Meet the, the man arrested in connection with that “False Flag,” eee-vul, bomb throwin’, Libtard, Dimmycrat, Anti-Trump, “mob” attempt to make Republicans look bad

What?!?!?! He's a registered Republican? What!?!?!?
He loves Trump?!?!?!?! What? That only proves there must
be a conspiracy to smear the conspiracy!

Hey, don’t ask cranky me who’s been sending all those bombs to everybody from George Soros, to Cory Booker, to Robert DeNiro, to Hillary Clinton. Ask the far-right-edge-of-the-right-wing media star John Cardillo. Here's what he said: 

“Investigators need to take a serious look at far left groups like #Antifa when investigating the bombs sent to Soros, Obama, and the Clintons, These smell like the false flag tactics of unhinged leftists who know they’re losing.”

Or ask Bill Mitchell who tweeted:  

Bill Mitchell‏Verified account @mitchellvii

These "explosive packages" being sent to the #Media and high profile Democrats has Soros astro-turfing written all over it so the media can paint the #GOP as "the dangerous mob." Pure BS.

8:24 AM - 24 Oct 2018

Or perhaps you'd like a little Rush Limbaugh with your morning cup of conspiracy bile: 

It doesn't make any sense for a Republican or conservative to do this....But flip that around. Would it make a lot of sense for a Democrat operative or Democrat-inculcated lunatic to do it? Because things are not working out the way they thought. Do not forget this. It’s why I’ve spent so much time dwelling on this today and the psychology that’s attached to this. This is not going the way they have assured us for the last nine months it was gonna go. More importantly, it’s not going the way they believed it was gonna go. They believe their lies, remember.

So now we have an FBI arrest of the dude who the FBI has said is implicated in  the case. And what's he like? Well, here are his outstanding characteristics, distilled from a report in the New York Times:

• Registered Republican
• "Older American" (Age 56)
• Criminal history going back to 1991 includes felony theft, drugs, fraud, and having been accused of threatening to use a pipe bomb
• Petitioned for bankruptcy in 2012
• Live with his mom and the time of the bankruptcy
• Note on his bankruptcy petition said, “has no furniture.”
• Appears to have been living in a van, whose windows were covered with “crazy conspiratorial stickers” according to one witness

In other words, he's the kind of loser who seems naturally drawn to Donald Trump. Come to think of it, who else is an older American, got involved in what appears to have been a fraud (Hint: Trump University), and went bankrupt a few times (or at least his businesses did.)

I'm thinking....I'm thinking....I see an orange cloud.

What happened to Jamal Khashoggi: Version 12.7.9

MBS Mohammad bin Salman prior to his most recent

nose job (Art work courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

When this cranky space last delved into the fate of the Saudi Journalist Jamal Kashoggi, who wrote for the Washington Post and happened to be in Istanbul, where he walked into the Saudi consulate  and never walked out again, we considered 11 partial scenarios of what might have actually happened.

Fortunately, we now have the official Saudi version. No no, not that version. I mean the latest version. Well then, versions. All of which Donald Trump believes. And also Jared.

So we now can authoritatively and confidently report:

A cordial invitation

to come home to Riyadh

Khashoggi did go to the consulate. Although we previously said he was never here, and then that he was here but he left, we now admit that we decided to invite him home to Saudi Arabia for, um, high level discussions.

However, once Khashoggi realized that he was being invited by fifteen husky-looking security guys, most of whom were half his age and twice his size, and also by a forensic pathologist armed with a bone saw, Khashoggi decided that he was the Karate Kid and got very unsuitably pugnacious.

Badly-made body parts

keep falling off Khashoggi

Khashoggi went on the attack against these perfectly innocent security people, who had been flown in just that day merely to keep Khashoggi feeling secure. However, the ingrate started a fight. Naturally the security guys had to fight back to protect themselves. During the scuffle, all the fingers on Kashoggi’s hands accidentally fell off. I mean, some of these newspaper writers are really shoddily constructed.

However, Khashoggi stubbornly kept on fighting. So one of the security guys tried to subdue him with a strangle hold, during which Kashoggi’s head accidentally fell off. And he still kept on fighting. Eventually his arms and legs accidentally fell off, too.

To return Khashoggi safely home to Riyadh in his condition, we put him in seven trunks and suitcases, which we put in the back of the car. Why all that luggage? So that in case one or two pieces of luggage got lost (you know how airlines are) we could still put most of him back together. 

The old rolled-up

Arabian rug trick

What about the story that we gave him to a “local cooperator" rolled up in a rug? Well, that’s true, also. But after the local cooperator got the rug home and spread it out on his living room floor, he gave Khashoggi back to us because the bloodstained body parts didn’t go with the rest of the decor. So we had to start all over again.

What's that? What's a "cooperator," you ask? Don't ask.

