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Improbably, the White-Nationalist-In-Chief still plunges to lower, ranker, more nakedly racist depths as he tries to deflect from his failings, lies, naps and crimes. The fake Peace President’s ugly apogee, topping murders at sea, banning migrants “non-compatible with Western Civilization,” siccing ICE dogs on innocents et al: His vicious invective against Somalis as “garbage” while his Stepford bigots stand silent before it all, complicity unbound. Ferris Bueller's hapless teacher: "Anyone? Anyone?"
Obviously the mild cluelessness of blank students facing Ben Stein's teacher in Ferris Bueller's Day Off pales before the toxic spectacle of a blithering, execrable fascist stirring up gutter-level hatred as he spews "possibly the most openly racist shit any US president has ever been caught saying." The dissonance of the furious bigotry erupting from an alleged national leader - its vitriol, animus, beyond-the-pale crudeness, the eerie silence into which it falls - also prompts a jarring, queasy sense of, "what the fuck is wrong with this picture?" even as it comes from a ghastly human whose most longstanding, foundational tenet is brutish racism (plus greed), going back to his KKK father, his deadly hatred for the Central Park Five, his snarling claim all Mexicans are criminals and rapists.
In his ongoing "shitification of American politics," there's always, obviously much more. There's blithering, gaslighting, verbal incontinence: "Affordability is a con job, a hoax started by Democrats." Self-serving grandiosity: "The Ukraine war never would have happened if I'd been president." Outlandish fantasy: "They're finding money in our country now they never knew existed. The other day - $30 billion. Where did it come from? I said, 'Why don't you check the tariffs shelf?' They call back: Sir, you're right.'" (America: "Of all the things that didn’t happen, this didn’t happen the most.") Cult worship: The National Park Service has removed MLK Jr. Day and Juneteenth from their free admission days, replacing them with Dear Leader's birthday; he'll be 12 next year.
In further Stalinesque self-glorification - and in the first time a living (sort of) president (ditto) named a building for himself while in office - months after DOGE tried to illegally seize control of the U.S. Institute of Peace, a non-profit think tank for international conflict resolution, the building has re-emerged with massive silver letters as the Donald J. Trump U.S Institute of Peace. A White House spokesbot, lauding straight-faced the what is it now 38? wars he's ended, declared, "Congratulations, world!" The world, noting the Orwellian renaming of an institute created in 1984, helpfully if hopelessly pointed out that Orwell's dark masterwork "was supposed to be a cautionary tale, not an instruction manual," but here we are.
Other atrocities proliferate. The report Trump’s military occupation of U.S. cities has cost over $473 million - from $270 million in D.C and $172 million in L.A. to $13 million in Chicago - even as he cut more than $1 trillion from vital domestic services. The fact that both of the DOJ's wildly unqualified, illegally appointed partisan hacks/pretend acting U.S. attorneys Alina Habba and Lindsey Halligan still claim to hold their non-existent positions. The fact that, after boasting about rolling back food stamps and her "gratitude and joy for this work," USDA Sec. Brooke Rollins is still "hellbent on people going hungry" in blue states. Passage of Texas' racist redistricting coup - "Let's talk about cowardice" - and the White House's icky Daddy's Home holidays meme.
And everything "no stupid rules of engagement" dunk-tank clown Pete Hegseth does: The Signalgate report that his massive security leak "risked endangering U.S. military personnel," which he somehow turned into, “Total exoneration." His slimy, shifting narratives - the Pentagon has no idea who's on board vs. they're all on a secret list of military targets - for 48 minutes of murderous video showing "what it looks like when the full force of the United States military is turned on two guys clinging to a tiny piece of wood and about to go under," aka, "a shooting gallery with helpless targets" which is clearly either a war crime or murder - plain and simple,” both impeachable, though Megyn Kelly would've preferred "they lose a limb and bleed out a little."
Still, with sinking polls, rising prices, Epstein lurking, a tragic D.C shooting to open the floodgates and billions for ICE's jackbooted thugs, the splenetic racism from a presidential bully pulpit is paramount, a timeless scapegoating ploy now at "absolutely unique" levels of depravity. "It all started with Barack Hussein Obama," he raved, before attacking Somalis who have "nothing" to do with the shooting or anything else. America will "go the wrong way if we keep taking in garbage," "They have destroyed our country," "Ilhan Omar is "garbage," "her friends are garbage," Somalia "is just people walking around killing each other," "they come from hell and do nothing but bitch," "their country stinks," "we don’t want them," "Minnesota is a hellhole right now," ”Let them go back to where they came from." And, evil one, may you too. Oh please.
His on-camera racistmania was dutifully lapped up, first by the obsequious (seated) members of his creepy circle jerk, then by the obsequious (standing) minions - blinding white, stiffly smiling, hands clutched, tongues tied - performatively gathered for his "supine authoritarian MAGA messaging...a barely coded cry of 'Everybody into the pool!' for a supporting cast of racist demagogues." One by one, they obeyed. J.D. banged on the table to lay the blame where it belonged: "Why did homes get so unaffordable? Because we had 20 million illegal aliens taking homes that ought by right to go to American citizens." Marco Rubio, in some insane optics - try watching without sound - feverishly genuflected to the peace president, sitting next to him, dozing off.
