A mob execution

“It looks like nothing so much as a mob execution.” That's former Deputy Attorney General Harry Litman's description of today's violence—the most widely reported instance of it, anyway—in occupied Minneapolis, where once again ICE agents murdered an American who posed zero threat to them because fuck you, that's why.

The lies from DHS and the White House came fast and furious, just like last time. They described the victim, military veteran and VA nurse Alex Pretti, as a "domestic terrorist." They called him "an assassin." They described a sequence of events that did not happen. They made up a scenario that fit their preferred narrative despite the video evidence that shows the true sequence of events:

ICE agents violently attacked another victim, then Pretti comes to that person's assistance, then—while Pretti's back is to the agents—the agents pepper spray him at close range, then the agents wrestle Pretti to the ground, and while a blinded Pretti is flailing an ICE agent pistol-whops him in the head, then an ICE agent discovers Pretti had a holstered (legally registered and permitted) gun on his person and confiscates it, then one agent shoots Pretti, then other agents shoot Pretti, all while Pretti is struggling to even get to all-fours on the ground. Ten shots. To a disarmed, beaten and and blinded man sprawled face down in the street who at no time posed any threat to anyone involved.

Then some of the agents attempted to leave the scene. Then DHS denied local authorities access to the scene. Then the lies came spewing out.

Felon47 even tried to place blame on Minnesota officials, the same officials that ICE and DHS prevented from even approaching the scene, alleging that Mr. Pretti was menacing ICE agents and local law enforcement is at fault for failing to protect ICE agents. If I may quote Alan Tudyk's TV version of Harry Vanderspiegle, "this is some bullshit."

It now seems inevitable that, unless Congress acts swiftly, Minnesota governor Walz will, someday soon, have to deploy the state's National Guard to protect Minnesotans from the Federal government. And then the fireworks really start.

ICE is a terrorist organization and every elected official not in the thrall of Felon47 and his cult needs to be saying that loud and clear at every opportunity. DHS Secretary Noem needs to be impeached. DHS needs to be defunded. Investigations need to proceed unhindered, real ones, ones performed by state officials and not the corrupted Federal agencies, and the ICE and DHS agents (including Noem) who committed these and every other unjustifiable violent atrocity need to be prosecuted.

And Congress has to WAKE THE FUCK UP and demand every Republican who is currently collaborating with the fascist regime either (belatedly) honor their oaths of office and impeach Felon47 and his entire cadre of enablers or resign immediately. (I see that FINALLY, today Sen. Patty Murray is declaring she won't support the funding bill for DHS. FINALLY, Murray is calling on Republicans to join Dems in efforts to end the abuses. I know she was trying to be pragmatic before, but pragmatic's just not gonna cut it. Better late than never.)

If this is allowed to continue, we're gonna be smack dab in the throes of that second American Civil War Captain Pike told us about.

Some quotes from around the Interwebs:

Whatever one’s views of the circumstances that ICE agents confront, the gravity of these reflexive official lies to the American people can’t be overstated. The highest federal official immediately jumped in to defame and disparage the victim of an ICE killing. That is exactly how totalitarian governments react. It’s the sort of official dishonesty that can and should bring down governments. ... Taken together—the shooting itself and the federal response afterward—the episode screams out profound contempt for both the Constitution and the public it exists to serve.

...

Whatever one’s views of the costs to the country of illegal immigration—and all indications are that the people caught in the dragnet of the Trump surge have overwhelmingly committed no offense other than possible immigration violations—they pale in comparison to the shredding of the Constitution and the vicious tactics of federal law enforcement, cheered on by the highest government officials.

Members of Congress, every one of them, need to assess with the highest sobriety where they want to be now and what they want the United States to represent and portray to the world.

—Harry Litman

 

The murder of Alex Jeffrey Pretti was not a mistake, or a tragedy, or a misunderstanding. It was a choice. The president of the United States and his regime saw what its masked agents had done to Renee Good and decided to do more of it, at a larger scale. Killing Alex Jeffrey Pretti was the Trump administration’s policy.

—Jonathan Last

 

Given DHS making up stories about what we can plainly see in the murder videos, we have to just presume every other death under their purview is also murder.

—Bob Schooley

 

I don’t agree with people saying ICE and CBP need “more training.” They’re doing exactly what this administration has trained them to—impose a reign of fear in blue cities. They don’t need more training. They need to be ripped up root and branch.

—Bill Kristol(!)

 

Thank you Alex Pretti for honoring and caring for veterans like me. You deserved better from this country and I am truly sorry that they failed to protect and honor your life the same way you have protected and honored so many of our lives. This veteran salutes and thanks you.

—@pissedoffarmyvet.bsky.social

 

I want all the right-wing fuckers of this country to see this. They claim to care about veterans, well this guy actually cared for veterans, and their votes murdered him in the street.

—E. Perkins (@hauntedpumpkin.bsky.social)

 

Donald Trump sees blue states as something like conquered territory. In his mind, he won them fair and square in the 2024 presidential election. The country is his. He owns it. And all its might falls on his political foes and those who resist him.

—Josh Marshall

 

Tin soldiers and Trump is coming

We're finally on our own

This winter I hear the drumming

Two dead in Minnesota

Gotta get down to it,

Icemen are cutting us down

Should have been gone long ago

What if you knew her and found her dead on the ground

How can you run when you know?

—DS9 writer Robert Hewitt Wolfe paraphrasing Neil Young

 

Cynics and defeatists share the same story as authoritarians do: that nothing is worth trying, the conclusion is foregone, hope is naïve, and attempts to resist are too small or futile. Don't listen to them. Do not give up. Try. A better world is possible. We will win. We must.

—Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez

Tagged Politics, President VonClownstick, Republicans, Posted on January 24, 2026 at 11:25PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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Psychoanalyzing a bigoted narcissist

I've got a lot of stuff to do here, from basic household chores to some minor work stuff to website repairs to eBay listings to leisure stuff like sketches, novels, comics, etc., and yet instead I'm allowing myself to go down a rabbit hole based on reading something in the news. Because I'm just that broken, I guess.

Not as broken as President Ralph Wiggum Palpatine, though. I mean, no one is as broken as that guy, which the world was reminded of this week when he made his latest bat-guano-crazy speech in Davos (my favorite moment of which was when he asserted that his Swiss hosts should be worshipping the United States because "without us, you'd all be speaking German"). 

But it's actually something from the big interview he gave to the New York Times a couple of weeks ago—you know, the one in which he said he was restricted in his actions by nothing other than his own morality—that grabbed me today. And it isn't anything new.

It's Felon47’s remarks about the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and its subsequent support measures that got me spinning out.

