One thing you have to say for the Republicans is that they present a unified front. They’re horrible, but they know how to “politics” – though, perhaps, they find it easier because many of them don’t seem to actually believe in anything except power and its application.

So, imagine my surprise when the Democrats started kicking one of their more female, and browner, members. It’s probably also points against her because she’s muslim. Democrats are raining shitstorms on Ilhan Omar’s head for saying incendiary and hurtful things that are somehow inappropriate. They can’t be arsed to make public statements like, “Holy shit, that Joe Manchin asshole is a posturing asshole, even for an asshole. Does he really expect anyone to believe what he’s saying?” But they can go our of their busy way to deplore Omar.

I suspect the folks at Politico who wrote this made it convoluted to match the situation. Or, they need to do some thinking about how writing is accomplished. [politico]

Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s leadership team took the unusual step of issuing a statement that both rebuked Omar for her comments and thanked her for later clarifying her remarks — taking a more nuanced approach than the last major uproar over the Minnesota Democrat’s comments on Israel that escalated into a days-long political crisis for her party.

“Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s leadership team” – that actually sounds like Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s non-leadership team. Leadership would be having the courage to actually come out and confront this maybe extremely important situation-like thing directly, if “directly” can be an option in these circumstances. Or something. Stop bullshitting around: if Pelosi has something to say, she should say it. If she has a complaint to make, she should put her Big Senator Pants on and fucking complain. or take Omar someplace quiet and browbeat her. What we’re seeing with the Democrats and their complete failure to rein in their own caucus is that the Democrats are, as usual, acting like a bunch of amateurs compared to the Republicans who will lock-step nod agreement that water isn’t wet and the war in Vietnam was just a vacation that went horribly wrong. I loathe them so much; it should surprise no one that the only Democrats I respect are Tlaib, Omar, and Occasio-Cortez. At least those three will say “Hey, the Republicans just stole the election and all future elections” while the rest of the Democrats wail about their imagined past paradise in which bipartisanship was real and the Republicans played fair. I think that was back around The Civil War.

Alright, so this is what Ilhan Omar said:

“unthinkable atrocities committed by the U.S., Hamas, Israel, Afghanistan, and the Taliban.” 

Obviously that is wrong! The order should be: The US, Israel, Hamas, the Taliban and omit Afghanistan. Afghanistan is just a bunch of people, led by a government (in recent cases, respectively, the US puppet government, the Taliban, the Soviet puppet government, “The Democratic Republic of Afghanistan was the government of Afghanistan between 1978 and 1992 recognised by 8 countries” which was incompetent and required the Soviets to invite themselves in with a great big army to sort everyone out. By the way, that’s exactly what the US did, when the CIA jumped in and deployed a lot of money and special forces behind the “northern alliance” to overthrow the government. Those naughty Soviets! But Omar’s right (except for implying that the people of Afghanistan had any kind of say in events): the US is the foremost fomenter of terrorism, and Israel, Hamas, and the Taliban also use terrorism as a tool. What’s the problem with that statement? Could it be that you cannot be a muslim woman in the US Congress and say anything about Israel that is not effusive butt-kissing?

Omar does not need to apologize or “clarify” for pointing out that Israel’s engaged in terrorism when it bombs civilians in Gaza. The word she should have used was “war crimes” except that would get her censured, by her own side, again – for being perfectly right. Because I’m a bit of a philosopher and enjoy thinking about things, I have to mention that since Omar is perfectly right, that means that Pelosi – excuse me, “Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s leadership team” are in the wrong: they should be thanking Omar for doing her job and speaking truth.

After the dozen Democrats spoke out against her comments, Omar quickly denounced the “harassment & silencing” from her own colleagues.

Who spoke out against her comments? Because anyone who did so is speaking against the truth. I’d like to know who that was, so that my plummeting opinion of the Democrats has a few names to associate with cowardice.

