Tuesday, July 8, 2025

America has grown too comfortable with violence and cruelty

The national handbell seminar begins tomorrow. I’m not attending in person. Even so, it will be livestreaming three concerts a day starting with one tomorrow evening. The concerts will feature a selection of the best handbell performers. I don’t know how much this will affect my blogging time. I may post regularly or I may not post again until Sunday or Monday. Lisa Needham of Daily Kos reported that 144 employees of the Environmental Protection Agency sent a letter to administrator Lee Zeldin objecting to new agency policies. Another letter in March complained of the illegal dismantling of core agency functions. In response to the latest letter Zeldin put all who signed (some were anonymous) on leave. This is a violation of First Amendment rights of free speech. Needham spent much of the rest of the article explaining in what cases employees do and don’t have free speech rights. In this case they clearly do. What caught my attention in this article is the last few paragraphs:
Trump treats the presidency like an extension of his person, and his Cabinet has adopted that same framing: People voted for Trump, which means they preapproved anything he chooses to do. Any disagreement, therefore, means you are not respecting the will of the voters. It isn’t surprising, with that mindset, that the administration is coming for the free speech rights of public employees. After all, how dare they speak out against Dear Leader? Just because the GOP has signed on to Trump’s cult of personality doesn’t mean that federal workers have to do so as well.
Brett Kelman, in an article for KFF Health News posted on Kos a month ago, reported many American doctors are moving to Canada. One big reason is because, as Kelman paraphrased one of the doctors, “Too much of America has simply grown too comfortable with violence and cruelty.” There are a lot of reasons inside the big one. The nasty guy becoming more authoritarian. The deep cuts to Medicaid. Appointing Robert Kennedy Jr. to lead and dismantle federal health agencies. On the other side of the border, applications to be licensed in Canada has increased more than 750% in the last seven months compared to a year ago. Some are saying they are moving specifically because of the nasty guy. Also, Canadian provinces have relaxed some licensing regulations in recent years to allow easier migration. A Canadian physician recruiting company said they saw a 65% increase in inquiries from January to April and is now contacted by up to 15 American doctors a day. Another company helps doctors to get licensed in other foreign nations. They had previously worked with doctors with wanderlust, seeking adventure. Now it is more intentional about getting out of the US. Doctors who have made the move feel less stress, do less paperwork, and have no fear of burying patients in medical debt. And in the US we already don’t have enough doctors. When Musk slashed his way through federal agency personnel some of the talk was we’ll just replace all those workers with AI. Some of the most vocal people, like Musk, have shown they are anti-human and would rather deal with technology. So a month ago Needham reported that two AI tools have been installed at the Food and Drug Administration. And both of them suck. FDA Commissioner Martin Makary gushed over the new tools, as did Jin Liu, deputy director for Drug Evaluation Sciences. One of the tools isn’t connected to anything – like medical journals or even other computers – so it can’t manage basic tasks. The other was asked questions about publicly available information and answered incorrectly. We may get half-baked AI anyway. Also from a month ago Needham discussed another way the nasty guy is threatening universities. It is telling the organizations that do the accrediting that universities are in violation of federal anti-discrimination laws. In Needhan’s example the nasty guy claims Columbia doesn’t meet the standards for accreditation because of the way it treated Jewish students. The threat – the Notice of Violation – includes no information on what Columbia needs to do to comply. There are only the threats if it doesn’t. Columbia is finding out that although it bent the knee to the nasty guy it will still be attacked. It can’t do enough to stop the attacks (except maybe cease operations).
The government doesn’t accredit any school and therefore can’t yank any accreditation. The federal government does certify accreditors, but while it's likely that the leftover remains of the Department of Education could approve new accreditors, getting rid of the existing ones isn’t that easy. These are vague, meaningless attacks that don’t have a lot to do with the actual requirements for certification of accreditors. As the Council of Regional Accrediting Commissions explained in a statement about Trump’s executive order, the Higher Education Act establishes due process requirements for recognition of accreditors, including reviews from multiple offices within the Department of Education. And it included a pointed reminder that “concerns about accreditor recognition can be escalated to federal court.”
There’s another reason why the nasty guy is attacking the accreditors. They were a big part of the demise of Trump University. In the comments of a pundit roundup on Kos Paul Fell posted a cartoon shows a waiter has delivered a dead bird, type unknown but definitely not appetizing. The customer says, “Waiter! This isn’t what I ordered!” The waiter holds up a sign saying “2024 election” and says, “Wanna bet?” Fell added:
As Americans keep finding out all the disastrous, cruel, & frankly anti-American things Trump & Republicans are doing, even MAGAts are saying this isn't what they voted for. Don't believe them. This is *exactly* what they voted for.
A meme related to the devastating Texas flood posted by exlrrp shows a photo of the president of Mexico. Below it is the text:
Mexico’s president just sent rescue teams to Texas. After all the hate. After all the anti-immigrant policies. After all the racism towards brown people. She still helped. She still showed up. She still did the right thing. To a red state that wouldn’t do the same for her. That’s leadership. That’s power. That’s a woman.
I’ve written about Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene claiming that Democrats can control the weather and that it must stop. Fiona Webster posted a cartoon by Lalo Alcaraz titled “Weather Control Machine” and showing a truck labeled “Big Oil” that is spewing a lot of pollution.