ICE Barbie thanked him for having "kept the hurricanes away" and "saved hundreds of millions of lives with the cocaine you’ve blown up in the Caribbean"; she urged a travel ban on "every damn country that’s been flooding our nation with killers, leeches, and entitlement junkies" - but not those getting free jets - who "slaughter our heroes, suck dry our hard-earned tax dollars, or snatch benefits (from) AMERICANS. We don't want them." Whew. She flamboyantly echoes both Stephen Goebbel's Nazi rhetoric and Trump's calls for stripping citizenship, blocking all refugees - except sad white Afrikaners - from a vague list of “third world countries,” aka brown and black, "non-compatible with Western Civilization" - an illegal move that def turns the racism up to 11. Manifesting "cultishness off the charts," Press Barbie celebrated all this as "amazing" and "epic."For Minnesota's Somali community of up to 80,000, the largest in the country, it is "extraordinarily harmful." Already tense in the wake of an alleged $250 million fraud scandal involving federal nutrition aid and two non-profits - both run by white people but involving dozens of Somalis - pressure from the new racist surge feels "inescapable...The volcano has erupted." Though many are U.S. citizens, and Minneapolis' police chief has told officers they'll be fired if they don't stop illegal force by ICE goons, people are afraid to go to work, to school, to Friday prayers, especially in Somali-dense areas like "Little Mogadishu" and the Karmel Mall. "We know authoritarianism," said a Somali city council member, and with it the potency of racism and nativism. After Haitians eating pets, he said, "It's just the next iteration."
Meanwhile, ugly ripples ooze from Trump's rhetoric. ICE thugs keep thugging, though most of their victims have no criminal record and some are U.S. citizens. They've sicced dogs on people, resulting in horrific injuries and reviving MAGA's sick "good old days." They have a cruel new plan dubbed "Operation Irish Goodbye" to arrest those already self-deporting, and they're canceling citizenship ceremonies for people from the "wrong" countries. A 2025 blood-and-soil US National Security Strategy touts great replacement theory, warns Europe it faces "civilizational erasure" by migrants of color, supports their fascist groups, rejects our allies for Russia, imagines a "Crusader-style reconquest (of) Europe by the white right." He just trashed a "decaying" Europe with "weak" leaders, 'cause brown people. A Wisconsin worker was fired and went viral for calling a Somali couple "niggers"; fellow racists raised $100,000 for her, echoing "garbage" slurs.
Despite outrage about his murders at sea, Dunk-tank Pete killed four more brown people, bragged about it, insisted Trump can kill "as he sees fit" and gave a speech with ominous shock-and-awe echoes declariring "narco-terrorists are the al-Qaida of our hemisphere (and) we will keep killing them." Then the most petty, hateful person on the planet - spite-revoking a pardon?! - giddily accepted a hideous, made-up, Happy Meal, savagely mocked FIFA Peace Prize and medal - the “Trump dance! the Village People! - to appease his no-Nobel ego because "if you show up with a tchotchke (and) give it to the three-year-old in the Oval Office, he will (be) happy." Gavin Newsom got the Kennedy Center Peace Prize: “AUDIENCE WAS AMAZING (CHAIRS NOT GREAT)...CROWD WENT WILD."The View gave out medals too: "You get a medal! And you get a medal!" Okay, all medaled up. Now can he go home?

The surreal and deadly lurches on. In the last, frantic, script-flipping week, MAGA went from threatening to kill Dems who reminded troops to obey the law to scurrying to parse or ignore the news their macho, bungling Secretary of War Crimes evidently blew apart (at least) two guys in the water for no reason - an action universally deemed either murder or war crime, but def against the law. Now see Kegseth et al thrash, bluster, scapegoat the other guy. Trump doctrine: Deport, raze, blame, kill first; think (sic) later.
Most notably, a flailing presidency of "malevolence tempered by incompetence" - Cue the bonkers holiday greeting, "A very Happy Thanksgiving salutation to all of our Great American Citizens and Patriots who have been so nice in allowing our Country to be divided, disrupted, carved up, murdered, beaten, mugged, and laughed at" - is now embroiled in the detritus of a toxic, slapdash revenge tour targeting perceived, if often outlandish, enemies, both here and abroad. Last week's berserk campaign focused on six, mouthy Democratic lawmakers and veterans who had the chutzpah to post a brief video reminding the military of their oaths to follow the law and if needed disobey orders that don't - a bedrock tenet of the military so vital it's engraved on a plaque at West Point: "Should orders and the law ever conflict, our officers obey the law." Pretty radical.
The measured response from the Mob-Boss-in-Chief: Hysterically charging them with "SEDITION," "TREASON," "MILITARY TRIBUNALS," and calling them "traitorous sons of bitches" who should be "EXECUTED." Even as death threats followed, he was swiftly joined by every MAGA lickspittle, especially the lickspittlest - manly Whiskey Pete, the preening, pig-eyed, fragile creator of the War Department famed for strutting on stage to spout inane bullshit about a "warrior ethos" that demands "more lethality, less (sic) lawyers" 'cause who needs rules and laws? Shrieking the Dems' "screed" was "despicable, reckless, and false," he zeroed in on Sen. Mark Kelly - Macho Twit Goes After Actual Mensch - announcing he'd heard "serious allegations of misconduct” by Kelly, he'd "determine further action," and maybe recall Kelly to active duty so he could court-martial him.
It was a brilliant move by a National Guardsman whose drunken, inept, sexual assaulting career peaked in a Civil Affairs job and a weekend TV host gig until his absurd appointment, savaged as "an affront" to anyone who ever served, especially after he leaked war plans - a move just found to have violated Pentagon policy and put at risk military personnel. Veterans eviscerate him as "an absolute jackass," "an imposter," "a coward," "a blowhard" in makeup, "that officer, a total blue falcon" who screws his comrades. Now pols are too. Sen. and former Marine Ruben Gallego: "This is fucking insane." Kelly, in contrast, is a decades-long, much-decorated Navy pilot who saw 39 combat missions in Operation Desert Storm, an astronaut who flew four space shuttle missions including the mission to recover the Columbia crash victims, a husband who retired to nurse his wife back to health after she was shot in the head, and a respected Senator.
Kelly, who's seen much worse, fought back: "(Hegseth) runs around on stage talking about lethality and the warrior ethos (like) a 12-year-old playing army, and it is ridiculous, embarrassing. This is not a serious person." He noted the "wild" irony of Hegseth attacking him under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which is what the six traitors recited: "You can't make this shit up." He also posted an image of his 20-plus medals to illustrate how he'd served and loved this country. In response, Pete sneered to "Captain" Kelly not only did he do "sedition" but his medals "are out of order," and he'd get to that. Alexander Vindman (and half of America): "Ever heard of a picture being mirrored? Good reminder: You’re out of your depth." Shut down, a pouting Pete went after our real enemy, vowing to cut support for a DEI-infected Boy Scouts who've become "genderless" and failed to "cultivate masculine values." Welcome to the Gulf of Fragile Masculinity.
