Meet the New Boss...

 (By American Zen's Mike Flannigan, on loan from Ari)
We can't do nothing right when wrong is what we do
'Cause we die to live, we die to live
We ain't got the time for a Christian lullaby
When off goes the alarm and the house is going down
We die to live, we die to live
 Let it burn, let it burn
Oh, well, let it burn, let it burn. -Volbeat, "Die to Live"

...Same as the old boss.

     If the late Stieg Larson (who'd warned us his entire life about fascist politicians and billionaires exactly like Trump) was still alive and wrote a book about Trump bombing the Baghdad airport and killing Gen. Qassem Soleimani, he'd name it, The Fucking Idiot Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest.
    "General who?" you might find yourself asking and you could be forgiven. You're in pretty good (?) company if you don't because just four years ago, Donald Trump also didn't know who Gen. Soleimani until he was told by Hugh Hewitt (who was later scolded by Trump for embarrassing him on live radio). So here's a basic tutorial on the life and times of the man whose death very likely touched off WW III:

Widely considered the second most powerful man in Iran and the most powerful operative in the entire Middle East.

Brokered a ceasefire between the Iraqi Army and Mahdi Army in March 2008.

Until another Republican moron, George W. Bush, named Iran part of "the Axis of Evil" in 2002, partnered with the United States right after 9/11 to help us fight the Taliban and to identify Taliban targets.

Was alleged to have led militia forces that killed "hundreds of Americans", according to Dexter Filkins in 2013, whose questionably-sourced article seems to be the basis for any sudden scholarship on the life of Soleimani

    In short, Donald John Trump, a guy who didn't even know who Soleimani was four years ago and thought the Quds Force he led was the same as the Kurds, killed a nominal ally who helped us fight two terrorist organizations that were actually a threat to us while working with another (Hezbollah) that wasn't.

     And he may have just started WWIII between us and at least the entire Shiite Muslim world and their allies. Because TrumpWorld can't do nothing right when wrong is what they do.

Like Hallmark, There's One For Every Occasion

Remember this? This is a tweet that Trump wrote from his gold toilet in either Trump Tower or Mar-a-Lago over eight years ago. It's one of many in which Trump either criticized or predicted Obama would do things he either didn't or wouldn't do that Trump would. Like playing too much golf. And starting a war with Iran.

   So, barely three days into the new year, we've carried out what was essentially an extralegal terrorist action, an "assassination", according to both Bernie Sanders and Fox, against Iran that may've touched off WW 3 by an impeached president, I'm thinking of the movie, Wag the Dog. So, how and why did this come about?

    Well, hindsight being (ha ha) 20/20, perhaps President Rouhani is even now rethinking his decision to crow last November about finding an oil field with 53 billion barrels beneath it. And if you think our Middle East foreign policy isn't guided by oil, then I've got an oil field once owned by George W. Bush and Arbusto I can sell you.

    Two months later, we killed their #2 guy, on sovereign foreign soil, without notifying 534 members of Congress that is now suddenly alarmed and shocked that Trump is now using the $738 billion it just gave him for defense but telling his son Eric, Bennie in Israel, and his golfing buddy Lindsey Graham, the only member of Congress who was clued in beforehand (and who joked about killing Iranian civilians).

     To give you a warm, fuzzy feeling of reassurance that this revolution and war will be guided by capable hands, there's this news article that says Trump was eating meat loaf and ice cream when news broke about a certain US drone strike that killed Soleimani and six others near Baghdad Airport. If you're having flashbacks about Trump launching a strike on Syrian soil from Mar-a-Lago, then it's for good reason. 

     It seems whether it's ice cream or chocolate cake, whenever the Toddler in Chief gets a sugar buzz, he just has to bomb the shit out of some Middle Eastern country. Reading the account of eating ice cream and meat loaf while gloating over the news of what he'd done, one can be forgiven for embellishing that visual with him wearing onesie jammies with the trap door down, a juice box in one tiny fist while watching Power Rangers on another TV.

     And, predictably, the old PNAC chickenhawks, the Democrats and corporate mainstream media are...

Partying Like It's 2003

40 years ago, we were trained to hate the Ayatollah Khomeini. 40 years later, we're being trained to hate Soleimani by the same psychopaths who 20 years ago trained us to hate Saddam Hussein. This includes the very architects of the biggest foreign policy disaster since Vietnam: Iraq. Within hours of the attack that killed Soleimani, we've since heard from Karl Rove, the world's biggest fetus, Ari Fleischer and Mike Pence (who's blaming Iran for the 9/11 attacks, despite the official 9/11 Commission finding that to not be true).

     We have Democrats such as Elizabeth Warren and Adam Schiff (all seemingly getting their Cliff Notes on Soleimani on the fly from the seven year-old Filkins article) who have been furiously writing tweets that start out, "Well, yeah, Soleimani was a bad guy who killed hundreds of Americans but..."

     And, of course, right in the thick of it, beating the war drums like Keith Moon on a pound of Ecstasy, are the corporate mainstream media, already licking their chops and rubbing their bloody hands at the thought of the ratings bonanza awaiting them. They're already framing the air with their fingers, thinking of the charred, rotting corpses of Iranians they can telecast each night for a 50 share as we devolve further and further into World War Three so Trump can have his Wag the Dog moment. In fact, Tangerine Nightmare's already sent 3000-3500 troops to the Middle East (So much for ending endless wars) in preparation of the de-escalation this missile attack was supposed to have guaranteed.

     And front and center of all this is Pompous Maximus, who huddled with Netanyahu, Lavrov and others as the drones were being readied and armed. According to Pompeo, not only was this illegal mass murder an exercise in de-esclation (which is guaranteed to have the same effect as pouring a tanker's worth of gasoline on a small Australian brush fire) but, uh, Soleimani was planning on doing something, uh, really really bad to our people!

    And that's precisely the rationale used by the lunatics at PNAC who infested the Bush administration like Rocky Mountain spotted ticks. How do you get America, a nation with a historical voter turnout of 39-45%, to support a war against a nation that's 7000 miles away? Tell them they're a threat to our way of life, of course! They'll bomb us with their WMDs, impose Sharia law on your white Christian ass and, uh, other things I can't get into.

     So now we're taking a cue from Minority Report, a science fiction movie in which a future society arrested people who were going to commit crimes (although who knows what we're using for Arthur, Dash and Agatha). Except that in Minority Report, those people weren't extra-judicially executed but put in a painless suspended animation and sent away, meaning they weren't even aware of the passage of time.

     In case you so-called Democrats were still wondering what would happen if you gave a billionaire psychopath a $738,000,000,000 war budget, here's your answer: