It Can't Happen Here

 

The United States of America has been a gonzo, berserk nation from its inception, an unlikely an amalgam as ever pullulated up from planet earth, with silk stockinged bewigged delegates from the slave states of South Carolina and Virginia (Edward Rutledge, Thomas Jefferson)  joining dowdy, disgruntled New Englanders (John Adams) along with Benjamin Franklin, to establish a half slave nation which claimed to be a beacon of liberty, and which did, indeed inspire others (the French most immediately) to realize that even if there is a God in Heaven, He likely did not actually anoint a mere mortal to be a king. 

This America, Man!

Looking at developments in their own countries and in the world Sinclair Lewis and George Orwell (Eric Arthur Blair) wrote parables which proved to be both prescient and illuminating. Lewis's novel and then stage play depicted the rise of a Hitler/Huey Long like figure who played on American prejudices and gullibility to seize power.

Orwell once said he'd like his tombstone to read, "Damn you all to Hell! I told you this would happen!"

Mad Dog has thought fascism would not take hold outside the South, where it has been in place since the 18th century, simply because the rest of the country was too self absorbed, complacent and ignorant to actually bother embracing the mind control necessary to a fascist state.

But now, we see masked goon squads, trundling people off into unmarked vans in broad daylight. So, Mad Dog asks, how are we any different from Russia, Venezuela, Brazil or El Salvador? 

No Baklava. Home Address is Public

When asked why sheriffs from Rockingham County who now assist ICE agents in abducting people from their work sites or automobiles, the New Hampshire's finest replied that police are now subject to "doxing" and they and their families are at risk from "the cartels," and so the police are afraid and must be allowed to beat, subdue and even kill their prey for fear...fear of what? 

We Hang Together or We Hang Separately

Mad Dog asked what doxing is and was told it meant publishing on social media the telephone numbers, home addresses and other identifiers publicly.

Which reminded Mad Dog of the conversation he once had with the CEO of Portsmouth Hospital, in Portsmouth New Hampshire. Mad Dog said he was glad to finally meet her because he could not find her name on any of the printed media, on the hospital website or even at the reception desk in the hospital and when he asked where her office was, the man behind the counter asked, "What do you need to know for?"  

If You Can Find Me

She explained she did not want anyone to know who she was--outside of the hospital staff--because she feared getting hate mail and who knows what else? This was fifteen years ago, well before doxxing or shootings of CEO's of health insurance companies. 

I stared at her thinking: If you are THAT afraid, maybe you should not BE the CEO. After all, isn't that why we pay CEO's the big bucks, because they are willing to take the responsibility? (Of course, all this was long before that United Health Care CEO got shot.) But really, if you are going to be a CEO, or a cop, shouldn't that entail a certain risk? What's next, soldiers and sailors and marines wearing masks?

Eventually, the CEO was fired for not meeting budgets and the CEO functions transferred to the Hospital Corporation of America in Nashville, Tennessee, where presumably the managers in power would be safe.

No Hiding From His Enemies

Taken to it's logical extreme, this might mean our next candidates for Congress, for the Presidency may simply identify themselves by numbers or some sort of social media tag, "MAGAMAN" or "Super Sleuth" or "Ultra Kool Dude."  And police walking a beat? Forget about it. Police will cruise around in airconditioned Hum Vees totally garbed up in body armor and equipped with robots to pluck likely looking suspects off the streets.

Remember when police in New York did "stop and frisk" for any suspicious looking (i.e. dark skinned) young males walking down the street, claiming that technique had made crime drop? Then, when the actual data was examined it turned out crime had dropped years before stop and frisk and after stop and frisk was outlawed, crime dropped further.

Buy Your Badge on Line

So, yes, it CAN happen here.

Already has. 

Where's His Baklava?

We are just too complacent and preoccupied with getting the kids to day care and camp and with watching the Red Sox and the girls displaying on the Sea Wall to notice.

The Devil Went Down to Georgia and Senator Jon Ossoff Smites Him

 

There's a lot of well ground angst about the failure of Democrats to rise up to do battle with Republican thugs like Jim Jordan, about how the Republicans have tigers in Congress where Democrats send only house cats.

