I receive plenty of emails drawing attention to information and news stories from around the world. I’ve been busy, so few of the recent ones have prompted me to look closely. But one by David A. Graham immediately led me to an article in The Atlantic, my favourite U.S. publication. Titled “A Horrible Throwback to the Early 2000s,” it reveals some shocking American behaviour.
Excerpts for those who have not subscribed to The Atlantic:
Members of Congress are using the kinf of anti-Muslim rhetoric that was common then—this time with a president who has encouraged it.
No one could accuse Representative Andy Ogles of using dog whistles. The Tennessee Republican prefers a bullhorn.
“Muslims don’t belong in American society,” Ogles wrote on X on Monday. “Pluralism is a lie.”
The statement’s open bigotry is jarring. Where American Islamophobes in the past two decades have tended to demand that Muslims assimilate or denounce particular people or views, Ogles is taking a categorial approach. (In the past, Ogles has demanded the denaturalization of New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, whom he called “little muhammad”— whatever that means—and told an activist that his attitude toward Gazan children was that “we should kill them all.”)
But Ogles is not alone. Last month, his House colleague Randy Fine of Florida declared, “If they force us to choose, the choice between dogs and Muslims is not a difficult one.”
Recently I watched a YouTube video of police arresting a man for drunk driving and possession of meth. As officers took him into custody, he loudly insisted they had no right to arrest him and declared that Trump would soon make things right. It left me wondering how many poorly educated, marginally employed, and substance-addled Americans make up part of Trump’s base.
Yet members of Congress are supposed to be more respectable public figures. One might imagine that the rope-carrying grandfathers of Andy Ogles and Randy Fine once wore the white robes and hoods of the Ku Klux Klan. Overt displays of that sort have fallen out of favour, of course. African Americans have long demonstrated that they contribute as fully as anyone else to civil society. So racists have found new targets.
Muslims are convenient. They do not attend Southern Baptist churches, and many have brown skin—traits that make white supremacists uncomfortable.
At some point it will be demonstrated definitively that Trump is mortal. He will leave the scene. One wonders what follows. It is possible to imagine a kind of dynastic succession—echoing the way power passes within families in authoritarian systems, such as the leadership transition following the murder of Ruhollah Khomeini in Iran.
That may sound ridiculous, but democratic norms have clearly been devalued among some American leaders and a significant portion of the public. Consider that the senior U.S. senator from Pennsylvania, John Fetterman—a Democrat—has said that the United States should assassinate Iran’s new leader.
Is this the emerging model of American diplomacy? If you refuse to comply with Washington’s demands, we may respond with assassination, kidnapping, or economic strangulation—bombing, blockades, sanctions, and other measures that can impoverish entire populations and limit their prospects to live without fearing their families and communities will be destroyed.
Categories: USA
in-sights.ca 
Wow! I hadn’t heard that Fetterman said that, about assassinating the newly-chosen ayatollah. (The daily onslaught of news is hard to keep up with…)
He’s not one to toe any party’s line… but he’s dipped his toe in some fetid Trumper swamp water with that statement.
Calmer voices need to speak up.
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On the subject of Democratic Senator Mr. Fetterman?
https://www.rawstory.com/john-fetterman-2676086642/
Fetterman joined CNN’s Kaitlan Collins on “The Source,” where he was asked about his decision not to sign a letter asking for an investigation into the bombing strike on a girls’ school in Iran that reports indicate killed about 182 civilians, mostly children.
According to reports, U.S. forces were operating in the area, and the school was struck by what appeared to be a Tomahawk missile, which the U.S. has access to.
In response to the question, Fetterman said he didn’t sign the letter because everyone in Congress agreed that the incident was a tragedy. He also complained about how the media was covering the incident, and added that he disagreed with his colleagues, who he said had argued the war is “dumb.”
“I think it’s necessary and I support it,” Fetterman said about the war.
The Senator’s comments didn’t sit well with several political analysts and observers, who shared their reactions on social media.
“Fetterman claims that ‘left media’ like the New York Times is too focused on innocent children dying because war is a ‘good thing,'” political communications expert J.J. Abbott posted on X.
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Did Prince of Peace D J Trump just lose avid supporter Ann Coulter?
Ms. Coulter has witnessed the downsides of the Doctrine of Total War.
