Today, Professor John ("Juan") Cole Teaches Some Hard Truths About Recent Developments In The Middle East

Up front, today's essay by John ("Juan") Cole, a highly informed expert on the Islamic faith and the history of the Middle East, refers to the most prominent terrorist group in the Middle East as ISIL (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) and not ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria). The lamestream media and its government mouthpieces (like The LK [Lyin' King]) insist on referring to the Iraqi terrorist group as ISIS, not ISIL. As Forrest Gump said, "Stupid is as stupid does." If this is the (fair & balanced) true description of ISIL, so be it.

[x Informed Comment Blog]
US Militarism, Having Provoked ISIL (Islamic State Of Iraq And The Levant) Into Being, Kills Cult Leader Baghdadi
By John ("Juan") Cole


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Al-Baghdadi Arab Baghdadi beliefs believe brutalized Buddhist caliph captured commit cult East enormous God Iraq Iraqi ISIL Islam John journalists Klan Kurds Levant massacred million Muhammad Muslim normative nothing organization people prisoners Qur'an ransom religion report Roman Shiite sort state Sunni Syria taken terrorist trick Vatican village violent war Western

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“Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi,” the nom de guerre of the notorious Iraqi terrorist Ibrahim al-Samarrai, is dead, killed in a US Special Forces raid on his compound in Syria’s northwest Idlib province. Declared a “caliph” in 2014, this minor cultist helped turn the Fertile Crescent into a charnel house. From a village near the mostly Sunni Arab city of Samarra, he barely graduated from high school and, in secular, socialist Iraq, was shunted to the less desirable Islamic University of Baghdad, where he studied some Islamic subjects, likely at a low level and mainly by rote.

Unlike what the Western obituaries say, he was not “an Islamic scholar.” He maybe gave some sermons in a small local mosque.

Baghdadi was in US custody in Iraq in 2004, and in the prison camp he made some of the contacts that later formed the ISIL terrorist organization. The US at any one time held 25,000 Iraqi young men in camps on suspicion of trying to resist the US military occupation, brutalizing and further radicalizing them. Some, as at Abu Ghraib, were tortured and humiliated.

ISIL did not arise organically from Islam. There was little violent religious extremism among Sunnis in Iraq before the United States invaded in 2003. Iraq had had a secular, socialist ideology and its government refused to put Islam in the constitution as the religion of state. Bush installed a Shiite sectarian government allied with Iran and pushed Iraq’s Sunni Arabs into such despair that some of them turned to “al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia,” which morphed into the “Islamic State of Iraq,” and then after the Syrian revolution of 2011 became the “Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.” Had there been no American invasion and occupation of Iraq, there would have been no ISIL. US warmongering has sown dragons’ teeth throughout the Middle East.

Al-Baghdadi and his movement did enormous damage to the image of Islam in the world, and committed genocide against Muslims, as the term is defined in the Rome Statute that established the International Criminal Court. One of the insidious ways al-Baghdadi and his fellow cultists worked was to trick the Western media, where many journalists know nothing serious about Islam or the Middle East.

Just calling his organization the “Islamic State” was one way of trolling everyone. Baghdadi’s beliefs and practices were so far out of the mainstream of normative Sunni and Shiite Islam that they may as well have been Martians.

As I have noted before, it would be as though a guerrilla group in Mexico or Colombia declared that their name was The Vatican. And if the press fell for it, then every time the group massacred villagers, they’d be obliged to report that “Today the Vatican massacred 63 with machetes in the highlands.”

Since Western journalists actually know what the Vatican is and what Roman Catholicism is, they wouldn’t fall for this trick.

But some journalists in prominent outlets reported silly things like that ISIL is “very, very Islamic.” Yes, and the Ku Klux Klan is “very, very Christian.” People reply that ISIL erected a state over some 5 million people. Well, the Ku Klux Klan ran Indiana.

Nor was his ramshackle terrorist statelet a “caliphate.” People in the Muslim world, in urbane cities like Cairo and Beirut, laughed at his pretensions, calling Baghdadi the “Rolex Caliph” after he showed up at the pulpit sporting pricey bling.

Violent cults like ISIL grow out of social conditions. They tell you nothing about the character of the religion out of which they emerge. In East Africa, the Lord’s Resistance Army has terrorized Uganda and its neighbors, coming out of local interpretations of Christianity. In Japan, Om Shinrikyo put sarin gas in the Tokyo subway in 1995, sickening thousands (they were trying to commit mass murder). They are a Buddhist offshoot and were trying to provoke the advent of the next Buddha. Buddhists are often appalled to hear this, and protest that Om Shinrikyo is not Buddhism. Right. And ISIL is not Islam in exactly that sense

On June 14, 2014, ISIL massacred 1700 Shiite cadets of the Iraqi military whom they had taken captive, in the most horrible ways.

Or then there was the Jordanian pilot whom they shot down, captured, and set afire in a cage.

A. J. Arberry translated the chapter of Muhammad in the Qur’an, 47:4, concerning prisoners of war this way: “tie fast the bonds; then set them free, either by grace or ransom, till the war lays down its loads. So it shall be; and if God had willed, He would have avenged Himself upon them; but that He may try some of you by means of others. And those who are slain in the way of God, He will not send their works astray.”

