Trump Ties Terror Attack to Immigrant from Texas
It's not yet clear how the Bourbon Street attacker crossed into the U.S. from Texas
Jan. 2: Texan immigrant indoctrinated by dark worlds of capitalism, militarism … I was told Trump defeated ISIS … Justice Roberts tries to lock barn door after freeing metaphorical horse … Schumer makes DNC endorsement …
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RePresident-elect Donald Trump yesterday linked the deadly New Year’s Day attack on Bourbon Street to immigration.
In a 10:48am post yesterday on his social-media platform, Truth [sic] Social [sic], Trump said:
“When I said that the criminals coming in are far worse than the criminals we have in our country, that statement was constantly refuted by Democrats and the Fake News Media, but it turned out to be true. The crime rate in our country is at a level that nobody has ever seen before. Our hearts are with all of the innocent victims and their loved ones, including the brave officers of the New Orleans Police Department. The Trump Administration will fully support1 the City of New Orleans as they investigate and recover from this act of pure evil!”
As real native-born Americans know, “refute” means to disprove, meaning Trump just said his lies were disproven, which he would know he was saying if he had bothered to learn the language. But Trump’s family, too, came in to this country, bringing crimes, attacking American women, and not speaking English good.
Law enforcement identified the driver and gunman in yesterday’s early morning attack as Shamsud-Din Jabbar, a native of Texas. His name translates loosely as “Billy-Bob Jabbar.”
It’s not clear exactly when or how Jabbar entered the U.S. from Texas, but the Biden administration has a virtual open-border policy across the treacherous no-man’s land between Texas and Louisiana. Thousands are believed to cross every day, trafficking drugs, women, children, and Amazon packages.
In the past, Trump has criticized U.S. immigration policy for letting “all these people from shithole countries come here.” And Texas is well known for its deplorable conditions, including economic inequality, environmental horrors, unchecked local warlords/business leaders, and theocratic rule by religious zealots who oppress women and LGBTQ+ people.
Relying on scraps of intel and Jabbar’s LinkedIn page, investigators have pieced together the tortured path that created a murderous mind intent on killing innocents. And the Texas government isn’t the only radical, toxic, destabilizing, antisocial institution involved in shaping Jabbar’s mindset.
He spent years immersed in the grip of chaotic, nihilistic ideologies fostered by institutions that have infiltrated the country, including the Texas government, the U.S. Army, consulting firms Accenture and Deloitte, and the shadowy, amoral underground world of the real estate industry.
Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX), the highest-ranking cleric in Texas, just last year abetted another homicidal U.S. Army acolyte’s politically motivated act of terror. The victim, Garrett Foster, was peacefully protesting the murderous Texas regime and the terror campaign of its religious enforcers against Black people.
Abbott himself has used the state’s security apparatus to kill dozens of people. State officials routinely celebrate weapons of war as means for addressing even minor, stupid-dipshit grievances.
After a briefing yesterday, Pres. Joe Biden last night shared some specifics on Jabbar’s disturbing affiliations, revealing his dark past as “an American citizen, born in Texas. He served in the United States Army on active duty for many years. He also served in the Army Reserve, until a few years ago.”
Investigators have managed to trace Jabbar’s movements prior to yesterday’s attack. It’s believed he first began working for the Army in March 2007 and stayed with them through January 2015, even spending almost a year in Afghanistan.
He then joined another group with loose ties to the Army, the U.S. Army Reserve, taking on a leadership role that translates exactly as “staff sergeant” until he left in July 2020.
Jabbar even received a medal for his service on one of the sides in the Global War on/of Terrorism.
Intelligence sources reportedly said Jabbar was radicalized by a number of organizations that operate via regional offices, or “cells.” At first, Jabbar got involved with Accenture, but he moved easily from one group to another, radicalized by an extremist strain of capitalism, joining a coalition known as Ernst & Young, and finally rising to power as a supreme consultant at Deloitte.
It was at Deloitte where he authored a disturbing screed about his horrific goals within his warped world. In one passage devoid of humanity, he wrote with no apparent sign of remorse that, “I have proven that I can build and leverage relationships and knowledge sources to research and execute solutions that mutually benefit all concerned parties.” Where did such a chilling and inhuman world view come from?
As difficult as it may be to imagine the kind of mind capable of issuing such incoherent ravings, the groups that push this twisted mindset make intensive efforts to indoctrinate America’s young, posting videos on the dark web and deploying attractive job-fair recruiters to colleges already transformed to churn out nothing but capitalist soldiers.
