Look For A New Shutdown As Impeachment Noose Tightens Around Trump's Orange Neck

"I will shut down the government again if the Dems do not stop impeachment!"

In the wake of the passage of the resolution for the House impeachment rules yesterday, too many have forgotten that a series of high priority federal decisions lay ahead - touching on every aspect of the government and beyond.  In particular, the chances for a government shutdown before Thanksgiving loom much larger given zero progress reported on any of the 12 key spending bills.  These actually expired one month go but have been given a temporary extension until November 21st.

As this goes on the risk grows with each passing week and day of a shutdown and one that would be far more sweeping then the 35 day partial shutdown earlier this year.

Besides the spending bills, other laws are expiring or lapsing and require attention and appropriate action. These include:

- The National Defense Authorization Act which sets Pentagon policy (approved every year since 1946)

- An ensemble of tax break bills, ranging from the health care industry (medical devices' tax) to paid family leave, all of which will expire on December 31st.

- A World Trade Organization appellate body ceases to exist unless approved for extension.


Alas, for many,  each of these is seen as separate from the House Democrats impeachment of Trump. But not for Dotard and his brash enablers. Despite  Repukes like Kevin McCarthy yammering for the Dems to "trust the people instead" (i.e. in the general election) any one with an IQ above moron knows if left to his own devices - with no oversight- Trump will be emboldened to do even more pernicious damage to the Republic. At least impeachment forces the mutt to lawyer up and focus on the impending open hearings and the eventual Senate trial to remove his orange ass.

For Trump himself, however, there is no assurance he sees the bills' passage as separate from impeachment.  This is given he tends to see critical issues as one large negotiation - linking together seemingly disparate threads and issues into one "legislative ball of wax"  in the parlance of one WaPo columnist.   A specific indicator of that and of how unfit this human swine is to hold office - any office - was spotlighted in his Dallas rally 2 weeks ago.

We know already that the man has zero interest in working (like Obama did for 10 hrs./day)  - and rallies provide him with a kind of ersatz "oxygen " to energize his dementia- afflicted brain.  Also,  a ready made excuse to get out of DC and the impeachment spotlight. - while railing against the Dems and his other enemies seen  (e.g. Never Trumpers)  and unseen ("the Deep state" in his febrile, CT brain).  At that Big D rally we beheld his return to all his greatest hits, each reeled off in a couple hours of irrational whining and loathsome, unpresidential behavior.

By last week Sunday, even his tweeting, Fox TV watching and other goldbricking became old hat so he had to get his staff to gin up the takedown of al-Baghdadi to start looking "presidential" again.  Never mind it was mostly a PR stage show and the raid on the Isis head was accomplished more despite Trump than because of any substantive contribution. See e.g.

Foreign Policy

The Baghdadi Scam

by Margaret Kimberley | October 31, 2019 - 5:45am | permalink

Excerpt:

"The corporate media, Democrats and Republicans all joined in celebrating Baghdadi’s reported demise. Even those who count how often Trump tells lies suddenly expressed complete confidence in the version of events. Once again we see the embrace of Trump by the so-called resistance if he adheres to imperialist orthodoxy. The same man who they claim to want to impeach suddenly gets praise as he did when he launched an attack on Syria in 2017. The man mocked as a buffoon can be seen as “presidential” if he kills or even claims to kill people in a far away land.." 

With the impeachment process now fully formalized, and hearings likely to begin by the middle of this month, Trump's ratlike,  cornered behavior is likely to worsen, and no matter how much his Repuke stooges (like McCarthy, Jim Jordan and Lindsey  Graham) grovel and kiss ass, he won't be satisfied.   Thus many congressional leaders worry that Captain Bonepurs might use any of the must pass bills as hostages to try and gain leverage against an impending impeachment.

My take is the probability is very high it could happen with an unstable sociopath and authoritarian like Trump in the Oval office.  All sentient citizens need to be paying attention to what happens to the above cited bills as the Nov. 21 deadline approaches. We may well be seeing another shutdown and just before Christmas.