Everyone knows Felon47 is a racist. That's been clear for decades. Most of us also know that at the root of every grievance that broken human cesspool utters is fear and insecurity. Put those together and you get remarks like he gave the Times, such as "white people were very badly treated" by civil rights laws, and that the Civil Rights Act "hurt a lot of people." He couched this by saying what he no doubt thought was a mitigating context around affirmative action policies without actually mentioning affirmative action policies: "People that deserve to go to a college or deserve to get a job were unable to get a job. So it was, it was a reverse discrimination."

Part of this is, of course, him pandering to his base of wannabe Klansmen. He knows his strongest support comes from people who need to scapegoat their problems on an "other" and the easiest "other" to invoke is the one he's personally held in contempt for his whole pathetic life. But a lot of it is real, borne of a combo package of personality traits and disorders that make him devoid of empathy and have him believing that everyone in the world thinks like he does. Since he cannot conceive of anyone looking at the world any differently—everything is zero-sum, everyone is self-obsessed, anyone that has power abuses power—his view of civil rights laws is not that they are protections for the common good, but rather that they're weapons in a conflict.

"White people were very badly treated." This means, before the law, people with power and privilege—boiled down here as "white people"—were allowed to oppress people with less power and privilege—women, African-Americans and other minorities—with impunity, but after enactment they weren't. Disallowing oppressive behavior equals "very bad treatment" because everything is zero-sum, everything is about exerting power. If I can't exert a power over you, then that means you can exert that power over me.

The concept of equal treatment or the good of the whole doesn't compute, to him that's like trying to divide by zero. "People were unable to go to college or get a job" in his terminology means that before the law, white folks only had to compete with other white folks and thus the pool of college or job applicants was smaller, while after the law that pool was enlarged to include minorities, reducing the likelihood of the less-abled white applicant to get in/get hired. (Affirmative action hasn't been quota-based for decades, it's all about making sure women and minorities are recruited/considered with a goal toward proper representation, i.e. enlarging the pool.) He's probably not exactly sure why odds and ratios work that way (because math is so hard), he just knows that "his side" lost power, which by definition means the "other side" now has that power over him and "his side." 

Bigotry isn't the problem issue in his mind; to him, bigotry is a given and a neutral tool. The issue is who gets to wield the bigotry and to what degree.

That shows up in his use of "reverse discrimination." There's no such thing as "reverse" discrimination, you either discriminate, in whatever context, or you don't; A holds more value than B, B holds more value than A, or A and B are equally valuable. I discriminate between this piece of paper, which is a bulletin from the state telling me I have to now charge sales tax on services (a whole 'nother problem in my world), and that piece of paper, which is a receipt from the Post Office for mailing my latest eBay sale. Discrimination reveals that the former is important, while the latter holds no value to me. I don't "reverse discriminate" against the receipt. Felon47 doesn't get that. If a comparison doesn't fall in his favor, then it's "reversed." If no discriminating is done at all, then it's got to be unfair because his value should always be superior, and if it's not superior, that means someone else is superior, and them's fighting words.

If I can't oppress you, then it follows that you are oppressing me.

Because remember, not only is everything zero-sum, but everyone thinks about using power just like he does.

If African-Americans were given power, then, his thinking is, they would enslave white people as revenge, because that's what he would do. If immigrants were allowed to thrive, then they would subjugate the native-born, because that's what he would do (is doing, actually). If trans folks are given respect, that means less respect for non-trans folks and thus the trans community can better impose "their agenda" (which in his mind means turning more people trans, because his goal is to prevent people from being trans).

Every single thing Felon47 does follows this paradigm. "If I don't abuse my power, someone else will abuse me with their power." If the U.S. doesn't take Greenland from the Danes, then China will and thus diminish U.S. power. If tax policy doesn't benefit the super wealthy, then the super wealthy will be the oppressed class. If the president doesn't usurp power from Congress, then Congress will usurp power from the presidency.

Even tariffs—he genuinely does not understand what a tariff is, so he thinks that imposing a tariff on a country (a tariff isn't imposed on a country, but he thinks it is) is a means of directly taking money from that country for the United States. Zero-sum, exert (abusive) power to diminish their power over (and ability to abuse) you. In this case, because he is so stupid as to be uneducable about what a tariff is, it's a spectacular backfire, but the psychology is the same.

Anyway. None of this is news or really at all helpful in getting through these nightmare years, it's just something I needed to process to get it out of my head so I can focus on something else.

Like soup. I think I'll now try making a big pot of a winter soup since it's so bloody cold out.

Tagged Politics, President VonClownstick, Posted on January 23, 2026 at 8:08PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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Irredeemably Committing Evil

5-year-old Liam Ramos, who was abducted by ICE and renditioned to Texas after ICE arrested his father

ICE has to die.

I don't mean to suggest that the country shouldn't have a mechanism to enforce immigration law. I mean that the existing entity known as Immigration and Customs Enforcement is beyond hope of reform. It is completely off the rails, it is operating in a fashion that cannot be redeemed, and it must be dismantled.

That's true, of course, for the entire so-called Department of Homeland Security (the name alone should have been a a clue that it would abuse its power), but right now I'm focused on DHS's division of violent masked thugs that are told: "break the law at will, kidnap people, use children as bait, imprison said children many states away, and hey, if you murder a completely unthreatening lady out of anger 'cause you couldn't intimidate her, don't worry about facing any consequences."

It has to go.

Quoting our friend Craig Calcaterra:

Just yesterday afternoon [ICE agents] held a person down on the ground and, while they were completely helpless, sprayed a massive amount of pepper spray into their eyes:

Photo: Richard Tsong-Taatarii/The Minnesota Star Tribune

That stuff is designed to subdue a crowd of people from a distance. Doing what they're doing here stands a great chance of blinding this person. This is state-sanctioned torture, carried out in broad daylight against someone who is utterly powerless, for no reason whatsoever.

Later in the day it was reported that ICE agents are acting pursuant to a secret memo, released by a whistleblower, which purports to authorize agents to break into homes without a judicial warrant and drag people away. It's blatantly illegal—it's something straight of out a fascist's most intense fever dream—yet that is what is currently governing the rules of engagement and there is no one doing a thing to stop it despite its manifest unconstitutionality.

Finally, I saw a photo of a young child, a little boy no older than five, being taken away by ICE agents after his father was arrested. First, however, ICE agents apparently used him as bait to apprehend his own father. There was no effort made to find the child's mother. The child has reportedly been whisked, alone, to a prison in Texas. It's an open question as to whether he'll ever even see his parents again. A report about that all can be seen here.

There have been scenes and stories like this every day, but yesterday something broke in me and I was filled with a murderous rage. I feel so helpless. It all feels so hopeless. Twisted, hateful, and evil actors are using the power of the state to attack its own people for no cognizable reason and to no legitimate end. The attack is the end. It's immiseration, terror, torture, child trafficking, and even murder for its own sake, ordered by lawless and immoral people and carried out by an American Gestapo who have been told that the law does not and never will apply to them. They have been told to brutalize others because fuck them, that's why, and they are doing it with gusto while trying to foment riots so that they'll have the pretext to expand their violent campaign.

