So I said... for February 25 to March 4

Updated to include links, which I failed to include before posting.

The next issue of my irregular compilation of comments I’ve made at various places on various issues over the past week or so, with some added context as seemed needed.

2026-02-25
[In the SOTU, the Orange Overlord endorsed forced school outing of trans kids.]

What still seems so tragic to me that is I can recall from a good number of years ago PSAs on TV (okay, maybe it was radio; the words are what I remember) telling children that if there were problems at home and they needed help, to tell an adult, including, I remember this specifically, “a trusted teacher.”

Now, that’s simply no longer true. If you’re trans and home feels like a hostile environment, a teacher is someone you dare not trust. Not just because they might expose you to your parents but because they might have no choice in the matter, so you remain silent, feeling trapped and isolated and alone - and potentially suicidal.

Ignorance leads to fear (transphobia). Fear leads to hate (transmisia). Hate leads to inflicting suffering. And the infliction of suffering will be described as doing good - because the alternative is facing the reality of what it is being done and that is too much to bear.

[Footnote: “Tell a trusted adult” is still standard guidance. The issue is, if you’re a trans child, who could such a person be?]

==

2026-02-26
[H.R. 7661, introduced hours after the SOTU, would prohibit schools from “promoting” or “facilitating” anything involving “gender dysphoria” or “transgenderism” and codify the idea that anything to do with trans people is “sexually explicit.” The only thing other than being trans designated “sexually explicit” is depictions of sexual intercourse as defined in 18 USC §2256.]

This just goes to confirm what I’ve been saying for a long time: These are mentally disturbed, ethically warped people driven nearly mad by their obsession with sex such that they can’t conceive of being transgender as a matter of who a person is but only in terms of how they “do it” and “what’s in their pants” and all their attempts at disappearing trans folks are really attempts to repress their hidden, lurid, guilty fantasies.

==

2026-02-27
A simple question I have not seen asked regarding impending war on Iran:

WHAT THE FLAMING HELL IS “COMMERCIAL-GRADE ENRICHED WEAPONS MATERIAL??”

I have to assume the “enriched weapons material” refers to enriched uranium or plutonium. The only sense I can make of “commercial grade” is that it’s enriched to a degree useful for commercial applications - specifically, running a nuclear reactor.

That’s an enrichment level of 3-5% (i.e. 3-5% of the fuel is actual U-235 or Pu-239). Weapons-grade is >90% enriched.

So unless there is some explanation of which I am unaware, the administration of The Orange Overlord and his coterie of clowns and lickspittle liars is threatening to go to war because Iran is “a week away” from being able to operate a nuclear reactor.

[I made essentially the same comment just in a shorter form on another site on March 1 in reply to the observation that “they’ve been saying Iran is days away from producing nuclear weapons for decades. They’re probably hoping we don’t remember that so they can justify what he wants to do.]

==

2026-02-27
[In the Orange Overlord’s SOTU he said “The first duty of government is to protect American citizens, not illegal aliens.” The same day, a nearly-blind, non-English-speaking Burmese refugee was found dead after being dumped by CPB at night, in a Buffalo winter, five miles from his home.]

“If he’s going to die, the better he do it sooner, so to reduce the illegal population!”

Seems to me I heard that or something like it sometime in I think it was December.

==

2026-02-28
So Secretary of “War is Peace” Pete “Manly Man” Hogsbreath says the Pentagon has made a deal with Scouting America to eliminate DEI programs and end tolerance of transgender scouts.

To the relief of some, the group declared it would still “have transgender people in our program going forward.”

For my part, I’ll hold my applause until I hear more details. The statement says that yes, trans kids are still welcome - but it does not say that they will not be programmatically segregated by birth sex nor does it say anything about the cutting back on or elimination of DEI programs.

Suppose some state said “Of course trans people are welcome to use our bathrooms or compete in sports - as long as they do it according to their sex assigned at birth.” Would that satisfy? Because it shouldn’t.

This may turn out better than I think it sounds, but I’ll need to be convinced it isn’t just a smokescreen over what is essentially a surrender.

In any event and personally, I think Scouting America should tell the Pentagon to, as I used to put it, “remove thyself to an alternate location, there to engage in autoerotic activities” - i.e., GFY. Crafts, outdoor camping, and sports should not be pipelines to the military.

==

2026-02-28
[In response to the same announcement, someone noted the Scouts are significantly dependent on the DOD, e.g., the Corps of Engineers maintains a lot of Summer Camp infrastructure.]

Yes, and why do they do it? Civic duty? Contribution to the public good?

Nah. It’s because Scouting America acts - whether consciously or by default - as recruitment for the military. The group will even brag about how many of its participants wind up in the military.

==

2026-03-01
[Robert Reich referred again to how offended he was by Randy Newman’s song “Short People.”]

Randy Newman’s song “Short “People” was intended as a satire about prejudice. Apparently he was unaware of the prejudice based on height, saying later he couldn’t see why people would think that anyone “was as crazy as that character” or something to that effect. It was not his only satirical song about bigotry where he spoke in the voice of the bigot, it was just the one that became well known. If you still wonder, you should read the lyrics to see that it is deliberately way over the top.

Just remember, Newman also wrote “Political Science” in which he said we should “drop the big one” on everybody because everybody hates us - except on Australia because we “don’t wanna hurt no kangaroo.” Failing to recognize obvious satire is a rookie mistake.

==

2026-03-01
So I see people saying “Iran is just another distraction from Epstein.”

NOT EVERYTHING IS A DISTRACTION, DAMMIT!

This is a real war with real people really dying, not a damn sideshow and I guarantee you it’s not a “distraction” to the people doing the suffering and dying.

Do you really think that there would be no war, no attacks on immigrants, no undermining of science and public health, no stripping of LGBTQ+, particularly trans, rights, no voter suppression, no pushing of white Christian nationalism, no assertions of near-dictatorial powers, no threats about Greenland or Canada, no the list just goes on and on and on, if it wasn’t for Epstein?

Get a flaming grip!

[This resulted in my being accused of being unconcerned with child rape so I’ll add this addendum, something I apparently should have included but didn’t because I thought it was apparent: When you label something as “a distraction,” you are saying it is unimportant, irrelevant, not worthy of attention and can be safely ignored; in fact it should be ignored so as to keep all focus on whatever is claimed in the particular case to be the singular “real” issue.

As horrific as the facts and the further implications surrounding the Epstein files are, I find myself incapable of letting pass without resistance all the other examples of heinousness coming from the court of the Orange Overlord. I will make no apologies for that and I reject the underlying suggestion that those actions would not have been undertaken, that is, were done only to serve as distractions, were it not for Epstein.]

==

2026-03-03
[Hemant Mehta wrote about his doubts about a story that a combat-lever commander told officers under their command that Donald Trump was “anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon,” leading to the Second Coming.]

I come to this as, if you will, a virgin, as while I had seen the headline on [Jonathan] Larsen’s story, I hadn’t read it. I still haven’t.

That said, I was put off by your “just asking questions” approach, one that despite your disclaimers came across much more as debunking the story than as expressing healthy skepticism.

For example, you took a couple of personal shots at [Mikey] Weinstein[, President and Founder of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, the source of the story] - “he brags about being repeatedly nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize,” “every email publicized by MRFF reads more like an internal fundraising email,” the group “takes in a lot of donations on the backs of stories like these,” he personally gets paid about $375,000, about half the group’s total income - while insisting they’re not relevant or “not accusations, just observations.” Then why bring them up?

