Mayday, Mayday, Mayday!

We’re going down!

Donald Trump was convicted of sexually assaulting and defaming E Jean Carroll and ordered to pay her $83 million, which he hasn’t done yet years after a judge said that yes, what Trump did amounted to rape. Trump was also convicted of 34 counts of falsifying business records, basically a fraud sort of thing. And he exhorted a crowd to sedition and insurrection on January 6, 2021.

Naturally Republican candidate for congress in NY21 Anthony Constantino was thrilled to announce that Donald Trump endorsed him in the election to replace noted antisemite Elise Stefanik over Republican Robert Smullen.

Ethically challenged Chairman of the Warren County Republican Party and Ward 4 Town Councilman Timothy McNulty “reached out” to managing editor of the Glens Falls Chronicle Cathy Dede to try to explain away why the local Republican committees chose Smullen over the Trump-lite candidate Constantino. “We support the president’s decision. We feel, based on the presentations both candidates provided that Robert Smullen would better represent the North Country in Congress.”

McNulty said that the convicted sexual assaulter and convicted of 34 counts felon Trump “…made a decision based on the information he was provided. We made a decision based on reaching out and actually meeting the two candidates.”

Basically what McNulty said is that Trump doesn’t know what he’s talking about; that he made a decision based on feelings and maybe Constantino sucking up by buying Trump a life-size statue of himself rather than a rational assessment of the merits. Or maybe Constantino’s buddy Roger Stone convinced Trump to make the endorsement. Essentially, it appears that Trump has lost his grip on the base.

Washington County Republican Chair William Herrick agrees with McNulty, “Well, I think everybody would want [Trump’s endorsement]. But I don’t think it’s a game changer. As far as I’m concerned, I think Washington County will still come out and support Bob Smullen.”

Trump’s endorsement is “not a game changer.” We have been seeing a lot of that over the last year. In election after election the Trump supported candidate has either lost or won by a very slim margin in districts that previously voted heavily for Trump.

Why is that? Well, it could be that people aren’t happy about starting unnecessary wars, bombing children, and disrupting the entire world economy. Trump promised Americans that the price of gas would go down but aside from a roughly 6 week period the price of gas has been up since he took office. Way up!

I didn’t know gas could get that expensive.

Not an actual image. Not even AI.

James Comey has been indicted for posting a picture of “8647” on a beach apparently because Trump viewed it as a threat. I’ve been posting lots of references to 8647 on social media, me and about 100 million other people. It’s funny that very shortly after posting 8647 bots started tagging the FBI, the Secret Service, and the Department of Homeland Security in the comments hoping to get me arrested or something. I say bots because that is what they are. They could be real people but if you act like a bot you are a bot. They (mostly) haven’t been anyone I’ve ever interacted with in any way before. They are minions controlled by the MAGA machine. It’s funny that they can’t seem to distinguish what is a real threat - like an enormous amount of the filth that spews from Donald Trump’s mouth - from a totally harmless picture.

A real threat would be everyone who posted 8647 gathering in Washington DC and marching on the White House, “with love” ❤️, just like the pardoned January 6th people marched on the Capitol. Of course, Trump would have them slaughtered by the thousands exactly like the Iranians slaughtered the people Trump encouraged to take to the streets in Tehran to overthrow their government, telling them that he would stand behind them sort of like he insinuated to the insurrectionists on J6.

When the Iranian regime predictably slaughtered thousands of Iranians the media here at home predictably decried the mass slaughter, but I didn’t hear a lot of discussion about the Trump policy of sanctions intended to destroy the Iranian economy and drive people to the streets where everyone knew that they could be arrested or killed.

That policy, like similar policies against Venezuela and Cuba, was an act of war. And it’s a war crime. It is a deliberate attempt to weaken and starve people hoping they will, in desperation, attempt to overthrow their government. It was a policy that anyone with any sort of understanding of the people of Iran and their history would know was doomed to failure. Not because ordinary people in Iran love their leadership, but because the people of Iran are sick and tired of outside oil interests trying to run their country. They were sick of it in 1979. They were sick of it in 1953. They were sick of it in 1933. But weren’t sick of it in 1901. Not yet.

