The Bleak Parade

Just as donald Shitgibbon trump ruined January 6th in my mind, the bastard is going to ruin June 14th on a personal level as well. 

Where June 14th is officially Flag Day for the United States and the anniversary of the official formation of the Continental Army that evolved into the US Armed Forces 250 years later, it also happens to be trump's birthday.

So we're getting the unwarranted - and in some ways offensive - spectacle of a military parade in front of the White House while trump stands there and revels in it.

If this was going to be a celebration of the Army there were better places to host such an event, like Valley Forge or one of the nearby bases, or a memorial held at Arlington National Cemetery. However, trump is not a fan of cemeteries - unless he's the focus of everything - and considering how he keeps dumping on soldiers as "suckers", he's not about to honor the troops with anything when he's too busy honoring himself.

Let Eliot A. Cohen at the Atlantic spell it out for us (paywalled):

The United States Army deserves a celebration, as do the other armed services during their upcoming birthdays. Tens of millions of Americans have passed through the Army’s ranks, and something close to a million have died in the line of duty, while many more were wounded or taken prisoner, or suffered extraordinary hardships. We owe them a lot.

The administration, however, is orchestrating a parade not to honor service, but to celebrate power. Tanks and infantry fighting vehicles will tear up the capital’s streets as helicopters thrash overhead. Tough-guy stuff, in other words, designed to show the world that we are, in the much-overused word of the secretary of defense, lethal...

Nor is this hardware relevant to the strategic choices the Trump administration has avowed, leaving Europe and the Middle East and focusing on the Indo-Pacific. Tanks will not persuade China to keep the People’s Liberation Army Navy behind the first island chain. This is about preening for the American public and indulging a kind of juvenile fascination with big, noisy armored vehicles...

If the draft-evading president and disgruntled former National Guard major running the Department of Defense better understood the American military, they would know that by sending National Guardsmen (and now Marines) to deal with riots when neither the governor of the state nor the mayor of the city concerned want them, they are courting danger. They would not promise, as Trump has, the use of “heavy force” against protesters. They would not, in other words, anticipate, almost with glee, the prospect of Americans in uniform shooting their fellow citizens. For that matter, they would know that deploying thousands of military personnel to the southern border disrupts training for war, which they supposedly value highly...

All this so a confirmed draft-dodging felon and sex offender can pretend to be an Alpha Male in front of his lackeys.

At the least, we should expect the roads of Washington DC torn up by the heavy tanks and transports rolling up and down the square (the military's promised they reinforced the roads but I doubt it will help), adding millions of wasted dollars being spent to deploy the troops and equipment this way.

At the worst, I'm dreading how trump could turn this parade into a public call of a military takeover (technically an autoglope) and declaring the Constitution suspended while he orders the entire military to join in with ICE's mass deportation pogroms across our major (mostly Democratic) cities. And attack any protests that rise up against him.

No matter what happens, I am making the rather miniscule - hello, ten readers of this blog! - call to my fellow Americans to avoid this bleak trumpian parade at all costs. Just don't be in Washington DC at all. Don't add to the numbers that trump will try to claim as turnout, make it as deserted as his 2017 inauguration.

There's a ton of other places to be this Saturday. There's these No Kings rallies happening by the by that you can register and attend across every state. If you're in Chicago, Da Pope is hosting a livestream mass as a blatant counterpunch to trump's self-indulgence (although I've heard it's sold out). If you're not inclined to protest or pray, you can always go to the beaches (it's a bit of a drive to Virginia Beach but worth it)

Just remember that this parade isn't honoring our Army, it's not for the troops to display their discipline and training, it's not anything honoring America.

This parade is for trump's vanity and his alone, and it will be as vulgar as he can make it.

Paramount

As the ICE persecution of legal migrants/refugees escalated over the past month, more protests have erupted across the nation even in places like Minnesota. A lot of anger and frustration towards trump's thugs who are rounding up moms and children instead of the "criminal gangs" that the Far Right have screamed about for the last 40 years.

The tension made its way to Los Angeles this Friday, where the outrage among the residents - many of them in defense of their neighbors getting rounded up for doing nothing wrong - erupted into the kind of protest that brought out the LAPD and their crowd control of gas, rubber bullets, and batons.

Today, the protests continued in the neighborhood of Paramount, and the violence escalated even more (via Steve Patterson and Dennis Romero at NBC News):

Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department deputies deployed tear gas on protesters in Paramount this afternoon as they sought to end the chaotic gathering.

