The Wickedness of the Unwanted War

Are we the baddies?
-- Mitchell and Webb

The "bomb 'em all" war that trump and his lackeys triggered in Iran last week started with a horrific war crime: the destruction of a school building that killed hundreds including children. Only now are we getting confirmation it was our side doing it (via Merlyn Thomas and Shayan Sardarizadeh with the BBC, through a fact-checking service called BBC Verify): 

A US Tomahawk missile hit a military base near a primary school in southern Iran where Iranian authorities said 168 people, including around 110 children, were killed, expert video analysis shows.

A video published yesterday by Iran's semi-official Mehr news agency, which BBC Verify has confirmed as authentic, shows a missile moments before it struck an Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) base next to the Shajareh Tayebeh primary school in Minab.

BBC Verify has previously established through satellite imagery, verified videos and expert analysis that the area near the school was hit by a series of strikes.

Experts who have seen this latest video told us the presence of a Tomahawk missile, along with evidence the area was hit with multiple strikes, indicates this was a US operation. Neither Israel nor Iran are known to possess Tomahawks, experts said.

Netanyahu and his Israeli forces are eagerly striking targets across Iran for their own reasons - to end Iran's proxy war through terror groups, and to destabilize the entire Middle East to justify land-grabbing Gaza and the West Bank - but they've dragged in on their side a bomb-happy trump regime that wants "results" through glorified explosions and graphic body counts.

Just look at Secretary of War Assholes Pete Hegseth, out here crowing about ignoring the rules of engagement that our military is supposed to follow to reduce civilian casualties (via Haley Fuller at Military.com):

At a Pentagon briefing on March 2, 2026, War Secretary Pete Hegseth used blunt language about how the United States would fight, saying there would be “no stupid rules of engagement,” “no politically correct wars,” and “no nation-building quagmire.”

Those remarks became a flashpoint because rules of engagement, or ROE, are not “vibes” or slogans. They are a formal control system that ties tactical force decisions to strategy, law, and escalation management. Human Rights Watch responded the same day by warning that dismissing ROE in public can read as minimizing legal constraints that exist to protect civilians and keep operations compliant with the laws of war. 

In U.S. doctrine, ROE start with standing baseline rules and then get tailored by commanders for a mission, geography, and threat picture. The Joint Staff’s Standing Rules of Engagement and Standing Rules for the Use of Force (CJCSI 3121.01B) are the backbone reference that describes how U.S. forces think about self defense, hostile act, hostile intent, and the conditions for using force...

There are well-documented cases where tighter guidance on the use of force improved strategic outcomes by reducing civilian harm and preserving legitimacy with the population. In Afghanistan, ISAF’s 2009 Tactical Directive under Gen. Stanley McChrystal tightened standards for air-to-ground fires and emphasized protecting civilians, explicitly shaping how units used force in populated areas.

U.S. military analysis later described how that directive and related command emphasis drove changes in how airpower was used and contributed to decreased civilian casualties from airpower during that period. That is not a moral victory lap; it is operational logic. Civilian harm can create tactical blowback, degrade intelligence access, and strengthen enemy recruiting. 

Counterinsurgency doctrine makes the same point in more formal language: in COIN, legitimacy and civilian protection are not side quests. They are part of the theory of victory, which means ROE can become an instrument of strategy rather than just a compliance checklist...

In short: we're supposed to be the good guys, and good guys do not blow up schools and kill hundreds of children.

We do that - our US forces go in and commit atrocities across the board - and we signal to the local population we can't be trusted, that we are the demons that the other side keep painting us as. Recruitment for insurgents will go up: Local resistance - if we ever send troops to occupy - will get violent. Regional terrorism within any allied nations - and the likelihood of another terror strike here in the U.S. - will play out. And you get the quagmire Hegseth claims we're not getting dragged into.

But Hegseth doesn't care, he just wants to preen and strut as "a warrior" playing out his Alpha Male fantasies. trump never cared, he wants to satisfy the cruel urges that fill that empty void where a human soul should be.

It's telling that neither man were never truly soldiers. For all of Hegseth's "military" experience in the National Guard, he rode a desk not a tank. None of the actual Code of good soldiering got through that thick skull of his. Hegseth thinks warring is all about killing, and planting a colored flag on a battlefield to claim victory.

He is so wrong about that.

And trump, draft-dodging bone-spur coward that he is... he said far too often to far too many people that soldiering is for losers and suckers.

In the process, Hegseth is pushing our military into committing more and worse war crimes on the scale of My Lai, or Sand Creek. He's hoping - with trump's approval - to turn our troops into mindless trigger-pullers, taking aim at any target he and trump order them to kill.

This may be about the senseless - and criminal - killing of Iranians, and Venezuelans, and South American boaters, and now they're taking aim at Cubans. It's also about trump and the Far Right's desire to get troops to aim their rifles and missiles at other Americans, the ones the Far Right fear and hate the most.

trump wants his war on the part of America that doesn't cower or offer him adoration. Hegseth and the other Republican chickenhawks are willing to help him.

We need to stop these warmongers, not just for the sake of innocent lives across the globe but for the sake of our families, friends, and communities.

trump, Hegseth, and the Far Right want to be the Bad Guys. We shouldn't let them.

One Bit of Good News (Which Highlights All The Other Bad News)

With the furor over ICE basically kidnapping a 5-year-old from the streets of Minneapolis, the courts thankfully stepped in and said "HELL NO, Send Liam And His Dad Home" (via Sofia Barnett at the Minnesota Star Tribune): 

Five-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos returned home to Minnesota on Sunday, Feb. 1, with his father, ending a detention that carried the Columbia Heights preschooler hundreds of miles from his school and family and turned him into a national symbol of the human toll of immigration enforcement.

Liam and his father, Adrian Conejo Arias, boarded a commercial flight from San Antonio to Minneapolis after spending more than a week in federal custody at a Texas immigration detention center. They were detained Jan. 20 outside their home in Columbia Heights shortly after Liam returned from preschool, according to school officials and witnesses.

Their detention drew national attention after photos circulated of Liam being taken into custody in his driveway, wearing a blue hat with bunny ears and a Spider-Man backpack. In one photo, his face is twisted into a frown as agents lead him toward a vehicle, his small frame swallowed by a bulky flannel, his hands held together in front of him...

Liam’s release followed an emergency order from U.S. District Judge Fred Biery, who directed the government to immediately free the father and son from the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley. The ruling capped days of mounting pressure from lawmakers, school leaders and advocates who warned the detention of the young child had crossed a line.

The good news is that Liam is home, he's in a safe place and he has a chance to recover from the trauma ICE, Stephen Miller, and trump dumped on him.

The bad news? There's still thousands of innocent children being held in cages by trump's thugs (via Holly Yan and Priscilla Alvarez at CNN):.

But the boy’s plight – and his now uncertain future – sparked renewed outrage over the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement crackdown, which has also ensnared children.

Liam is now the fourth child from his school district to be taken away by ICE in just the past two weeks, Columbia Heights Public Schools said...

Liam, a student in the “PreK 4” program at Valley View Elementary, isn’t the only child from his school district who has been taken away by federal agents. Three other students have also been taken by ICE, school officials said.

Also on Tuesday, a 17-year-old Columbia Heights High School student on the way to school was taken by armed, masked agents, Columbia Heights Public Schools said.

“No parents were present,” the school district said. “The student was removed from their car and taken away.”

Last week, ICE agents entered the apartment of another 17-year-old high school student and her mother. Both were detained, the district said.

And a fourth grader was taken by ICE agents on her way to school with her mother two weeks ago. The 10-year-old is still in a Texas detention center, the school district said on Wednesday...

The current (as of December 2025) estimate on the number of children Homeland Security/ICE are detaining is around 3,800. This could be ranging from newborns to high school teens.

And we're talking CHILDREN here. Not gang-bangers. Not criminals. Children going to school, children trying to learn, trying to grow up in a nation that's supposed to be better than this.

