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Further
A Moral Monstrosity: Yet More Blood, Hate and Grief
At home, DHS and its ICE Gestapo have presided over about 675,000 deportations and perhaps 2.2 million "self-deportations," mostly by those who'd committed no crime but having the wrong skin color. They've been nannies, taco-makers, scientists, academics, kids with cancer, families split, people who peaceably lived and worked here for decades. Often, they abruptly vanish into an opaque detention system that holds them incognito, moves them away from family and lawyers, and ships them back to countries they fled in terror. Lately, cruelly, illegally, over 23,000 have been whisked to 26 third countries not their own to which they have no ties: Afghans, Iraqis, Cubans, Nicaraguans sent to Mexico, South Sudan, Sierra Leone, Djibouti, Central African Republic - "Like hell - countries so unsafe the U.S. warns "Don't Go," and if you do leave us your DNA to be ID'ed when you die.
Implausibly, the regime keeps upping the barbarism. In August, in a first, about 20 people shackled at waist, wrists and ankles were sent to Liberia, where six - four Cubans, a Brazilian, a Cameroonian - refused to disembark. ICE thugs beat them, threw them back on the plane, told them they were headed to the U.S., and dropped them in a fourth country, corrupt, repressive, newly popular Equatorial Guinea, where the venal son of its longtime dictator, banned from the U.S., somehow got a brief waiver long enough to wrangle a deportation pact to take America's refuse for just $7.5 million, a deal all around. In Guinea, armed guards took the arrivals to a former luxury hotel turned detention center, where they've been held in "horrific conditions" and legal limbo; lawyers say the U.S. is using 3rd-and-4th country threats to pressure migrants back to their lethal countries.
Of those not yet deported, a regime "hell-bent on imprisoning as many immigrants as possible” has detained over 610,000 brown and black people - more than the population of Atlanta, Baltimore or the state of Wyoming - less than 4% of whom have criminal records; they include an average of 25 children 3 or younger a day. In a new initiative, an "army" of attorneys from over 50 organizations and law firms are trying to free about 1,900 kids from custody, many stranded without their families, before "they get chewed up and spit out by the child detention system." But the regime remains relentless: A judge just again blocked their latest malevolent effort to kill still-constitutionally-protected birthright citizenship; they argue this new, more narrow move reflects "a commonsense agenda" by only trying to block those born to parents deemed "an alien enemy." Evil incarnate.Meanwhile, in "the most stark testament to (their) lawlessness," this week marked the anniversary of "a year of murders" as the regime killed at least 227 people in boat strikes in the Caribbean declared "absolutely criminal" under U.S and international law. The consensus:"There is no plausible legal justification for the strikes. The term for premeditated killing is murder.” But the upcoming 25th anniversary of 9/11 shows MAGA world still feels free to spew their racism, however specious. In "an insane, blatantly racist" hit piece on Abdul-El Sayed, now-right-wing CBS blathered the date "invited scrutiny" of his past posts - like his mourning "devastation perpetuated ignorantly in the name of my faith"? Translation: "Tell us about the scary Muslim man." One MAGA sage: “El-Sayed has (a) ‘Quacks like a duck problem." James Talarico: "I wish our government would go after pedophiles the way they go after brown men headed to work at 7am."
Or honor students wanting to become doctors. In 2024, Pierre Damas Bel came to the U.S. legally via the Biden-era CHNV program, settling in Springfield, Ohio with his two younger brothers and their parents, who had bought a home there. At Springfield High, Bel quickly acclimated: He excelled academically, played varsity soccer, enrolled in the Marines' JROTC, was in the National Honor Society and worked at a local restaurant. When he graduated in May, he was one of a handful of seniors who won a local college scholarship and an Award of Excellence from the Business Advisory Council; he was also recruited to play soccer at Wittenberg University, where he planned to study neuroscience and physiology in hopes of going on to medical school. He had filed for asylum, and was scheduled to appear for a hearing at immigration court in October.
In preparation for court, he had assembled multiple, glowing references from local mentors. His JROTC instructor wrote Bel "exhibits the type of individual character that makes our society great. He has my highest endorsement that he will make us proud and be value added to our nation." "From the moment Pierre came to Springfield, he has done everything needed to be a valuable, upstanding member of American society," wrote one of his teachers. Along with excelling at school, he "utilized all its opportunities to better prepare for his future (and) realize his fullest potential (to) continue to succeed and give back to the country that helped save him from the threat of violence. I have no doubt he will only continue to deepen and broaden not only in his personal growth, but in his dedication to the city, state and country where he has chosen to make his home.”
In June, the right-wing zealots of SCOTUS allowed Trump to terminate Temporary Protection Status for up to 350,000 Haitians legally in the U.S; they include up to 15,000 who were welcomed to, and helped revive Springfield despite the infamous, bonkers, they're-eating-the-pets claims first promulgated there by racist shitgibbon J.D. Vance. In fact, most TPS holders are decades-long U.S. residents who contribute nearly $6 billion to the U.S. economy and pay over $1.5 billion in taxes. More than 111,000 work in health care as nursing assistants or home health aides; others work in construction, agriculture, hospitality and food production, which is why the abrupt termination of legal protections for so many law-abiding, hard-working immigrants who happen to be Black was widely denounced as "an abomination" and "unthinkably cruel."
It was also torched as a depraved move that "blatantly ignores reality on the ground and knowingly puts lives at risk." The State Department gives today's Haiti a Level 4: Do Not Travel” advisory, citing a "high risk of crime, kidnapping, terrorism, rampant gang violence and limited health care." Armed gangs control large swaths of the country, more than half Haitians don't have enough to eat, overcrowding in cities is "a public health disaster waiting," the risk of a major earthquake remains, Port-au-Prince is too dangerous for even U.S. deportation flights to land, and deportees arriving in Cap-Haïtien with nothing but the clothes on their backs - and, if they're lucky, maybe $130 - are reportedly either "running for their lives" or trying to push their way back onto planes. Even Haiti's prime minister has declared, "This is not the time to send people back here."