I had to close the laptop and sit in silence for a good long while after taking that all in. I feel like I'm losing my fucking mind.

 And that's not enough for President Ralph Wiggum Palpatine, who has ordered active-duty military to prepare for deployment to Minnesota. Which is illegal, a direct violation of the Posse Comitatus Act. In order to make such a deployment "legal," Felon47 would have to invoke the Insurrection Act, which would also be illegal as it can only be invoked to enforce Federal law, not defy it.

Those military commanders, as well as the individual soldiers, had best remind themselves of their obligation to refuse illegal orders.

I ask again, WHERE IS CONGRESS? IMPEACH NOW.

Tagged Politics, President VonClownstick, Republicans, Craig Calcaterra, Posted on January 22, 2026 at 5:08PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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One year on

Today is January 20th (happy birthday, Erik, sorry it falls on a bad anniversary). That means it's been exactly one year since the current president—an improbable amalgam of Ralph Wiggum and Emperor Palpatine—resumed power and re-began his assault on the United States.

I could go into all the atrocities of the past week or so—of which there are many, not the least of which is Felon47’s demented letter to Norway's Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere, in which he obtusely blamed the Norwegian government for the choices of an independent board unaffiliated with the state, claimed (again) to have halted wars that remain ongoing, pretended not to understand territorial rights, implied that the United States existed "hundreds of years ago" and landed boats at Greenland at the same time the Norse did in the 13th Century, and demanded NATO "do something for the United States" as if the common-defense alliance's purpose was to be some sort of patron—but we are all suffering from WTF fatigue, right?

Suffice to say, the outrages continue, largely unabated.

So, I figured it was time for another letter to Congress. I fully expect it to fall on deaf ears, but if enough of us deluge our representatives with demands for action, with pleas to rise to the occasion, with calls to fight for the continued existence of our republic, maybe we'll see some more leaders grow a spine and stand up to these fascist terrorists occupying the White House and the majority party in Congress.

I urge you all to make use of the link in the sidebar and send your own letters to your three House and Senate representatives.

January 20, 2026

Dear Sen. Maria Cantwell (D WA):
Dear Sen. Patty Murray (D WA):
Dear Rep. Pramila Jayapal (WA-7):

 

Hi again.

Just wanted to remind you all that over the weekend President Trump committed several more impeachable offenses and yet no one in Congress seems to be doing anything about it.

I say "seems to be" because I know how Congress works; I know that the minority party is operating at a significant disadvantage. But when I see Democrats go on television and/or speak to the press, very little of what they're saying rises to the reality of the moment. I see Chris Murphy demanding no masks for ICE agents, I hear Ritchie Torres offering a bill to make ICE agents wear QR codes, I read that Hakeem Jeffries declared that "we’ll figure out the accountability mechanisms at the appropriate time."

Milquetoast, small-scale pleas for reform.

Well, I have to ask, if what we've endured for the past year doesn't put us at "the appropriate time" right now, what the hell will it take to get there?!

I am pleased that you, Rep. Jayapal, are one of the few out there recognizing the calamity we're facing if action isn't taken. I am disappointed that you, Sen. Murray, have evidently dismissed the concept of not funding the government at the end of the month because it wouldn't immediately stop DHS from continuing its abuses. I'm not sold on the idea that a shutdown would help, but I don't see how it could hurt (and I'm aware I may be missing something there). No matter what, it's leverage. Just like the Senate had leverage last fall during the shutdown over ACA subsidies and then threw it away for nothing, this stance at least has the appearance of the same kind of capitulation.

DHS is a rogue operation, a sprawling and largely unaccountable behemoth of a department that never should have been created in the first place, a manifestation of paranoia and trauma inflicted by 9/11 and exploited by George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. A long-term goal needs to be the dismantling of the whole department and returning some of its functions to their former agencies while doing away with others, including ICE, and I want to hear that goal articulated by people in Congress.

Right now, in this moment, this country is on the brink of civil war. Donald Trump and his ICE Gestapo are firing on Fort Sumter right now in the Twin Cities. You all may not have the ability to use the current funding deadline to immediately strip this lawless militia of its resources, but doing nothing—even maintaining the status quo—is unacceptable.

We need to know that our Democratic leaders and our representatives—this is still a representative democracy, at least for now—understand that you don't "reform" fascism. You impede its workings, you refuse to fund it, you refuse to confirm its operatives, you oppose it however possible until you can crush it for good. And we're not hearing that. Again, Rep. Jayapal, you're on the right track, at least, thank you for that, but you're one voice and we need to hear the whole party speak up.

We need to hear every elected Democrat demand that everyone in Congress, most assuredly including Republicans, abide by their oaths of office and respect and defend the Constitution of the United States. Which REQUIRES CONGRESS TO REMOVE THIS PRESIDENT ASAP:

Article II, Section 4: The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.

"Shall be" isn't an optional phrase. This president, this vice-president, and the majority of this cabinet have all betrayed the Constitution and their oaths to it multiple times in the past year. This president, abetted by the vice-president and the cabinet, has engaged in bribery on a near-daily basis. This president, enthusiastically abetted by this vice-president and this cabinet, has committed multiple other high crimes, both criminally speaking and in the more fungible sense of damage to the nation—including but not limited to murder, abuse of power, betrayal of alliances and treaties, obstruction of justice, corrupt use of the military, piracy, kidnapping of American citizens and a foreign head of state, destruction of government property, illegal taxation, theft, and lest we forget, suppression of the Epstein Files which no doubt implicate the president in even more criminal behavior.

Every single member of both houses of Congress should be made aware, if they are not there already, that failure to impeach and convict equals a betrayal of their oaths. Sooner or later this regime will come to an end. If it ends with the United States surviving, then every Congressperson and Senator who refused to act in accordance with his/her oath will be remembered as a fascist enabler AT BEST and will be subject to consequences ranging from prosecution to ostricization to simply the end of political careers. If the regime ends with the United States transformed into a totalitarian state, then every Congressperson and Senator who refused to act in accordance with his/her oath will have lit the kindling that starts the second revolutionary war.

Milquetoast is insufficient. Small-scale reform is insufficient. Removal is required.

 

Sincerely,

Tim Harrison

Shoreline, WA

Tagged Politics, President VonClownstick, Democrats, Democracy, Posted on January 20, 2026 at 7:38PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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Mélange of miscellany

Kudos to the great people of Minnesota, who go out in the cold to document the fascism

Rather than pick a topic and dive in I'm going with a potpourri of assorted notes on various things today...