And yet trump and Miller and Koem and nearly every Republican talking head out there are still trying to shill the Narrative that all these brown dark-skinned kids are the bad guys.

THEY'RE CHILDREN.

NONE OF THEM SHOULD BE IN CAGES, YOU MONSTERS.

Send every child back home, goddammit.

This Was Horrifying the First Time

Update: thanks again to Steve in Manhattan for including this article at Crooks & Liars' Mike's Blog Round-Up. Stay safe, everyone, and read up on how to wash out tear gas.

Back in the first term of the Darkest Timeline, we had a serious problem of trump's administration detaining entire families and separating the kids for maximum trauma. This was in 2018: 

Offensive above all is how - seemingly beginning under trump's misrule - the Border Patrol and ICE agents are intentionally splitting up families "in order to send a message". This message just happens to be "Hey, Mexico and Central America! The United States is now led by a group of rampaging assholes!"

'Cause only assholes would take a baby getting nursed by her mother.

The situation has gotten enough attention - especially after a reporter did a recent tour of a detention facility (converted from an empty Wal-Mart, how's THAT for symbolic?) - to where the DC Press Corps tried asking the White House Press Room about what was going on.

The answers they got? Shut up and don't question your government overlords...

And here we are deep into trump's second term as History's Greatest Monster, and he and his anti-immigrant allies like Stephen Miller and Kristi Noem are back attacking families and children without any moral constraint. They have ICE and Border agents basically kidnapping children (via Sam Levin at the Guardian (US)):

Liam Ramos, a preschooler, and his father were taken into custody while in their driveway, the superintendent of the school district in Columbia Heights, a Minneapolis suburb, said at a press conference on Wednesday. Liam, who had recently turned five, is one of four children in the school district who have been detained by federal immigration agents during the Trump administration’s enforcement surge in the region over the last two weeks, the district said.

Liam and his father had just arrived home when they were detained, according to Zena Stenvik, the superintendent, who said she drove to the home when she learned of the detentions.

When she arrived, Stenvik said the father’s car was still running and the father and son had already been apprehended. An agent had taken Liam out of the car, led the boy to his front door and directed him to knock on the door asking to be let in, “in order to see if anyone else was home – essentially using a five-year-old as bait”, the superintendent said in a statement.

Remember how trump and the Far Right described their anti-immigrant effort as "going after the bad hombres" like gangs and drug dealers and such? The truth of their anti-immigrant campaign is that they are going after families, working class people, those who came to this country legally and were following the rules to make new lives here.

The truth is that trump's racist regime is arresting five-year-olds. Does this child look like a ganger?

photo from Columbia Heights Public Schools
the school superintendent arrived at the scene and took the picture

And the agents tried to use the boy to bait more people to come out and get arrested by them. The sadists.

Stenvik said another adult living in the home was outside during the encounter and had pleaded to take care of Liam so the boy could avoid detention, but was denied. Liam’s older brother, a middle schooler, came home 20 minutes later to find his father and brother missing, Stenvik said. Two school principals from the district also arrived at the home to offer support.

Marc Prokosch, an attorney representing the family, said the family had an active asylum case and shared paperwork showing the father and son had arrived to the US at a port of entry, meaning an official crossing point.

“The family did everything they were supposed to in accordance with how the rules have been set out,” he said. “They did not come here illegally. They are not criminals.” He said there was no order of deportation against them and he believes the father and son have remained together in detention...

“Why detain a five-year-old? You cannot tell me that this child is going to be classified as a violent criminal,” Stenvik said.

It doesn't matter to Miller, Noem, trump, or anybody else eagerly volunteering to serve in the ICE brute squad. Liam Ramos, his father, and thousands of other migrants getting shipped off to detention camps are seen as criminals by the racist Far Right simply for existing.

And Liam isn't the only one. That Guardian article references a number of other children and teens getting grabbed and shipped off to god-knows-where. And even after the immediate outrage that Liam's "arrest" created, the ICE thugs doubled-down on their cruelty towards children (via Matt Lavietes with NBC News):

A 2-year-old girl and her father were taken by ICE on Thursday, according to a Minneapolis council member. The Department of Homeland Security confirmed it has detained the father, who was with a child at the time.

Elvis Joel Tipan-Echeverria and his 2-year-old daughter Chloe Renata Tipan Villacis were taken in south Minneapolis on their way home from the grocery store, Minneapolis City Council member Jason Chavez said on Instagram.

A spokesperson for DHS confirmed that Tipan-Echeverria was taken into custody and that he was driving with a child when he was stopped. The agency did not identify the child’s name, age or gender.

“A suspicious vehicle followed her father’s vehicle home, broke his window and kidnapped them,” Chavez wrote with the post. “No judicial warrant was provided.” In a brief interview with NBC News, he confirmed that they had been taken and added that he met with the father and daughter’s family on Thursday evening.

Why arrest a TWO YEAR OLD? Because they can. Because that two year old offends them just by being here. the Homeland Security spokespeople are claiming "no mother arrived to take care of the child" but the report suggests the mother wasn't even contacted. The agents didn't even try.

Never forget this fact with trump and his wingnut allies: The Cruelty Is the Point. The more vicious they can behave towards families and children, the more the wingnuts believe they can generate obedience through fear.

trump wants the round-up of families and children to continue. he WANTS violent confrontation with the groups in America - the ones defending not only the rights of immigrants but the rights of everyone - he despises to justify triggering the Insurrection Act and suspending all laws to his desire of being dictator. And the Republicans will back his play because - as their conservative ideology compels them - they want all the power for themselves.

As I was typing this, even more discouraging - and heartbreaking - news is coming out of Minneapolis. The downward spiral of state-sanctioned violence is getting worse.

Stay safe, people. But stand your ground as well. We cannot let these bastards win.

Blood in the Streets of Kansas City

So there was a Super Bowl recently, and the Kansas City Chiefs won a back-to-back title in overtime over the San Francisco 49ers, and as usual there was a parade in the team's honor through the streets of Kansas City, Missouri (it's not in Kansas itself just on the state border, weird I know) and even with all the police and private security forces in place to manage the parade route and celebration sites, two three gun nuts were able to open fire and give our nation yet another mass shooting (via Jaclyn Diaz at NPR):

One person was killed and up to 21 others were injured after shots were fired Wednesday afternoon outside Union Station in Kansas City, Mo., at the conclusion of a celebration for the Kansas City Chiefs' Super Bowl win, officials said.

The number of victims from this shooting is still evolving as law enforcement continues their investigation.

Officers took three individuals into custody, Kansas City Police Chief Stacey Graves said during the day's second news conference, updating the previous tally of two suspects brought in.

One suspect was captured after a foot chase with officers, she said...

In preparation for the expected crowd size, 800 law enforcement officers were on scene for the parade, Graves said. The heavy police presence helped in getting fans to safety once the shooting began and in administering life-saving aid to gunshot victims, she said...

Even with all those good guys with guns, gun violence still happened.

But KCUR reported that Children's Mercy Hospital received 12 patients from the rally, 11 of them children and nine of those with gunshot wounds. Fire Chief Ross Grundyson couldn't immediately confirm the ages of the victims.

Children.

The gunmen FIRED AT CHILDREN.

It is too early to speculate what the motive of the gunmen were, but the fact they opened fire with children present spells out that these sons of bitches didn't give a damn who they were hurting.

And there's one more event in public that we can't dare attend without risk of getting shot at.

We can't go to open-air music concerts.

We can't go to movie theaters.

We can't go to food festivals.

We can't go to our city halls.

We can't go to grocery stores. Or Wal-Marts.

We can't go to malls (TOO MANY TO LINK HERE).

We sure as hell can't send our kids to schools - we haven't been able to for decades since Columbine in 1999 - without the risk of them never coming back.

We as a nation cannot peaceably assemble - we cannot celebrate, we cannot convocate, we cannot be a community - because the ongoing threat by the National Rifle Body Count Association's public demands that their rights to carry murder weapons everywhere at all times shall not be infringed.