What’s more, some of your “red flags” aren’t even flags, much less red ones. So the theology expressed by this commander isn’t the same as that of Pete Hegseth? Okay, now that is irrelevant not only to the truth of the story but to the central issue of such “last days” theology being expressed in the military and how far it is being spread, if it is. 

You also said “If they’re actively editing the emails, then they need to admit that” just a few paragraphs before stating that he did precisely that when you asked for an original.

So do I think that some commander could have expressed that sort of “final days” theology to those under their command? Yes. Considering the number of examples of right-wing pastors declaring Trump was “anointed of God” to be president and “Jesus is returning,” I have no doubt.

Beyond that, I suspect that a lot of the reports were repeating scuttlebutt and that they didn’t “call a reporter” because beyond concern about being outed - seriously, how many reporters would be willing to deal with a report from someone who wouldn’t ID themselves, leaving no way know the source - they didn’t have additional info to offer and it was more a case of “I heard about this and I thought you should know.”

The question of how widespread the particular form of religious extremism involved is in the military and if it’s being promoted by higher-ups are important ones and wholly worthy of investigation. But neither was the question at hand; the reliability of the story and therefore the trustworthiness of the MRFF was.

Bottom line: At this point, do I have cause to doubt that basic story? No. And bluntly, neither do you.

==

2026-03-04
[In this case, literally “said.” A local Board of Education was considering revoking its guidance on dealing with transgender students, that is, stripping away their protections. Several folks spoke against it at the meeting; this is from what I prepared (which likely makes it seem more polished than it was as delivered).  In the end, the motion lost on a tie vote of 4-4.]

Good evening.

I come before the Board tonight to urge you to continue to support and indeed where possible to strengthen the Transgender Student Guidance.

I say this despite the fact that I am not trans, no one in my family is trans, and in fact as far as I know I do not personally know a single transgender person.

The point is, you don’t need to have a personal connection to be to be aware, to understand, to have empathy.

I was bullied growing up. A lot. I was a fat, shy, bookish kid, the kind who becomes a natural target for bullying, for mockery, being picked on, teasing, and “jokes.” The result was that I never felt connected, never felt I belonged.

It was bad enough that in my teen years I seriously considered suicide and a few years later I attempted it.

Looking back on that time, I can understand to some degree what it’s like to be trans, indeed how much harder to be trans than it was for me. Because if you’re trans, you’re not just made to feel apart, you’re actively set apart, tagged, marked  as the “other,” as the “not us” by the society around you - increasingly, even legally so.

Transgender children deserve support, protection, and encouragement sufficient to thrive of the sort that any child should be able expect in any public school.

I’m not an expert, but as a layperson I’m fairly conversant with the science involved here. But you don’t have to be an expert to know the difference between what is right and what is wrong, between fair and unfair, just and unjust, between what is kindness and what is cruelty, to recognize the difference between performative concern and concealed contempt.

So I want to again, call on the Board of Education to continue, and where possible deepen, the support. the protection, the inclusion for trans students in this school system.

What’s more, I call on you to not be deterred or stampeded by the fears, fables, and fairy tales likely to be thrown at you in the course of considering this issue but rather to adopt just some portion of the courage it takes to be transgender and embrace the right, the fair, the just, and the kind.

I want to thank the members of the Board for taking on this civic responsibility of being on the BOE and I thank you for your time.

So I said... for January 26 - February 13

Another collection of comments on various topics at various sites, with context added as needed to make sense of what was said.

2026-01-26
The White House gangsters, including Greg Bovine (not a typo) and Kristi No-one, have made much of the claim that Alex Pretti was not carrying ID while armed, which meant, they claim, he was breaking the law and that somehow proved he intended to “slaughter” the DHS thugs and deserved to be shot down.

YouTuber Jesse Dollemore bothered to look up the actual law. It turns out the penalty is a max fine of $25 and if you later show the court or the arresting officer your ID plus permit it goes away.

Truly a major crime worthy of instant death.

==

2026-01-27
So the face of The Orange Overlord’s repression regime in Minnesota is going to go from Greg Bovine (not a typo) to Tom Homan, well-named because he’s almost human.

Color me unimpressed.

==

2026-01-27
According to journalist Ron Filipkowski, John Fetterman says he’d like to see DHS funding separated from the mini-bus and voted on separately. But it it’s not (and it won’t be), he’ll vote for the full bill anyway. He ended by saying he’s “committed to being a voice of reason and common sense.”

A worthwhile goal. I hope someday he achieves it.

==

2026-01-29
[Background: Julia Serano did a video essay on “marked” vs. “unmarked” (that is, “othered”) people]

I watched the essay with appreciation. Thank you for doing it. I gave a little fist pump when you referred to part of being “unmarked” is not just what others think about you, it’s what they don’t think about you - having made the same point a couple of years ago in discussing white privilege.

Related to that is the idea that if you are “marked” and in some way misbehave, it’s taken as “that’s what ‘those people’ do” - but if you are “unmarked,” it becomes “that’s what that one individual does.”

Again, thanks for the essay.

==

2026-01-30
[A collection of 47 groups - including faux-Christian ministries, anti-choice twits, and state-based far-right outfits - have started something they’re calling the “Greater Than” campaign to push for overturning Obergefell based on the vacuous claim that children of same-sex parents have been “failed” by marriage equality.]

So I just checked out their website and three things struck me:
One: The first person they picture and quote is Charlie Kirk and they quote Barack Obama as if he is a supporter.

Two:  There is no hint they oppose divorce, which would be required to be consistent with "mother and father are never optional, they are essential." (Then again, when has ethical or logical consistency ever been a requirement for this crowd?)

Three: They equate children's "needs, rights, safety, [and] development" with no same-sex parents without a word about prenatal care, WIC, SNAP,  health care, educational and housing programs, the list would be quite long. (Repeat previous parenthetical.)

Conclusion: Exactly what you'd expect. A concoction of bigots, bozos, and buffoons united in their homophobic paranoia.

==

2026-01-30
[A poll cited by Erin Reed says voters prefer Democrats to GOPpers on trans issues, suggesting there is no need for Dems to shy away from defending trans rights. An objection was raised that trans issues rank low on lists of voter concerns, so extremists dominate on the issue.]
The answer, then, is to be loud. To show it matters to (the generic) you.

Political parties don't just look for voters, they look for motivated voters, not only because they're a source for campaign volunteers but more importantly because they're the ones most likely to turn out if they think the party is on their side and also are the ones most likely to say "the hell with it" and not vote at all if they think you're not.

That "extremely radical vocal minority" you cite fits that description: loud and motivated. So should we.
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2026-01-30
[In response to a different person’s comment on the same poll.]

I expect the coming campaigns to be even more vicious than those to date and the wave of continuously more evil legislation to continue - in spite of the diminishing returns in elections.

Why? Because the most fanatical among the reactionaries know, they can't NOT know - that they are in the long run losing. They'll even say it; their constant desperate whining about the approaching collapse of civilization unless unless unless - it's not just posturing, it's a primal scream and they will fight to hold off the denouement as long as they can.

But at the same time, the rest of the right wing knows that's the only thing they've got. They are so far underwater that they have already essentially surrendered the House and are getting twitchy about the Senate. They can't hope to run and win on issues that people care most about and they know it, so they have to exploit our all-too common discomfort about anything elated to sex to arouse fear and then ride a social panic.

Combine the most fanatical with the merely ordinarily fanatical and you've got a recipe for a very very bad several months.

==

2026-01-31
[A post with a link I failed to record described anti-trans legislation as genocide.]