The deployment was preceded by explosive less-lethal rounds and the placement of cinder blocks in the street near a Home Depot where protesters believed federal immigration enforcement agents were conducting a raid. Fireworks also peppered the soundscape.

Sheriff Robert Luna said no immigration raid took place, though there was staging at federal offices adjacent to the Home Depot.

Sheriff's officials ordered the raucous crowd to disperse around 2:30 p.m., though several people remained in the area hours later.

While it's heartening to see Americans rising up against the brutality of trump's - and Stephen Miller's - anti-immigrant campaign, this is unfortunately the response those SOBs were hoping for, because it can justify trump's declaring martial law and assuming dictatorial powers (via Maya Yang and Diana Ramirez-Simon at the Guardian (US)):

The Trump administration will deploy the national guard to immigration protests in Los Angeles, border czar Tom Homan said on Saturday, as an immigration crackdown in the area erupted into mass protests with police in riot gear deploying teargas at bystanders.

“We’re already mobilizing. We’re gonna bring national guard in tonight and we’re gonna continue doing our job. This is about enforcing the law,” Homan said in an interview with Fox News.

US immigration authorities on Saturday extended area raids into Paramount, south-east of Los Angeles, and were met with more protests outside an industrial park.

Border patrol personnel in riot gear and gas masks stood guard outside the park, deploying teargas as bystanders and protesters gathered on medians and across the street, some jeering at authorities while recording the event on smartphones...

Stephen Miller, an immigration hardliner and the White House deputy chief of staff, wrote on social media that Friday’s demonstrations were “an insurrection against the laws and sovereignty of the United States”. On Saturday, he described the day’s protests as a “violent insurrection”.

During Friday’s protests at a federal detention facility in downtown LA, David Huerta, the president of the California branch of the Service Employees International Union, was arrested amid a police response that included teargas and flash-bangs.

Huerta, who was injured and detained, released a statement to the Los Angeles Times from the hospital, saying: “What happened to me is not about me. This is about something much bigger.”

“This is about how we as a community stand together and resist the injustice that’s happening. Hard-working people, and members of our family and our community, are being treated like criminals. We all collectively have to object to this madness because this is not justice,” he added.

The reports are that they'll be sending in about 2,000 Guardsmen, but if they're thinking that will subdue a metro of 18 million people covering a geographic area of 400 square miles or so, that isn't going to help. I'm willing to bet they want this deployment to get overwhelmed so trump can justify sending in the US Army to "pacify" all of Los Angeles.

California's governor Newsom is trying to defuse the situation, but it's a question of what he can do to stop his state's National Guard from answering to trump's generals.

LA authorities are able to access law enforcement assistance at a moment’s notice. We are in close coordination with the city and county, and there is currently no unmet need. The Guard has been admirably serving LA throughout recovery. This is the wrong mission and will erode public trust.

— Governor Gavin Newsom (@governor.ca.gov) June 7, 2025 at 8:14 PM

Somewhere in a dark hole, Stephen Miller is enjoying the suffering and chaos he's wanted to inflict on our nation, if the reports are true about his obsession to terrorize Latino communities (via Tom Boggioni at Raw Story):

Following up on her Wednesday report on how Miller and Donald Trump's war on immigrants is "reshaping" the focus of what crimes should be prioritized, NBC's Julia Ainsley told the hosts of MSNBC's "Morning Joe" that the abrasive Miller is increasingly angering other members of the administration.

For NBC News she wrote that in May, Miller "berated and threatened to fire senior Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials if they did not begin detaining 3,000 migrants a day," and has since demanded other agencies help out with his "Operation At Large..."

Noting plans to use members of the National Guard to round up immigrants, Ainsley added, "This comes a week after the infamous, now infamous meeting where Stephen Miller called in the leaders of ICE and screamed at them, yelled at them, threatened to start firing the bottom 10 percent of performers if they didn't get their arrest numbers to 3000 a day."

Anna Giartelli at the Washington Examiner had more details about that rant:

“Miller came in there and eviscerated everyone. ‘You guys aren’t doing a good job. You’re horrible leaders.’ He just ripped into everybody. He had nothing positive to say about anybody, shot morale down,” said the first official, who spoke with those in the room that day.

“Stephen Miller wants everybody arrested. ‘Why aren’t you at Home Depot? Why aren’t you at 7-Eleven?'” the official recited.

One of the ERO officials in attendance stood up and stated that the Department of Homeland Security and the White House had publicly messaged about targeting criminal illegal immigrants, and therefore, ICE was targeting them, and not the general illegal immigration population.

