Imagine That You're Marco Rubio...

Marco Rubio: Moving Target

Imagine, if you will, Gentle Reader, that you’re Marco Rubio.  You’re a rather mendacious little weasel (as usual, Curmie apologizes to actual members of the genus Mustela), but your defining characteristic has become your sycophancy. 

Back in 2012, Curmie, though he disagreed with you far more often than not, allowed for the possibility that, unlike virtually all other leading Republicans, you just might be “both sane and intelligent.”  When you were seeking the GOP nomination for President in 2016, you accurately described Donald Trump as a “conman” who has “spent his entire career sticking it to the little guy,” and whose rhetoric is reminiscent of “third-world strongmen.”  You said that you’d promised to support the Republican nominee in 2016, but “it’s getting harder every day.”

But then you didn’t get the nomination; Trump did.  And, choosing expediency over integrity, you re-invented yourself as a MAGA flag-bearer.  After casually breaking your promise to return to private life if you didn’t get the presidential nomination, you had a pretty easy life, cruising to re-election in both 2016 and 2022.  You could almost certainly could have continued in the Senate for another couple of decades at the very least: a sort of Mitch McConnell without even having to be quite as actively evil.

For reasons Curmie fails to understand, however, you chose to trade that comfortable future, along with the last vestiges of your self-respect, to align yourself with Dear Leader, a feckless buffoon who is the perfect storm of ignorance, xenophobia, malevolence, prevarication, and hubris.  To be fair, you were far from the worst cabinet-level appointment: with Bondi, Gabbard, and Noem now gone, that dubious distinction is pretty much down to two combatants: Robert Kennedy Jr. and Pete Hegseth, neither of whom is remotely qualified to work for, let alone head, their respective agencies.

Unfortunately, those years you’d spent on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee may have been more of a hindrance than an asset when you were expected to carry out the orders of an incompetent narcissist.  You knew that what he wanted in terms of policy was idiotic and what he wanted from you wasn’t your experience, much less any claim to expertise.  He wanted yet another yes-man, someone to tell him his every absurd utterance was the stuff of brilliance.  He didn’t want an advisor; he wanted a minion.

So, there you were, embarrassing yourself on an almost daily basis: you were left trying to justify this administration’s serious violations of international law, its inane and vacillating tariff policies, and the not-so-veiled threats against some of our nation’s staunchest allies.  You came off like a cringing houseplant in that White House meeting with Volodymyr Zelenskyy because, no doubt, that’s what you were told to do.  You knew better, but you couldn’t seem to muster even the modest amount of courage it would take to rein in 47’s pompous and puerile bluster.

And what did you achieve by all the bowing and scraping?  Certainly not loyalty; that’s a one-way street in Trumpistan.  Dear Leader expects servile fidelity to him rather than to the Constitution or the citizenry, from everyone around him.  But reciprocating that allegiance?  Who are you kidding?  The Trump administration is nothing if not an organized crime syndicate; you can’t go a week without reading of another case of favors granted in return for… erm… financial largesse (generally in seven figures).  On rare occasions, criminals will get pardons or commutations if doing so either helps 47 politically or is so outrageous that it demonstrates his power.  Usually, though, it’s just a monetary bribe, and Rubio’s net worth is barely over $1 million: nowhere near enough, in other words.

Any normal person with even a below-average ability to read people and the slightest touch of self-preservation would have avoided the Trump administration like the proverbial plague.  Marco Rubio may say and do profoundly stupid things on a regular basis, but, unlike his boss, he’s not a blithering idiot.  He knew better than to trust Dear Leader, but he did so, anyway.

The one-sidedness of that relationship was never more obvious than in the Colossal Catering Container Caper.  Details are sketchy and sometimes contradictory, but a few things seem to be pretty clear.  After the NATO summit in Ankara, Türkiye last month, there was apparently reason to believe that there might be an attempt on Trump’s life by the Iranians.  Remember them, Gentle Reader?  The folks whose military capabilities have been utterly annihilated so many times in recent weeks that Curmie has long since lost count?

Oh, and the intelligence report about the potential attack came not from the US military or the CIA, who perceived only the usual bellicosity and were skeptical of the information, but from Israel, who certainly would have no reason to increase the tensions between Iran and the Trump administration, right?  😉 Still, an abundance of caution in such matters is reasonable, and Curmie is not going to criticize the extra protection in general terms.  The specifics are another matter.  We’ll get there in a moment.

Exactly why it was decided that Trump should not be on board Air Force One is unclear: there are conflicting reports about the plane’s defenses.  What we do know is that the President was sneaked off that plane and taken via catering container to a nearby military jet on which he and a handful of other people left the country.

And then Air Force One took off, with dozens of staffers and journalists on board!  Had there actually been an attack, then those people would surely have perished.  Here’s the take of Joe Lockhart, who served as White House press secretary to President Clinton during their 2000 trip to Islamabad: 

They just didn’t seem to give a second thought to anybody but the president and the few people who were with him.  We went out of our way to make sure the maximum number of people, especially civilians, were protected and not human shields. They didn’t even think about it. And to me, that’s the big difference.