That is, once the enemy is taken prisoner, they should either be simply released, or they should be ransomed back to their colleagues as a sort of war indemnity, and this should be done while the war is still going on.

Later Muslim tales from 130 to 300 years and more after the Prophet Muhammad’s death tell all sorts of war stories about early Islam. But the Qur’an is our only primary source for very early normative Islam, and its attitude toward prisoners of war is quite clear. Wealthy Roman generals of that era (the 500s and 600s) were known to pay a ransom for soldiers they had captured (see John of Malalas) as well.

Or there was ISIL’s genocide against the Izadi Kurds of the Sinjar region. They are non-Muslim but believe in God, following a religion influenced by ancient Iranian beliefs.

The Qur’an 2:62 promises paradise to “whoever believes in God and the Last Day and does good deeds.” Izadi Kurds have been living in Northern Iraq for centuries. Like all minorities, they often had a hard row to hoe. But they weren’t ethnically cleansed by the Ottoman sultans, who also claimed to be caliphs or vicars of Muhammad.

The ISIL cult is not gone, and extremism continues to have a purchase in the Fertile Crescent. Trump refused to spend tens of millions of dollars expropriated to rehabilitate the Raqqa region of Syria after ISIL was defeated there. People in eastern Syria were brutalized and then suffered enormous damage as the US bombed their towns and villages to defeat ISIL, which had taken them over. They have nothing. Is it wise to leave them twisting in the wind? ###

[John ("Juan") Ricardo I. Cole is the Richard P. Mitchell Distinguished University Professor of history at the University of Michigan at Anrbor. He has written Muhammad: Prophet of Peace Amid the Clash of Empires (2018). Since 2002, Cole also has maintained a weblog, Informed Comment. Cole received a BA (history and literature of religions) from Northwestern University (IL), an MA (Arabic studies/history) at American University in Cairo and a PhD (Islamic studies) from the University of California at Los Angeles. Cole is the founder and chief editor of the Informed Comment blog. ]

Copyright © 2019 John ("Juan") Cole




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Ho Hum, It's Late October & There's Another Jack Reacher Thriller — No, It's "Oh Boy!" To This Blogger

On October 29, 1996, James Grant was made redundant (British term) or laid off from his position as a film producer for the British Broadcasting Company (BBC) and he left his now-former office and walked to a nearby stationer's shop and purchased a yellow-paper tablet and a box of No. 2 pencils. He went home and began writing and a year later, his first novel, Killing Floor, was published under the pen-name Lee Child. Twenty-four years later, on October 29, 2019, Amazon Books delivered a Kindle-version of Blue Moon.to this blogger's Kindle through the magic of FTP (File Transfer Protocol). And serendipitously, the blogger — after taking note of the downloaded novel, discovered a report by a NY Fishwrap's book critic, Janet Maslin, and voilà today's post was established. The pen-name Lee Child is the product of a family joke when a daughter was nicknamed Le Child after a French automobile commercial and the name of Lee Child's protagonist, Jack Reacher, came early during the BBC-layoff. Lee Child's wife, Jane, said to her unemployed 6'4" husband in a supermarker that he could always find work among groceries as "a reacher" to assist short shoppers in getting an item off the very top shelf. All that aside, if this is a (fair balanced) appreciation of Lee Child and Jack Reacher, so be it.

[x NY Fishwrap]
Jack Reacher Is Still Restless, But His Creator Has Settled Down
By Janet Maslin


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acres Amazon apartment area Army blue book boot British Child coffee Cruise decided different diner drive enough face films gets home house Jack Jane Laramie large leather Line live lunch miles Moon mostly novel Point project Reacher real recreational road room sits small spends tiny TV wall wear work year

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Two books ago, Lee Child’s Jack Reacher passed through the southeast corner of Wyoming in his efforts to track down the owner of a pawned West Point ring. The book was The Midnight Line (2017) and it was unusually transporting for a Reacher thriller. You could visualize the immense flat expanses of old railroad land stretching toward the foothills of the Rockies, the long miles of dirt road down which anyone could disappear under a vast open sky.

Reacher moved on. He always does. But Child and Jane, his wife of 44 years, decided to stay.

Now, with a Reacher TV project in the works and the 24^th novel in the series on the way (titled Blue Moon (2019), it will arrive on Child’s 65^th birthday, October 29), I am in Laramie to have coffee in a diner with Reacher’s creator. As any devotee knows, Reacher spends a lot of time in diners. He downs amounts of coffee that would put most people on life support. He sits with his back to the wall, eats like a trencherman and gets acquainted with the waitress. He wants her to remember him, because it might be handy.

But here in the real world, I’m meeting the reedy, 6-foot-4 Child — actual name, James Dover Grant — and not his brawnier, inch-taller hero. Laramie has no real diner. It’s got a place that serves cappuccino and arty beer that, Child confirms, Reacher would be “bemused by.” Sitting in a booth with his back to the wall, Child faces a rainbow flag; Laramie is where Matthew Shepard was killed for being gay 21 years ago, and this city of 32,000 continues to honor his memory. We’re directly across the street from two bookstores. Outside their doors, few people know that a best-selling author has started spending three months of the year nearby.

