Departures

It's been a minute since I've written a political post so let's play catch up.  

At 100 years old, Henry Kissinger kicked the bucket last week. He served in the Nixon and Ford administrations as a national security advisor and Secretary of State. 

On the plus side, Kissinger was instrumental in achieving detente between the United States and the Soviet Union. 

On the negative side, pretty much every other god damn thing this mother fucker did. Several news outlets included the words "war criminal" in the headlines announcing his death. 

Basically, Kissinger tended to support autocratic strongmen to the detriment of democracy and human rights. 

For example, in 1973,Chile’s democratically elected socialist president Salvador Allende was forcibly removed from power by General Augusto Pinochet in a violent, murderous coup. Guess whose side Kissinger was on.

At the time, President Nixon was open to working with Allende but Kissinger put the kibosh on that idea and made it clear Pinochet was our guy.

History repeats in 1976 when a even more brutal and murderous coup upends the democratically elected government of Argentina. Kissinger turned a blind eye from the slaughter of left wing leaders and endorsed the autocratic government. 

Time and time again, in East Timor, in Pakistan, in Cambodia, when Kissinger had a choice between supporting democracy and basic human rights or supporting authoritarian dictators, he would defer to the latter. All told, millions of lives have been lost from either Kissinger's efforts or his apathy.  

If you wonder why the United States is not more beloved as a shining beacon of freedom and democracy, the seeds of that disdain were planted by Henry Kissinger. 

While Henry Kissinger spun off this mortal coil for his corner of hell, we also witnessed another departure as George Santos was expelled from the House of Representatives. 

With all the lying (Santos has lied about where he went to school, where he worked, if his mother was alive or dead, his religion...he described himself as "Jew...ish") and two federal indictments for 23 fraud-related charges and a damning report by the House Ethics Committee revealing all sorts of fuckery (such as Santos spending campaign money on Botox), you might think expelling this dipshit con man would be a no-brainer. 

And an overwhelming majority of the house did indeed vote to kick his ass out. 

But it was not unanimous. 

114 congress people voted to give this fucker another chance.  

The person most hurt by Santos being removed from Congress? Bowen Yang from Saturday Night Live who has made a big splash portraying the man who put the "con" in "congressman".

Here is a link to Bowen as Santos with a big musical tribute to himself. 

In other news, Donald Trump is still a motherfucking piece of shit and is still leading the polls for the Republican nomination. 

So we're all doomed.