It’s reasonable to assume that the misdirection was initiated by the Secret Service or the military or whoever, but at the very least, Dear Leader must have signed off on the plan.  It certainly fits with everything we know about his personality. 

No particularly strenuous mental calisthenics are required to imagine that 47 would relish the idea of sacrificing the press corps, especially those who had the audacity to ask pertinent questions he couldn’t answer without telling an obvious lie.  He saw nothing wrong with sending American servicemen and -women into harm’s way in a war of choice he started because Bibi Netanhayu told him to, with bombing Iranian schoolgirls and Venezuelan fishermen, with shooting Renee Good and Alex Pretti (among others), with canceling US-Aid programs that would have saved literally millions of lives, with… well, you can recite the litany as easily as Curmie can, Gentle Reader.  So why would he care about journalists, or his own staffers, for that matter?  Yeah, he’d probably miss Stephen Miller, but all things considered it sounded like a good deal.

Of course, the stratagem has its defenders: anything to protect the President, and all that.  Curmie has no issue with the deception, but there’s an easy way to avoid putting all those other people at risk.  Start with exactly what happened: sneaking Trump away from Air Force One.  Wait until that military plane has taken off and the President is out of danger.  Announce that there was an issue with Air Force One and it would remain on the ground until that situation was fixed, but it was important that Trump depart as quickly as possible (make up a reason), so he was taken to a military jet and is already in the air (or in the UK, as the case may be).  The target was specifically Trump, apparently, so there’s no apparent threat to the passengers still on what ultimately became the decoy plane.  Boom (or, actually, no boom): problem solved.

Curmie does not fancy himself a strategic genius, but the solution does seem pretty obvious.  If you’re going to lie, anyway, at least do it in a way that achieves your primary objective while also reducing the risk to dozens of other people.  Duh.

All of this leads us back to Marco Rubio.  There’s a lot of chatter of late about Karoline Leavitt (Bullshit Barbie) leaving her position as Press Secretary the day after finding out that she was one of those that Dear Leader would be perfectly willing to sacrifice for his own safety.  But other than her rather impressive ability to tell outrageous lies without flinching, she’s kind of a nobody.  And she’s young, blonde, attractive, and unprincipled: she’ll have a job at Fox News whenever she wants one.

Little Marco is a different story.  He actually gave something up to be part of this administration, only to be used as potential target practice: not a comfortable position.  What’s worse: those accompanying Trump out of Türkiye included 47’s “executive assistant” Natalie Harp, deputy chief of staff Dan Scavino, director of Oval Office operations Walt Nauta… and Pete Hegseth.  Yes, Dear Leader was willing to sacrifice the only qualified person in his administration to save a drunken, philandering, bloviating incompetent. 

It’s gotta be tough to be Marco Rubio about now.

Dear Leader's Latest Vanity Endeavor

How telling is it that they’re either too stupid or too lazy
to use the right damned font?

It’s still the Gulf of Mexico.  It’s still the Department of Defense.  It’s still the Kennedy Center.  When we are finally rid of the Sociopath-in-Chief, these titles, at least, can return to normalcy with some dispatch.  It will take longer to recover from the crippling blows to the country’s international reputation, the exploitation of the poor to benefit a handful of corrupt billionaires, or, perhaps most problematically, the willingness of far too many Americans from SCOTUS to Congresscritters to everyday citizens to let him get away with this shit.

The latest exploit of Curmie’s least favorite narcissist, as you probably know, Gentle Reader, was to arbitrarily and illegally re-name the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts after himself.  Oh, sure, he didn’t actually do so alone; his hand-picked gaggle of sycophants the Kennedy Center board did so, presumably although not provably at his behest.  And, to be fair, he didn’t totally co-opt the name; he just gave himself top billing.  As one does.

Whatever you may think of their respective presidencies, Gentle Reader, Mr. Kennedy was a patron of the arts; Mr. Trump is a patron of Mr. Trump.  Kennedy was assassinated before the founding of the National Endowment for the Arts, but he certainly set things in motion for that agency to exist.  The White House Historical Society (an independent agency, or Trump’s Ministry of Truth would have scrubbed their website by now) writes that:

President John F. Kennedy and First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy’s advocacy for the arts endures as a vital part of their White House legacy. From 1961 to 1963, the White House became a focal point for the arts and cultural engagement. The Kennedys hosted numerous concerts and performances and infused the Executive Mansion and the country with the same vitality, youth, and idealism that followed them on their journey to the White House.

That’s a little purple, but essentially accurate.

By contrast, Mr. Trump shows no indication of ever having read a book (let alone of the poetry which JFK adored), and apparently believes that mediocrities like Sylvester Stallone and KISS are worthy recipients of Kennedy Center honors.  The most outstanding artist of this year’s recipients, Michael Crawford, is a native Briton living in New Zealand, and reportedly received the recognition because Phantom of the Opera was Dear Leader’s favorite musical: i.e., not for a lifetime of outstanding work, just because DJT liked a show he was in.  (Sigh.)  For what it’s worth, although Curmie isn’t a particular fan of the genres represented by George Strait or Gloria Gaynor, he does not object to their being honored.  