Child drinks a meager half cup of coffee, claiming to have had a whole pot at home. He insists on paying the check, either out of gallantry or for tax reasons. Then we climb into his distinctly un-Reacher-like electric blue SUV and begin a drive straight out of his novel. He lives 40 or 50 miles from town. The intersection closest to his roost is a 10-minute drive away. That’s also where the paved road ends.

The sky is as big as skies get. The high prairie is golden. Miles of dirt road lead upward to an immaculate, rustic house with decks on three sides. Unobstructed views stretch 20 miles into the distance. Child’s place is on 35 acres, protected by thousands of acres of forest, lakes and ranch land. It all cost less than he got for the 900-square-foot apartment on 22^nd Street [in NYC] where he used to live. If you want to relocate to the middle of nowhere, this is how it’s done.

Child, an Englishman, has gone native. He’s dressed in boots, jeans, T-shirt and a leather barn coat. He owns two cowboy hats, but didn’t wear one for this interview “for fear of making you laugh.” He already lived here when he wrote The Midnight Line, and acknowledges that describing a familiar setting was more satisfying than making one up. Though Wyoming’s renown as a tax haven was a factor in his move, he says, the decision had “more to do with an immigrant’s sense that there’s always somewhere else to explore.” (Child and his wife have numerous homes, including one above St. Tropez and a spread in East Sussex, England, that he bought for bragging rights after growing up poor. He still spends time at an apartment he owns on Central Park West, but Jane has decided she’s through with New York.)

The Laramie area also happens to abut Colorado, where recreational marijuana is legal. Child made waves when he talked about being a regular user; his habit goes back 50 years. He finds it especially handy for reading his work, claiming the high helps him judge his writing. And he likes doing actors’ voices: Tony Curtis, a pretty good Michael Caine.

As we approach the house for lunch, Child proudly points out a few landmarks. The address number is printed in a clean font and hangs from a sturdy post. He did that himself. The generator on the hillside got them through all of last winter. To the right of the driveway sits what Child calls his rockery. Since his hands, unlike Reacher’s, aren’t the size of small animals, he’s dexterous enough to treat this tiny garden lovingly. So does Jane, who has arranged some low, heathery sprigs in a small vase for lunchtime.

Their 39-year-old daughter, Ruth, who studied forensic linguistics and will move to Fort Collins, CO, later this year, has come by for the occasion. She and her mother have made lunch. “It was supposed to be tuna niçoise, but we all like different things,” Jane says; these three are strong willed as well as close-knit. So lunch means a different kind of tuna salad for each of them, and a highly entertaining debate about apostrophe usage. Ruth was only about 7 when she went to a market with her father and asked, “Dad, shouldn’t that sign say ‘10 items or fewer?’”

Jim and Jane, as they’re known here, have made local friends. But they’re both voracious readers (she is a dedicated environmentalist) and they’re mostly home alone. The place is set up for that. Their work areas are far apart, and he has lucked into the best room in the house as his office: double height and mostly glass with a fireplace. It should be the master bedroom. But the noisy furnace room below ruled that out, so here are two desks face to face, one for Reacher projects and the other for correspondence; plus high piles of books for Child’s recreational reading; the longest available leather sofa, which still isn’t long enough; and a golden trophy shaped like a pen nib, the 2019 British Book Award for author of the year, on the otherwise bare shelves.

(Child will receive another award, the Commander of the British Empire [CBE], in February, though his fierce objections to the British class system make him reluctant to bow to the royal family member presenting it. What if that turns out to be the queen? “She is tiny,” Child says, “so there’ll be a certain amount of craning, which might pass for a bow.”)

The study is also where Child is taking on a major new job: the Reacher TV reboot, for Amazon. Earlier this decade, when Paramount made a couple of Reacher movies starring Tom Cruise, Child knew better than to cede full control of his popular character. He sold the rights to two films, with the condition that he’d have to sign off on any others. After Reacher fans complained that Cruise was too small to play the big bruiser, and Cruise coaxed the first film’s director, Christopher McQuarrie, to his “Mission: Impossible” franchise, Paramount decided two Reacher films were enough. And along came streaming.

Child settled on Amazon rather than Netflix or any other streaming service in part because of the synergy it allowed. Every time he publishes a book, Amazon delivers a lot of copies. The company is willing to advertise the show on its book packaging, and email a link to Child’s readers. So he’s begun work on what could be an eight-year project.

The TV Reacher will be large, very large, and in his 30s or 40s. (The lead hasn’t been cast yet; an Army boot is waiting for the right Mr. Cinderella.) The series will start where the books did. Killing Floor (1997, 2006), the first Reacher novel, will anchor Season 1, with other books picked over for subplots. Child will supervise the screenplays but not write them, and will help reinvent Reacher from the ground up. Or Reachers, plural. The one in Blue Moon is older, hipper, richer and hotter than previous incarnations. He doesn’t wear Army surplus. He likes black. He knows about performance art. And he gets into a sustained sexual relationship as well as a vicious gang war between Ukrainians and Albanians.

“I wanted him completely out of his comfort zone,” Child says. “He’s capable of getting comfortable pretty quick.”