A bit under three years ago I compared what the right wing wants to do to trans folks with an oubliette (from the French oublier, “to forget”), a type of Medieval prison cell in which people would be stuffed and then, well, forgotten.

That’s what the right wing wants to do to trans people in this country. Not physically, at least not yet, but legally, socially, politically, psychologically, wants them to be disappeared and forgotten as if they simply do not exist, do not have the right to exist, do not even have the right to say "I exist."

I didn't use the word "genocide," but damn, it fits.

=

2026-01-31
CBS network news just this moment, on its Sunday evening broadcast, referred without comment to the new DHS policy that its agents can enter private homes without a judicial warrant.

NO THEY CAN’T! PERIOD TRIPLE-EXCLAMATION POINT ALL CAPS!!!

The masked thugs are claiming an administrative warrant is sufficient. T’S NOT! End of argument.  But I guarantee you there will be more smashed-in doors as a result.

Why why WHY do our major “news” media treat any claims to powers and authorities claimed by The Orange Overlord and his Brownshirted underlings as if they actually had them? Cowardice? Sloppiness? Incompetence? Indifference?

It really doesn’t matter. It’s just another example of how we are uninformed, misinformed, and malinformed by corporate media.

==

2026-01-31
[The following involves an exchange with another commenter. As always in such cases, I have edited their remarks to the points to which I was responding. If you suspect I may be being unfair, I urge you to check out the unedited exchange, which can be found at this link.

It began with a comment that defended the arrest of Don Lemon and Georgia Fort by citing 1 Corinthians 3:17: “If anybody should destroy the temple of God, God will destroy that person, because God’s temple is holy; and you are that temple.”]

I think I'm going to remember that quote. The next time some transphobe wants to deny needed health care to a trans person, I will tell them that they are destroying the temple of God.

As for its use here, I recall the line from "Pilgrims Progress" that says "The devil can quote Scripture for his purpose."
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2026-02-01
[Reply: “Let’s be clear about targets and responsibility. I quoted Scripture to talk about physical intrusion into holy space and natural law fundaments of the Western legal tradition.” He also laid healthcare issues faced by trans folks on insurance companies, not the laws.]

Macbeth may have been referring to life, but he could just have well meant your argument.

So let's skip the attempts to change the subject (to "Who is REALLY to blame for trans people being denied care: profit-mongering insurance companies or the right-wing fundamentalist Christian Bible-thumpers behind the drives to legislate trans folks out of existence?") and get back to the point.

That point being that you quoted the Bible - you know, that book that "has been debated for two thousand years" without even reaching a consensus as to what should be included in it but with a plethora of sects claiming their particular interpretation of their preferred translation is THE TRUTH - as expressing "natural law" and therefore as the foundation of common law and the Constitution.

Which says at minimum that you don't understand the concept of natural law while indicting strongly that you would have our secular laws be "Bible-based," thereby rejecting the very Constitution you claim as backing - all in service of justifying the arrest of Don Lemon and Georgia Fort in contravention of the social contract that allows journalists to bear witness to and report on events.

That contention is given weight by you choice of of closing [Bible] quote [about the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah], which bears no connection to anything certainly I and as far as I know anyone else has said but seems to be just a random rant threatening divine retribution for, well, for something from your imagination but not for anything here.

And since you brought up Sodom and Gomorrah, I'll reply with Ezekiel 16:49 (NIV): “Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy."

I believe I've given you as much time as you deserve. Last licks are yours if you want them.
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Except for this, which I separate to a reply to myself because it's more of a sidebar than part of the actual argument.

Would your contention that Lemon was an "appendage of the protest mob, an added feature ... part and parcel of the intimidation" and therefore deserves punishment be the same if the site had been, say, the HQ of one of those insurance companies you consider "the real enemy of trans people in health-care disputes?"

If yes, your argument about "sacred spaces" goes out the window.

If no, should it be assumed that you would likewise demand punishment for ICE or CBP agents who entered a "sacred space" to arrest a so-called "illegal immigrant?" (Note that the answer "yes, with the permission of those in charge of that space" by definition gives those same authorities the power to absolutely bar entry.)

Finally, who and what gets to define what is a "sacred space?" Does it include all Christian (including Catholic) sects? Does it include synagogues, mosques, Native American sacred lands, various shrines around the world where entry is only by permission? And note that using "a house of God" as a reference point only throws you back onto the already-rejected "'cause the Bible says so."
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2026-02-02
[I got a reply but it didn’t address the first question and the answer to second was "societies define what is sacred."]

I said I wouldn't reply and it's taking considerable will to keep to that, but I can't resist noting your statement "The moment you redefine reporters as 'appendages' of a mob, you’ve justified the baton," etc.
That "redefinition" of Don Lemon was yours. No one else's. By your own words you have "justified the baton, the cuff, and the cell - forever."

And "societies" don't define sacred spaces - the dominant forces in a society do. Consider as illustration the cavalier treatment still accorded to sacred spaces of Native Americans.

One of the roles of government is - or, rather, should be - to protect the rights of those lacking the economic, social, or political power to protect them on their own. Which will of necessity at times involve a use of state power in a way that inconveniences the powerful or privileged.

==

2026-02-01
[Still defending Lemon’s arrest, this same person in a different thread cited Owen Shroyer, who pled guilty to trespass on 1/6 and was sentenced to 6 months: “He never entered the Capitol; he was there as a journalist” so Lemon deserved the same.]

I looked up Shroyer.

First, by trespassing he violated an earlier agreement he made after he disrupted an impeachment hearing.

He made speeches endorsing the claim the election was stolen.

On Jan 5, he put out a video saying "Are we just going to sit here or are we going to actually do something about this?”

On Jan 6, he joined a crowd in shouting "We aren’t going to accept it."

While he could have had some claim to being a journalist (even if it was for Infowars), the fact is, he was not there as a journalist. He was there as an advocate and a participant.

Equating the two cases - Lemon and Shroyer - is flatly false.

==

2026-02-05
["If you can't see a trans person without sexualizing the, that's your sin."]
Geez, how long have I been saying this? So much of the bigotry and social panic about trans folks is driven by our cultural discomfort with, our cultural immaturity about, anything in any way related to sex and for the transphobes, it’s all about sex. They can’t look at, hear about, or even consider a trans person without thinking about “how they ‘do it’” and “what’s in their pants” and desperately needing to reject the guilty fantasies such thoughts arouse.

==

2026-02-06
[In reacting to TOO's saying he'll release the money for a major NJ-NY project if Penn Station and Dulles Airport are renamed for him.]

He is acting like an Egyptian pharaoh, building monuments to make himself appear greater than all who came before and so in a sense immortal. He should check out the poem "Ozymandias."

==

2026-02-08

It's not proper to dismiss Niemöller as an antisemite; his story is much more complex than the single label.

He did indeed embrace that sort of presumptive antisemitism with which we are still afflicted but was even worse then - but he came to regret it and alter his views (while in a concentration camp for being insufficiently pro-Hitler) and the poem was intended not just as a warning but to express his own guilt and shame for his own silence in the face of oppression of others.

==

2026-02-10
From the Meidas Touch "Today in Politics" for Feb. 10 we learn that Binance now holds 87% of the total circulating supply of a stablecoin issued by a crypto outfit affiliated with the Trump family. That's a $4.7 billion investment. The partnership comes after Trump pardoned Binance founder Changpeng Zhao in Oct 2025.

The degree of corruption in this administration is truly phenomenal, phenomenal to the point that I just can't keep track of it.

