a fool." So back to you, Pete. "Everything is on the table in any future peace talks between Ukraine and Russia, including Ukraine’s aspirations to join NATO," he said in a 180-degree "clarification."
And so subsequent to being "surprised," "puzzled" and "disturbed" by Hegseth's original unmistakability, Wicker was "heartened." Meanwhile, Vice Despot JD Vance was further rewriting Carlson's speech: "There are economic tools of leverage, there are of course military tools of leverage." ("Freelance" national security expert Mark Toth opined that the round-robin messaging chaos "was likely intentional," thereby demonstrating that Toth's expertise is likely a joke.)
Wicker also observed that “everybody knows … you don't say before your first meeting what you will agree to and what you won't agree to." His ellipsis-removed words were "people in the administration know" that. But Senator, these are not normal, rational, well-adjusted and well-informed people. They're idiots, Senator, with the integrity of Al Capone.
Trump's imbecility is a matter of public record, and kakistocratic kleptocrats autocratically dripping sociopathy as they flaunt their psychoses are rarely known for being men of high integrity. But to your specific point, Sen. Wicker, if Trump is one of the [people] who knows "what you will agree to and what you won't agree to" before a negotiation, explain his remark, "[Ukraine] may be Russian someday."
Also explain why he excluded Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky from his confab with Russia's Vladimir Putin about Ukraine's future. And when you're finished with that, Senator, explain why he's sodomizing Zelensky and French-kissing Putin when the former is willing to compromise and the latter, inflexible?
Sorry, did I say "Vladimir Putin"?
At the hypocenter of the greatest European crisis since the Second World War sits the Russian tyrant. Highlight and delete Putin and you erase the mass murder and vast destruction he hath wrought on the Ukrainian people. These democratic, pluralistic 44 million were once industrious in seeking national prosperity; they turned away from the primitive backwardness of what lay to the East and instead looked forward to the West for economic, cultural and diplomatic integration. That, Trump's fellow autocrat Vladimir Putin would not tolerate. So he blew it all up.
Putin blew it up. Putin ordered the killing of Ukrainian women and children, only Putin machine-gunned the nation's defenders, and he alone bombed Ukrainian cities at rush hour, then waited, as terrorists do, for emergency medical aides and civilian volunteers to arrive, so that he could bomb them again. But you'd know none of that if for the first time you heard Trump survey the carnage that Putin has visited on Ukraine — for throughout the video above, he speaks solely in the passive voice; the war, something that's just sort of happened, slaughterdom exists in a mysterious vacuum, no one is responsible for it.
The passive phrasing of Trump:
"want to see people stop getting killed"
"probably a million-and-a-half soldiers killed"
"young, beautiful soldiers that are just being decimated"
"[Ukraine's] people are being killed"
"[Zelensky] has a country where it's been savaged, attacked"
"the cities and towns have been largely demolished"
And in general terms?
"That was not a good war to go into." Ukraine! For Ukraine to go into.
Such is the best possible voice in this, the worst of all possible Americas, to crack down on any competence or integrity that may still be lurking unnoticed in the kakistocracy of the autocratic thug Donald Trump.
Just fyi I cannot comment on my iPad. iPhone works but it’s a work phone so I don’t want to use it. On iPad I can enter my name and email but comment box wont work. Keep up the good work whatever you do!
It sucks for us if there is WWIII, because we'll be the bad guys.
Is this how it's going to be the next four years? Idiot senate republicans having to contradict everything their approved cabinet of weaponized incompetence says? Honestly, I was surprised that Murkowski and Collins voted in that dirt bag RFK Jr. for HHS. And as far as I'm concerned, McConnell's no votes are far too little, far too late. I just hope the administration collapses under the weight of it's own stupidity in very short order.