Friday, June 20, 2025

Neutrality Is Chimerical


 

I don’t expect AI to understand this (I don’t expect AI to understand anything), but a “neutral” or its common synonym, “objective,” stance is an impossiblity.

Scholars aim for a neutral analysis in their studies, trying to achieve a conclusion produced only by the results of “objective” analysis.  It’s better than saying “I like it, that settles it!,” but that’s because the raw assertion of preference is replaced by argument. The better the argument, the better the conclusions. But there is no such thing as a truly objective stance. As Kierkegaard said: no one has an objective stance on their own existence. Which raises an interesting question: does AI have being, which is to say, existence?

The terms are not synonymous, nor co-terminous. The phone I’m typing on “exists,” in that it has mass, shape, form, even solidity. That doesn’t mean it has being. Even when all traces of personality have been erased by dementia, a person still has being. And everyone who knows them has a subjective view of them. No one is neutral.

I’m squashing a lot into a little, here. 30 pounds of shit into a one-pound bag level squashing. In literacy criticism theory, the “objective” response to a text is considered a con…on the person who thinks their analysis starts from a non-subjective posture. It’s like saying you have an objective opinion about your own existence. You’re just fooling yourself, as surely as Trump does when he says polls show his approval rating is the highest recorded. Trump cannot consider any ideas that he doesn’t share could be valid, and he certainly can’t accept any ideas that threaten his ego.

No more can catturd consider an idea he doesn’t agree with. Catturd thinks Grok is woke because Grok analyzes data according to its programming and machine learning, and comes to different conclusions than he does. The fact is, Grok makes different assumptions, or starts from different bases, in making its analysis than catturd does, and probably considers information catturd rejects outright. Catturd hears what he wants to hear, and disregards the rest. Grok analyzes a large body of relevant data and reaches reasoned conclusions based on its programming. Is Grok neutral? In this arena, what is “neutral”? If Grok’s arguments are sound and well reasoned, it is more challenging to reject them. But it isn’t incontrovertible proof that Grok is right because Grok is “neutral.”

Whether or not it is truly neutral (whatever that is), neutrality is never the goal. The only relevant question is: who has the better argument?

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“I Won’t Get A Nobel Peace Prize.” “I Won’t Get A Nobel Peace Prize”

 


Did he have to stay after school and write that 100 times?

This is the most pathetic display I’ve ever seen.

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Staff Updates And Further Deadlines

Reporter: But Stephen Miller said every person here illegally— He told ICE to arrest everyone here illegally.

Trump: Stephen and I have a very good understanding. He's a terrific person.
Keen insights from a stable genius.
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JD Vance Is Trump’s Spiro Agnew

2. Got @SenAlexPadilla's name wrong despite serving in the Senate with the man for the entire time he was there

3. Refused to take questions from any California journalists

Nailed it!
Aren’t they all “Jose”? On second thought, maybe he’s Trump’s Dan Quayle. No. He’s just his own racist asshole. Seriously.
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And People Going To Baseball Games

It’s the people ICE is rounding up that are the concern. Immigrants at court hearings and keeping appointments for their legal status? Students whose opinions Trump doesn’t like, snatched off the streets? By masked men who may not be federal agents? Who can tell? That’s the public image of ICE. Because LA didn’t catch fire? Because LAPD went a bit nuts (inexcusable), but the NG and the Marines just stood around a building? Or is it because ICE went to Dodgers stadium 🏟️ and tried to persuade us those masked men were not their masked men?

The people paying enough attention to answer polls know there is a quota, and what “quota” means to cops (right down to speed traps). That really isn’t helping with acceptance of what Trump/Miller want.

As Trump knows:
Notice how Trump is evading responsibility for taking away migrant farm workers. Good luck with that. You think people are going to blame farmers’ employment practices for this?* Neither do I.


*Stonewall, Texas is where I’ve been buying peaches for decades (I can ‘em). I take it kinda personally if they start rotting in the orchards. Stonewall is a wide spot in the road in an agricultural community. Peaches are a major crop.  Ripples out to the community around it, and customers like me, and food companies who use peaches in the products they sell. Shit hitting the fan, IOW. And multiply that across Texas alone. Gonna be a shitstorm.
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The Nobel Prize Is DEI

They also only give it to black Presidents, which is what really hurts. 