If there is someone who is trying, please point me in their direction!

==

2026-02-10
[Idaho is considering the harshest anti-trans bill yet, making bathroom bans apply everywhere with violations for a 2nd offense a felony punishable by 5 years.]

I'd push back on one point or perhaps more on how a point is expressed. I'd say Idaho doesn't want to run trans folks out of the state. They're quite willing for you to be there - so long as you remain completely invisible.

So long as they can tell themselves you don't exist.

So long as they can smugly declare "there ain't none of that stuff here, not like [insert preferred locale for sneers]."

So long as you commit emotional suicide and live so locked in the closet that you can't see the handle.

There was a time, not that long ago in historical terms, when being gay or lesbian was "the love that dare not say its name." Now we might say the goal here is "the self that dare not admit it breathes."

I know it's small comfort, but know both that you are not alone and that the bigots and haters are so intent on their attacks because they know - they can't not know - that history says they are losing and, like King Canute in the popular version of the story, it will wash over them.

In the meantime, keep fighting and take care of yourself whatever way seems best to you.

==

2026-02-12
[A coalition of religious organizations has filed suit in federal court charging that TOO's "Religious Liberty Commission" violates federal law.]

According to the World Religion Database at Boston University, the world's five largest religious traditions by number of adherents in 2020 were, in order, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, agnosticism, and Buddhism.

Meanwhile, according to a 2023 The Economist/YouGov poll, the top five in the US are Christianity, "nothing in particular," atheist, agnostic, and Mormon.

I'm sure Trump's "Religious Liberty Commission" of 13 Xian nationalists and one Conservative Jew can be trusted to take a truly unbiased approach to the issue of religious freedom in the world.
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2026-12
[Reply: I'm not sure about Hinduism, but Christianity, Islam and Buddhism all have multiple divisions, so lumping them together isn't really valid. Perhaps all the animist religions should be combined as well.]

That's how they were grouped in the source, apparently by general overall theology. The list also grouped "Chinese folk religions" and "ethnic or tribal religions (mostly in Africa)" seemingly in the same manner.

OTOH, decided by sects, according to the same source the top five are Sunni, Roman Catholicism, agnosticism, Protestantism, and Chinese folk religions (note the last is still a grouping).

Either way, it makes the same point: A panel of 13 Xian nationalists and one Conservative Jew cannot be trusted to approach world religious freedom on an unbiased basis.

Just as a footnote and not relevant to the issue at hand, I'll note that if we were to combine all the animist beliefs based on the single commonality of everything having a spiritual essence, to be consistent we'd have to combine all theistic beliefs as well, based on the single commonality of believing in a god or gods, which I'm not sure would yield a useful category.

==

2026-02-12
So in "a deliberate act of erasure," the administration of The Orange Overlord has removed the rainbow Pride flag from the Stonewall Monument, having already removed the Trans Pride and the Progress Pride flags.

Hey, all you "LGB without the T" dunderheads: We told you so! We told you that you would be the next target. DO YOU GET IT YET?

==

2026-02-13
[A post wrote about US weapons used by the IDF in Gaza.]

Damn. I don't get shaken easily but I should have taken your advice about skipping the section about the, let's call it "the mist."

The thing is, I already knew about thermal bombs. I already knew what they do, I knew about the effects and what they're used for. I even already had a decent sense of just how they do it even if I couldn't lay out the chemical reactions involved.

Even so, I didn't catch on until you actually said "Israel used thermal bombs" - and oh god I sat with my head in my hands for what must have been 30 seconds before I could carry on to read the rest.

Unconscionable. Just unconscionable.

032 The Erickson Report for February 25 to March 10

 

 

032 The Erickson Report for February 25 to March 10

- Virginia abolishes the death penalty

- Oregon reforms drug laws

- Restricting the 1033 Program

- Advances in and attacks on LGBTQ+ rights

- Two Weeks of Stupid: Clowns and Outrages

- Examples of the Rules for Right-wingers

The Erickson Report, Page 8: Two Weeks of Stupid: Clowns and Outrages [the Outrage]

The Erickson Report, Page 8: Two Weeks of Stupid: Clowns and Outrages [the Outrage]

[Because the discussion of the "Deal of the Century" ran so long, I had to edit on the fly and the part about "non-persistent" mines didn't make it to air.]

Living in a sea of Outrages and with time for just one, I chose this one because it has gotten, I think, too little attention.
In 1997, something called the Ottawa Process lead to the Mine Ban Treaty, an agreement to ban landmines, which are notoriously indiscriminate and persist to cause injury long after the conflict in which they were used is over.

It went into force in 1999. Today, 164 nations are party to the Treaty. Despite helping to develop it, the US is not among the signers.

However, in September 2014 the Obama administration announced a commitment not to use antipersonnel landmines outside of the Korean Peninsula and not to assist, encourage, or induce other nations to use, stockpile, produce, or transfer antipersonnel mines outside of Korea. This came three months after the US forswore future production or acquisition of antipersonnel landmines.

So while the US still was not a signatory to the Treaty, it had taken a big step towards being in line with it.

But on January 31, the Tweetie-pie White House reversed that directive, allowing combatant commanders to use antipersonnel landmines anywhere the "specific operational context" allows.

result of a landmine in the war in Yemen

This is attached to a claim that landmines are necessary for US forces and that not using them "could place them at a severe disadvantage." However, the US has not used antipersonnel mines since 1991, has not exported them since 1992, has not produced them since 1997, and has destroyed millions of stockpiled mines. And yet somehow the military manages to carry on.

The claim is that the mines to be used in the future are an advanced, "non-persistent" type intended to "reduce unintended harm to civilians" but that's a verbal fig leaf to cover the fact that the mines are indiscriminate weapons that still can't tell the difference between friend and foe, innocent and enemy, adult and child, human and animal (note they only promise to "reduce" the number of civilians killed and maimed).

Moreover, Jeff Abramson, senior fellow with the Arms Control Association, dismisses the "advanced" landmines outright. "Technical solutions to make landmines self-destruct or otherwise labeled as 'smart.'" he said, "have failed to work as advertised" and have been rejected by the countries that have signed onto the Treaty.

What makes this especially outrageous is that you know damn well that the only reason this was done is that it was an Obama-era policy and Tweetie-pie seems determined to make it like the Obama years never happened.

On all accounts, an Outrage.

The Erickson Report for February 12-25

The Erickson Report for February 12-25

[A note about sources: Pages 1-6 were originally to be one long piece and I usually only cite a reference the first time I use it. Which means some things in Page 2 may be based on references listed under Page 1, and so on.]