From the looks of it, so is his maker. ###

[Janet R. Maslin is a journalist, best known as a film and literary critic, for The New York Times. She served as The Times' film critic from 1977–1999. She began her career as a rock music critic for The Boston Phoenix and Rolling Stone. She left film criticism behind in 1999 and now reviews books for The Times. Maslin received a BA (mathematics) from The University of Rochester (NY). When an interviewer asked her about the incongruity of a math major becoming a film/book critic, Maslin replied, "Go figure."]

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The Cobra (Maureen Dowd) Bites The LK Where It Hurts By Referring To The Fool As "President Snowflake"

The Cobra (Maureen Dowd) offers a deft example of the use of irony in today's essay. The Cobra referrs to The LK (Lyin' King) was "President Snowflake" — an ironic use of the term (Snowflake) used by The LK's minions to describe those who oppose him. The resisters melt in the face of The LK's faux fury. The furious shtik was adopted by The LK when he studied at the knee (and other low joints) of Vince McMahon, the professional wrestling promoter, who included an early version of The LK in World Wrestling Entertainment shows. The LK portrayed a villainous tough guy in the shows as the fake-billionaire-wrestler learned the shtik of the wrestling tough guy — fake anger and insulting nicknames at overblown volume. If this is a (fair & balanced) political farce, so be it..

PS; The source of this blog's noms de stylo serpent reference to the three women on the NY Fishwrap's Op-Ed staff began with this 2001 essay by The Cobra (Maureen Dowd) who's been joined by her distaff colleagues: The Krait (Gail Collins), and — most recently — The Viper (Michelle Goldberg).

[x NY Fishwrap]
Extra, Extra! Prez Won’t Read All About It — Snowflake Trump Wants Us Off His Lawn
By The Cobra (Maureen Dowd)


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afterward aims behaved canceled days Donald Extra eyes feel field given House including institution Lahren lawn looks media Middle name Nancy news newspapers papers picture Post president press probably properly read reader reality reported Republicans savaging sneak Snowflake spend stop story subscriptions taxpayers Times Tribune Trump tweets Washington White York

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My first job in journalism was as a clerk at The Washington Star. I fielded a lot of calls from readers threatening to cancel their subscriptions — including, on occasion, my mom.

I never got upset about it. Their loss, I figured. I know, because I prowl through at least eight newspapers a day, that I feel about 1,000 percent smarter and more interesting afterward.

I’ve always noticed a huge difference in leaders who read the news carefully, like Barack Obama, an avid New York Times reader, and those, like Donald Trump, who fail to feed their brains properly. The nasty Narcissus looks at the papers not to broaden himself but for the most narrow of reasons: to hunt for his own name and to search, largely in vain, for any scrap of positive coverage.

Trump cheerleader Tomi Lahren recently tweeted a picture proving that the White House staff is still artificially sweetening what they show the boss. The president sent Lahren a printout of tweets — including hers — praising him for his Dallas rally, compiled by his aides to reinforce Trump’s reality distortion field.

President Snowflake had a pout this past week and canceled the White House subscriptions to The Times and The Washington Post. He probably thinks the papers are still delivered by boys in tweed news caps tossing them over the fence in the general direction of the West Wing.

Get those damn papers off my lawn!

Stephanie Grisham, Trump’s press secretary, imperiously announced that the White House would also strong-arm federal agencies to end their subscriptions to the papers, noting that this would be “a significant cost saving” to taxpayers.

Not as much, of course, as if Trump stopped spending tens of millions on golf outings after savaging his predecessor for excessively hitting the links. Besides, taxpayers would probably be happy to spend the money on newspapers if the president would stop staring at his name and educate himself on the globe.

The enormity of his stupidity caused him to accomplish the impossible: He managed to bollix up America’s Middle East policy even more, after we had already shattered the region through ignorance and arrogance.

In dropping The Times and The Post, the president came across like all those liberals on Twitter who bristle with cancelitis. They’re always huffing away from our paper only to sneak back a few days later

Trump’s move is not without precedent.

As Michael Grynbaum reported in The Times, JFK was widely mocked when he canceled The New York Herald Tribune and said he would read The St. Louis Post-Dispatch instead. After sneaking in copies of The Tribune for a while, President Kennedy resumed openly reading it.

The same will happen with Trump. He can’t quit us. The relationship of Donald and the media is the greatest love affair — and mutual addiction — of all time. When he cancels subscriptions, it’s like an angry lover tearing up pictures of a woman he is obsessed with but cannot win over.

Newspapers are liquid history, with deadlines pressing and people trying to pull the wool over our eyes. God knows, we’re not perfect. But we’re definitely better arbiters of objective reality than Donald Trump, Lindsey Graham, Kevin McCarthy and Steve Scalise.

Given the perverted values we’ve seen in other institutions, such as Facebook, the Catholic Church, the Bush-Cheney White House and the Trump White House, it feels good to be part of an institution that aims to illuminate rather than obscure.

Speaking of spin, I’ve got a push alert for Kellyanne Conway: No matter how many reporters you dress down, your tortured triangle with George and Donald is a real story. No one in Washington has seen anything like it since the days of Martha Mitchell.

So, Mr. President, given that you are shorn from The Times and The Post, I feel an obligation to fill you in on what you’re missing:

You’re about to be impeached.

Nancy Pelosi is kicking your butt.