Jamie Raskin, Alan Schiff cross foils with Republicans, but they usually only leave a dueling scar across the odd Republican cheek. 

Jon Ossoff lancinates the heart.

Consider his evisceration of the latest Trump toadie to sit before a Senate Committee.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epqdjIIkqnk

It's a lovely bit of predation.

His quarry is Russell Vought, of the OMB. Senator Ossoff ticks through a list of civil servants who had been summarily fired in mass, then rehired when it was discovered these workers actually service and protect our nuclear missiles, or our vaccine supplies and asks if the very act of quickly rehiring those essential workers did not speak for itself, ipse race loquitor ("The fact speaks for itself"), demonstrating such willy nilly actions were a mistake which even the perpetrators had to quickly admit and correct. Oh, my bad.

Ode to Chattel Slavery

Well, I don't know it was a mistake. I wasn't the one firing those particular people, is Vought's answer. But surely, even if you weren't the one who made that particular mistake, you can look at the act and agree firing nuclear missile caretakers and then rehiring them the next day suggests a mistake, actually an avalanche of mistakes were made? 

No, Vought says. I don't know that.

And then Vought does the Trump Tango: It was all Biden's fault.

When Ossoff shifts the question to firing half the staff at the CDC, which is in his home state of Georgia, Vought stammers that the CDC showed itself to be a failure during COVID, implying firing half the CDC staff was justified, but then he slips on to saying the CDC's failures were all Biden's fault. 

And Ossoff replies, "You are not here representing the Biden Administration. You represent the Trump administration. I don't want to hear about Biden."

It's the old Trump Tango, shuffle, well you think we're bad, what about Biden?!?

Poor Vought: He's stuck with just a few dance steps. He cannot possibly admit to a mistake because that means someone in the Trump administration may have been wrong about something. So all he can do is pretend he doesn't know enough to know when someone un-does  what he's just done, that is a tacit acknowledgement of, "Oh, my bad."

Georgia Justice

But this is not about Vought, who like so many Trump toadies is not really worth the time it takes to flay them.

This is about Ossoff, who is combative enough, adroit enough to be a Democrat with some street cred and good vibes. The man can throw a punch. He's not got the baggage of AOC. He's not got the cadence or maybe not the charisma of Bernie Sanders.

Slaying Dragons: Ossoff

But he's definitely got something. If it's not charisma, I don't know what to call it. 

Mad Dog found he could not resist contributing to his campaign. 

He's a keeper. 

Trump Threatens to Bomb Norway Unless He Gets Nobel Peace Prize!

 NB: Headline from Borowitz Report

We can all well remember the night!

And now it's come back to haunt us, well, to haunt the Donald, the searing memory of that utter humiliation, and Norway will pay the price!

The White House Correspondents' Dinner and President Barak Obama addressed Donald Trump about Trump's insistence Obama's birth certificate was faked and Obama, Trump said, was really born in Kenya and "Oh, you'd be surprised the things we're finding," Trump said.

Well, he was right about that. Mad Dog would have been just SO surprised, because, Trump so rarely tells the truth.

President Obama began with that indelible image of his "birth video" and things went down hill from there for the Donald.

Trump has always been obsessed with President Obama, who was an actual President, not just someone playing his impression of a President on reality TV.  Next to the smooth and the polish and the cool of Obama, nobody has to say anything about the Donald's inadequacies--the comparison is so obvious and the humiliation so complete. The Donald ultimately refused do the annual White House Correspondents Dinner when he was in office, because he, on some level in that reptilian brain, appreciated the contrast between real quality and his own third rate bluster would be so devastating.

It would be the difference between a Pavarotti concert and Donald doing his best karaoke imitation. Just cringe.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zeGpLg0b3DE

And so, Donald has shifted his sites on winning the Nobel Peace Prize, as Obama did. He's got Karoline Leavitt, his press secretary, Pathetic Hegseth, Marco Rubio all crying out for the Peace Prize committee to do their duty and award Mr. Trump his gold bauble.

Truth be told, given Obama's forays into dropping drone bombs and other military adventures, that Nobel Peace Prize seemed a bit premature and ill considered--all things considered, as wonderful as Mr. Obama was, a Peace Prize winner was a bit of a stretch, but no matter, the Donald wants one because, you know, it comes with a medal which looks gold! And Obama won one, so he wants one, too.

