This and that

Sorry for the absence, been busier than I have been motivated.

Dan Drezner is right: it's no use writing about Donald Trump. What is there to add to the obvious?

The trouble with writing about Trump is that he has no complexity. There is no subtext to what Trump says or does — it’s all on the surface. He’s so basic that it’s impossible to find any deeper meaning or counterintuitive take.

As usual, you have to read European media to learn that the CIA took naked photographs of people before sending them off to be tortured by foreign co-conspirators. This was ostensibly to prove that the CIA hadn't beaten them up too badly before having somebody else do it (some of them were bruised, however) but sexual humiliation is also a war crime. But you know, we're looking forward, not back.

All these "Christian" legislators voting for bills to permit discrimination is getting old. Fortunately, Republican governor Nathan Deal is more beholden to business interests than he is to religious fanatics so he is going to veto the Georgia version. Note that these Christians who hate gay people are no doubt very supportive of the CIA sadistic psychopaths who got off on shoving various items into prisoners' rectums (as the Spencer Ackerman piece in the previous link reminds us). Today is a good day to say that I have had far more than enough of Christians.