With a failed marriage, failed business, and crushing debt, Jabbar reportedly posted videos in which he said he planned to gather his family for a celebration during which he would kill them, but then had dreams inspiring him to join ISIS and so he went with that.
Ultimately, Jabbar’s dark journey led him yesterday to become the most confused man in a nation full of confused men: A Muslim U.S. Army veteran from Texas flying an ISIS flag who wanted to kill his family but killed civilians instead.
MORE FUCKING TRUMP SHIT It’s worth noting a few things about Trump and his lazy exploitation of yesterday’s horrific attack on New Orleans.
One is that pinning the crime on immigrants wasn’t even challenged in outlets that reported it. Politico’s headline reads, “Trump says New Orleans attack confirms his rhetoric on crime,” which is a weird headline because despite the “Trump says”-ing, the attack not only doesn’t confirm his rhetoric, nothing confirms his rhetoric because his rhetoric is bullshit and ergo unconfirmable.
Trump’s claim about immigrants is in the second paragraph. Jabbar’s U.S. citizenship isn’t mentioned — let alone contrasted with Trump’s lie — until the tenth paragraph. And that was after readers had to scroll past three separate ads for ███████.2
Some media even joined the xenophobic bandwagon as it smuggled fear bordering on insanity. One headline read, “Truck Used in Bourbon Street Attack Crossed Border Just Over Month Ago — Investigators Look Into Suspect ISIS Ties: Reports.” Scary, right?
Here’s the thing. It “crossed border” in November. Here’s the other thing. Y’know what kind of truck crosses border routinely for innocuous reasons? Rentals with Texas plates. And y’know who wasn’t in the truck at the time it crossed border? Jabbar.
WHAT NO-ONE BUT TFN SEEMS TO BE RE-REPORTING Funny how Trump is only to be taken seriously, not literally, when it benefits him.
But back in 2019, Trump claimed that ISIS had been destroyed. “One hundred percent of the ISIS caliphate” had been captured, he said, literally and lyingly. He was called out by no less a veteran liar than his own National Security Adviser, John Bolton, and even by FactCheck.org.
But that out-calling was 2019. And today, as Trump is blaming yesterday’s attack on an ISIS immigrant, it seems worth at least recalling, if not re-out-calling, that Trump assured us ISIS was gone in 2019. 💯%
Next he’ll tell us Jabbar was eating the cats.
Roberts Realizes Making Presidents All-Powerful Makes Him Powerless
Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts in his annual report on the federal judiciary, released Tuesday, suggested that he has now read his own court’s ruling last year that presidents can do whatever the fuck they want.
And apparently it has now occurred to America’s finest chief legal mind that the legal principle of “do as thou wilt” includes ignoring judges, even if they’re named him.
As the Washington Post’s Ruth Marcus points out, Vice President-elect JD Vance said just three years ago — before he had a single day’s experience in government — that presidents should ignore court rulings and orders:
[W]hen the courts stop you, stand before the country like Andrew Jackson did and say: ‘The chief justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it.’
As Marcus notes, Roberts doesn’t name Vance, but he subtweets the hell out of him, writing, “judicial independence is undermined unless the other branches are firm in their responsibility to enforce the court’s decrees.” Which doesn’t address the fact that Trump hasn’t once in his life given a shit about judicial independence.
Roberts writes, “elected officials from across the political spectrum have raised the specter of open disregard for federal court rulings. These dangerous suggestions, however sporadic, must be soundly rejected.” Or else what, Chief Fucker?
You’re the one who said we can’t arrest the fucking president, Chief Genius.
And remember what Roberts did when Trump attacked the independence and impartiality of judges the first time he was president? Nothing.
Roberts’s newfound respect for checks and balances has a lot to do with his checks and balances getting unchecked and unbalanced. But even in his report, Roberts reveals just how alien the concept is to him generally.
He says the separation of powers “create[s] an inevitable tension.” It’s not inevitable, it’s the point of separating the powers. Tension between branches was the goal not an unavoidable side effect.
Roberts is so used to deferring to executive authority that he reflexively does so even in his defense against it. And what about all that originalism that meant we don’t have abortion rights anymore?
Where’s the originalist Constitutional text declaring that presidents can’t disregard court rulings? Oh, right, that’s not in the Constitution, it’s in court rulings…just like ones the Roberts court itself has ignored. Roe v. Wade on line 2!