There really is some pathos, looking at the Donald, the wannabe, who tells the world he is the greatest President ever, better even than Lincoln! And we laugh, because, of course you cannot take the Donald literally, but he is-- seriously. 

And that's why the Donald's fans (and the Donald himself) so loathe Dr. Fauci and make up all those slanders about him--just seeing the diminutive Dr. Fauci (five feet seven) standing next to the Donald on the stage, during the COVID crisis, and Fauci obviously a giant of integrity, intelligence and intuition, made the Donald look, well, you know how he looked. Before our eyes, Dr. Fauci towered over the Donald, who suddenly could be seen to be a mental and spiritual dwarf (Dopey, or maybe Grumpy).

 

So the Donald wants his Peace Prize, and his father cannot get it for him, so he'll have to bomb Norway all on his own. 

The good news: No pilots will have to fly all the way from Missouri. The peach prize is kept at ground level. 

PS: Thanks to Borowitz for the Headline

Get Your ICE Now!

The state of New Hampshire just passed a law saying that if any New Hampshire town refused to allow its police to cooperate with ICE agents, those towns would be penalized financially by the state, which will withhold funds from them.

The Sheriff of Rockingham County has admitted to having entered into "an agreement" with ICE agents to use sheriff's deputies to stop foreign looking folks driving while looking dark, which in New Hampshire is something uncommon. The Sheriff, when queried about this arrangement, refused to provide details, saying only the agreement was not a contract but an understanding still in progress.

For $50 You, Too Can Raid 

New Hampshire is something of a chimera, or maybe schizophrenic--It's Congressional delegation, two US Senators and two Representatives are all Democrats. But its governor, its House of Representatives, its Senate and its arcane Executive Committee are all Republican and not just by a little. Concord and the state house are beyond conservative; that whole mob is medieval.

So, it is with some interest Mad Dog reads of women who have been raped by men in baklavas bearing ICE badges, who, presumably were imposters.

When law enforcement officials do not have to identify themselves, that's what you get.

The Minnesota state representative and his wife were murdered by a man posing as a policeman.

Community Policing, ICE style

And checking Amazon, I do not see ICE badges on sale, but E Bay and plenty of other sites have them. So for the price of a badge and a baklava and a hoodie, you too can wrestle a citizen, woman or man, into your van and become part of the Donald Brigade, bringing an American Gestapo to your own home town.

And you can do as you feel.

Obliterating Inconclusiveness

Sometimes, art can inform life. 

And depictions of history can inform the present. 

There is a famous scene from "Downfall" a German movie based on eyewitness testimony from Hitler's secretary and others who were in the Berlin bunker with him, which is, as we say, "of moment."  We see Der Fuhrer simply unable to cope with reality.  In a sense, this is not unexpected or even suggestive of a psychotic break, as for Der Fuhrer, reality has always been what he says it is, and,  that worked for him, until it didn't.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBWmkwaTQ0k

And now we see Mr. Trump caught in that same bind. Illegal immigrants are murderers and rapists and we can simply round them all up and deport them; tariffs will solve all  our economic problems and there will be new factories blossoming all over the rust belt with American workers making Made In America products again; Ford F150 trucks which are made of parts 2/3 of which are made outside America will carry "Made In America" labels; birthright citizenship will be voided, no matter what the Constitution says; taxpayer funds will fund Catholic, Baptist and other religious schools, because separation of church and state is now unconstitutional; white men will no longer be victimized because they are white; Harvard will become a school for the trades and electricians, plumbers and carpenters will go forth and fix America--and don't get me wrong, we can use way more tradesmen and will be better for that-- but I wouldn't bet on them curing cancer; vaccines which have harmed our beautiful children will no longer vex our families; America is Great Again!

And, of course, there is peace in the Middle East because, despite intelligence assessment which say the effects of that glorious bunker busters raid is inconclusive or indeterminate, Iran's capacity to make nuclear bombs has been obliterated.

As if you can bomb knowledge.