Oh, and he’s wrong:
Trump lives in his alternative world, and wants to drag us all along with him. See?
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Just Because I Brought It Up

And, to be fair, I used the image from her TV series.
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“The Evidence Is Massive And Overwhelming!”

NYT Pitchbot :
Donald Trump is the most brilliant military strategist in our nation's history, but it's completely unfair to force him into a decision about Iran when he's in the midst of rolling out his new cell phone service. Another two weeks is more than reasonable.

by Marc Thiessen
He also needs to relitigate the 2020 election, first. "The evidence is MASSIVE and OVERWHELMING!” Says the self-proclaimed “stable genius” who also describes himself as 6’3” and 225 lbs.

Remember the Cyber Ninjas in Arizona, who ended up finding extra votes for Biden? That’s where this is headed:
Trump's own campaign commissioned a second firm to investigate his fraud claims in the weeks following the 2020 election, and Simpatico Software Systems founder Ken Block told the Biden Justice Department in 2023 that his claims were "all false."

“No substantive voter fraud was uncovered in my investigations looking for it, nor was I able to confirm any of the outside claims of voter fraud that I was asked to look at,” Block said. “Every fraud claim I was asked to investigate was false.”
If Trump was capable of strategic thought, I’d say he was trying to distract us from this: But I don’t think Trump acknowledges any polling except the fantasy polls in his head, where he has the best numbers of any president in the history of the world. So he doesn’t think in terms of distraction. He just needs the attention; and that requires a new, shiny thing every few minutes. For his ego; not for his success.
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Some USC Law Students Are Going To Be Arrested For Obstruction


 Or assault. Or using the law to protect the rights of people. Or something.

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But Trump Is White. And Male.

That’s really all I’ve got, anymore.
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🤨

She said she was told, “ICE is purposely avoiding the gang areas for their own safety.”

That says it all. Trump claimed he’d go after criminals and big talk about deporting gangs, but they’re out here targeting workers and families, while steering clear of actual gangs.

Talk about a MAGA hoodwink.
I’m pretty sure “DWB” is still a thing. I remember black people walking peacefully down streets in solemn marches, being set upon by police with Billy clubs, water cannon, and dogs. No, it’s not a justification. This is just America. It doesn’t have to be; but it is so easily it’s hard not to take it as the default.
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Thursday, June 19, 2025

USPS Is Closed Today

 The local Social Security office is closed (I need to make an appointment). 

The “Y” is open (this morning). The stores are open (and crowded). AFAIK, everything is open but federal offices (state and local too, I assume.).

So what the fuck is Grandpa ShoutyPants talking about?


I don’t even understand why he gives a shit. 💩 
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TMI

Or too little information. The age old question: do words have more than one meaning, more than one application? Like “discriminating between” v. “discriminating against.” Inquiring minds want to know. 🤔 Everything old shows up again?
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Two Weeks

There’s a scene in one of my favorite Guy Ritchie movies where Jason Statham is waiting on a friend cooking him a sausage on a grill in the background. As he talks to another character, he asks “Hiw long on that sausage?” Two minutes, is the reply. Five minutes later, Statham asks the same question. Five minutes,  he is assured. “But you said ‘two minutes’ five minutes ago!”

He never gets his sausage.
We all are. Right, Karoline Leavitt?
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Is Trump Going To Nationalize Dodger Stadium?

 Because apparently it’s a “sanctuary…”

ICE agents attempted to enter Dodger Stadium on Thursday but were denied entry to the grounds by the team, a source familiar with the circumstances told CNN.
There's video with this one:
You can see the ICE agents in their minivans then the LAPD cars in the back appearing to block the Dodger Stadium parking lot entrance.

When I asked an LAPD officer if they are blocking ICE from entering the parking lot she said “put it this way. The Dodgers don’t want them coming in.”
And with this one, where it looks like about five ICE agents have nothing to and no one to arrest for assault or obstruction.

Trump denouncing the Dodgers as un-American commies in 3…2…1…. No, scratch that. He’ll never mention the Dodgers. He’ll blame Newsom and Biden.
ICE, by the way, says that’s not what happened:
But LAPD and the presence of peaceful protestors who left when ICE did, and the five. ICE agents standing sullenly by their cars a few yards from the gate, say otherwise.