Dateline: Occupied Minnesota

• The campaign of state-sponsored terror continues in occupied Minneapolis, and thankfully the good people who live there are out documenting it. One video made it to the cablewaves of the Chicago-based allegedly-centrist-but-Republican-slanted station NewsNation, which showed it over an interview with Congresswoman Mary Miller (R–IL). Rep. Miller said the woman shown in the video being abducted out of her car while trying to drive to a medical appointment deserved to be manhandled and abused because "she's here illegally [and] probably getting free health care." She later admitted that she doesn't know who the woman is and thus has no earthly idea if she's here illegally or not, but she also says, "who cares? She's breaking the law and resisting arrest." For the record, the woman was later identified as a biracial U.S.-born software engineer and ICE had to release her.

  The video, which is all Rep. Miller had to go on, shows no lawbreaking whatsoever on the woman's part; it shows ICE acting illegally, though, breaking her car windows and abducting her rather than allowing her to move along her way. Was she being arrested for cause? Was she to be charged with something? Would the charge be, say, asking an ICE patrol why she was being hindered from traveling to her appointment? That's the "lawbreaking" Rep. Miller sees and says "who cares?" about? This interview is the first and thus far only time I've ever seen Rep. Mary Miller, I'd never heard of her before, but it's plenty sufficient to reveal her as a racist, authoritarian abettor of criminals with no respect for law or her oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. In a sane world, she would be censured, removed from committees, or even expelled from the House by her fellow Congresspeople for what she said in this interview.

  Miller represents a gerrymandered district created in the 2020 redistricting that moved Illinois 15 from the southeastern corner of the state to a rural expanse in the center that is nearly bisected by population centers. If you live in Decatur, Springfield, or Champaign, congratulations, you are not Miller's constituent, though you are completely surrounded by those who are. If you live in East St. Louis, Bloomington, or Peoria, you're less than 20 miles from IL–15. The 2020 census took a seat away from Illinois, necessitating a redistricting, and the state redrew its map to group cities together as much as possible in a "fight back" gerrymander. It gave the state three more Democratic seats in the House but eliminated toss-up districts and made the three remaining R districts deeply, deeply Republican. This new blood-red district had two incumbents, one holding the seat lost in the census, and its voters reelected Miller over the more moderate R and then overwhelmingly reelected her again. Congrats, IL–15, you people are batshit crazy. At best.

• In another incident on Monday, ICE agents kidnapped a black woman, a U.S. citizen, in occupied St. Paul. It wasn't clear if the damage to her car seen in the video was caused by ICE or not, but rather than assist someone after an automotive collision of some kind the agents abducted her, threw her into an unmarked vehicle, and drove off.
• Also Monday, ICE agents abducted two teenage employees of a Twin Cities area Target store, tackling one of them to the ground and beating him, only to dump them out of the unmarked vehicle, bloody and sobbing, eight miles away when they were satisfied that the teens were American citizens. (Video is on X, so I'm not linking it. Screw you, Elon.)
• Three Minnesota school districts (and counting?) are now accommodating remote classes as it is unsafe for students to attend school. ICE has abducted parents, tear-gassed playgrounds, and generally terrorized various Minnesota schools this month in their alleged quest to deport immigrants.
• A Minneapolis resident, abducted by ICE for following an ICE vehicle and alerting neighbors to ICE's presence—agents stopped her car, broke the driver and passenger side windows, and forced the two occupants from the car—said that while being forcibly taken in an unmarked vehicle to a nearby Federal building agents told her, "you guys have to stop obstructing us, that's why that lesbian bitch is dead." The threat, the misogyny, the bigotry, the callous disregard for law, the small-minded insecurity, all there in one quote from a government-sanctioned thug during an illegal arrest. Before being released, agents apparently offered at least one of the two abductees money if they would name or identify other protesters.
• Congresswoman Robin Kelly (D–IL 2, south Chicago suburbs) has spearheaded a move to impeach Kristi Noem over her use of ICE thugs in Minnesota and elsewhere. More power to you and your colleagues, Rep. Kelly. It won't succeed in this House, but I applaud the effort and want to see more of this. Just because Speaker Johnson won't allow such things to be voted on doesn't mean we shouldn't be doing them every damn day.
• An activist in the Netherlands was given a list of more than 4,000 names of people working as ICE agents or support personnel. He put it online. Since these people have no business trying to hide their identities in the first place, I'll link to it. The site is slow to load, I imagine it's getting a bit of strain put on its server.
• I look forward to the massive number of lawsuits that will eventually be filed against DHS, the least of which will be a plethora of demands for financial restitution for property damage to the various cars agents have rammed, broken windows of, sliced seatbelts in, and, you know, shot.

The hot stove league

• With the signing of free-agent third baseman Alex Bregman, the Chicago Cubs have bumped incumbent third-sacker Matt Shaw to the bench. Shaw is a MAGA ideologue who left the team to attend the funeral of Charlie Kirk and again during the pennant race to go to a MAGA rally in Arizona. Thus, when the Bregman signing became official we got this outstanding post on BlueSky:

  

  Our buddy Craig Calcaterra followed up on that with this sentiment:

  I suppose Shaw will now be a super utilityman. Which makes me REALLY want the Cubs to acquire a better utilityman such as Santiago Espinal or someone like him so Shaw can be replaced, in the same offseason, by both a Jew and a Latino guy. That'd probably break his fascist ass.

  Schadenfreude for the win.

• The Kansas City Royals are the latest team to do something stupid with their field dimensions. That's my bias, of course, that it's stupid. The Royals are moving the fences in at Kaufmann Stadium, shortening the alleys between the foul poles and dead-center field by ten feet. Not satisfied with that, they are also making the fence height 18 inches shorter. KC's general manager, J.J. Picollo, claimed he wasn't "trying to jump-start our offense," which is silly, of course he is. But the thing is, Kaufmann has always been a great hitters' park. It just hasn't been a great home run park. Especially in the days when it had AstroTurf, but even with grass, KC's was a terrific park to hit doubles and triples in. A big outfield means potentially fewer homers, but it also means more base hits—outfielders have more ground to cover, balls are going to fall short of their positioning or go over their heads more often than they would in smaller outfields. Also, a curved symmetrical outfield wall meant any roller that hit the wall had the opportunity to hug the wall as it rolled on rather than carom back to an outfielder. I haven't seen whether or not they're trying to keep the curvature of the wall, but no matter what it won't be as prevalent since the degree of curve will be lessened. This is a move intended to make home runs easier to hit and to thus encourage batters—Royals and opponents—to keep up the dumbness that has made for less interesting baseball since the post-strike 1990s. That is, the all or nothing, "three true outcome" style offense that has reduced balls in play, skyrocketed strikeouts, and massively devalued defensive skill, particularly for outfielders.