The Erickson Report, Page 1: "Deal of the Century" - Other Voices
https://fair.org/home/media-urge-palestinians-to-take-crumbs-because-democracy-is-not-on-offer/
https://prospect.org/world/dont-call-it-a-peace-plan-israel-palestine-trump/
https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/01/29/trump-middle-east-peace-plan-trojan-horse-israel-occupation-permanent/
https://www.crisisgroup.org/
https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/eu-rejects-trump-mideast-plan-amid-annexation-concerns-68745475
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/anti-peace-plan-many-democrats-are-denouncing-trumps-deal-century

The Erickson Report, Page 2: "Deal of the Century" - What's wrong with it
https://theintercept.com/2020/01/28/trump-netanyahu-dictate-terms-palestinian-surrender-israel-call-peace/
https://www.jns.org/knesset-makes-it-official-israel-is-a-jewish-state/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_Farm
https://fair.org/home/ending-palestinian-statehood-as-path-to-palestinian-statehood/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%27Shana_Haba%27ah

The Erickson Report, Page 3: "Deal of the Century" - a "State of Palestine"
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/revealed-trumps-deal-century-map-future-palestine-israel
https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/buried-in-the-trump-netanyahu-deal-is-an-effort-to-torpedo-a-war-crimes-investigation/
https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/01/14/justice-at-last-panic-in-israel-as-the-icc-takes-momentous-step-in-the-right-direction/
https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/icc-judges-dash-hopes-swift-probe-israeli-war-crimes

The Erickson Report, Page 4: "Deal of the Century" - What about Israel?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEbwZfkeIt8
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/07/israeli-forces-prepare-demolish-100-palestinian-homes-190722032443910.html
https://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/No-daylight-between-Trump-Netanyahu-but-will-the-sun-set-on-annexation-617049
https://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Netanyahu-We-want-to-annex-settlements-with-US-support-not-without-it-617113

The Erickson Report, Page 5: "Deal of the Century" - an old game
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2004/11/yasser-arafat.html
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2004/07/peas-in-pod.html

The Erickson Report, Page 6: "Deal of the Century" - a Footnote
https://www.juancole.com/2020/02/blocking-palestinian-apartheid.html

Two Weeks of Stupid - Clowns and Outrages [the Clown]
https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-friends/fox-news-doctor-blames-obamacare-americans-dying-preventable-illnesses
Two Weeks of Stupid - Clowns and Outrages [the Outrage]
https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/01/31/us-trump-administration-abandons-landmine-ban
https://www.hrw.org/news/2014/10/03/united-states-landmine-policy-questions-and-answers
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/01/31/bringing-back-archaic-and-gruesome-weapons-trump-reverses-us-restrictions-landmines
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/statement-press-secretary-107/

38.3 - Question: why has the left dropped military spending as an issue?

Question: why has the left dropped military spending as an issue?

I have a question.

In the midst of all the talk about Tweetie-pie's proposed tax gift to the rich and the hack-and-slash treatment proposed for Medicare, Medicaid, and much more, another part of budget considerations has been met with a massive yawn.

On November 8, House and Senate negotiators agreed on the Fiscal 2018 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), setting authorized levels of spending for the War Department. The figure? $700 billion.

That stunning figure includes $634 billion for core Pentagon operations and $66 billion for our various wars.

That is not just an increase over last year, it is an increase over what Tweetie-pie asked for: It's $31 billion more for Pentagon operations and $1 billion more for the wars.

It is a total increase over last year of $81 billion, more than 13% - an increase so large that had the DOD budget simply stayed the same level as FY 2017, not cut, just stayed the same, the US could have paid this year's tuition for every public college student in the country and still have $11 billion left over for board and books and so much for "free college is unaffordable."

Instead, we're supposed to waste it on crap like the F-35 strike fighter, the most expensive weapons system in history, with more than $100 billion invested over 25 years and it is still, according to recently-retired Director of Operational Test and Evaluation, at least two years and $1 billion from being combat ready.

We're supposed to spend it on more bombers, more submarines, more destroyers, more aircraft carriers.

And we are supposed to pay for war and more wars and wars you haven't heard of and wars that are secret.

The New York Times reports that the United States has been at war continuously since 9/11 and now has nearly a quarter-million active-duty and reserve troops in at least 172 countries and territories. American forces are actively engaged not only in the conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen but also in Niger, Somalia, Jordan, Thailand, and elsewhere. In fact some 38,000 troops are on assignment in places the DOD lists as "unknown" doing who knows what.

So here's the question: Where the flaming hell is the left?

Why the silence? Why the acquiescence? The NDAA passed the House by 344-81 and the Senate by 89-9.

Looking for, proposing, ways to cut war spending used to be a rallying cry of the left. Money for life, not death! we said. Fund human needs! we said. What the hell happened?

Is it truly that just because it's not Americans doing a lot of the dying that we just don't care? Is that what we are saying? Or are we embracing the militarized paranoia of "the terrorists are coming! the terrorists are everywhere?" Is that what we are saying?

Well, I'll tell you what I say and I'll do it by paraphrasing something I wrote about 25 years ago:

Killing is what too much of our federal budget is about. I’m not going to get into the argument about what portion of federal spending goes to the military, not only because of disagreements over exactly what should and shouldn’t be considered “military spending,” but also because, frankly, I just don’t care.

Forget the number-crunching, forget the arguments about discretionary versus non-discretionary spending, about ratios and operating budgets and “trends,” forget the blather and the bother. The issue is not the percentage of federal spending going to the military, the issue is military spending. And the military budget has been and continues to be too big.

As long as we can afford to build rail guns but not railroads, the military budget is too big.

As long as we can afford humvees but not health care, the military budget is too big.

As long as we can afford military housing but not public housing, the military budget is too big.

As long as we can find money for mass murder but not mass transit, the military budget is too big.

As long as we can pay to make our bombs smart but not our children, the military budget is too big.

As long as military aid is given higher priority than development aid and world hegemony matters more than world hunger, the military budget is too big.

In short, as long as it’s easier to approve money for matters of death than for matters of life, the military budget is just too damned big.

But that’s still the political reality, no matter the current numbers: For domestic programs or non-military foreign aid, spending has to be justified - but for military programs, not spending has to be justified. The bias remains in favor of the Pentagon, the burden of proof remains on its opponents.

That bias, to be blunt, is the mark of militarism. And as long as that remains true, the military budget Is. Too. Big.

And I am ashamed of how the left seems to have forgotten that.

35.2 - Good News: anti-nuclear weapons group wins Nobel Peace Prize

Good News: anti-nuclear weapons group wins Nobel Peace Prize

The 2017 Nobel Peace Prize has gone to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), a coalition of grassroots non-government groups in more than 100 nations.

The award going to a relatively a little-known group was something of a surprise, leading some to suspect that it was intended as a kick in the shin to TheRump over his bellicosity over North Korea and the expectation that he will try weasel out of the Iran nuclear weapons deal.

The Nobel committee denied that, saying it was a call to states that have nuclear weapons to fulfill their earlier pledges to work towards nuclear disarmament.

Either way, the renewed attention to the threat of nuclear war, a threat which has never actually gone away and now appears to be increasing, is welcome and in helping to generate that attention, this is Good News.

31.3 - Noting August 6 and 9: the start of the nuclear weapons age

Noting August 6 and 9: the start of the nuclear weapons age

I'm going to spend the rest of the show on something I do every couple of years around this time, in fact it is largely based on something I did two years ago. This time out it carries extra resonance and we daily have the spectacle of two egomaniacal, sociopathic, man-babies spluttering threats at each other across the Pacific Ocean like it was a 4th grade schoolyard. It is the anniversary - the 72nd anniversary, to be exact - of the bombings of Hiroshima on August 6 and Nagasaki on August 9 and the birth of the age of nuclear weapons.

Leo Szilard

Albert Einstein

Most people date the start of the American nuclear arms effort to a famous 1939 letter composed by physicist Dr. Leo Szilard but sent to President Roosevelt over the signature of Albert Einstein because it was thought his name would be more impressive to Roosevelt and his advisors).

The letter noted the possibility of developing an atomic bomb. By the time of Pearl Harbor, the US already had a small nuclear bomb project going that had made real progress.