Or, as George Conway put it:
They were just hanging out in Chavez Ravine because it’s so convenient to everything

ICE lies. But you knew that. 
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👿☠️

 

When I wore a younger man’s clothes (much younger; back in the early ‘80’s), I worked as a paralegal before I went to law school.

The firm I worked for represented a party in the then-burgeoning and soon voluminous asbestos cases. This was long before Johns-Manville escaped liability in bankruptcy court (they shed their liability like a snakeskin. Congress closed that loophole, which is the only reason Alex Jones is still fighting the bankruptcy trustee.), and the fund was finally established, even later, to end the lawsuits and compensate the victims of asbestos. So it was endless plaintiffs (people who had worked with asbestos products. The stuff was in everything: insulation, roofing materials, floor tiles. The only thing it didn’t do was hold together; but you could fix that. Or they thought they could. Asbestos is very friable. But like pollen, it’s virtually indestructible. That’s why industry liked it; and nobody paid attention to the dust. Which was tiny particles of asbestos, getting into your lungs. Forever.) and a small city (it seemed) of defendants.

All of the cases I touched (mostly depositions I read and summarized) involved asbestosis: lung damage from asbestos fibers (dust). Roughly equivalent to emphysema. Most of those cases were about who had liability, and so who would pay what to whom, and how much? The usual work of products liability, IOW. The horror stories, which I don’t remember working any case on, were all about mesothelioma.

It’s cancer of the mesothelial lining of the abdomen. So far as I know, the only cause is still exposure to asbestos. Any case like that was settled quickly, because it was a wrongful death case. 40 years ago, nobody lived long after that diagnosis. Because it was contiguous tissue and didn’t need a blood or lymph system to spread it, it was a wildfire. It was anyway,  as it literally grows and drips onto internal organs, so it moves damned fast.

I remember this because I organized the files in these cases (there were hundreds? Memory may exaggerate.), and there was reading matter on the then-new to non-specialists subject. And reading what I now remember about the cancer related to it (other than lung, which could be from other carcinogen. These were lawsuits, after all; cause mattered.), I read the story of a 10-year old boy.

I remember him as 10 years old, but don’t hold me to that. I’m sure he wasn’t older than that. This was a case history in some materials about the dangers of asbestos and mesothelioma. What I’ve never forgotten is what happened.

His father was changing the brakes on his car. Asbestos brake shoes, because that’s what everyone used. Heatproof; indestructible; but friable, so they would wear down, they would have to be replaced. His son was helping; and Dad used compressed air to blow the “dust” out of the brakes, thinking nothing of it. Why should he? I had asthma as a child, they tell me. For a short period, they thought I wouldn’t make it. My father virtually chain smoked. Years later I realized I was raised in a chimney; the house was always filled with smoke. My father was neither evil nor selfish. He just didn’t make the connection until much, much later. As I say: who knew?

The son got a face full of dust. And a diagnosis of mesothelioma. He was dead within a year. It must have been a horrific way to die.

I think of that boy, and his father, whenever I even hear the word “asbestos.” I have no sympathy for the people who trade in it; nor the people who would allow the trade in it. There is a reason asbestos abatement procedures are so rigorous, so time consuming, and so necessary. People who would let that mineral back into commerce in this country deserve the lowest place in hell, for eternity. And I don’t believe in hell. But if it would make a difference, I’d make an exception.
“Trump’s support for asbestos'” Ars Technica adds, “has been welcomed in Russia, a primary asbestos supplier to the US. In 2018, a Russian asbestos company began marketing asbestos with Trump’s face and a seal reading ‘Approved by Donald Trump, 45th President of the United States.'”

In 2019, The New York Times pointed to this photo on a Facebook page showing pallets of asbestos stamped with a seal that featured President Trump’s face and the alleged endorsement—a “public relations stunt.”