When GOP lapdogs Congress voted to name the Center’s opera house after Melania, Curmie responded thus: “Naming literally anything after a vulgar trophy wife known primarily for posing for some soft-core porn is beyond laughable.  Remember, this is the couple who broke tradition by not attending the Kennedy Center Awards during 45’s term.  ‘Appreciation of the arts,’  my ass.” This is worse, because although it’s unlikely that many Republicans would actually defy Dear Leader on one of his vain and petulant whims, this time they haven’t yet bothered to go through that process.  But the signage on the building has already been changed.  

Of course, Designated Liar Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt proclaimed the decision to have been “unanimous.”  That assertion has been called into question by JFK’s grandson, Jack Schlossberg.  He tweeted that “Microphones were muted and the board meeting and vote NOT unanimous.”  This was confirmed by Rep. Joyce Beatty, who posted that “The White House claims the vote to rename the Kennedy Center was ‘unanimous.’ That is false. I was muted on the call and denied the opportunity to speak or register my opposition. That is not consensus. That is censorship.”  Actually, it’s worse than that.  It’s about yet another lie emanating from this utterly corrupt administration.

Well, of course, that’s only true if a Democratic Rep and a Democratic candidate are telling the truth.  That’s more likely than that Leavitt is doing so, but it’s well short of a certainty. Pols are pols, after all.  And Schlossberg’s contention that “Trump explicitly motivated to act by JACK FOR NEW YORK.  Our campaign represents everything Trump can’t stand or defeat,” shall we say, at the very least borders on the vainglorious. 

But no rational person believes that the Kennedy Center ought to be re-named in honor of an anti-intellectual, narcissistic, vulgarian like Donald Trump.  A unanimous decision or not, approved by Congress or not, this is beyond embarrassing… and it’s the new reality, because we sure as hell can’t count on SCOTUS to do their jobs.  Jolly.

Trying to Parse the Kilmar Abrego-Garcia Case

A rally in Baltimore last week.

Curmie is a skeptical lad, especially when it comes to politics.  Experience suggests that proclamations from inveterate liars like Donald Trump are to be treated as mendacious until proven to be true, but that doesn’t mean that the opposition doesn’t stoop to a little… erm… misrepresentation from time to time.

The saga of Kilmar Abrego-Garcia (hereafter, KA-G) is a case in point.  In one sense, whether he is the gang member and terrorist the administration would have us believe or the tax-paying family man the left would like to portray him as is utterly irrelevant.  ICE agents knew he was, at the time of his arrest, a legal resident of the US.  They also knew that a federal judge had ruled that he should never be deported to El Salvador, even as a free man when he arrived there.  They arrested him and sent him to (let’s call it what it is) a Salvadoran concentration camp, anyway.  “Administrative error.”  Oops!  (By the way, the DOJ lawyer who admitted that there had been an “administrative error” was suspended and subsequently fired.)

Whatever KA-G’s character or his affiliations (or lack of them), this case is about due process.  That’s it.  As Senator Chris Van Hollen said on ABC’s “This Week,” “I am not defending the man. I'm defending the rights of this man to due process.”  The Senator took a much-publicized trip to El Salvador, where he was eventually able to meet with KA-G.  Was that grandstanding?  Of course, but, unlike the disgusting display of Kristi Noem and a gaggle of Republican pols, it actually had a purpose other than just showing off.

The administration would like to claim that supporters of the basic principle of due process, guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment to everyone (not just citizens), want to import foreign-born terrorists.  No, actually, the terrorists in this scenario are the ironically named Justice Department, ICE, DHS, Trump, Vance, Rubio, Noem, and their apologists.  Every accusation does indeed appear to be a confession.

The Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the administration should “facilitate” KA-G’s return.  The administration first tried to pretend the ruling was in their favor, then pretty much ignored the court order, then openly defied it.  The administration is clearly in the wrong, and they don’t want to take responsibility for their fuck-up.  There’s no news there for any administration, especially this one.

The procedural violations are sufficient to rally to KA-G’s defense, and no honest and rational American would say otherwise.  Yes, Curmie just called the entire Trump administration and the overwhelming majority of GOP pols dishonest and/or irrational.  On second thought, they might not all be corrupt or stupid, just craven.  Moving on…

The facts that KA-G was denied due process, that he was deported in violation of a court order, that (unlike POTUS) he has never been convicted of literally any crime: these matter.  What they don’t do is paint him as an entirely innocent victim in ethical as opposed to legal terms.  In other words, if the administration had followed the rules and gone through the appropriate processes, incarcerating KA-G might have been the appropriate outcome.  (Sending him, or indeed anyone, to a Salvadoran Gulag is, of course, a different matter, one which Curmie chooses to sidestep at the moment.)