See also:

• Republicans claim that Tim Morrison's testimony exonerated Trump, they couldn't be more wrong 

And:

Government | Republicans

Shutdown, Impeachment: Welcome to the Beginning of Another Crappy Holiday Season Courtesy of the GOP

Excerpt:

"Republicans are at the political positioning/finger-pointing stage of budget negotiations, ahead of a potential government shutdown in a few weeks. While Congress approved a budget for the next fiscal year before the August recess, it didn't pass the necessary spending bills allocating the money. The stop-gap funding bill it also passed last month is going to expire on Nov. 21, after which there are three possible scenarios, only two of which are feasible. The Congress could pass and Donald Trump could sign all of the 12 appropriations bills. That's not going to happen. The two real scenarios: another stop-gap bill going until Christmas or into the new year, or a shutdown."

Killing Baghdadi Doesn't Give Captain Bonespurs Any "Lifeline" To Escape His Just Deserts!

I could barely watch 5 minutes  on MSNBC  yesterday as Captain Bonespurs Trump  seized media attention to spiel his braggadocio about offing Isis No. 1 terrorist,  Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.  Merely the short exposure  revealed an imp  trying his best to look and sound presidential for claiming to have dispatched the top Isis rat.  But I was not impressed, despite his embellishments of how Baghdadi died ("like a dog", "like a rat", "crying and whimpering").

I still saw the same sniveling, whiny bitch coward and traitor who has betrayed his country on multiple occasions - from the capitulation to Putin in Stockholm two years ago (even volunteering to have his own Intel people interrogated by Vlad), to walking over to North Korea and greeting Kim last year (despite Kim amping up his missiles), to surrendering the Kurds to  Turkey's dictator Erdogan barely a month ago.  None of what he did or claimed yesterday absolves him one iota from his past crimes and betrayals and it certainly doesn't give him any "lifeline" from being impeached.  If the Dems fall for that they'd really deserve to lose next year.  Lifeline?

Yes, that's the word I saw bandied about in later press, media accounts, along with this tripe spewed by CBS' Gayle King this morning:

  "And this is a BIG victory for president Trump who was accused of giving  a lifeline to Isis when he pulled American troops out of northern Syria".

Then compounding her imbecility five minutes later, after a clip showing Trump getting booed at the World Series, the third game (with the Houston Astros)  in D.C.:

"It's so interesting to me that on a day when it's a clear victory for his administration he gets booed at a World Series game. I don't care who you are nobody likes to get booed! That's not nice."

Tough shit, Gayle. Maybe if your head was less in the clouds you'd grasp those fans probably know more than you do with your "victory" babble - which is just what the Trump cabal wants.  Mayhap Gayle ought to have read Jennifer Weiner's column ('Why Did It Feel So Good To See Trump  Booed?')in today's NY Times,   wherein she writes:

"The booing itself wasn’t the problem. The booing was appropriate. The booing was necessary, insofar as his trip to Nationals Park was one of the few times Mr. Trump has crept out of his self-made bubble and encountered something resembling the real world. When he eats out, it’s in a restaurant in a hotel he owns; when he plays golf, it’s at a club he owns; when he’s with a crowd, it’s his crowd.

Inside and outside of the White House, Mr. Trump has surrounded himself with sycophants and suck-ups, minions who stroke the emperor’s ego and assure him that his decisions are wise and his phone calls are perfect and his new clothes are absolutely the best. The boos were a reality check, real-life proof that it’s not just the “corrupt” media or the “do-nothing Democrats” who oppose him."

Adding:

"Civility is a wonderful thing, when shared among equals. When people who have power require civility from those with less, or none, though, that demand is a cudgel, a weapon the haves use to keep the have-nots in line. When you’re confronted with evil, you don’t shake its hand or applaud it. If booing is incivility, bring it on."