Monday, July 7, 2025

They built the wrecking ball now swinging at them

Myriam-Fernanda Alcala Delgado, in an article for Capital & Main posted on Daily Kos, discussed the Los Angeles volunteer organization Unión del Barrio. The group got their start in 1992 after the beating of Rodney King. They are a community patrol network to monitor law enforcement activity that might be dangerous to residents in vulnerable neighborhoods. These days they monitor ICE. Volunteers look for cars with tinted windows and masked license plates. They patrol neighborhoods looking for ICE. They also respond to tips about current ICE activity. They do some verification before issuing public alerts. They are very careful to keep to the speed limit and obey all traffic signs. They don’t want ICE or law enforcement a reason to stop and engage with them. Sometimes ICE leaves an area because they have lost the element of surprise. But ICE is changing tactics in response to volunteer patrols. Instead of morning operations ICE shifted to later in the day when volunteers are at work. They have also started using decoys – one ICE vehicle leads patrols one way while ICE operations go another. The group got a letter from Sen. Josh Hawley saying they are supporting civil unrest and aiding criminal conduct. The letter demands they “cease and desist.” Unión del Barrio says the letter is simple intimidation and won’t stop them. Carrie Levine, in an article for Votebeat posted on Kos, talked about an executive order involving new rules for voting machines. From this article I didn’t figure out whether the new rules promoted the nasty guy, promoted democracy, or were impartial. The article is more about the problems implementing the new rules. From what I can figure out, one problem is that federal accredited laboratories have not yet certified voting machines to the new standards, which can take years. In the meantime, the current standards are quite good and lead to accurate results. But devious actors can say the current machines don’t meet the new standards, spreading doubt on the election results. Another problem is the move to the new standard does not come with money to make that happen. Replacing voting equipment can cost millions. A while back I talked about ways authoritarians stay in power. One way is to hold elections that the opposition party is well represented on the ballot but just can’t seem to ever win. Thom Hartmann of the Kos community and an independent pundit wrote an essay in response to words by James Carville. Carville warned that as the nasty guy sees a decisive Republican loss in the coming 2026 midterms he may try something extreme to hold onto power. Hartmann is equally concerned, but doesn’t think the extreme action will be martial law or a national emergency. Instead, according to journalist Greg Palast, a Great Purge will be enough. The purge has been authorized by five corrupt conservatives on the Supreme Court. It involves scrubbing names from voter rolls. One part is removing names and Hartmann lists several ways that is happening. Another part is the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act introduced by Republicans (who else?). One provision is if the name on the birth certificate is different from the passport or driver’s license a person can’t register (or reregister). The biggest group this affects is married women who take their husband’s last name. Others affected are transgender. The other half of the problem is that most Americans don’t have a birth certificate readily available or know where it is. The reason for the law is a racist myth. There are claims that millions of undocumented immigrants vote. When dedicated sleuths work to uncover evidence of that claim they can produce in court they come up empty, while defendants can show similar state laws prevent thousands of legal voters from voting. These tactics go back to before the 2000 election. In that one George Bush II was able to claim victory in Florida, and thus the White House, because his brother Jeb, governor of Florida at the time, had purged tens of thousands of black voters from the rolls. Republicans continue to use purging because it works. “That’s not election security. That’s systemic suppression.” And it happens before a vote is cast. If it doesn’t work? There is always ICE, answerable only to the nasty guy and with a growing number of concentration camps to use. Kos of Kos wrote that two Alaskan lawmakers, one a Republican, wrote a hand-wringing op-ed in the New York Times about the Big Brutal Bill with the headline, “Alaska cannot survive this bill.” Kos lists the horrors of the bill – lost health coverage, food assistance, school funding, and more. The nasty guy campaigned on all that carnage. And 54% of Alaskans voted for him anyway. Strange that the small-government crowd is the most dependent on assistance from the government. The state’s politicians, Sen. Lisa Murkowski in this case, scramble to shield their constituents from the cuts the citizens voted for. The pattern is getting old.
So, yes, Alaska is right to be scared. The bill will devastate them. But they aren’t innocent. They helped build the wrecking ball—and now they’re shocked to find it swinging in their direction. Actions have consequences.
In Saturday’s pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin had several quotes worth mentioning. Norm Ornstein of The Contrarian talked about how Democrats were tripped up when the nasty guy’s campaign was able to cast several issues in terms of fairness. There was a female swimmer who tied for fifth place with a transgender swimmer, but got the sixth place trophy. Another case was student loan forgiveness that was portrayed as unfair to those who had worked hard to pay off their student loans.
Democrats who did not want to sacrifice anyone for temporary political advantage supported trans athletes as a matter of fairness and decency were easy to portray as being too woke to recognize the perceived unfairness.
Matt Fuller tweeted a link to a story on Notus and wrote:
That letter from 16 vulnerable House Republicans — about how they won't vote for the Senate's Medicaid cuts — is a pretty crazy read today. Everyone on this letter voted for the bill.
Paul Waldman of The Cross Section also talked about Republicans and the Big Brutal Bill:
So why are they doing this? One can certainly imagine a less radical version of this bill, one that moved in the same direction but not so far and fast, much as the legislation they passed in Trump’s first term did. That kind of bill might not be a political winner, but it wouldn’t be such a huge loser either. Why not go that route? They’re not giving away their shot [not quite the Hamilton lyric] The answer is that this isn’t about the politics, it’s about the substance. You don’t like weather-vane politicians, always checking the polls to see how they should vote? Well here you go. They are willing to take the political risk, even the certainty of future defeat, because they believe so strongly in what this bill does. They despise Medicaid and have contempt for everyone who uses it. The same goes for SNAP, aka food stamps. They desperately want to cut taxes for the wealthy, and always have. They don’t just want to roll back Biden-era climate policies, they want to destroy the entire green energy and manufacturing sectors of the economy. ... That’s just part of what’s in the bill, but the point is that this is the fulfillment of their fondest policy wishes. If it costs them their House majority and maybe even their Senate majority as well (a long shot, but not impossible), they’re willing to do it. Because they believe in it.
I’m on the email lists for Demand Progress and Move On. Both are very good at sending me frequent emails about the latest outrage from the nasty guy (and there are lots). All of them ask for money. Some ask me to sign a petition first, though I’ve gotten no feedback on whether any of the petitions have been effective – from what the nasty guy and Republicans are doing they probably aren’t. I also get letters from various prominent Democrats as well as the national committees, all asking for money. I get texts on my phones from Democratic candidates around the country hoping I would be a part of their team (as in donating money). So this tweet from Dan Pfeiffer resonated:
I understand the short term incentives involved, but the fact that every bad thing that Trump does is immediately followed by 1000 fundraising texts from every person in the Democratic Party has some long term consequences for the party’s relationship with its base.
In the comments ResJudicata22 posted a cartoon by Drew Sheneman. A MAGA man says, “Gender-Affirming care is unnatural!” Around him words point to various parts of his body, words such as, “Hair plugs, Beard coloring, Viagra,” and for his shoes, “Lifts.” Tracy posted another cartoon by Sheneman. This one shows the nasty guy telling young kids, “I’m cutting your school lunch program to pay for tax cuts and bombs. If you’re hungry, join the Army.” Another commenter noted that lowest level Army pay is below a living wage. In the comments of Sunday’s roundup Rented Mule posted a meme:
I didn’t grow up reciting “with liberty and justice for all” every morning at 7 am just to be called radical for actually wanting liberty and justice for ALL.
A cartoon posted by thendis-nye, creator unknown, shows a man on the phone as out the window is a formal garden with a fountain. The man says:
They’re all gone!? My pool’s dirty! Who’s going to cook for me and clean my house? Who will trim the hedges and take care of the estate grounds!? No one told me this would affect me!
And a cartoon by Garth German show a man with elephants:
Man: Why should we spend $60 billion to help Ukraine?! Elephants: Yeah! Damn Straight! Man: Think of all we could to if we spent that $60 billion helping Americans instead! Elephants: (uproarious laughter) Elephant1: This guy thinks we’ll spend money to help Americans... Elephant12: Hee Hee Elephant3: Here’s the plan to cut Medicaid, Social Security, and SNAP.
In today’s roundup Dworkin included a tweet by Melanie D’Arrigo that quoted a tweet by Aaron Rupar. First Rupar, referring to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, billionaire.
Bessent on Medicaid cuts: "The able-bodied Americans are not vulnerable Americans ... people can get off Medicaid and get a job that has good healthcare benefits ... I don't think poor people are stupid. I think they have agency."
D’Arrigo adds:
30% of American jobs do not offer health benefits, and 49% of employed workers can't afford healthcare without going into debt. Every American is a vulnerable American when healthcare is restricted, tied to employment, and for-profit.