This is what the "Secretary of War" is busy doing. This is who this petty macho arrogant jerk is. This is the guy who, as the Washington Post reported days later, allegedly ordered a SEAL Team on Sept. 2, in the first of nearly two dozen military strikes on fishing boats in the Caribbean that have killed 83 mostly anonymous "narco-terrorists" in extrajudicial assassinations, to "kill everybody" after the smoke from an initial strike cleared and revealed two wounded survivors in the water, clinging to wreckage of the burning boat. "Kill them all," writes JoJoFromJerz. "That was the order, plain, deliberate, and damnable, issued by the booze and bronzer-brined (Hegseth) as if American power were his personal cudgel and human life his disposable currency. The directive slithered down the chain of command like toxic runoff," and in moments the two helpless men were "blown apart in the water."
The murderous "double-tap" strike was needed, the Pentagon argued, to sink the boat and avoid a "navigation hazard” - a claim Rep. and Marine veteran Seth Moulton called "patently absurd," just like Trump's underlying "novel" claim the U.S. is in an "armed conflict" with oil-rich Venezuela' and its drug cartels. Despite American opposition, to date he's threatened ground strikes, hinted at regime change, and unilaterally declared Venezuelan airspace closed along with 83 killings so politically and legally dubious the U.K. has stopped sharing intelligence on traffic in the Caribbean to not be complicit. All this, despite a total lack of evidence the victims are drug traffickers or any accountability for their deaths, and the fact most potentially lethal fentanyl doesn't even come from the Caribbean. One pundit: "So what gave him the idea blowing up small boats in international waters was a thing?" Especially when, per Marcie Wheeler, it took four shots for these killer clowns to do the lawless dirty deed.
Inept Warrior Pete is on it anyway, damn near swooning from blood lust, with his ridiculous renaming stunt - "WAR.GOV/JOINTHEFIGHT - rabid calls for "lethality," firing of military Judge Advocate Generals who act as legal guardrails against possible future illegal commands (hmm), and queasy, chest-thumping zeal for the fight: "Trump ordered action - and the Department of War is delivering! Operation SOUTHERN SPEAR defends our Homeland!" The WaPo story of his verbal command to "kill everybody" shouldn't surprise anyone; it's part of the long, sordid, bellicose narrative arc of a laws-are-bullshit buffoon who only feels big if he makes others small, or per Trump, "like, dead," and can then brag about it. A wildly unqualified, uber-macho cartoon version of a weak man willing to do anything to prove he isn't, he fits right in with all the other flame-throwing hacks and sycophants now inexplicably handed the terrifying reins of power.
Meanwhile, the consensus of virtually every military expert or lawyer asked is that Hegseth is, by his actions, either a war criminal or a murderer. The legal bottom line: "There is no basis in law for the maritime attacks. Period. Full stop." Even if there were, international and US law render the targeting of defenseless persons - showing them "no quarter" - "patently illegal." They add, "Violations of these obligations are war crimes, murder, or both. There are no other options." And anyone who issues or follows those orders should be prosecuted. Many cite for reference a "textbook war crime," as in, "If we were at war, Hegseth committed one. If not, it's outright murder." Laurence Tribe, who taught law at Harvard for 50 years, helpfully adds that the DOD Law of War Manual, Sec. 18.3.2.1 includes the "requirement" to refuse illegal orders. Their example? "Orders to fire upon the shipwrecked."
Also, in case anyone ever believed Trump's "war" was about drugs: Last week he pardoned former Honduran president and cocaine kingpin Juan Orlando Hernández, sentenced last year in a US court to 45 years in prison for conspiring to traffic over 400 tons of cocaine into the U.S.; with his brother, he also helped turn Honduras into a major producing hub and transit point for cocaine heading to the US, and once said he wanted to “stuff the drugs right up the noses of the gringos." Trump's brazen flaunting of his "charade" of a drug war may be why even Newsmax (sadly) argues the strikes are war crimes, and Repubs on House and Senate Armed Services Committees say they may even do some oversight of this one crime among so many by their mad king; it remains unclear how many are willing to "fall on their swords" for the grossly incompetent, unsavory Hegseth.
South Park's latest, savage skewering of "fucking douchebag Pete Hegseth" may help them decide, or not. Trump sends him to town to free Peter Thiel; armed with his selfie stick but thrown out by the "woke" police chief, he teargasses the annual, Saudi-sponsored 5K Turkey Trot, mistaking the race for an Antifa mob; then he bickers with ICE Barbie - who shoots another dog livestreaming and yelling, "Like and subscribe, guys! The Department of War will not be intimidated!" Possibly confusing art with life, Hegseth tried Friday to sneeringly meme his way from the outrage by trashing "fake news," doubling down with, "We have only just begun to kill narco-terrorists," and posting a grotesque, quickly blasted, parody of kids' icon Franklin the Turtle firing rockets at small boats. Up next: "Franklin Goes to the Hague For War Crimes" and "Franklin On Trial at the ICC."
The White House, meanwhile, feverishly tried to quiet the uproar. Press Barbie babbled the second strike was "in self-defense to protect Americans in vital United States interests" (sic) and insisted "presidentially-designated Narco-terrorist groups are subject to lethal targeting." Also, they suddenly found a scapegoat, Admiral Frank Bradley: "Bus, meet Admiral Bradley. Admiral Bradley, meet bus." Hegseth "authorized Adm Bradley to conduct these kinetic strikes. (He) worked well within his authority and the law to ensure the boat was destroyed and the threat to the United States was eliminated," said Barbie, a renowned scholar of maritime law. Pete's stupid, rank deceit reportedly set off "furious backlash" at the Pentagon. "He is selling out Bradley and sending chills down the spines of his chain of command," said Sen. Chris Murphy. "A case study in how not to lead."