Gayle King - if she even had an average  IQ - would grasp that.  And also that a  con man coward who keeps himself in a bubble surrounded only by sycophants, then steps out expecting more acclaim from non-MAGA hat citizens, deserves booing - and worse ('Lock him up!' chants).  Most of those who booed  and shouted the 'lock him up' chants  likely understood - unlike King- that the butchering of hundreds of Kurds, including children, and the prospect of further genocide and ethnic cleansing -   doesn't give Bonesuprs a pass for no hectoring in public. Or any  claimed "victory". No way in hell!

In fact, there is no such "victory" and if King paid more attention she'd know not to repeat such drivel.    Where Dotard does get credit is in shamelessly exaggerating his role in the elimination of Baghdadi to be able to hoodwink those like Gayle King.  How so?  As ABC national security correspondent Martha Radditz pointed out it was the culmination of a heroic effort by the Syrian Kurds with informers on the inside of Baghdadi's operation. Kurd couriers also helped in getting critical info to the CIA.   The operation had been going on for WEEKS.  Indeed, the commander of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), Mazloum Kobani, tweeted on Sunday morning that the hunt for Baghdadi had been a five-month US-SDF joint intelligence operation.

But in Trump’s 50 minute self-obsessed bloviation, the Kurds were barely mentioned and  then only grudgingly.  Why would they be allowed much credit when Bonespurs stabbed them in the back, withdrawing U.S. forces 2 weeks ago, leaving them at the mercy of the oncoming Turks?  Apart from that - as Radditz also pointed out - taking out Baghdadi doesn't end Isis, given it is a multi-headed Hydra and not merely one man. Indeed, recall Trump's abandonment of the Kurds effectively made it possible for hundreds of Isis fighters, terrorists to escape from their prisons - as the Turks bombed them open.

So don't be snookered by his bellicose babble.  Trump had only a minimal role in this whole episode, and it doesn't mean the end of the Isis terror. As Thomas Friedman wrote in his NY Times piece, "Trump boasts of defeating the Islamic state which only shows how ignorant he is."  

So pardon me as I howled with laughter when this sorry, orange hued maggot hyped his role waxing forth on how he had  "captured Isis in one month and Mattis said it would take two years".   In fact he did no such thing. Most of the captured Isis scum escaped from their Kurd-held prisons after Trump abandoned the Kurds. The advancing Turks caused the Kurds to retreat - without U.S. help - and the prisons were  blasted open enabling a mass jail break. Baghdadi himself wasn't captured, he blew himself up using a suicide vest.

Predictably,  as Gayle King's useless editorializing showed, the clueless media missed the boat on Trump - as they so often do when he briefly  shows the slightest hint of being  a real commander -in- chief,  usually after being programmed by handlers and reading from his teleprompter instead of going off half -cocked. (Which he did anyway after ten minutes yesterday).   But most of us aren't fooled because we know this is his core character:  a sneering, mendacious, bullying con man and cowardly traitor who merits impeachment and rapid removal from office.  This is the same character, as Gen. Jim Mattis chided at a recent national press event, who five times got his daddy to get a doctor to write letters to excuse him from military service for "bone spurs".  This was a terrific comeback after Dotard had denigrated his former defense secretary for being “overrated” and “not that tough".  Well, Mattis actually went into service unlike Trump who tried 5 times to escape with phony medical ruses.

But never mind, because cowards like Trump never recognize their cowardice. Hence, he could go on his bombastic way babbling that Baghdadi  “died  a coward crying, whimpering and screaming after running into a dead end tunnel ".   Thereby projecting the same behavior onto Baghdadi that Trump himself would have exhibited, say if he'd been sent to Vietnam instead of escaping with con man inspired "bone spurs".  As Gen. Jim Mattis noted,  Trump might call him "overrated" but at least he (Mattis) didn't use "bone spurs" to get out of military service five times.  Correction:  task his rich daddy Fred to recruit a doc to write a letter excusing Dotard from service for bone spurs.

