On Monday Oliver Willis of Daily Kos offered possible reasons why the nasty guy authorized bombs to be dropped on three Iranian nuclear sites over the weekend. Perhaps it’s because Republican leaders pushed it, as they have doing for many conflicts over the years.
Or perhaps Fox News kept pushing for the attacks. The network seems to be the nasty guy’s most influential advisor. Willis listed the praise the network gave Israel’s military operations. Then he listed several network hosts who pushed US involvement.
We should also remember the number of Fox News personalities who are in his cabinet and administration – Pete Hegseth, Sean Duffey, Pam Bondi and 20 others.
In Tuesday’s pundit roundup for Kos Chitown Kev quoted Bernd Ulrich of the German weekly Die Zeit (translated by Irene Caselli):
It is not the fault of some mythical traits — real or imagined — of the “Orient.” No, there is another reason that things in the Middle East tend to turn out differently than expected, that actions produce unintended and often overwhelmingly negative consequences.
It’s not a mirage, nor the shimmering heat, nor the buzzing bazaar that’s to blame — it’s the West itself, repeatedly falling into the same traps. It has interests in the region, but no real interest in the region.
The image at the top of Kev’s post shows a satellite image of line of vehicles outside a building with the caption, “Satellite imagery showing that Iran may have moved significant amounts of enriched uranium prior to Saturday's American strike on Fordo.”
In today’s roundup, Greg Dworkin quoted two sets of tweets by Phillips O’Brien:
So the US air campaign against Iran seems to have gone like this.
1) Trump does not want to get involved
2) he is told that Israel is having lots of success
3) he becomes desperate to join so he can be seen to “kick ass”
4) He bombs Iran one night
5) The results of the bombing
[6 is not mentioned]
Now we have moment 7
7) Trump slaps down Israel because the campaign was really about his personal glory.
Ps. Trump does not care a win for Iran or Israel, it’s all what it means for him
And...
There is a chance that Trump's bombing of Iran might turn out to be the most ludicrous use of military force in US history. Not the worst or the most destructive--just the most absurd. A failed attempt by a weak man desperate for glory.
Maybe the only good thing to come out of this was that the American people, by a large majority, saw these strikes for the self glorifying gestures that they were, and disapprove. What’s the opposite of rallying around the flag?
Yesterday was the primary election for mayor in New York City. Much to the surprise of many Andrew Cuomo lost to Zohran Mamdani, who has described himself as a Democratic Socialist. He ran on making NYC affordable. Dworkin quoted Mike Madrid on Threadreader:
One of the interesting things to look for is how working class Black and Brown residents voted. If these voters break left after moving towards Trump there’s a lot of water thrown on the ‘racial realignment’ narrative.
These voters are becoming more populist NOT more conservative.
Voters are absolutely sick and tired of establishment politics. It’s not ideological and that’s what the parties, pollsters and politicians are missing.
A tweet by David Dayen:
It will be tempting to analogize from one idiosyncratic municipal election that the old guard of the Democratic establishment has been wholly discredited and should be dismantled to make way for new leadership. Tempting, and also correct.
In the comments is a cartoon posted by paulpro and created by M. Wuerker to mark the three year anniversary of when Roe v. Wade was overturned. It shows a man in a MAGA hat with a sign saying, “No Masks” and a t-shirt saying, “My body my choice.” Looking at him is a woman with a sign saying, “Pro choice” and also with a t-shirt saying, “My body my choice.”
Alexandra Bowman posted a cartoon with characters from Star Wars, Sound of Music, and Indiana Jones. They ask, “Did all those anti-fascist movies teach you nothing?”
Alex Samuels of Kos, in a weekly column looking at polls, wrote:
A new Reuters/Ipsos poll reveals significant frustration among Democratic voters who believe their party is too focused on social issues—like transgender rights—and not nearly focused enough on the economy. That disconnect between what voters want and what they think party leaders care about could spell trouble, especially with a critical midterm election map approaching.
Sixty-two percent of self-identified Democrats indicated the party’s leadership should be replaced. Just 24% disagreed.
Samuels lists a few issues – taxing the rich, focusing on everyday needs, reducing corporate influence in politics – get high support from Democrats with noticeably fewer saying they think the party leadership feels the same way. On the flip side, only 17% of Democrats feel transgender women competing in women’s sports is a priority while 28% feel the leadership think of it as a priority.
I’m with the voters on this one. As much as I believe transgender women need to be allowed to play in women’s sports I agree it is a low priority. The other issues listed above, plus all the things needed to be done to secure our democracy are a much higher priority.
Overall, voter mood says Democrats should stop playing nice with the nasty guy and Republicans.
Samuels discussed views on how concerned people are of far-right and far-left extremism. 55% are very or somewhat concerned about the far-right and 49% are very or somewhat concerned about the far-left. Not a great deal of difference.
Then Samuels noted since 9/11 far-right extremists have killed at least 130 people in the US. Samuels doesn’t list a body count from far-left extremists – perhaps it is zero? – though notes far-left violence does exist.
Lisa Needham of Kos reported that the nasty guys judicial picks are now more terrible – nominees are now asked whether Biden won the 2000 election. They quickly learn the correct answer, used by other types of nominees, is: “Joe Biden was certified as the winner of the 2020 presidential election and served four years as president.”
There’s no question that Trump’s first-term nominees were bad in some spectacular ways, eager to help the wannabe autocrat eradicate rights and regulations. But when it came to the wide variety of election conspiracy cases Trump filed in his failed bid to overturn the election, even his own appointees did not sign on, ruling against him. Trump isn’t going to make that mistake again. He doesn’t just need conservative ideologues in the federal courts: He needs judges who won’t stop him no matter what he does, and agreeing to the farce that Biden didn’t win in 2020 is a pretty big tell that these nominees see their primary job as ensuring Trump gets his way, no matter what the law says.
...
None of these nominees will act as a check or balance on Trump. It’s pretty obvious they would not have gotten the nod if they believed the judiciary had any authority over the president. So, instead of normal judicial candidates, we’re going to get a motley mix of true believers crawling over one another to prove that they are the most committed to the Big Lie and the most eager to let Trump do whatever he wants.
That is going to be terrific for Trump, but terrible for democracy.
Kiley Price of Inside Climate News, in an article posted on Kos wrote that climate change is making protests against climate change harder. The example is the recent No Kings demonstrations where in El Paso, Texas temperatures passed 100F (38C). Protests in such high heat carries public health risks. It can also galvanize climate protesters. Many protests are also in urban areas, which tend to have higher heat and poor air quality.
So how can people stay safe during an outdoor protest? Many tips are fairly simple, such as using sunscreen, wearing sunglasses or a hat and drinking copious amounts of water.
As Wired points out in their guide to safe protesting, these supplies can also be used to guard yourself from other threats; sunglasses can shield your face from surveillance while water can be used to clean wounds and flush your eyes if you are pepper-sprayed or hit with chemical gas.
Public health experts say it is also crucial to recognize the signs of heat stress, which include heavy sweating, dizziness, cramping and headaches.
A health professional at the Denver protest put it this way:
“Best case? We just hand out water, treat a few heat injuries and eat pizza at the med tent,” Jake Paul, the group’s medical coordinator, told CBS prior to the demonstrations. “If we’re bored, that means everyone’s safe.”
Two weeks ago Nineteenletterslong of the Kos community reported:
Southern Baptists have endorsed a ban to end same-sex marriage in America marking the first time the group has officially opposed the ruling in Obergefell v Hodges, the case which legalized it in 2015. The vote on the motion came during the annual Southern Baptist Convention in Dallas, Texas, attended by over 10,000 church representatives this past Tuesday.
The Southern Baptists' resolution does not use the word "ban" directly. Instead, it calls for the "overturning of laws and court rulings, including Obergefell v. Hodges, that defy God's design for marriage and family" (something something something, separation of church and state though...).
The motion additionally calls "for laws that affirm marriage between one man and one woman".
The denomination’s values are shifting to align with the far-right.
A reversal would not automatically lead to a nationwide ban of same-sex marriage (as was the case with abortion rights). Same-sex marriage had already been legalized in 36 stated when the Supremes ruled in 2015 and nearly 70% of Americans support it.
Alas, Michigan is not one of those 36. It passed a state constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage in 2004, when several other states did (part of a bid to bring Bush II voters to the polls). The federal decision overrules it for now, but if that is overturned Michiganders would lose rights. There is the start of movement to overturn that amendment.
There is still a lot of news about the nasty guy ordering “bunker buster” bombs to be dropped on nuclear facilities (especially since I’m a couple days behind in reading the news). In what I’ve read and heard so far there isn’t much I want to emphasize, beyond the strangeness of dropping bombs, then seeming to declare a cease-fire before the enemy can retaliate. I’ll admit I probably haven’t heard the full story.
If you’re still curious there is an Associated Press article posted on Daily Kosabout the bombing and another AP article about the spin the nasty guy’s goons are trying to give the story.
Of more interest to me is an article by Mark Jacobs on Stop the Presses pleading with media to not turn the war into entertainment. He lists eight things journalists should keep in mind.
1. Don’t sanitize the impact on humans. Saying people don’t want to see dead and wounded with their cornflakes is a terrible way to judge what to show.
2. Put events in a complete, honest historical context. The question “Why does Iran hate us” and most of the answers are shallow. The full answer includes how the CIA helped a coup in Iran install the Shah, which was seven decades ago.
3. Hold politicians accountable. Too many headlines imply politicians have no agency, that things just happen.
4. The peace movement is patriotic too. Dissent is lot disloyalty.
5. Lying politicians are more dishonest in war. Be extremely skeptical of the wins they claim.
6. Don’t act like you’re “in the know” when you’re not.
7. Beware of optimism, such as the vice nasty claiming the war won’t be a long one.
8. War allows governments more easily take away liberties. Authoritarian governments use war as a reason to control citizens. They frighten citizens into giving up rights. From 1984 by George Orwell, “The war is not meant to be won, it is meant to be continuous.”
