Late last night, I mentioned that terrible little man who defended torture by claiming it worked on McCain. Again, I think McCain was a posturing, hypocritical Republican, but it turns out that one thing he was not is a “songbird”: when asked to name the members of his squadron under torture, he gave up the names of the Green Bay Packers football team. The cheeseheads of Wisconsin might resent that bitter treachery, but he didn’t betray his military colleagues.
The guy who made the accusation, Thomas McInerney, is a kook of the first order who was formerly on a birther crusade, claiming that Obama was a secret Muslim who was not born in this country, and he also filed an affidavit to support a military officer who refused to obey orders, since the Commander-in-Chief, he claimed, had no authority. I think that makes him more of a traitor than McCain.
McInerny still got booked for his valuable opinions on Fox Business, despite being a gullible conspiracy theorist and racist (face it, if you gave credibility to the claim that a black president was not eligible for the office, you’re a goddamned racist.)
Gina Haspel was the commandant of a secret prison in Thailand, where prisoners were tortured. She was responsible for destroying all recordings of the torture. She got nominated for head of the CIA.
Scott Pruitt was bragging about blocking environmental regulations before he was made head of the EPA. Now it’s revealed that he was also having expensive dinners with a certain Catholic defender of kiddie diddling. Isn’t associating with Cardinal Pell a moral failing?
I could name the entire cabal of crooks in the Trump administration, including the chief con artist himself. None of these people belong in any position of power and influence, yet there they are. I could name the rotating cast of regulars appearing on talk shows and “news” programs every day, milking every scrap of notoriety for more notoriety. They’ve tunneled through rich loamy filth to suddenly pop up with an eruption of dirt and sludge at the top of our country.
White House special assistant Kelly Sadler on McCain’s view of the CIA nomination:
PZ: … I think McCain was a posturing, hypocritical Republican …
McCain: I’m not dead!
Sadler: Well, he will be soon, he’s very ill.
McCain: I’m getting better.
Sadler: No you’re not, you’ll be stone dead in a moment.
McCain: I feel happy. I feel happy.
THUNK
Trump: (with a tear in his eye) John McCain was a brave, patriotic American who supported all of my policies 110% …
Isn’t associating with Cardinal Pell a moral failing?
Under the current White House Code of Ethics, no.
Cardinal Pell is (or was) Prefect of the Secretariat for the Economy. In rough translation Pell == Yugge Money!!
So, contact with Pell is acceptable.
But what if there were a ticking time bomb and the Green Bay Packers knew how to defuse it? See, torture works.
That “expensive dinners” article is remarkably shallow, even by The Hill standards – neglecting to mention that Pell functioned as head of the Vatican Bank, f’rinstance, nor that he also covered up numerous cases of child abuse during his long tenure in the Australian Catholic hierarchy (no mention of Australia at all).
Even Sanders has wearied of spouting all those non-answers.
By the “standards” of the Trump administration Pruitt is the norm, not the abberation he would be in any other White House.
The saddest, most filthy part of this entire exercise is about 38% of Americans are okay with all of it. Racist rube ignorant cracker hick loser jackass pseuoreligious clown fool greedy worthless turds.
Their own book has a lesson in Matthew circa 25:45. Something like: Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me. Then they will go away to eternal punishment . . . . But it’s somehow this weird thing that their book mysteriously didn’t print that one particular page. Times about 50,000,000 of their book(s).
Apropos of things other than this post, I have been trying to resubscribe to Pharyngula for a few years. No luck. Gave up. Suddenly, yesterday, I start receiving posts, but all the links come up 404. I finally succeed in logging-in and Eureka!, here I am. But this is beyond weird. There be ghosts in this machinery.
Don’t forget Trump’s Labor Secretary, Alexander Acosta, a Florida lawyer and former US attorney who helped a rich buddy get the soft treatment and avoid Federal prosecution after pleading guilty to a state charge of soliciting child prostitution. Florida billionaire Jeffrey Epstein paid damages to 40 victims ranging in age from 13 to 17. He spent 1 year in the Palm Beach jail, although most days he was allowed to leave for work or whatever.