The morning after the Sept. 3 attack, Hegseth told Fox News he tracked the strike in real time: "I watched it live." At Tuesday's Cabinet circle jerk, Trump dozed from his night's hypomanic episode of rage-posting160 times, and Pete's story slimily shifted. As the big boy leader, he said, of course "you want to own that responsibility." So he saw the first strike, but "at the Dept.of War we got alotta things to do," and he had, umm, a thing, so he didn’t stay for "the hour and two hours or whatever where all the sensitive site exploitation digitally occurs" yada yada. Huh. Hours later, he learned "the commander had made the - which he had the complete authority to do" whoosh under the bus and "we have his back." Asked if he saw survivors, he lost it: "The thing was on fire. This is called the fog of war. This is what you in the press don’t understand. You sit in your air-conditioned offices, plant fake stories, nit pick, kill everybody, not based on anything, American heroes, I wrote a book, yada yada, go war fighters!
Wait. "The fog of war"? You mean the fog of bullshit? You mean the cloud of smoke you see in your own air-conditioned office far away as drones on a screen incinerate small boats and the poor souls in them, also the rare survivor who desperately hangs on in the flames and water until you flick a blithe switch to kill him too? That fog of "war"? Fuck you, you gutless vapid self-serving ghoul, whining and snarling you're all doing "what is necessary, dark and difficult things (on) behalf of the American people." Right. On Tuesday, the Columbian family of one victim filed the first court petition charging their husband and father, Alejandro Carranza Medina, 42, was illegally killed in a 2nd US strike on Sept. 15. They said he was a fisher who often set out for marlin and tuna; they named Trump and Hegseth as his killers. Trump had bragged that day of "a SECOND Kinetic Strike against positively identified, extraordinarily violent drug trafficking cartels and terrorists." He said they were "from Venezuela."
Update: Good news from The Borowitz Report for the Manchild King: The Hague has invited him to receive an award. "They said it was in response to things I've done as president," he boasted, before nodding off.
Whew. Last week was...a week. Enraging, astounding, often venomous, with flailing small dicktator energy all around. There were pigs, dogs, bonesaws, pedophiles, tumbling polls, charming Marxists, almost everything he's done declared illegal and defiant Democrats threatened with death for, um, defending the rule of law. Sen. Chris Murphy's message to those still complacent before the growing dangers posed by a cornered, venal, fascist loser: "Maybe now would be the time to pick a fucking side."
Over the last bungled weeks of a shambolic presidency that's transmuted America into ugly chaos, the wannabe king has suffered enough losses - electoral, legal, political, economic - some observers argue he's finally losing his mystifying "air of impenetrability," with polls showing him underwater on every issue, including immigration. As U.S. consumer sentiment falls over 7 points to record lows - thanks disastrous tariffs! - he has a lame 26% approval rating on the cost of living, 76% of Fox viewers say the economy is bad, and even cult members shopping for the holidays are reportedly starting to notice the dissonance between his gold ballroom and their unaffordable "groceries," even if he did invent the elegant word. Hell, they might even spot the idiocy of a guy who recently revealed he had an MRI, insisted it had "the best result," but when asked if it was for his brain raved, "I have no idea what they analyzed, but whatever they analyzed, they analyzed it well."
They've also finally noted his stonewalling on what is evidently, universally unpopular pedophilia, with 80% of voters blasting his handling of his dead bestie predator's files and the "wonderful secret" they shared. Even as Congress voted to release the Epstein files and Trump signed off on it, he continues whining it's "time to move on" from "a Hoax" that just deflects from his "Great Success (with) Affordability (where we are winning BIG!)" and "gaining Trillions of Dollars of Investment" and "stopping Transgender for Everyone." Hmm. A tad suspiciously, he then ordered his Dept. of Justice (sic) to newly investigate any creepy Democrat pedophiles though they already said there'd be no more investigations; asked about that disparity, a robotic Pam Bondi declaimed there is "Information...new information" but not to worry because they will "follow the law" with "maximum transparency," blankly repeating, def not from a script, "follow the law, maximum transparency," "follow the law...."
Finally, desperately cornered into "maximum transparency" after months of dissembling and deflection and lies, Trump has taken in stride his monumental failure to get his way and hide his crimes with the calm compliance of any vaguely responsible adult who knows he's doing the right thing. Just kidding. Because, "Nothing says 'I'm definitely not worried about the Epstein Files' like telling a female reporter, 'Quiet, Piggy,'" that's what he now famously did last week during a press gaggle on Air Force One en route from D.C. to Mar-A-Lago (again). Asked by Catherine Lucey, a senior Bloomberg reporter who's covered national politics for over 20 years, what Epstein meant when he said Trump "knew about the girls" - duh - he said, "I know nothing about that" but insisted on his "very bad relationship" with his longtime bestie. When Lucey began a very sensible follow-up question - "If there's nothing incriminating in the files..." he lost it. "Quiet! Quiet, piggy," he snarled, jabbing his stubby, rancid, little finger in her face.
It was, of course, "one more unforgivable thing in a list of 20,000 unforgivable things." It was the gazillionth loutish, repulsive, misogynist dross issuing from the vile anus mouth that's spewed, "be nice;" "fat pig," "keep your voice down," "not my type," "what a nasty question," "don't be threatening," "that's enough of you," "there was blood coming out of her eyes, out of her wherever," and, "they let you do it." Perhaps because it was more of the same or that no reporter stood up to it, the atrocity drew little mainstream coverage. But for many, revulsion at his aberrant, "aggressive sexism now seemingly uncontrollable by the man himself" took off. Among pols, Gavin Newsom and his take-no-prisoners press team were almost alone to speak up, loudly. Along with legit critiques - tariffs, ballrooms, gold crap, last month's 40,000 layoffs: "Cant. Stop. Winning" - there was the pig-faced builder of ballrooms, the Trump/Epstein "piggies," the "Good Night Little Piggy" and several other grotesqueries.