In Springfield, where the Haitian community "had taken one hit after another," the end of TPS sparked terror. ICE sightings and arrests soared, people afraid to leave their homes lost their jobs, hundreds had to be fitted for painful ankle monitors; for many, they evoked the chains of slavery, prompting an “Unshackle Springfield" protest. On July 29, Bel was notified he had to wear a monitor. The next day, he posted photos on Instagram of his awards, soccer triumphs, referral letters. "I came to this country to pursue my education," he wrote. "I didn’t come to commit a crime or hurt anyone. Yet now I’m walking through the streets of the U.S. with a GPS monitor on my leg, carrying a feeling of shame and humiliation I never imagined I would experience. I came here to study, to build my future and to live a better life, not to be treated like a criminal."
Friends texted messages to comfort him: "We will fight for you," "Keep praying, Young King." A prosecutor called the imposition of a monitor, rarely used even for drug traffickers unless deemed a serious danger or flight risk, as "staggering" and "grossly disproportionate" for a 20-year-old student who'd never gotten a traffic ticket. Bel was so upset he drove twice to nearby ICE offices, pleading it be removed; both times, officials refused. The heavy monitor, and his new uncertain immigration status, made him unable and ineligible to play soccer at Wittenberg. He transferred to Wright State University; on August 24, he arrived there as a freshman, but he was teased about the monitor. A few days later in ROTC, again due to his new legal status, he was the only person who didn't get handed a uniform.
“Everything was fine with him before this happened," said his father Pierre Ronal Bel. "They put an ankle monitor on him, and everything changed." For his son, the monitor was a constant reminder the life in America he'd worked to build could be taken away at any moment. It had already taken much of what he felt gave his life purpose; he was ashamed of it, and terrified it meant he would be sent back to Haiti. "He didn't go to work, he wouldn't eat," he said of the energetic kid who until recently had loved his life, friends, family, education. "It was his first week of classes, but he didn’t feel he was learning anything because he was traumatized. He'd wear long pants so people wouldn’t make fun of him....A 20-year-old living their life shouldn’t feel like it's a crime.”
Early Monday morning, his son called him crying, sitting in his car by the side of the road. "He said, 'Dad, I'm not feeling OK. I'm not thinking right. I can't do it any more. I can't take the bullies.' I told him, 'Come home, so we can talk.'" The call ended; the father kept trying to call the son back, there was no answer. A few hours later, police arrived at the house. They said Pierre had walked into traffic on I-70, thrown himself under a tractor-trailer in the westbound lane, and was pronounced dead at the scene. Days later, his family issued a statement saying they wanted people to know their son and brother had committed suicide, and he'd been driven to it by this regime's grotesquely inhumane immigration policies. Said his father, "He felt like he was treated like an animal."
"Multiply this story by millions," said one horrified observer, "and we get a sense of the moral monstrosity this country is committing." "This is our worst fear and nightmare come true," said a member of Haitian Bridge Alliance. "Our government, our system, our Supreme Court - they are all complicit in the death of this young man." Yola Lamarre of the Haitian Community Network concurred. "They all have blood on their hands," she said. "Pierre Damas Bel was not a criminal, but he was treated as one." At vigils this week, devastated friends, residents, community leaders mourned "the loss of this incredible young soul." They reminded others feeling hopeless, "Your status does not define you - your life is precious." They vowed, "Someone must be held accountable for a life upended and destroyed," "We are not going to be silent," "We have to do more."
Dr. Leo Moore, who trained and worked alongside Haitian doctors, grieved "the loss of a future physician in a country in desperate need," imagining how Bel, with his education and character, could have lifted Haiti up: "Pierre was on his way to becoming one of those physician who understands both the body and a patient’s story. His community needed him, in that Wright State classroom and, one day, in a white coat...Instead, we are left with tragedy and stolen potential." Pastor Carl Ruby of Central Christian Church recalled "a friendly, joyful, very smart young man (who) everyone loved." "This was so unnecessary," he noted. "I am supposed to be forgiving. But right now, as I sit with a broken family, I’m crying out to God for righteous judgment of those who made this happen.” The furious Dropkick Murphys: "Don't tell us everything is fine."
- YouTube www.youtube.com
An abomination: Haitians about to be deported Photo by Getty Images
Oh Canada: We Will Neither Cower Nor Bend
Other things he did, abetted by a confederacy of dunces, stooges, techno-fascists, warmongers, crypto dorks, "unfuckable hate nerds" and "an actual Jewish Nazi": Having hit the six-month mark of his Iran debacle, he giddily proclaimed, "Mission Accomplished!" despite a. the only thing achieved is handing a newly empowered Iran control of the Strait of Hormuz as U.S. gas prices skyrocket and the economy implodes, b. he evidently missed the part where George W's 2003 banner aboard an aircraft carrier became a queasy punchline, c. he did so amidst reports his and Kegsbreath's said debacle has pushed the US military into a "beyond critical" shortage of money and missile interceptors in the case of an enemy attack, forcing them to shift funds around "in imaginative ways" - because everything he touches dies and we probably will too.
A fragile child, he demands fealty to even his ceaseless clusterfucks. Thus the latest inane authoritarian hokum from a Department of Homeland (sic) Security that alas hasn’t lost any of its fascist fervor since the brutal puppy-killing days of ICE Barbie. Its new, dystopian, “genuinely deranged” missive: A glowering image of Dear Dumb Leader with the dark challenge, “Did you remain loyal?”, which chillingly fails to consider just what atrocities they’re demanding allegiance to. The answer came in a post that swiftly followed: Sadistic footage of shackled Haitian immigrants, targeted after losing Temporary Protected Status for no reason but mindless, racist cruelty, being shuffled onto planes in pouring rain to the sneering tune of a Creole song about returning home - complete with fawning close-ups of the chains on their feet. Well done, sick fucks.