Sunday, July 6, 2025

Keeping democracy is a constant, high-stakes battle

My weekend movie was Saturday afternoon when I went to the Detroit Film Theater (and enjoyed some of the Detroit Institute of Arts) for the documentary Secret Mall Apartment. In the 1990s Providence, Rhode Island was getting rather run down. The mills that had provided its wealth had closed. So the city decided to build a shopping mall, Providence Place, at the edge of a good neighborhood where people on the other side saw it more as a barrier than a benefit. Many artists and musicians had taken over the old mill buildings not far from the new mall. They were quite annoyed that city planners saw their area as the next place to gentrify, and evicted them. One of those was the artist and art teacher Michael Townsend. As Townsend watched the mall being built, a place with unusual planes and angles, he saw a space that he identified as unusable. In 2003 he crawled through the in-between spaces of the building and found it. He and seven friends turned the space, about 750 square feet, into an apartment. They hauled furniture up there (through a route a bit more direct than crawl spaces, but still difficult) and turned it into a place to stay. They used a palm size camera to film their work and those films were an integral part of this movie. I think they had residences elsewhere, but that was never specifically said. They managed to live in the mall undetected for four years. This was an act of defiance against gentrification, their private clubhouse, and a place to plan their art. Townsend and his team were also working artists, and generous with their art. One of their big things is tape art – using rolls of blue and green painter’s tape to construct outlines of figures on walls. They were regular visitors to a children’s hospital, decorating rooms and hallways with whimsical figures and helping the little patients create their own ideas. These were intentionally temporary, easily pulled off the wall when no longer wanted. Here’s their tape art website. The main page of the site includes a photo of Townsend. Check out their murals page. The team also took their tape art to Oklahoma City for the tenth anniversary of the bombing there and to New York to commemorate those who lost their lives in 9/11. These people have their hearts in the right place. Townsend was the only one known to the public when their hideaway was discovered. The mall banned him for life for trespassing. When this documentary was premiered it was at the cinemas in – Providence Place. I’m sure Townsend was the guest of honor. I quite enjoyed this one. I read through the transcript of the June 10, 2025 episode of Gaslit Nation titled How a Christian School Kid in Indiana Saw the Fall of Democracies Coming. Gaslit Nation is hosted by Andrea Chalupa. Her guest in this episode is Chrissy Stroop. Chalupa introduces her this way at the top of the webpage:
Chrissy is a leading voice in exposing the Christian nationalist movement, the exvangelical uprising, and the growing marriage between the American and Russian far-right. She also happens to be a trans woman with a PhD in Russian history and a wild journey that took her from a fundamentalist Christian school in Indiana to teaching in Moscow.
And like this during the episode.
[She is] an analyst on global affairs as well as the American Ex-vangelical Movement, as well as Christian Nationalism and Russia. She's an advocate for religious deconstruction, LGBTQ+ rights and social justice.
The episode begins with the story of a woman who came to the US as a fetus. Chalupa reminds us that the media sees immigrants as a hostile invader rather than an individual human story of someone seeking a better life. Chalupa describes the bill the nasty guy just signed (still in process when this episode was recorded) as the “concentration camp” bill. It allocates “a staggering $160 billion to expand state terror and intensify their anti-immigrant crackdown.” The current ICE budget is $8 billion. The new bill keeps that funding and adds $15 for deportation and $45 billion for new camps. That increases ICE’s power by 20 times. This is how MAGA plans to stay in power. Stroop got her PhD in Russian History. After the Cold War there wasn’t much use for it, which is why she taught in Moscow for a while. She noticed that in Florida the big education push was to make sure everyone related to colleges and universities are on the same page. Not said so loud is that the same page is the state ideology. It’s what the Nazis did when they came to power. Now Linda McMahon, Secretary of Education, is using the term. A goal of dismantling public education is so that students would be funneled into Christian education (which implies conservative Christian views). These same Christians are a big supplier of resources for homeschooling. Stroop discusses her own conservative Christian education. As a student she was constantly told liberals are evil because they kill babies (allow abortion). Gay people want special rights. If a country disobeys God it will be punished. If it follows God’s will it will flourish. To get God’s blessing abortion must be banned, the queers must be kept at bay, and the political system must align with God’s will. There is a world of Christian broadcasting and Fox News carries similar ideas. Stroop tells the story of recognizing she is trans. She had hints, but didn’t figure it out until she was living in Moscow at age 33. She stopped going to church and began to have a few queer friends. That journey is what helped her reject the teaching of her youth. Her time in Moscow also helped her see the similarities between Russia and far-right Americans. Chalupa said Putin’s 2013 anti-gay laws were pivotal in the global fascist war against democracy. Because of the law Madonna and other superstars began to boycott Russia. There was one notable exception – the nasty guy held his 2013 Miss Universe pageant in Moscow. By his actions the nasty guy was telling Putin I’ve got your back and I know you have mine because my businesses depend on you and Russia. Putin invaded Crimea in 2014 and the nasty guy was elected in 2016. Christopher Steele (of the Steele dossier) noted something must have happened to the nasty guy during that pageant. Stroop reminds us that the nasty guy is currently targeting immigrants. But they won’t do that forever. You say the wrong thing, such as praise the Palestinians and condemn Israel, and they arrest you. They’re trying to Christian Nationalize the universities as well as the K-12 education system. They may not be able to get rid of all public schools, but they’ll try to Christianize what’s left. Since they think public education should not exist that remnant will be as bad as they can make it. Conservative Christian schools and conservative homeschool programs resist government standards because the parents have certain things they don’t want their children to learn, such as evolution and comprehensive sex ed. And human rights. They say that’s a secular concept. Human rights aren’t to be used for things that don’t contribute to human flourishing. Human dignity means one is not gay and not trans. If one is those things one is doing dignity wrong. Yeah, that very much depends on ones definition of “flourishing.” The gay and trans people I know flourish when they are allowed to be gay and trans. As a child getting a Christian education, Stroop felt out of sync a lot of time. One thing that guided her out was a subscription to Ranger Rick Magazine given to her by her moderate grandmother. That magazine is pro environment. At the end of the episode, starting at minute 45, Chalupa discusses the Gaslit Nation Action Guide, which has its own page.