Anyway, there's the issue of Khashoggi’s clothing. We didn’t want to cut his clothing up into pieces because it’s so hard to find a decent tailor shop to mend clothing in Riyadh, so we gave it to one of our security people to wear. We told him not to go out like that, but you know, some of these young guys don’t listen. Or you think they’re listening, but all the time they’re swiping their cell phones and tapping the Like button on videos of the latest public beheading in Riyadh, or the news photographs of little children starving to death in Yemen.

Now we know you find this all rather far-fetched, but it’s all up-to-the-minute true, and will be for at least another two minutes. And even your Trump administration believes every word. Trump behaves as if he believes it. Jared, the Middle East maven isn’t denying it. We even bombed a Yemeni school bus for him the other day, just to demonstrate our sincerity. And Mnuchin is going to our little conference. No boycott after all.

Car? What car?

What about that abandoned Mercedes — or was it two abandoned Mercedes-es? — from the Saudi consulate that the Saudis then decided to reclaim after Turkish forensic teams started to search them? Whaddaya complaining about? We cleaned off the bloodstains before we abandoned them.

Yes but what about…..?

Sorry no more questions until we issue version 13.1.2.

“In the first place, we didn’t do it. In the second place, we only did it by accident. In the third place, somebody else did it. In the fourth place….”

Your basic bone saw, frequently carried by Saudi tourists in 

Istanbul, in case they stumble across any bones that need sawing

From the New York Times:

WASHINGTON — Saudi Arabia was preparing an alternative explanation of the fate of a dissident journalist on Monday, saying he died at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul two weeks ago in an interrogation gone wrong, according to a person familiar with the kingdom’s plans. In Washington, President Trump echoed the possibility that Jamal Khashoggi was the victim of “rogue killers.”

Yeah. Right-oh. The story is getting a bit….shall we say plastic? The goop-y tale keeps melting down and re-forming, and melting down again, sometimes taking on an extra weird shape with the interpretive assistance of some guy in the White House named  Donald Whatzisname.

For openers, there was a Saudi journalist named Jamal Khashoggi. He was critical of the new regime of Mohammed Bin Salman, or MBS for short, who seems to be in the midst of a semi-hostile takeover the whole House of Saud Incorporated, or in other words, the country.

Heads you win!

(Also, heads you lose.)

MBS puts out that he’s a great liberalizer. He’s bringing Saudi Arabia into the modern age by letting women drive. At the same time he’s arresting the women who led the movement to let women drive. 

There are rumors around that some of those women may face the death penalty, in a country where people are put to death by getting their head chopped off with a sword. This proves, I suppose, that you can have your steering wheel and decapitate it too. Or something like that.

Well, because of his criticism, Kashoggi feels Saudi Arabia heating up for him faster than even the rest of the planet. So he skedaddles and becomes an American resident. He gets a gig writing for the Washington Post, but then ends up in Istanbul where he has a fiancée he decides to marry. 

In order to do that in Turkey, he needs a certificate of divorce from his previous marriage in Saudi Arabia. He calls the nearest Saudi consulate and asks how he can get his divorce certificate. They act, if you’re old enough to remember, like that big friendly guy in a 1970s TV spot for Florida tourism (was it Bob Barker?) who used to wave his arm and say, “C’mon down!”

The Saudi Arabian

Roach Motel

So Kashoghi goes to the consulate. It turns out to be a Saudi version of the Roach Motel. Dissidents check in, but they don’t check out. 

The Turks have security video which has played on TV ad nauseam showing Kashoggi going in. There are no videos as of October 16th of his coming out. At least, not in one piece. 

Meanwhile, a platoon of thug-y looking guys gets off two charted airplanes from Riyadh to Istanbul, and shows up at the Saudi consulate. For some reason they have a bone saw. A day later they all go home, with big suitcases. 

Now Kashogghi is missing.  Here are some some explanations we’ve since heard from the Saudis, along with some others that we expect to hear any minute.

1. He was never here.
2. He was here but he left.
3. You don’t have footage of him leaving because he left via the back door.
4. Well, okay, he was here and we arrested him. But only for questioning.
5. Well, we wanted to question him and then send him back to Saudi Arabia, but some strange rogue guys accidentally killed him, so it’s not like we’re responsible or anything, and furthermore MBS knows nothing about this. Anyway, that’s how Khashogghi managed to leave through the back door — in a lot of different suitcases.
6. The bone saw? Oh, nothing premeditated. That was just to saw up our camel for camel cutlets at a consulate reception for Mike Pompeo.
7. Where were the camel cutlets?

   

   Also, what happened to the camel? Whaddya mean, what camel?