It’s wrong.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/total-war
The modern concept of total war can be traced to the writings of the 19th-century Prussian military strategist Carl von Clausewitz, who denied that wars could be fought by laws. In his major work Vom Kriege (On War), he rejected the limited objectives of 18th-century warfare, in which winning local military victories was regarded as the key to advantageous diplomatic bargaining, and described wars as tending constantly to escalate in violence toward a theoretical absolute. Clausewitz also stressed the importance of crushing the adversary’s forces in battle. His 19th-century admirers tended to overlook his insistence that the conduct of war must be strictly controlled by attainable political objectives.
The classic 20th-century work on total war was Erich Ludendorff’s Der totale Krieg (1935; The “Total” War), based on the author’s experience in directing Germany’s war effort in World War I. He envisaged total mobilization of manpower and resources for war. The country at war would be led by a supreme military commander, and strategy would dictate policy. The concept of total war moved geography and economics into prominent positions in Nazi thinking. The two World Wars of the 20th century are usually regarded as total or at least the most total of history’s wars, although they were, of course, limited in numerous ways.
https://www.rawstory.com/ann-coulter-2676161670/
Conservative commentator Ann Coulter presented a stark hypothetical scenario to illustrate what she characterizes as a double standard in the Trump administration’s approach to civilian casualties in the Iran conflict.
Coulter posed a thought experiment: “Suppose Iran dispatched operatives to Mexico, where, from the Texas border, they fired a missile at an American base and, unintentionally but carelessly, demolished a nearby American school, killing 175 people.”
She then escalated the scenario to include additional infrastructure strikes: “What if they then blew up fuel depots, showering a chemical rain on residents? Then struck homes, schools and clinics, as Iran’s leader warned that ‘death, fire and fury’ would so pulverize America that it could never be rebuilt?”
Coulter’s rhetorical point directly mirrors documented events from the actual Iran conflict. The U.S. military has been credibly accused of bombing an Iranian girls’ school on the conflict’s opening day, killing approximately 175 children. American strikes have also damaged fuel depots, resulting in toxic oil rain over civilian areas, and targeted residential neighborhoods and medical facilities.
“In that case, President Trump — and all of us — would howl at outrageous attacks on innocent civilians. And we’d be right,” Coulter concluded, suggesting that identical actions warrant identical moral judgment regardless of which nation commits them.
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When it looks like he’s winning it’s Trump’s War. If he’s not? It’s your war too! Or Else!
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/iran-us-war-trump-live-updates-supreme-leader-oil-b2938810.html
Iran-US war latest: Trump says Nato faces ‘very bad future’ if allies don’t help open Strait of Hormuz
The US president said it is only appropriate that those who benefit from oil coming through the waterway help to free it
Donald Trump has warned Nato faces a “very bad future” if allies refuse to help the US open up the Strait of Hormuz. It comes after the US president’s calls for assistance in the key shipping waterway have so far gone unheeded, prompting the comments in an interview with the Financial Times.
The chief executives of Exxon, Chevron and Conocophillips have told the White House that disruption through the Strait of Hormuz will continue to wreak havoc on global energy markets, reports the Wall Street Journal.
Over 400 million barrels of oil from the International Energy Agency’s emergency reserves are set to be released in a bid to counter a significant surge in crude prices since the onset of the Iran war.
Meanwhile, Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araghchi has denied claims that Iran requested negotiations or a ceasefire and says the country will “fight as long as it takes”.
President Trump had claimed Iran requested a ceasefire but said he was not ready to make a deal with the country because “the terms aren’t good enough yet”.
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Did he go too far, push too hard, too often? Is he paying for it now?
https://www.rawstory.com/trump-eu-iran-greenland/
CNN anchor Jim Sciutto reported that European Union (EU) officials had turned their backs on President Donald Trump in Iran after he poisoned the well by trying to take over Greenland and threatening the NATO alliance.
In an angry Truth Social post on Tuesday, Trump said NATO countries “don’t want to get involved with our Military Operation against the Terrorist Regime of Iran.”
“We will protect them, but they will do nothing for us, in particular, in a time of need,” the U.S. president complained. “Because of the fact that we have had such Military Success, we no longer ‘need,’ or desire, the NATO Countries’ assistance — WE NEVER DID!”
“WE DO NOT NEED THE HELP OF ANYONE!”
Sciutto said he had spoken to EU officials about the president’s accusations.
“Many already doubted Trump’s commitment to their defense alliances, informed by his public questioning of Article 5, threats to reduce U.S. deployments, and generally dismissive rhetoric,” Sciutto wrote on X. “His attempts to take Greenland were a breaking point for many. Some will see this not so much as punishment for failing to join the Iran war, but as his honest thoughts about alliances in general.”
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How’s this for crazy?