  I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Home runs are boring. Compared to most other ways to score, unless it's a walkoff ending a game, a homer is dull. It's a flash-in-the-pan event, a potential rally-killer, while a string of base hits keeps pressure on the pitcher and the defense. Other than a bases-loaded walk/hit batter, a balk, or, god forbid, a pitch timer violation, the home run is the least interesting way to score. Teams ought to be doing what the Orioles did a few years back and making their outfields bigger. Encourage more contact, encourage smart baserunning, make outfield defense important, and above all, make the game less reliant on brute force. Rob Deer was an interesting player because there just weren't very many Rob Deers. Nowadays every team has at least two of him. The world champion Los Angeles Dodgers had five players top 120 strikeouts in 2025. Five! (Your Seattle Mariners only had one, which is a big reason they were so much better in ’25 than in prior seasons.)

  I realize I'm never likely to see a team like my beloved 1985 Cardinals ever again, but can we stop trying to make baseball dumber? Please?

• The Washington Nationals are the latest team to ditch their cable television contract, leaving the Mid Atlantic Sports Network and turning over their TV rights to Major League Baseball. The cable TV model is quickly dying and I am here for it. What remains to be seen is how MLB is going to be handling the various teams (now including Your Seattle Mariners) they need to televise. Presumably they will find a cable outlet in each of the markets they can pipe feeds to, but really the need is in streaming. Because Commissioner Dumbass shot himself in the foot trying to extort a better playoff TV deal from ESPN, he ended up losing revenue and to try and make up for the loss in the short term sold ESPN the streaming rights for what had been MLB.TV. Until very recently, MLB.TV was only meant for subscribers to watch out-of-market teams and that's what ESPN now has control over; whether MLB will retain these individual teams' in-market streaming rights or lump them in with the ESPN deal is unclear. We'll find out in a couple of months. Regardless, the death of the cable model means an end to the stupidity of making it difficult/impossible for local fans to watch their own team without paying through the nose for a cable/satellite package. That stupidity remains for playoff games, though, so there's still a ways to go. But it's more evidence that Commander Data was right in Star Trek: TNG when he mentioned that broadcast television didn't last in any significant form beyond the year 2040.

Site tweaks and email issues

• I have succeeded (I think) in eliminating the duplicate email problem with the new daily update email subscription thing. However, I have in the process discovered that the emails being sent have a moderately high spam score. This is mostly because the system is intended for a lot more stuff to be in the emails than I want to include, and thus they go out with a lot of blank lines in the formatting. Lots of blank lines are suspicious to spam filtering algorithms. So I would ask any who like receiving the updates-via-email to add *@starshiptim.com to the whitelist in your spam filter of choice to prevent the emails from going into your junk folders unseen. If you don't know how to do that, just ask me, I'll walk you through it.
• I have always disliked WordPress as a platform, and these days, while I don't exactly hate it with the fire of a thousand suns, I heavily discourage anyone from using it unless there are mitigating circumstances of some sort. This site, obviously, has nothing to do with that platform and never will, and my reasons for eschewing it are many. One of them is that the WordPress platform has become ubiquitous, it's everywhere, and thus bad actors—hackers, phishers, malicious billionaires, etc.—target WordPress sites specifically to do their fuckery. They target other sites too, of course, but there's a reason an entire subindustry of WordPress repair and protection services has popped up over the years. Anyway, with that in mind it should not have surprised me to find in the data from my recent experiments in bot-fighting that many of the malicious bots attacking this site are specifically trying to find WordPress login pages and file structures. Shouldn't have, but it did. In a way, it's comforting—it reinforces the belief that bots and their operators don't do subtlety. They're kind of like Rob Deer, really; brute force, swing hard and either get the homer or strike out. So, another thing to cite in my ever-present recommendation that if you use WordPress you should move to something else (I'll help you, my rates are good!), and if you're thinking about starting a WP site to think again.

Tagged Politics, ICE, President VonClownstick, Republicans, Baseball, Site issues, Craig Calcaterra, Posted on January 14, 2026 at 9:29PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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Quotes of the day

A few choice quotations from my Sunday reading before I head out to do more umpiring this afternoon/evening...

I know how Congress works. I know that a party in the minority cannot impose their will and that they can't stop what's happening right now. But I do want them to at least acknowledge it and communicate with Americans in a way that demonstrates that they understand why so many of us are being driven to madness and tears at the country being destroyed. I want them to engage in argument and persuasion which meets the moment and which makes it clear that, when the political situation does change, they will act in decisive ways.

This can happen in any number of ways, such as making sure to find the cameras and the microphones to make it clear where they stand when shit goes down. The articulation of a moral stance. It can also happen such as in simply not going along with the Trump Regime in any way whatsoever. Don't vote for things he wants and don't try to find common ground, because finding common ground with a criminal enterprise in a Constitutional crisis only serves to normalize the regime's anti-democratic behavior and to make one an accomplice to criminality.

—Craig Calcaterra

If the American Experiment dies, it will be because we didn’t stop the immorality of a white supremacy that calls Somali refugees “garbage” and a patriarchy that mutters “fucking bitch” as it murders a woman in ice-cold blood. If it lives, it will be because we embraced the higher morality of empathy and compassion for our neighbors—and for people we don’t even know.

—Will Bunch

In my reading of that moment, through everything I know about abusive men and the way they move through the world, that quiet "I’m not mad at you" may have felt like a challenge to someone who needed to be in charge. Because some men don’t hear peace as peace. They hear it as a woman claiming ground that isn’t supposed to belong to her. They hear it as a refusal to be properly afraid. ... 

... I keep thinking about how often women are asked to be the calm in a storm they didn’t create, how often we’re taught to soften danger with our voices and our bodies and our fear, and how often it doesn’t save us anyway.

—Jo Carducci

Trump, until very recently a self-styled antiwar isolationist, now threatens to forcibly revert Greenland’s status to unreconstructed colonialism under a nation forged in high-minded opposition and bloody resistance to that very notion. Why? Probably, judging by his acknowledged fixation on Venezuelan oil and riches in general, for plunder, but also, by his own account, “for national protection.”

That’s funny, because the United States has enjoyed unfettered military access to the island since World War II, when Denmark was occupied by Nazi Germany and the United States took Greenland in defense. A 1951 agreement between Denmark and the United States allows the latter to expand its military presence there at will, and the postwar NATO alliance, of which both nations are founding members, obligates us to defend each other.

—Josh Gohlke

You have to love this line from the State Department’s warning [recommending U.S. citizens leave Venezuela immediately]:

“Venezuela has the highest Travel Advisory level—Level 4: Do Not Travel—due to severe risks to Americans, including wrongful detention, torture in detention, terrorism, kidnapping, arbitrary enforcement of local laws, crime, civil unrest, and poor health infrastructure.”

Did your irony detector just start shrieking? mine did—because you can replace "Venezuela" with "Minneapolis" and not have to change one word in the rest of that paragraph.

—Jeff Tiedrich

And finally, the cartoon that nails the essence of where we are as a nation in the 21st Century: under the yoke of misogynist thugs so insecure in their identities that they're driven to make other people suffer in order to feel better about themselves.