Speaking of: In the following days, there was also treacherous, sycophantic Press Barbie, aka Washington Rose, excusing the "hostile sexism" widely deemed not just a crass personal offense but "a political weapon (tied) to violence, a war on women that is ultimately part of the war on democracy." First, Karoline Leavitt tried out, "This reporter behaved in an inappropriate and unprofessional way towards her colleagues" - with, obviously, zero evidence. When that didn't fly, she turned to calling for us, his lucky minions, to celebrate the mad king's "frankness." We should respect "the president being frank and honest," she said, returning to the "frankness" theme three more times as "one of the many reasons the American people reelected him." Also, "fake news," calling it "like he sees it," and getting "frustrated with reporters when you lie about him" - which we bet is a lot like patriots getting "frustrated" when foul regime flunkies brazenly lie to them about fucking everything.
- YouTube www.youtube.com
Lie, twist, embroider, digress, threaten, distort: Has there ever been a less "frank," more hideously two-faced, self-serving band of charlatans, fraudsters and crooks ostensibly running this nation? "Quiet, piggy" has, indeed, been said in various iterations to us all. Words have become hollow and weaponized, cudgels to deceive, subdue, silence enemies" - who, if they dare speak up, are pummeled by the full force of a vengeful regime. And so to six "seditious" Democratic lawmakers, all veterans, who had the chutzpah in this dark lawless time to urge members of the military to, gasp, obey the law. In last week's 90-second video, Senators Elissa Slotkin and Mark Kelly, and Reps Maggie Goodlander, Chris Deluzio, Chrissy Houlahan, Jason Crow reminded service members they don't have to obey orders they believe break the law. "Like us, you all swore an oath to protect and defend the Constititution," they said. "Our laws are clear, you can refuse illegal orders."
Private Bonespurs, the abuser-in-chief in charge of words as weapons, went ballistic. "Each one of these traitors to our Country should be ARRESTED AND PUT ON TRIAL," he thundered. "Their words cannot be allowed to stand - We won’t have a Country anymore!!! An example MUST BE SET.” For moral support, he added 16 MAGA comments; one called for hanging the perps. Still fuming, he kept raging. Soon, "SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR FROM TRAITORS!!! LOCK THEM UP??" Then, just going for it, "SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!” He also re-posted another MAGA stable genius: “HANG THEM GEORGE WASHINGTON WOULD !!” Ok. So the leader of the free speech, anti-cancel-culture party, whose frenzied campaign against potentially violent political speech after the shooting of angelic Charlie Kirk led to many hundreds of people losing their jobs for accurately critiquing Kirk's incendiary words, now accuses his opponents for encouraging political violence. Got it.
The Democratic veterans stood firm. "The president considers it punishable by death for us to restate the law," they said. "But this isn’t about any one of us. This is about who we are as Americans. This is a time for moral clarity." Sen.Chris Murphy concurred. "The President just called for Democratic members of Congress to be executed...If you're a person of influence in this country (who) hasn't picked a side, maybe now would be the time to pick a fucking side." On social media, people were aghast at the spectacle of a weak strongman spiraling down, like a cornered animal. "Good fucking Christ, what an absolute buffoon," said one. Also, "'Just following orders' is not a valid defense, and never will be." Heather Cox Richardson noted that, before 1866 midterms, Andrew Johnson called for his rivals to be hanged as traitors: "Voters were so profoundly moved by his words they gave his opponents a supermajority in Congress, and the nation got the 14th Amendment.”
Republicans, with their usual backbone, stayed silent. Reptilian Mike Johnson said Dear Leader was "just defining the crime of sedition" and any Democrat "behav(ing) in that kind of talk is to me just beyond the pale," MAGA-ese for, "You talkin' to me?" Press Barbie again defended her mob boss, shrieking Dems "conspired together" to urge the military to "defy the president's lawful (sic) orders" and we should be talking about them inciting violence. But the backlash shut her up. A day later, asked, "Does the president want to execute members of Congress?” she answered, "No." Headlines befitting the surreal timeline then dutifully reported, "Trump Does Not Want to Execute Members of Congress, White House Says." The same day, a judge declared National Guard deployment to DC an unlawful order, just like in Chicago and Portland; another, in a 233-page roast, said ICE use of force was also illegal, blasting mini-perp Greg Bovino as "evasive, violent and outright lying."
At the next "veritable Comicon for serial killers," the White House rolled out a blood-red carpet for Saudi Prince Mohammed bin Bonesaw as a giddy Trump proclaimed, "We’re more than meeting. We're honoring Saudi Arabia." Never mind his own first-term CIA found they ordered the grisly murder of WaPo writer Jamal Khashoggi: Cue a weird, gleeful, blindingly gold Oval Office meeting, a state dinner with Jewish or gay CEOs who'd be stoned or jailed by Saudis, a swap of U.S fighter jets for Saudi investment. It was jolly until ABC News' Mary Bruce rightly asked about the Saudis' role in 9/11, Khashoggi's murder, Trump's blood-soaked business deals. At her impudence, the mob boss who gets to decide who says what scowled. He smeared Khashoggi, cleared Bonesaw, inanely decreed "things happen," and went after Bruce. She was "insubordinate," "a terrible reporter" who shouldn't "embarrass our guest by asking him a terrible question.” Essentially, he told Bruce, "Quiet, piggy."
@thedailyshow Trump’s playdate with Mohammed bin Salman took a handsy turn #DailyShow #Trump #MohammedbinSalman
It's unclear how productive the meeting will prove. At their last visit, the Saudis blithely played the idiot narcissist - SAD - with a mobile McDonald's truck; this time, headlines posited Bonesaw "got almost everything he wanted" from Trump, and pundits gravely noted, "We're still kind of waiting to see what all this actually means." Meanwhile, can-do House Republicans continue tackling vital issues of the day. After 10 months of mostly being on vacation and accomplishing virtually nothing but an Epstein vote they were forced into - and before breaking until December - they just passed a resolution, 285-98, denouncing the horrors of socialism. In a truly WTF move, they were helped by the votes of 86 cowardly Dems who evidently agreed with sponsor and Florida Rep. María Elvira Salazar that, "The Mamdani socialist agenda is seeping into our country like poison," aka we can't let them make our children live under Sharia law and count in Arabic numbers and let's all panic.