Meanwhile, the trail of destruction goes on apace. In D.C., after the East Wing and reflecting pool - we like the meme of him studying it with, "All I see is scum" and a lackey saying, "Well, it is a reflecting pool, sir" - we've reached the mobsters' "offer-they- can't-refuse" phase on the besieged Kennedy Center. Having repeatedly lost in court, the regime now threatens to demolish the not-long-ago-flourishing Center unless a tantrum-throwing 10-year-old gets his name "prominently added" to its exterior with "appropriate respect" of his efforts to "save” it from a fictional "death spiral" that's rendered it "dilapidated, outdated, decrepit and embarrassing to the Nation’s Capital," which is some pot/kettle. If they can't plaster his ghastly name over it - inscription, plaza et al - they'll replace it with "an outdoor amphitheater," aka a lawn.
They're also pushing to sell off part of Yosemite National Park, like everything else, to the highest bidder, though the seller is such an imbecile he still cringingly says "Yo, Semites!" He's such a petty dolt he's also skipping this year's 9/11 remembrance at Ground Zero because he wasn't allowed to give a Nazi speech there, opting to give it at the Pentagon before rushing off to the Irish Open at his crappy golf course, 'cause priorities. Having trashed jobs, health insurance, food aid, the environment and most of our global alliances, he blew up trade talks with Canada, calling its endlessly nice residents "nasty people," and holding a clownish Oval Office event to sign an idiotic executive order renaming Lake Ontario to “LAKe AMeRiCA,” which he's "been thinking about for a long time" with what's left of his tiny brain. (Here he is on trade: The stupid, it burns.)
"All it takes is a good pen and some intelligence,” he said, only batting one for two in a pretend-name-changing event labeled, "Making the Great Lakes Even Greater.” Then - what a feckin’ playacting infant - he drew a line through the doomed lake and intoned, “We have notified various people who needed to be notified...This is official.” He said he’d instructed craven lickspittle and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum to "take all appropriate actions." Burgum slavishly wrote, “We’re on it, Mr. President!”, thus becoming the only person on Planet Earth to take this puerile claptrap seriously, evidently unaware an executive order is not a law and every ship entering the Great Lakes has to go through Canada's Welland Canal, including $26 billion in U.S. trade, and it would be a shame if Canada up and supersized their tolls, and thank you for your attention to this matter.
Uncle Bernie and most of America promptly responded they'd rather have affordable health care, thanks, also housing, food, education and cancer research. Nova Scotia's Conservative premier Tim Houston, "not exactly a firebrand," opined, “We’re into some real foolishness now. It’s Lake Ontario, buddy." Canada's newly combative Prime Minister Mark Carney, out of fucks to give, noted that long before Europeans came the lake was named by Native Americans using the Huron word "Ontari’io," for, "The lake is beautiful, the lake is big." "The name is more than 400 years old," he said. "Canadians know that naming reality means calling it Lake Ontario - then, now and always." The Canadian Resistance Army, who earlier defended penguins, also chimed in, declaring, "We're going to trade war/Beavers and moose won't take it any more."
Above all, it was agreed, “LAKe AMeRiCA" is what God invented the Internet for. The names spooled out in a gleeful torrent.
Lake Release the Epstein Files. Lake Gulf of Mexico. Lake Are We Doing This Again. Lake Micropenis. Lake Natalie. Lake Huron Thin Ice with Melania. Lake Universal Healthcare. Lake Eerily Overweight Pres Dick J. McRectum. Lake Felon. Lake Not Eerie. Lake Oh Canada. Lake Small Dick Energy. Many chose Lake Obama. Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers created the politically incorrect Lake Retard: "See, I can sign napkins that say things too." One decided to "just keep calling it Lake Epstein, like the Founders wanted." Mapquest, unlike cowering Google, not only declined to change the lake's name but invited viewers to "spread some geographic joy" and "name it whatever you want." One result: Lake Who Uses Mapquest Anymore.
Many noted the traditional Great Lakes litany of "H.O.M.E.S" had entirely logically become "S.H.A.M.E." People renamed their toilet bowl to Lake Trump. The White House to Home of Diaper Butt. Mar-a-Lago to Poopy Pants Palace. The United States of America to the Epstein States of Pedophiles, or just South Canada. President Trump to President Dickhead. California to Amerifornia. Strait of Hormuz to Strait of Our Moose. People mocked his thieving choice of one of the smallest and dirtiest Great Lakes. They noted, "Nobody in Ontario gives a single solitary fuck what Assclown McCrappy-Pants says about anything." They griped the name change "really screws with the lyrics of Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald."
"What are they trying to distract us from this time?" they asked. Response: "The previous distraction." Some coddled the needy child-king: "Good for you, li'l fella." Some railed: "Jesus Christ, can somebody just get him a coloring book already?" Some were still baffled by how low we've gone: "Wait, this is real?" Some refused to go there: "Nope." Some summoned the great Talking Heads: "As things fell apart/Nobody paid much attention." And some fought back against the incessant bullying. After the Center for American Progress released a report finding billions spent on ICE thugs and National Guard swarms had no real effect on reducing violent crime, Trump threatened a $5 billion lawsuit if they didn't retract it. The center stood firm against "a transparent attempt to silence us." "We will neither cower nor bend in the face of it," they said. And, still and all, we will snark away.
Update: Talk about "Do not obey in advance": After defying the petty madness, usage of Mapquest has surged to about 50 times its usual rate, leapfrogging past Google and Apple Maps to become the most-downloaded mapping app, and the fourth most popular of all apps excluding games in the US. Along with their "spread some geographic joy" invite, they posted a mocking, all-caps retort: "OUR MAPS ARE BIG AND BEAUTIFUL. PEOPLE COME UP TO US AND SAY WE'LL GET THEM PLACES. AND WE DO!!" Lol.
Canada vs. the Epstein Statesof AmericaImage from Bluesky
Be Quiet, Be Quiet: We Are All On the Decoy Plane Now
At home, alas, America will likely continue getting dumber thanks to the moronic regime deleting or altering nearly 400 federal datasets - tracking police misconduct, violence against children, pollution - to wipe out facts they don't like. Of online data released last week from over 60 agencies - environment, education, labor, law enforcement - by far the largest slice is health information, much on substance abuse, mental health, infectious disease, queer and trans people in keeping with the surreal executive order “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government." Entirely logically, experts decry the destruction - Facts: who needs 'em? - arguing once these cretins crawl back to their caves "we are not going to have the information we need...We’re erasing our institutional memory for public health.”