At war with Iran the US un-sanctions Iranian oil?
https://crooksandliars.com/2026/03/bessent-us-unsanction-iranian-oil-while
With the price of oil so high right now, the United States is lifting sanctions from Russia and Iran to try to keep prices lower. Does that make any damn sense? Does any of this make any sense is the real question.
Trump Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent joined Maria Bartiromo on Thursday morning to discuss the latest market turmoil from the U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran, which has sent gas and oil prices spiking following an Iranian attack on a key Qatari gas facility.
BESSENT: We, and Maria, to be clear, this is a coordinated effort. We had a “break glass” plan across the administration and Treasury. We unsanctioned Russian oil. We knew that there were about 130 million barrels on the water, and we created supply that is beyond the Strait of Hormuz.
So we anticipated this.
We knew there could be a temporary—and I want to emphasize temporary—chokepoint there, and there was 130 million barrels of floating storage. In the coming days, we may unsanction the Iranian oil that’s on the water. It’s about 140 million barrels.
So, depending on how you count it, that’s 10 days to two weeks of supply that the Iranians had been pushing out. That would have all gone to China. In essence, we will be using the Iranian barrels against the Iranians to keep the price down for the next 10 or 14 days as we continue this campaign. So we have lots of levers.
We’ve got plenty more that we can do. The largest coordinated SPR release in history—400 million barrels—was approved last week, and some countries are going to do more. The U.S. could unilaterally do another SPR release to keep the price down. As you will have noted, WTI and its European counterpart Brent have substantially diverged over the past few trading sessions.
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Not a promising future down south. Suddenly the AI Purges roll out.
You work at CBS? No, you used to work at CBS.
https://www.rawstory.com/cbs-news-2676393932/
Bari Weiss is about to swing the ax at CBS News, according to a new report.
The polarizing top editor plans to lay off dozens of staffers imminently as she reshapes the storied broadcast network, Business Insider reported Thursday. And she has telegraphed the cuts for weeks.
At a late-January all-hands meeting, Weiss told CBS News employees that a “tsunami of technological change” was coming and warned that transformation wouldn’t be painless.
“I can’t stand up here and tell you that in a moment of incredible transformation that that’s not going to mean transformation of our workforce,” Weiss told staffers.
Weiss has been blunt about her diagnosis of the network’s problems. CBS News has long trailed broadcast rivals ABC and NBC in ratings, and she said clinging to a broadcast-first strategy would be a death sentence.
“Our strategy until now has been to cling to the audience that remains on broadcast television. I’m here to tell you that if we stick to that strategy, we’re toast,” Weiss has said.
The cuts follow eleven buyouts at “CBS Evening News” last month as the show underwent an anchor change, with former “CBS Mornings” co-host Tony Dokoupil taking over. That program has seen ratings plummet to perilously low levels.
Weiss, a former New York Times editor who founded anti-establishment news site The Free Press, was a controversial hire by Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison from the start. Her decision to delay a story critical of President Donald Trump’s deportation efforts while Paramount pursued a merger with Warner Bros. Discovery drew fierce backlash inside and outside the network.
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You work for Jeff Bezos? No, you used to work for Jeff Bezos.
https://www.rawstory.com/trump-2676404605/
The Wall Street Journal reported that Amazon’s Jeff Bezos is in talks to raise $100 billion to acquire manufacturing businesses and automate them with artificial intelligence. The report was published at a time when economic experts at the Federal Reserve had expressed concerns about the “almost zero” job growth over the previous year.
“The Amazon.com founder is meeting with some of the world’s largest asset managers to raise funding for the project,” the report reads in part. “A few months ago, he traveled to the Middle East to discuss the new fund with sovereign wealth representatives in the region. More recently, he went to Singapore to raise funding for the effort as well, according to people familiar with the matter.”
Political analysts and observers reacted to the report on social media.
Jobs? What jobs?” military veteran John Jackson posted on X.
“Very curious what he means by AI or if he even knows,” journalist Daniel Willis posted on Bluesky.
“Because I’m not sure how a language simulator would automate manufacturing? Or if he just means machine learning, what there even is to automate beyond the programming we already give the robots who have done most of the work for decades?”
“The Epstein class is literally trying to take everyone’s job and leave people to suffer and die with absolutely nothing,” podcaster Kyle Kulinski posted on X. “Billionaires are a national security threat and need to be dealt with accordingly.”
“This is the future people like @matthewstoller and @SohrabAhmari see for reshoring U.S. manufacturing,” Derek Guy, editor at Put This On, posted on X. “It’s reshoring in name only, as it does not create good-paying jobs for regular people.”
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