Donald Trump is not the cause of America's fascism crisis. He's a symptom. Trump reflects a deeper disease of corruption, institutional failure, and widespread indifference. We can no longer afford to look away. We're in a moment that calls not just for outrage, but for action.
So study the action guide. The June 24 episode of Gaslit Nation has guest Anne Applebaum. She’s a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and author of Gulag, Iron Curtain, Red Famine, Twilight of Democracy, and Autocracy Inc. Host Andrea Chalupa’s grandfather, a Holodomor survivor, is cited in Red Famine. In 2023 Poland ousted the far right Law and Justice party. By razor-thin margins they retook power this year, only 18 months later. “Democracy isn’t a destination. It’s a constant, high-stakes battle.” We will all be in this struggle for the next few decades. Neither side will achieve a definitive victory. Applebaum commented on the nasty guy’s attack on Iran. The regime in Iran is waging two wars. One is against the US and Israel and has been going on for four decades. The other is against its own people. About the same time the bombs fell there was a crackdown on the opposition. Even though the bombs cause death and destruction and the crackdown causes more, the opposition is delighted with the mess. The nasty guy did not have Congressional approval for his attack. He did not explain why he did it nor convince the public for its need. There is no groundswell of opinion (well, there is... against him). He didn’t say whether uranium had been moved before he struck or what the bombs really accomplished. He hasn’t defined any strategy for Iran, the Middle East, or the world. That’s all a red flag. Perhaps he engaged in war because it is war. Perhaps because he likes the Fox News reporting. Perhaps he thinks he’ll look strong. Chalupa asked how the strike in Iran might affect Russia. As part of her reply Applebaum said:
Putin thinks a lot about other autocracies, and he's concerned about the survival of other autocracies because he thinks of himself as being part of a global war of ideas against liberal ideas, against democratic ideas, but also against the rule of law, against accountability and a win for the other side. In other words, the fall of a sister regime would be interpreted in Moscow is bad for them.
Maybe propping up the Iran regime is in Russia’s interest. But Syria fell because both Iran and Russia have been weakened. And Russia would not be taken seriously if it tried to be a broker in the Iran-Israel war. Even so, Russia maintains ties with and offers help to autocrats in Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Cuba in addition to Iran, China, and North Korea. Turning to the situation in the US, Applebaum said we can’t ever be completely lost into autocracy. One dictatorial family ruled Syria for 50 years, then it collapsed. Nothing is irreversible. What happens tomorrow depends on what we decide today. The US has has autocratic periods in the past, such as the rise of the Klan and Huey Long ruling Louisiana in the 1930s as an autocrat. An autocrat at the federal level at this scale is new. One type of corruption is financial. The only purpose of the nasty guy’s cryptocurrency is being a pathway to bribe him. He can’t do anything else with it. The other type of corruption is taking over government institutions and making them loyal to himself and not the Constitution. Right now American politics isn’t about discussing policy it’s about the nasty guy’s taking over institutions, the nature of the state. It’s about do we and the candidate believe in democracy or not? Is government to help or harm? We have to think differently to organize to stop that. In 1945 in Europe most Communist parties tried to take over with minimal violence. In Hungary this was known as salami tactics. Make a little change. Let the opposition adjust. Make another little change. Do it until the opposition is squeezed out. Many people won’t notice the individual steps. Orbán, Hungary’s current dictator, is doing the same thing. This is the most common way democracies fall. That’s not the method the nasty guy, with the help of DOGE, has been using in the US. His method makes progressives feel overwhelmed. The Soviet takeover of Eastern Europe was also all at once. Their takeover focused on education and culture, in hijacking the way people think. When they captured Berlin in May 1945 their first step was to take over the radio station, moving in German communists. Another early step was replacing kindergarten teachers. The nasty guy isn’t particularly interested in this. But the people around him are. American science is admired around the world. So why attack scientific institutions? It’s to hijack the way people think, to mold culture in their own image. That didn’t work in the Soviet Union, nor in Poland and Hungary. They didn’t win people’s minds. People assumed what the government said was a lie. They got their information from other places. Destroying institutions is easy. Getting people to change their thinking to conform to government ideas is quite hard. They can do a great deal of damage, but they won’t win. Those in the government will completely believe their ideology. When it doesn’t work they’ll blame spies and traitors. In the Soviet Union there were waves of harsh repressions. Those didn’t work either. So they would liberalize a little bit and that would prompt a popular uprising. Somebody began to see the value of obeying the law, of following the regime, wasn’t worth the low returns. Protests would be organized. The fall of communism in Poland was negotiated. There were already people who could take over the functions of government. In each of those countries by the 1980s few people believed the ideology or accepted the government, which had little legitimacy. Orbán faces his strongest opponent in the next election. He has massaged the system rather than smashing it. Has he made enough changes to the Constitution that he can’t be defeated electorally? Will he allow himself to lose? How far would he go to prevent a loss? What happens to the companies, the dominant ones in Hungary, connected to himself and his family and friends? Once Orbán is gone all the government institutions will have to be examined to see how to make them neutral again, how to make them belong to the nation rather than the party.