Speaking of: Just in time for fall, we have "Bobby Jr's Back to School Special: Free Measles!" The folks who won't give out free lunch are instead giving us over a quarter of a million kids entering kindergarten susceptible to measles, which has hit a 36-year high along with an all-time high of vaccine exemptions after rules were loosened - a vax rate so low health experts say it cannot provide herd protection. Just to keep us on our toes, polio, diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis and chickenpox vax rates are also down, good news for a regime whose only strong point is spreading preventable disease. Dems wrote a letter urging Trump to halt substituting “anti-vaccine ideology for decades of scientific evidence”; good luck to them and us on what besieged health officials deem ongoing "chaos and confusion in vaccination recommendation systems."
Meanwhile, as Americans struggle to afford food, gas, health care - 8 million have lost coverage - the mad king is insisting his "REAL Polling Numbers (are) the best they have ever been" - ie: low 20s for Independents, 13% for Black voters, down 27 points for his Latino voters as Dems flip 30 state seats, including where Mar-a-Lago is - and covering everything in gold. Like, everything. One sage: "His super power is the ability to ruin shit you didn’t even know existed." He's spent up to $900 million on vanity pr0jects and $200 million to turn the White House into a brothel-like, gimcrack-packed "Middle Eastern bazaar crossed with an opulent Cracker Barrel" - complete with gold Trump coin glued to the Oval Office door - in a lavish, tacky, Let-Them-Eat-Gold-or-at-least-Home-Depot-plastic-appliques shopping junket with (obviously) our money.
He's ordered a "golden fleet" of 15 new "Trump-class" nuclear-powered warships estimated to cost about $275 billion, though he's said he'd rather get 25 ships for $455 billion. He announced the White House was buying 250 giant new Cadillac Escalade SUVs - retail price $90,000 each, over $300,000 for armored version - because, "That’s how we look sharp in those cavalcades." Last month, he spent over $5 million to gaudily gild two 19-foot, 80,000-pound equestrian statues, Arts of War and Arts of Peace, in 23.75-karat gold leaf (though they're bronze and should have been polished), rendering them like "very, very gold" oversized children's trophies next to the austere Lincoln Memorial. "We made them the way they were plus," he moronically bragged, "and everyone’s so proud." We wonder: Is "everyone" in the room with us?
As the national debt just hit $40 trillion for the first time - it took nearly 200 years for it to reach $1 trillion in 1981- Trump remains fixated on his feckin' $600 million ballroom - oops, sorry: "military complex" - that no one asked for. After a court blocked construction, he called the National Trust for Historic Preservation, who successfully brought the suit to stop it, “TREASONISTS” who are threatening national security and exposing "top secret military features.” More weirdly, the guy supposedly worried about "national security" just imploded seven decades of careful diplomacy with South Korea - and a 1950s mutual defense treaty the State Department calls "the linchpin for security and stability in the Indo-Pacific” - to punish a longtime democratic ally for declining to join his Iran debacle and instead appease a nuclear-armed dictator.
His abrupt move Sunday night to “substantially reduce” joint exercises with South Korea, hours before 18,000 South Korean troops and thousands of Americans were set to kick off their annual Ulchi Freedom Shield drills, was widely panned as "an unforced error" and "another inane, haphazard decision (by) a chaotic administration" - one made, as usual, not jointly with Congress but unilaterally, on social media, based on wildly false, revisionist history. His "reasons": The drills are "costly" (see statues, ballroom, mountain of gold crap), they send a signal that's "inappropriate and hostile" toward a regime that's "unthreatening," and “Kim Jong Un has always treated me with great respect...I understand him, and he understands me." In other words, he is Sally Fields at the 1985 Oscars: "You like me!"
Never mind his "unthreatening" North Korea has weapons that reach the US; they're shipping weapons to Putin's forces in Ukraine; and Thursday they shrugged off Trump's paltry olive branch by launching a barrage of missiles, dismissing the "recent measure (of) so-called good faith," and denying Trump's claim his bestie had reached out. Sen. Tim Kaine: "North Korea tests ballistic missiles and Trump decides the problem is with...our ally, South Korea." These are also the guys who killed Otto Warmbler, a 21-year-old U.S. student on a 2016 tour charged with a "hostile act against the state" after allegedly stealing a hotel poster. He was put away after a show trial; when the U.S. got him released 17 months later, he came home blind, deaf, vegetative, howling, with catastrophic brain damage and signs of torture. He died six days later. But sure, Trump and Kim Jong Un "get along GREAT!"
Along with America’s rebuff of ally South Korea, the Pentagon just chose to relieve the beleaguered USS Lincoln with the USS Washington, the Navy’s only aircraft carrier in the Asia Pacific. The move leaves no U.S. presence there for the first time since 1944, “vaporizing” U.S. influence in the region and marking “the end of an era” - maybe just as well, given the Navy’s belated admission that last month U.S. destroyer USS Benfold lost power and ran adrift in the South China Sea for four days with no food, water, AC or toilets. Heckuva job, Pete. No wonder the rude mad king lost it Monday when CNN reporter Kristen Holmes did her job and challenged him on the wisdom of said “policies.” "What I'm doing is making things safer," he snarled. Admirably, she persisted. "Quiet! You're very disrespectful, you're a loud boisterous person," he snapped. "Be quiet. Be quiet. Be quiet."
The rancor didn't end there. Holmes also dared to ask about a now-viral speech by Sen. Jon Ossoff, who noted the "crook president" doesn't want "to do the job." Instead, "he wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on their apparently defenseless flying palace gifted by the emir of Qatar" - a brief, incendiary reference to "weird stalker-slash-diaper-nurse" Natalie Harp, who Trump calls "sweetie." Trump brushed off Holmes' question with the always bizarre tactic of a grotesquerie tossing puerile insults at better-looking people: Ossoff is "a Pee-wee Herman look-alike." Still, the fragment of discomfiting reality - Ossoff: “Apparently, in the White House, the truth hurts” - in a 30-minute speech sparked a telling torrent of fury from MAGA cultists unaccustomed to hearing it. As a result - and 'cause they're dumb - the meltdown was laughable.