So… what are the actual facts, as best we can understand them?  Curmie is going to try to tease things out in chronological order.  Here goes…

We know that KA-G entered the country illegally as a teenager in March of 2012.  That’s about the only part of this saga about which there is no disagreement or need for contextualization.  He says he walked across the border near McAllen, Texas.

In 2019, he was detained for “loitering” outside a Home Depot in Hyattsville, Maryland.  Local police identified him as a member of the Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) gang.  Here’s where we get into murkier waters.  The “Gang Field Interview Sheet” claims that the hoodie he was wearing and the fact that he was wearing a Chicago Bulls hat meant that he was “a member in good standing with the MS-13.”  There was also the corroboration of what one presumes was a confidential informant.

Curmie suspects that there may have been a few people in the country who weren’t in a gang but sported that Bulls cap, although according to one actual expert on the gang, “at some point, the Chicago Bulls logo with the horns became a stand-in of sorts for the MS-13's devil horns symbol.”  The details of the hoodie—“with rolls of money covering the eyes, ears and mouth of the presidents on the separate denominations“—may or may not be “indicative of the Hispanic gang culture.”  Is there a possibility that those sartorial choices at least suggested what the cops said they meant?  Yes.  Is there prima facie evidence to support that conclusion?  No.

Ah, but there’s the testimony of that presumed witness, “a proven and reliable source of information,” who said that Abrego-Garcia was an “active member of MS-13 with the Western Clique… with the rank of ‘Chequeo.’”  But, and as they said in burlesque, it’s a big but: Chequeo is the term for an MS-13 recruit who has not yet been initiated, so not an “active member.”  Oh, and the Western Clique operates out of New York, where KA-G says he’s never lived.  (It would be easy enough to check.)  And, of course, the cop who filled out the form was suspended for misconduct shortly thereafter and subsequently fired.  Other than those… ahem… minor details, the bust and its consequences seem totally kosher.

Anyway, the case went to an Immigration judge, who relied on this allegedly legitimate informant, and decided that there was enough evidence to support KA-G’s gang membership.  Another judge agreed.  At this level—remember, Gentle Reader, this is not a trial—the court, according to David Bier of the Cato Institute, “takes at face value any evidence that the government provides. It is not assessing its underlying validity at that stage.”

KA-G was therefore denied bail as a flight risk.  It’s important to note here that in such cases, the burden of proof shifts.  Denial of bail in these situations happens not because the authorities can prove that a foreign national is either a danger to society or a flight risk, but because the defendant cannot prove that he is not.  

During this time, KA-G applied for asylum so he would not be sent back to El Salvador.  This was denied.  Again, the reason is important: the application was filed too late.  What happened instead was the next-best thing: a “withholding of removal,” based on KA-G’s “well-founded” fear of persecution by Barrio-18, MS-13’s most notorious rival gang.  Does this provide further evidence that KA-G is an MS-13 gangster?  Maybe.  Or perhaps the whole business really was, as he claims, about extortions and threats against his mother’s pupusa shop.

Again, it’s time for some clarification.  The “withholding of removal” order means, first of all, that KA-G was in the country legally thereafter.  He could still be deported if the government chose to do so, but not to El Salvador, and certainly not to a Salvadoran Gulag.  It also means that the Department of Homeland Security had to sign off that he presented no “danger to the security of the United States.”  Lemme think… who was President in 2019?  It seems to have been that bellicose fat guy with the spray tan and the bad toupée.

It also means that KA-G had to have an annual check-in with immigration officials, including twice in the previous Trump administration; they proceeded without incident.  No new evidence has been presented, which, if nothing else, makes the present-tense accusations of recent weeks (see below) even a little more suspect.

OK, so now we jump ahead a couple of years to 2021. KA-G is now a husband and a father.  His wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, claimed he had attacked her, and a temporary restraining order was indeed issued.  She decided not to take the matter further; there was no formal charge of domestic battery or the like, and the case never as much as went to trial.  The couple sought counseling and seems to have completely reconciled.  She is certainly supporting him now, and, by the way, has repeatedly and emphatically denied that her husband is a member of MS-13.

Spousal abuse is not a good thing.  Indeed, the DHS tweet that KA-G is “not a sympathetic figure” has a point (sort of), even if commenting at all beyond releasing the court documents was tacky in the extreme and deceitful in its claim that he is an “MS-13 gang member.”  (In any actual professional organization, whoever posted that tweet would be fired.  Not so with DHS, of course.)  Notice, also, the present tense of that claim.  For the tweet to be other than slanderous, DHS would need actual evidence that KA-G is currently functioning as a member of MS-13.  Show us, then.