> The cheeseheads of Wisconsin might resent that bitter treachery, but he didn’t betray his military colleagues.
Are you saying that he refused to provide evidence that could have lead to a group of murderers being captured? That’s not exactly heroic.
Just be glad you haven’t been watching Illinois politics up close and personal at any time in the last, oh, century. They’ve got BOTH KINDS there: Corrupt Jackasses and corrupt Heffalumps. Sadly, almost without exception: Getting senior “enough” in the respective party hierarchies to get party endorsement at election time has a life-sciences- (not social sciences!) acceptable P-value for one or more of {corruption} {nepotism} {incompetence}… And remember that more than half of Illinois’s post-WW2 governors are convicted felons (regardless of party).
Whether this has had any effect on the way that “outliers” are treated in Illinois politics is left as an exercise for the highly imaginative student.
Personally, I think that Trump is just trying to emulate Chicago and Illinois. He’s trying, but he’s just not there. Yet.
I was scanning through Google News and there was an editorial by someone named Marc Thiessen. Turns out he was a speech writer for George W. Bush.
His editorial was about Haspel, saying she is the most qualified woman for the job of CIA director and therefore should be promoted to that position. Apparently we are just supposed to ignore the fact that she is arguably a war criminal and probably should be in prison.
Gina Haspel said she has a strong moral compass. Maybe so, but it appears to point in the wrong direction. So, apparently, does Thiessen’s.
I watched some of Haspel’s confirmation hearing. There were several times she was asked clear yes-or-no questions and the morally correct answer was either yes or no. Instead, she would answer with a non-sequitur. For example, when asked if she would follow an illegal order given by Trump she said she did not think Trump would give such an order. A “no” was the morally (and legally) correct answer. That she wouldn’t give that answer is deeply troubling. It indicates her real answer was “yes”. She just didn’t want to say it out loud.
And on top of this, they are fast-tracking a lot of young, extreme-right misogynic people for lifetime positions as judges.
Remember the “blue slip stuff they used to block Obama nominees? Now, when Democrats withhold their blue slips, the Republican majority has decided blue slips don’t matter, and they are ramming through their nominees at a fast pace.
It is an orgy of hypocricy by a swarm of maggots wiggling through the cadaver of democracy.
I am referring to the congress republicans, not just the mutants in the administration.
This is America.
Gopher people, surely.
This admin is so scary to me and I am 61 years old. Pence has to go with drump ish.
14: This is Troll Nation.
Thiessen proudly shows this blurb on his own website, quite prominently:
He is a monster.
And he gets a regular paycheck from WaPo. “Liberal media” my ass.
The disturbing thing is the present control of information (Fox news, etc). RT, Al Jazeera, don’t exist for the average voter.
jack16
In the case of RT (and the Sputnik “news agency”), that might be just as well, as both are Russian propaganda outlets. Massively unreliable, other than, perhaps, as a preview of what twittering robots are or will be pushing.
In the case of Al Jazeera English, this not-existing is hugely unfortunate. And it is frequently confused with Al Jazeera Arabic and other bogeys.
Several others, including (but not limited to & not listed in any specific order) France24, the Grauniad, the Irish Times, the BBC, Le Monde, are probably also not-existing — which is also hugely unfortunate.
Instead there is Faux & Kochroach Bros., UnLimited.
According to this report from CNN any American POWs cracked under torture, including John McCain. McCann himself has said this.
According to this CNN report many American POWs cracked under torture, including john mccain
http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-91618
hotspurphd,
Read the small print: “Not verified by CNN.”
That is not a CNN report. It is an unverified “report” (read: opinion piece) by user “14u2env”, which is hosted on a CNN platform.
Also, cracking under torture != torture works. Of course people at some point crack under torture, I don’t think anyone disputes this.
“Traitor” is very specifically defined in the constitution. I believe this was a political necessity. So, legally, most accusations of treason are wrong.
jack16
@jack16 #25, the word “traitor” does not appear anywhere in the US Constitution. You might be thinking of “treason” which is an act not a person.