Variously...

Have you noticed that when the BernieBots say "Democrats should end all of this intra-party bickering" what they really mean is "We reserve the right to lie about the Clintons incessantly, and we forbid you from ever saying one critical word about Bernie Sanders"?

Fuck that shit. Of the abolition of capital punishment, a French wit once said: "Je veux bien que messieurs les assassins commencent." I would say something similar to any Berner who suggests burying the hatchet.

Elsewhere: What can one say about the events of this day?

There was a horrifying mass shooting in a Texas church; the shooter has been identified as one Devin Patrick Kelley, killed after a police pursuit. Kelley was white, which explains why Trump refuses to classify this shooting as terrorism.

No official word yet on the motive. Kelley's Facebook page indicates that he favored the "new atheism" movement, even though he taught Sunday school as recently as 2013. I've long suspected that atheism is just as likely as any other -ism (or -anity) to push unstable individuals over the edge. The convert's zeal is usually annoying and sometimes dangerous.

As always, liberals are forbidden from discussing even the most modest gun control proposals for the next 90 days, while conservatives may say whatever they please whenever they please. Sorry, folks: Rules is rules.

Has Alex Jones blamed Antifa yet? Have you heard anything about "crisis actors"?

On a related note: We have finally learned that the Vegas shooter vaguely favored Trump, though no evidence suggests that the mass killing had a political motive. AJ, of course, will never apologize for his false claim that Antifa leaflets were found all over the hotel room.

(Does Antifa even publish leaflets? Does any modern group or movement publish leaflets?)

The "corruption" purge in Saudi Arabia strikes most people as bizarre -- and inexplicable. Jared Kushner makes a secret trip to SA and next thing you know, the Kingdom is in upheaval. Seems to me that the only way to purge the place of corruption is to get rid of the monarchy altogether.

Among those purged is Alwaleed bin Talal, friend to Rupert Murdoch and investor in Fox News.

You may argue that connecting the purge to the Kushner visit is a classic example of post hoc ergo propter hoc reasoning. True enough -- but in this case, one would have to be other than human not to suspect a linkage.

So what the hell is going on? Anyone out there have any theories? I'm not asking for a bulletproof argument, just a "placeholder" hypothesis to get the conversation started.

As for the Paradise Papers: All I can now say is that this business looks awfully complicated. My British readers were no doubt overjoyed to learn that this affair tosses mud at Her Majesty. Stateside readers will be more intrigued by the revelations concerning Wilbur Ross and Jared Kushner.

As for me: I'd like to know who provided this avalanche of paperwork to the Süddeutsche Zeitung, the same German newspaper which received the Panama Papers.

From the Wilbur Ross piece:

After becoming commerce secretary, Wilbur L. Ross Jr. retained investments in a shipping firm he once controlled that has significant business ties to a Russian oligarch subject to American sanctions and President Vladimir V. Putin’s son-in-law, according to newly disclosed documents.

The shipper, Navigator Holdings, earns millions of dollars a year transporting gas for one of its top clients, a giant Russian energy company called Sibur, whose owners include the oligarch and Mr. Putin’s family member. Despite selling off numerous other holdings to join the Trump administration and spearhead its “America first” trade policy, Mr. Ross kept an investment in Navigator, which increased its business dealings with Sibur even as the West sought to punish Russia’s energy sector over Mr. Putin’s incursions into Ukraine.

From the Jared Kushner piece:

Two Russian state institutions with close ties to Vladimir Putin funded substantial investments in Twitter and Facebook through a business associate of Jared Kushner, leaked documents reveal.

The investments were made through a Russian technology magnate, Yuri Milner, who also holds a stake in a company co-owned by Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior White House adviser.

Right now, it looks as though Ross is in much more danger than Kushner. (Also see this Mother Jones piece from December, 2016.)

Finally, here's a matter that I should have mentioned earlier: Some Ukrainians seem to think that Paul Manafort is party to murder.

Was Manafort backing all the decisions by Yanukovych, including the murders of protesters in Maidan square? Many in Ukraine suspect that was the case.

Manafort returned to Kiev even after the horrible violence on its central square to help re-form the Party of Regions into a new organization. His representatives, including his current lawyer, insist he is innocent of charges in the U.S. indictment and that his role in Ukraine was to encourage pro-European Union democratic government. But investigators in Kiev aren't buying that for a minute.

In March this year The Daily Beast reported that Yevgenia Zakrevskaya, an attorney in the Ukrainian capital, and one of the strongest liberal voices in the country, focused attention on Manafort after text messages between his daughters were hacked and released in February. One of them, from Andrea Manafort to her sister, read “Don’t fool yourself. The money we have is blood money.”

“All Mr. Yanukovych’s allies, supporters of the former regime, should be questioned on this case as potentially responsible for the mass killings during the Maidan protests; including, if the facts get proved, Mr. Manafort,” Ukrainian legal expert Mikhail Zhernakov told The Daily Beast.

The article goes on to aver that the Russians don't like Manafort either. In fact, they consider Manafort to be CIA -- an interesting idea, although I've yet to see any real evidence for it. Roger Stone and Paul Manafort were business partners, and I've long suspected (for reasons too complex to summarize here) that Stone may have links to Spookworld.