The next day, Trump met with Mamdani. It was not the expected fiery confrontation; rather, a savvy, charming Mamdani wrapped a star-struck Trump around his Democratic Socialist finger in a surreal scene that made MAGA heads - especially, presumably, Goebbels' bald one and J.D.s groveling one - explode. The newly gracious,Trump, a hollow, insecure, image-obsessed shell of a human ineluctably "drawn to the shine of respect in others' eyes" who "agrees with whoever's standing within 10 feet of him," pronounced Mamdani "a very rational person," a winner who will make "a great New York City mayor." Mamdani smiled. "What the hell is going on?" asked many. Also: "Trump having a man crush on Zohran was not on my Bingo card," "You can tell Mamdani spent a lot of time ferrying loose aunties around because I don't know how else you get that kind of composure," and, "We did the same thing to our dog - insult him but with a smile and friendly voice. He would wag his tail."
In a memorable moment, one far-right dreg of the White House press corps asked Mamdani if he still thinks Trump is a fascist. Carefully starting to answer, he's interrupted by Trump mildly saying, "That's okay, you can just say yes...I don't mind." "Okay, yes," said Mamdani, still smiling; Trump pats his arm. In all, argues Bruce Fanger, it's a case study in what happens when a bully can’t rely on fear, and a principled politician refuses the role of victim. Trump, argues Fanger, needs an emotional response to his abuse - fear, flattery, even anger. "Mamdani gave him nothing," he writes of "the calm of someone who refuses to let the other person set the emotional tempo." He speaks plainly, in a "civic language," about issues. Trump, awash in grievance, ego, delusion, nostalgia, "can't decode it...They aren’t having the same conversation, (or) even on the same continent." The lesson: "Trump is only powerful when the room fears him. Mamdani didn’t. Trump folded."
At least in that moment. Then he sprang back to vitriol, bluster, lies. At length, he blasted "the traitorous sons of bitches" who told soldiers to obey the law, raved about "prices sharply down," bragged about "THE HIGHEST NUMBERS OF MY 'POLITICAL CAREER.'" More numbers for him: Racking up thousands of conflicts of interest, often on lavish witless trips abroad, he's spent $71 million on 99 fucking trips to his crappy properties and millions more on a fucking marble bathroom and Gatsby party and cheesy patio and Oval Brothel and garish ballroom to come, all amidst kidnappings of brown people, extrajudicial murders, endless abuses of power, vast obstruction of justice and rabidly working to strip food stamps as four of ten kids in the U.S. go to bed hungry. Now, after an aerial tour of Joint Base Andrews' fucking three 18-hole golf courses, three putting greens, two private practice areas and driving range, he's decided on another vital task: to do "some fix-up" on them. A fucking shameless piggy. May he fall quiet soon.
Update: More bigly, deeply gratifying, pretty embarrassing court losses: A federal judge just threw out the DOJ's ludicrous, brazenly vindictive criminal cases against both James Comey and New York A.G. Letitia James, ruling that Trump’s cute but Keystone-cops-inept beauty-queen-insurance-lawyer-turned-pretend-prosecutor Lindsey Halligan was unlawfully serving, the fourth Trump-appointed acting US attorney so unqualified they even failed at failing upwards - kinda like King Dickhead Loser himself. Huh.
The American Gestapo's brutish, racist, unholy crusade rampages on. They've now left Chicago - trailing tear gas, court losses, manifest lies, the wrath of a people - to terrorize diverse blue Charlotte NC with its "cowardly fascist pigs doing cowardly fascist pig things." In a new "offense to history," they even named their latest depravity Operation Charlotte's Web. its author E.B. White, a stirring voice for democracy and inclusion who decried the "smell" arising from those who "adjust to fascism," weeps.
Thanks to his big butt-ugly bill's profane gift of $75 billion to thugs fighting an imaginary invasion of "criminal illegal aliens" and other forms of "domestic terrorism" by brown people, nearly half of FBI agents and countless Homeland Security workers have been pulled off other issues (like homeland security) and reassigned to round up deadly day laborers, taco makers and baby-sitting abuelas - coincidentally and not vengefully at all, mostly in Dem-run cities. Key to keeping the ethnic cleansing program churning is fascist ghoul Stephen Goebbels Miller, who sees every critic or court loss as "legal insurrection" and "domestic terrorist sedition" - what Jan. 6?- against federal government heroes who have immunity no matter their atrocities because, "This campaign of terrorism will be brought down."
Miller's fever dreams are echoed in the frenzied white nationalist agit-prop DHS spews to lure thugs to JOIN.ICE.GOV: "America has been invaded by criminals and predators. We need YOU to get them out." The rhetoric is brown-shirted: "We're Taking Back America," "The Enemy Is At the Gates," "America For Americans," "We Are Asleep No Longer," and, from the video game Halo whose villains are zombie parasites, "Destroy the Flood." They've even tossed into their state-sponsored domestic terrorist campaign Teddy Roosevelt's Rough Riders from the Spanish-American War - "We have room for but one flag, the American flag" - evidently unaware they were famously diverse, from cowboys to elites to Native Americans. George Conway on the brazen language: "It's hard to Nazi what's going on here."
Despite vastly lowering standards and offering $50K bribes, DHS is still struggling to find enough sadists, losers, sexual predators, "pudgy militia stooges" and Marx' “scum, offal, refuse of all classes" to fill their ranks of bounty hunters. As a result critics, often cops, say it's clear from videos of wild, ham-fisted abductions, "There's something off with those guys - they're out of control." Many cite operations "built on spectacle, not evidence," with "a total abrogation of responsibility or training" and illegal practices like chokeholds meant to "send a message of brutality..."They're just fascist shows of force to satiate the creepy desires of an old man who wants to seem macho.” In Chicago, those abuses led to multiple court orders to rein them in, and even a call from Mayor Brandon for the UN to investigate them.