The Deep State is not only out to get you; it’s gotten you.

The Republicans on the Hill who tried to crash the hearing — even though their fellow Republicans were taking part — looked like fanatical losers. Matt Gaetz compared his stunt to the Spartans and the movie “300,” but he’s no Gerard Butler and his pizza party was lame.

Your long-suffering Republican allies/hostages are finally getting tired of having to defend you all the time.

You’re canny about media. You know that you can’t hurt The Times and The Post by having a childish fit of pique; that just sells more newspapers.

The only way you could cut the clicks is if you calmed down, behaved properly and acted like a decent human being, so that there weren’t always 20 breaking news stories every day about your conspiring and grifting and lying and lunacy.

And there’s no chance of that, because then all eyes wouldn’t be on you.

You’ll sneak back and you know it. ###

[Maureen Dowd received the Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 1999, with the Pulitzer committee particularly citing her columns on the impeachment of Bill Clinton after his affair with Monica Lewinsky. Dowd joined The New York Times as a reporter in 1983, after writing for Time magazine and the now-defunct Washington Star. At The Times, Dowd was nominated for a 1992 Pulitzer Prize for national reporting, then became a columnist for the paper's editorial page in 1995. Dowd's first book was a collection of columns entitled Bushworld: Enter at Your Own Risk (2004). Most recently Dowd has written The Year of Voting Dangerously: The Derangement of American Politics (2017). See all of Dowd's books here. She received a BA (English) from Catholic University (DC).]

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Today, This Modern World Portrays The MAGA People For What They Are — Damn Fools!

The e-mail bearing today's TMW 'toon also contained this message from Tom Tomorrow (Dan Perkins):

Hey all,

I have discussed the upheaval in my personal life, these past two years, and the difficulty of dealing with a world gone mad when your own life is in flux as well. I’m happy to say that the late unpleasantness (my divorce, for those of you newer to this list) has mostly settled down into a new normal. Unfortunately a new family crisis erupted last week — I’m not going to go into too much detail on this, except to say that it involves my aging father, and a now-undeniable need to get him into some sort of assisted care situation, which at the moment I am trying to manage from 2000 miles away. I’ll be heading back there at some point in the near future, and of course will take my travel work setup, but there may be a week or two when my cartoons are reruns, weirdly disconnected from the news cycle. Not a great moment for *that* to be happening, but these life crises don’t tend to phone ahead and set up a convenient moment at which they can explode into your life. It’s a rough moment but I’m doing okay with it. The past couple years have taught me that I can handle a lot, and roll with it. I’ll get this one figured out too. In the meantime, my recurrent MAGA guys helped me get through this extremely difficult week, with their always-fascinating take on the world. I’m using them as stand-ins here for Trump’s tweet about lynching and the subsequent defense of it by everyone from Lindsay Graham to Rush Limbaugh. You really have to wonder what they even think the long game is, at this point. The Trump grift is collapsing around them, but they seem determined to hold the line as long as possible. As I’m writing this on Friday, Rand Paul is trying to argue that quid pro quos are just a normal part of diplomacy — coneniently elliding past the obvious point that the quid pro quo in question was aid in return for help smearing a domestic political opponent. The obvious rational response right now would be to throw Trump under the bus and spend the next year distancing themselves, and Pence, from him, and trying to salvage something from the wreckage. But they seem determined to go down with the burning ship. Maybe that’ll work out great for them? But the odds seem kinda low at this point.

Until next week...,

Dan/Tom

This blogger wishes the best for Tom Tomorrow (Dan Perkins) in a difficult time in his life and simultaneously wishes the worst for The LK (Lyin' King) and the idiots who are willing to stand by while The LK is attempting to destroy this country. The LK is flailing like a hooked fish on the dock and yesterday, Andy Borowitz — doing stand-up — described impeachment as the "800-pound alligator in the moat — and there is hope that the long national nightmare may end with our awakening. If this is a (fair & balanced) patriotic desire, so be it.

[x TMW]
The Unfairness Of It All
By Tom Tomorrow (Dan Perkins)

[Dan Perkins is an editorial cartoonist better known by the pen name "Tom Tomorrow." His weekly comic strip, "This Modern World," which comments on current events from a strong liberal perspective, appears regularly in approximately 150 papers across the U.S., as well as on Daily Kos. The strip debuted in 1990 in SF Weekly. Perkins received the Robert F. Kennedy Award for Excellence in Journalism in both 1998 and 2002. When he is not working on projects related to his comic strip, Perkins writes a daily political blog, also entitled "This Modern World," which he began in December 2001. More recently, Dan Perkins, pen name Tom Tomorrow, was named the winner of the 2013 Herblock Prize for editorial cartooning. Even more recently, Dan Perkins was a runner-up for the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning.]

Copyright © 2019 This Modern World/Tom Tomorrow (Dan Perkins)

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Today's Blog Post Offers A Lagniappe — Andrew (Andy) Borowitz Does Stand-Up

In today's post, a video clip of The New Yorker's Andrew (Andy) Borowitz at a recent festival offered by the magazine is a wonderful stand-up offering about Botowitz's thesis that the impeachment of The LK *Lyin' King) would bring great joy to this land. In many respects, Borowitz's stand-up excels his droll essay. But together, the essay and the video clip are an excellent elixir for a dreary day. If this is a (fair & balanced) surprise, so be it.