It's just that the gun nuts' right to carry assault rifles and semi-automatic handguns stocked with high-capacity magazines requires the rest of us to pay in our blood.

We in the majority are dying so that the paranoid, armed-to-the-teeth minority can fantasize to their Turner Diaries cosplay bullshit.

Goddamn the NRA. Goddamn the politicians who let them rack up these body counts.

We need gun reform NOW, before every street in America drowns in the blood of our children.

Where Are The Ukrainian Children, Putin?

I was kind of waiting for arrest warrants to go out for the other guy today, but getting this announcement of arrest warrants for trump's evil puppetmaster Putin will do nicely (via Mike Corder and Raf Casert at AP News):

The International Criminal Court said Friday it has issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin for war crimes because of his alleged involvement in abductions of children from Ukraine.

The court said in a statement that Putin “is allegedly responsible for the war crime of unlawful deportation of population (children) and that of unlawful transfer of population (children) from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation.”

It also issued a warrant Friday for the arrest of Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova, the Commissioner for Children’s Rights in the Office of the President of the Russian Federation, on similar allegations.

The court’s president, Piotr Hofmanski, said in a video statement that while the ICC’s judges have issued the warrants, it will be up to the international community to enforce them. The court has no police force of its own to enforce warrants...

There is of course no way that the Russian government will honor the Hague's warrants, I don't believe they are even signed onto the treaties that created this court.

But this puts the whole world on notice. In the eyes of the international communities, of their legal systems, and in the name of justice, it is a matter of public record that Putin is the war criminal here in his uncalled and unjust invasion of Ukraine since 2022 (arguably well back into 2014 when Russia seized Crimea and the Donbas region).

The ICC said that its pre-trial chamber found there were “reasonable grounds to believe that each suspect bears responsibility for the war crime of unlawful deportation of population and that of unlawful transfer of population from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation, in prejudice of Ukrainian children.”

The court statement said that “there are reasonable grounds to believe that Mr Putin bears individual criminal responsibility” for the child abductions “for having committed the acts directly, jointly with others and/or through others (and) for his failure to exercise control properly over civilian and military subordinates who committed the acts...”

Anybody trying to defend Putin's actions from here on will have to justify Putin and Russia's illegal kidnapping of thousands of Ukrainian children, which they can't. Everything else Putin is doing that's illegal - such as the bombing of civilian areas and the killing of innocents - becomes harder for his apologists to excuse away as well.

The sweeping investigation also found crimes committed against Ukrainians on Russian territory, including deported Ukrainian children who were prevented from reuniting with their families, a “filtration” system aimed at singling out Ukrainians for detention, and torture and inhumane detention conditions.

But on Friday, the ICC put the face of Putin on the child abduction allegations.

WHERE ARE THE CHILDREN YOU STOLE, PUTIN?

Uvalde Followup: The Sound of Shameless Cowards (w/ Update)

The ongoing terror and ongoing shame in our nation regarding the plague of mass shootings and widespread sorrow of gun violence just keeps getting worse.

Back in late May, the community of Uvalde Texas suffered the unimaginable loss of 19 children and 2 teachers killed by a gun-wielding angry guy. Ever since then, there had been questions about how the school security and later how the local police mishandled the situation. For months, stories kept dribbling out about how the police waited for minutes during the most critical moments; how the police detained mothers who heard the screams and wanted to rush in to save their babies; how the local police chief failed to understand the severity of the situation to the point of criminal negligence; and even how one of the cops at the scene had to be restrained because he was getting text messages from his dying wife who was one of the teachers killed.

Well, this past week, a video recording from security cameras inside the school leaked out. And while the mayor began screaming about going after the leaker(s), everyone else was horrified by the visual evidence that police did nothing (via Justin Peters at Slate (paywall)):

Though the video does not include any gory footage, and though we do not see inside the classrooms in which Ramos shot and killed 21 people, it is nevertheless hard to watch. (You can hear a lot of gunshots in the video; an “editor’s note” appears periodically informing viewers that “The sound of children screaming has been removed.”) Almost exactly three minutes after Ramos enters the school, three police officers enter and head down the hallway toward him. A minute later, after receiving fire, they retreat. More and more police officers show up. For over 40 minutes, as the video makes irrefutably clear, they more or less just stand there...

The one thing every viewer and pundit focused on when the video got out: The inhuman line "The sound of children screaming has been removed." Stephen King could never write a line more horrifying than that.

On Wednesday in Slate, my colleague Rebecca Onion nicely captured the excruciating experience of watching over an hour’s worth of footage of officers sanitizing their hands, checking their phones, standing around, and doing pretty much everything but intervening to stop the shooter...

It’s one thing to read about the police inaction at Robb Elementary; it’s another, much more viscerally maddening thing to see it with your own eyes. The written accounts that I’ve read of the police response have contained excuses and rationales and official statements; they’ve left room for doubt over what happened and why, and for the prospect that the police on the scene actually acted heroically after all. But the video has no bandwidth for  such shades of gray. It is an indelible partial record of what happened that afternoon. It sticks in a way that the stories I’ve read did not...

And when the video leaked, what was the official response from Uvalde officials like the city mayor?

On Tuesday, Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin announced that the news outlets were “chicken” for publishing the video before the victims’ families had had a chance to see it...

The mayor’s response, in which he appealed to emotion in order to criticize the media for doing their jobs, is worth analyzing. On its face it sounds reasonable, even humane. The victims’ families have indeed been through enough, and it’s natural to want to spare them additional gratuitous trauma. But this plea to consider the families’ emotional welfare reads as smarmy and self-serving when uttered by the mayor of a town whose first responders failed the students and teachers of Robb Elementary on the day of the shooting, and whose authorities have been trying to duck responsibility for their own behavior ever since then...

More than an hour elapsed between when the first police officers arrived on the scene at Robb Elementary and when the police finally confronted and killed Ramos. This gap was not initially public knowledge, and in the aftermath of the shooting, Texas Department of Public Safety director Steve McCraw announced that “the bottom line is that law enforcement was there, they did engage immediately, they did contain him in the classroom.” Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, meanwhile, praised the police on the scene for showing “amazing courage by running toward gunfire..

The video proves that Abbott's praise is absolute bullshit. Even when the cops had body armor, helmets, even those bulletproof shields clearly visible on camera, they waited like chickens for the gunman to finish his bloody agenda.

Every goddamned Uvalde and Texas law officer who failed to act on that day, and every goddamned Uvalde and Texas elected official all the way up to the goddamned Governor who tried to cover up this shame, should have the phrase "The sound of children screaming" tattooed to their foreheads for the rest of their gutless miserable lives.

This is, by the by, absolute proof that the Far Right wingnut fantasy of "Good guys with guns" is a goddamned lie. We had a platoon, nay an entire police force of "good guys with guns" and even they were too terrified to go after a lone gun nut who just happened to carry assault weapons with enough firepower to scare them.

The widespread availability of military-grade assault rifles - thanks to the blind and inhuman misreading of the goddamned Second Amendment by conservative wingnut justices and politicians - is a serious problem for law enforcement across the United States. You wanna know the excuse for why every police department is stocked with riot gear and firepower that even our own military thinks is excessive? The excuse is that the cops want to be "prepared" to face off against any large-scale riot where the rioters may have these AR-15s and similar semi-auto (and illegally converted full auto) firearms.

But even that excuse is a lie. Watch how the cops behaved at Uvalde - when there was just one gunman - and how they cowered behind their shields for a full hour. Then watch how these cops behaved at Black Lives Matters protests: Where most of the protestors were waving signs and carrying water bottles, and where the cops responded with rubber (and real) bullets, smashing in heads with batons and the butt of their own rifles because the cops fucking knew they held all the firepower on those streets.

If our nation's law enforcement were truly honestly serious about protecting themselves in dangerous situations, if they truly wanted to live with the belief that they should "go home to their families at the end of every shift," you'd think every sheriff's department and police union out there would be fighting tooth-and-nail to pass assault weapon bans to make their lives easier. 