"Operation Midway Blitz," the terrorizing of Chicago's brown-skinned population from early September to last week, saw 3,100 people, including U.S. citizens and children, detained, perhaps 1,100 of them deported or agreed to leave, lively communities shrunk to ghost towns, widespread trauma, inspired resistance, and a shitshow of often deranged violence by grossly ill-trained goons. They shot at least 2 people, killing one. They repeatedly, indiscriminately shot rubber bullets, flash-bang grenades, teargas and smoke bombs at protesters, journalists, first responders, pastors, and outside an elementary school. They handcuffed a city alderman at a hospital, pepper-sprayed a one-year-old in the face, beat up and bloodied the people they detained. They undertook 8 car chases that ended in 8 crashes.
In one of their most ludicrous, performative flops, they launched a flamboyant raid on an apartment building allegedly filled with Venezuelan gang members - rappelling from a Black Hawk helicopter, smashing doors, seizing families and crying kids, dragging them into the cold, zip-tying, leading away and slickly videotaping 37 victims in what Goebbels hailed as a counterterrorism victory that "saved God knows how many lives" - except all the drama resulted in zero criminal charges. Again and again, the bombastic cruelty proves both hollow and illegal: In a lawsuit about conditions at Broadview detention facility, a judge "literally ordered DHS to clean up their shit" after agreeing detainees were being held without access to beds, toilets,food, water, counsel, telephones, anything approaching basic humanity.
The malfeasance kept bigly backfiring on them. Last week, another judge, citing "repeated, material violations," ruled that 614 detainees at Broadview should be released on a $1,500 bond following an earlier class action lawsuit charging their detentions contravened a Biden-era consent decree limiting warrantless arrests; he also barred them from being deported. Of the 614 named, just 16 have criminal records, usually minor, and will not be freed. The other 97.4% were just randomly grabbed and shoved in vans, mostly while working, commuting to or from work, or at Home Depot looking for work, leaving little time for the gang murders they're alleged to indulge in. Sensibly and hysteria about terrorism notwithstanding, the judge decided it was "highly unlikely" they constitute the infamous "worst of the worst.”
Overseeing much of this hapless carnage is preening, Napoleonic, 5'4", Nazi-coiffed Greg Bovino, who goes to work "with a Bowie knife in his belt - it's all for show." Bovino often posted heroic photos of his time in Chicago, like on a Mekong-esque patrol boat - "Where streets end, our Marine Unit begins" - and when he slammed a city official to the ground and paraded him around "like in some kind of masked-domination fantasy reboot of the Battle of Midway and the London Blitz, but where the Nazis were the good guys." His contempt for heeding the law is so great that, when he got hauled before another judge in a lawsuit ripping his violence - teargassing students, no body camera, repeatedly lying, "force (that) shocks the conscience" - and she issued a restraining order, it took him just days to violate it.
On Friday, ongoing protests at Broadview erupted in scuffles that ended in several injuries and 21 arrests. Among the detainees was Rev. Michael Woolf, pastor at Lake Street Church and one of many faith leaders who've long put their bodies out there to decry a "black hole" of a facility, tell those inside "we didn’t forget you," offer weekly witness "at the picket line, amid the tear gas," and declare the moment "absolutely a spiritual emergency...We are somewhere in 1930s Germany, and whether the church is going to be silent is being tested." In this commitment, he joins Catholic bishops, journalists, rights advocates, former federal officials and other critics who've blasted the months of mindless brutality, abduction, fear-mongering and gutting of communities. One attorney: "This is not law enforcement. It is terror."

Still, Chicago has sought to rise to the challenge. The nation's third-largest city, with a history of fierce labor activism, it likes to view itself as "a collection of small towns with Midwest sensibilities," where "people know their neighbors (and) word spreads quickly." Organizers began building a broad grassroots coalition right after Trump's election: "We knew what was coming. Trump wants to terrify Chicagoans into submission - we aren’t having it. Mayor Brandon Johnson created an Office of Immigrant, Migrant, and Refugee Rights to strengthen sanctuary protections, declare an "ICE Free Zone," expand access to resources and local groups launched multiple resistance efforts, many in the largely Latino Little Village: Rapid Response teams, neighborhood patrols, ICE-spotting hotline, Know-Your-Rights flyers.
Volunteers escorted kids to school and families dropping them off; for those afraid to go out, they did grocery runs and gave out ride-share gift cards. A West Side group hosted "Whistlemania" events, packing over 17,000 kits with warning whistles, resource guides, tips on what to do if ICE turns up. MigraWatch trained over 2,000 people to monitor raids and tell people their rights. Everyone honked horns. To help often-targeted Latino street vendors - tacos, flowers, candy, tamales - cyclists organized "buy-out" events, emptying stands and delivering the goods to shelters or families in need. Pop-up events raised money for vendors, restaurant crawls helped keep Latino-owned eateries open, students held walkouts, tracked unmarked SUVs, monitored ICE hot spots to keep neighbors safe.
"The strategy here is to make us afraid. Our response is a bunch of obscenities and ‘no,’" said one resident. Of those threatened, she said, "We’re showing we care about them, even if the federal government doesn’t." Organizers also sought to create a template for other besieged cities to follow - a tactic that's evidently worked as North Carolina towns face their own "reign of terror." Tellingly, before leaving, Bovino berated Chicago as "a very non-permissive environment"; weirdly, he then gathered his gang of armed sadists in their masks and fatigues for a photo op by their agit-prop team at Anish Kapoor’s landmark sculpture Cloud Gate, or The Bean; preposterously, because they exist beyond irony, on command they shouted not "cheese" but "Little Village," the community they've been terrorizing.