We cannot know what lies hundreds of yards beneath that Iranian mountain. Not even the Iranians may know yet. But, its just as likely once they dig down, they'll find those centrifuges survived just fine. If not, they'll make new ones. They know how.

But Mr. Trump knows what he knows. 

We cannot take him literally. But we must take him seriously. 

Oh, You Can TRUST them!

Of course, we went to war to eliminate Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq.  Secretary Colin Powell, held up a vial of something nasty at the U.N., which he said Iran had and could use to destroy an entire city. He was very sure. Our government is usually very sure of itself. And vaccines cause autism and fluoride in the water poisons our precious bodily fluids and does untold but well known harm. Be sure of that. Mr. Trump has told us all that through his henchmen and henchwomen.

Greatest Air Transport Ever!

We do not have to believe him, of course. 

Oh, Well, Then Again, Maybe Not: Mission (Un) Accomplished

One thing about war: it tends to impose reality upon those who want to deny it.

In that famous sequence in "Downfall," the German movie about Adolph Hitler in the bunker, Hitler is ordering around phantom Wehrmacht divisions which the generals know do not exist, to defend Berlin, to turn the tide of war against the Russians, and to sweep them from Germany.

When people talk about the miracle of Hitler having escaped the assassin's bomb which killed the officers in the room, but left Hitler unscathed, with only a shredded pair of trousers, they pointed to his escape as evidence of God's will to protect and preserve, Der Fuhrer.

But later, it was realized had Hitler been killed, his generals, and his lieutenants would likely have sued for peace and nobody outside Germany, Poland and Austria would ever have learned about the concentration camps and if the allies had agreed to terms, the Second World War might have ended like the First, with Germany unreconstructed. The total collapse of the Third Reich was necessary to reinvent Germany and establish a new order in Europe and only with Hitler fighting to the bitter end could that happen.

Now we have similar things being said about the bullet which only grazed Trump's ear.

But as Lincoln noted in his sacred Second Inaugural Address: God works in mysterious ways; "The Almighty has His own purposes; the judgements of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."

Now, Donald Trump asserts mission accomplished; the Iranian nuclear program has been destroyed. They can no longer enrich uranium or create an atom bomb. 

As reported in the New York Times: "There was also evidence, according to Two Israeli officials with knowledge of the intelligence, that Iran had moved equipment and uranium from the site in recent days."

Trump, of course, has claimed the radi was "a complete and total success," and Iran's nuclear capabilities have been "obliterated."

Now we are parsing what "complete success" means and what "obliterated means.

If Iran moved its enriched uranium and its centrifuges and if the mountain redoubt was only damage and not destroyed, then what the raid demonstrated was that America does not have the power to stop Iran from making nuclear bombs.

But it's still early yet.

We do know one thing: We cannot believe Trump about anything. Of that we can be sure. Even his most ardent supporters have always said, "You cannot take him literally, but you can take him seriously."

Which is to say, you cannot believe the bum at all.

P.S. (Addendum 6/24/25)

Report from the "failing" New York Times:

A preliminary classified U.S. report says the American bombing of three nuclear sites in Iran set back the country’s nuclear program by only a few months, according to officials familiar with the findings.

The strikes sealed off the entrances to two of the facilities but did not collapse their underground buildings, the officials said the early findings concluded.

Before the attack, U.S. intelligence agencies had said that if Iran tried to rush to making a bomb, it would take about three months. After the U.S. bombing run and days of attacks by the Israeli Air Force, the report by the Defense Intelligence Agency estimated that the program had been delayed, but by less than six months.

The report also said that much of Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium was moved before the strikes, which destroyed little of the nuclear material. Iran may have moved some of that to secret locations.

Thinking Fast and Slow

 

So King Donald drops the bunker buster bombs on Iran's mountain protected nuclear facilities.

And he announces it, not from the Resolute Desk, but as Obama did when Obama announced the death of Osama Bin Laden, standing behind a podium. And standing behind him, nodding obsequiously,  were Marco Rubio, J.D. Vance and Pathetic Hegseth--the three stooges of the apocalypse.

The fast thought is: What a stupid thing to do! Not to mention illegal, as this is clearly an act of war and Congress, not even this rubber stamp, spineless Republican Congress voted an act of war.