“Strangely enough,” Fast Company also reported, “Trump himself wrote in his 1997 book Art of the Comeback that he believed asbestos bans were a conspiracy ‘led by the mob, because it was often mob-related companies that would do the asbestos removal.'”
The lowest place in hell. Maybe even a little bit lower.
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Not Reassuring

In his head? He’s waiting for the voices to tell him what to do. Congress will be informed via social media, like the rest of us. Which he has been trying desperately to reinstate. Because he’s a deal maker…or something. 🤷🏻‍♂️   Which got nowhere, but hey. Or the situations he created, like canceling international agreements because: Obama cooties. What’s meritocratic about Juneteenth, anyway, amirite? Cold comfort for the rest of us.
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Remain Calm! All Is Well!!

If I didn’t know better, I’d swear Trump was thinking of Wonder Woman’s invisible jet.
I’m not really sure I do know better, though. Freud was right. (It’s a fucking Doonesbury cartoon, too.) "Legal" criminals are fine? I know, small beer; but fucking hell, these people are too stupid to know how to wipe their own asses.

Cheap Bastard in Chief (and several of his personal lawyers now work for DOJ):
A panel of judges on the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday denied Trump's request to have Justice Department lawyers argue in his appeal of columnist E. Jean Carroll's defamation case against Trump.

...

DOJ lawyers had argued that since some of Trump's alleged conduct fell within the scope of his role as president, the Justice Department should be able to defend the president in court.

"Substitution is required because once the Attorney General certifies that a defendant is acting within the scope of his office or employment, the United States is the party defendant unless and until a court rules to the contrary," they argued.
Or maybe Trump thinks immunity means he gets free legal services, too. Anyway, the court ruled to the contrary.

And a closing thought:
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Juneteenth Is A Dark Day

 …for Donald Trump and Stephen Miller:

Politics editor Andrew Perez obtained an email from Hegseth's office that "requested 'a passive approach to Juneteenth messaging' for the holiday on Thursday commemorating the end of slavery."

The email was sent by "the Pentagon’s Office of the Chief of Public Affairs, which said it wasn’t planning to publish Juneteenth-related content online," Perez wrote.

The date June 19th was declared a federal holiday by President Joe Biden in 2021 after a bill unanimously passed the Senate and received "broad bipartisan support" in the House. It commemorates the day at the end of the Civil War in 1865 when enslaved people in Texas were told that slavery had been abolished throughout the United States.

Dwayne E. Campbell with the African American Veterans Liaison, explained the significance of Juneteenth for Black veterans like himself in an article for VA News, "an official website of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs."

"Juneteenth is not just a day of celebration—it’s a day to remember the price of freedom and the ongoing work needed to preserve it," Campbell wrote. "For Black Veterans, it is a moment to reflect on the sacrifices of those who paved the way, recognizing that military service has always been at the tip of the spear."

He added that "Black Veterans, past and present" stand as a "testament to the resilience of a people who fought for their country even when their country did not fully fight for them."
But what’s meritocratic in reminding white people of that?
When Rolling Stone asked the Pentagon for comment on Juneteenth, the outlet was told that the DOD “may engage in the following activities, subject to applicable department guidance: holiday celebrations that build camaraderie and esprit de corps; outreach events (e.g., recruiting engagements with all-male, all-female, or minority-serving academic institutions) where doing so directly supports DoD’s mission; and recognition of historical events and notable figures where such recognition informs strategic thinking, reinforces our unity, and promotes meritocracy and accountability.”

Since taking office, President Trump has vowed to replace diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives with "merit-based" programs.
So the message is, slaves didn’t win their freedom based on merit?  Well, at least they’re clear about it.

And “merit based” means “white people deserve it, non-white people are just lucky to be here/shut up and play (or sing) to entertain the white people.”
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Does He Know What “Money Laundering” Is?

Because I don’t think he does. Neither does the “solution” he is backing do anything to help rural hospitals. Pretty sure it was the American backed regime change that put the Shah on the Peacock Throne, which ended with the regime change Sen. Tillis now wants U.S. soldiers to change again. And the music goes ‘round and ‘round…🎶 Giving Elmo another excuse to babble about “human consciousness” being “interplanetary,” thus mixing bad ‘70’s mystic babble with unscientific ‘50’s science fiction. First, outside of Mars, which we can’t inhabit, what planets do we go to? The gas giants? The frozen trans-Neptunian rocks? The burning clouds of Venus? 