Captain Bonespurs didn't stop there with his egoistic boasting and denigration, seeing the overawed media assembled before him - a veritable captive audience -  waiting with bated breath so he could carry on his asinine, half-baked rhetoric. So we also  learned  the Isis leader was a “dog”, a “gutless animal”, and the Isis militants who died alongside him were “losers” and “frightened puppies”.  In other words, all  characterizations of Donnie Dotard himself as he faces imminent impeachment with  another parade of witnesses to provide depositions this week.

 So one would think the media would have been able to see this as well, no? Not on your life.  The corporate media still give Trump the benefit of the doubt every time - or almost - and on an occasion like  this one heard nary a critical word.  This despite the fact of having told over 13,000 lies - by the Washington Post's latest count.

One would have at least expected the media to ignore Trump's  overheated claptrap  that frankly sounded like it came from a Z-grade made-for-TV  epic about  a narcissist authoritarian who brags after killing a foe.  Well, the film ('Last King Of Scotland') about Idi Amin Dada comes to mind,  with that authoritarian tyrant bragging at various points about his conquests. That's what Trump's spiel reminded me of.  Indeed, at one point Trump  himself confirmed he had witnessed it almost as a piece of cinema, “as though you were watching a movie. The technology alone is really great.”

A legend in his own mind, like Idi Amin Dada.


So yeah, I was appalled that within hours  of  seeing Trump's performance (recall he's an entertainer first)  a number of sectors in the press claimed that the  killing  gave  Trump a "lifeline " in the midst of a battle for his own political survival..  Do not believe this codswallop for a nanosecond! This one off episode  which translated into a very minor role (giving a simple ok) does not make up for his betrayal of the Syrian Kurds to the Turks,  and the hundreds of Kurds slaughtered in the wake. A people who now also face massive ethnic cleansing as Turk Tyrant Recep Tayyip Erdoğan resettles over a million into the region the Kurds had to abandon. (Under orders from Russia's Vladimir Putin who had met with Erdoğan in the power vacuum left by Coward Dotard - who now seeks glory for vanquishing the Isis terrorist thugs he released by his withdrawal).  Then there was his Mafia-style  shake down of  the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy to try to get dirt on Biden. No way in hell.  And again, the media for being so daft and lacking in critical thinking is doing us no favors by such wretched lazy ass reporting

So don't buy for one second this guy is a hero or finally "presidential". He isn't. and don't buy Gayle King's gibberish that it's a great victory for him.  He's the same craven, self obsessed mutt who isn't fit to be a dog catcher.

Two things are clear to me after seeing the Trump chest -thumping PR spectacle:

1) The asshole still has an inferiority complex vis-a-vis Barack Obama, which provides more reasons for him to lie and exaggerate. Recall Obama actually did oversee the takedown and elimination of Osama bin Laden.  Indeed, Dotard left little doubt that Barack Obama’s success in tracking down and killing Osama bin Laden was on his mind.

As is his wont in declaring bigger wins he barked that taking down Baghdadi was the "greater win".  But again, bear in mind he'd not have done zip without the Kurds' critical role and he shafted them when he realized he didn't need them any more. So, subtract 55 points for a hollow 'W'.

Oh, subtract another 45 points for an all out lie.  Trump  repeated a claim that he had somehow had a hand in Bin Laden’s downfall by calling for him to be targeted before the 9/11 attacks, before he was generally perceived as a threat. This is a false claim. Trump does mention Bin Laden in passing in one of his books, but does not call for him to be tracked down. Also, the al-Qaida leader was already widely seen as a substantial threat following several attacks on the U.S.  No one needed (or wanted) Trump's input.

Trump, let us remind ourselves, has also sought to erase the Obama legacy. Secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, repeatedly has made the false claim that it was the current administration that amassed a coalition to defeat Isis. But that coalition was almost totally put together and made operational under Obama.

2) Given the preceding facts, it is evident that this whole Sunday PR show was scripted and put out by Trump's handlers and minions - like  Pompeo and Stephen Miller (aka Goebbels Junior) -  to use as a political weapon against the Dems and impeachment. The very bombastic content of his rambling and vainglorious, bullshit conveyed a foreshadowing of exactly how he will use it for political ends, and as a club to swing at his political enemies pushing for impeachment.   From where I sit, the Dems and Pelosi need to  club the maggot right back - right in the face. Starting with why he didn't give them a heads up on the operation, while he did deliver it to Putin (and assorted Repukes with less standing than Nancy Pelosi).