In his conclusion he adds one more: Don’t let the war engross you so much you miss the domestic misconduct.
I first heard of Sarah Kendzior through her work on Gaslit Nation. She is no longer a part of that and now had her own newsletter on Substack. I hadn’t checked it in quite a while. What I found was a post with a long list of perceptive questions from readers and Kendzior’s answers. She does this monthly and this one was posted June 13. I picked several questions and answers to include.
Be wary of the “feud” between Musk and the nasty guy.
Dictators seek to be the sole star of a spectacle state. Doing so drains public imagination, making it difficult for citizens to conceive of a politics beyond the demagogue.
And we had two demagogues trying to be the sole star. Beyond that the feud doesn’t matter.
Kendzior doesn’t trust Gavin Newsom, governor of California. At times he seems to want California to secede from the rest of the country (part of the idea that rich people want to break it up) and being the president of California instead of its governor might sound pretty cool.
One reason for gutting Medicaid (and Medicare) is “a sick and scared populace is easier to control.” But note that for a long time health care has been tied to jobs to prevent our independence.
A surprise of the nasty guy’s second term:
That pundits and politicians treat Trump’s first term as if it never happened and as if there’s not a template to these crises. They’ve done that before (they ignored his entire organized crime career) but, like, we were there! He was the president and we saw the whole four years! This bizarre selective amnesia is a big part of why people do not trust the media or the Democratic party.
Kendzior is wary of politicians, even Democrats, “because of the lack of accountability for sedition.” The Department of Justice under Biden was obligated to prosecute that and didn’t. Every state crime should be treated seriously, even if the perpetrators are old news. Not doing so make containing new operatives who use the same illegal and destructive tactics. This prosecution could bring the country together, since there were perpetrators in both parties.
Why did the DoJ refuse to prosecute? Because Merrick Garland was nominated by Biden to make sure it refused.
In the past an authoritarian would let protestors go for a few months to exhaust them and the public’s attention before calling in the national guard. By acting fast the nasty guy energized the opposition.
But in the digital and AI world speed is more important. Algorithms control attention and curtail choice, so people don’t know what is happening. The nasty guy needs a military willing to fire on Americans. The more time soldiers have to see through his propaganda the less likely they are to fire. He needs his soldiers frenzied and frightened. The nasty guy may get around a possibly reluctant military by also using “deputized” civilians.
Also, the nasty guy is more of a mob boss than a dictator. He doesn’t care if the US collapses.
Pat attention to who is labeled a “resistance fighter” and who is called a “terrorist.” Keep in mind that in the past Native Americans and Blacks had their righteous rebellions portrayed as barbaric violence. “Palestinian terrorism” was accepted description until smart phones showed Israeli violence. Watch out for sadism hiding behind a uniform.
In response to a question about tipping points in a country facing the loss of democracy, Kendzior wrote:
Protests are good ways of showing dissent and noncompliance with immoral orders, but they should be strategic when dealing with a regime that seeks the collapse of the state.
The tipping point is different for each country. I actually think the US reached our tipping point in January/February 2021, and then Biden DOJ tipped it back through inaction. The inaction confused much of the public, leading them to conclude that Trump must be innocent, or else he’d quickly be punished. The refusal of the Democrats to examine why that happened is keeping the whole country from moving forward and reaching a new tipping point. People need to have confidence that if they bravely confront the Trump administration, they will have the backing of powerful officials. They have no confidence now, due to the abandonment of accountability by Biden administration, and that is a shameful thing.
The confidence has begun to grow again.
Republicans abandoned the idea of trying to win people to their ideas and they would not win in a fair fight. So they cheat. They also see that the instigators of the Capitol attack were never punished and the participants have been pardoned. They could do it again without consequence.
Cutting the staff of National Parks – the beloved federal workers – reminds people the federal government can do great things, not just corruption. That might be a mistake in all the slashing of federal jobs.
After getting to the end of Kendzior’s Q&A session I followed a link to another one of her posts, this one from last November, about a week after the election.
I warned you for nine years, because I wanted you to be prepared. Biden was a Placeholder President designed to fill the four years between two terms of Trump while plutocrats shifted American political culture sharply to the right. Media gutted, Twitter decimated, activism destroyed, books censored, minorities demonized, public health annihilated, victims blamed, empathy scorned.
That is the main thing they are after now: your empathy. They want you to hate each other so you don’t hate them first.
They want us to hate each other so we agree to their plan to tear the country apart for the rich to plunder. There is a larger plan and we are merely a pawn. Though we can’t vote out the mafia our “power lies in refusing to abandon each other or abandon the truth.”
As for that election:
The most important thing about the election is not that Trump was proclaimed the winner, but that he was allowed to run.
The second most important thing is who paid for it.
To see that look at the nasty guy’s donors and to who he pardoned. Look at who procured the pardons and the name Jared Kushner, the pandemic prince, comes up a lot. Kushner is relevant to Israel’s wars, yet he has vanished from punditry. Whether the US is in a mafia state centers on Kushner.
Over the years I collected browser tabs, intending to use a particular tweet or cartoon when the subject came up elsewhere. That tended to not happen. So here are some old and unrelated tweets as I go through old tabs.
Back in November 2022 (I did say “years”) Leah McElrath (who has now switched to Bluesky) wrote:
One problem with many well-intentioned efforts over the years to provide housing to the unhoused has been that the programs have difficulty getting funded without including a lot of moralistic conditions for the housing.
Just. Give. People. Housing.
THEN offer other services.
SCIENCE:
If you don't make mistakes, you're doing it wrong.
If you don't correct those mistakes, you're doing it really wrong.
If you can't accept that you're mistaken, you're not doing it at all.
In August of 2024 Jeff Danziger posted a cartoon on Kos. It shows a college finance officer telling a student “Here... Sign this. Won’t take a moment.” The student looks down at a bin that is encasing her feet in concrete coming from a mixer labeled “College debt.”
I finished the book Blackouts by Justin Torres. The first is a mental blackout experienced by the narrator (never named), which prompts him to visit Juan. The two originally met when the narrator was about to turn 18 and Juan was much older and they are briefly together in the “nuthouse,” an asylum. The reasons they were there are never stated. I wondered if they were there because they were homosexual, but this was the 1990s. After that blackout and a decade after their first meeting, the narrator goes to visit Juan, now in a group residence of some sort, well past its prime. Juan is near death. He wants he narrator to receive his books and papers and do something useful with them.
The second blackout concerns a two volume set of books where on most pages the text is blacked out, leaving scattered words that create a description or small story quite different than the original text, which is never shown. The books are Sex Variants: A Study of Homosexual Patterns from 1941. Who did the blacking out and why is a mystery.
Once together the narrator describes his time as a hooker. Juan tells the story of his life and of the books. The core of the research in the books was done by Jan Gay, longtime partner to Zhenya Gay (these are not the birth names of either women). Jan wants to get the research published but no publisher will touch it without the backing of a (male) doctor. And very few doctors will touch it.
All that was interesting and enjoyable to read. It was also curious. At the back of the book are endnotes that give copyright info on the books whose blacked out pages appear through this book. It looks like the two volumes are real. Jan and Zhenya are real historical figures. Zhenya also illustrated children’s books and they’re given copyright info and some of those illustrations are in this book, showing they are real. There is a fun scene where Juan gives a very gay reading of one of the stories Zhenya illustrated. In other endnotes the narrator discusses Juan as a real person. Yet, this book is described as a novel.
Was Juan real? That question is so obvious the author talks about it in what he calls “A sort of Postface.” He refuses to answer the question and says again the book is fiction.
My Sunday movie was Ideal Home. I see it is on a variety of streaming services. I saw it on Kanopy. Erasmus is the star of a food show, his longtime male companion Paul is a producer. They live in a big house in Santa Fe (lots of great panorama shots). They’re very good at partying and bickering. Then Bill shows up claiming to be the grandson or Erasmus. Bill has come to stay while is father serves a jail sentence.
Neither Paul nor Erasmus wants to interrupt their partying lifestyle to take care of a kid. And Bill annoys his grandfather because he only wants to eat Taco Bell. Of course, all that changes. Eventually.
IMDb notes the gay couple at the center of the story are played by straight actors (Steve Coogan and Paul Rudd) and many of the straight characters were played by queer actors.
It was very well done and I enjoyed it.
In today’s pundit roundup for Daily Kos Greg Dworkin quoted part of a thread by Juliette Kayyam posted on X in response to the nasty guy ordering the dropping of a “bunker buster” bomb on underground nuclear facilities in Iran.
I don't know if this was successful or just attacks on surface level access. But there are consequences and so here are issues to discuss beyond tactics @CNN
+ Strait of Hormuz: reporting suggests about 50 oil tankers are scrambling to get out, so there may be fears that it can not be navigated soon and that will impact global economy;
+ American and American interests as a target abroad, including troops, European targets, or US targets/people abroad;
+ homeland security threat with our entire DHS apparatus now focused on ICE and the evisceration of counterterrorism and countercyber capacities there;
+ would be nice to have confidence in our intelligence but the last few days suggest our own – let alone our allies – is being ignored.
Aaron Rupar and Thor Benson of Public Notice:
“Performative public lying is a hallmark of far right authoritarian parties.”
“Neither our media nor our political system is designed to deal with a far right authoritarian party.”
If you’re familiar with these phrases, you’re probably aware of Mark Copelovitch, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who has popularized them on social media.
Both expressions capture something profound about American politics in the age of MAGA. Not a single day goes by without performative lying from Republicans — consider the truth-resistant sales pitch they’re currently making for Trump’s big bill — or without fresh demonstrations from the press and/or the political opposition that they’re unequipped to deal with a major party that has abandoned democracy for the sake of smash-and-grab mobsterism.