Friday, July 4, 2025

A description of an autocrat’s offenses against a free people

Emily Singer of Daily Kos reported the Big Brutal Bill passed the House. The margin 218-214 isn’t as tight as when it first passed the House a month ago. Two Republicans voted against it. Republicans in swing districts were concerned with the big Medicaid cuts and voted for it anyway. Those who said they could not vote for adding trillions to the deficit voted for it anyway. And Dear Leader got his wish to sign the bill on Independence Day, his declared deadline.
While Republicans celebrate the bill's passage, Democrats warn that it will be only a pyrrhic victory. The Democratic Party plans to hang the overwhelmingly unpopular legislation around the GOP's neck in the 2026 midterm elections. In a record-breaking speech lasting more than 8 hours and 32 minutes, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries lambasted Republicans’ bill, saying it violates the principles they pray to in the Bible. “We’re going to press on until victory is won,” he said. And Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said after the Senate passed the bill, “This vote will haunt Republicans for years to come.” In fact, even House Speaker Mike Johnson warned his members that passing the bill was probably the death knell of his narrow House majority, due to the bill’s deep Medicaid cuts. Yet, rather than amend the bill, he passed the Senate version and possibly sealed the fate of his speakership.
Already, a hospital in rural Nebraska, one that has mostly Medicaid patients, has said the Medicaid cuts make an already tough financial situation worse and they will close. Bill Addis of the Kos community reported that yesterday, while the brutal bill was still being debated, Rep. Jamie Raskin read a “preamble” for the Big Ugly Bill into the Congressional Record:
We the billionaires, and our King, in order to deform and sicken our Union, establish injustice, ensure domestic servility, weaken our peoples defenses, undermine our general welfare, and reserve to ourselves and our posterity staggering debt servitude for eternity, do hereby instruct the Republicans in Congress to strip 17 million people of their healthcare, increase copays, premiums and deductibles for everyone else, cut 42 million people off of nutritional assistance, increase the national debt by 4 trillion dollars, trash renewable energy systems, increase our electric bills for the carbon kings, all to weaken and destroy the Constitution of the people of these United States of America.
The nasty guy objected to Raskin’s words and Addis took some time to dissect them. Pedro Molina posted a cartoon on Kos showing the nasty guy siphoning gasoline out of an ambulance and into a very expensive car. The hose is labeled “Megabill.” Margaret Coker, in an article for ProPublica posted on Kos, discussed the Medicaid work mandate in Georgia, the only state that has a mandate. As of May this year about 3% of the nearly 250,000 eligible Georgians enrolled in Medicaid, even though 64% of those eligible are working. The reason is bureaucratic hurdles in the work verification system. That system is known as Georgia Pathways to Coverage and Gov. Brian Kemp admitted it was never designed for maximum enrollment. He’s in favor of moving from government-run health care. The system was glitchy and those who worked in the informal economy, such as house cleaners, didn’t have the required documentation. The national bill just signed, based on Georgia’s experience, will cost hundreds of millions in administrative costs and threaten coverage for nearly 16 million people. At least the federal system requires verifying employment only twice a year instead of monthly. Arkansas did have work requirements, but Republican state lawmakers changed their minds when the verification process threw 18,000 people off in just a few months. A federal judge helped that along by ruling the uninsured rate went up without increased employment. The federal bill gives $100 million to be divided among the states, but Georgia spent $55 million to get their system set up. And Kentucky expects administrative costs to top $200 million. The federal math isn’t mathin’. The federal bill says nothing about staffing or who pays for them. Georgia Pathways is understaffed and in March had a 5,000 application backlog. Verifying employment means more caseworkers, which means more expense for states. Or maybe the cost gets passed to counties.
“There are provisions in there that are very, very, very challenging, if not impossible, for us to implement,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski, an Alaska Republican, told reporters in June of the costs facing her state to meet the House bill requirements.
She said that before Alaska got an exemption on Medicaid changes. In today’s pundit roundup for Kos Chitown Kev started with a quote from Jennifer Rubin of the Contrarian on a topic appropriate for Independence Day.
Desperate for some inspiration, I decided to reread the entire Declaration of Independence. We know it as an aspirational document (“We hold these truths…”). We understand it as a repudiation of tyranny (“Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government.”). It is both those things, but it is also a compendium of complaints, a description of an autocrat’s offenses against a free people. And that was the part I found strangely relevant to our times. The signers railed about exclusionary immigration policies that hurt the colonies (“He has endeavored to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither”). They inveighed against barriers to trade (“cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world”). And they condemned imposing “Taxes on us without our Consent,” which, if we remember that unilaterally imposed tariffs are a consumer tax, also sounds familiar. Tyrants, then and now, seek to dominate and micromanage commerce to the detriment of ordinary people seeking a better life. And notice the common problem, then and now, when a tyrant attempts to corrupt the rule of law by seeking to intimidate and threaten members of the judiciary (“He has obstructed the Administration of Justice…. He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices”); seeks to impair due process (“depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury”); and even ships people out of the country for punishment (“Transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences”). The tyrant playbook has not changed much in nearly 250 years.
In the comments are several good cartoons and memes. A cartoon posted by paulpro and created by Branch shows a man of color doing yard work while inside the house a man holds a “Mass Deportation Now!” sign and the woman says, “Let’s wait for him to finish cleaning up the yard before putting the sign back.” Underneath the cartoon is a tweet from Human, “How did the poor guy mowing your lawn every two weeks become the biggest national security threat, rather than a Defense Secretary posting war plans on Signal?” Another cartoon posted by paulpro shows Lady Liberty blowing out candles in a birthday cake. Uncle Sam asks, “A 249th birthday! What do we wish for?” Lady Liberty replies, “A 250th.” The Political Cartoon Gallery posted one from Morten Morland showing the nasty guy talking to the founding fathers, “Let’s declare a big, beautiful independence from the tyranny of checks and balances!” A third cartoon posted by paulrpo is by Clay Bennett. Half of it shows a classroom and has the words, “Those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Those who prevent history from being taught fully intend to repeat it.” The other half shows a library in which the only book is Project 2025. A meme posted by Angie is Pissed has a creator I can’t make out. It says:
Unfriendly Reminder: If you only support abortion in instance of rape or incest, you’re reinforcing the idea that in order for a woman to have a right to her body, someone else has to violate it first.
I like this one: Exsyntrix posted a cartoon by Garth German showing people reacting to a woman wearing a shirt with the words, “Freedom includes me making choices that conflict with your faith.” A week ago Lisa Needham of Kos reported the nasty guy might have his very own housing crash.
Federal Housing Finance Agency Director William Pulte just ordered Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to treat cryptocurrency—a volatile and largely unregulated mess—as an asset when evaluating whether to purchase mortgages from banks. Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae support about 70% of the mortgages in the country. They don’t issue loans but instead buy up home loans and package them into mortgage-backed securities, which are then sold to private investors. Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae then guarantee payments to those investors if the mortgage holder defaults. You can see where this is going. Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae are likely going to have to issue loans to people partly based on their cryptocurrency holdings. So when the cryptocurrency market collapses and homebuyers default on loans, Freddie and Fannie will have to cover the resulting losses.
Ten days ago Needham reported on the state of abortion to mark the third anniversary of the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade. At the time Justice Alito promised the Dobbs decision would return abortion to the states. A lot of people knew that promise was a lie. Yeah, there is an effort to ban abortion nationwide. It is shown in trying to apply the 1873 Comstock Act that criminalizes mailing “obscene materials” to shipping abortion drugs across state lines. A problem for anti-abortion crusaders is even in red states people want abortion to be legal, as shown by approving ballot measures to do that. There are efforts to ban travel for abortion and efforts by red state officials to try to reach into blue states to prosecute doctors and clinics. And the nasty guy is trying to bar Planned Parenthood from receiving Medicaid funds. In Texas a man was arrested for slipping abortion pills into his girlfriend’s coffee. Yeah, that is a crime. But the man is being charged with murder under the claim that harming an embryo is the same as killing a human. The case is really about making life hell for anyone seeking an abortion out of state. As part of that there are efforts to allow one state to demand health records for suspected abortions in other states. States are criminalizing pregnancy, as in banning taking certain drugs while pregnant. Or having to prove a miscarriage wasn’t an abortion. Even in states where abortion is legal and protected clinics are running low on money and having to close. Planned Parenthood had to close four in each of Michigan, New York, Illinois, Iowa, and Minnesota. People are dying from not being able to get an abortion. But many states have stopped tracking that data. The public won’t be able to tell. In contrast, abortion, especially medicated abortion, is significantly less dangerous than pregnancy. Needham also reported that the Supreme Court agreed to hear a case based on a boring technical question. But it can have profound implications because the plaintiff is a chain of crisis pregnancy centers. Those are the places that advertise pregnancy care. Once a patient shows up they use a variety of tactics, based on lies, to keep that woman from having an abortion. So the case is really about protecting the ability for these clinics to lie. Since the high court is done for the summer I guess this case will have oral arguments in the fall. Needham reported that Homeland Secretary Kristi Noem went to the notorious CECOT prison in El Salvador to have photos of her posing in front of an overcrowded prison cell. Yet, she said they were receiving terrific care – mattresses, full meals, exercise, and medical checkups. The nasty guy and Noem knew that if Klmar Abrego Garcia was ever let out of CECOT he could prove Noem was lying. That was a big reason why they refused to bring him back, though being sent there was a mistake they admitted to. Abrego Garcia is back and is talking about his experiences. Remember the Iraqi Abu Ghraib prison scandal from 20 years ago? Yeah, that’s how Abrego Garcia was treated. He’s amending his legal complaint (not well described) to tell about his treatment. Through that court document he’s also telling the world. Abrego Garcia is incarcerated right now facing bogus charges. He asked the judge to keep him there. He knows the moment he is released ICE would immediately deport him again. My city has given up on fireworks for Independence Day. Detroit had a big display on the river last week, but from newspaper reports it would have been hard to get to. Other cities around me have already done their fireworks display or won’t do one at all. So the residents around me have bought fireworks at the various stores and since 9:30 this evening the noise has been constant. I think the city ordinance says they have to stop at 11:30, which is bedtime for me.