By contrast, when Bin Laden was killed in 2011, one of Obama’s first calls was to George W Bush, who had launched the hunt for the al-Qaida leader.  The idea of calling Putin before Bush or others in the congress would have been unthinkable. But they are doable for Trump because he is a traitor at heart and is only using this takedown of another human rat as a political PR weapon to wield against Pelosi and the House Dems.

At the end of the day, while one can say good riddance to al Baghdadi, Trump is no hero in this, only a bystander for whom the effort was 99 percent completed (by the Kurds) before he even knew where Baghdadi was.   The ultimate design  of this public relations stunt was to craft a cudgel to use against his political enemies who he's referred to as "human scum".  Thereby hoping his "victory" - and future barking about it, including questioning anyone's patriotism who isn't 100 % sold-  - will cause the Dems to back off and slink away.   Also expecting his chorus of coward enablers, like Lindsey Graham, Devin Nunes, Matt Gaetz and  Steve Scalise to step in to further help with the call for 'No impeachment now!'

More alarming, even before the Sunday show, the personality cult that Trump is seeking to construct had already taken on an alarming tone. Over the weekend, his press secretary, Stephanie Grisham, had denounced another former aide turned critic, John Kelly, as “totally unequipped to handle the genius of our great president”.   This after Kelly, in a discussion and panel appearance, admitted he warned Trump not to have any 'yes' men who might advise him to do or act in way that would get him impeached.

As for Steph Grisham believing Trump has any "genius", well she's now proven she has an even lower IQ than her clueless predecessor, Sara Huckleberry Sanders.

Don't blink, don't get bamboozled, and don't bite on the PR which will be shooting out like putrid fracked water pumped  from a firehose  in the coming days. These vermin all need bringing down, and they should not be allowed to don the mantle of faux patriotism using the corpse of al Baghdadi.  The Dems,  and citizens at large, need to see through this charade and act accordingly - like the DC fans who booed Trump at the World Series.

'Nuff said!

See also:

Foreign Policy

The Baghdadi Scam

by Margaret Kimberley | October 31, 2019 - 5:45am | permalink

Excerpt:

"The corporate media, Democrats and Republicans all joined in celebrating Baghdadi’s reported demise. Even those who count how often Trump tells lies suddenly expressed complete confidence in the version of events. Once again we see the embrace of Trump by the so-called resistance if he adheres to imperialist orthodoxy. The same man who they claim to want to impeach suddenly gets praise as he did when he launched an attack on Syria in 2017. The man mocked as a buffoon can be seen as “presidential” if he kills or even claims to kill people in a far away land.." 

And:

John Feffer

Article Tools E-mail | Print Comments (0)

Donald Trump | Terrorism

The Islamic State and Donald Trump’s Delusion

And:

Donald Trump

Trump Doesn't Have the Balls To Throw Out the First Pitch at the World Series

No More Kid Gloves For Domestic Terrorists - It's Time To Treat Them Like Al Qaeda & ISIS Vermin

Right Wing terrorist Robert Dear blurts out his guilt in court, in December, 2015. 


It was back in November, 2015 that domestic terrorist Robert Lewis Dear, 57, had been arrested and charged with shooting three people to death and wounding nine others,  including five police officers.  This was at a Planned Parenthood clinic here  in Colorado Springs, in which he took aim using an AK-47, the same type of weapon used by the White Nationalist terrorist Patrick Crusius in the El Paso butchery.