[x The New Yorker]
The Life-Changing Magic Of Impeaching Trump
By Andrew (Andy) Borowitz


TagCrowd Cloud provides a visual summary of the following piece of writing

although amazed Americans answer Anthony asking Bannon belongs contentment culling decluttering different discovered Donald done dwelling Festival Flynn forgot fulfillment garish gave gone Hicks higher House Impeaching John joy Kondo Life-Changing Marie Nielsen possessions pretty Priebus question removed Russia Sanders--none Sarah spark talking task things tidy Trump Turkey useless White

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Andrew (Andy) Borowitz At The New Yorker's 20th Festival (2019 )

Over the past five years, millions of Americans have ascended to a higher plane of fulfillment by tidying up their homes. By talking to our possessions, one by one, and asking if they spark joy, we have achieved a kind of contentment we never dreamed possible.

Now it’s time to tidy up a residence that belongs to all of us: the White House.

At first, this seems like a daunting task. After all, the White House has a hundred and thirty-two rooms. There is much culling to be done.

But there’s no reason to despair. Many useless things have already been hauled away. Reince Priebus, John Kelly, Steve Bannon, Kirstjen Nielsen, Michael Flynn, John Bolton, Sean Spicer, Hope Hicks, Sarah Huckabee Sanders—none of them sparked joy. And now they are all gone. And Anthony Scaramucci, who sparked joy as briefly as those paisley pants you immediately regretted buying at H&M—he is gone, too.

Clearly, though, more culling remains to be done.

We must look at Donald Trump and ask ourselves, “Does this spark joy?” And, although the answer to that question might be somewhat different in Russia, North Korea, and Turkey, the answer here is a resounding no.

Remember how, once you tidied up your dwelling, you discovered hidden treasures buried under all of those needless possessions? Well, once that garish orange thing that sparks no joy has been removed from the Oval Office, you’ll be amazed what you’ll find underneath. Things you forgot you even had, like democracy.

In the video above, from last weekend’s New Yorker Festival, I speak about the happiness we can attain by decluttering the country of Trump. Much like Marie Kondo, the authors of the United States Constitution gave us a unique tool for improving our surroundings: impeachment. And the Twenty-fifth Amendment is pretty good, too. ###

[Andrew (Andy) Borowitz is the creator the Borowitz Report, a Web site that is a lot funnier than the stuff posted by Matt Drudge and his ilk. Borowitz is a comedian and writer whose work appears regularly in The New Yorker. He is the first winner of the National Press Club's humor award and has won seven Dot-Comedy Awards for his web site. His most recent book (and Amazon's Best Kindle Single of the Year) is An Unexpected Twist (2012). Borowitz received a BA, magna cum laude (English) from Harvard University (MA).]

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Roll Over, Thérèse Defarge — May Your Spirit (Fictonal Or Real) Inspire Your Present-day Sisters To Take Up Their Knitting Needles & Pink Yarn To Knit The Watch Caps With Ears Before Taking To The Streets And Going To The Barricades!

The Cobra (Michelle Goldberg) really opened her mouth and showed her teeth this week. Why? Because The Viper has had enough! Since 2017, most people who disliked Th LK (Lyin' King) in the Oval Office were tempted by a positive result from the enormous street demonstrations across the country, but The LK has remained. Then, the temptation was the Mueller investigation Russian interference in the 2016 election to the benefit of The LK, but Mueller was unable to produce a "smoking gun" that actually tied The LK to his Russian friends. Now, with the current Ukrainian affair, both The LK and his disgusting (acting) Chief of Staff both ran their mouths that acknowledged that The LK had committed the impeachable act of seeking Ukrainian interference in the 2020 election. The past 3 years have convinced The LK and his minions that he can do anything without consequences The Viper is correct that a mass demonstration like those in Hong Kong, Chile, Lebanon, South Korea, Bolivia, Spain, Iraq, Russia (!), the Czech Republic, Algeria, Sudan, and Kazakhstan. Now, the time has come in the United States of America to strike fear in The LK and his minions. If this is a (fair & balanced) argument for Direct Action, so be it.

PS; The source of this blog's noms de stylo serpent reference to the three women on the NY Fishwrap's Op-Ed staff began with this 2001 essay by The Cobra (Maureen Dowd) who's been joined by her distaff colleagues: The Krait (Gail Collins), and — most recently — The Viper (Michelle Goldberg).

[x NY Fishwrap]
1, 2, 3, 4, Trump Can’t Rule Us Anymore
By The Viper (Michelle Goldberg)


TagCrowd Cloud provides a visual summary of the following piece of writing

act address American around calling Chenoweth continue corruption dangerous days decade democracy demonstrations election Fisher going grievances House leader level mass mobilization moment months national Organizers outrage people point president protest public really removal Resistance restrain Senate series shock sort start streets surveys taking Trump used vote White world years

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All over the world right now, outraged citizens are taking to the streets. Mass protests in Hong Kong have been going on for months, at one point drawing about a quarter of the territory’s population. For the last five days, hundreds of thousands of people have been marching against austerity and corruption in Lebanon, and the government has pushed through a package of reforms to address their grievances. In Chile, protests over a subway fare increase have exploded into a broader uprising against inequality.