A bit of a thread on X by Jeff Timmer in response to the nasty guy saying the Iran nuclear sites were obliterated.
Trump’s bombing of Iran’s nuclear sites needs to be evaluated based on what we know about Trump: he never has a strategy, he is impervious to reading, learning, or understanding, and he lies. Lies all the time. About everything. Big or small.
Trump has forfeited the benefit of the doubt. We should be deeply skeptical of yesterday's mission and any information or further action to come. Trump is a liar and an idiot. Incompetent and inexperienced people surround him.
In the comments Art Garfunky posted a full-page ad The Onion put in the New York Times. The ad looks like the front page of an edition of The Onion. The main headline:
Congress, Now More Than Ever, Our Nation Needs Your Cowardice
And the top headline for a side article:
Entitled Child Expects to Eat Lunch Every Day, Girl Literally Wants Food to be Handed to Her on a Plate
The Onion also sent that latest edition to every member of Congress.
Dworkin remided us that just below its banner The Onion has a motto in Latin, “Tu Stultus Es” and of course I went to Google Translate, which gave me, “You are stupid.”
Further down samanthab posted a tweet by Catherine Rampell with links to an article in the Wall Street Journal:
As I have argued for months: The person calling the shots in this admin was never Musk or Bannon or Susie Wiles. It's always been Shadow President Stephen Miller. Anything Trump says on e.g. immigration is cheap talk; Miller is the decider.
In Saturday’s roundup Dworkin quoted a tweet by Ruth Ben-Ghiat discussing the recent arrest of Democratic politicians. She included a headline (source not identified) that says:
For Democrats, handcuffs are the latest symbol of resistance to Trump.
Ben-Ghiat responds:
Only in America would the press treat the opposition party getting arrested as a "symbol," rather than as a concrete sign of descending authoritarianism.
Dworkin quoted a column by Jonathan Last in The Bulwark that asked an intriguing question that Dworkin’s quote wasn’t large enough to answer. So I looked up the full article.
Last quoted an email from a friend:
Are you absolutely sure that as Christians this isn’t the time to hide Anne Frank? Shouldn’t I be willing to help migrants avoid deportation/detention at whatever legal perils await me? If not now then when ... when it gets twice as bad or three times as bad or ten times as bad?
Last at first says we’re not close to that, but then he thought through the logistics: If an immigrant, perhaps with spouse, is snatched, what happens to the children, the assets, the home? Alas, that’s all I can see without subscribing.
I’m sure it all led to Last concluding hiding immigrants in the attic really is an important thing to do.
Dworkin also included a tweet by Micah Erfan, but I couldn’t see the whole chart within the roundup. So I looked at it directly. Erfan wrote, “Y’all I’m beginning to think that Trump tearing up Obama’s nuclear deal actually had consequences.” Below that is a chart from the Financial Times and shows the number of installed uranium enrichment centrifuges across all sites in Iran. Just before 2001 the number starts to rise to about 1,000 and stays there for a while. When Obama signed the nuclear deal in January 2016 the number dropped to zero. It stayed there until about 2019, a year after the nasty guy withdrew the US from the deal. Then the number of centrifuges rose rapidly until May this year when it was just under 15,000.
johnbeske of the Kos community posted an image of a sign he created that he would like to see posted on every building where immigrants might be. The first half of the sign is:
Notice
Anyone purporting to be an agent of ICE or federal agency who enters these premises with the intent of arresting or detaining any person or persons within:
Must wear clothing that accurately displays the agency they represent.
Must not wear a mask or anything else concealing their identity.
Must possess an official warrant that has been signed by a federal judge and agree to show it to anyone who asks to see it.
Mitch Perry, in an article for the Florida Phoenix posted on Kos reported that Central Florida Democratic U.S. Rep. Maxwell Frost introduced a bill that would require ICE facilities to publicly list all who were detained along with where, when, why, plus age, nationality, legal status, use of force on arrest, when they were transferred to another facility or deported.
This is good to see. Alas, in this Congress it isn’t going anywhere.
Kos of Kos discussed men and their votes for the nasty guy and what we can do about it. He first reviews voting stats – including the nasty guy won married men by 60-38 prercent.
On to examining the global problem. For example:
In Poland, rural men used to count on marrying women who’d handle domestic duties. But those women are moving to cities like Warsaw to become lawyers and professionals. That “loss of status” has fueled support for right-wing nationalist parties, making feminism the enemy and “traditional values” the solution.
From an article in The Economist:
In democracies, many politicians on the right are deftly stoking young male grievances, while many on the left barely acknowledge that young men have real problems.
Those real problems include being taught they are to be a provider. That becomes a core of their identity. Yet unstable economies threaten their ability to do that role – half of men believe home ownership is out of reach.
There is also a “Man Box” in which masculinity is defined around “dominance, and self-reliance.” Men have a mental health crisis.
We need an intervention to redefine masculinity beyond economic provision and the Man Box. Social media and its influencers promoting masculinity makes younger men feel inadequte, unvalued, and unwanted. They look for control – as in authoritarianism – or declare nothing matters.
What can we do? These men are looking for purpose and connection. They want to be caregivers (they support policies that care for children). So lets promote a version of manhood based on caring and men’s mental health.
These men are not fringe. Their numbers are growing. And their despair is being weaponized. Let’s understand how to fight back.
I had written that the nasty guy had tweeted that illegal workers at farms and hotels should not be picked up because they are necessary for these businesses. I noted that the White House said the policy of raiding those places had not changed.
Walter Einenkel of Daily Kos reported that Homeland Security tried to clarify by sending Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin to Newsmax. Yes, raids on worksites are sill a cornerstone of ICE operations. There was no exemption for farms and hotels. McLaughlin lied when she said ICE was only going after “the worst of the worst.”
I recently wrote that Sen. Alex Padilla was forced to the ground and handcuffed when asking HS Secretary Noem a question. Now there is a second political arrest.
Lisa Needham of Kos said ICE arrested Brad Lander, a Democratic candidate for NYC mayor. The reason appears to be because he was accompanying someone they wanted to nab and he tried to prevent it. One problem: ICE isn’t allowed to arrest citizens.
McLaughlin announced the charges as impeding a federal officer. That nicely confuses FBI agents who can arrest citizens with ICE agents, who can’t. They way she said it made it sound like the real victims were ICE agents, not the immigrants.
Needham talked about the old practice of company towns. When a company set up operations in a remote area workers had to live in company housing and shop in company stores. They were paid in company scrip, which couldn’t be spent elsewhere. Pay and prices were such that the workers fell deeper into debt, and thus were stuck.
Bringing that up to date, the possibility of creating new crypto currencies allows Walmart and Amazon to consider issuing their own. At least they are thinking about stablecoins, meaning their value is pegged to the dollar. But a person paid in Walmart coin would be restricted to spending it at Walmart, even if prices were better elsewhere.
There is a reason, outside of tying people to their store, for issuing their own currency – they can sidestep the significant costs of payment processing and banking fees. But it leaves consumers juggling currencies.
A different president might protect consumers. But the nasty guy made $57 billion from crypto last year and the Securities and Exchange commission dropped a crypto case after the company cozied up to a nasty guy company.
Needham reported that companies that cozy up to the nasty guy are getting a good payback. Sure, that cozying can cost millions, but the payback is much higher.
Needham gave a couple examples. I’ll mention one. GEO is a company with government contracts to run ICE detention centers. The EPA had a complaint against GEO last year for failing to provide protective gear from chemicals that can cause skin burns and eye damage. The NLRB filed a complaint for using detainees as workers and not paying them proper wages. Large fines were pending.
Then the company gave the maximum to the nasty guy’s campaign, $1 million to his PAC, and smaller amounts to other Republicans.
The NLRB no longer has a quorum and can’t hear cases. And the EPA withdrew its complaint.
That’s called corruption.
Alex Samuels of Kos wrote about the other side of the issue: “Sen. Bernie Sanders is urging Democratic leaders to stop cozying up to their own wealthy donors.” Sanders and seven other Democratic senators wrote a letter to the leaders asking them to ban super PACs and “dark money” in Democratic primaries. If Democrats are to fight the influence of rich people, something Sanders has been talking a lot about lately, they need to start with themselves.
The letter noted that these super PACS spend in Democratic primaries, then spend to defeat Democrats in the general election.
Overturning Citizens United, the Supreme Court ruling that opened unlimited outside spending, is a long-term project. But citizens already notice (thanks to Musk) that rich people have too much influence. That give Democrats an opening.
In 2022 the 988 suicide crisis hotline began working. One could contact that number in a variety of ways. A person is first asked a bit about who they are. One of the options is LGBTQ. If that is chosen they are passed on to the Trevor Project, counselors trained to handle queer people. This separate service is needed because of the high suicide rate of queer youth.
Oliver Willis of Kos reported that initial menu option disappears on July 17. The reason is the nasty guy is being nasty and said so. Yeah, this is part of his and Republican attacks on LGBTQ people and trans people in particular. Suicide rates will go up.
Young LGBTQ+ people are under attack by their state and federal governments. And now, if they are driven into darkness, Trump has cut off a vital and lifesaving resource that the community increasingly depends on.
Thankfully, the Trevor Project remains. All that is being lost is the vital connection to the 988 hotline, which is much easier to remember than the name and full number of the Trevor Project. That’s still losing a lot.
If you are in crisis, contact 988. If you are queer you can still contact 988 for now or find the Trevor Project number.
The nasty guy created a Religious Liberty Commission. Alix Breeden of Kos reported they met for the first time this week. Thankfully, it seems all they did was gripe about “anti-Christian bias,” how Christians are “under attack,” that religious liberty is threatened, and that the society has no moral code.
Yes, we as a nation do have a moral code. It’s quite a good one, though far from perfect. It just isn’t completely Christian.