We don’t have “warp drive.” “Class M planets” are not a scientific designation (or a reality). We are creatures of a specific biosphere and ecosystem, and unless those conditions are reproduced exactly somewhere within reach (and there ain’t no other such place in this solar system, which our reach doesn’t exceed yet), forget this “we shit the bed, time to move on,” ignorant claptrap.

If human consciousness disappears, it disappears. But it won’t be because we didn’t colonize Mars. Although human consciousness probably would improve if we sent Elmo to Mars. 🤔

(Elmo also excuses his failures as being part of the “learning process.” If NASA had taken this long to learn, Alan Shepard would have died an old man without ever making a suborbital flight in a space capsule. It reminds me Tesla is the most over-capitalized company on the planet, and with all that money they’re still making crappy cars, a truck nobody wants, and a self-driving taxi even the state of Texas doesn’t want on the streets. Why do people keep throwing money at this boob?)
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The Elephant 🐘 In The Room

Seeing what is right in front of your nose:
"If you’re looking for the definition of ‘self-fulling prophesy,’ look no further than Trump’s stream of policies that intentionally take legal status away from people so they go from being documented, to undocumented and then are fair game for being deported,” said Angela Kelley, an adviser at the American Immigration Law Center and a former senior adviser on immigration for the Department of Homeland Security.
The entire point of Miller's effort.
Trump pledged to target criminals, but immigration advocates say he has de-legalized many immigrants who had been authorized to live and work in the U.S. “What happened to his promise of targeting criminals?" Kelley said. "He’s had to create larger numbers of targets and even then, the folks aren’t criminals, because they’re here legally."
But they're still immigrants. Which is the point.
Critics say the administration has not expanded the number of visas or provided other pathways to legally bring workers into the country or legalize individuals who've spent years trying to improve their immigration status, which business and agriculture leaders say is necessary to maintain a viable workforce.

“We’ve just seen no effort to improve legal pathways and, if anything, things have gotten worse,” said Stuart Anderson, executive director for the National Foundation for American Policy.
Gee, why is that?
The administration wants to take away citizenship from people who don't have at least parent who's a U.S. citizen or legal resident, which would significantly enlarge the number of unauthorized people who could then potentially be deported, and they have challenged previous policies that allow migrants to legally be in this country.

“Now they are having the rug violently pulled out from under them,” said Guerline Jozef, executive director and founder of Haitian Bridge Alliance.
Even children of immigrants are immigrants. It’s the “one drop rule,” all over again. When you start to see that, you start to see what’s going on.
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Wednesday, June 18, 2025

Is She Talking To Ted Cruz?

Or to the people who agree with Ted Cruz?
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Is He Really This Stupid?

We tried that, Smokey Bear. Turns out forests and grasslands west of the Rockies need fire to sustain their ecosystems. That’s why we control the burns now. You could have stopped it before it started, right?  And won the first Nobel prize 40 years before the first one was awarded. It’s all fun and games until the body bags come home.
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Biblical Witless

I don’t care about Tucker pantsing Cruz over the question of how many people live in Iran. This exchange shows Cruz to be the child of his father, and that makes him a bull goose looney.

I honestly don’t how Cruz connects Christian obligations to support for the “nation” of Israel,  That’s not Christian doctrine at all, that I’ve ever heard of. It became an idea among extreme right-wing Christian sects long after 1948, mostly as a part of eschatological ranting about “end times.”  People obsessed with that idea tend to either want to be “prophetic” (not the correct understanding of that term in Biblical history), or to hasten the “end.” As for “nation of Israel” meaning the “political nation state,” that concept didn’t exist before the 19th century (or at least wasn’t widely accepted before then). And it is a European concept, not a Middle Eastern one. It simply couldn’t be the correct interpretation of the Masoretic text.

Let me shorten this with the Shama: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord is God, the Lord is One.” If you’re wondering about that phrasing, it’s because there are layers of history in the Torah, and one of them is the Jahwist (earliest layer), another the Elohist (later than Jahwist). The names refer to words used to identity God: “Jahweh” in the former, “elihu” in the latter. The standard English translation is “God” in the first case, “Lord” in the second. So, “Elihu is Jahweh,” and Jahweh is one (a statement of radical monotheism).