These demonstrations are part of a global trend. “There has been in this decade a real rise in the use of mass protests in particular as a way to address grievances against governments around the world,” said Erica Chenoweth, a Harvard professor and co-author [with Maria Stephan] of Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict (2011). In fact, she said, in the last 10 years there have been more mass demonstrations calling for the removal of political leaders than in any decade since 1900.

So as Donald Trump’s sneering lawlessness and stupefying corruption continue to escalate, it’s confounding, at least to me, that Americans aren’t taking to the streets en masse. This presidency began with the biggest protest in American history, and its first two years were marked by a series of high-profile demonstrations. But three years in, even as the conviction that Trump threatens the Republic unites stolid military heroes and socialist feminists, demonstrations against the administration have faded. Lyndon Johnson was famously tormented by protest chants that could be heard through the walls of the White House. Why isn’t Trump?

Organizers and experts offer both optimistic and pessimistic explanations for Americans’ relative quiescence. Let’s start with pessimism: Some people are burned out. In her book American Resistance: From the Women’s March to the Blue Wave (2019), Dana Fisher, a professor at the University of Maryland, described how a series of “moral shocks” propelled people who hadn’t thought of themselves as activists to join protests. But after three years of Trumpism, it takes more to shock people than it used to. “People have grown accustomed to a certain baseline level of outrage,” Fisher told me.

But that’s far from the whole story. Fisher surveyed people at the Women’s March and other demonstrations, and then tracked them afterward, doing follow-up surveys six months before the midterms and two days after. “All of their levels of civic engagement went up,” she said.

Many had called elected officials and attended town halls. Now, she says, much of the Resistance is focused on organizing for presidential candidates, particularly Elizabeth Warren. “One of the reasons we’re seeing less protest is that protest is being seen as the beginning of activism and political involvement rather than being the end,” she said.

So if America isn’t seeing the sort of huge demonstrations roiling other countries, it’s at least in part because those most fiercely opposed to Trump still believe in the power of our democracy to get rid of him. “People actually trust the election to sort it out,” said Chenoweth. “This is something that’s common in democracies — when you start to see a protest wave really pick up, a lot of time that mobilization really gets filtered into the next election.”

But the next election is a year away, and American democracy is in danger now. You can’t count on an election to restrain the president when the president is using the power of his office to subvert the election with foreign interference. Each day, it seems, Trump and those around him become increasingly brazen in their lawbreaking.

The president’s re-election campaign is selling T-shirts that say, “Get Over It,” which is what the acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney said after admitting on national television to Trump’s quid pro quo with Ukraine. Trump associates are blithely defying congressional subpoenas. With the staffers who used to at least try to restrain the president long gone, he’s testing the limits of his authority. And he’s retreating only in the face of bipartisan public fury, as he did when he backed off his plan to hold next year’s G7 at the Trump National Doral, his failing Florida resort.

As the impeachment investigation closes in, Trump will continue to act out. That’s why a growing number of people — many of them more temperate than I am — have started calling for mass protest in response.

Organizers are brainstorming how to make this happen. “Our experience has been that the most successful mobilization moments have some kind of trigger or flash point,” said Leah Greenberg, a co-founder of the anti-Trump organization Indivisible. “The place that we have agreed as a movement to make that next flash point mobilization moment is going to be around the House vote.”

Once the House votes to send articles of impeachment to the Senate, there needs to be a public groundswell to force the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, to allow a thorough and transparent trial. Then, assuming the evidence is as compelling as it seems, there should be mass nonviolent action calling for Trump’s removal.

Americans might feel that democracy in our country is more robust than in places disrupted by enormous protests. But at this dangerous phase of a dangerous presidency, enormous turnout in the streets may be the only way to make sure it stays that way. ###

[Michelle Goldberg has been an Opinion columnist since 2017. She is the author of several books about politics, religion and women’s rights, and was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize for public service in 2018 for reporting on workplace sexual harassment issues. She received a BA (English) from the State University of New York (SUNY) at Buffalo and an MS (journalism) from the University of California at Berkeley.]

Copyright © 2020 The New York Times Company




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Copyright © 2019 Sapper's (Fair & Balanced) Rants & Raves

Laughing At A Car Wreck — Gail Collins' (The Krait's) Annual Contest To Name The Worst Current Cabinet Official Of 2019

This blogger's immediate reaction upon reading this incredible essay by The Krait (Gail Collins) is to impeach and convict The LK (Lyin' King) of Maladministration for the parade of incompetent and/or criminal men and women who are the custodians of the good government in the nation's departments and agencies. Instead, over the past three years, we have been treated to the malignant conflicts of interest with every appointment. Instead of the best and brightest, we have a government of the worst and the dumbest. And the bottom line is that The LK appointed each and every one of the scumbags. If this is a (fair & balanced) cure for our national cander, so be it.

PS; The source of this blog's noms de stylo serpent reference to the three women on the NY Fishwrap's Op-Ed staff began with this 2001 essay by The Cobra (Maureen Dowd) who's been joined by her distaff colleagues: The Krait (Gail Collins), and — most recently — The Viper (Michelle Goldberg).