Though this is a “Religious” commission one can easily guess how much representation there was from Muslim, Jewish, or even liberal Christian groups.
The group’s next meeting is scheduled for September. We can hope they’ll gripe some more and not actually do anything.
In last Friday’s pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin had a couple good quotes. This was before the No Kings protest and the dreary parade for the nasty guy. Just before then the nasty guy went to the re-re-named Fort Bragg and used cheering soldiers as a backdrop for a rally style speech. Will Bunch of the Philadelphia Inquirer added a bit of background.
The insurrectionist Bragg surely would have been heartened when Trump used his powerful platform to rally an entire army against democratically elected public officials like California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass — and when the uniformed troops of a once-proudly-apolitical U.S. Army answered with thunderous applause.
Like everything else about Trump’s strongman regime, the cheers had been manufactured. Military.com later reported that the chiseled forces of the storied 82nd Airborne Division behind Trump’s podium had been picked in part for their right-wing political views and also — according to one email obtained by the news site — to satisfy our allegedly 224-pound (lol) president with “no fat soldiers.” (Yes, Donald Trump’s Tinder ad for his dream-date U.S. soldier essentially read, “No fatties.”)
Tom Nichols of The Atlantic noted the generals did not speak up and added:
He mocked former President Joe Biden and attacked various other political rivals. He elicited cheers from the crowd by announcing that he would rename U.S. bases (or re-rename them) after Confederate traitors. He repeated his hallucinatory narrative about the invasion of America by foreign criminals and lunatics. He referred to 2024 as the “election of a president who loves you,” to a scatter of cheers and applause. And then he attacked the governor of California and the mayor of Los Angeles, again presiding over jeers at elected officials of the United States.
He led soldiers, in other words, in a display of unseemly behavior that ran contrary to everything the founder of the U.S. Army, George Washington, strove to imbue in the American armed forces.
In the comments exlrrp posted a meme playing on one of Marjorie Taylor Greene’s claims that Democrats could control the weather. This meme shows a woman with a bright smile ready to push the button on the Democrat Party Weather Machine on the day of the parade. It did rain that day in Washington, though a White House spokesperson claimed that it hadn’t.
In today’s pundit roundup Dworkin had more good quotes. From Ron Fournier of Convulsions:
During a contentious Senate Armed Service Committee meeting Wednesday, [Elissa Slotkin,] freshman Democrat, grilled [Defense Secretary Pete] Hegseth over whether he had authorized members of the military to "detain and arrest protesters" in Los Angeles. He ducked and deflected. She erupted.
"What is the order?" Slotkin demanded. "Be a man, list it out. Did you authorize them to detain or arrest? That is a fundamental of democracy. I'm not trying to be a snot here. I'm just trying to get the actual — did you authorize them to do that?"
Be a man, she said. But Hegseth didn’t have it in him.
Dworkin wrote about the nasty guy saying he’ll decide in two weeks if the US should help Israel against Iran:
Reports are that Pete Hegseth and [director of intelligence] Tulsi Gabbard are ignored when it comes to input on what Trump is supposed to do. No surprise; they, like DHS Sec Noem are only there to cosplay. And as for Bibi Netanyahu, Trump knows any advice he gets is to benefit Netanyahu, not Trump.
When it comes to Iran, Trump is stuck with making a decision. The buck stops with him. And he’s afraid to decide.
My best guess is that Trump will do the right thing (not bomb Iran) for the wrong reason (he’s a coward and is afraid of his base turning on him). But who knows? Trump’s a damaged human being and is hard to predict when it comes to doing something difficult.
Thomas Edsall of the New York Times worked with Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the Berkeley law school, to list five grounds on which to impeach the nasty guy. Dworkin quoted two.
Trump has repeatedly ignored due process of law, such as in sending people to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador and to the South Sudan without a semblance of due process. The cutoff of funds to universities and to grant recipients has been done without any due process. This is a very serious abuse of power.
President Trump has used his power for retribution. His actions against law firms, which have been done without due process, have been expressly stated to be for personal retribution because they employed lawyers who investigated or prosecuted him. This is a very serious abuse of power.
Dworkin reminds us we need “a Democratic House to impeach him (and a heavily Democratic Senate to convict).”
Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos quoted late night commentary. A sample:
“I am genuinely baffled. Why is it when a foreigner—or someone that shouldn’t be here—kills one of us, we’re going to put 150-billion dollars into border security, we’re going to militarize our cities, we’re going to spend trillions of dollars to bomb and destabilize foreign countries overseas, we're going to ban people from random countries from ever f---ing visiting here, [and] we’re going to take our shoes off at the airport forever? But when we do it to ourselves? Nothing. It makes no sense—it's jarring cognitive dissonance.”
—Jon Stewart, on the MAGA cult’s obsession with beefing up law enforcement and the military in response to barely-existent shootings by immigrants, while doing nothing to reduce the epidemic of shootings—like the assassination of Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark—by home-grown Americans.
A tweet from the Daily Show has the caption, “Iran: Weeks away from having nuclear weapons since 1995.”
And something I heard in the news: As part of the Israel-Iran war Iran hit an Israeli hospital. Israel’s defense chief declared that to be a war crime. I thought that statement took chutzpah to cover the hypocrisy, considering what Israel has been doing in Gaza. Bill quoted an NBC News report:
“Nearly all hospitals in Gaza are now damaged or destroyed, and half of them are no longer operational,” Jens Laerke, spokesperson for the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, or OCHA, told NBC News. During the war, Gaza’s hospitals have eked back services, only to be repeatedly struck or besieged again.
FIFA, the international soccer (what the rest of the world calls football) federation, has started a tournament of 32 teams to be played in a dozen US locations over the next month. This is a team World Cup, separate from the country World Cup to be played in the US, Canada, and Mexico next year.
Lisa Needham of Daily Koswrote Thursday a week ago:
On Tuesday, Customs and Border Patrol posted on social media that CPB agents would be acting as security for Saturday’s opening match in Miami at the Hard Rock Stadium.
“Let the games begin! The first FIFA Club World Cup games start on June 14th in Miami,” the post read. “CBP will be suited and booted and ready to provide security for the first round of games.”
What a nice, breezy way to make sure immigrants know that not only are they not welcome, but they will also be actively targeted! Of course, because everything this administration does is a shambolic mess, CBP later deleted the post. At the same time, Immigration and Customs Enforcement official told an NBC Miami affiliate that ICE would be there and that non-Americans need to bring proof of their legal status.
So maybe agents will be there, or maybe they won’t. Either way, the Trump administration has already sown the fear it intended.
Football is a game loved by lots of people around the world, including the countries in Central and South America. So a stadium with 64,000 in a city (Miami) that is 70% Latino sounds like an easy way for ICE to make its daily quota of detaining 3,000 people.
ICE has a problem in that there aren’t enough undocumented murderers and rapists to fill that quota, though that’s who the nasty guy said was his target. And if they’re going after soft targets like people showing up at scheduled immigration hearings, why not a stadium full of football fans?
As for the big tournament next year the vice nasty has already issued a threat: Please come. Then go home – or have a chat with Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.
And what about the Olympics in 2028, which the US is hosting?
A week ago Friday Needham talked of other ways the nasty guy is making life hard for immigrants. He ended a program that allowed a half million immigrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela to legally remain in the country.
Though the case involving 350,000 Venezuelans on Temporary Protected Status is still in the courts the Supreme Court says the nasty guy can start deporting anyway.
Another dozen immigrants were detained at Guantanamo Bay, which means their lawyers aren’t nearby.
The nasty guy has declared a strip of land along the border to be a “national defense zone” so when a migrant crosses, they can be accused of trespassing on a military installation. Already a New Mexico judge has thrown out over 100 of these cases.
ICE raided a meatpacking plant in Omaha and half of the 140 workers were detained and others didn’t show up out of fear. Would Sen. Ted Cruz, or any member of Congress, want their children to work in such a plant?
The Trump administration’s capacity for cruelty toward immigrants is truly astonishing—not just in terms of the government resources it is deploying, but in terms of how it acts from a space of bottomless hate, an infinite ability to revel in the harm they can cause. It’s the only work that Trump and his minions actually want to do.
Also on Thursday a week ago Emily Singer of Kos reported the nasty guy tweeted an exemption to deportation raids. He realized that farming and hospitality need lots of immigrant labor, so those places won’t be raided. I’ve heard since that the tweet had no effect on the actions of ICE agents and the White House has said there has been no actual change in policy.
Kos of Koswrote last Saturday:
Donald Trump doesn’t want to lead. He wants to rule. There’s a distinction.
This week, we’ve crossed the line from authoritarian flirtation to autocratic overreach. The events of this past week—the illegal deployment of the National Guard in California, the arrest of California Sen. Alex Padilla, the ignoring of yet more judicial orders, and the chilling preparations for Trump’s grotesque birthday parade—undeniably show that Trump and his acolytes have abandoned all pretense of adhering to democratic norms.
We knew this would happen, we warned people this would happen, and now we’re watching in horror as Trump shreds our norms, laws, and institutions. All the while, the Republican Party kowtows to him when it isn’t outright cheering him on.
Kos wrote that while he’s all in favor of Democrats following the law there is no need for them to follow norms the nasty guy and Republicans have thrown out.
The nasty guy is vulnerable in one way – he’s concerned about public opinion. And polls show he and his policies are not supported by Americans.
On Monday Singer reported:
GOP lawmakers are lining up to support President Donald Trump’s declaration of war against Democratic-controlled cities, after he ordered Immigrations and Customs Enforcement officers to specifically target undocumented immigrants in Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York by spreading the insane and false conspiracy theory that Democrats use undocumented immigrants in those cities to hold on to political power.