The White House declared Ossoff “the biggest cuck loser in politics,” a “feminine theater kid,” a “lightweight.” They also went for Holmes, “a disgraceful, humiliating embarrassment." “These scumbags are the lowest of the low,” they said. “Someday, your children will come across your disgusting and inhumane question. They will be sickened and embarrassed.” (Cue lowest of the low.) Many others chimed in. Ossoff is “a mean-spirited jerk who traffics in slander,” “Who does this and holds their head high? This guy should be ashamed.” Hilariously, some ran with the news the quiet, studious Ossoff, known “for keeping his head down and doing the work,” spent $2,887 on make-up and prep for TV appearances. Laura Ingraham: "Beneath that pancake bronzer and rouge, we have an ambitious man, (the) most dangerous type of politician." America: "Fox ridiculing men who wear makeup is really something to behold."
Amidst the eruptions, Trump took to Truth Social, his tawdry security blanket, in a weekend spree of over 40 posts in six hours, most of it AI slopaganda. No more hiding in catering trucks: Here he is triumphant, a svelte Elvis - "President Trump ages in reverse!” - building a “WALL OF STEEL" around Iran's ports in a made-for-TV movie war where, in Nazi typeface, “We are going to win.” Also beware Elizabeth "Pocohontas" Warren, Abdul El-Sayed, and women in hijab who "are coming for your home and your belongings!" Enamored of George Washington, he saves him at Mt. Rushmore, splits a portrait with him, rides beside him on horseback (the bad guy on a black horse) and, before two huge American flags with the wrong number of stripes, consults him - shrunk shorter than Trump 'cause petty is as petty does - on his feckin' ballroom: "Thank you, George, for some of your brilliant ideas." Consensus: "Psychotic stuff."
Dean Blundell cites the screaming dissonance of Trump’s infatuation with a leader of grace and integrity who over time “refused a crown, a palace, a third term, power itself” as he “diligently sought the public welfare.” In He’s No Washington, Blundell helpfully offers “the most humiliating side-by-side in American history.” With no fancy education, Washington had and read one key book of philosophy: A 1702 translation of Seneca’s Morals. Its chapter headings became the moral axioms Washington followed through "a lifetime of deliberate self-discipline," starting at 14 when he copied “110 Rules of Civility” into a notebook "and spent the next 50 years living them." A man who could "command a room by saying less" but naturally "most tremendous in his wrath,“ Washington's composure was "a construction project...He was a volcano that decided, every single day, not to erupt."
Blundell describes ”the moral weight of a man who asked nothing for himself.” When he took office, the Senate debated for weeks what to call him - “His Highness the President of the United States," "His High Mightiness“ - but he chose the unfussy ”Mr. President." Same with his residence; the original plan was a European-style palace four times bigger. He twice gave up power at the height of his own, for which King George called him "the greatest man in the world.” His favorite piece of writing was a play about the Roman Stoic senator Cato, who chose death over submission to Julius Caesar’s tyranny. With his army barefoot and freezing at Valley Forge, he had Cato performed for them "to remember what they were freezing for." In his farewell address, he warned of demagogues who would "ride public rage to power." He understood that in America, "the office was supposed to be bigger than the man. Power was never the prize. Character was the prize." Blundell: "Compare and weep."
Wednesday, the “visibly incoherent” current president, laser-focused on our most vital issues, led the press on a giddy tour of the work he’s ordered on the White House grounds in a scene like “a lost episode of the 1980s Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.” He bragged about the driveway’s “flawless granite,” autographed the ornate helipad “he insists he needs” - “It’s very strong stone, it will never break, it will never do— it’s rated million-year plus” - claimed the "military complex will have a drone-proof uh roof, and you’re gonna have on top of the roof, many drones,” and for perhaps the 10th time intoned “grass has a life like humans”: "We put brand new earth on top, so if you’re grass, you’re very happy.” America: "Hey Ma, Grandpa is in the front yard again yelling at people," "What an incredible babbling idiot," "A million years - that's how long his presidency has felt," and, "Fix the country you broke, asshole." Trump moved on to his new flagpoles. "This is a great pole," he said. "I'm very good at flagpoles."
Update: Now we're not only at war with Canada, but with the U.S. bond market. Asked how he might address volatility in the market, he offered, "The ultimate intervention is our military. And if we have to use that, we will.” Comments:" "Operation Epic Interest Rates," "We will bomb the shit out of the bond market," "First, they eliminated the short-term interest rates traders, and I said nothing..." Make it stop.
- YouTube www.youtube.com
We Shall Prevail: An Echo That Doesn't Die
A Marxist activist and singer hugely popular with Allende supporters, Jara had re-written the 1969 song Venceremos - composed by Sergio Ortega with original text by Claudio Iturra - as an anthem for Allende’s 1970 Popular Unity election campaign. Born to a poor farm family, Jara was mestizo, a mix of Indigenous Mapuche and Spanish heritage. He once said his first memory was hearing his mother sing folk songs as she worked in their garden or kitchen; after she died when he was 15, Jara went to seminary school but eventually decided against the priesthood. After military service, he studied theater and music at university, then turned to writing songs that merged tender folk music with political themes - rural working-class stories, brutal evictions of squatters: "We began to create a new kind of song. It was music that was born out of necessity."
In September 1973, widely recognizable, he was seized by soldiers the day after the coup and taken to Estadio Chile, a Santiago stadium now named for him, where about 5,000 people were being held. For four days, he was beaten, tortured, humiliated. An officer threw a cigarette on the ground and made him crawl for it; others played Russian Roulette with him; eventually, they broke both his hands before parading him through the stadium; later, through split lips, he sang a final Venceremos - "We Will Prevail." On his last day, said a fellow detainee, he found a pen and notebook and scribbled one more song, or harsh poem, Estadio Chile, later smuggled out. Two hours later, he was killed, his body dumped near a cemetery. His body had 44 bullet wounds 56 broken bones, including a shattered skull. He was 40 years old.