[x NY Fishwrap]
Pick Trump’s Worst Cabinet Member
By The Krait (Fail Collins)


TagCrowd Cloud provides a visual summary of the following piece of writing

administration around Bernhardt cabinet car chief companies contender current defense department earned Elaine energy enforcing fire former general government heads House interior investigation law list lobbyist lot Mark Member national officials people Perry probably protection recent secretary seems spurs state think top Trump Ukraine Wheeler Wilbur winner work Worst Zinke

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Time to vote for the Worst Trump Cabinet Member.

Not Rudy Giuliani! He’s Personal Lawyer. And Best Friend. And, yeah, Raving Maniac. But we’re going to stick to people who are running the federal government.

At least in theory.

One top contender has to be Attorney General William Barr. When Americans make a list of things they’d like the nation’s foremost law enforcement authority to do, how many do you think would start with, “Travel around the world seeking to discredit the Mueller investigation.”

But wait! What about Secretary of State Mike Pompeo? He’s the one who fired a much-respected ambassador to Ukraine. And was listening in on the fabled Trump-Ukraine phone call. Career State Department officials are reportedly miserable working under him. But then that’s true of so very, very many parts of our current government — “drain the swamp” is Trump code for “torture the people who actually have to do the work.”

Acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney is on a mission to destroy the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

He’s also the one who blurted out “We do that all the time” when asked if there was a quid pro quo between aid to Ukraine and getting dirt on Democrats. Then he tried to retreat. (“That’s what people are saying that I said but I didn’t say that.”)

Ineptitude is an important consideration here. There are lots of cabinet members who would cause immeasurable harm if they weren’t so incompetent. (This is the Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos contingent.) Consider Ben Carson, our secretary of housing and urban development, who was asked at a congressional hearing about REOs — a well-known HUD acronym for foreclosed properties — and appeared to think the questioner was talking about cookies.

Trump cabinet-watching is much more exciting than it would be in a normal administration, where, say, the secretary of labor did not have to be tossed out of office for a role in the Jeffrey Epstein sex scandal. (Alex Acosta, we hardly knew ye.)

You’d probably be able to name the whole cabinet now if it wasn’t for the rapid-fire turnover. We’ve been through four different heads of the Department of Homeland Security. And three in charge of the Department of Defense. Beginning, of course, with retired general Jim Mattis, who said recently that while he earned his spurs on the battlefield, “Donald Trump earned his spurs in a letter from a doctor.”

It’s been pretty much downhill since. The current secretary of defense is Mark Esper, a former lobbyist for a defense contractor. Who the president referred to in a recent tweet as “Mark Esperanto.”

I’m sure the president isn’t the only one who doesn’t remember all their names. When the cabinet meets, there are probably a lot of comments like: “I agree with… that guy over there with the green tie.”

But back to our contenders: Anybody having anything whatsoever to do with the environment is a good Worst candidate in this White House. Former winner EPA chief Scott Pruitt has slunk away — remember the time he tried to use his influence to get his wife a Chick-fil-A franchise? His deputy, Andrew Wheeler, is now the top guy.

Wheeler used to be a lobbyist for energy companies and he seems determined to weaken car emissions limits even when the car manufacturers want to keep them. His critics say that if he can’t get rid of environmental protection laws he doesn’t like, he simply stops enforcing them.

Interior Secretary David Bernhardt has replaced the dreaded Ryan Zinke, another former Worst contender. Previously Bernhardt was — yes! — Zinke’s top deputy and before that — yes! yes! — a lobbyist for energy companies. One who had so many potential conflicts of interest he had to carry around a card listing all of them.

So, tough luck, endangered species. Bernhardt hates it when you get in the way of fuel extraction. But you have to admit he’s making history. Bernhardt is the first interior secretary to be under investigation by the department’s inspector general since his first day on the job.

And Wilbur’s back! Last season’s winner, Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross Jr., is most definitely looking for a repeat. We are thinking here of his threats to fire officials at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for reassuring Alabamians that a hurricane was not headed their way no matter what crazy maps a certain chief executive drew with his Sharpie.

Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao doesn’t seem to be doing much on national infrastructure. But she’s been very energetic when it comes to boosting her family’s shipping company and squeezing extra grants for Kentucky, which happens to be the state represented by her husband, Senator Mitch McConnell.

And what about Energy Secretary Rick Perry? He was one of three Trump officials who seem to have been running the Ukraine policy, which would be bad enough even if the trio had not been calling themselves “the three amigos.” On the other hand, he’s resigning, and Trump does seem to be trying to blame him for everything.

What’s Perry’s bottom line? “Let’s face it — he’s not the brightest light,” said Elaine Kamarck [PDF] of the Brookings Institution.

Well, he seems to be a better dancer than Sean Spicer. … ###

[Gail Collins joined the New York Times in 1995 as a member of the editorial board and later as an op-ed columnist. In 2001 she became the first woman ever appointed editor of the Times editorial page.Her most recent book is No Stopping Us Now: The Adventures of Older Women in American History (2019), See other books by Gail Collins here. She received a BA (journalism) from Marquette University (WI) and an MA (government) from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.]

Copyright © 2019 The New York Times Company




This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License..

Copyright © 2019 Sapper's (Fair & Balanced) Rants & Raves