"We must expand efforts to detain and deport Illegal Aliens in America’s largest Cities, such as Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York, where Millions upon Millions of Illegal Aliens reside. These, and other such Cities, are the core of the Democrat Power Center, where they use Illegal Aliens to expand their Voter Base, cheat in Elections, and grow the Welfare State, robbing good paying Jobs and Benefits from Hardworking American Citizens," Trump wrote in a disturbing Truth Social post on Sunday night.
Of course, undocumented immigrants cannot vote, so Trump’s claim is a bald-faced lie. Undocumented immigrants are also not taking jobs from American citizens, as Americans do not want to work the low-wage, back-breaking jobs immigrants are filling in meatpacking plants, restaurant kitchens, and farm fields.
In the rest of the article Singer documented Republican praise for the statement and the Democratic rebuttal.
An Associated Press article from Thursday a week ago and posted on Kos reported that a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order directing the nasty guy to return control of the National Guard to California. The nasty guy had overstepped his bounds in ordering their deployment. Doubtful this will prompt him to obey.
Andrew Mangan of Kos reported that before Musk broke up with the nasty guy he declared, “A new political party is needed in America to represent the 80% in the middle!”
Musk is no centrist, so hard to tell what he means. But the idea of a centrist party that appeals to a broad middle has been the wish for quite a while, including the political group No Labels.
A dream of the 80% middle is a naive dream. 80% of Americans will agree on only a handful of policies, such as the Food and Drug Administration inspecting food or requiring car companies to submit accident data on self-driving vehicles. Yeah, Musk hates that last one.
But what if we built a party around ideas that have 60% approval? That’s still a sizable majority. What are policies such a party could run on, policies supported by 60% of voters?
A party of the 60% would increase taxes on billionaires and large corporations, raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour, and pour more federal funding into affordable housing. Its economic agenda would also expand antitrust enforcement against Big Tech and advocate for stricter environmental regulations, even if they cost jobs and dent the economy. This hypothetical party would prioritize expanding wind and solar power over fossil fuels, and it would want to tax corporations based on how much carbon they release. Hell, this party would even favor making power plants completely eliminate carbon emissions by 2040.
A party of the 60% would support abortion being legal in most or all cases. It would see the government as responsible for ensuring all Americans have health insurance. It would strongly support Medicare, Medicaid, and the Affordable Care Act. It would want to pour billions into research for women’s health and cap yearly out-of-pocket costs for prescription drugs on all insurance plans. It would support creating a public option for health insurance and lowering the enrollment age for Medicare from 65 to 60, though it wouldn’t be sold on Medicare for all. Nonetheless, this party would increase benefits for Social Security and Medicare.
Mangan provides links to surveys supporting what he wrote.
Also with 60% popularity are support for legal abortion, access to contraception, and support for all Americans having paid family and medical leave. There would be support for banning assault rifles, implementing universal background checks and red-flag laws. There would be support for free college tuition of middle income families and below, vaccine requirements, and increased funding for public schools. Plus, support for legal recreational marijuana, increased food assistance, term limits for the Supreme Court, and many types of foreign aid.
Sound familiar? All of these policies are supported by at least 60% of respondents, and virtually all of them are parts of the Democratic Party’s platform—and reviled by the Republican Party.
I’m puzzled what exactly is meant by “parts of the Democratic Party’s platform.” Parts of each idea are in the platform? Various states have some of the ideas in their platforms?
So what about immigration? Yeah, 55% want a decrease in the number of immigrants (note it is less than 60%). But over 60% oppose deporting undocumented immigrants who came as kids, are married to a citizen, or have children who are citizens. And majorities oppose raids at churches and schools. A very strong majority do want to deport immigrants who committed violent crimes.
The nasty guy is doing the last – and all the others.
But back to that praise for the Democratic Party. If the party agrees with 60% of the country – why didn’t they implement all those things when they had the chance? They had majorities during Biden’s first two years.
I ventured into the comments for this one. A couple of the ideas:
tuma: They’re popular only as long as they’re not labeled as Democratic policies. Anything Dems support is taken to mean benefiting black people.
Teacherbill: Democratic policy is popular. Democratic politicians are not.
In last Saturday’s pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted a couple interesting tweets. Kareem Carr, Statistics Person tweeted:
The great irony is that “White America” itself is already a case study in multiculturalism: a near seamless fusion of ethnicities who spent centuries at war.
And Noah Smith added:
This is an incredibly important and underrated point. The reason people think "white" is this homogeneous bloc today is that America did such a good job erasing the distinctions between European ethnicities.
In the comments LJ Slater countered the claim that riots are raging through LA by posting a map of the city with one small red circle in a corner of the area marked Downtown.
I hadn’t realized Los Angeles loops in and around other cities (such as Beverly Hills and Santa Monica) with a long slim corridor down to the neighborhood of San Pedro.
In today’s pundit roundup Chitown Kev had some good quotes. Jazmyne Owens of the New America blog wrote about Juneteenth, which is today.
False distortions of history, especially to serve a political agenda, are not new. During the Civil War, propagandists across the South referred to the war as one “of Northern Aggression,” or “the War Between the States,” ignoring the role that slavery played in the Confederacy’s secession from the Union. While wholly untrue, that version of history, now known as “the Lost Cause of the Confederacy”—or simply “the Lost Cause”—took deep root in the South. [...]
Reframing history to erase acts of violence against African Americans and other groups is seeing a resurgence today. In President Trump’s first term, his administration created the 1776 Commission to promote politicized narratives that historians have called inaccurate. In his second term, the administration is committed to weakening the public education system by dismantling the functionality of the Department of Education in an attempt to close it, and slashing funding for vital public education programs. It is also worth mentioning that the administration is currently receiving a lot of legal pushback against their actions, including over several executive orders that embody alarming government overreach by undermining civil rights enforcement and asserting federal oversight in schools and classrooms.
Alex Hinton of The Conversation:
After decades of research on numerous attacks that have left scores dead, we have learned that extremists are almost always part of a pack, not lone wolves. But the myth of the lone wolf shooter remains tenacious, reappearing in media coverage after almost every mass shooting or act of far-right extremist violence. Because this myth misdirects people from the actual causes of extremist violence, it impedes society’s ability to prevent attacks. [...]
This was true long before the social media age. Take Timothy McVeigh. He is often depicted as the archetypal lone wolf madman who blew up the Oklahoma City Federal Building in 1995.
In fact, McVeigh was part of a pack. He had accomplices and was connected across the far-right extremist landscape.[...]
How did the lone-wolf metaphor come to misinform the public’s view of extremists, and why is it so tenacious?
Part of the answer is linked to white supremacist Louis Beam, who wrote the essay “Leaderless Resistance” in 1983. In it, he called for far-right extremists to act individually or in small groups that couldn’t be traced up a chain of command. According to his lawyer, McVeigh was one of those influenced by Beam’s call.
It isn’t just Beam’s call. It is a lot of conservative leaders using the “lone wolf” myth to shield themselves and their ideas from being held responsible for the lone wolf’s mayhem.
Will Pattiz and More Than Just Parks of the “More Than Just Parks” Substack writing about a provision in the Big Brutal Bill that isn’t getting any discussion by mainstream media:
The Senate budget bill includes two provisions that would trigger the largest loss of public land in modern history.
First, it mandates the sale of 3 million acres of federal land. This land will be sold, full stop. There is no requirement for public input, environmental review, tribal consultation, or resource assessment. It will be auctioned off whether the public wants it or not.
Second, it grants the Secretary of the Interior authority to sell an additional 253 million acres at their discretion. That amounts to 40 percent of all federal public land.
There are no rules on how much land can be sold, how fast it can be moved, or who can buy it. There is no guarantee of public review. There is no conservation filter. There is nothing in the bill that protects ecologically sensitive areas, sacred sites, or places used for hunting, fishing, or recreation.
The language sounds sterile.
“Disposal.”
“Divestment.”
“Asset management.”
But make no mistake. This is a plan to break apart the public estate and transfer it to private hands.
In the comments are several cartoons and memes about Juneteenth and immigration, such as this one posted by exlrrrp and from Films for Action. It shows a Mexican man sitting on a white bucket with the caption:
Schrödinger’s Immigrant
Lazily collecting all the welfare
but somehow taking all the jobs.
And a meme posted by Liberal Jane showing a young woman with buttons showing all the minorities she supports and holding a sign that says:
I’d rather be hated for who I include that loved for who I exclude.
I finished the book The World in Six Songs; How the Musical Brain Created Human Nature by Daniel Levitin. I had read and enjoyed his earlier book This is Your Brain on Music so when I saw this one I bought it.
The title might properly be The World in Six Types of Songs. The author discusses six categories of songs and how each would have influenced the evolution of humans. He also discusses the opposite – how humans developed the capacity to create music while animals cannot.
The six types, common to all cultures, are: Social bonding, including helping us develop synchronous movement. Joy, being so joyful we want to sing. Comfort, why we sing lullabyes and why we don’t listen to happy music when we’re sad. Knowledge, more than the ABC song. Religion, music that accompanies rites. And Love. That last one prompted a long discussion of what love is.
Decades ago I had heard when the Christian Old Testament (the Jewish Testament) was written down the scribes had to sort through four sources. More modern scholars had identified four threads of influence. The chapter on knowledge songs explained how the ancient text could have had four sources. The reason is that for perhaps the first thousand years of the Jewish story the Torah and other books were not written down, they were sung. Levitin explains how singing influences memorization. But over a thousand years the words and tune would drift, both within a community and between separated communities. So, yes, four (at least) sources.
I enjoyed the book and learned from it. But I can recommend the book only to people who have a strong interest in both music and how the brain works. He definitely gets into the details.
My writing time has been limited lately, enough that I finished a second book. It is the novel, What Strange Paradise by Omar El Akkad. The pivotal event is portrayed in the first chapter – a boat full of refugees has come apart and the humans have washed onto the shore of an island. Only one of the travelers is alive. He is Amir and about nine years old.