At the time I recall going at it with my (now deceased) brother Mike, a strong NRA guy, e.g.

who himself owned an AR, and leaned toward Rightist ideology, though to my knowledge he never entertained ideations of retribution against Jews, undocumented immigrants or LGBT people.  Nonetheless, he did feel Dear was getting a raw deal - and like other right wingers-  had come out strongly against a 2009  Dept. Of Homeland Security report by domestic terror specialist Darryl Johnson.  Johnson at the time headed up a 6-person team at DHS' Office of Intelligence and Analysis which had focused on right wing extremism and terrorism   The paper produced at the time exposed a linkage between Christian fundie religious terrorists (like Dear) who kill abortion providers, as well as anti-immigration and other anti-Semitic extremists.

Alas, the report was pilloried by conservatives and GOP groups as picking on their lot while leaving the left alone, and ignoring the Islamic terrorists.   In the words of Johnson - a self-described conservative Republican: "I didn't think the whole Republican party would basically throw a hissy fit."

Well, they sure did and the effect grew as conservative media's usual whiners (like O'Reilly et al on FOX) painted it as a political hit job by the Obama administration.  My brother Mike (in his blog postings), also depicted it this way, to the point of suggesting Obama had "ordered it".  Ultimately - following the "squeaky wheel"  model -    funding and oversight for domestic terrorism was pulled back in reaction to right wing squeals.  In its wake, DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano issued an apology to the American Legion (since one report section concerned returning Iraq and Afghanistan vets) and the number of domestic terror analysts fell to zero by 2010. It was literally a gold-engraved invitation for the rats and roaches to crawl out of the rotting, racist national woodwork.

No one, certainly in the wider media, was able to see how the spread of domestic right wing terror was to metastasize like a cancer gone wild.     Indeed, Johnson's report and the energy devoted to the right wing terrorists proved prescient  given  that since 9/11 far right extremists (including white nationalists) have been responsible for 3 times as many attacks in the U.S. as Islamic extremists.  That stat alone speaks with force to the idea that the full power of the national security state now needs to be brought to bear on the domestic terror elements - including surveillance of all their web cesspools and hiding places. Not necessarily to shut them down but to surveil them for information much as the national security apparatus now does for Isis and al Qaeda bad actors.

This follows the advice of former FBI special agent Cliff Watts in his recent WSJ Review piece, 'Our New Terrorism Problem' (Aug. 10-11, p. C1)  wherein he writes:

"Today's white supremacist terrorists band together online, further radicalize themselves and fire one another up in much the same manner as their jihadist counterparts."

For example, to give an idea of this "firing up" we learned (WSJ, 'Suspect Got Ideas Online', Aug. 6, p. A9):

"In the hours after the attack a discussion broke out on 8chan about his place in the history of mass shooters. One commenter offered:  ' The new guy deserves some praise, he reached almost a third of the high score."

This referred to the fact these cockroaches actually keep score by using the published death counts. Hence, at the time the largest such toll was due to the Orlando Pulse nightclub killer (59) and at the time of the comment Crusius had slaughtered 20. (The death toll has since climbed to 22).   Still other roaches in the vile den of losers were unimpressed and mocked Crusius for failing to kill more people, or for targeting Hispanics instead of Jews.

 Others spewed out praise of the New Zealand mass murderer with this drivel: "Hail St. Tarrant!"  referring to Brenton Tarrant, the slime  who killed 51 Muslims in two Christchurch mosques.

Crusius himself, appeared to lose nerve when first posting on this roach den, writing (ibid.):

"I have to do this before I lose my nerve.  I figured that an underprepared attack and a meh manifesto is better than no attack and no manifesto."

And of course, the most outspoken in the 8chan  roach nest urged him on to action. But stop for a moment: If the FBI had been monitoring the site they'd have been alerted to his plans, put a GPS or other tracking on his vehicle, then taken him out before he even got to the outskirts of El Paso  Then 22 lives could have been saved.  As Cliff Watts aptly noted (ibid.):

"The overall goal is clear and urgent: detect violent white supremacists online and intercept them on the ground by increasing the volume of intelligence and the speed with which it is shared among federal, state and local law enforcement officers."

Adding:

"As white supremacists have been pushed from more mainstream social media platforms, they have descended on less policed, more anonymous platforms such as Gab.com and 8chan."