Which is beside the point, actually. I cite the Shama because “Israel” there refers to the children of Abraham, the people of the covenant. Biblically (v. politically), the word always refers to the people. Not the kingdom (when there was one), but the people. The kingdom of Israel was in fact a brief period in history. The children of Abraham consider themselves “Israel” because God made a covenant with Abraham and his descendants. It was after Jacob wrestled with an angel and was named “Israel,” and after Joseph brought the Hebrews to safety in Egypt, and after Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt, and after the decades in the wilderness, and after the time of the Judges, that Israel finally became a kingdom. Which didn’t last long, and Israel wasn’t a political state (like a kingdom, for example), until 1948. And “Israel” was always understood to be the people of the covenant, the children of Abraham. They were Israel with, or without, a king, or judges, or a state. How else can Israel hear, except with the ears of the people? Who else is the Shama addressed to, except the people?

I’m not saying the Biblical history I referenced is solidly historical, but the fall of the two kingdoms (Israel and Judah) is history, as is the establishment of a “nation of Israel” in 1948.  Nothing Ted Cruz said lines up with that reality in the least.

And then there’s the point Tucker Carlson implicitly makes. Who is Cruz to decide for this republic why we go to war? Especially when his decision is based on misunderstanding history, theology, and the Biblical witness. Cruz doesn’t make an argument, he asserts an ideological conclusion, one impervious to reason or argument. Carlson claims to be a Christian. What authority does Cruz have to impose his biblical interpretation on Carlson, or the rest of the nation? Some of us are Christians, some of us are not. I, for one, don’t think my Christianity empowers me to decide public policy, especially to settle questions of whom we go to war with, and why. I mean, religious beliefs can inform an individual’s decision making; but what Cruz says here is some weak ass shit which he asserts as unassailable authority. It may be for him; it cannot be for the nation. There’s a very serious ethical question here.

Not that Ted Cruz bothers himself much with ethical issues. Worse, this decision doesn’t just affect this country:
1. BREAKING via the Financial Times

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has put his cabinet on alert for a possible US attack on Iran, just 24 hours after insisting Donald Trump had given no indication he was about to “get involved in this conflict”.
Cruz is not any dreamier or simple minded than this:
The only difference is, Cruz is a U.S. Senator. Which makes him more dangerous.
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Don't Blame Me, I Was Watching The New Wes Anderson Movie

Guess who?
We're doing well as a country. If the Fed would ever lower rates, you know, we'd buy debt for a lot less," Trump said as the workers looked on.
And then we could "afford" tax cuts for the 1%?
"It's a shame, this guy. I have a guy. Do you ever have a guy that's not a smart person and you're dealing with him and you have to deal?" Trump asked the workers.
That's an oddly familiar acenario.
"He's not a smart guy. He's worried about inflation. I said, 'That's all right, if there's inflation in six months or nine months, you lower the rates or you raise the rates. You can do whatever you want'...So let's say there's rampant inflation, which there's none. You know what? There is a success. I got a call from Congress last night: 'Sir, there's a problem.' I said, 'What is it?' 'Money is pouring in. We don't know how to account for it.' I said, 'Check the tariffs.' $88 billion came in from tariffs. No inflation. And it's going to get even more. So, I know what I'm doing. So, we have a stupid person frankly at the Fed."

"He probably won't cut today. Europe had 10 cuts and we had none. And I guess he's a political guy. I don't know. He's a political guy who's not a smart person, but he's costing the country a fortune. So, what I'm going to do is, you know, he gets out in about nine months. He has to. He gets fortunately terminated."

Trump then claimed people are losing "hundreds of billions" and "even trillions of dollars," because Powell is "too late" cutting interest rates.

"I call him 'Too Late Powell,' because he's always too late. I mean, if you look at him, every time I did this, I was right 100%. He was wrong. Maybe I should go to the Fed. Am I allowed to appoint myself? I don't know. Am I allowed to appoint myself at the Fed? I'd do a much better job than these people."
Who is going to explain to him that the Fed is not a sole proprietorship, and Powell does not set interest rates by fiat? And Trump appointing himself to chair the Fed? Even Lindsay Graham wouldn’t lapdog that one.
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Tuesday, June 17, 2025

It Can Be Hard To Know Who To Trust

Huh.
Lander tells supporters gathered in Foley Square that the ICE agents who detained him today are among the 40% of 8+ million NYers who are foreign-born

“One of whom is a Pakistani Muslim who lives in Brighton Beach — and the other, an Indo-Guyanese guy in South Ozone Park”
Has Stephen Miller tried to “re-migrate” them yet? What is he waiting for? I am left wondering who was going to enforce those reforms. 🤔
"Conan, what is best in life?”