Saturday, they moved on to Charlotte, which has a black female mayor and black male sheriff; he and four other black sheriffs in the state’s largest counties were all elected on platforms opposing ICE after fierce organizing by immigrants’ groups. DHS said they were "surging" agents to Charlotte "to ensure Americans are safe"; they also charged "sanctuary politicians" letting alleged criminals "roam free on American streets" "failed to honor" ICE detainers - so, keep people in prison to not hurt goons' feelings? Given Charlotte's diversity, its low crime rate, and Dem Gov. Josh Stein's charge ICE is just "stoking fear," their arrival was widely deemed "pure racism and retribution." Also, Bovino is from there and attended Western Carolina University before becoming a stormtrooper; his parents, if he had any, must be so proud.
The abuses came fast. En route to work Saturday morning, Willy Aceituno stopped at Pollo Campero to get breakfast; Honduran-born, he's a U.S. citizen. At the door, he was confronted by thugs for living while brown; he showed his REAL ID, they let him go. Minutes later, in his truck, more thugs; he declined to open his window or answer their questions with, "Why don’t you ask other people? Why just me?" They smashed his window, dragged him out, slammed him to the ground; livid bystanders yelled, "They just I.D.'ed him!", "Don't you guys coordinate?", "This whole thing's wrong, man!" and "What the fuck is wrong with y'all?" After driving off with him, he later said, they finally looked at his I.D. and let him out of the car; when he asked for a ride back, they told him to get lost or they'd arrest him again.
- YouTube www.youtube.com
Charlotte, meanwhile, grew quiet, with residents "reeling" from the ugly incursion. Protesters marched and chanted, "Fuck Donald Trump"; drivers honked thug warnings; a woman in a car kept yelling, "This is an illegal traffic stop" until nervous goons pointed guns at her. But many restaurants stood empty, street vendors dwindled, small businesses and foreign markets shut down. Manolo’s, a Colombian bakery that's closed once in 28 years, did again after thugs chased and tackled customers when they left; the owner didn't want to carry the weight "of maybe a kid to lose their father or mother on their way (to) get a cake." Outside apartment complexes, auto parts stores, Wal Mart, masked agents menacingly patrolled, grabbing "whoever they see as Latino" and bumbling with handcuffs before driving off with them.
Panicked churchgoers fled after masked agents came and snatched a member as scared kids cried; one 15-year-old: "We thought church was safe." Thugs "geared up like they're in Fallujah" chased a flower-shop owner into the woods; bystanders followed, filmed, shamed them into clumsily retreating. The owner of a laundromat stayed open but locked the door behind each customer. as louts patrolled outside: "I know these folks, and I'm pretty sure they're not criminals...People need to do laundry. Laundry does not discriminate."An older woman having coffee on her porch as two guys she'd hired hung her Christmas lights chased off goons who came by "looking for easy pickings." "We've got two human beings in my yard trying to make a living," she raged. "It's an abuse of all our laws."
At a grocery store, Bovino heroically helped bulky guys in camo snare a teenager pushing carts and pin him to the ground; as agents drove out, they smirked at appalled residents filming them. And a neighbor filmed goons chasing down two women, U.S. citizens, who'd been honking at drivers to warn of a raid; as they pulled into their driveway, the guys aimed a rifle, screamed to open the car window, smashed it, hauled them off. The neighbor, in disbelief: "This is our reality now." In a scathing editorial, The Charlotte Observer blasted that reality of a hateful regime that's "already failed...with every unnecessarily smashed window, every sneer at due process, every federal agent’s smirk." While the cruelty is still the point, they write, "It turns out Americans don't like masked federal agents gleefully stomping on our core values."
An oblivious, Bovino keeps celebrating doing it anyway, crowing on social media of his success in Charlotte. He touted the arrest of a "criminal illegal" with an alleged history of drunk driving, bragging he took him "off the streets so he can’t continue to ignore our laws (like he is) and drive intoxicated on the same roads you and your loved ones are on." He gloated about capturing his latest victim with a photo of her in tears. He boasted 81 people were detained Saturday - the total eventually climbed to 130 - with, "We had a record day today!!!!!" He added, "With some good criminals also," evidently forgetting the tired, worst-of-the-worst claim. Many had “significant criminal and immigration history,” he said, then listing minor breaches like DUI, larceny, and removal orders - which have always been, and remain, a civil offense.
His transgressions grew yet more egregious when he doubled down on the assault's grotesque Charlotte's Web shtick. Alongside a video of two victims, Bovino quoted, wildly out of context, the gentle, eloquent, freedom-loving E.B. White, who created a generous, compassionate spider, Charlotte, who uses her web and words for good, to save Wilbur the pig. "By helping you, perhaps I was trying to lift up my life a little,” she says. "Heaven knows anyone’s life can stand a little of that." Bovino, deeply ignorant of lifting up a life, appropriated the words of Charlotte’s babies as they hatch and fly off: "Wherever the wind takes us. High, low. Near, far. East, west. North, south. We take to the breeze, we go as we please." He then crudely, basically added, "Us too!" with, "Our agents go where the mission calls." Just fucking fuck off, you fascist fucking loser.
Bovino, raged both White's granddaughter and literary executor Martha White and Law Dork's Chris Geidner, "is exactly who E.B. White warned us about." Geidner praises White, who once shamelessly admitted he believed in freedom "with burning delight," as "a leading voice for American democracy." In a 1940 essay, before the U.S. entered World War II, White described America's worrisome reaction to the rise of Nazism as "a sort of dim acquiescence." "The least a man can do at such a time is to declare himself and tell where he stands," he wrote, adding he was "suspicious of people beginning to adjust to fascism and dictators. From such adaptable natures a smell rises. I pinch my nose." After Charlotte, Bovino and his thugs went to Raleigh, where they were fiercely denounced; said Mayor Janet Cowell, "We didn't ask for this." Neither did 16-year old Manny Chavez. "Everyone is scared," he said. Still, he spoke up.
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