But they don't. You barely hear a peep from police unions when it comes to debate for assault weapon bans or any other gun safety option.

Part of cop rationale is that they want that excuse of mad gunmen running around so they can play soldier with overpowered gear of their own. Part of it is that the cops are on the same page with the National Rifle Body Count Association when it comes to ensuring the goddamned White Nationalist Christianist "Rapture Is Coming" Gun-Worshipping wingnuts are locked and loaded for the Second Civil War vs. bleeding heart liberals.

The anxiety cops have with every traffic stop could easily go away when the open-carry prevalence of guns go away. But no: they would rather live with the fear, all because it lets them impose their fear and firepower on the ethnic minorities they deem to punish and harass.

In the meantime, the shameless cowards in Texas will keep bleating the same excuses and the same lies until they are held accountable. Until each and every cop who failed in their duty, each and every official who failed to be honest and upfront, each and every demagoguing politician who blustered and lied are either in jail or out of office.

The sound of children screaming should haunt them forever.

Update 7/18: Am waking up this morning to reports that there were 376 officers that eventually showed up at Uvalde. All those cops, and they STILL could not work up the nerve to apprehend a single gunman. All because the gunman had AR-15 murdersticks with him. /rage 

IT'S THE GUNS

IT'S THE GUNS

IT'S THE GODDAMNED GUNS.

Get rid of the assault rifles and maybe just maybe the cops will stop being cowards and bullies.

Grooming Hypocrisy

In the past month or so - especially as the anti-LGBTQ+ legislation like "Don't Say Gay Florida" got signed into law - we've witnessed an uptick in a particular form of Republican attack, where they go on the offensive (by being offensive) and accusing their political opposition of crimes they haven't proven.

You've probably been overwhelmed by now from the Far Right Narrative that the Republicans are passing all these anti-gay bills to protect our families and children from the dread threat of Communism The Big Scary Blacks Satan Worshipers Feminazis Baby Parts Factories and now Groomers. The accusation is that the gays and lesbians and trans people are infiltrating our schools in order to "groom" the next generation of teenagers to be gay/lesbian/trans themselves.

It's as though the Far Right still believe that homosexuality, or any alteration of gender identity, is a "choice" rather than the personal psychological self-awareness that every person - straight, gay, bi, trans, or fluid - goes through growing up. We've had decades of studies providing some evidence that the self-identity is biological, internal, that you're born to it, and it's not something you can plug into another person like teaching them math or history.

It may stem from the fear/belief that the Far Right has - given their religious absolutism and devout faith - that such sexual identities can be programmed into people the same way churches program people into their dogma. It ignores the hard-wired nature of self-identity, and it's all projection and hypocrisy.

The hypocrisy comes from the facts that 1) there's no proof of wide-spread grooming conspiracy going on (remember Pizzagate?) and 2) the Republicans are willing to overlook how heterosexuals - especially older men - are willing to chase after the younger generation of women to "groom" them as their second (or third) wives / mistresses on the side.

These Republicans yelling and screaming about "Gays grooming yer kids" have no problem rewriting state laws like the one in Tennessee, where they were trying to create loopholes to deny gays right to marry... while at the same time getting rid of the restrictions that protected girls as young as 10 from forced marriages. Nationwide outrage finally pushed the state legislature to re-insert the age restriction, but this was how the Far Right religious bastards wanted to take it (via Jon Skolnick at Salon):

H.B. 233 gives Tennesseans "an alternative form of marriage" between individuals who have a "conscientious objection to the current pathway," according to state Rep. Tom Leatherwood, the bill's Republican sponsor. 

As WKRN ​​reported, the GOP bill, first introduced in January, establishes a common-law marriage between "one man" and "one woman" but omits any age requirements for the union, an omission that Democrats have blasted.

"I don't think any normal person thinks we shouldn't have an age requirement for marriage," said Democratic state Rep. Mike Stewart. "It should not be there as it's basically a get out of jail free card for people who are basically committing statutory rape," Stewart. I mean it's completely ridiculous, so that's another reason why this terrible bill should be eliminated..."

The measure is a significant step back from a Tennessee law passed in 2018 that prohibited minors under the age of seventeen from getting married. 

According to Unchained at Last, Tennessee ranks the 13th highest state in child marriages per capita. Nearly 10,000 children were granted marriage licenses in the state between 2000 and 2018... 

While the original intent of that law - which is still getting voted on - was to get around the gay rights to marriage, the fact that the Far Right didn't care they had removed the protections for children vulnerable to older sexual predators spells out their utter hypocrisy when it comes to "think of the children". The fact they didn't address this as a problem until 2018 (!!!) and were happy to undo what they had done just six years prior ought to horrify people.

Republicans - especially the religious wingnuts - look at gays and lesbians and bi and trans going public with their gender identities and scream "THEY'RE GONNA BRAINWASH YOUR KIDS INTO TEH GAY." Those same Republicans will then look at hetero men in their 20s and 30s chasing after 14-year-olds to get them pregnant and proclaim "Well this is the natural order of things as God intends."

Statutory rape means nothing to them. Actual rape - where the young girls are abused one way or another (physically or emotionally) into submitting to those men's wills - means nothing to the Far Right. The age differences between the sexual predators going after teen girls means nothing to them. Republicans pushing their religious wingnut agenda are going to make sure rape victims are forced to bear babies they didn't want for the glory of the sons-of-bitches who raped them. All they see is their sexist "make 'em barefoot and pregnant" agenda regain its "proper place" in the goddamned Patriarchy.

They've been like this for decades. We've seen their behavior in public over and over again. This blog has railed against the likes of Roy Moore - who was chasing after teenage girls while in his 30s, so much so a local mall had to trespass him to stop him stalking girls there - and other religious extremists like the Duggar family, which had sided repeatedly with their sexual predator son Josh who molested his own sisters (the parents' own daughters!) and was convicted in 2021 for possession of child porn. 

That is all young women are to these forced-birth zealots: Sexualized targets regardless of age, whose only purpose in their Christian Utopian is to breed. As often as possible, as early as possible.

The threat of "gay grooming" is a fake news story compared to the real threat girls and women from the ages of 10 to 50 are facing from the wingnut Religious Right the very minute Roe v Wade gets nuked by this ultra-conservative Supreme Court.

Gods help this nation the minute we turn half of our population into cattle.

There Is Only One Safe Place In America Right Now: Home

We are eight months into 2020 and we are still coping with a Coronavirus pandemic that shows no sign of slowing, all because our national political leadership remains unfocused on fighting it to the point where trump and his handlers behave like it's still not real.

The scary thing is we are closing in on the traditional start of our national education system returning from summer breaks, where classrooms open in August through December for Christmas/New Years holidays. trump is insisting the schools open. Coronavirus is telling us differently (via Adrianne LeFrance at The Atlantic):

“This push to open schools is guaranteed to fail,” says Peter Hotez, a pediatrician and molecular virologist, and the dean for the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine. I’ve been corresponding with Hotez, and with several epidemiologists, over the course of the pandemic, and have noticed a starkness in their views in recent weeks. “The social-distancing expectations and mask requirements for the lower grades are unrealistic,” Hotez told me. “In communities with high transmission, it’s inevitable that COVID-19 will enter the schools. Within two weeks of opening schools in communities with high virus transmission, teachers will become ill. All it will take is for a single teacher to become hospitalized with COVID and everything will shut down.”

Hotez has good reason to be pessimistic. There were 68,605 new cases in the United States yesterday, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The seven-day average has stayed above 60,000 new cases per day since July 13. Reaching 100,000 cases per day, once seen as an apocalyptic, worst-case-scenario warning from Anthony Fauci, is no longer difficult to imagine. Indeed, my conversations with epidemiologists in recent days were all strikingly dark. They agreed: Schools should not risk reopening, probably not even for the youngest children, in the coming weeks. “We can’t pretend like everything’s fine,” said Gary Simon, the director of the infectious diseases division at George Washington University. “If I had a school-age kid, I wouldn’t want to send him to school.”