The Pinochet dictatorship went on to kill or disappear over 3,000 people, and detain and torture up to 40,000 during its brutal 17-year reign. It ended in 1990 through a constitutional process wherein voters rejected extending its rule and elected a civilian president. After years of legal efforts to hold Pinochet accountable, in 1998 a Spanish judge issued an international arrest warrant for his human rights abuses; he was detained in the U.K during a medical visit after the House of Lords ruled he did not have immunity, but Britain ultimately released him back to Chile in 2000 for health reasons. There, Chilean judges pushed their Supreme Court to strip him of immunity to face trial for murders and kidnappings tied to military death squads, but he died under house arrest of a heart attack in 2006, age 91, having never been formally tried or convicted for his crimes.
Victor Jara, one of the regime's most beloved and recognizable victims, swiftly became an enduring international symbol of resistance after the deadly, public silencing of his music. In 2003, Estadio Chile was renamed Estadio Víctor Jara; in 2009, Victor’s body was reburied in a public funeral attended by thousands of mourners; today, an annual 1,000 Guitars event held in his honor at that stadium also draws thousands. Still, the moral arc of the universe moved slowly. Over time, Chilean courts convicted hundreds of military officers and secret police for human rights abuses, but it was not until 2018 that eight retired officers were charged with Jara's murder, and that of Allende's director of prisons Littré Quiroga Carvajal. In August 2023, after five years of appeals and 50 years of evading justice, Chile's Supreme Court convicted them all in a unanimous decision.
The Court sentenced the eight, several in absentia, to 15 years and a day for the murders of both men, and 10 years and a day for their kidnappings, for a total of 25 years. A ninth was given eight years for concealing the crimes. The Court also dismissed all their appeals for annulment, and ordered the state to pay large reparations to the families of both men. Of those sentenced, 86-year-old Gen. Hernán Chacón killed himself moments after police arrived to arrest him at his home in a wealthy district of Santiago. Another, Pedro Barrientos, had fled Chile for the US in 1989; he was extradited back in 2023 after he was arrested in the US during a traffic stop. During his trial, one former soldier testified Barrientos liked to brandish his pistol in a crowd and declare, “I killed Víctor Jara with this!"
Five others have been in jail since then. Only one, Nelson Haase Mazzei, had remained missing since he failed to appear in court in 2018. A retired colonel, Haase Mazzei joined the Chilean army’s notorious Tejas Verde brigade in 1972 and was part of Pinochet’s brutal secret police; he worked closely with its head, Manuel Contreras, sentenced to over 500 years in jail for crimes against humanity before his 2015 death. Last weekend, in likely the final act of a too-long quest for justice, Chilean police announced they'd arrested Haase Mazzei, now 80, in rural Puyehue, south of Santiago. A judge ordered his immediate imprisonment to start his 25 year sentence; one article noted, "Impunity Takes Another Hit." Another said his defense lawyer has requested his transfer to Punta Peuco, a ritzy jail already housing many of the Pinochet era's murderers.
Through the Víctor Jara Foundation, started by Victor's widow Joan, a British dancer and activist who died in 2023 at 96, their daughter Amanda said she welcomes the news of Haase's arrest but, "Half a century after the murders, it is difficult to see this as justice." Still, Jara's songs live on from when Allende, after he won the presidency, spoke before a banner reading, "You can’t have a revolution without songs." "They were on the radio and television," said Joan in 1975. “The song movement was a tremendous weapon." Since then, music has continued fighting the fear authoritarianism depends on, transforming "political grievance into a shared language of survival" - Miriam Makeba, Mikis Theodorakis, Pussy Riot, America's Woody Guthrie to Dylan to Bad Bunny, who launched his 2026 tour in Chile with Jara's song, dedicated to Ho Chi Minh, The Right to Live in Peace.
In 2020, James Dean Bradfield, lead vocalist and guitarist for the Welsh alt-rock band Manic Street Preachers, released Even in Exile, a concept album dedicated to Jara's life and work, along with a three-part podcast. Bradfield discovered Jara as a teen, taken aback by a tenderness he didn't associate with "one of the only truly Marxist musicians. The truth...floats to you like a dream.” He learned more about Jara from poet Patrick Jones, whose brother is Bradfield’s bandmate; Jones had found two compilations of Jara songs in a thrift shop, became "obsessed" and wrote dozens of poems about Jara that, shared with Bradfield, became the album's songs. For Jones, the story of Jara's life and death is "a warning from history" that deeply . resonates with today's rise of the right: "Power is always afraid of those who stand up and say, 'There’s another way.'"
For the album, Bradfield wanted songs that span Jara's life, from his rural childhood to his final hours. He was moved by his singing of Venceremos near the end - "He died defiantly, but with grace" - yet felt, "If you just focus on his death, you ignore the journey." Above all, he wanted to highlight Jara's daunting courage and conviction throughout his life, a "naked truth" that rendered him what Phil Ochs called, when he met Jara in 1971, "the real thing." For Bradfield, it reminded him of the Preachers' 1998 song, If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next. He also deliberately chose to include Jara's final Estadio Chile - "How hard it is to sing when I must sing of horror/ Horror which I am living, horror which I am dying” - which he calls "an anthem that became a prophecy." Of Jara's life and work, he hears "the echo time and time again. I wanted to show here’s an echo that doesn’t die."
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You Sirs Are the Duplicitous Murderous Failures
In the bleak wake of eight missed deadlines, 28 empty claims of a "deal," several failed ceasefires and ongoing blather of a mythical "victory" on the horizon, the war is now widely seen as militarily, politically and morally "unwinnable," and even U.S. money, always there for calamitous wars, is running low. Thus did greasy dunk-tank clown and strung-tight "warfighter" zealot Pete Hegseth appear before Congress last week to plead for a profane $67 billion more in emergency funds - part of a $1.15 trillion defense bill, a 44%, $454 billion increase - added to the $37.5 billion he's already squandered in the name of a vague "generational investment," maybe to get the Strait of Hormuz closed again? Par for the inept course, only Pete, fired from two non-profits for mishandling their finances and adroit at blaming others for bad decisions, seems surprised the money's run out.