   We decided, what with American companies cancelling on us left and right, that just for Pompeo to have one lousy camel cutlet we could not cut up our camel.
8. We are not executing the women who led the movement to let women drive in Saudi Arabia. We are merely temporarily removing their heads for their own protection.
9. Well, okay, that’s technically decapitation, but some rogue executioner is doing it, completely without sanction from the House of Saud.
10. What, back to Khashogghi again? We’ll refer you to what Donald Trump said about Khashoggi’s so-called mysterious disappearance, and this is an exact paraphrase: “Do you want to lose $300 billion worth of military orders, or what?” You know, business is business. I mean, it’s not as if we’ve kidnapped, tortured and killed any American citizens….yet.
11. Okay, we’re going to say this one more time. Khashogghi was never here. And furthermore, we never heard of him. Now please deposit our multi-billion dollar check and send those damn Boeing jets. We still have a ton of schools and hospitals in Yemen to bomb.

Here comes Karma, ready to bite Brett Kavanugh in the butt

Source: Wikimedia Commons

“What goes around comes around,”  Brett Kavanaugh declared ominously. This almost-Buddhist pronouncement came during the second round of Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on September 27th. Kavanaugh was responding to to sexual molestation charges against him that the committee was pondering. 

Buddhist wisdom?

Or threat of revenge?

Buddhist or not, "What goes around comes around" sounded to some like a veiled threat to use his judicial power on the Supreme Court for revenge against those who’d opposed his nomination. As such it was intemperate, injudicious, and not to put too fine a point on it, sleazy. 

Kavanaugh later claimed that his speech, which history may remember as the  “I like beer” speech, was the consequence of his emotions getting the better of his judicial temperament. As if the words just flew spontaneously out of his mouth. Hardly so.

Scripted emotion?

If his emotions got the better of him, they did so very methodically. If you’ll recall, Kavanaugh was reading from a ring binder full of notes, and frequently looking down and turning the pages as he spoke. 

So somebody — whether Kavanaugh or somebody else — had deliberately and calmly written that “emotional” speech. 

Clearly, his emotions must have been as spontaneous as a hooker’s faked orgasm. He even thought to have lots — and lots! — of bottles of water on hand. It’s as if he knew exactly how long his so-called spontaneity would last, and — perhaps from rehearsals — how dry it would make his throat.

Well, as Kavanaugh told us, what goes around does come around — and now it’s coming for Brett Kavanaugh, even as he takes his seat on the Supreme Court.

Forget the hoots and jeers and raucous laughter generated by comedians mocking Kavanaugh’s testimony at the Senate. 

That’s small potatoes. I’m talking about the national outrage that is already spurring others to pinpoint acts of actual perjury that Kavanaugh may have committed over the years.

Down-and-dirty

outright lies

Last week, Newsweek published a whole compendium of them headlined, “The Lies that Could Still Sink Brett Kavanaugh.” We’re not talking about little fibs here, or even Trump-style fictional hyperbole about whose crowds were bigger. We’re talking about down-and-dirty outright lies about matters ranging from the impeachment of a previous president, to Kavanaugh’s assistance in permitting the physical torture of human beings.

The entire bill of particulars warrants your attention, which you can give, if you haven’t already done so, by going here. But let me quote my two favorites:

1. May 9, 2006, SJC nomination hearing to the DC Circuit Court of Appeals, response to Senator Richard Durbin (D-IL) and the late Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA), again about his knowledge of the “Memogate” emails.“I’m not aware of the memos, I never saw such memos that I think you’re referring to. I mean, I don’t know what the universe of memos might be, but I do know that I never received any memos and was not aware of any such memos.”Distance from the Truth: Kavanaugh made the denial under oath multiple times to committee members. Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT), however, recently posted confidential emails on Twitter that he says were in Kavanaugh’s possession, proving his previous denials are, Leahy wrote, “just FALSE!” 

2. May 9, 2006, SJC hearing on Kavanaugh’s nomination to the DC Circuit Court of Appeals, response to Senator Durbin (D-Ill.) about the judicial nomination of William Haynes, the Pentagon’s director of torture policy during the George W. Bush administration.
“I was not involved and am not involved in the questions about the rules governing detention of combatants or—and so I do not have the involvement with that.”
Distance from the Truth: Kavanaugh has since been doubly implicated, both in significant involvement with Haynes’ judicial confirmation for Bush and in having a hand in Bush detention and interrogation policies. Newly discovered emails from 2002 prove the former, Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL) charged last month, and “show that Kavanaugh played a substantial role in the decision to nominate Haynes.”

The karma of Kavanaugh’s lies now lays in wait for him. It may be inactive for the moment. But sooner or later, both the Senate and House will have a Democratic majority. When that happens, Kavanaugh will almost assuredly be subject to the humiliation of impeachment and removal. Further, since perjury is involved, it is always possible that perjury charges may be brought against him.

Let him live with that while, the hot breath of Karma blowing in his ear, as he goes about attempting to undo everything civilized that has happened in the United States for over a century: Minority voting rights,  Obamacare,  Social Security, Medicare, birth control, abortion rights, voting rights, and who knows what else. He most certainly must know that Karma is half a pace behind him, waiting for the right moment to pounce.

And sooner or later, it will.