—David Whamond

Have a pleasant Sunday, everyone.

Tagged Politics, Craig Calcaterra, Will Bunch, Jeff Tiedrich, David Whamond, Jo Carducci, Posted on January 11, 2026 at 2:57PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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Rage processing

I said at the turn of the new year that I had optimism regarding how 2026 would play out big-picture-wise, but it was a specific kind of optimism—the kind that says we have to go through worse before the better comes, and this is the year when the worse forces us to make the choice to be better. For whatever reason, I was and am still surprised at just how quickly we're careening into the worse.

I still think we'll have turned the corner by the time we get to New Year's 2027, and I'm trying to take a rose-colored-glasses view that the rapidity of the descent into even greater evil by Felon47, his cronies, and his puppet masters will herald a faster and more powerful move to oust them. I see reasons to think that might be the case, but I'm also more aware than ever of what John Fugelsang calls "WTF fatigue."

Every damn day there's a new WTF incident stemming from the fascist regime in DC. Processing all the outrage is a challenge. And it would go along way in aiding the public's mental health if elected officials were more visibly putting up a fight.

In this way, the speed of the regime's further descent into evil is helping because more officials seem to be finally getting it that these are not your grandparents' Republicans, these are rather the enemies your grandparents fought in World War II. But it's not enough, it's not nearly enough. I'm glad to see the statements by some Democratic Congresspeople voicing outrage over Felon47’s Venezuelan smash-and-grab and ICE’s murderous thuggery and the overt obstructions of justice being perpetrated by the FBI of all agencies. I'm gratified to hear state and local officials making it clear that the regime's actions are criminal. But what we need to see and hear are Senators, Representatives, and potential candidates for Federal office demanding impeachments. Promising reforms. Vowing to prosecute.

Instead we still get Tim Kaine and Amy Klobuchar and others voting to confirm insurrectionists to the Federal bench.

We cannot be giving an inch here. The cult is beginning to crack. A significant number of Republicans in Congress seem to be realizing that they're politically better off opposing Felon47 on at least some things—nine of them helped Democrats succeed in a discharge petition to force a vote on restoring ACA subsidies and then 15 voted for the measure, even though the Speaker refused to put it up for a vote under normal business; five Republican Senators voted in favor of curtailing Felon47’s military adventurism—and that they have to think about their careers post-regime.

Because one way or another, this regime will end. That's where that choosing-to-be-better thing comes into play, and that should be what Democrats nationwide at all levels of power need to be shouting into every microphone they can find.

In the words of our friend Craig Calcaterra:

America is lost. It's completely lost and it is marching deeper and deeper into darkness every day. We're past the point of mere elections fixing it. It's going to take the prosecution of scores if not hundreds of members of the current regime and the eradication of their evil and lawless works to even begin to put us on something resembling a path back into the light. Like, that's where we have to start to even have hope of a positive future.

We cannot go back. We must forge a new path forward and through. Anyone who promises, with clarity and conviction, to do that has my support. Anyone without the courage to do so does not.

Tagged Politics, President VonClownstick, Democrats, Republicans, Craig Calcaterra, Posted on January 9, 2026 at 3:25PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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Domestic terrorism

Domestic terrorist

Unsurprisingly, the response of the Felon47 regime—principally the Secretary of Homeland Security and Felon47 himself—to the murder of a young mother, an American citizen, by an ICE agent in Minneapolis has been to lie their asses off and claim the incident was something entirely different than what occurred in reality.

They are attempting to spin the killing as some sort of justified self-defense action, but if you've seen the videos taken by eyewitnesses you can plainly see that such a spin is, to echo the term used by Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, bullshit. Everything in the statements by the DHS secretary and Felon47 is profoundly untrue, though there is a kernel of truth in one of the lies. Secretary Noem said that ICE reacted to a case of domestic terrorism. That is a blatant lie, easily debunked by the video records. But this was a case of domestic terrorism—just not in the way Noem would have us believe. The terrorists were the ICE agents, and the ICE agent that fired his gun repeatedly into the open driver-side window of Renee Good's car at point-blank range committed murder.

ICE has become a terrorist organization. By extension, the Department of Homeland Security has become a terrorist organization. By extension, the executive branch of the United States government has become a terrorist organization.

One of the many, many reforms I think is necessary for our country to recover from this dalliance with fascist thuggery is to undo the biggest mistake of the George W. Bush administration outside of his wars. That administration crafted the new cabinet agency, the Department of Homeland Security, in the wake of 9/11, making it a sprawling cluster of bureaucracies borne of paranoia and with overreaching, careless authorities. It needs to be abolished, its constituent parts returned to their former agencies or erased from existence. ICE in particular needs to be disbanded, with customs and border control and immigration duties reorganized in ways that actually keeps them in their own lanes.

Right now ICE is just the American Gestapo, with DHS functioning as the American Schutzstaffel.

These people have to be stopped. Since the Republican party is corrupt and Republican officials are functioning as accomplices and accessories to countless crimes including murder and outright betrayal of the Constitution, we may well have to suffer for another year before a new Congress can finally take these fuckers down, assuming we can overcome the inevitable Republican attempts to subvert the midterm elections. But that doesn't mean we don't try in the meantime.

Write your Congresspeople. Write your Senators. Call their offices, shout from the rooftops, communicate however you can to those with the power to fix this—and make no mistake, Congress could end this reign of terror today if they chose to—that we are mad as hell and won't take any more.

Impeach. Convict. Remove. Do it now.

Tagged Politics, Republicans, Society, Congress, President VonClownstick, Posted on January 8, 2026 at 12:26AM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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Better late than never

For three months it has irked me greatly that the mainstream press in this country has treated the continual policy of Felon47 and his cabinet of criminal cruelty to extrajudicially murder Venezuelans (and others?) on the open seas as just another curiosity in the vast mozaic of chaos this alleged president has wrought. Now, after almost 90 people have been murdered by the United States for the offense of being on a boat out of (we think) Venezuela, it's finally getting some traction, but it took ancillary stories to get the media to care.

It took six congressional Democrats distributing a video reminding military personnel that it is their duty, as codified in the Uniform Code of Military Justice, to refuse illegal orders; it took Felon47’s outraged reaction to that video in which he essentially admitted that he wants to issue illegal orders and have them followed; that apparently led to someone telling the Washington Post that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered a war crime in the first of these murderous strikes on Venezuelan boats. That what it took to generate any real outrage.

That in itself is maddening, but hey, at least the outrage is starting to spread. Sadly, the outrage is still focused on one egregious element of one incident, the "double-tap" second missile fired to kill two survivors of an initial strike on a boat in September. Because that action is explicitly described by military codes of conduct as a blatantly illegal order that should not be followed—killing the shipwrecked—it's the focus right now. OK, at least it's an entry point to the greater issue. But talking about the killing of the two survivors of a first missile as if it is fundamentally different from the rest of the policy is yet another failure of the American press.