That said, KA-G was not, as Trumpian Puppet Vice President Vance declared, a “convicted MS-13 gang member.”  Unlike the proclamations of DHS, Karoline Leavitt (a.k.a. Bullshit Barbie), and Trump himself that KA-G is a gang member, Vance adds the word “convicted,” thereby changing speculation masquerading as fact to… (what’s that phrase again?  Oh, yes…) an outright lie.  He has a law degree from Yale and doesn’t know there’s no conviction without a trial?  On the contrary, he’s just a mendacious attack dog.  (Curmie intends no disrespect to literal attack dogs who happen to be Dobermanns or pit bulls or Rottweilers or whatever, and apologizes for linking them in any way to refuse like Mr. Vance.)

And so we move ahead to December of 2022, when KA-G was pulled over in what was initially a routine traffic stop by the Tennessee Highway Patrol.  The trooper noticed that there were eight men in the vehicle, but no luggage; he suspected the possibility of human trafficking.  All of the passengers gave the same home address as KA-G’s.  Yeah, that might raise an eyebrow.

That, plus the fact that KA-G was apparently driving with an expired “Limited Term Temporary” license, led to a little checking with other agencies, and that immigration judge’s ruling came to light.  There’s some confusion here, as one report says that KA-G’s name was found on a terrorist watch list; another says it didn’t, but that of one of the passengers did.

Anyway, after nearly two hours, the trooper released KA-G without even a traffic ticket, apparently at the behest of the FBI.  KA-G’s story that he was collecting prospective workers in Texas and taking them to Maryland seems to check out, which of course doesn’t mean that this wasn’t, in fact, a human trafficking operation.  The first reporting of this incident came in the Tennessee Star, a right-leaning publication which sort of hints at some kind of impropriety on the part of “Biden’s FBI.”  Exactly why the FBI would care is unclear.  There would seem to be no political advantage to be gained.  Bribery?  Possible, of course, but it would have to be massive.  ‘Tis, as they say, a puzzlement.

Anyway, rightly or wrongly, there was no arrest, let alone conviction.  Could this have been the prompt for the idiot Vance’s claim that KA-G wasn’t a good father because he’d been stopped for speeding?  Maybe.  And whereas suspicion about that traffic stop is reasonable, it’s well within the bounds of possibility that the FBI simply told the trooper that no, there’s no probable cause to hold him.

Bullshit Barbie has, of course, labelled KA-G a terrorist (among other things) because someone, Curmie isn’t sure who, accused him of that.  Well, if he’s guilty because of that, then BB’s boss is similarly guilty of treason, conspiracy to commit kidnapping, election interference, fraud, grand larceny, racial and sexual discrimination, slander, bribery, and rape.  Oh, and murdering his ex-wife.  That doesn't even count his actual felony convictions.  How anyone can take her, or indeed anyone in this administration, seriously is beyond Curmie’s feeble ken.

It could well be that KA-G really is a bad guy.  That does not mean that snatching him in the presence of his young son with threats to send the lad into foster care is anything but abhorrent.  Or that shipping him off to a Salvadoran hellhole in intentional defiance of a court order is legal, let alone legitimate.  Or that refusal to abide by a Supreme Court ruling is anything less than an impeachable offense.  The fact that there are too few GOP Congresscritters with the integrity of a hungry cobra or the backbone of overcooked linguini to actually take action doesn’t change their responsibility to do so.

Once again, had the administration followed legal procedure, detained KA-G on suspicion of membership on what Trump had by now declared a terrorist organization, provided due process, and, after appropriate opportunities for KA-G to defend himself, still found him guilty, it would have been legal to send him to El Salvador.  Not appropriate, not ethical, but legal.

Of course, the administration’s claim that they’re powerless to get him back, completely undercut by their (alas, successful) efforts to release the undeniably despicable Andrew Tate from a Romanian prison, is just downright silly.  One phone call from Trump would do it.  But, petulant toddler that he is, he just doesn’t want to.  Na-na na-na boo-boo.

Finally, there’s the pièce de résistance (Curmie seems drawn to that word “résistance” of late), the clearest example of the inability of the Emperor of Trumpistan to justify his actions, the most obvious demonstration of just how desperate he is to avoid accountability.  In an absurd and futile attempt to further smear KA-G, Donald Trump himself released a photo are what he purported to be tattoos on KA-G’s knuckles.

Curmie detected the aroma of bovine fecal matter immediately upon hearing about the story; if such a photo actually existed, it would have been released weeks ago in an attempt to quell the backlash.  But he hadn’t seen the photo and decided to check it out.  The photoshopping job on that image is so outrageously inept that Curmie, who’s used Photoshop only a couple of times a decade or so ago, has got 20 bucks that says he could create a more believable fake in about five minutes. 

As Curmie wrote on his FB page, anyone who believes in the authenticity of that image has already sent money to that Nigerian prince and is wondering why he hasn’t replied.  The good news here is that in his attempt to make points, Trump overwhelming overplayed his hand.  He’s a buffoon, and he proved it so convincingly that even the MAGA minions have got to be shaking their heads in disbelief.

So here we are.  Up to date.  Or maybe there’s yet another development that Curmie hasn’t seen yet.  The good news is that the illegality, the arrogance, and the racism of this administration are on public display.  The bad news is that GOP pols still pretend not to see what’s right in front of them.