The evidence is all around us. There is the summer camp in Georgia where hundreds of kids and counselors—nearly half the camp—got infected after only a few days together. Then there’s the school in Indiana where, just hours after reopening last week, a student tested positive for the coronavirus. (“We knew it was a when, not if,” the superintendent told The New York Times, but officials were “very shocked it was on Day 1.”)

We had months to prepare, ever since the official shutdown in March. We needed extensive testing in place, enough labs to generate results in days so we could quarantine fast enough. We needed more hospital beds and supplies, overflow facilities to handle the waves of infected we're still trying to heal. We needed to plan for home child care, providing workplaces the means to redirect work from office to home so parents could keep an eye on their families. We needed the funding to set up virtual schooling, mobile WiFi hotspots to families in rural areas, free Internet to suburbs and cities, and loaner laptops so that kids could get classes and submit work to and from home, where they'd be safe.

None of that happened. The scope and size of such endeavors can't be done state by state. It had to be done at the federal level. Yet trump and his Republican allies in the Senate are DOING NOTHING except give orders to the states and to school systems that can't even begin to solve the problems they're being told to fix. Back to LeFrance:

“The problem is the White House and the task force could never organize themselves to lead a federal response and bring virus transmission down to containment levels,” said Hotez, who has argued for the necessity of a federal containment plan that, if executed effectively, might allow the nation to reopen comprehensively as soon as October. “Instead they took a lazy and careless route, claiming schools are important, as we all know, and the teachers and principals need to figure it out. What they did was deliberately set up the teachers, staff, and parents to fail. It’s one of the most careless, incompetent, and heartless actions I’ve ever seen promoted by the executive branch of the federal government.”

All of this disaster gets laid at the feet of the trump family. Like every other crisis, trump handed this off to his son-in-law Jared Kushner, who proceeded like all his previous endeavors to mismanage the situation to where we're screwed now. As pointed out in this article in Vanity Fair by Katherine Eban:

Six months into the pandemic, the United States continues to suffer the worst outbreak of COVID-19 in the developed world. Considerable blame belongs to a federal response that offloaded responsibility for the crucial task of testing to the states. The irony is that, after assembling the team that came up with an aggressive and ambitious national testing plan, Kushner then appears to have decided, for reasons that remain murky, to scrap its proposal. Today, as governors and mayors scramble to stamp out epidemics plaguing their populations, philanthropists at the Rockefeller Foundation are working to fill the void and organize enough testing to bring the nationwide epidemic under control...

Rather than have states fight each other for scarce diagnostic tests and limited lab capacity, the plan would have set up a system of national oversight and coordination to surge supplies, allocate test kits, lift regulatory and contractual roadblocks, and establish a widespread virus surveillance system by the fall, to help pinpoint subsequent outbreaks.

The solutions it proposed weren’t rocket science—or even comparable to the dauntingly complex undertaking of developing a new vaccine. Any national plan to address testing deficits would likely be more on the level of “replicating UPS for an industry,” said Dr. Mike Pellini, the managing partner of Section 32, a technology and health care venture capital fund. “Imagine if UPS or FedEx didn’t have infrastructure to connect all the dots. It would be complete chaos.”

The plan crafted at the White House, then, set out to connect the dots. Some of those who worked on the plan were told that it would be presented to President Trump and likely announced in the Rose Garden in early April. “I was beyond optimistic,” said one participant. “My understanding was that the final document would make its way to the president over that weekend” and would result in a “significant announcement.”

But no nationally coordinated testing strategy was ever announced. The plan, according to the participant, “just went poof into thin air.”

In a statement, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said, “The premise of this article is completely false...”

By early April, some who worked on the plan were given the strong impression that it would soon be shared with President Trump and announced by the White House. The plan, though imperfect, was a starting point. Simply working together as a nation on it “would have put us in a fundamentally different place,” said the participant.

But the effort ran headlong into shifting sentiment at the White House. Trusting his vaunted political instincts, President Trump had been downplaying concerns about the virus and spreading misinformation about it—efforts that were soon amplified by Republican elected officials and right-wing media figures. Worried about the stock market and his reelection prospects, Trump also feared that more testing would only lead to higher case counts and more bad publicity. Meanwhile, Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House’s coronavirus response coordinator, was reportedly sharing models with senior staff that optimistically—and erroneously, it would turn out—predicted the virus would soon fade away.

Against that background, the prospect of launching a large-scale national plan was losing favor, said one public health expert in frequent contact with the White House’s official coronavirus task force.

Most troubling of all, perhaps, was a sentiment the expert said a member of Kushner’s team expressed: that because the virus had hit blue states hardest, a national plan was unnecessary and would not make sense politically. “The political folks believed that because it was going to be relegated to Democratic states, that they could blame those governors, and that would be an effective political strategy,” said the expert.

That logic may have swayed Kushner. “It was very clear that Jared was ultimately the decision maker as to what [plan] was going to come out,” the expert said...
On April 27, Trump stepped to a podium in the Rose Garden, flanked by members of his coronavirus task force and leaders of America’s big commercial testing laboratories, Quest Diagnostics and LabCorp, and finally announced a testing plan: It bore almost no resemblance to the one that had been forged in late March, and shifted the problem of diagnostic testing almost entirely to individual states...

We saw the results of that: A number of Republican-controlled states - Florida, Texas, Georgia, and Arizona above all - decided to push for quick re-openings, acting as though COVID was under control when it was merely waiting for super-spreader events to cause a second wave. Those Red states - no longer the Blue states (save California) - are now the hot spots threatening our citizenry to the detriment of REPUBLICAN governors who are now the ones to blame.

The means to track and isolate carriers through testing fell apart: Not enough funding and help from the federal level where it had usually been. We're at a point where people are waiting more than 7 days for results... during which time they're infecting everyone else as asymptomatic victims of the Coronavirus.

In the meanwhile, trump's Far Right fan base and media allies pushed against EVERY tool of combating the pandemic as though the fight itself offended their "freedoms", especially waging a war against mask-wearing in public places even though months of evidence demonstrated here and elsewhere that masks reduce the spread of COVID. Unless trump himself comes out and repudiates his earlier stances, we are not going to see an end to that fearmongering over masks (it may already be too late if trump tries).

There are no good solutions except the hard choice of going back to Shut Down like we did in March. The hard choice for the U.S. Senate - which is FAILING to pass much-needed extensions of financial aid to the unemployed and renters in dire need of paychecks - to continue federal support that most conservatives despise. These hard choices may be unpalatable to the Far Right... but without those decisions, we are facing both an expansion of a lethal pandemic killing more Americans and a worsening economic situation that can't repair itself without yet another massive bailout.

First things first, Americans.

Keep our kids and families safe as possible. Keep them home. Give them the tools to study in safe places and learn as best they can without the exposure to death they'll be facing in the close quarters of classrooms.

Stay At Home, America.

Stay Safe.

September 11 Again And We're STILL Not Okay

It's just another morning in a United States scarred deeply by the tragedy of this September 11.

My memories of that morning still fresh in my mind and in the minds of so many others.

It took a few seconds. It took a few seconds to realize that one plane was an accident. Two planes, one right after the other… hitting each tower…

I knew then it meant war.

The lobby TV was terrible, snow and static, and I went up the 8th floor to see if reception for a TV in the staff lounge was better up there. It wasn’t. They tried moving it into a meeting room closer to the windows to see if that could help. And barely. There was still a lot of static and snow, and some of the guys I was with didn’t agree with me when I swore one of the towers had collapsed...

Our whole country hasn't been the same since.

Since then, a raw nerve has been exposed. A terrible, racist pulse of anger has driven half of this nation into rage towards anyone Muslim, anyone Latino, anyone Black, anyone and everyone who fits the definition of "Other."

It's why there's a raging Shitgibbon in the White House, someone who tapped into that racism and obsession and used it - still uses it - as a weapon.

It's why we're still in Afghanistan 18 years later, unable to secure any lasting peace because that effort was so mismanaged the second we leave it falls to chaos and the Taliban again.