There is no legality—none—to any of the boat strikes. They are all crimes. They are all murders. Getting wrapped up in the nuances of the double-tap strike and Hegseth's alleged order to "kill everybody" as the reason for doing that threatens to justify by implication the rest of the killings. Hegseth and Felon47 insist that they are perfectly  within their rights to conduct these strikes because they are abiding by "the rules of war" in an "armed conflict" with "narco-terrorists" in league with the Venezuelan government. Except those reasons are all bullshit. 

a) The United States is not at war with Venezuela or any other nation. b) There is no armed conflict with these boats—none of the boats took offensive action against US personnel or property. c) The phrase "narco-terrorists" is just a made-up term to stoke propaganda, it makes no sense—the goal of a drug trafficker is to sell drugs, to make money, and instilling terror on their prospective markets is counter to that interest. d) There has been no evidence proffered—zero—as to who or what was even aboard those boats; were they really carrying narcotics? Were they really Venzuelan gang members? Were they affiliated in any way with the Venezuelan government? One thing that is relatively certain is that they were not heading for the United States; none of the boats had that kind of range, particularly if they were laden with a heavy cargo of narcotics. e) Felon47 doesn't give a tinker's damn about drug trafficking—if he did, he wouldn't be pardoning drug kingpins, as he has done repeatedly including just this week—so the entire motivation for the murders is suspect.

Further, drug trafficking, while a serious matter, is not a capital offense. Further still, even if it was a capital offense, it has to be proven in the judicial system before sentence can be carried out. Because, again, it's not a war.

The latest incident that we know about came just yesterday. Hegseth announced on social media that the US "just sunk another narco boat," this time in the eastern Pacific. An official announcement confirmed the strike and noted four deaths, bringing the tally of known  extrajudicial killings—murders—in these operations to 87.

Felon47 and his utterly lawless regime has killed and will kill untold numbers of people, both in the US and around the world; these Venezuelan boats account for only a tiny fraction. Reversals of international aid policies, destruction of public health infrastructure, rollbacks of environmental regulations and incentivizing fossil fuel pollutants, economic oppressions, and poverty-by-intent legislation will be far more deadly in the end. But the in-your-face audacity of just targeting a boat and blowing it up on the open sea because you want to feel like a tough guy is so emblematic of this tyrant and this regime that it should get covered more intently. And with that context: This is outrageous and easy to understand in the moment, but it is just the tip of the iceberg. MAGA is a death cult, even if the members don't know it.

More folks are calling for Pete Hegseth to resign, which is great, but it's insufficient. Pete Hegseth, along with everyone who carried out his illegal orders, should be prosecuted. So, frankly, should the tyrant-in-chief, but John Roberts and his corrupt majority of the Supreme Court decided presidents are above the law. Still, I'd like to see it anyway, bring charges against him and make the Court defend its ruling.

Tagged Politics, President VonClownstick, Pete Hegseth, Republicans, Posted on December 5, 2025 at 11:58PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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Dear Democrats

Feckless leader

An open letter to Senate Democrats. Seven specific ones, really, plus independent Angus King. And to one other, alleged minority leader Chuck Schumer.

To Senators Kaine, Durbin, Shaheen, Hassan, Rosen, Masto, Fetterman, and King, along with "leader" Schumer:

Today you voted to advance a Republican measure to reopen the government. (All of you except Sen. Schumer, but we'll get to you in a minute, Chuck.) You must have had your reasons for doing this. They might even make sense to you in some weird way. But that being the case, I have to ask one rather fundamental question of you all:

What the fuck is wrong with you?!

The Federal government has been shut down now for 40 days—insert Noah's Ark joke here—with Democrats holding firm on one comparatively minor demand, one that is politically beneficial for all parties, for agreement on ending the shutdown: Restore subsidies for the Affordable Care Act that Republicans eliminated in their Big Bloodbath of a Bill earlier this year. That's it, that's the one thing Democrats were demanding, and for a while it appeared that you all would stand together and force the issue.

Then came today.

Today, when the eight of you capitulated to the Republican terrorists who have been "negotiating" in bad faith and governing illegally for nearly ten months and counting. You voted to advance the GOP measure rather than use the leverage you had to actually get what you allegedly wanted and allegedly deemed important for the American people. Why?

Senator Shaheen said she voted for it because "this was the only deal on the table." Oh? So next time when the Republicans put up a measure that jails half of all Americans with Spanish surnames instead of all of them, you'll vote for it because it's the only deal on the table?

Last Tuesday the off-year elections showed us that the American people writ large do not support today's Republicans or their policies. Republicans got their clocks cleaned. We're approaching major holiday travel season, with air travel being disrupted in significant ways that are untenable. GOP officials are refusing to do their jobs in the House, taking literal wrecking balls to the White House, and committing crimes at a pace one can't even keep current with. They are exceedingly vulnerable.

They are behaving like authoritarians, and you had a significant piece of leverage to use against them. Until today, when you eight pissed it away.

For what? Let's look at the so-called "deal" you made with the Republicans. This measure does the following:

• Officially funds the government through January 30, 2026. I say "officially" because the Felon47 regime has demonstrated repeatedly that whey do not respect Congressional appropriations and have simply chosen not to spend money they're legally obligated to spend. So what did you get here? Things will be funded, but only at the whim of the regime.
• Guarantees retroactive pay for furloughed workers and those working without pay during the shutdown. Congratulations, you got a promise to OBEY THE EXISTING LAW. Well done.
• Likewise, SNAP benefits will resume being paid. Likewise, the courts were forcing that to happen anyway because the Republicans were withholding that money illegally.
• Rehires employees that were fired during the shutdown and prohibits new firings through January 30. OK, but what's to keep them from being fired again on January 31? Anything? No? Good job.
• Funds the VA and the USDA through fiscal 2026. Really? You believe that? You think the regime won't just decide not to pay those bills like they've refused so many others thus far? Suckers.
• Requires a Senate vote on ACA subsidies by the middle of December. Great, you got a promise for a symbolic vote. In one chamber of Congress. That won't pass. And even if it did, that the Speaker of the House has already said he won't put it up for a vote in his chamber. Utterly worthless.

That's it. Am I missing anything? No?

To paraphrase the late great Gene Wilder, "You got nothing. Good day and get bent."

If one were cynical, one might think you eight were more concerned with your own travel plans being disturbed than in advocating for your constituents. Yes, disrupted air travel is an inconvenience. Potentially a severe one. An untenable one. You know what else it was? Leverage.

Democrats have, once again, bailed out the Republicans. Rather than force them to face the consequences of their disastrous, painful, massively unpopular policy agenda, the eight of you have rewarded them by removing at least some of those consequences. Every time the Republicans enact some policy or other that will, by design, inflict great pain on the American people, they know Democrats will mitigate the damage. They're arsonists that count on the fire brigade to check some of the blazes while they continue to light other infernos with impunity.