"To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women."
Fuck it, we’ll just send in Arnold Schwarzenegger. Can we get 1982 Arnold Schwarzenegger?
Fox News host Will Cain: "The 'No Secret Police Act' would ban local, state, and federal law enforcement from covering their faces when interacting with the public. Officers would also have to wear identifying information on them, like name tags. Hard to believe this is real!"
Much harder to believe you are sentient.

Census data says Los Angeles has 4 million total residents. A birther crypto scammer convicted of 34 felony fraud charges says the city harbors "Millions upon Millions of Illegal Aliens." For busy voters, it can be hard to know who to trust.
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⚛️

because there is opposition on both the Republican and Democratic side to the United States getting dragged into another potentially disastrous conflict in the Middle East.
I like the sentiment, but the only recourse Congress has is impeachment. You can’t imagine the courts will intervene. Boy, does he... Mark Levin has views. It could be worse. He could be Clay Travis. And now for something completely different.
I'm with Maga on this
Netanyahu needs this war. Not for Israel. For his control on power. IMHO. Why do you think Bibi did it this time?
Appearing on The Source with Kaitlan Collins on Tuesday, Haberman responded to new comments from Trump in which he contradicts testimony his director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, delivered in March.

"I don't care what she said," Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One. "I think they were very close to having one,” he said about the possibility that Iran was developing a nuclear weapon.

Haberman was taken aback by the apparent split between the president and his spy chief.

“What I was struck by – you know, he was publicly dismissive. That just is what it is,” the Times reporter said Tuesday. “But what I was also struck by is he was saying, ‘This is what I think.’ You know, you asked him about his opinion. He made very clear his opinion. I was struck by that.”

Haberman also referenced her reporting with other Times journalists, telling Collins that “contrary to what the Israelis were saying, there was not some new piece of information that appeared to point to some acceleration, at least, that the U.S. intelligence officials were aware of.”
Bibi knew how to play Trump.
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Because That Worked So Well In…

Vietnam; and Iran; and Afghanistan. And frankly, it’s worked out so well for Israel in what used to be British Palestine.

It’s just a matter of “shock and awe,” isn’t it? Or just dropping a few bombs?💣 

Really, how hard can it be?
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Please Explain This Slowly, As If I Wasn’t A Kid…

/2 I stood there with half an eyebrow and was sullen. Why, I demanded to God, is there not some kind of pop-up screen where I get asked if I really want to shave off my eyebrow Y/N? Why is there no guardrail? But Guardrails are ineffective against human indifference, incompetence, or evil.
...who came home from 4th grade in November, 1963 to see my mother weeping because the President had been shot to death in the streets of Dallas, a city where I was born and we’d moved away from only 3 years earlier (and where most of my mother’s family still lived)…
3 What we’re seeing with the accelerating collapse of America is that the things we see as guardrails are not self-enforcing — they rely on norms and values and when those norms and values are ignored or defied the guardrails no longer work.
...who watched black Americans peacefully march for civil rights, being attacked by dogs and water cannon on TV; who entered “Robert E.Lee” high school the year the school district was forced to integrate, and did so by closing the black schools (because no white parent was going to tolerate their children being forced to attend those schools), and people cheering the symbols of the Civil War as.a weapon against the black students (the Confederate battle flag, the “Rebels” as the school mascot, the whole nine yards…)