“Miller said, ‘What do you mean you’re going after criminals?’ Miller got into a little bit of a pissing contest. ‘That’s what Tom Homan says every time he’s on TV: ‘We’re going after criminals,'” the ICE official told Miller, according to the first official...

Miller doesn't want gangbangers. He wants Latino families. And he's desperate to shove too many of them into kennels and basements and overflowing prisons.

It's proof that the anti-immigrant forces were never interested in stopping crime. It's proof that these bastards were interested in their racist agenda to purge America of anyone too dark-skinned for their liking.

We have monsters ruling the nation.

We have to defy them. It is paramount that we do so.

Tiananmen Square 2025: You Cannot Wash Away the Blood and Tears

No matter what the Chinese government does to erase the massacre of the democratic protests that fateful June 4, 1989, the world will not forget (via Helen Davidson at the Guardian): 

The world will never forget the Tiananmen Square massacre, the US secretary of state and Taiwan president have said on the 36th anniversary of the crackdown, which China’s government still tries to erase from domestic memory.

There is no official death toll but activists believe hundreds, possibly thousands, were killed by China’s People’s Liberation Army in the streets around Tiananmen Square, Beijing’s central plaza, on 4 June 1989...

The date of 4 June remains one of China’s strictest taboos, and the Chinese government employs extensive and increasingly sophisticated resources to censor any discussion or acknowledgment of it inside China. Internet censors scrub even the most obscure references to the date from online spaces, and activists in China are often put under increased surveillance or sent on enforced “holidays” away from Beijing.

New research from human rights workers has found that the sensitive date also sees heightened transnational repression of Chinese government critics overseas by the government and its proxies.

The report published on Wednesday by Article 19, a human rights research and advocacy group, said that the Chinese government “has engaged in a systematic international campaign of transnational repression targeting protesters critical of the Chinese Communist party,” with Uyghurs, Tibetans and Hongkongers particularly likely to be affected.

There are too many other nations opposed to Chinese interference and bullying ways. There are too many people - like myself - who remembered what happened and refuse to forget.

I'm still hoping I get to meet Tank Guy some day.

Flirtin' with Disaster Once Again: Welcome to the 2025 trump Hurricane Season

Update: Hello again, those of you coming from Crooks & Liars' Mike's Blog Round-Up! Thanks as always to Batocchio for including this blog to the array of socio-political blogs still out there. Good luck, and stay safe.

In the "What Could Possibly Go Wrong" category of bad news today, Reuters is dropping this particular tidbit about trump's pick to run our federal disaster relief agency (via Leah Douglas, Ted Hesson, and Nathan Layne):

Staff of the Federal Emergency Management Agency were left baffled on Monday after the head of the U.S. disaster agency said during a briefing that he had not been aware the country has a hurricane season, according to four sources familiar with the situation.

Insert every facepalm GIF you can find, folks.

The U.S. hurricane season officially began on Sunday and lasts through November. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration forecast last week that this year's season is expected to bring as many as 10 hurricanes.

The remark was made by David Richardson, who has led FEMA since early May. It was not clear to staff whether he meant it literally, as a joke, or in some other context.

Richardson said during the briefing that there would be no changes to the agency's disaster response plans despite having told staff to expect a new plan in May, the sources told Reuters.

Richardson's comments come amid widespread concern that the departures of a raft of top FEMA officials, staff cuts and reductions in hurricane preparations will leave the agency ill-prepared for a storm season forecast to be above normal.

Hurricanes kill dozens of people and cost hundreds of millions of dollars annually across a swath of U.S. states every year. The storms have become increasingly more destructive and costly due to the effects of climate change...

Richardson, who has no disaster response experience, said during Monday's briefing, a daily all-hands meeting held by phone and videoconference, that he will not be issuing a new disaster plan because he does not want to make changes that might counter the FEMA Review Council, the sources said.

President Donald Trump created the council to evaluate FEMA. Its members include DHS head Kristi Noem, governors and other officials.

trump, of course, would like to use that "council" to make recommendations to gut that relief agency - and anything that would highlight the reality that climate change is happening - altogether. When you consider how trump is refusing to send aid to states like North Carolina still recovering from last year's hurricane season, we are facing a grim situation that when the storms do slam into the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts that our federal government is not going to lift one damn finger to help even if the heavily Republican-controlled states getting hit are screaming to high heaven.

Add to this how trump is denying aid to the midwestern states getting hit by tornadoes, and we're talking about an administration that doesn't give a damn about the lives on the ground. 

And so YES, Red state America. Every single one of you who voted for trump this 2024 you are getting exactly what you voted for: Cruelty and denial.

We are so royally fucked (again).