La la, how the life goes on.

You will note, Gentle Reader, that as has happened once or twice in the past, Curmie hasn’t linked every fact or quote.  He’ll do that in his scholarship and usually, but not always, here.  So here’s a list of a few links that contributed to this piece: An early report from NBC.  General overviews from the BBC, Yahoo, and PolitiFact.  The Gang Field Interview Sheet from 2019, the denial of an appeal to be released on bail in that case, information about the cop’s suspension and firing from the Daily Voice and USA Today.  The 4^th Circuit’s ruling, SCOTUS documents on the administration’s attempt to overturn the 4^th circuit decision, and more from the 4^th Circuit.  DHS’s tweet.  Two stories about that traffic stop in Tennessee: from The Tennessee Star and WSMV.  Stories about that stupid photoshopped image of KA-G’s “tattoos” from Politifact, Newsweek, and The Latin Times.  Info on Sen. Val Hollen’s appearance on “This Week.” 

Signaling Incompetence

Trying to keep up with the latest developments in the recent national security fuck-up for the ages is a bit like trying to drink from a fire hose.  There are new revelations—or suspected revelations, at the very least—appearing at an alarming rate.

What we know at this point is troubling enough.  A host of the people who are charged with defending the country proved themselves to be not merely “not ready for the big leagues” (hey, baseball season is upon us; gotta show some respect), but probably not worthy of sitting on the bench for the high school JV team. 

We know that this collection of absurdly unqualified hacks defied Pentagon regulations and used a commercial product, Signal, to plan an imminent attack on Houthi forces in Yemen.  We know that somehow Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, got added to the group chat by Mike Waltz, the national security advisor (!). 

We know that there was concern, probably more than mere concern, that Russia and perhaps China could hack Signal virtually at will.  So why use it?  The most likely reason is that messages there disappear without a trace after 30 days.  Shades of the self-destructing tapes on the old “Mission: Impossible” series.  Alas, there was no Jim Phelps or Rollin Hand or Cinnamon Carter in this group: just a gaggle of boneheads getting off on causing the deaths of a few dozen people, a couple of whom might even be considered enemies.  Note: the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was not included.  Neither was POTUS.  Is Curmie the only one who thinks that’s odd?

There are other possibilities, of course, but all are ultimately worse than concluding that everyone included in that chat is an idiot.  What if this was a variation on a game of chicken: who can flout the laws and national security the most?  What if they wanted the allegedly top secret discussion to be hacked?  Curmie isn’t saying, as has been alleged, that President Trump and Director of National Security Tulsi Gabbard are Russian assets, but as someone (Curmie regrets that he forgets who) wondered, what would they do differently if they were?

Mistakes do happen, so perhaps Mike Waltz is just sloppy, as opposed to utterly incompetent.  Curmie remembers asking a student why he hadn’t sent a required email.  The student responded that he had done so, and included a copy of his message… which had been sent to someone in a totally different part of campus.  Ah, but his name was pretty close to Curmie’s, and the student looked online instead of on the course syllabus for my e-address.  Thing is, though, matters of national security are of somewhat greater importance than asking for an extension on a due date or whatever it was.  And blunders of this magnitude are—or should be—firing offenses, irrespective of circumstances.

There’s one other possibility, and this would also account for why Goldberg was in on the chat: it was a clumsy attempt at a trap.  Bait him into releasing the information before the raid, and now he’s guilty of a serious federal crime.  Of course, Goldberg is neither an idiot nor a felon—a description that doesn’t apply to many of those we assume were the intended participants in that chat—so he waited until the strike was over before releasing his initial story. 

It’s also interesting to note that the various denials that the chat contained classified information work in some ways to Goldberg’s favor.  On the one hand, if that wasn’t classified information, it sure as hell should have been, so Hegseth et al. look like the inept buffoons they are.  But if that information really had been classified, then the government could claim that Goldberg released classified documents: a serious federal offense.  But all the players insist that there was nothing classified there, so they’re the first witnesses for the defense should a prosecution be threatened.

We also know that the chat included all sorts of details about the planned raid: times, places, ordinance, even the name of a covert CIA operative.  We therefore know that at least three of the members of that chat—Secretary of Defense Hegseth, CIA Director John Radcliffe, and Gabbard—have already lied to Congress about what was contained in those communications. 

Oh, and FBI Director Kash Patel wasn’t in on the group chat, but he couldn’t let other people have all the fun, so he lied to Congress, too.  These are facts, not opinions or even interpretations.  Those folks knowingly and intentionally lied, going all in on what turned out to be a losing hand: betting that Goldberg wouldn’t release a transcript. 

Interestingly, if the Trumpsters just acknowledged their mistake, apologized profusely, swore off Signal (and meant it), promised it wouldn’t happen again, etc., Goldberg might just have taken the journalistic win and called it good.  But, as egotistical bullies generally do, they accused him of lying.  So he felt compelled to prove that he wasn’t.  And… boom.