Why didn’t (whoever it was from the media who was maybe there and reported on this) trying to get quotes from those Democrats saying “No. I don’t think the US invasion of Iraq was a bad thing; it was not terrorism. Or “I don’t think that the destruction of Libya was terrorism; in fact it was just fine.” Maybe “Obama’s secretly starting an illegal covert war in Syria wasn’t terrorism because Congress authorized it. Except, it didn’t.” Those things I just said, right there, on the page, are all true – obviously true – which means that, yes, the US is a massive perpetrator of terrorism. Gaza aside, Israel is treating Syria as a free-fire zone and hunting whoever it wants using drones and expensive aircraft given to it by the US. What about that isn’t terrorism?

Terrorism is talking to a bunch of journalists who are pleading over the phone not to have the building they are in, bombed. That is called “negotiating with terrorists” and it didn’t work very well. But, basically, Israel said, “your building is associated with Hamas, it’s going down.” It’s like this local joke:

Two hunters are stalking along a tree-line in rural Pennsylvania, rifles ready. Suddenly someone wearing blaze orange jumps out of the trees ahead of them, waving hands in the air, “Don’t shoot, I’m not a deer.” One of the hunters looks at him for a long moment, then raises his rifle and shoots him right through the heart. The other hunter is horrified, “Oh my god, Bob, you just shot that guy! Didn’t you hear him say he wasn’t a deer?” Bob shrugged, “I thought he said he was a deer.”

It’s terrorism when you get bombs dropped on you if you say “We aren’t Hamas, here” and the Israeli military says, “what? I thought you said you were Hamas.” It’s less funny in that form, though.

But that’s the crazy statement Omar made: that governments and proto-governments use force inappropriately against civilians.

Omar is cunning and smarter than her foes. Her clarification leaves an accusation against Israel and the US hanging in the air:

Omar’s clarification stated that her conversation with Blinken was about “accountability for specific incidents” under investigation by the International Criminal Court: “I was in no way equating terrorist organizations with democratic countries with well-established judicial systems.”

The ICC is not investigating Israel because the US and Israel say the ICC has no jurisdiction and should fuck off and die. Surprisingly, the Taliban and Hamas, expected to be the Bad Guys in the scenario, are remaining mum. And, of course, for the record: the Taliban and Hamas would be horrible terrorists if they managed to kill 500,000 people in Iraq, too. Or, if they bombed big parts of civilian infrastructure in Gaza. I’m sure that Hamas and the Taliban wish they had the power to do that kind of thing, but – they don’t. They barely should make the list as far as terrorists (I’d put England, Germany, France, and Belgium on that list) Hamas and Taliban are nobodies. That’s probably not the clarification Omar was trying to make, though.

Rep. Brad Schneider (D-Ill.), one of the Democrats who had reprimanded Omar in Wednesday’s statement, said Thursday he was “pleased” that Omar heard their concerns about her tweet and issued the clarification and said he hoped that “all can avoid such offhanded statements in the future.”

Now there is a fellow who has placed himself beyond courtesy. You can call that dickhead anything you like as long as it’s not legally defamatory. I.e.: you can say he’s “probably a shit-eater” but don’t say he’s a paedophile unless you have evidence. But, seriously, who is that pustule to be tone-trolling another member of the caucus? No wonder the Republicans look unified and resolute – the democrats have waffle-stompers like Schneider. Now, you may be thinking, “but: he may actually be a decent human being, aren’t you being a bit hard on him?” No, he’s an apologist for war crimes and terrorism, that’s what he is. I really don’t care if he’s said nice things about Black Lives Matter, he just tried to downplay terrorism and war crimes committed by Israel. Why? I don’t know but it’s probably something someone put in the shit some people say he was eating.

“Equating the United States and Israel to Hamas and the Taliban is as offensive as it is misguided,” the 12 Democrats wrote in the statement, adding that “false equivalencies give cover to terrorist groups.”