The good news here is not just that Roberts realized he, too, is on the Trump menu. It also suggests that the Roberts court may take a dim — albeit unoriginalist — view of Trump’s executive excesses. And even Trump and his congressional accomplices might not want to trigger a constitutional crisis when they’re in charge of everything.
Capitalism, Communism Unite for Cyber-Attack on U.S.
The Treasury Department office that oversees economic sanctions was hacked recently by Chinese government hackers aided by rampant capitalism privatizing core functions of the U.S. government.
The hack was reported to Congress by the Treasury on Monday. The targeted office handles highly sensitive matters related to economic sanctions, a subject of keen interest to China, which denies the hack just like the U.S. would.
The hackers reportedly did not breach government security — they breached the private-sector security of a government contractor, because for some reason the government uses contractors for shit it could do better and cheaper without a profit margin.
The contractor, a software provider ironically called BeyondTrust, told the Treasury Department on Dec. 8 that a hacker got access to a security key that let the hackers get in all kinds of places. Of course, both parties have bought into privatization, so voters should be BeyondPissed that this shit is happening.
It wasn’t immediately clear how RePresident Donald Trump might address the hacking, since he has vowed to wage a virtual economic war with China, but also to dismantle the U.S. government.
James Carville Said Things and TFN Is Honor-Bound Not to Let This Stand
In an op-ed published in the New York of course Times this morning, former I don’t even remember anymore James Carville wrote some dumb things about how he was wrong in forgetting just how right he was.
Specifically, Carville said he was wrong that Vice President Kamala Harris would win, because he forgot how right he was when he famously, inescapably forever, said of presidential politics, “It’s the economy, stupid.”
This is themifestly not newsworthy, but it angered me so I guess it’s newsfuckworthy. “We lost for one very simple reason: It was, it is and it always will be the economy, stupid,” Carville writes wrongly.
As most observers have noted, a lot of things happened. Donald Trump successfully weaponized American phobias both transgender and xeno.
Carville writes, “Although the U.S. economy remains the strongest in the world, with G.D.P. soaring and inflation subsiding, the American people did not settle for us being better than the rest or take that as good enough.” How many voters does Carville think know America’s gross domestic product, let alone how inflation rates compare to the rest of the world?
But the absolute worst, most dangerous part of Carville’s argument is this:
“To win back the economic narrative, we must focus on revving up a transformed messaging machine for the new political paradigm we now find ourselves living in. It’s about finding ways to talk to Americans about the economy that are persuasive.”
I was gonna beat up Carville for focusing on messaging at the expense of policy substance, but to his credit, he advises Democrats — rightly — to change what they’re messaging about. “We must be on the offensive with a wildly popular and populist economic agenda.”
Unfortunately, the specifics he suggests are pretty small-bore. A $15/hour-minimum wage is the best of it, but unlikely on its own to motivate millions of voters — especially because the second it gained traction Trump could endorse it.
And Carville cites JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon for his political wisdom, even though citing a JPMorgan CEO is the opposite of political wisdom. (A real, wildly popular agenda would cast Dimon as the enemy.)
Instead, Carville agrees with Dimon tsk-tsking Democrats for criticizing MAGA. Per Carville, “Denouncing other Americans or their leader as miscreants is not going to win elections.”
You goddamn serpentine motherfucker did you not just watch Trump do exactly that?
And if Democratic leaders can’t effectively, believably denounce the Dimons and Trumps and other billionaires of the world, maybe that’s because those Democrats don’t actually consider them the enemy, which is why they cite a JPMorgan CEO’s political advice. And there’s your problem right there, stupid.
Two Quickies
Lock up your daughters, folks. The new Congress begins tomorrow. CNN reports there are slightly fewer women in their ranks, 150. That’s down from the record of 152 in the previous Congress. And it’s because Republicans have fewer women in Congress, while Democrats have more than they ever have. But there’s good news at the state level, where women will be serving in record numbers, although some of them oppose women’s rights, so good news/bad news.
Democratic diversity is in short supply in the race to run the Democratic National Committee (DNC). Author and activist Marianne Williamson is running against a bunch of white dudes. One of said white dudes, Wisconsin party Chair Ben Wikler, just picked up an important endorsement. Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) this morning told Politico that Wikler is a “tenacious organizer … proven fundraiser … [and] sharp communicator.” We’ll get four debates in the DNC race before the Feb. 1 vote by DNC members.
TCB
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