It's why we're still caging babies and kicking military troops - men and women who volunteered to serve this nation - out because the racists refuse to accept them as citizens or even as humans.

We're not winning any War on Terror because we let the Haters and Monsters gain control of our nation.

Gods help us. These scars are not going away any time soon.

There Is No Word for a Child's Fear... But There Is a Name For That Fear Now And It Belongs to trump

A few weeks back, trump and his ICE thugs had openly talked about raiding ten major "Sanctuary" cities to "arrest" (actually kidnap) thousands of "undocumented illegals" (anybody with dark skin and no paperwork to prove who they are), but those raids either never happened or fizzled out. The understanding post-panic was that it was trump and the anti-immigrant bastards doing their upmost to scare Hispanic-Americans into fearing the worst.

Well, yesterday, the worst finally happened in Mississippi (via Sarah Fowler at the Clarion Ledger):

A Scott County child started kindergarten Tuesday. Wednesday, while the child was at school, their parent was arrested by federal agents, one of 680 people taken into custody after U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement conducted seven raids at food processing plants across Mississippi.

Superintendent Tony McGee said, as of Wednesday afternoon, he knew of at least six families within the district that had a parent caught up in the raids. The students range from kindergarten to high school.

McGee, who met with ICE officials after the raids, said he expected the number to increase. 

The raids happened in small towns near Jackson with a workforce made up largely of Latino immigrants. The towns hit include Bay Springs, Carthage, Canton, Morton, Pelahatchie and Sebastapol.

Reports from the scene of the raids mentioned children waving goodbye to their parents as the adults were taken into custody. It is not publicly known how many children are being impacted by the arrests.

In Scott County, teachers and staff are on standby. To make sure a child doesn't go home to an empty house, bus drivers have been given strict instructions to have a "visual reference to a parent or guardian" before they drop the student off. If there is not a parent home, the child will be taken back to school, McGee said... 

This wasn't an attempt to rein in street gangs. This wasn't a law and order situation.

They arrested families. They attacked people who worked for a living (and likely paid more in taxes than any rich man ever would). They attacked mothers and fathers (on the first day of school in the state, no less. THEY KNEW what they were doing). They abandoned children to empty homes without meals, without supervision, without answers.

The goddamn wingnuts wanted scalps.

The racists wanted to terrify Latinos (and other ethnics).

And now children are scared. And now parents are locked away, terrified about what might happen to their kids. I wouldn't be surprised if ICE personnel started forcing mothers and fathers to sign away their lives on any form shoved in their face if they were promised the safety of their children. Any coerced confession to Gods knows whatever the hell the bullies want out of their victims.

This is a nightmare.

This is exactly what trump and the goddamn Republicans want.

For everyone not White to be afraid.

This Is Happening Right Now We Are Killing Children In trump's Concentration Camps (w/ Update)

Jesus.

It seems trump and his Latino-bashing lackeys have doubled down on the sadism (via Caitlin Dickerson at the New York Times):

A chaotic scene of sickness and filth is unfolding in an overcrowded border station in Clint, Tex., where hundreds of young people who have recently crossed the border are being held, according to lawyers who visited the facility this week. Some of the children have been there for nearly a month.

Children as young as 7 and 8, many of them wearing clothes caked with snot and tears, are caring for infants they’ve just met, the lawyers said. Toddlers without diapers are relieving themselves in their pants. Teenage mothers are wearing clothes stained with breast milk.

Most of the young detainees have not been able to shower or wash their clothes since they arrived at the facility, those who visited said. They have no access to toothbrushes, toothpaste or soap...

This is part and parcel of an inhumane immigration policy that's been in place since the Reagan administration and left to rot ourselves from the inside (via Ken White at The Atlantic):

The government’s “safe and sanitary” argument did not arise from a new case generated by Trump administration policies. It arose in 1985, during the Reagan administration, when a 15-year-old El Salvadoran child named Jenny Lisette Flores was detained after entering the United States illegally, hoping to escape her country’s vicious civil war. Flores spent two months at a facility in California, confined with adult strangers in poor conditions and strip-searched regularly. In July 1985, she and three other minors brought a class action against what was then called the Immigration and Naturalization Service, challenging its policies for the care and confinement of minors.

In 1997, after a dozen years of litigation, the parties settled the lawsuit in what became known as the “Flores Agreement.” The Flores Agreement requires, among other things, that the government hold minors in facilities that are “safe and sanitary” and that they be released from confinement without delay whenever possible...

...The United States’s loathsome argument—that it is “safe and sanitary” to confine children without soap, toothbrushes, dry clothes, and on concrete under bright lights—is morally indefensible. It’s also a spectacularly foolish argument to raise in the famously liberal Ninth Circuit, where the United States should have expected exactly the reception that it got. And even though the litigation began under the Obama administration, it was the Trump administration that elected to bring this appeal and ask the court to bless these inhumane conditions as “safe and sanitary.” That’s an extremely aggressive legal argument, and one that suggests that the disturbing conditions being reported at confinement centers are intentional, not a sign of mere neglect...

And trump, deal maker that he thinks he is, is trying to use all of this (again) to wrangle concessions from an increasingly angry Democratic House.

I say fuck him and his whole racist administration. What trump is doing here - violating human rights as guaranteed by treaty and the 14th Amendment - rises to impeachable offenses, just like twenty other criminal acts he keeps committing every GODDAMN DAY.

And while we're yelling and screaming about trump STILL breaking up families and detaining children in sickening conditions, we've got Republicans and conservative pundits arguing over the "misuse" of the word "concentration" when describing trump's Concentration Camps. They're trying to get us to debate semantics while PEOPLE ARE DYING IN THOSE HELLHOLES.

JESUS GODDAMN CHRIST, HOLD trump AND HIS SICK RACIST LACKEYS ACCOUNTABLE FOR THIS, DEMOCRATS.

Update: Doctor compares conditions at these concentration camps to "torture facilities." Goddamn you, each and every Republican signing off on this inhumane treatment OF CHILDREN.

History Repeats As Racist Tragedy

Jesus. Under trump's administration, we're not only doomed to repeat the worst parts of our nation's history, it's like trump and his cronies are intentionally going out of their way to be assholes. Look at what they're planning to do next to asylum-seeking families now (via Chelsia Rose Marcius at the Daily Beast):

The Trump administration plans to use an Oklahoma Army base that previously served as a Japanese internment camp to hold a growing number of migrant children, Time reports. About 1,400 children who are in U.S. custody will reportedly be placed at Fort Sill, a 150-year-old military base previously used to house hundreds of Japanese-Americans forced into internment camps during World War II. According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the base will be used “as a temporary emergency influx shelter” to alleviate the influx at other facilities. The U.S. government operates about 168 facilities and programs in 23 states. The Department of Health and Human Services said in a statement that it has detained approximately 40,900 children from the beginning of the year through April 30—a 57 percent increase from last year.

We're seeing an influx of immigrants and asylum-seekers at our borders because of various reasons: Growing gang violence in Central American nations, ongoing drought in Guatemala, problems that just make it unsafe/unhealthy for families to stay.

Yet here's the modern Republican Party showing absolutely no awareness, no sympathy, no realization that the last three years of vicious behavior hasn't scared off Latinos, no concern that there are more humane ways to handle the overflow than shoving thousands of honest-to-God families in need of help into cramped, lethal conditions.

We're basically jailing kids for being alive.

We're basically allowing the Republicans to bring back the internment camp horrors of the 1940s, to where Japanese Americans (some of them still alive from those years) are reacting in anger.

We're basically building our own version of concentration camps. Yeah, I went there. BECAUSE WE ARE, DAMN US.

Adam Serwer's article should be read every morning as a reminder of how sadistic the Republican Party has become.

The Cruelty IS the Point.

A Cruel Month for a Cruel Administration (w/Update)

April is the cruelest month. - T.S. Eliot's "The Waste Land"

(Update 12/29/19: Thanks to Batocchio for accepting this as my Jon Swift submission for 2019!)

