FEBRUARY 2020 IGNOMINIOUS ABSURDITY OF THE MONTH: THE IGGY

1. Senator Joni Ernst. One of the problems with electing brick-stupid people as senators, as Republican voters have taken to doing in droves since the election of the first non-white American president broke what was left of their brains, is that those senators tend forever to be saying the quiet parts out loud.

Sen. Joni Ernst, inflicted on us by Iowa for some reason, has been (1) frothingly angry at the impeachment of Donald Trump for merely doing crimes, (2) eagerly leaping to television cameras to (for free) further the very same conspiracy Donald Trump was attempting to get out of the Ukrainian government for a few hundred million dollars, and (3) is now insisting that since Democrats meanly impeached Trump for crime-doing well maybe Republicans will impeach a theoretical President Biden too because screw you, that's why.

“Joe Biden should be very careful what he’s asking for because, you know, we can have a situation where if it should ever be President Biden, that immediately, people, right the day after he would be elected would be saying, ‘Well, we’re going to impeach him,’” Ernst told Bloomberg News.

For what reason?

“For being assigned to take on Ukrainian corruption yet turning a blind eye to Burisma because his son was on the board making over a million dollars a year.”

Bloomberg News notes, to their small credit, that this is not true. This is a conspiracy theory. In the real world as inhabited by those of us not raised by paint fumes, Biden demanded the removal of Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin for not prosecuting alleged corruption in companies like Burisma. Biden was acting on behalf of the United States government and State Department to further an official United States policy, one shared by the European Union and by Senate Republicans themselves. Because Shokin, now Rudy Giuliani's best friend after he came up with a host of theories on why everyone in Ukraine but him were the crooked ones, was corrupt.

What Bloomberg News does not point out, however, is that this makes Joni Ernst a liar. Not just a liar, but either a willful propagandist or an unwilling idiot, someone who allegedly is responsible for help writing our laws but who has not, at any point, been able to grasp even the most fundamental of information about the trial that she just fidgeted her way through. She is furthering a lie, and using it as reason why Dear Leader's new enemy must be retaliated against, and justifying both the lie and the retaliation on the indignity of Dear Leader being asked to answer for doing what even her fellow Republican senators agree was a crooked act.

Sen. Ernst may be taking the fascist path on these things, but she is, thank God, not a bright fascist. A smarter Republican would have shut their pie-hole long ago, but she just keeps going, apparently on a mission to show that her home state of Iowa will put literally anyone in a position of Republican power. Liars, white supremacists, you name it.

JANUARY 2020 IGNOMINIOUS ABSURDITY OF THE MONTH: THE IGGY

1. President Donald Trump. I know, I’ve vowed to not include Trump absurdities, but sometimes it can’t be helped. In just his latest ignominious tweet, Trump stated that his list of targets in Iran would include sites of “very high level & importance to Iran & the Iranian culture.”

One would think that the resulting international and domestic uproar to the threat would move a normal person to “qualify” the statement, or at least say he was misunderstood, but Donald Trump is not a normal person. Just hours later, he made it very clear that he thought cultural sites were in fact legitimate targets.

“They’re allowed to kill our people,” he told the reporters on Air Force One as he flew back to Washington from his winter holiday in Florida. “They’re allowed to torture and maim our people. They’re allowed to use roadside bombs and blow up our people. And we’re not allowed to touch their cultural site? It doesn’t work that way.”

The furor was a classic controversy of the narcissistic Mr. Trump’s creation, the apparent result of an impulsive threat and his habit of refusing to back down in the face of criticism. On the contrary, his impulse is to double down.

Administration and Pentagon officials moved quickly to walk back Trump’s assertion, which if carried out would amount to a war crime. Secretary of Defense Mark Esper sought to douse the international outcry by ruling out attacks on cultural sites in Iran if the conflict with Tehran escalates further.

Mr. Esper acknowledged that striking cultural sites with no military value would be a war crime, putting him at odds with the president, who insisted such places would be legitimate targets. Mr. Trump’s threat generated condemnation at home and abroad while deeply discomfiting American military leaders who understand the importance of complying with the rules of war (at least professing to).

“We will follow the laws of armed conflict,” Mr. Esper said at a news briefing at the Pentagon when asked if cultural sites would be targeted as the president had suggested over the weekend. When asked if that meant “no” because the laws of war prohibit targeting cultural sites, Mr. Esper agreed. “That’s the laws of armed conflict.”

Trump’s threat was not just a slip of the tongue spewing from a man who is grossly ignorant of history and propriety. It comes from a man who has no respect for laws, particularly those codified internationally. He truly believes he is above the law. He is not only oblivious to the consequences of his assertions and actions; he doesn’t seem to care what happens. After all, his enablers will cover for him.