I get that you don't want people to go without their paychecks and you don't want travel disrupted. But you were also supposed to be looking out for people's health care. What you have done is communicate to Republicans that terrorism works. That threats of starvation by illegally withholding SNAP funds is a viable tactic. That all it takes to get you to capitulate to their plan to make health insurance unaffordable for many and less affordable for all is to throw empty assurances at you and promise that this time, for real, you'll be allowed to kick the football.

And you, Chuck Schumer:

You didn't vote for this, so good on you for that, but you're supposed to be the leader here. You hold that title. How is it, then, that these defections were allowed to happen? You couldn't communicate the basic facts of the matter here, that this measure gets your party bupkis? That this is not only bad for the country but bad politics? That giving in tells people that there was a 40+ day government shutdown for what in the end was no reason whatsoever? You couldn't keep your caucus in line to prevent doubling and tripling health insurance premiums because flights were being delayed??!

This should have been a gimme issue for you, Chuck, and you blew it. Are you truly that feckless as party leader? Apparently you are. I implore you to recognize that you have failed and resign as leader. Right now. You clearly suck at this now.

May all eight of you—no, all nine of you, this goes for you too, Chuck—may you all lose in primaries the next time you're up for election. And for those of you that have already declared your retirements, may you reap the karmic consequences of your cowardice and spinelessness in whatever post-Senate ventures you undertake.

Assholes.

The only positive that might—might—come out of this is that once the final bill gets out of the Senate the House will have to vote on it, which means the House will have to be in session, which means Speaker Johnson will have to convene the House and swear in Representative-elect Grijalva, which will force a vote to release the Epstein files and bring that scandal back to the forefront. Johnson might invent some new reason not to, though. He's nothing if not craven, he's proven he'll stop at nothing to protect the pedophile in chief.

We'll see if the House Democrats will use their leverage or if they, too, will capitulate to the GOP terrorists.

Tagged Politics, Republicans, Democrats, Posted on November 10, 2025 at 1:34AM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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A tale of two eras

On the drive down here to greater Palm Springs, I played a number of CDs in the car, various album collections on the randomizer. Occasionally a tune would pop up that was written/recorded in 2002 or so that directly or obliquely referenced 9/11. Stuff like Melissa Etheridge's "Tuesday Morning," Springsteen's "Into the Fire," that kind of thing.

Those songs are a manifestation of the collective outrage of both the public and the government over a terrorist attack that was deadly and horrific, yes, but also blunt and spectacular and shocking (we'll leave aside the questions about whether or not GWB and company should have been shocked or not; the point is, the public was). Not for the first time, I was struck by the massive difference in the American reaction to 9/11 from the American reaction to President Convicted Felon's regime of terror and incompetence.

Bin Laden and his minions killed 3,000 Americans with a stunt designed to get everyone's attention and scare us. The reaction was, probably as intended by bin Landen, outsized and detrimental to the American public, but it was swift and massive in the name of defending the United States and our free democratic republic.

Felon47, when he was merely Fraudster45, presided over three million deaths from a pandemic he so grossly mismanaged and, in fact, abetted. As Felon47, his regime has already killed untold millions around the world with the destruction of USAID. He's outright murdered 57 people and counting on the open seas. He's created a secret police force to terrorize Americans and non-citizen residents of his own nation, disappearing people to secret gulags and tear-gassing residential neighborhoods. His Department of Homeland Security thugs—an agency misguidedly and foolishly created in the overreaction to 9/11—are nothing more than mob enforcers abusing people for the sole purpose of making people scared. You know, terrorism.

This country is under a threat so much greater today, from the alleged President and his evil henchmen—and I do not exaggerate when I call them that—an existential crisis brought on by, yes, terrorists with the stated intention of destroying the U.S. Constitutional order and replacing it with a dictatorial regime of oligarchical rule. In the early 2000s, Bin Laden and al-Qaeda were such a threat that the American public collectively lost its mind, elected officials were so frantic in their attempts to protect the country that they basically ran around screaming and bouncing off the walls while passing poorly-considered rush legislation to prevent further damage. Here in the 2010s and 2020s, the entire Republican party has thrown in with the terrorists and the American public is either shrugging its shoulders or cowering in fear.

At least, it seems that way. It feels that way.

The No Kings protests gave me some hope that the majority of us really are trying to resist and push back against the terrorists. But this threat has been here now for ten years, the consequences of it continue to escalate and continue to metastasize with such tepid defiance that I find myself just aghast at the contrast.

9/11: An attack in spectacular fashion from elsewhere that killed thousands, resulting in near-instant panic and fervent defense of America as a concept as well as a territory. Trump: An attack in slow-moving idiotic fashion from within, aided by Russians under cover of night, that killed millions and counting, resulting in the complete abdication of the Congressional majority and the corrupt majority of the Supreme Court as a despotic regime takes over the nation and plunges us into a dark age while the public just sits and looks at Instagram.

Wake the fuck up, people.

 

 

Tagged Politics, Republicans, Posted on October 29, 2025 at 4:34PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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This aggression will not stand, man

It felt good to be out among the protesters at today's No Kings rally. On the one hand, it felt slightly impotent, like it was the literal least one could do; but on the other, seeing—and being among—the throng of folks out there proudly displaying their displeasure and even contempt for the authoritarian American regime circa 2025 was like a balm. Like, there's practical evidence that there are more of us—believers in the ideals of democratic governance and the US Constitution—then there are of them. Them being the Trumpers, the Nazis, the despotic enablers of tyranny that make up the modern party calling itself "Republican."

I've not seen any news today, just a few posts like this one documenting the protests themselves and sharing creative signage. I do know the turnout nationwide was massive, eclipsing June's No Kings events, and doubtless that fact annoys/angers/frightens the regime.

That might mean things get worse before they get better—you just know Stephen Miller is planning something heinous and brutal as revenge—but it reinforces my optimism that sooner or later the reign of terror will end. Just a matter of how much damage is left in its wake by the time sanity returns to the US government.

I took a lot of photos of the signs folks brought out today. I didn't have one of my own, I just wasn't with it enough to make one ahead of time. It would have felt better out there if I'd had one. But others were more on the ball and I will share some favorites. A lot of the photos were from a distance and are thus slightly out of focus; there's only so much Photoshop can help with.

Helps to be in the Mariners know for this one



These two as well









I wish this one had turned out better; Kermit's word balloon says "Release the Epstein Files"






And then these were from the bigger protest downtown, culled from a couple of friends' social media feeds...

I hope you all had similarly good experiences at your local events.

 

Tagged Politics, Republicans, President VonClownstick, Posted on October 19, 2025 at 12:15AM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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