There's so much to go over and it's all coming in too fast I can't keep up with the blogging outrage. But here's where we are at halfway through April 2019:

trump is continuing to treat the shutdown of the Mueller Investigation as "vindication" even as evidence piles up his new Attorney General Barr gave the order to shut it down. Adding onto that is Barr's refusal to give Congress an unredacted copy of the Mueller Report - which never seemed to happen to previous Special Counsel reports, definitely not Starr's Report on Bill Clinton - meaning trump is covering up whatever Mueller found out that hadn't made it to the courts for trial.

trump is dropping more public statements about going after his critics and political opponents, accusing them of "treason" over unfounded beliefs that he was being wrongly investigated. He's been pushing Barr - and his new AG seems willing - to open investigations into the investigators.

The Democratic House finally had a committee - the Ways and Means - request trump's hidden tax returns and did so in a way the IRS and Treasury Department could not block without facing the threat of jail time. trump's buddy Secretary Mnuchin refused to turn over the tax returns. It's now a question of what the committee's response will be (right now they've extended the deadline but at some point someone's going to have to flinch in this Game of Chicken).

The problems at the southern border are getting worse, where the immigration system we had that was working is at the point of collapse. trump's obsession with ending illegal immigration has intermixed with the legal system of asylum seekers. As a result the asylum courts are backlogged to forever with no relief in sight.

trump wants to physically shut down the border with Mexico altogether, mostly out of spite. The fact this move would immediately destroy a multi-billion import/export economy means nothing to him.

trump has been asking about intentionally transporting the millions of incarcerated immigrant families to Blue State "Sanctuary Cities" with the intent of punishing those cities for defying him. While the Sanctuary Cities are mostly saying "Let them come, we will shelter them" the reality of such a sudden influx of people would overwhelm their social services ranging from housing to food to basic medical care. The likelihood of the humanitarian crisis turning into a deadly disaster goes high, with trump and his Republican Hate League certain to blame it on the cities' inability to cope.

We still don't know what happened to thousands of stolen children.

On top of that, verifiable reports are coming out that trump is telling law enforcement underlings - especially the Border Patrol people - that he wants them to lie to judges and he wants them to break the laws constraining trump's desire to shut the entire asylum system down. And that when they get arrested for breaking those laws, trump is promising to pardon them in a blatant abuse of pardoning power. trump is basically telling people to break laws for him, period.

And just to show trump isn't all focused on hating Mexicans and Central Americans, he's spent this weekend bashing Muslim Congresswoman Ilhan Omar to the extent that her personal safety is in danger. Going on a selectively edited quote from a false extremist, a fellow Congressman Dan Crenshaw accused Omar of attacking 9/11 victims and trump followed through on that crap.

At this point, you need to follow this link to Adam L Silverman's article at Balloon Juice and read the whole thing. As a foreign intelligence guy and terrorism expert, Silverman can see exactly what's happening here:

There is much more exposing the fraud that is Mohamed Tawhidi at the link. Unfortunately, all Congressman Crenshaw saw was someone claiming to be a Muslim cleric bashing Congresswoman Omar for saying something she didn’t say, which gave him both an excuse and a rhetorical weapon to go after Congresswoman Omar to score political points. This was, unfortunately, all Congressman Crenshaw was actually interested in.

So what did Congresswoman Omar actually say? Not the barbered clip taken out of context, but the actual remarks? I’m glad you asked. Here are the full set of the remarks before the barbered clip put out by Tawhidi and then amplified by Congressman Crenshaw. This portion of her remarks begin around the 12 minute mark of her speech and immediately follow Congresswoman Omar discussing how Muslims, in regard to fully claiming their civil liberties, can liberate themselves...

Unfortunately Congressman Crenshaw’s political and rhetorical attack was picked up and transmitted by Brian Kilmeade, the left boob of Fox News’ morning show A Blonde with Two Boobs on a Sofa, which is also doing business as the President’s Daily Briefing. And that’s how it got to the President who then decided to take the gasoline pump, turn it on, pump gasoline all over, light a match, and throw it in. Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post decided that wasn’t a visible enough conflagration, so they threw a crate of fire crackers onto the pyre.

All of this, from the fake imam who conservatives and extremists on the right love to quote to Congressman Crenshaw doing exactly what you’d expect him to do in amplifying and weaponizing Tawhidi’s rhetorical hit job to the President finding a way of making it all about him because he cannot stand it if anyone else is getting any coverage to Rupert Murdoch’s minions making it worse, the die has been cast. Right now, somewhere in the United States, at least one white man who most likely describes himself as both a “patriot” and a “good Christian”, but possibly a “good Jew”, is planning to assassinate Congresswoman Omar in order to save the Republic from her. And at least one of these white men will be smart about what they are doing. They will hold their planning close. They will not make a threatening phone call and leave their real names with a staffer. They won’t tweet that they’re going to shoot her or cut her throat or whatever other snuff fantasy gets them off. They will, instead, quietly plan all while stewing in their own juices until their own internal pressure has built to the point where they decide to take action. And that day, which will, unfortunately, eventually come, will be a very, very, very bad day for America...

If you think angry rhetoric is just venting, that it's just the price for Free Speech... Just remember what happened to George Tiller. It's the same goddamn thing happening with the media over-inflating the danger, riling up the easily riled wingnuts, and just waiting for a fuse to get lit. And then when (not if) Omar is attacked - even if she gets out of it wounded - those same demagogues will step back and say "oh we didn't MEAN for it to happen, First Amendment bitches" and move on to the next target of their hate speech.

I've been primed for a while now for this darkest timeline to get worse, and the last six months IMHO there's been an escalation in hostility among the Far Right. The shit has been getting real, but damn I know that this is just DEFCON 3 level of madness. All it's gonna take is one more crazy plan by trump to become "law" and we're DEFCON 1 and the mess turns bloody.

And I haven't even touched on the goddamn wingnuts going after abortion on a scale that could lead to women getting the death penalty for anything the wingnuts deem as baby-killing (just let the hypocrisy of that world-view horrify you for about, oh, the rest of your life).

We are so very extremely royally fucked right now.

The Damage Done by Nielsen and Her Fellow Haters

Update: Hello again, Crooks and Liars readers, from the Mike's Blog Round-Up! Big thanks to M. Bouffant for the referral. Please enjoy your visit!

I was writing something else to blog but this came up today that requires comment.

Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen is resigning. Via Dara Lind at Vox.com, here's more:

Nielsen, the sixth head of the Department of Homeland Security and Trump’s second appointee (she was confirmed in December 2017 after John Kelly left to become White House chief of staff), has arguably been the most aggressive secretary in the department’s short history in cracking down on immigration — with her legacy likely to be defined among progressives by the “zero tolerance” prosecution policy of late spring and early summer 2018 that resulted in the separation of thousands of families at the US-Mexico border.

She is one of the key figures in a policy that separated children from families and put babies into jails. This wasn't "zero tolerance" this was zero humanity.

None of it appears to have been enough for Trump.

Nielsen’s resignation was preceded on Thursday night by the abrupt withdrawal of the nomination of acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement director Ron Vitiello to formally lead the agency, with Trump telling reporters Friday morning that he wanted to go in a “tougher direction.” While it’s not yet clear whether Trump requested Nielsen’s resignation or not, it certainly appears as if that “tougher direction” is extending to a new DHS secretary. (Earlier in the week, it was reported that Trump was considering a White House-based “immigration czar” to coordinate various immigration-related agencies — most of which are under the aegis of DHS.)

Do you realize what's happening here. trump desires finding someone to put in charge of a sadistic immigration policy who will make it worse.

Trump has taken out his frustrations on Nielsen before. In spring 2018, he reportedly threw a tantrum at her during a cabinet meeting over why she didn’t just “close the border” (a threat he brought back last week, though Nielsen and other officials made clear he would only be able to close ports along the border). After the 2018 midterms, he reportedly decided to ask for her resignation as part of a post-election Cabinet shakeup, but appears to have changed his mind.