In 1901 a British millionaire, William Knox D’Arcy, with a hot tip from British government insiders decided he could make even more money by prospecting for oil in Iran. He signed an agreement with the Shah of Persia at the time (no relation to the Shah overthrown in 1979) known as the D’Arcy Concession which (very simplistically) gave the Shah some money and a 16% concession on any profits to allow D’Arcy to search for oil in a region covering most of Iran except the very north in order to avoid angering Russia which had its own designs on Iran. After several years D’Arcy hit oil. Companies were formed, oil flowed, everyone was happy. For a while. Until the Shah learned that the British government was taxing the oil concession heavily which severely reduced profits which in turn reduced the 16% royalty he was expecting from a gusher to a trickle.

At this point, because Britain was involved, Winston Churchill gets involved. And from this point on I’m relying on memory so I’ll get details wrong but essentially Churchill was in charge of some office in the British Admiralty and he wanted to take the oil from Iran because he was tired of paying Standard Oil and Royal Dutch Shell for oil as he transitioned the British navy from coal steamers to diesel.

Of course Winston Churchill got involved, becuase he is the cartoon trope that represents the type of British Colonialism that made it a champion of starving people to death like in Ireland in 1847 or in Bengal in 1943 when Churchill decided the British military needed the rice that the people of Bengal depended on to live and tens of millions suffered famine and maybe a million or two died. I say champion but I haven’t actually researched exact numbers and Stalin might be a contender for the title at least until Mao came along in China and starved about 33 million people to death for which he now holds the starving-to-death trophy.

[Aside here that Zohran Mamdani hasn’t forgotten British Colonialism and just the other day he asked the current king to give back the Koh i Noor Diamond to India, so good for him]

Basically, aside from giving some heroic speeches during the darkest hours of the Blitz, Winston Churchill was an asshole. But wait, there’s more.

A lot of stuff happened, British Petroleum was formed to rob Iran of its oil profits, and a new government was formed in Iran which frowned on the money they needed to build their nation and feed their people going out the door, and somewhere in there WW2 occurred and I can’t really sum that up in a few words, but fascism, Nazis, Japan, Pearl Harbor, Holocaust, and America comes in to save the world and drop nuclear bombs on it.

Iran looks at the mess they had zero role in making and says to itself “fuck those guys.” And I understand that “fuck those guys” is harsh language, but it is totally understandable from their point of view having seen the devastation Western Civilization wrought on the world. I mean, not to deny the role of Japan in this either. So Iran decided to to go it’s own way and formed a new government, one formed democratically, by the people, its just powers derived by consent of the governed. And they nationalized the oil industry because it was democratically their oil. (Aside here - Venezuela?) At this point, way over there in what I think is at this point the UK, out past the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz, past the Suez Canal, past the Mediterranean, and up by the North Sea, Winston Churchill gets his voluminous knickers in a bunch and calls up President Eisenhower, who he had met during the War, and says that if he doesn’t get his god-given oil back he’s going to start a war with Iran, right there on the southern border of the Soviet Union, during the Cold War with Stalin who may or may not be dead at this point but it isn’t public yet for sure. Eisenhower says “whoa, whoa, whoa there Winnie! Let me see what I can do about it,” and he sent in Kermit Roosevelt (and I am not making him up) along with a team of spies and they stir up a rebellion on the streets. The newly elected leader of Iran Mohammed Mosaddegh was assassinated, and the US basically installed a new Shah as head of a new, unelected, government. And the Shah gave up the oil.

Stop me right here if any of this seems sort of like stuff going on in Iran right now.

Okay, you can’t stop me. Just like Trump and Netanyahu can’t stop Iran from stopping the flow of oil - theirs and others’ - through the Strait of Hormuz. Or at least slowing it down and making it very expensive.

No matter how much the Iranian people hate their leaders they are not about to 8647 them in favor of letting assholes like Trump and Netanyahu take their goddamn oil. They are not going to attempt a Donald Trump style insurrection like January 6 against their government, just like the millions of people in the US who hate Donald Trump are not going to march on the White House, Mar a Lago, or any of Trump’s golf courses and end the tyrannical rule of the simpleton madman. And even though we pump plenty of oil for ourselves, we are not going to demand the oil is nationalized and we get cheap gas.

It’s not going to happen.