Maybe that's 'cause at the start of the Iran misadventure he was so busy posting braggadocious war porn, "some of the most loser shit ever," of tacky bellicose video games cut in with real carnage from Iran - war=Call of Duty - and delivering bombastic briefings to crow about annihilating the enemy "without mercy" in the name of "real warriors." Those briefings have now been quietly "replaced by a vacuum." Frantic to control a grim political narrative, he's held no briefings since May, emptied the Pentagon's press corps of everyone but right-wing hacks, restricted access in ways large and small, banned "unflattering" images of himself - oh vanity thy name is lame snowflake - and otherwise treated America's vital free press as an enemy to be subdued, defeated or at least hoodwinked in order to obscure his own lies, failures, abuses and all-round buffoonery.
By all accounts, Hogsbreath has been serving more as showboating fitness influencer than sober head of a functional military. He now presides over a largely broken Pentagon where morale is dismal, finances are strained, readiness is collapsing and care for troops, veterans and their families is at historic lows. Within the ranks, he's derided as an out-of-his-depth, D-list pretender and "fake-ass manly man" who looks like a Ken doll "stored too close to the furnace," relishes lecturing generals, and "dresses like he's on The Love Boat" - hair gel, makeup, showy pocket hanky resembling military honors - while somehow disastrously managing to kill 170 Iranian schoolgirls on the first day of a misbegotten war he still insists is "a historic, overwhelming victory." From Jeff Tiedrich: "He's what would happen if arrogance and an elevated blood-alcohol level became a real boy."
In a "beyond Strangelovian" move, that blustering boy recently responded to the multiple crises of his Dept. of Deep Masculine Insecurity with a bonkers video from def not his makeup studio, titled "The High-T Department of War," announcing a new program to ensure troops have enough testosterone to stay "on the leading edge of lethality." He's evidently unaware any guy who declares he's "high-T" is probs not - "Real gangsta *ss people don't flex nuts"; also, that behind most war crimes is too much testosterone and a failed moral compass, today's military doesn't do much hand-to-hand combat, studies show testosterone doesn't help focus, fatigue, memory or well-being, and "High-T For Better Killing" is maybe not a great slogan. Still, the guy fixated on "the highest male standard" is calling for mandatory annual screening of those over 30; under 30, it's voluntary.
The general response to this very cool plan has been...mixed. Many noted the discrepancy between his strident insistence on freedom from governments making our medical decisions - hence ending a decades-old flu vaccine mandate (until an outbreak led to its quiet reversal) and gender-affirming health care, which is why a judge may overturn it - and his railing against beards, fat troops, high-ranking women and people of color. Women decried flaky policy decisions inspired by "the far corners of the manosphere" or the ravings of RFK Jr.; some suggested he replace salutes with chest bumps and "Sir" with "Bro"; others wondered who'll be screening Pete "for being a dick." Above all, especially after last week's hearing, a broad consensus has emerged that no amount of testosterone pumped into his body will render him even remotely qualified for his job.
Confronted with lawmakers questioning yet more money for a debacle, Pete blustered, stuttered, sneered, fear-mongered about radical Islamists "coming for our families" with nuclear weapons "to hold us at issue (sic)." He thundered Jack Reed - West Point, Harvard, veteran, professor - should respect "the historic nature of what (Trump's) undertaking"; Reed snapped, "He should be praised for starting a war without authority?" He shrieked at Jon Ossoff for calmly listing the multiple times he's lied "Iran’s military had been, quote, destroyed." When Gary Peters cited those lies and the 30 times he's declared what's clearly "a complete failure" an "overwhelming victory," Pete screeched the word failure "smears the sacrifice of the troops" (sic) and "shame on you." He didn't use it about the troops, Peters retorted, but their leaders: "You, sir, are the failure. You don't have a strategy."
Finally Hegseth, the model avatar for a regime that never accepts responsibility for anything, laid the blame for a Pentagon famed for funding atrocities abroad with little to no accountability seeking $1.5 trillion more in blood money on...Biden and his “gross negligence.” Gross, indeed: “You cannot inherit a war you started.” Dems balked at an obscene price tag that dwarfs even the Iran debacle, noting it includes $800 million for the National Guard to keep pointlessly patrolling D.C, over $1bn to patrol the southern border which is DHS’ job, $900 million to illegally bomb more boats in the Caribbean etc. Also quietly stuck in there was the vile Save America Act (more sic) to further restrict voting, and the random horror of a move to establish a joint US-Israel tech initiative so we can further integrate our military with Israel's universally admired genocidal regime. Still, it passed, barely.
Defense bills tend to win broad bipartisan support, but the House barely squeezed through a $1.15 trillion version of this insane one with the help of six craven Dems, including Maine's fucking Jared Golden. In better news, they also passed a second, largely symbolic but heartening resolution to end the war, with four Repubs joining them. In the Senate, the measure was blocked, 47-49, by fucking John Fetterman. Also last week, the US made a deal to help the Saudis - of hacksaws and 9/11 - set up a civilian nuclear program, despite MAGA terror of Nukes For Muslims! (see war in Iran, whose painstaking deal Trump tore up). Despite longtime fears of a nuclear race in the Middle East, Trump said they have to join the "very respected" Abraham Accords with Israel and sign a hollow "safeguards agreement" with a pinky promise of "no enrichment of material!" So no worries.
Still, some were worried, also enraged. The folks at I Fucking Love Australia were already some pissed at Admiral USS Bigly and his 271 Republicans, "you spineless, belly-crawling, yellow-bellied fucking grubs" and "geography-proof fucking muppets who can't count past their own indictments," not one of whom will stand up to a doddering "windbag at the arse end of his miserable sex-offending, pedo-loving, decomposing life" as a fifth of the world's oil remains bottled up behind Hormuz, just like "HIS OWN JOINT CHIEFS WARNED HIM," using small words and a hand puppet. With Australia down to 29 days of vital diesel in reserve, they fume, "You lot couldn't poll your collective vertebrae and build a fucking prawn...Do your job." And that was before last week's Houthi attack by "a militia in sandals" on two Saudi oil tankers in the Red Sea for breaching their naval blockade.