Thursday, July 3, 2025

Not the land of the free, but the home of the caged

Lisa Needham of Daily Kos reported that the Department of Justice has issued a memo saying DOJ attorneys were to strip the citizenship of immigrants that have committed certain crimes. Yeah, this is a historical thing, though rarely used. It’s usually reserved for literal Nazis who hid their past when they became citizens. The memo lists the usual crimes that can trigger denaturalization – torture, espionage, trafficking – but they added a really bad one: any other case determined sufficiently important to pursue. Yep, that can be anything. To make all that worse denaturalization cases will be done in civil court where the burden of proof is lower and the victim doesn’t have the right to an attorney.
Of course, the Trump administration was never going to stop at deporting undocumented immigrants who’ve committed violent crimes. And it was never going to stop at deporting undocumented immigrants with no criminal records or immigrants with temporary legal status. The inevitable next step was to strip citizenship from those who already have it. And after that, who knows? But rest assured Trump will figure out another way to hurt people.
Thom Harumann of the Kos community and an independent pundit posted an essay comparing Dachau, the first Nazi concentration camp, to Alligator Alcatraz. This comparison further pushes my belief that “Alligator Auschwitz” fits better. Dachau opened just three months after Hitler took power. It was described as a place for political prisoners. From the beginning it was known for its brutality. The first people sent there were not criminals or traitors. They were people the regime considered a threat or a convenient enemy.
The Nazis didn’t hide Dachau. They advertised it. It was a warning. A message. Step out of line, and this is where you go.
Only much later did they add extermination facilities. Alligator Alcatraz isn’t just a deportation facility. It is a political prison to humiliate, dehumanize, and broadcast terror. It is a symbol that American democracy is being publicly dissected, cruelly, and with calculation. It is also proof-of-concept. If it succeeds – as political spectacle – there will be more. Another similarity is the ongoing state of emergency. Florida declared an immigration state of emergency in 2023. It allows the governor to act without oversight. The Nazis used the 1933 Reichstag Fire to give themselves emergency power, which removed democratic guardrails. A third similarity is location. Both are in isolated places. Escape is close to impossible. Oversight is nonexistent. Rights lawyers and journalists will find it hard to access.
The most dangerous thing about Alligator Alcatraz isn’t the alligators. It’s the message. The message that some people are less than human. That caging them is acceptable. That they deserve no rights, no hearing, no compassion. Just mud and barbed wire. That was the logic behind Dachau. And it’s becoming the logic behind Trump’s America. This facility is being built not to solve a problem, but to create one. To manufacture outrage. To train the public to see brown-skinned immigrants not as workers or families or survivors but as invaders. Intruders. Animals. And that’s when the door opens for something far worse.
There are ways to engage: Lawsuits to challenge it, using any statute possible. Journalists to document construction, conditions, and policies. Peaceful protests. Using proper words – not “detention center” but “political prison” or “migrant concentration camp” and people were not sent there “for their own protection.” Learn how Dachau started and what happened there. Teach your neighbors. Democracy ends with a shrug. We need to commit to human dignity, due process, and liberty.
If we wait too long, we may wake up one day and discover we are no longer the land of the free, but only the home of the caged.
Today’s pundit roundup for Kos has a couple good cartoons. One posted by Jon Cooper and created by Bagley shows handcuffed men in suits boarding an ICE bus. The caption:
Something you will never see: ICE rounding up the CEOs who illegally exploited undocumented workers...
Cooper added, “I wonder why we aren’t seeing this? A cartoon posted by paulpro and created by Geoff Coats shows the nasty guy handing a sack of cash to a rich dude while beside them is a MAGA hospital patient with a high bill. The nasty guy says, “Don’t worry, little buddy. We can still hate trans people together.” Needham also reported Republicans of North Carolina introduced a state bill to replace over a third of state election staff jobs with political appointees.
The new state elections director, Sam Hayes, had a very Trump-ish explanation for why he needs to eliminate experienced nonpartisan staff, NC Newsline reported: “These positions would just allow me the flexibility that I need to conduct that reorganization and make sure that folks that are surrounding me, certainly my direct reports and I, are aligned on the vision for the agency as I set forward.” That’s just code for “I want a bunch of stooges who will help continue the GOP project of undermining elections in the state.” But somehow, according to Hayes, this will also be nonpartisan. Yes, replacing nonpartisan staff with political appointees is totally nonpartisan indeed. It’s not surprising that Hayes only knows how to operate like a hardcore partisan, as his previous gig was as counsel for the GOP House speaker.
Any guesses to his “vision for the agency”? Dan K of the Kos community started a post with:
Lots of stories both here and elsewhere have been written in the past few days about how Republicans are committing political suicide by pushing the One Hugely Ugly Bill, how it will not only cost them the House but also the Senate. Very few if any have asked the obvious questions: Don’t you think they know this? And if they do, why are voting for it anyway? That’s because they may have come to the conclusion that they will not have to pay a political price because the next election is being rigged for them.
We don’t have one election system, we have fifty. And many of them are run by honest people dedicated to an accurate count no matter who wins (though see above). But Republicans have been tampering with elections since at least Nixon. Republicans may not be counting on this. There has been a lot of talk about cuts to Medicaid but no talk that the main cuts take place after the midterms. Three weeks ago Jeremy Kohler, in an article for ProPublica posted on Kos wrote that Republicans are getting annoyed with citizens undoing their work. The citizens have been passing state constitutional amendments and voter initiatives. So Republican led legislatures are trying to make citizen initiatives harder to pass. Missouri citizens led efforts on two big measures, one of them restoring abortion rights. Abortion was also the issue in Arizona. The other Missouri initiative was sick leave benefits, which also passed in Alaska and Nebraska. In those states the effort is to undo what citizens did. Republicans in Florida, Utah, Montana, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Arizona, Ohio, North Dakota and South Dakota are trying to restrict initiatives, making changing laws outside of legislatures harder.
Republican elected officials across these states make strikingly similar arguments: They say the initiative process is susceptible to fraud and unduly influenced by out-of-state money. What’s more, they say that they, as elected officials, represent the true will of the people more than ballot initiatives do.
I’ve worked on a couple citizen initiatives in Michigan and likely gearing up for two more. The only ones associated with fraud were Republican efforts, such as in 2004 getting a same-sex marriage ban into the state constitution. Signature gatherers said they were working for one initiative while the actual forms were for the harmful one. As for out-of-state money, Republicans are good at collecting cash for a cause from across the country. As for elected officials representing the true will of the voters, I’ll believe that when gerrymandering is outlawed and every state draws district lines through citizen commissions, as is now done in Michigan. Needham reported that California is in a tough spot – it’s regular fire season started swiftly over the weekend. And a good chunk of its National Guard, who normally serve as fire fighters, are being used by the nasty guy as his personal police force. Which means California is asking the Department of Defense if, pretty please, the state could have the use of its own National Guard. The original request was for 200 guardsmen. The DOD was magnanimous in offering 150. How can a state have enough guardsmen for state-level challenges if the president can yank them away at any time? Back in 2018 the nasty guy punished Washington state by deliberately delaying wildfire aid. This year he isn’t punishing through money, but by yanking personnel. He’s got lots of ways to punish blue states. Last week Wednesday Alix Breeden of Kos reported that Jeff Bezos planned to marry Lauren Sanchez at the 14th-century Grande Scuola Misericordia in Venice. But locals planned to form a blockade in the canals around the venue, in addition to other protesting. Protesters won and the venue was changed to Tese 91 of the Arsenale, which is described as a shipyard. Part of the protest was a huge banner laid out in St. Mark’s Square saying, “If you can rent Venice for your wedding you can pay more tax.” Though protesters got the wedding venue switched, Bezos’ visit still caused havoc. He kicked out all the other paying guests at his chosen hotel so that he wouldn’t be disturbed. Breeden then listed several ways Bezos has been bending a knee to the nasty guy.