It is true Crusius' manifesto on 8chan didn't include specific plans to carry out the shooting and as the WSJ piece notes "it isn't clear law enforcement would have taken action even if they had known about it."

This is because "there are many vague threats of hate-filled violence" including 2,730 in a single hour two days following the shooting. Fair enough, but we've since learned Crusius purchased an AK-style weapon and his mother Lori had alerted local authorities. That ought to have been a major red flag in tandem with his 8chan post, especially on the "fear of losing his nerve".  Which I would always take 100 times more seriously than an ordinary threat, i.e. minus any expression of fear.  And as Cliff Watts points out, this is all the more urgent given "violent white supremacism in the U.S. has grown from the bottom up, not the top down."

Basically then, we are dealing with a leaderless,  paranoid pseudo resistance to "elite" democratic norms and laws. This means other (peer) extremists, like on 8chan, or the Daily Stormer, will generally be the immediate stimulus for any attacks, not some distant authority - such as Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi,  who directs the Isis rats.    Thus we have a spontaneously emergent  - but malignant -- social media entity that irrationally glorifies the worst solo mass killers while extolling their monstrous deeds  - and challenging others to surpass them.  In many ways, as bio-ethnologist Jacques Monod would put it, we are confronting one of the most malignant mind viruses.  And just like smallpox or the Ebola virus it needs to be eradicated but there are right and wrong ways to do it.

Current 8chan operator Jim Watkins describes his site in preposterously vanilla terms as "just an open piece of paper for writing on" (Sunday Denver Post, p. 7 A)..  Hardly! It's more akin to an open cyber cesspit inviting every passing hater and miscreant misogynist (incel) or white supremacist to spout his venom and violence and add to the existing, overflowing effluent.

Fortunately, Cliff Watts in his WSJ piece,  offers ways to neutralize this effluent and its more violent, would be terror perpetrators   Many of his proposals also ought to be acceptable in terms of the First Amendment. My brother Mike always would say 'Show me a decent way to temper online speech - say to prevent mass murders- and I'll accept it!"  Well, I believe Mr. Watts has found a way and I suspect Mike might concur if he was still alive.

For example, Watts bids us to honestly acknowledge that "U.S. counterterrorism is behind the times".  This also references Director Chris Wray's recent testimony that "the Bureau has recorded roughly as many domestic terrorism arrests as international terror ones in 2019": and yet the FBI still dedicates more investigators to the latter.  The question is 'Why?'   The answer provided is simply that the "FBI has more resources to tackle the jihadist problem and more legal authority to pursue its adherents."

But this needs to change if the statistics for victims keep accumulating as they are. The most direct way to resolve this issue, which even Mr. Watts has advocated for (in a recent appearance on 'All In' ) is by  using human intelligence in conjunction with extending surveillance of social media sites where these dregs of society congregate   As he also writes:

"Law enforcement and social media companies must also work more transparently together. to detect likely attackers and stem the flood of terrorist and violent content."

This is already being done in the case of child pornography and federal and local authorities can now profile the creators, traffickers, traders and related offenders, as well as track them across the web - to the point of arrest and then prosecution. So why not a similar method to ferret out the mass killers hiding out in assorted rat warrens?   Well, it's largely a matter of will, political and legal.  One answer for Watts is to create a "joint center for social media intelligence where investigators and personnel at the tech companies share information about extremists."   This could work, assuming the social media outfits cooperate, but an even better solution would be to do what is already done for surveillance of child porn creators and purveyors: assign specific task force units to monitor activity 24/7  on supremacist- incel sites - and then drop the hammer when the line is crossed and a transaction or attack is evident.. This can be done with or without social media companies' cooperation. Above all, it ought to be done in the name of national security just as was invoked to monitor Islamic radical attacks.  Watt also adds that: "Investigators must know what to look for. That means a comprehensive study of domestic extremist ideologies, however confused or vitriolic."