But with nearly 100,000 migrants apprehended by Border Patrol agents along the US-Mexico border in March, Trump is yet again ruminating angrily and obsessively over immigration, riffing in speeches about telling migrants “we’re full” and “go back.”

You and I both know that he's only screaming "GO BACK" to just the Latino immigrants. And the Asian immigrants, and the African immigrants. I guarantee you trump will greet a refugee boat of Norwegians washing up on the Maine shoreline with open arms and a goddamn welcoming parade. Outside of that, trump wants his goddamned Wall and his bloodlust against Mexicans (and Central Americans) sated.

Nielsen couldn’t make that happen, because no one could, because it’s impossible. The US can’t — even with a wall — physically prevent the entry of unauthorized immigrants onto US soil. And once on US soil, they have certain rights — including the right to request asylum...

These are rights set down by international treaty - something we signed onto and under the Constitution has to be treated as law - and what trump is looking to do is ignore all of that to fulfill his racist obsessions. All it will take is a compliant Senate to agree to whatever hateful wingnut - I'm hearing voter-suppressor Kobach, but am willing to bet Stephen Miller would love the opportunity as long as he doesn't face scrutiny - will take the job next.

There is nothing to celebrate here. Yes, a terrible person is dropping out of power but she is leaving behind a disaster filled with ruined lives that will take years to repair (if at all). There are still missing children, goddammit, and Nielsen has to answer for every single one.

Once this goddamn blight is out of the White House, there better be a Human Rights Commission to hunt every violator of immigrant and asylum seekers' rights down and hold them accountable for the dead and missing and scarred. Time to shove Nielsen, trump, and every goddamn Republican who signed off on this policy into one of those cages they've been using at ICE facilities.

WHERE ARE THE CHILDREN, NIELSEN?

WHERE ARE THE CHILDREN, trump?

Families Belong Together Lakeland Rally w/Photos

As mentioned yesterday, I went to Lakeland's afternoon rally in support of the Families Belong Together effort that is protesting trump's inhumane policy of separating immigrant and asylum families (as well as throwing kids as young as NEWBORNS into chain-link-fence cages).

Most people I know in the area probably went to the Tampa rally - those tend to be bigger and more awe-inspiring - earlier in the day, but I heard via Twitter from Betty Cracker of Balloon Juice that it got interrupted by a late morning thunderstorm (welcome to Florida, lightning capital of the Northwest hemisphere (which should actually be a quadsphere not a hemi, but I digress)).

At our march it was mostly grey and threatening, ending up with a bothersome drizzle as we started walking through downtown Lakeland (all five blocks of it, sigh).

I figure we had around 100 people and between four to eight puppies.

I documented what I could with pics and video I am having problems downloading video off my phone damn the man below:

This fat boy looks familiar. I wore my Captain America shirt because it seemed appropriate.

I will work on getting the video uploaded.

I was too busy actually walking to get my smartphone out to record any of it, but we circled Munn Park a few times and performed a few chats.

Out of the car traffic that passed us, I would say we had 30-50 people honking their horns in favor and only 3 people being total jerkasses: one middle finger, one couple shouting pro-trump crap out the window, and one attempt at a Coal Roll exhaust blast. ALL THREE OF THEM were driving the oversized supertrucks most people shouldn't drive unless they really do haul 16 tons around work. I had to explain to a couple protesting beside me what Coal Rollers were and why they were the perfect example of deplorable trump voters. This is purely anecdotal on my part, but I figure we had a 10-to-1 balance of pro-family pro-immigrant support over the hater coalition.

I hope everyone else's marches went well. I am linking to updates that were posted at Balloon Juice over the weekend.

Keep marching. Keep protesting. Those kids need to be reunited with their families as soon as fucking possible. Our immigration policy needs to open up to asylum seekers and honest families looking for safe homes to raise their kids to go to college and contribute to our United States. We need to listen to the better angels of our nature.

Out In the Streets, Fighting for Justice

I plan on being at the Families Belong Together rally in Lakeland this afternoon.

Pics to prove it happened forthcoming.

Stay safe at these rallies today, America.

The Worst Impulses of an Angry trump Nation

While the Beltway media is sitting around in their overindulging circle jerk arguing about civility in Virginia restaurants we should not overlook the fact that OVER 2000 CHILDREN HAVE BEEN KIDNAPPED BY OUR GOVERNMENT AND THAT THEY NEVER PLANNED TO REUNITE THESE FAMILIES.

Are you starting to understand this, America? Any of you? We are facing a humanitarian crisis of our government's own doing, and the people who are in any position to question this, fight back against this are all rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic just before Vesuvius erupts! (or something to that effect)

Then again, there's nothing we CAN do because the leadership we have in government knows exactly which part of America they answer to - that's not the majority - they answer to their primal angry destructive base. And I'm not the only one saying this. Drew Magary over at GQ is noting it too:

...In fact, and oh wow you’re not gonna believe this, but Trump voters tend to grow even fonder of Trump the more he fucks up at his job. A near-infinite number of gallons of ink have been spilled trying to explain the fever grip Trump has over this inordinately powerful bloc of the electorate. He lies to them. Fox News lies to them on his behalf. The Internet lies to them. The establishment media (hi!) disdains them and sows their distrust as a result. They’re going through difficult times and need bogeymen to lash out at. Their schools are garbage. They’re hooked on opioids. They harbor deep racial and sexual resentments that have only been superficially addressed through the years. Since 2016, I have been fed explanation after explanation as to why these people act and vote the way that they do.

But what if, and hear me out on this… what if it’s because the people are the problem?

America is a broken democracy at the moment, and Trump’s presidency has revealed the myriad ways in which it always has been. Going by polls, our leadership does not accurately reflect the views of a majority of our population. And yet, ever since Trump was elected, I have had a very difficult time comprehending the fact that over 60 million people voted for him. Voted for THAT guy. It was an electorally unforgivable act, and yet they went ahead and did it anyway. These voters are always portrayed as beholden to forces outside of their control, both socioeconomic and political. But it is the will of those same people that put Trump in power and have approved of nearly all of the Republican Party’s efforts to mutilate democracy to better serve its own greed. The people did this...

At nearly every turn, our worst leaders are enabling our worst people. They are, in the most soulless possible fashion, REPRESENTING them. When Trump chucks a handful of Starburst at Angela Merkel, he’s representing the people. When an anonymous Trump official says that the official Trump Doctrine is “We’re America, Bitch,” they’re representing the people. And when Trump uses ICE as an agency of soft ethnic cleansing, he’s representing the people. If Trump has brought out the worst in them, well the worst was always there to begin with. I can say “Trump doesn’t REALLY stand for America” to myself over and over, but I know that’s a lie.

This is not a spell. There’s no prince who’s gonna ride in with true love’s first kiss and bring sunshine and flowers to the land once more. There is very little in America’s history to suggest that its evils haven’t been a direct result of the will of a sizable and highly influential number of its citizens, and it is an enormous abdication of leadership when politicians and titans of industry don’t have the sack to tell these people that they are WRONG.

Because they are. Trump voters were wrong to elect him president. They are wrong to support mass family jailings at the border. They are wrong to blindly support corrupt police and sheriff’s departments. It is a fundamental, perhaps lethal, flaw of our democracy that our leaders are rewarded more for catering to the people (and craftily exploiting them in the process) rather than actually serving and leading them...

While this is all taking place, trump's policies are starting to have an adverse affect on the parts of the nation that supposedly supported trump. His tariff war against steel is forcing companies to shut down and forcing manufacturers like Harley Davidson to relocate to countries where the costs won't hurt them. Our farmers are starting to see their foreign markets close all doors to them.

But I guarantee you every single "trump Voter" is humming a happy tune tonight knowing every libtard and dark-skinned Other out there is feeling butt-hurt.

And the anger and rage that is cutting this nation further apart is getting worse because whatever leadership we have right now is too cowardly to make a moral stand and lead us away from our nation's worst impulses.

We are so very royally fucked as a nation. And about 62 million trump voters are loving every minute of it.