The political argument given for building the atomic bomb, for investing the enormous amounts of time, money, resources, and scientific talent in what became known at the Manhattan Project, was that some intelligence reports said that Nazi Germany may have been working on one. If so, we had to have one and we had to have it first. Although it must in fairness be noted that it may not have been known at the time, the fact is that although the Germans were indeed doing some experiments in that direction, they were going about it in an extremely inefficient way and it would've taken them decades to develop a bomb - if it was possible at all.

Some of late have tried to resuscitate that threat of "the Nazi bomb" by claiming the Germans were "closer than we knew." The argument, however, is based on their progress in enriching uranium and relies on the supposition that in the 1940s the German scientists working on the project could have suddenly changed gears and adopted a sharply different approach to fashioning a bomb - that is, do exactly what they had decided against doing years before. (Which would also entail admitting to their superiors that they had wasted a whole lot of time and money on a dead end.) At least one writer added the argument of a commando raid that destroyed an enrichment facility in occupied Norway, claiming that set back the German's bomb project significantly. That undoubtedly slowed production, but it didn't affect the problems with the design process itself. That is, the "closer than we knew" assertion in based on a series of "what ifs," which makes for interesting speculation but not a persuasive argument.

But no matter what you think on that point, what's important here is that it was the claimed threat from Germany that supposedly provided the logic, the argument, the purpose of the Manhattan Project. And yet....

By late 1944 US intelligence knew that the German nuclear experiments had failed. The Manhattan Project didn't even slow down.

Trinity test

In fact, Germany surrendered on May 8, 1945 - 10 weeks before the first successful test explosion of an atomic bomb. (Code-named Trinity, it took place at Alamogordo Testing Range, 230 miles south of Los Alamos, New Mexico, on July 16, 1945.) With the surrender of Germany, the entire founding logic of the Manhattan Project evaporated, vanished, dissolved. But the project by then had too much momentum - it had become its own purpose, its own logic. So instead of stopping or even slowing down, the project accelerated, in part because some on the staff were afraid the war would end before they got the bomb built. We simply switched myths: from the myth of Nazi atomic bombs to the myth of the fanatical Japanese. The weapon that was supposedly designed for defense against Germany now "had" to be used on Japan.

And here is what's probably the most important myth of all, because it provided the logical (if you can call it that) underpinnings for actually carrying out the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, for actually vaporizing tens of thousands of human beings in the flash of an instant and opening the door of the atomic age, a myth that gets replayed, reproduced, re-pronounced, re-proclaimed every time Hiroshima and Nagasaki are mentioned, a myth that people continue to believe today, as polls show that a clear majority of Americans approve of the bombings: the myth that the Japanese were so fanatical that the only possible alternative to the devastation of those cities was a bloody land invasion of Japan.

It's just not true. It's more than a myth, worse than a myth, it's a damned lie. A damned lie that is now more than 70 years old.

To begin with, the yearly claims, sure to be heard again this week, that such an invasion would've cost 250,000 or 500,000 or 1,000,000 American lives (the numbers vary unpredictably) is utter nonsense. Even President Truman originally cited an estimate of 250,000 casualties (not deaths) - although in later years he doubled it, then doubled it again, each time for no discernible reason other than self-justification. More to the point, the War Planning Committee of the Joint Chiefs of Staff never expected more than 40,000 American deaths, and thought they might've been as low as 20,000 because they thought it a fair likelihood that Japan would surrender during the first part of such a campaign.

Now, 20,000 is a lot of people - then again, it's about 1/7 to 1/10 of the death which we inflicted on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Which in turn raises the more important question of whether such an invasion was necessary at all.

It wasn't.

By the spring of 1945 Japan was already a defeated nation. It no longer had any navy to speak of, its air force had been decimated, its army driven back to its own shores. It was incapable of mounting any offensive action or even of defending itself against US air raids. Critical materials and even food were in short supply.

The situation was so bad that even attempts to justify the bombings wind up confirming Japan's desperate condition: Several years ago I had an email debate with a man who tried to project the classic image of a well-defended Japan bristling with military forces. At one point, trying to show the determination of the Japanese to defend the homeland no matter what the cost, he said "Japan pulled some 500 loaded ships out of China and not one of them made it back to Japan," because of attacks by high-altitude bombers. In response, I noted that he had thereby agreed, if unintentionally, that Japan's air force was so thoroughly destroyed that it couldn't even provide air cover to get its own retreating troops back safely.

In fact, the situation was so bad that before - before - the bombing of Hiroshima, Japan had already made secret overtures to the United States through Sweden and the Soviet Union stating that it was ready to surrender. All of this was known to the US military, all of this was known to Truman, who rejected the offer because it wasn't unconditional: Hirohito would've kept his throne as Emperor.

What was also known to Truman was the USSR's intent to declare war on Japan and its likely impact: In his journal about his meetings with Stalin at the Potsdam conference, Truman wrote on July 17, 1945, "He'll be in Japan War on August 15. Fini Japs when that comes about." (Sidebar: Truman stalled at the beginning of the conference because he wanted to know that the Trinity test, which occurred the day before he wrote that, had been a success before he dealt with Stalin.)

The atomic bombings were simply unnecessary. But we refused to accept the idea, refused even to accept surrender - because by then peace was not enough, even victory was not enough: It had to be utter, smashing, devastating, total victory.

So it was that early on the morning of August 6th, 1945, the B-29 Superfortress bomber nicknamed "Enola Gay" took off from Tinian Island in the Pacific, headed for Hiroshima, a city in Japan of about 250,000 people. It carried a single bomb, code-named "Little Boy." At 8:15 AM local time, Little Boy was dropped.

I want to pause for a moment to give you a sense of the kind of power we're talking about here. The bomb contained 64 kilograms - about 141 pounds - of highly-enriched, fissionable uranium. Of that amount, only about .7 kilogram, or about 1.5 pounds, actually fissioned - that is, the atoms split - and only about 600 milligrams was actually converted into energy. That 600 milligrams equals six-tenths of a gram, or a little more than 1/50 ounce.

"Little Boy"

Hiroshima

The energy released by that 1/50 of an ounce had the explosive force of 14,000 tons of dynamite. It was enough to devastate Hiroshima. Around 70,000 people died instantly; some of them were literally vaporized. Another 20,000 died shortly thereafter, some thousands more by 1950, due to injuries, radiation poisoning, and cancer.

Just three days later, another nuclear bomb, code-named "Fat Man," did the same to Nagasaki, with tens of thousands more dead, thousands more condemned to die of injuries, radiation poisoning, and cancer, and another city destroyed.

So we destroyed Hiroshima and then we destroyed Nagasaki when Japan didn't surrender fast enough.

"Fat Man"

Nagasaki

We destroyed them even though many US officials and top military officers, including such as Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair Adm. William Leahy as well as Gens. Dwight Eisenhower, "Hap" Arnold, and Douglas MacArthur, declared it unnecessary. That judgment was proved correct by US analysts sent to Japan in 1946 who concluded that nation would've surrendered before November 1, 1945 "even if atomic bombs hadn't been dropped, Russia hadn't entered the war, and no invasion was planned."

Bombing Hiroshima was unnecessary and the US government and military knew it was unnecessary. It was a crime, a war crime, one that we compounded, more than doubled, by bombing Nagasaki before the impact of the first bomb had time to settle in. The Nagasaki bomb was made ready in a day-and-night effort and the city wasn't even the primary target. Kokura was. In fact, Nagasaki was not on the original list of the top three targets for the second bomb and wound up being devastated only because Kokura had too much cloud cover that day for a clean bomb run.