The rest of the book is alternating chapters of Before and After that event. The Before chapters tell about how Amir got onto the boat and what the crossing was like. He, his mother, infant brother, and Quiet Uncle (brother to Loud Uncle) flee the regime in Syria. They get to Alexandria, Egypt and Quiet Uncle buys passage on a ship to smuggle him to the West and Amir also gets on board. As is frequently the case with these sorts of things the passengers pay a lot of money and are duped onto a rickety boat. The crossing is not what they thought they paid for. Because of the structure of the book we know what will happen to most of them.
TheAfter chapters are about what happens on the island. It is not named, but presumably is Greek. Amir flees from officials in uniform and is protected by Vänna, a fifteen year old girl. Both don’t know the other’s language. She wants to get him off the island in a way that doesn’t get him bogged down in the official government method of processing refugees. They are pursued by Colonel Kethros, who wants to make sure Amir does go through the approved system.
Along the way various characters discuss how the West views refugees and how the island locals view tourists. I enjoyed the book. It sheds important light on what the refugee crisis is about in human terms.
Meteor Blades of Daily Kos posted a mashup video, less than 3 minutes long, of scenes of many No Kings protests around the country.
In a pundit roundup for Kos Chitown Kev quoted Zeeshawn Aleem of MSNBC, who discussed the end “protest fatigue.”
In the early months of Trump’s second term, it was common to ask “Where is the resistance?” Whereas Trump’s first inauguration triggered the largest single-day protest in American history, his second inauguration was met with far smaller demonstrations. Combined with Democratic Party leaders’ timidity and a business community that was much more receptive to Trump than in his first term, there was a widespread sense that Trump’s victory had fundamentally demoralized the left and that MAGA was the new normal.
...
Another encouraging phenomenon: According to the Crowd Counting Consortium researchers, the total number of protest events this year is far outpacing 2017. That’s a proxy for how organized protest coalitions are — and suggests that activist networks may be building up more extensively than during the comparable part of Trump’s first term.
Kev added:
IMHO, I think that Trump’s popular vote win in the 2024 presidential election accounts for much of the “timidity” and even shock from the Democratic Party overall, including some of the party leadership. (The MSM capitulation, by and large, to MAGA coverage has also been a huge factor in a downplaying of the resistance.)
I will note that the mass protests that I have seen televised and even live here in Chicago seem to be better organized than many of the protests during Trump’s first term.
In the comments is a cartoon by DaylieDoodle. It shows an elephant lecturing:
Now remember kids... When we win, it’s because we’ve earned it fair and square. But when you win, the system is rigged. When we catch a break, it’s a reward for our hard work. When you catch a break, it’s a handout. If we stop supporting something, we boycott. If you stop supporting something it’s “cancel culture.” Our extremists have nothing to do with us. But yours are indicative of everything that you believe in.
Yearning for what this country used to be is patriotic. And changing it is un-American.
And if you aren’t American, you’re the enemy.
Last Thursday Emily Singer of Kos reported that California Democratic Sen. Alex Padilla went to a Department of Homeland Security news conference to ask Secretary Kristi Noem a question. She was defending the nasty guy’s use of the military to subdue protests against deportation. Two men forced Padilla out the news conference where FBI agents pushed him to the ground and handcuffed him.
DHS accused Padilla of not identifying himself (he had) and that he “chose disrespectful political theatre” and that Secret Service thought he was an attacker.
What is known about Padilla’s actions do not sound like an attacker and anything Noem says about the incident is highly suspect. Even if this was disrespectful political theater he did not deserved to be shoved out the door, then pushed to the floor and handcuffed. No one who did what he did deserves it.
But this is another instance of the nasty guy’s administration calling law enforcement on Democrats wanting answers about the treatment of immigrants.
Last Wednesday Alex Samuels of Kos reported that Elon Musk is trying to mend his relationship to the nasty guy after the spectacular public breakup. About all he said, though, was:
I regret some of my posts about President Donald Trump last week. They went too far.
He didn’t say which of the many posts crossed the line.
Though Musk is trying to revive their alliance, the nasty guy may not want him back. Also, the public didn’t rally to Musk’s side. And he still wants those government contracts. The nasty guy did walk back his threat of pull those contracts.
The nasty guy went off to the G7 conference, held in Canada this year. He then left early. YourAnonCentral explained the various humiliations he may have felt, prompting him to leave. His microphone was cut off in the middle of a rant against US citizens. He tried to act as a spokesman for Putin. He defended Israel’s attack on Iran as the others called for de-escalation. A picture circulated on him falling asleep at the meeting, prompting the name “DonOld.” He struck a deal with the UK while calling it the EU.
Last Friday Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos, quoted late night commentary. Here’s a couple:
"Everyone was talking about Trump being on the Epstein list and fighting with Elon. So what did he do? He manufactured a crisis. He got back to what got him here in the first place—good old xenophobia. I don’t know what happened to the states' rights he thinks so much of when it suits him, but I know I speak for a lot of us here when I say leave us alone here. We don’t need you. We don't need your 'help.' [...]
And to those of you in the National Guard who have been thrust into this: when Donald Trump orders you to do something that is immoral, try to get your dad's podiatrist to write a note to say you have bone spurs."
—Jimmy Kimmel
"Trump's terrible policy has generated a huge backlash, which he's responded to by overreacting, which is gonna generate another backlash. We don’t know how this is gonna end, but at least we know it'll be a huge waste of money. Hello, DOGE? I found some cuts for ya."
—The Daily Show's Desi Lydic
I watched my “Sunday” movie on Friday night at the Detroit Film Theater. It was Holy Cow, a French film (no, that’s not the French title). It is a coming of age story about Totone. It takes place in the rural Comté region of France, along the Swiss border. He and his besties like to drink, dance, and carouse. He also has a few enemies.
Totone’s father (his mother is not in the picture) likes to drink and dance too and tries to drive himself home when he should have a designated driver and ends up dead. Totone is now in charge of a much younger sister. And is in desperate need of money.
He hears that there is an annual contest for the best Comté cheese with a sizable prize. He decides he needs to win this contest. Never mind he’s never made cheese before (though I think his father has), doesn’t have any of the equipment, can’t afford the milk and other ingredients, and hits other major problems.
At least he tries. He gets help from his besties and from the sister of one of his enemies. And through the effort he steps from boy to man.
It’s a sweet tale and I enjoyed it very much.
I went to the No Kings protest in the Detroit suburb of Livonia on Saturday afternoon. It was along the major streets on two sides of the Livonia civic center (city hall, police, library, community center, and court). Plenty of parking but by the time I got there the parking lots were full.
I parked about a half-mile from the major intersection and the crowd along the street reached almost that far. There was no good place to get a photo to show the size of the crowd, though I have a few that hint at it.
In this first photo one can sense the size of the crowd towards the right of the photo. This is still about a third of a mile from the main intersection.
This photo shows the crowd on both sides of the street.
My third crowd photo is towards the end of the protest and I’m walking back towards my car. The crowd still lines the street.
The organizers sent links to images participants could download. Many did. Many more came up with clever posters. I was able to get photos of some of them, which are below. Others, I’ll share the text as well as I remember it.
Seen across the street:
Other posters I saw:
“It’s so bad even introverts showed up!”
“The only monarch I want is a butterfly.”
“If you have money for a parade you have money for Medicaid.”
“Don’t make me do this again! – History.”
“If cruelty isn’t the point, what’s the point of the cruelty?”
“Childhood vaccines cause adulthood.”
My poster: “Together we can trump Trump.” Likely the only people who saw it were fellow protesters.
And a t-shirt I saw, though it doesn’t have anything to do with the protest: “To those who stole my anti-depressants I hope you’re happy.”
This protest merely lined the streets. Sometimes there was some chanting. There were no speeches and no marching. The two major streets were in active use and a lot of people honked as they passed. There were a few pickup trucks with nasty guy flags that made passes, doing a good job of getting the crowd riled up. But that was the extent of the counter protests.
I don’t have a count of how many showed up in Livonia. My guess is there were over a thousand people along the streets.
Sister suggested I explain why the protests used the name No Kings. The nasty guy has been acting like a king, restrained by no one and able to issue whatever decrees he wanted. But this protest was to say we rejected a king in 1776 and are rejecting him as king now.
Bill in Portland, Maine in his Cheers and Jeers column for Daily Kos used today’s column to show photos of the protest in his home town.
An Associated Press article posted on Kos described a few of the protests in major cities.
Dan K of the Kos community started a post with:
In political science, there’s something called the "3.5% Rule":
Nonviolent protests are twice as likely to succeed as armed conflicts – and those engaging a threshold of 3.5% of the population have never failed to bring about change.
Dan added that in San Francisco, which he attended, may have had 100,000 people there, perhaps even 150,000. Thee were 2,000 protests across all 50 states, including some conservative areas. Minimum estimates are that 5 million people attended. Some sources suggest 10 million. Dan noted that 12 million is 3.5% of the US population.
In my reading today I saw a link to a spreadsheet that lists attendance at many protests. It is a crowdsourced list, allowing certified users to list a city, the attendance, and the source of the count. It has a second list that anyone can edit, though supplying a source for their numbers.
The more official tally is 3.16 million. Adding in the less official numbers and they tally goes up to 5.85 million. Alas, Livonia is not listed. Some of the big protests: Austin, TX, 20,000. Boston, half million. Chicago Dealy Plaza, 100,000. Eugene, OR, 20,000. Houston, 25,000. Los Angeles City Hall, 200,000. Mountain View, CA, 21,000. Manhattan, Fifth Ave. 200,000. Manhattan Bryant Park, 50,000. Philadelphia, 80,000. Phoenix, 20,000. Portland, OR, 20,000. Saint Paul, MN, 55,000. San Diego, 60,000. San Francisco, Van Ness Ave., 100,000. Seattle, 70,000. Sunnyvale, CA, 20,000. Tampa, 20,000. Torrance, CA. 20,000.
