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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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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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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The future sure ain't what it used to be

Tomorrow the latest nationwide No Kings protest is scheduled to take place and I plan to participate. Just by showing up, not by doing anything elaborate. I'll put in some time at the smaller neighborhood protest near my place rather than go down to the waterfront/Seattle Center for the big crowd. I have faith in my fellow Seattleites that we'll have impressive turnout at the various marches/protests around the area.

I mean, we have to, right? It feels like there's so little we can do in the face of this tyrannical, lawless wannabe despot's continuing reign of terror that taking to the streets and holding signs and displaying some honest-to-goodness patriotism will at least feel somewhat cathartic.

The tyrant-in-chief today showed yet again that he is the pro-crime president, commuting the sentence of his fellow serial liar and fraudster George Santos because, I kid you not, he voted Republican. That's why, he said so on his stupid social media platform:

If you're a kindred spirit sort of criminal, in Mango Mussolini's world the law doesn't apply to you. Laws are for other people. Hell, for other people why even bother with laws? Just round ’em up and disappear them.

Of course, letting fraudsters get away with crime is only a secondary purpose here, the primary function of this is to, of course, give us something to talk about that isn't related to the Epstein files and the fact that the entire Republican party, with very few exceptions, doesn't want the public to know that their "dear leader" is a vile, sleazy raper of children just like his dead bestie was. Anyone who's been paying attention would already believe this to be true regardless, but suppressing evidence is Speaker Mike Johnson's first commandment. "Thou shalt not allow the truth about how disgusting and predatory POTUS47 is to see the light of day." It's right above "thou shalt not provide health care to the sick and injured" and "thou shalt bear false witness to everything at every opportunity."

I hope you all will also put in an appearance at a No Kings event near you. For inspiration, I give you Michael McDermott's new song "The Future." Enjoy and maybe play it at your event. For this I'd even say turn the volume up to 11.

 

Tagged Politics, President VonClownstick, No Kings, Posted on October 17, 2025 at 11:59PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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Civil War II: The Wrath of Steve

White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller

This isn't quite how I though this would go. I figured that our nation's second civil war (it's canon, Captain Pike said so) would start as a slow burn initially fought by essentially guerilla forces, terrorist attacks by the same kind of cultists that stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, rubes that follow the tyrant-in-chief's mob-boss-like instruction; those attacks would then escalate to conflicts with authorities that escalate to conflicts between authorities that escalate to federal crackdowns.

Instead, the regime is skipping all those preliminary steps and just diving in with federal oppression. Why warm up?

The assault by ICE agents in Chicago, along with other factors of note—POTUS47's unexplained absence from view for several days at a time; the illegal murders of Venezuelans on the open sea; multiple claims by the tyrant that Portland, Oregon, is "burning to the ground" and "war-torn" when the real circumstance involves a small protest outside an ICE building by a guy in a chicken suit and a preacher (who was shot by an ICE agent with a non-lethal round after he told the agents they could still repent their sins); and myriad other actions taken under the auspices of DHS—lend considerable credence to the theory that Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller is really in charge of the regime, at least so far as non-economic policy goes.

We all know that the alleged president is too stupid to orchestrate anything himself—not effectively, anyway; when he tries we get tariffs that cripple the whole economy. He is instead manipulated by his puppeteers to authorize what they want to do and then they do it without interference. Miller is the chief puppeteer, the architect of the most Nazi-esque policies of the regime, and he isn't subtle. He's a blunt instrument. His only warmup moves for his remake of DHS into a fascist secret police force were building/expanding DHS detention facilities and putting out the call that ICE would hire anyone who could pass a sort of inverse background check. Do you have a history of antisocial behavior? Violent outbursts? Have you ever been fired from a job for your racist attitudes? Are you well-versed in a variety of slurs and hate speech? Did you beat up smaller kids in elementary school? If so, you are the ideal candidate for a career in the new ICE Thug Force. With his secret police all staffed up, he can just exploit the boss' ignorance to get authorization for terror campaigns in cities across the country.