The second bombing was originally scheduled for August 20 but was moved up to August 11 when the fissionable material became available sooner than expected. It was then pushed forward to August 9 by a day-and-night effort in order to get the next attack in ahead of some days of bad weather predicted for Japan. General Leslie Groves, director of the Manhattan Project, claimed that speed was the only consideration:

Admiral Purnell and I had often discussed the importance of having the second blow follow the first one quickly so that the Japanese would not have time to recover their balance.

The statement is oddly forced: If a quick second blow was the intent, why not hold off on the first  one until you had a second one in hand? But take Groves at his word. It is then legitimate to ask if the purpose was to stun the Japanese into instant surrender - or to get the second bombing in before it had a chance to.

There is good reason to think the latter. Truman's note about the impact of the expected entry of the Soviet Union into the war against Japan was not enthusiasm; it was a reflection of concern about Soviet influence in the post-war world and how we could try to prevent that.

James Byrnes (and Truman)

Before the bombings, some officials urged that we stage a "demonstration" blast on a deserted island or in an uninhabited area of Japan to show the Japanese the power of the weapon we had and to give them a chance to surrender before we actually used it. (Among those pushing such an idea was Leo Szilard, who, perhaps having second thoughts about his role in all this, pleaded with Secretary of State James Byrnes not to use the bomb on people and circulated a petition to Truman to rule out its use because it would open the "door to an era of devastation of an unimaginable scale.")

The idea of a "demonstration" blast was supposedly shelved. But, in fact, the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were demonstration blasts. They were intended to show the awesome power we held in our arsenal - only the target of the demonstration wasn't Japan. It was the Soviet Union.

Bernard Baruch

US officials, including Byrnes, presidential advisor Bernard Baruch, and some top military leaders had urged the use of atomic weapons on Japan as a means of warning the Soviet Union not to challenge American plans for a postwar world dominated by US interests, to, in Byrnes' words, allow the US "to dictate our own terms [with the USSR] at the end of the war" and "make Russia more manageable in Europe" by showing both our power and our willingness to use it.

Which means, ultimately, that hundreds of thousands of Japanese were destroyed, disintegrated, as sacrificial lambs at the start of a decades-long campaign to "contain" the Soviets if not to bully them into submission. From Nazi bomb scientists through wild-eyed Japanese fanatics to intractable Soviet deceivers, the mythmakers had constructed an image of the United States as appointed to protect and shape the world, with the atomic bomb, as Truman put it, the weapon given us by God that we were to use "for His purposes and His ends." The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not the last shots of World War II, they were the first shots of the Cold War, and the Japanese the first of its many victims.

On another note, some, notably Ward Wilson of Rethinking Nuclear Weapons, have claimed that the atomic bombings had nothing to do with Japan's surrender, that in fact it was, as one writer put it, Stalin, not Truman, who ended the war. The argument is largely based on a time frame: Despite the dire situation, the Japanese High Command had never considered unconditional surrender until the morning of August 9, before Nagasaki was struck and nearly three full days since Hiroshima but just hours after the Soviets declared war by attacking Manchukuo, a Japanese puppet state on the mainland of Asia.

Certainly Russia's entry into the war had a large impact; even if it had taken no direct military action at all it would still undermine Japan's attempts at a negotiated settlement because the Soviets were no longer a go-between. However, the argument that the nuclear attacks were inconsequential in Japan's surrender is belied by several facts: At that very August 9 meeting being cited, the Soviet declaration and the bombing of Hiroshima were presented by the "peace" faction in the government as twin reasons why the war could not continue; a few hours later it was clear that the claim by the "war" faction that nuclear weapons are so complicated that the US could not have more than one was wrong; and perhaps most importantly, when Japan did surrender on August 15, in his address to the nation Hirohito specifically referenced the use of "a new and most cruel bomb" as a cause for surrender.

It is obviously historically wrong to say the Soviet declaration of war was a sideshow of little importance in ending the war, but to say that it was what made all the difference is to replace one myth with another. At the same time, it's worth noting that to the extent the argument has weight, to that same extent the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki become even greater crimes.

One final bitter note:The ultimate terms of surrender for Japan were strikingly similar those offered by Japan before the bombing of Hiroshima, including allowing Hirohito to keep his position role as Emperor - marking the last several weeks of World War II were a complete and utter waste of time, energy, resources, and most importantly, life.

That, too, is part of the world the Manhattan Project created.

18.5 - Outrage of the Week: militarism unleashed as national policy

Outrage of the Week: militarism unleashed as national policy

Finally, we have our other regular feature; this is the Outrage of the Week.

This week it's a bit different in that it's not about a single issue or a particular event. Rather, it's on a broader question of a part of what I'll call our national ethos.

On April 13 in Afghanistan, the US dropped the largest non-nuclear bomb ever used in combat, a 22,000 pound device known as the GBU-43 Massive Ordnance Air Blast or MOAB, which some have described as standing for "mother of all bombs." It's 10 times the size of the largest generally-used bombs in the US arsenal and has a yield of 11 tons.

Asked if he authorized the use of the bombs, TheRump said "Everybody knows exactly what happened. What I do is I authorize my military. We have given them total authorization and that’s what they’re doing, and frankly that’s why they’ve been so successful lately."

Some people, especially on the establishment, Democratric Party-oriented left, jumped on his use of the word "my," claiming he was acting like "a dictator or boy king." But that misses the real point, the important point, which was the statement "We have given them total authorization," which if it means anything, it means "I have told the military to do whatever they damn please and don't bother me with details."

The so-called MOAB provides a clear example: Why use it? Beyond insisting it was "the right weapon," the Pentagon won't say. What did it accomplish? Beyond referring to the claim that 36 insurgents were killed, they won't say that, either. They claim the target was the tunnels and caves used by Daesh in eastern Afghanistan on the border with Pakistan.

GBU-43 Massive Ordnance Air Blast

But they also claim that over recent months Daesh has well over half its fighters and two-thirds of its territory in the country and Daesh is in fact a minor factor in Afghanistan compared to the Taliban. So why use your biggest weapon on your weakest opponent? More to the point, the MOAB is not a ground penetrator. It's not designed to take out things like "tunnels and caves." So it's clearly not "the right weapon," especially when we have ground-penetrating bombs in our arsenal.

So why use it? Because they could. Because they had an open area that they could try it out on. Remember it had never been used in combat and what good is a toy if you can't play with it?

That's what we're seeing: the military being told to do what it wants.

That's why Army Gen. John W. Nicholson, commander of US forces in Afghanistan, could casually tell the Senate Armed Services Committee in February that he needs "a few thousand" more coalition troops while allowing as how he supposed he could make do with 30,000 - 2.5 times the number there now.

That's why TheRump has witnessed - and I say witnessed, not directed, he just let it happen - a drone strike just about every day he has been in office, a rate five times that of Barack Obama, who was often and rightly condemned for his drone war on multiple Muslim nations.

That's why in Iraq, where despite the lies about it, we have had "boots on the ground" for some time - I suppose I could say back on the ground except that there never was a moment when we didn't have boots on the ground in Iraq - in Iraq the US has streamlined the process for calling in airstrikes, strikes that as Iraqi and other forces get near Mosul have killed an increasing number of civilians, so much so that casualties in March broke records for a single month, so much so that concerns have been raised by human rights organizations including Amensty International that US forces may be acting with an unprecedented disregard for lives of noncombatants.

That's why in Syria, US personnel have expanded their footprint, including a detachment of Marine artillerymen and a contingent of US Army Rangers both entering Syria in March.