Of course, none of the insiders were quite as ostentatiously mendacious as White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt (a.k.a. Bullshit Barbie), but it’s her job to lie, and Curmie supposes that it’s ultimately a good thing that she’s so horrible at it that no one with an IQ above room temperature could possibly believe anything she says. 

The best she could come up with was proclaiming that The Atlantic had “admitted” that there weren’t “war plans” in the conversation.  That’s because the headline accompanying the release of some of the transcript referred to “attack plans.”  Seriously, that’s the argument.  When you’re desperate enough, you say some pretty strange things, especially if you’re a not terribly bright spokesperson for a narcissistic administration run by someone given to both delusions and prevarication.

Technically, it’s true that there weren’t “war plans,” as there’s no declaration of war.  There wasn’t for what we all refer to as the Vietnam War, either, but anyone who transmitted plans for a raid on Hanoi over an insecure line would have been court-martialed or worse.  But Curmie digresses.

What matters here is not the fuck-up itself, or, rather, not just the fuck-up itself, but the aftermath.  There is no doubt that literally everyone who participated in that chat prior to the attack (except Goldberg, of course) should be out of a job immediately: Vance impeached, the others fired.  Oh, and for the MAGA folks who are screaming about Hilary Clinton’s private server: yes, she should have been fired, too.  Willfully disobeying rules when lives are at stake: inexcusable.  End of discussion. 

Oh, and also on the probably-should-be-fired list is Katie Arrington, the Deputy Chief Information Officer for Cybersecurity and Chief Information Security Officer at the Department of Defense.  (Good Lord, what a title!)  She is apparently responsible for not merely allowing Signal to be installed on government devices, but insisting on it.  To be fair, it appears that she may have been referring only to unclassified communications: hence the “probably” in the first sentence of this paragraph.  

There have been murmurs, but little more than that, by a handful of Republican pols that perhaps this level of incompetence (or worse) should not go unpunished.  Curmie awaits the chorus of these faux patriots demanding accountability.  He fears there will be a rather long wait.

(You will note, Gentle Reader, that Curmie has not followed his usual practice of providing links in the foregoing commentary.  Instead, he suggests a few suggestions for further reading (he warns you, it’s a rabbit hole): a précis of relevant DoD regulations, Jennifer Griffin of Fox News (!) outlining some of the semantics concerning terms like “war plans” and “classified,” Jeffrey Goldberg saying in a interview that the CIA Director (!) put the name of a covert agent into an insecure chat, a Google Threat Intelligence Group post from February describing Signal as a “high-value target for adversaries seeking to intercept sensitive information,” the NSA policy on the use of Signal, Fred Wellman on Arrington’s role in all this, a report in Der Spiegel that contact data including the mobile phone numbers and even passwords of Waltz, Gabbard, and Hegseth are freely available on the internet, 10-year veteran Andrew Mercado’s take on accountability, and one of the incomparable Heather Cox Richardson’s essays on this whole business.  There’s more, of course, but perhaps you might have a life to lead…)

On the Aftermath of the Budde Homily

Let’s talk about Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde’s homily last week, or rather the responses to it.  You will recall, Gentle Reader, that she closed her remarks with the following:

Let me make one final plea, Mr. President. Millions have put their trust in you. As you told the nation yesterday, you have felt the providential hand of a loving God. In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now. There are transgender children in both Republican and Democrat families who fear for their lives.

And the people who pick our crops and clean our office buildings; who labor in our poultry farms and meat-packing plants; who wash the dishes after we eat in restaurants and work the night shift in hospitals—they may not be citizens or have the proper documentation, but the vast majority of immigrants are not criminals. They pay taxes, and are good neighbors. They are faithful members of our churches, mosques and synagogues, gurdwara, and temples.

Have mercy, Mr. President, on those in our communities whose children fear that their parents will be taken away. Help those who are fleeing war zones and persecution in their own lands to find compassion and welcome here. Our God teaches us that we are to be merciful to the stranger, for we were once strangers in this land.

May God grant us all the strength and courage to honor the dignity of every human being, speak the truth in love, and walk humbly with one another and our God, for the good of all the people of this nation and the world.

Curmie has three other essays partially written, and he acknowledges both that he’s late to this particular party and that he could never be as informed or articulate as Hayden Vaughn or Mark Sandlin or Tom Christofferson.  Rex Huppke’s snark is pretty good, too.  Seriously, please read those posts.  All that said, Curmie wants to follow up on a couple of ideas.

First, obviously, is that Bishop Budde owes no one an apology for suggesting that <checks notes> “Blessed are the merciful” (that’s Matthew 5:7, for those of you keeping score at home).  Nor does her Church.  The closest her critics can come to a rational argument is that she shouldn’t have addressed her closing remarks directly to the newly-installed President Trump. 

To this criticism, Curmie offers the following rebuttal: 1). It is her right, indeed her responsibility, to inject an ethical perspective into the proceedings.  Representing the teachings of the faith the new President purports to believe in doesn’t seem out of line. 2). The ceremony was part of the inauguration festivities.  We know that because Trump was in a church.  (Curmie hasn’t attended a regular church service—as opposed to, say, a wedding—in years, either.  But Curmie isn’t a hypocritical billionaire hawking autographed Bibles, either.) 