The bold move by a ragtag militia from the Middle East's poorest country, armed with "cheap hardware from a rusty shed - drones, hand-me-down missiles and a Telegram account" - prompted the sages at IFLA to offer a cogent, useful backstory on just what's going down in a volatile, "centuries-deep cauldron of grievance" into which "waddles Napoleon Blownapart, fresh from a Bibi slideshow in the Situation Room, convinced he can win a regional war with vibes and a Sharpie." They began by citing the Saudis' "one genuinely clever move of the war": When Hormuz shut down, they were ramming up to 3.5 million barrels of oil a day, far more than usual, through the critical Asia/Europe escape hatch of Bab Al Mandeb's east-west pipeline to Yanbu on the Red Sea. Then, "The Houthis just bricked it the fuck up - they welded the back door of the global oil market shut."
Pundits call Yemen's Houthis Iran "proxies,” but "they've got their own grievances, which tell you where this war is headed." IFLA "follows the thread all the way back, since apparently nobody in the White House owns a ball of string." To Houthis and hundreds of millions more, "This is now a defensive war against an attack on Muslim nations," and "you cannot drone-strike a conviction." See Vietnam, Afghanistan, ISIS etc. Not inside that tent: Saudi Arabia, who "picked the wrong side of (their) religion," watched Gaza flattened and only checked their wealth fund balance; now the Houthis "declared them fair game, and no one is holding (a) vigil for them." Righteous bottom line: "Why is the region on fire? Israel. Occupation, annexation, settlements, the slow-motion theft (that) manufactures resistance. Hamas and Hezbollah didn’t fall out of the sky. Dispossession built them, brick by bloody brick."
Brilliant strategist Trump "surveyed that flawless 0-4 record of American wars of choice, a historical record so grim you could read it by Braille, and thought, you know what this list needs? Iran, plus a bonus round against mountain fighters in Yemen who've never once lost." He thought the Houthis no longer wanted to fight; now, he's "disappointed" and "cranked up the rhetoric with his 76th ultimatum." Meanwhile, on "planet fucken consequences," oil prices spiked to over $100 a barrel amidst market chaos, and "the dumbest cunt that ever fumbled the world’s most dangerous military operation opened the gates of Hell with his own two tiny clay-colored hands." Or more accurately the Gate of Tears, Bab el-Mandeb in English. "The old sailors named it for the ships it drowned," notes IFLA. "Turns out it was just waiting all these centuries for a presidency worthy of the title."
Still, he blunders on. The same day he again boasted his war has *only* killed 18 U.S. troops - there's a chart! - vs. "hundreds of thousands" - actually 58,220, none him - in Vietnam, he went to Dover for the dignified transfer of four Americans just killed in an Iran attack at a Jordan airbase. He told reporters he was en route to "honor great heroes, actually." Then, in a "next-level ghastly" move, he put his own vile words in their young dead mouths to claim, "All of them said, very strongly, we cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon." Appalled responses: "Did they have tears in their eyes? Did they ask why we need to destroy their nuclear program when we've already done it five times? Vastly more plausible: They said 'What the fuck are we doing here?' or 'What the fuck is wrong with you?' and, Can any journalist ask him to name two of the fallen soldiers? Or hell, name two of his kids?"
We can name them: Sgt. Michael Swinton 30, of North Carolina, father to two kids 4 and 6, First Lt. Tyler Feehan, 25, of Hawaii, weeks away from earning his MBA, Sgt Angel Rampersad, 28, of New York, and Pvt. Isabella Gonzales, 19, of Texas. Hours after the ceremony - where the guy who never bothered to know their names gazed blankly, blue suit gaudy among black suits and bowed heads - he went to a MAGA rally at a Georgia high school where he sweated and babbled: "We had transgender for everybody, ravaging through our cities," "We don't need the Hormuz Street in our skirmish...They're not ready to make a deal. They'll be ready soon," "We'll pass the great healthcare plan. It's called Our Great Healthcare Plan," "The communists want to blow up Mt. Rushmore" (boos), "I fought Ossoff before (boos) and we won...He reminds me of Pinky Herman."
The newly dead, wholly unreal suckers and losers to a narcissist incarnate, were clearly far from what passes for the remains of his mind. That obliviousness reflects what former Sec. of Defense and CIA director Leon Panetta charged is a "deliberate effort to withhold information from the American people, a shameful approach to sharing the responsibility we all have (in) a war." Speaking of a New York Times report the Pentagon suppressed news of dozens of military injuries - which the regime called “baseless and malicious” but anyway they're not "strictly required" to publicize them - Panetta said officials are in essence "challenging the press to find what’s really happening, and they will." "They can dodge, bob and weave," he said of a long, base tradition in American politics, "but my experience is that no matter how much you try to hide it, in the end, the truth comes out.”
The truth, says James Talarico: "We are closing schools and hospitals in this country so we can bomb schools and hospitals in other countries" - and working hard to hide it. The latest proof, again from the Times in a rare, welcome burst of journalism: The Pentagon's Casualty Analysis website just lowered the number of troop deaths from 18 to 14, with the four names just brought home scrubbed from the list. Garbled rationales ranged from deaths after Trump's April ceasefire mean no war/no deaths to "site errors due to a temporary data disruption (with) anomalies being resolved." Days later, they're still missing. Michael Swinton's widow Jamiah, asked if she had any details on the disappeared names, said nobody has reached out: "I kind of don’t have words for that.” We don't either. "They died serving our country," wrote Bill Kristol. "They should be honored, not erased." In sorrowful fact, we say they died for little besides a sick con man's lies. For that we are truly sorry. Remember who to blame.
Update: Jesus these inept hacks and clowns can't even keep track of how many gullible young people's lives they've fucked up in the name of their imperialist misadventures. Now, after their data was "quietly updated," it's 18 killed and 624 wounded. Do better, or for the love of God and gullible young people's lives just fucking stop.
The "anomalies": Feehan, Gonzales, Swinton, RampersadPhotos from U.S. Army
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