We can no longer afford to keep separating the two forms of terror, and then claim we are advocating for the general welfare, and protecting the most vulnerable.  But when more people were murdered last year by  right wing extremists than any year since 1995 (Oklahoma City bombing) and the result is to defund the FBI's counterterrorism domestic task force- well, it's not getting done. No way in hell.  Begging the question that if Islamic terrorists were responsible for committing 75% of all extremist -related fatalities (from 2009-18) would such a blind eye similarly be evident? I doubt it.

Watts' other suggestion of conducting online interventions to match right wing extremists with counselors (to provide an "off ramp")  could also work.  But as my psychology post doc niece Shayl put it: "Yeah, but only if the choice offered is between seeing a counselor or getting ten years in the slammer!"

She has a point.  No intervention toward matching a miscreant with a case worker is likely to be of any use if it's purely voluntary.

What about the availability of military -style weapons like the AR-15, or AK-47?  Cliff Watts pulls no punches in his take that these don't belong on American streets - or in the hands of any respectable citizen. As he writes (ibid.):

"Reducing the impact of domestic terrorism requires restricting the weaponry available to radicals. America should treat guns much the same way it does cars.  Few Americans would want to share the road with unlicensed, untrained and uninsured motorists, but with guns we don't require even one of these elements to protect the public."

Which, of course, is pure, unadulterated insanity, as I often told Mike, including in responding to his then blog posts.  Most salient is Watts next point:

"Weapons of  war, like the assault rifles used by white supremacists in recent weeks....have no place on American streets. Today's terrorists have cops outgunned."

And as I repeatedly told Mike even after he got his own AR-15, one doesn't need such a weapon to protect home and hearth - OR for hunting.  That is bare foolishness.  Nor is there some 2nd amendment right to own such weapons, as I previously posted, see e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2018/02/sorry-you-have-no-constitutional-right.html

As blogger David Lindorff put it soon after the Parkland massacre:
"An AR-15 is not a hunting weapon. In fact there’s a reason it’s called an “assault rifle.” As a hunter, unless you’re an atrocious shot and are hunting random flocks of small birds, you certainly don’t need to be able to fire powerful ammunition of two bullets per second — the rate at which experts say an ordinary person could be able to pull the trigger."

By contrast, the knife  -- no matter how sharp or large- must usually be wielded by an assailant in an up close and personal manner. It isn't like taking aim from 20 or more feet away and dispatching victims with the touch of a trigger.  To kill seventeen people  even in the same room - the assailant would have to work demonically, stabbing from one to the other, and there is no assurance any given slash would be a fatal one  say like an  AR-15 bullet fired into a chest.  Even if it took only 3 seconds per stab, this  is much longer than firing 2 rounds per second. And you can't assume the people will just stand there like tackling dummies and let you do them in, oh no. They will react and more than likely several will gang up to take the assailant down. 

This is the first point that the assault rifle lovers must be forced to admit, that it is far more difficult to kill with a knife than an assault weapon.

Cliff Watts has admirably addressed the menace of domestic terrorism with a multi-pronged approach that ought to be taken seriously and implemented with due dispatch.  If it isn't we will see many more of these slaughters -   and the extremists behind them will become ever more emboldened.   The time is now to act and for the sane and rational to cease making excuses.  As Watts noted,the targeted minorities - whether Jews, Hispanics or LGBT people - "still haven't been properly heard or supported by their political leaders."  That needs to change and pronto. Either we're serious about all forms of terrorism- and that includes the use of assault weapons-  or we are merely play- acting when we profess outrage at mass shootings such as occurred in El Paso. 

See also:

• Barr, Trump DoJ hid 2018 report on white supremacy and domestic terrorism 

And:

The QAnon Phenom

P.M. Carpenter

Conservatives and the Right

by P.M. Carpenter | August 9, 2019 - 6:42am  

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/p-m-carpenter/85995/the-qanon-phenom

And:

Guns

Of Course Guns Have Nothing To Do With It

by Pierre Tristam | August 12, 2019 - 7:14am |