But let’s move on to the reactions of three people in particular.  The first, of course, is the POTUS himself.  (That’s an acronym for Petulant Obnoxious Toddler of Unusual Size, right?)  You can read his screed in its entirety here, if you must.  By now, though, you probably know the salient points: that she’s a “so-called bishop,” a “Radical Left hard line Trump hater,” that she was “was nasty in tone, and not compelling or smart,” and “the service was a very boring and uninspiring one.”  Yadda yadda yadda.

Actually, of course, she was simply doing her job, suggesting that the most powerful man in the world (but don’t tell Elon that) might show some mercy.  She didn’t say anything political, strictly speaking, at all.  That Trump would take offense at an indirect suggestion that he might pay at least a little attention to one of the central tenets of the religion of which he purports to be a member tells us all we need to know.

But we expect such brattiness from Trump, so it practically doesn’t register.  And, by now, we probably ought to expect even greater inanity from Representative Mike Collins of Georgia, who is primed to give his fellow Georgia Congresscritter Marjorie Taylor Greene a run for her money if she wants to retain her title of Biggest Idiot in American Politics.  This is the same yahoo who claimed that Joe Biden was behind that “assassination attempt” on Trump that Curmie still isn’t convinced was anything but a poorly directed community theatre production.

Now this blithering buffoon has posted that New Jersey-born Bishop Budde “should be added to the deportation list.”  Collins is, of course, too stupid to realize that in his zeal to protect the Tangerine Tribblehead that he’s undercutting what few philosophical underpinnings there are to the ongoing mass deportations (but notably, not from blue states with the exception of notoriously liberal Austin, Texas).  

If you want to claim that people are are “criminals” if they’re in the country illegally, even if they’ve been taxpayers and community leaders for decades or if they arrived as infants and never knew another country, there’s at least a legalistic argument there.  But Collins has shown very clearly that the intent of the MAGA minions isn’t grounded in the law, but in the attempt to get rid of anyone who isn’t willing to say and do whatever the Fat Felon wants.

And finally we move on to Karoline Leavitt, the new White House Designated Liar Press Secretary, who claimed that Budde had “weaponized the pulpit” (unlike, say, Franklin Graham or Jerry Falwell, apparently), that her comments were “egregious,” and that “she should apologize to President Trump for the lies that she told.”  Look, we all understand that whoever is in that job is expected to shill for the boss, and if it takes a little dishonesty to do that, none of us are shocked that we’re fed a line of bull.  This is true of every administration Curmie can remember; Republicans don’t have a monopoly. 

We can also extend to Leavitt at least a modicum of respect for clinging (retroactively) to the legalistic argument outlined above.  Technically, anyone in the country without either citizenship or appropriate other credentials is a “criminal.”  This would include even Dreamer kids, who have done literally nothing “wrong” other than not leaving the only home they have ever known, still as children, and without their parents...  or a passport, for that matter.  (Curmie expresses precisely zero surprise that the DACA policy introduced by the Obama administration has been ruled unlawful by the 5^th Circuit Court of Appeals, which often rules in ways no rational and even marginally empathetic person would do.)

So we can blame a little of Leavitt’s accusation that Budde “lied” on an inelegant phrasing by the latter, but notice that Leavitt objects to Budde’s “lies.”  That’s plural.  Where are the rest?  Are there people in this country right now who are scared?  Hell, yes.  Curmie is a little trepidatious, himself, and he’s a cishet white male American-born citizen.  He does have this awful habit of speaking his mind, however, and that there’s even a remote possibility that he’ll end up in trouble for that is more than a little ominous.

Are there trans kids in both Republican and Democratic households?  Yes; Curmie knows both, personally.  Do “the vast majority” of immigrants, even those without documentation, pay taxes?  Yes.  Are they good neighbors?  Yes.  Do they attend religious services?  At least as much as citizens do.  Are some of them “fleeing war zones and persecution in their own lands”?  Yes.  Does the Christian God teach that “that we are to be merciful to the stranger”?  Undeniably.  So… about that plural, Ms. Leavitt…

It is indeed clear that Budde is no fan of Trump.  She wrote in response to Trump’s media stunt standing holding a Bible in front of St. John’s Church after having police and National Guard troops clear the area with flash-bang and tear gas munitions, “Mr. Trump used sacred symbols to cloak himself in the mantle of spiritual authority, while espousing positions antithetical to the Bible that he held in his hands.” Tell us what you really think, Bishop!

By contrast, Budde is pretty accurate when she says “It was a pretty mild sermon.  It certainly wasn’t a fire and brimstone sermon. It was as respectful and as universal as I could, with the exception of making someone who has been entrusted with such enormous influence and power to have mercy on those who are most vulnerable.” 

That seems reasonable enough to Curmie.  He’s now officially a fan.