We have already discussed that, here: the CIA is the world’s largest exporter of terrorism, worldwide. Israel’s not bad either – don’t forget all the Iranian nuclear scientists and researchers like Gerald Bull, who woke up with bullets in their head placed there by Israeli intelligence services. Also, not to get too technical about it, hacking centrifuges and a nuclear reactor in Iran, and crashing them, is a violation of international humanitarian law/Geneva Conventions protocols regarding dangerous forces. And, you know, bombing the shit out of Gaza. The CIA leaves everyone in the dust. Just the Phoenix Program during the Vietnam War is enough to give them the #1 position, but then there’s the School of the Americas, the Contras, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya. Yes, it’s terrorism when the CIA collapses the Libyan government and turns the country into a free-fire zone. It’s terrorism when the US arms Khalifa Hifter and lets him build a personal army to try to take the country over. Hamas, which managed a few bombings and those pathetically stupid missiles, must stare in jaw-dropped admiration at how the US and Israel terrorist when they terrorize. The US is so good at terrorism that it even made Orwellian adjustments to the language so that “Terrorism” has this really convoluted definition that practically says “… except for the US and Israel.” The FBI are a bunch of terrorists, too: their new favorite pastime appears to be trying to talk gomers on Facebook into committing mass murder, so they can arrest them. But, as we know, sometimes the arrest doesn’t happen and instead an FBI undercover agent blows up a church full of Black people. Yes, that is a fact. Here’s another one: during the Church Commission hearings, an FBI Deputy Director said that FBI agents made up 1/4 of the KKK’s membership and the FBI was still having trouble getting traction against the KKK. Can we say that those FBI agents were also terrorists? I think so. And, again, Hamas and the Taliban would stand there, jaws hanging in wonder, because the FBI significantly outnumbers them. Look at the incredible weapons the CIA has – they’re the ones who invented the armed predator drone, by strapping a Hellfire missile onto one of their drones, in a way that the US Army did not have authority or courage to do. The CIA invented the drone-assassination regime that the US has expanded dramatically. In that case, the joke’s on the Taliban because they were the targets for the drones. And all their friends at the wedding.

“Speaker Pelosi’s continued failure to address the issues in her caucus sends a message to the world that Democrats are tolerant of antisemitism and sympathizing with terrorists,” tweeted House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy.

Speaker Pelosi’s continued tolerance of a Kevin McCarthy shows that even a soggy potato chip can be a democrat and that Speaker Pelosi won’t publicly take up the club and defend truth. It’s not antisemitism to say that Israel pulls that same hinky shit as the CIA does, it’s maybe anti-CIAianism, which is a totally moral and legitimate political stance. In fact, as I argued above, being pro-CIA means you are a horrible, immoral, sack of shit. Being pro– Israel, well, we’ve got two sacks apparently.

I’m not interested in giving strategic advice to Hamas or the Taliban but if I were, I’d be telling them that every time the US or Israel calls them terrorists, they should post a brief description of some massive crime committed by the CIA. “Oh, you don’t like our shitty rockets that we shoot at Israel? That’s because we don’t have B-52s and can’t hold our own Operation Linebacker II” (the bombing of Hanoi) “God, you people are stupid,” concluded the Hamas spokesperson.

Democratic leaders ultimately crafted a resolution condemning hate speech in all forms, indirectly rebuking Omar — a move that infuriated several Jewish Democrats who wanted to condemn her directly.

Missing from the picture is where the Democratic leaders crafted a resolution condemning terrorism and stopped tacking another $30 billion to the pentagon budget, in a display of bipartisan enthusiasm, every year. What do they think that money is going to be spent doing? Hint: it starts with a ‘T’.

Oh, and, open comment to writers at Politico: this is not a “political crisis” it’s called “a tempest in a tea-pot” or maybe “a fart in a hurricane.” It’s insignificant bullshit and Politico is insignificant bullshit for not calling it what it is. Just once I want to see an article like: “Democrats take time off their busy schedule failing to protect civil rights and voting rights, to unify for a few minutes in order to criticize one of their own for telling an unpleasant truth. Then yawn and go back to business as usual.”