It's possible that Miller is so tunnel-visioned in his racism that he doesn't realize that commando raids on minority-majority neighborhoods will have blowback, but I think it more likely that it's part of the plan. He wants the blowback, he wants the escalation, he wants to rain hellfire on anyone that reminds him of people he hated as a child.

Once again, I note that a person like this would never be allowed near the halls of power if the majority in Congress respected their oaths of office. I mean, no one in this regime would be, it's entirely staffed by authoritarians and idiots. But Miller seems a special case. He has no redeemable quality. If there is a fictional metaphor for Miller, an actual Jewish Nazi, it's Armus, the "skin of evil" from Star Trek: The Next Generation. Armus was the sludge making up all of the hatred, animus, and cruelty of an alien race, expunged from them and abandoned on a barren unpopulated world.

The tyrant-in-chief is the most dangerous person in the world because he wields power, but he's stupid and, I would bet, demented and dying. Miller is nearly as dangerous because he pulls the strings and wants to cement his place in power before the alleged president kicks the bucket.

Ruled by a skin of evil.

Tagged Politics, President VonClownstick, Star Trek, Posted on October 9, 2025 at 6:01PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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More reasons to impeach

Though I've been preoccupied by baseball playoffs this week, the rest of the world kept on turning and the regime at the White House and their collaborators engaged in yet more fascistic malevolence.

There's too much of it to list, so I'm just going to vent about the incident at Quantico, which was another thing to add to the ever-increasing list of actions President Convicted Felon and his entire regime of gangsters would be impeached and removed for if we had a Congressional majority that respected their oaths of office.

This week the United States Secretary of Defense (that's still the name, no matter what the dude says) Pete Hegseth summoned all of the US military's flag officers to listen to him project his insecurities and cosplay as a tough guy. The SecDef essentially told these generals and admirals to go forth and commit war crimes.

It was a speech that former Republican National Committee chair Michael Steele described as "a cross between a political rally and an old Friars Club roast." Hegseth not only disrupted the commands of all of these officers by demanding they give him an in-person audience to hear this inanity, he then fat-shamed them, criticized their grooming habits, encouraged the abuse of new recruits, and implied a blind eye would be turned to future sexual assaults on military bases. He called having to refrain from abuses "walking on eggshells" which shouldn't be anyone's concern. He paid lip service to racially motivated violence and sexual assault "remaining" illegal, but emphasized he wanted "no more frivolous complaints, no more anonymous complaints, no more repeat complaints, no more smearing reputations," which given his own history and predilections can easily be inferred to mean soldiers can do what they want and we won't listen to anyone who is victimized, even if they're fellow soldiers. He said outright that drill sergeants should be allowed to hit their troops. He also implied that officers or enlisted personnel who had been held accountable for various abuses in the past would be essentially pardoned: "At my direction, we're making changes to the retention of adverse information on personnel records that will allow leaders with forgivable, earnest, or minor infractions to not be encumbered by those infractions in perpetuity," he said.

He decried restrictions on military behavior in the field as well, blasting policies and agreements like the Geneva Convention as "stupid" and declaring that the US military should be ruthless. "We untie the hands of our warfighters to intimidate, demoralize, hunt and kill the enemies of our country. No more politically correct and overbearing rules of engagement, just common sense, maximum lethality and authority for warfighters."

There was a fair amount of, I will say, honest explanation of why he and President Convicted Felon want to rebrand the Defense Department as the "War Department," all of it chilling. "We have to be prepared for war, not for defense. We're training warriors, not defenders. We fight wars to win, not to defend." He might as well call it the "Department of Conquering" or the "Department of Global Bullies."

This cabinet secretary with multiple white supremacist tattoos on his body declared that he wanted the military to be white and male and heterosexual, barely coding his language at all. Referring to ethnic and gender diversity in the services, social justice, environmental concerns, and women in combat roles as "toxic ideological garbage," he declared that "we are done with that shit."  He called the new fitness requirement he wants to implement across the military to be "a gender-neutral age normed male standard," code for "no girls or sissies." He called on anyone in that room that wasn't on board with the fascist administration to resign their commissions. 