That's why the US Air Force has expanded an air base in northern Syria intended to play a major role in the coming attack on Raqqa, Daesh's self-proclaimed capital, another target of increased airstrikes and increased civilian deaths.

What we are seeing here is an expansion of militarism. Contrary to what some have said, we are not seeing a "TheRumpian military policy" except to the extent that the "policy" consists of giving the military a free or at the minimum an increasingly-free hand, and like a horse given its head that may not take off at an immediate gallop but will surely build up to one, we can and should anticipate more airstrikes, more boots on the ground, more drone strikes, more death, more blood, more civilians and other more noncombatants killed, more homes destroyed, more refugees - and more attempts to keep it all just beyond our awareness, just beyond our field of vision, just beyond our sense of outrage.

And that in turn is why the Pentagon will now no longer disclose how many US personnel are deploying to Iraq and Syria and why TheRump has returned authority to conduct drone strikes to the CIA: Those moves allow for more secrecy, the better to keep the carnage we create out of our awareness.

It was said a few decades ago, around the start of the first Gulf War, that Americans would not object to military adventures so long as the number of American casualties was low - that, in effect, we didn't care how many people got killed so long none of us were among the dead. At the time it was thought a horrible moral judgment on Americans which could not be true - but history has shown otherwise and it is now a basic part of Pentagon military strategy. Even so, there is always the chance that our national conscience could be awakened - the way the civilian casualties in Mosul breached the headlines being a fleeting example - so all the more reason to keep even the number of soldiers involved hidden behind a PR smokescreen about "security."

At this point it's important to say no, no, no! Do not fall for the partisan ruse that this all has to do with TheRump, that it is all his doing. The issue, again, is not TheRump, it is militarism. This goes back far, far, before him.

Indeed, we need only go back one administration. Remember that Barack Obama came into office on the wings of optimism and hope and "yes we can" and promises to end wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He left office with "boots on the ground" in Iraq and Afghanistan and Syria and a legacy of an illegal war in Libya, the expansion of the militaristic surveillance state, and having bombed more countries than George Bush did.

The US - the Obama administration - dropped over 23,000 bombs on six nations in 2015 and over 26,000 bombs on seven nations in 2016, totals which are in both cases surely low because a "strike" can involve more than one bomb. And, it needs to be noted, we as a nation stood largely silent - because we weren't the ones doing the dying.

And yet it's not unfair to say that Obama was at least to some extent trying to hold the reins, trying to exert some counterforce, refusing to just turn the military loose. But he faced the same enemy that multiple presidents have faced, the same entrenched - it's become a cliche but that's only because it's accurate - that same Military-Industrial Complex with an appetite for arms and an aptitude for aggression.

So no, this militarism is not something new with TheRump and not his creation and not his doing. What is different here, what is threatening here, is that he is prepared to stand by and let it happen.

And the potential consequences that presents for unknown numbers of people around the world is a true moral outrage.

6.2 - Footnote: drone war in Yemen continues

Footnote: drone war in Yemen continues

Oh, and as a very quick footnote to that: Yes, the US is still carrying out drone strikes in Yemen.

The military acknowledges four drone strikes in Yemen this year, all supposedly targeted against AQAP (al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula), which controls some territory in east-central Yemen. On the other hand, relying on published media accounts, New America.org claims there have been 38 such strikes in 2016.

The actual number is uncertain, particularly because the US usually only announces such strikes if either some "high-value target" is killed or the admission is forced because of the civilian casualties it caused. But no, the drone war hasn't stopped just because we don't hear about it as often amidst the roar of war in Syria and western Iraq.

6.1 - War in Yemen; US begins to back away

War in Yemen; US begins to back away

We're going to start with something that eventually, believe it or not, turns into a sort of good news kinda.

Yemen is the poorest country in the Middle East. It has been in a bloody civil war since late 2014. Even as the world was distracted by Syria, the death and destruction in Yemen mounted.

It is estimated that upwards of 10,000 have died in what the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs calls "the forgotten war." The health service there has "completely collapsed." There are 1.5 million malnourished children the country, 370,000 of them severely malnourished. UNICEF reports that of the total population of 27 million people, an estimated 21.2 million, nearly 80% of the total, need humanitarian assistance of some kind. Half of that number is children.

Of that 27 million, 3.3 million, over 10 percent, have been forced from their homes. Over half are "food insecure," meaning they don't know from one day to the next if there will be enough food to eat. Over two-thirds lack access to safe drinking water, which is connected to a recent outbreak of cholera, with the World Health Organization recording almost 5,500 suspected cases a month ago.

I'm not going to even try to disentangle the history of the war, especially since this is hardly the first internal conflict Yemen has experienced. I will just notice that the actual fighting broke out when Houthi rebels seized control of Sana'a, the Yemeni capital, in September 2014. A few months, later, they seized the presidential compound, forcing President Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi to flee the country in late February 2015.

Since then, the fighting between supporters of the Hadi government - with outside aid coming from the US via drone strikes and from Saudi Arabia - and the Houthi - with outside aid from Iran - has continued and gotten more vicious over time. As a quick aside, to show how messy civil wars quickly become, among those supporting the Houthi are supporters of Hadi's predecessor, Ali Abdullah Saleh - who was forced from office by an uprising supported by the Houthi.

Despite the on-going brutality and suffering, neither side has gained a decisive advantage.

Okay, so what's the sorta kinda good news? Because I'd say we could use some about now.

The Good News is that there is actually - or at least it appears there is actually - a limit to the atrocities our government will tolerate for the sake of "stability" and in the name of "fighting terrorism."

Since March 2015, Saudi Arabia has been leading what we call so euphemistically call an "air campaign" in Yemen. It has consisted of attacks on hospitals, schools, markets, factories, and other clearly civilian targets. It has consisted of, that is, war crimes.

And now, belatedly and after multiple protests, but finally, the United States has decided to limit its military support to Saudi Arabia's campaign by cutting off supplies of certain weapons.

Just what weapons are involved is not certain, but it involves precision-guided munitions which the US had been supplying under the notion that such weapons can minimize civilian casualties - only to have them used by the Saudis, it appears, to more accurately target civilian and non-combatant targets. It finally got to be too much even for the cold hearts of the US military establishment.

However, the reason this is kinda sorta good news is that while we can be glad of the decision, it not nearly enough. It is not the cut-off in support that folks had hoped for. For example, the US will keep refueling the aircraft involved and will continue some other arms sales to the kingdom, including a $3.5 billion deal for Chinook cargo helicopters, which the US insists would not be part of offensive actions in Yemen.

As a result, William Hartung of the Center for International Policy called the decision to stop supplying precision-guided munitions a "weak signal," while Samah Hadid of Amnesty International said the move "falls far short of what is needed" and Rep. Ted Lieu from California called the decision to continue the re-fueling "completely bizarre."

There is one other point to consider: This is not the US's first hesitant step away from its embrace of Saudi Arabia's war crimes.

In May, Washington suspended sales of cluster munitions to Saudi Arabia and in August, the US military began to back away from supporting to Saudi Arabia's campaign, pulling out a planning team that was coordinating with the bombing campaign.

Some have suggested that those moves, and this latest one, are less about any moral judgement on Saudi Arabia, an important regional ally we historically have tried very hard to avoid offending, but are more about concerns among some US officials that by not acting, the United States could be implicated in Saudi Arabia's war crimes.

Whatever the reason and yes, however weak the signal, we still should be glad it happened. Now it's time to pull the plug on all military aid and sales to the repressive regime of Saudi Arabia. Now, that would be Good News.