Wednesday, July 2, 2025

Ideological bumper stickers are for fundraising, not life

Emily Singer of Daily Kos reported the Big Brutal Bill has passed the Senate. Three Republican senators voted no so the vice nasty broke the tie in favor of passage. Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska seemed to be heading towards no, but the Republican leadership gave her a deal that the Medicaid cuts won’t hit Alaska and threw in some other goodies so she voted yes. How sweet that Alaska is protected from a bill that screws over all the other states. How annoying that Murkowski doesn’t care about all the other states. And then said she hoped the House would correct some of the bill’s problems. The bill goes back to the House because the Senate made changes to what the House passed. One of those changes was deeper Medicaid cuts. Already some of the Freedom Caucus members are saying the bill doesn’t cut Medicaid and the social safety net enough. They don’t like how the bill will balloon the national debt and they certainly aren’t going to give up on tax cuts to the wealthy. Singer reported the vice nasty wrote on X:
The thing that will bankrupt this country more than any other policy is flooding the country with illegal immigration and then giving those migrants generous benefits. The OBBB fixes this problem. And therefore it must pass. Everything else—the [Congressional Budget Office] score, the proper baseline, the minutiae of the Medicaid policy—is immaterial compared to the ICE money and immigration enforcement provisions.
Yeah, he wrote that throwing millions of people off Medicaid is “immaterial” and just “minutiae.” Singer rebuts the opening lie: Immigrants lower budget deficits by about $100 billion a year because undocumented workers pay taxes but can’t receive benefits. Then Singer quoted several Democrats who say the loss of Medicaid is not “minutiae.” Merlin196360 of the Kos community used a term I like: “MAGAcaid.” They started their post with a tweet from digby:
One more time, folks. This isn't a Trump thing. “Reagan proved deficits don’t matter.”--Vice President Dick Cheney "They'll get over it." - Mitch McConnell This is all performative nonsense meant to secure tax cuts and keep working America poor, sick and desperate. It's their raison de'etre.
Merlin196360 added:
While some element of fear of Trump supporters may have played a role in MAGAcaid, what’s really going on is that the current GOP is filled with people who simply hate to pay taxes for the social safety net. Full stop. The legacy media still talks about — cough, cough — “moderates” in Congress, but I’m with Catherine Rampell of now MSNBC: GOP moderates on the Hill are like Bigfoot sightings. There is no proof they exist.
Republicans say they vote for the bill because they fear the nasty guy. But what this post says, and what I’ve concluded, is Republicans, nearly all of them, want the Medicaid cuts because they hate paying taxes so that other people get “free stuff.” I don’t know the origins of the various pieces of this gigantic bill. I know the nasty guy campaigned on extending the big tax cuts that favor the wealthy. Did he also say the cuts should be “paid for” by cutting Medicaid? Or did that cruel mess come from Congressional Republican leadership? Oliver Willis of Kos reported that Elon Musk decried the bill the Senate passed because it isn’t cruel enough, it doesn’t cut the social safety net enough. When one hast $400 billion (didn’t Musk lose about half that over the last half-year?) why does the cost of Medicaid matter so much to him? Why does he demand to make the lives of poor people even worse? From what I’ve figured out he doesn’t value his life for who he is or for the huge amount of money he has. He values the difference between what he has and what the lowest people have. The further he beats them down the better he thinks he looks. Musk’s comments did not please the nasty guy, so their “feud” is back on. The nasty guy is talking about having DOGE examine Musk’s billions in government contracts. He also mentioned perhaps deporting Musk, sending him back to South Africa. That is one worth sending back. In a pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin had a few good quotes. A tweet from Greg Sargent commented on the vice nasty’s quote above:
What JD Vance is really doing here is telling MAGA voters who are set to lose health coverage due to Medicaid cuts not to think too much about that eventuality. It'll all be worth it once they get to see lots more migrants detained and frog-marched on to deportation planes.
Jilll Lawrence of The Bulwark talked about transgender kids:
Studies do not support the idea that peer pressure leads to “rapid-onset gender dysphoria” among susceptible teens or young adults (the “social contagion” effect). In addition, research shows that the prevalence of regret among people who transition is “extremely low.” And intriguing recent research points to possible factors in brain anatomy that correlate with identifying as transgender—which suggests it is wrong to describe transgender identity as a “subjective preference,” as the Ohio attorney general did in 2023. So let’s be clear: Trump’s “two-genders-only” is not science, it’s an ideological bumper sticker. Fundraising pitches are just that simple, but life is not. Here’s what the American Medical Association told governors in 2021: “Empirical evidence has demonstrated that trans and non-binary gender identities are normal variations of human identity and expression.”
G Elliott Morris tweeted a graph about Medicaid. Before I got to that I thought to check what the government spends on Medicaid. The number isn’t straightforward because Medicaid is open-ended. The federal program pays a particular percent of whatever the state Medicaid programs incur under the rules of the time. At least that’s what I came up with while scanning a Medicaid financing document put out by Congress. The closest I came up with for a dollar amount was from Figure 2: All personal health care in 2023 was $4.1 trillion. Medicaid paid 18.8% of that total or $771 billion. Figure 3 says that for 2023 federal spending was $614 billion and state programs paid $280 billion. However, news organizations have been saying there would be $800 billion in cuts to Medicaid. I didn’t flunk arithmetic all those decades ago and I’m pretty sure $771 billion is less than $800 billion. Then I see, as in this article from CBS News, there is a missing phrase (at least in my memory): “over a decade.” So $80 billion a year (or $93 billion a year in the Senate version). That makes more sense. Which means (a guess here) that for 2026 the cut is about 10%. So back to that graph that Morris tweeted. It divided up the Medicaid recipients in 2022 into groups. 37% were children and 9% were 65 and over. That meant 54% were working age. Out of that 54%, 48% (or 26% of the total) worked that year. 7% worked the next year 27% were disabled. 12% would soon leave Medicaid. And only 6% (or 3% of the total) were not working. From the way Republicans say it (and I quite possible have mixed this up) they want to get that 3% working so they institute work requirements and figure Medicaid expenses will go down by 10%. Yeah, my math isn’t mathing. In the comments are several good cartoons and memes. One by Kevin Kallaugher shows a globe with dynamite attached that is labeled “US Gov’t, Int’l Relations, Int’l Trade, The Environment, ETC.” The nasty guy is about to set off the dynamite. Behind him is this discussion:
Lady Liberty: “Are you going to watch and do nothing?!” Elephant: “NO!! I’m going to close my eyes and do nothing!”
Art Garfunky posted a cartoon of a cop holding up a skin color chart beside a stopped driver. The pale colors on top are labeled “Ignore” while the darker shades are labeled “Yank out of car.” Garfunky added:
There are almost a million people residing here illegally from Europe, Canada, and Australia, but you don’t see footage of ICE hassling them.
In a cartoon Lalo Alcaraz has a better name for the new detention center in Florida I wrote about yesterday. He calls it “Alligator Auschwitz.” exlrrp posted a tweet from the Florida GOP. They are indeed selling “Alligator Alcatraz” shirts and other merch. paulpro posted a meme that starts with a tweet from Adam Kinzinger, “Imagine being a grown man waiting for Donald Trump to tell you what to do. Lol. Super beta.” paulpro replied to that with a cartoon by Clay Bennett showing a man in his hands and knees wearing a GOP shirt and red hat with a dog collar around his neck and holding a leash in his mouth looking up at a guy in a dark suit and red tie. In another tweet paulpro quoted a tweet by The Serfs: “If it took 8 days to build a massive concentration camp in Florida then it means they could build and house the homeless at any point but choose not to.” Then paulpro quoted chris.writes.books:
Elon Musk said, “Homelessness is a lie.” Hear that? A billionaire thinks you’re faking your poverty. You genuinely can’t make this up. Even comic book villains are less cartoonishly evil.
Captain Frogbert responded to cartoons about abortion (which I won’t describe) first with a quote:
The conservative solution to any problem is always the proximate cause of the problem to begin with.
Then Frogbert added:
How to have fewer abortions: + Provide universal, age-appropriate sex education. + Safe and effective birth control to everyone asking for it. + Universal healthcare including pre- and post-natal care. + Ensure a living wage for all Americans. + Secure the civil rights of women. + Investigate and punish all rape severely. + Teach boys to be better men. + Do the work needed to make abortions safe, legal, and rare. How NOT to have fewer abortions, but ensure more women die: + Criminalize abortion. Conservatism is ignorant and harmful to humanity. Conservatism is not Christian.
In June, the views of this blog set a record of 48,310 views. It is quite a bit higher than any month in over a year. In the last 30 days (which doesn’t line up with June, but it is info I can get), 18 thousand views came from Brazil, 13.5 thousand from the US, 8.9 thousand from Vietnam (!), and about 1.5 thousand from both Britain and Argentina. Blogger will give me view counts from 19 countries and at the bottom of the list is Colombia with 133 views. In the last 7 days there were 7.5 thousand views from Brazil, 6.8 thousand from the US, 2.2 thousand from Vietnam, down to 38 from Russia. In overall statistics (from when Blogger started keeping stats for me in 2010) the top ten countries are the US (238 thousand), Singapore, Hong Kong, Italy, France, Brazil, Russia, Germany, Vietnam, and Sweden (9.8 thousand). Brazil hit the top ten in January and is now at 6th. Vietnam didn’t have enough views for me to notice until mid May and is now at 9th. The number of views has been climbing since March 2024, when it was 2668 views. There were a few months in the year before then that had high counts, but not consistently. After 17 years of writing the world has found my blog and declared it worth reading.