Hegseth's pro-abuse and pro-bigotry address was followed by a rambling, oft-incoherent speech by the tyrant-in-chief, who was very disturbed by the lack of adulation the flag officers were showing him. The tyrant told the generals and admirals that some of them would have a "major part" in his plan to essentially incite civil war, that he wanted to turn American cities into "training grounds" for the military, a force that would "straighten out" cities he didn't approve of. "That's a war too," he said, "a war from within."

Interestingly, Hegseth made multiple references to oaths taken to the Constitution and how they should be taken seriously, not once showing the slightest recognition that he and his boss violate such oaths on a daily if not hourly basis.

I've no doubt that there were some in that audience who were fully on board with what they heard, but I hold out some hope that some of them—most of them?—recognized that they were witness to leaders who seek to subvert the nation they swore to protect. I hope that enough of them convene among themselves in the aftermath of this and strategize for how to refuse illegal orders, protect each other from illegal firings, how to exert any influence they might have to promote an impeachment or two or twenty without overstepping their apolitical protocols.

We should fully expect President Convicted Felon to try to lay siege to major American cities in an effort to destroy his political opposition. I wish I could fully expect the military to tell him to fuck off when he does.

Tagged President VonClownstick, Republicans, Politics, Posted on October 3, 2025 at 4:54PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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Mad enough to chew neutronium

What the fuck are you doing, Hakeem?!

Hakeem Jeffrries, along with 94 other Democrats in the House, voted Yes on "a resolution to honor the life of Charles Kirk."

Why?

I can think of no good reason. I can think of bad ones. Capitulation is what the bad ones all redound to. 

Charlie Kirk—whose middle name I've learned was "James," which bugs me to no end—was, yes, the victim of a horrible crime and that crime was detestable and unconscionable and a black mark on humanity. But is that sufficient to warrant this Congressional resolution? If so, then where are the resolutions honoring the countless other victims of our absurd gun culture? Charlie Kirk gets honored but the woman gunned down in a camp of unhoused folks in Minneapolis this week doesn't? Charlie Kirk gets honored but the guy shot and killed while playing basketball in the Bronx last month doesn't? Charlie Kirk gets honored but Melissa Hortman doesn't? Charlie Kirk gets honored but the 1,400+ minors shot and killed just last year in this country don't?

Charlie Kirk gets honored because his murder is being used by the so-called Republican party to fuel propaganda and as a rallying cry for stochastic terrorism.

The Democratic leader in the House of Representatives shouldn't be voting in favor of that.

I wrote to my senators and congresswoman again today. Not about Jeffries and the resolution honoring a misogynistic bigot that called for the previous president to be killed; I only mentioned that in passing. My focus was, once again, on the duty of every member of Congress to remove the fascist regime currently occupying power in the White House. By not doing so they are betraying their own oaths of office as this regime continues to piss all over the Constitution as they declare the First Amendment dead, as they continue to murder people on the open sea—three more killed today—as they continue to use a de facto secret police force to abduct and disappear people they don't think are "American" enough.

I'm sick of Chuck Schumer insisting that he needs bipartisan support for even the smallest things. We need him—or his replacement as minority leader if he gets out of the way—to insist on bipartisan support for defending and upholding the Constitution. We need Democratic leadership to be demanding the so-called Republicans either respect their oaths of office and end this fascist regime or resign immediately because they are betraying their country. They need to be called out for their rejection of the bill of rights, the very rule of law, every principle this country was founded on. (Well, except racism; if we're honest, that too was part of the country's founding and they're staying true to that.)

Congress could end this nightmare tomorrow.

But they won't.

Because the majority party is too corrupt, too cowed, too myopic, too greedy, and too comfortable with fascism.

That's got to change.

Tagged Politics, Republicans, Hakeem Jeffries, President VonClownstick, Posted on September 20, 2025 at 3:17AM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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