The protests were held on the same day the nasty guy hosted a parade in Washington, DC to mark the 250th anniversary of the founding of the US Army in 1775. It also was the nasty guy’s 79th birthday and he has long wanted a parade. So most people say that is the real reason for the festivities.
bilboteach of the Kos community wrote that the parade was a flop. Sparse crowds. Low energy (partly because of the heat and humidity). And the nasty guy looking either inconsolable or asleep.
The Detroit Free Press posted a photo gallery of the parade. I’m not sure what a big military parade in the US is supposed to look like, so from these photos maybe this was OK? Then again, there aren’t many photos of the crowd or its lack.
In today’s pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin had a few good quotes. One is from G Elliott Morris of Strength in Numbers, which is where I got the link to the spreadsheet.
Dworkin quoted a tweet from Doug Landry. The quote was interesting enough that I went for the whole thread of 52 tweets laid out on Threadreader. Landry does events at the mall and was appalled how badly this one was organized. Too few entrance gates. Requiring people to cross roads on metal stairways and elevated crosswalks (a big hazard if lightning and a bother with strollers). And a parade with units with too much space between them and not enough bands.
Dworkin quoted a tweet by Michael Shurkin.
I now have attended enough West Point parades to know the US Army can parade with the best of them. What we are seeing here is not an inability to do this with precision but a decision not to. Which is more interesting.
Max Boot of the Washington Post:
Rolling Stone headlined its story about the day: “Trump’s military birthday was a gross failure.” I think that’s right, but the flip side is that the Army’s military parade was an absolute success. In other words, Trump did not hijack the event. For the Army, this was mission accomplished. With night falling on Washington and the skies clearing up, I’m sure that the generals left the festivities with as much relief as I did.
Ruth Ben-Ghiat of the New York Times:
The scale of the mobilization in Los Angeles throws the Trump administration’s strategies into stark relief. The Los Angeles Police Department, the third largest force in the country, clearly stated it could handle the protests. A localized response by the L.A.P.D. would generate only a spate of familiar images, however; it could never capture the drama of a foreign invasion, or the history-making moment when Los Angeles became “occupied territory,” as the White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller wrote on X after protests began.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, a former Fox weekend host, also depicted the L.A. protests as a collusion between an external enemy and the “violent mob” of protesters supporting this “dangerous invasion.” To show the public that order was being restored, Mr. Hegseth turned to a Marine infantry division that served in Iraq and Afghanistan, rendering Los Angeles into an open-air studio for the production of a show of force.
The Trump administration is now using the second-largest city in the country as a backdrop for its efforts to create the perception of a national crisis. Doing so could allow it to justify measures that would empower the government to act against its own citizens.
In the comments are lots of cartoons and meme about the parade and the protests. One cartoon to mention is posted by Faith Jackson and is by Lalo Alcaraz. It shows a hooded man feeding a fire with lots of news cameras on him. Behind the cameras is a large crowd of protesters. The caption:
People outside of LA keep insisting the city is in anarchic turmoil. Maybe that's because a lot of mainstream media is only covering the fires and vandalism, and not the hugely peaceful protests. You know the old saying, "if it bleeds, it leads."
I intended to post this last evening. But Blogger on my Vivaldi browser wouldn’t play well with my Google Account. I can’t tell which was the problem. Google said I had to allow cookies and when I did it still wasn’t satisfied. Deleting cookies and rebooting didn’t help.
I tried a chat session and ended up with Google Drive expert instead of a Google Account expert. The one I chatted with took a while to explain chatting can’t be done with an Account expert, something about privacy. That didn’t make sense.
I filed a question with the Google Account community and as of this afternoon got no reply.
Today I tried exploring Blogger help. Connections to Google Account seemed to get worse. I eventually found a help question similar to my situation. It suggested trying a different browser to verify whether the problem was or wasn’t Google Account.
So I started up Edge. And it uploaded photos just fine.
The big story of the weekend and week is the protests in Los Angeles and the nasty guy’s oversize response. A Martínez of NPR spoke to Rep. Nanette Barragán, D-Los Angeles and chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. I’m working from the news story corresponding to their discussion.
Many immigrants look for day jobs at work sites outside of Home Depot. Immigration and Customs Enforcement raided those sites. They were not targeting criminals, as the nasty guy said they were after. They were sweeping up friends and neighbors. The residents protested the ICE raids, which had detained more than 100 people.
I’ll combine that with a discussion between Leila Fadel of NPR and Hina Shamsi, the ACLU's National Security Project director. Again, I’m working from the news article.
Those demonstrators clashed with police. The nasty guy used the clashes as a reason to sign an order to deploy 2,000 National Guardsmen into the city. This was over the objection of Gov. Gavin Newsom. The deployment was to protect ICE agents from “violent mobs” who “fueled lawless chaos.”
Shamsi discussed the authority for the nasty guy to give that order. His use of the National Guard in domestic situations are reserved for actual emergencies, such as an actual war or armed rebellion. That’s not what this is. Instead, this is a dangerous abuse of power.
The memo didn’t place a geographic or time limit on the deployment. Shamsi sees this as the nasty guy writing himself a blank check to use the Guard in other place where people are using their free speech to protest dangerous ICE raids that are snatching neighbors.
Handling protesting crowds are not what the federal troops are trained for. This is an escalating show of strength that could have deadly results.
The legality of that memo will be tested in courts.
Oliver Willis of Daily Kos added more. Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said the chaos was provoked by the nasty guy. The raids caused fear and panic. Newsom said the state is suing the nasty guy.
One reason for the raids is the ICE agents are pressured to get their arrest numbers up. The threats are coming from Stephen Miller, the nasty guy aide in charge of anti-immigrant policies. The effort is to report higher numbers for the fear factor, even if the numbers aren’t real. Willis wrote:
Trump wants an excuse to attack the left and continue to justify his anti-immigrant bigotry, so he will continue to escalate. And while things seem to finally be calming down in downtown LA, protests are expected in more than a dozen cities nationwide.
Emily Singer of Kos reported that 22 Democratic governors -- as in all of them but Newsom – signed on to a statement supporting Newsom’s position and condemning the nasty guy’s deployment of the National Guard to squash protests against ICE raids.
The nasty guy falsely claimed the protests “constitute a form of rebellion” requiring a military response. But a National Guard presence only inflamed protests.
Democratic Sen. Ruben Gallego of Arizona wrote on X:
Reminder just because Donald Trump wants to inflame tensions doesn’t mean you have to play along. Don’t loot, don’t assault police officers, protest peacefully. Trump and Miller will do this in every Blue city whenever they want to distract from something unpopular, like their Medicaid cuts.
Walter Einenkel of Kos wrote about Sen. Chris Murphy’s protest of the nasty guy’s actions. Murphy said this on MSNBC:
“Donald Trump only cares about protests when they're opposing him. Every single day we should be reminding the American public that there were protesters at the Capitol fighting for Donald Trump to install him in power permanently on January 6 of 2021, who beat the hell out of police officers with metal poles and tasers and are out on the street today,” he said.
Murphy added that Trump’s unbalanced approach to power, sending in the National Guard despite state and local law enforcement’s objections, is “fundamentally undemocratic,” and a dangerous endorsement of violence.
“The message is simply, if you're violent in service of a Republican cause, you'll get a ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ card. But if you're engaged in protest against the administration, well then we're sending in the National Guard,” he continued.
Willis reported that Tom Homan, the border czar said Gov. Newsom and Mayor Bass could be targeted for arrest if their actions hindered ICE. “It’s a felony to impede law enforcement doing their job.”
Newsom responded, “Come and get me, tough guy. I don't give a damn. It won’t stop me from standing up for California.”
When a news anchor asked Homan for comment he said, “I never threatened to arrest Gov. Newsom, so I’m not biting off of that, that reporter’s dishonest.”
When the nasty guy was asked about what Homan first said he thought it was great.
Einenkel reported on what the nasty guy said to reporters:
The people that are causing the problem are professional agitators. They're insurrectionist[s]. They're bad people. They should be in jail.
Einenkel wrote:
The hypocrisy of labeling protesters “insurrectionists” after pardoning more than 1,500 convicted ones earlier this year is breathtaking. Even more staggering is the continued insistence of right-wing hot air balloons like Trump that any large protests against his unpopular policies are somehow deep state-funded, fabricated operations.
A reminder that such hypocrisy is a display of their power – they can be highly hypocritical and we can’t do anything about it.
Einenkel reported on House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries’ response to the nasty guy’s comment.
You know what he did on Day 1? He pardoned hundreds of violent felons who brutally beat police officers. That's the insurrection. The notion that Donald Trump and his minions—his sycophants here in the House of Representatives or in the Senate, who are nothing more than a reckless rubber stamp for Donald Trump's extreme agenda—are going to lecture America about issues of law and order? Get lost. We’re not feeling you at all. You have zero credibility on this issue.
Pedro Molina posted a cartoon on Kos. It shows several headlines – Economy in Danger, Plans to Cut Medicare, Putin Mocks Trump, Sky-Rocketing prices, ICE Abuses – all obscured by the smoke from a tear gas canister.
Willis reported several instances of criminals who impersonated ICE agents. One zip tied the wrists of a legal immigrant and stole $1000 in cash. A pair in South Carolina harassed a Latino man by threatening to send him back to Mexico. A man in Florida harassed two Latino migrants by demanding they prove their immigration status. There are many more instances.
Criminal elements are taking advantage of Trump’s embrace of these authoritarian techniques in yet another way that crime is enabled by Trump’s actions.
Instead of directing the government to fight crime in a traditional manner, Trump has pushed the false narrative that immigrant crime is more of a problem than homegrown threats. This pivot has provided the pretext ICE cosplayers need to rob more auto repair shops, harass innocent people, and continue terrorizing communities.