Tuesday, July 1, 2025

A concentration camp with heat, mosquitoes, and alligators

Rachel Treisman of NPR reported on Alligator Alcatraz – a new detention facility in the Florida Everglades on the site of an abandoned airport. The site was assembled quickly and the nasty guy visited it today to mark its “completion.” That it is on the grounds of an old airport is important because deportation flights can take off from there. The site could be created quickly because no buildings were constructed. Instead it is made up of tents and FEMA trailers. It will have 5,000 beds. Proponents say it has the best security – no civilization nearby and lots of alligators and pythons beyond the perimeter. Trying to leave would be deadly. Protests to the site also developed quickly. Protests are from conservationists who want to protect the Everglades and Indigenous groups who protest the use of their ancestral lands. There are also protests from immigration advocates worried about the lack of oversight and detainees being held in tents during high Florida heat and humidity with lots of mosquitoes and a big chance of hurricanes. I heard about Alligator Alcatraz this morning as a voice of a government official described it on NPR. I didn’t get the name and it must have been during a news report, thus not part of NPR’s stories that get transcripts. So I went looking for it. Meleah Lyden of WUSF wrote about what is known about the site. Officials declare the site to be temporary, so temporary they’re not building a sewer system. But “temporary” isn’t defined. That means there are no environmental safeguards and the waste runoff could pollute the Everglades. Between the sun, humidity, mosquitoes, and living in tents life there will be cruel. The money to create the site is coming from FEMA, meaning it will have less money when disaster strikes. Lyden wrote about requirements of other new detention centers, such as for food and laundry, but the Department of Homeland Security could issue waivers. That doesn’t sound good. I found out there is such a site as Know Your Meme, which explains memes that appear on the internet. It looks like their page for Alligator Alcatraz was updated between when I saw it this morning and when I am doing my evening writing. In addition to explaining what Alligator Alcatraz is all about there are images that people have created, such as alligators and pythons in guard uniforms. The page includes a tweet from Alt National Park Service (which I take to be someone other than the official NPS):
Starting the first week of July, when South Florida’s heat index regularly hits 100F, they plan to detain up to 5,000 people in tents. No A/C. No real shelter. Just suffocating heat, choking humidity, and swarms of mosquitoes. The location? A remote airstrip deep in the Everglades, surrounded by marshes, alligators, and invasive pythons. Florida officials are calling it a “detainment camp.” They say it’s fine because “We are swamp creatures,” and even brag that nature will “do us some favors.” This isn’t policy. It’s cruelty plain and simple. And it’s happening on U.S. soil.
We are swamp creatures? Can’t say I’ve visited a swamp recently. Dr. KevinYoung added:
You all understand that this is a Concentration Camp, right? RIGHT?!
I also saw cartoons such as one posted here. But I didn’t find the quote I had heard and I can’t reproduce it from memory. What I remember and thought about afterward was how the speaker described the place, each feature reinforcing how bad the place would be for anyone sent there. For me that translated into the speaker saying how important they were because they had the power to send the worst people to this horrible place. Alas, knowing the way the nasty guy and his minions operate many of the people who will be sent here are actually quite nice people. In Monday’s pundit roundup for Daily Kos Greg Dworkin included a tweet by Neil Stone. The tweet includes a chart of the reported cases of measles in the US since 1921. The number fluctuated widely with over 800,000 cases in about 1940 and about 150,000 later that decade. The measles vaccine came out in 1963. Within four years the cases fell below 100,000 where they have stayed since, with most years at or close to zero. Stone added:
Yes I can see why people like RFK Jr are sceptical about vaccines and asking questions I mean it's really hard to tell if they work or not A real head scratcher
In the comments exlrrp posted a meme:
Now hiring ICE agents! Aggressive? Disregard for due process? Enjoy targeting people of color? Then congratulations – you’re everything we’re looking for. ICE wants you! (No morals? No problem!)
Laugh About It cartoons posted one by Crampton. A woman is speaking to rabbits hiding under the furniture:
Yeah, it could be World War III. But it might be just some dudes bombing people to make their weenies feel something.
Kos of Kos wrote about Hungary’s authoritarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán:
Orbán shares MAGA’s worldview down to the bone: a politics rooted in white nationalism, xenophobia, bigotry toward LGBTQ+ people, fearmongering about immigrants, and open contempt for liberal democratic institutions. He’s taken a sledgehammer to press freedom, and rewritten Hungary’s Constitution multiple times to attempt to entrench permanent one-party rule. Who needs a think tank like the Heritage Foundation when MAGA can just follow the Orbán blueprint? ... Orbán took what was once one of Europe’s rising post-Soviet democracies and ran it into the ground. Today, Hungary is the poorest country in the European Union, while the nation continues to suffer some of the highest inflation rates in the bloc. Ironically, Trump’s tariffs are compounding the country’s ills. Furthermore, Hungary is hemorrhaging young people. Its economy is increasingly dependent on authoritarian allies, like China and Russia. It’s isolated from its neighbors, distrusted by democratic partners, and rapidly becoming a cautionary tale for the rest of Europe.
The opposition party Tisza holds a 15% lead in polling for next year’s Parliament elections, though no date has been set. Authoritarianism produces poverty, political isolation, and moral rot. In America the nasty guy doesn’t care about how is working-class base is faring economically and MAGA fans ignore that Orbán has crashed Hungary’s economy. It’s enough they hate the right people. At the 80th anniversary of the founding of the United Nations an Associated Press article posted on Kos discussed the current state of the institution. The UN was founded on June 26, 1945. This was after Germany had surrendered, but before Japan did. There were 50 charter members with 193 members now. The first words of the Charter were “to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war.” There has not been a WWIII, and we can thank the UN for that, but there has been war. Right now there is war in Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan, Congo, Haiti, Myanmar, Israel-Iran, and smaller skirmishes around the world. Diplomats at the UN are anxious because the nasty guy wants to review all the UN agencies. He’s also said the US will cut is contribution and other countries will as well, so the UN is facing 20% job cuts. The UN still sends out peacekeeping missions and small states don’t worry about larger neighbors occupying them. There is wide praise for UN agencies, especially those dealing with hunger, refugees, and children. There is also praise for the International Atomic Energy Agency, the nuclear watchdog, and the International Telecommunications Union, which allocates global radio spectrum and satellite orbits, among other things. And it remains an essential place for diplomats from around the world to meet, even if there is no results. Things not going well are: The gridlock in the Security Council’s permanent members of Russia, China, Britain, France, and the US. And a lot of the global issues, like climate change, aren’t getting addressed.
Ian Bremmer, who heads the Eurasia Group, a political risk and consulting firm, said the Trump administration’s attempts to undermine the United Nations — which the United States conceived in 1945 — will make China more important. With Trump exiting from the World Health Organization, the U.N. agency helping Palestinian refugees known as UNRWA and cutting humanitarian funding, he said, China will become “the most influential and the most deep-pocketed” in those agencies. Bremmer, who calls himself a close adviser to Guterres, insisted the United Nations remains relevant — “with no caveats.” “It’s a relatively poorly resourced organization. It has no military capabilities. It has no autonomous foreign policy,” Bremmer said. “But its legitimacy and its credibility in speaking for 8 billion people on this little planet of ours is unique."