On the other hand, we have long recognized there are circumstances the President may have to act in a timely way and Congress never does, so we accept he acts first and begs forgiveness later, rather than asking for permission.

And, of course, President Obama killed various Muslim leaders, terrorists, bomb makers with drones, and while this is an order of magnitude different, it's still just sending in U.S. military lethality to stop fanatics from acting.

And, as Israeli journalist Yossi Klein Halevi noted in a recent interview with Jeffrey Goldberg  of The Atlantic the regime in Tehran has been obsessed with annihilating Israel, which it has daily called the second Satan, second only to the United States, which is the Great Satan.  They erected a doomsday clock in the middle of Tehran which counts down the time to when Iran will wipe Israel from the face of the earth.

So, there can be little doubt, if and when the current Iranian regime gets its hands on an atomic bomb, it will drop it on Israel, or if it has more than one, it'll drop all of them.

Now Halevi is every bit as appalled by Netanyahu and his apocalyptic, Warsaw Ghetto like destruction of Gazza as I am, but he finds it difficult to say Netanyahu is wrong about Iran.

So, when Trump finds the airspace over Iran clear, he sends in the B-2 bombers and tries to take out the production lines for the Iranian doomsday machine they are building to deliver to Israel. 

It may not have been successful, despite Trump's claims, which we all know cannot be believed, but can we blame him for trying?

He did not drop these bombs on civilians. He did not say he wanted to convert Fordo into another French Riviera. He simply tried to eliminate a death factory.

The arguments against this rash action:

1/ It will provoke Iran into revenge attacks: We'll suffer repeat 9/11 attacks in the US.

2/ It was illegal, as it was an act of war without Congressional approval.

3/ It will do exactly what Trump promised his voters he would not do: Draw the US into another Middle Eastern war, like Iraq or Afghanistan.

Only the first really requires response. The illegal thing is debatable; whether it involves us in a wider conflict remains to be seen but is not a done deal by any means.

So, the argument about provoking an Iranian retaliation: The fact is, when Libya blew up that American plane over Lockerbie, Scotland you could point to any number of US acts to which this might have been a response, but from the vantage point of 2025, it looks as if the Muslim fanatics simply found they had in their possession the means to blow American planes out of the sky and they did it. They did not need to point to any specific act they were avenging. And once captured, they did not point to a specific act for which planting that bomb was an act of revenge--they were simply doing violence to a United States they considered their enemy, which had visited so many depredations against them they did not even need to bother to justify any specific act.

All they needed was hate.

When the Twin Towers were destroyed, and Jim Lehrer asked a Middle East pundit on the PBS News Hour, "But why do they hate us?" he was asking in genuine perplexity, and the pundit said there are Muslim fanatics who hate us for any number of reasons, general and specific. We are infidels. We live debauched and depraved lives. We arm Israel who kill Muslims. The list goes on and on and you do not need a specific incident, only the baseline hate.

And, of course, not all Muslims hate us. Specific fundamentalist fanatics hate us.

So, given that background, that Iranian leaders are obsessed with us, hate us, want to destroy Israel and to the extent they can, the US, trying to argue that dropping bombs on Fordo will provoke them, will stoke the hornet's nest--not convincing.

Iran is already a hornet's nest. And I have to admit, even though I try to allow creatures to live their lives--I do not hunt or trap squirrels on my property; I do not trap chipmunks or even rabbits (who eat my flowers), when a hornet or wasp nest appears in the corner of my garage door frame or anywhere on my house, I go full nuke on that. You cannot live with a hornet's nest on your threshold.

Now, I am very aware some will say, "But that's also the case with Gazza." 

No, Gazza is not a hornets' nest. Gazza is different from Tehran. I can say that while also agreeing my knowledge of the Middle East and Israel is superficial and based on American and British journalism, not on professional or personal experience. I can only listen to people who might know, like the former head of the Mossad, who said explicitly Gazza has been a disaster from the Israeli point of view and has long ago become a "useless and counterproductive" effort.

But Iran--like most Americans I have seen enough of the Iranian ayatollah's for long enough to believe, even if I do not know--they are fair targets.