In a pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin included a couple quotes to pass on. First is from Steven Beschloss of America America who titled his piece Trump Wanted This Escalation:
Trump’s directive yesterday stated, “To the extent that protests or acts of violence directly inhibit the execution of the laws, they constitute a form of rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States.”
Note the words: “a form of rebellion.” And note the further escalation by Defense Secretary and Trump sycophant Pete Hegseth who posted this on social media: “The DeptofDefense is mobilizing the National Guard IMMEDIATELY to support federal law enforcement in Los Angeles. And, if violence continues, active duty Marines at Camp Pendleton will also be mobilized—they are on high alert.”
...
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass’ response to the federal actions: "These tactics sow terror in our communities and disrupt basic principles of safety in our city.”
Second, in a tweet Bill Kristol included a tweet by Terry Moran:
The thing about Stephen Miller is not that he is the brains behind Trumpism.
Yes, he is one of the people who conceptualizes the impulses of the Trumpist movement and translates them into policy.
But that’s not what’s interesting about Miller.
It’s not his brains. It’s his bile.
Miller is a man who is richly endowed with the capacity for hatred. He’s a world-class hater.
You can see this just by looking at him because you can see that his hatreds are his spiritual nourishment. He eats his hate.
Trump is a world-class hater. But his hatred only a means to an end, and that end is his own glorification. That’s his spiritual nourishment.
In the comments exlrrp posted a meme showing a much younger nasty guy with Jeffrey Epstein and a woman with just enough clothes. The caption says, “Trump sent troops into L.A. to distract you from this.”
Further down exlrrp posted this tweeted exchange:
Nasty guy: Low-selling author Isaac Marion wrote an “apocalyptic” novel that’s clearly an attack on me. Biased and very boring. Not a good writer!
Isaac Marion: It’s more an attack on the selfishness and fear that poisons humanity, but sure, it can be about you if you want.
I highly doubt the nasty guy read Marion’s book.
Also in the comments is a tweet by Sen. Scott Wiener:
Vance calls the LA protests an “invasion.” 4 min later, Miller calls it an “insurrection.” 29 min later, Hegseth threatens to send in Marines.
It’s like clockwork. They’ve chomped at the bit for months for a pretext to declare martial law under pretext of insurrection/invasion.
Just below that is a tweet by Adam Cochran. It shows a news release from the Los Angeles Police Department. Cochran added:
Even the LAPD is saying the protests are peaceful and managed (i.e. it is not an uncontrolled insurrection requiring the National Guard).
Do you know how f---ing out of line you have to be, to be so authoritarian that the LAPD is siding with the protesters?!
That’s followed by a tweet from Mohammad Safa:
If the United States saw what the United States is doing in the United States, the United States would invade the United States to liberate the United States from the tyranny of the United States.
A tweet from Mike Nellis:
They're so desperate to escalate the situation in Los Angeles, they're sharing video of a car burning from FIVE YEARS AGO.
And one just for fun: A cartoon by Wayno shows Mr. Spock on a desolate planet surface speaking into his communicator: “Mister Scott, I’ve fallen and I can’t beam up.”
In a second pundit roundup Chitown Kev quoted Michelle Goldberg of the New York Times:
It’s important to understand that for this administration, protests needn’t be violent to be considered an illegitimate uprising. The presidential memorandum calling out the National Guard refers to both violent acts and any protests that “inhibit” law enforcement. That definition would seem to include peaceful demonstrations around the site of ICE raids. In May, for example, armed federal agents stormed two popular Italian restaurants in San Diego looking for undocumented workers; they handcuffed staff members and took four people into custody. As they did so, an outraged crowd gathered outside, chanting “shame” and for a time blocking the agents from leaving. Under Trump’s order, the military could target these people as insurrectionists.
The administration, after all, has every reason to want to intimidate those who might take part in civil disobedience. Violent protests play into its hands; peaceful ones threaten the absurd narrative it’s trying to bludgeon America into accepting.
And Chris Geidner of LawDork:
One of Trump’s...favorite methods of addressing a perceived threat is to declare a problem and then over-respond to the problem he has invented, thus expanding the scale of the problem as part of his self-imagined creation.
That, of course, is the reason why Trump is pretending that the National Guard is needed in Los Angeles.
Say there’s a problem, create new rules or restrictions, and justify future escalations based on opposition to the new rules.
Mary Louise Kelly of NPR talked to colleague Lisa Hagen, who looked at pro-nasty guy media spaces to see how his supporters were talking about Los Angeles. Hagen said:
The two words I'm hearing the most are insurrection and invasion. There's been a lot of focus on images of demonstrators waving foreign flags.
About foreign flags, one conservative voice said, “This is what invading armies do.”
Invasion and insurrection are two different things being blended together across conservative media. This could criminalize any protester, citizen or not.
The nasty guy has long been using the word invasion. He first used it to describe asylum seekers and gangs. Now he’s broadening the term to include anyone here illegally.
The Alien Enemies Act has already been invoked as justification to suspend due process for the Venezuelan immigrants accused of being gang members. The Insurrection Act may be invoked next. That “would allow the president to use the armed forces to take any measures he considers necessary to suppress an insurrection.” The problem is that the nasty guy is trying to claim that if he says it’s an insurrection he gets to use the Insurrection Act.
Alas, both of those acts haven’t had a lot of legal testing.
The conservative line used to be we don't hate immigrants. We just want them to come here legally. Voices are now saying, “ban all third-world immigration, legal or illegal.”
Kos of Kos says the deployment of National Guard troops to Los Angeles is personal because the deployment includes his son.
That son was called to help with the aftermath of the Altadena fire in January. Even after his official deployment ended he still helps out several times a week.
As for the current activation Kos wrote:
You can’t imagine the rage I feel.
Trump has spent his entire presidency railing against dissent. Now that he’s losing in Congress, in the courts, and in the court of public opinion, he’s escalating—using peaceful protests as a pretext for his dream of military dictatorship.
In January, my son and his fellow first responders were welcomed by Southern Californians with food, gifts, and gratitude. Today, Trump is sending them into those same communities as symbols of repression. He’s destroyed the goodwill they built—and he doesn’t care.
He wants confrontation. He wants escalation. He wants violence, because he thinks it gives him license to go even further.
The father is scared, but proud of his son. He’s also “burning with righteous fury.”
In the comments Albanius quoted Malcom Nance and his Substack Special Intelligence, where he recommends, “strategic ridicule including dance parties, led by patriotic military veterans.” From Nance:
Right now, Trump’s narrative is that he is using tough, lethal armed soldiers and marines to snatch a city from foreign invaders.
We must change that false narrative into harsh reality: A moron Presidrent and a drunk Secretary of Defense has taken good soldiers from training and has transformed them into a bunch of under equipped, under fed, hapless yutzes who have now been assigned to the stupidest duty in the world.
The best way to do that is to utilize former military personnel and retired veterans to take to the front line in Los Angeles and form Dumb Deployment Intervention Platoons (DDIPs). These DDIPs will use tried and tested techniques honed over hundreds of years of American soldiering to mock stupid decisions on and off the battlefield. And this one is a doozy.
Our DDIPs will also explain to the media just exactly how ridiculous and silly it was for Trump to order Marines to conduct an operational deployment to West Hollywood.
Dance party as resistance? I like that idea.
In a third pundit roundup, this one by Dworkin, he included a tweet by G Elliott Morris:
Brand-new polling from YouGov out this morning finds Trump's actions re: LA underwater — and double-digit disapproval on sending in Marines.
This should be a reality check for those people arguing the protests inherently help Trump bc his immigration approval # is positive.
And a tweet by Jon Favreau:
Every paragraph of this WSJ story is more shocking than the last:
"Agents didn’t need to develop target lists of immigrants suspected of being in the U.S. illegally, a longstanding practice, Miller said. Instead, he directed them to target Home Depot, where day laborers typically gather for hire, or 7-Eleven convenience stores. Miller bet that he and a handful of agents could go out on the streets of Washington, D.C., and arrest 30 people right away."
Alas, the part that X allows me to see does not include a link to the WSJ story.
In a fourth pundit roundup Chitown Kev quoted Anne Applebaum of The Atlantic compared the nasty guy to the Bolsheviks and the Maoists. Here’s a bit:
Trump faces the same choice as his revolutionary predecessors: Give up—or radicalize. Find compromises—or polarize society further. Slow down—or use violence. Like his revolutionary predecessors, Trump has chosen radicalization and polarization, and he is openly seeking to provoke violence.
In the comments exlrrp posted a meme from Occupy Democrats: “Notice how it’s no longer ‘State’s Rights’ since Republicans control the federal government.”
There are also two sets of cartoons about the comment about foreign flags. One shows a guy waving the Mexican flag and a bystander says, “We have to hire Mexicans to do the rioting Americans won’t do.”
Other memes and cartoons note how many MAGA followers, especially during the Capitol attack, carried Confederate flags, which are not American flags. Another Occupy Democrats meme says, “So when a guy waves a Confederate flag to celebrate heritage it’s ok, but when a guy waves a Mexican flag to celebrate his heritage he’s an ‘insurrectionist?’ I’m going to start waving a Mexican flag to troll the snowflakes offended by it.”
I like this one: rugbymom posted a few tweets under the heading, “Resistance takes many forms, including the supremely gloriously petty.” The tweets say, “At the Kennedy Center, half the theater just started clapping when a group of drag queens showed up to find their seats at opening night of Les Miserables, which Trump, Melania, Vance and their top allies have all come out to see.”
I hope they waited until the nasty guy was seated.
And lpeacock posted a tweet from BrooklynDad:
Good morning and Happy Thursday to everyone who appreciates the delicious irony of trump going to see Les Misérables at the Kennedy Center, a show about a country fighting a tyrannical king, and trump got his ass mercilessly BOOED.