Hell, I’ll diverge right here because the city was Tyler, established shortly after the Republic became a state, named to honor the President who pressed for the Republic’s acceptance into the Union, because he wanted another slave holding state, and Texas obliged. The first high school in the town was also named for him, so if you were black and forced into either school, you weren’t escaping the honoring of the legacy of American slavery. But I guess those “norms and values” worked to keep up the guardrails, huh? For white people, anyway.
/4 There is no Do You Want Society To Collapse Y/N prompt. There is no American ur-adult to step in and stop things from going to far. There ain’t to deus in this machina. If we are led by ineffectual, craven, dishonest, or evil people, all the bad things can absolutely happen ……
You mean like in 1968, when MLK was assassinated in broad daylight? Or 2 days after Kennedy’s death, when Oswald was shot to death while in police custody, live on TV? Or when RFK was assassinated, in ‘68? The same year Daley released his police thugs on protesters at the Democratic convention in Chicago? Or Nixon meeting with the North Vietnamese that year in secret to be sure there would be no peace agreement before the ‘68 election because he had a “secret plan to end the war”? The war that led people to flee to Canada to avoid the draft (or college; neither escape was really available to the working class kids who were fodder for that meat grinder. Right, Donald Trump?) A war Nixon kept going in ‘72 so he could get re-elected? (If you need the history lesson, the war officially ended in 1973. Coincidence? I think not. Watergate really was a trifling matter, in the rear view mirror). “…all the bad things can absolutely happen”? Really? No shit? What was your first fucking clue? A nation based in chattel slavery, maybe? And that slavery enshrined in the constitution as the only way to establish the nation?
/5….because the things we thought of as stable guardrails relied on the people running them adhering to a shared set of values. No values, no guardrails.
I really want to know, Pollyanna, who these people are, and who the man behind the curtain is, because in my 70 years I have yet to see a set of values shared by the country, except the value of keeping your foot firmly planted in someone else’s neck, and resolutely ignoring the fact that foot is your foot. The “shared set of values” was always “the status quo serves me and mine, and nobody better mess with it.” The ones who did were either murdered; shunted aside; eventually overruled or just discarded as no longer needed (how much of the 15th amendment is still needed, and how much of it is more honored in the breach than in the keeping? More relevant to your point, how long did it take for enabling legislation to begin to implement the 15th, and how long did that legislation last before it was effectively discarded? You can’t blame that solely on a few recent Justices.)

“No values, no guardrails”? Shit, son, that’s as American as violence and cherry pie. Ask anyone in American history who wasn’t white or just poor.  The Reconstruction amendments didn’t do a damned thing to stop Reconstruction and Jim Crow. Chattel slavery was simply traded for wage slavery and perfectly legal discrimination, and the iron wheels rolled on. As Stephen Miller thinks they should today.

In some ways I must confess, I think he has a less naive and navel gazing sense of history. He’s certainly less disappointed with reality.
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Facts Are Stupid Things

And I’m beginning to suspect a pattern. Except Mike Lindell didn’t make that his defense (that he was right), and he lost anyway. (Truth is an absolute defense to libel, but Lindell couldn’t prove his claims were true. He could yell it all he wanted; but wasn’t allowed to do that because he couldn’t present any evidence to prove it.)

So I think the pattern is Trump’s non-lawyer idea of fraud: that it undoes everything. That doesn’t work to undo elections or what Biden did as President (“AUTOPEN!!!”), or anything Trump wants to attack. But he wants desperately for everything he ever did to be “right,” which can only mean his opponents were WRONG! And the best way to prove that is to declare “FRAUD”, sweep the board if inconvenient history, and declare Trump Winner Forever No Take Backs!

"We're the first ones that went all the way to jury trial," he said of 2020 election fraud cases. "And we won. It was unanimous all the way, every single thing that they, when they brought up MyPillow, 100% victory. Now, the media is coming out and saying, well, you owe all this. Mike Lindell, you owe all this. Well, that's what appeals are for, Steve."

"But hang on a second," Bannon interrupted. "Appeals are only on points of law. What specifically in points of law are your attorneys involved — pointing to that because appeals almost, it almost never gets appealed, overturned at an appellate level."

"There was so many things they didn't let in that I wanted to bring in that my lawyers wanted to bring in," Lindell replied. "So I think that might be some of the things, because every time that happened, I'd go into kind of a panic, and they're going, Mike, this is all, if they do this, and it comes out, this is all part of the appeal process."

"It's the first victory involving his 2020 election," he insisted. "And I'm going to tell you, Steve, while it was there, you know, this all came out of Colorado media where it's going all over the country that, you know, Mike Lindell lost and all this rubbish."

"I feel very much that it was a great victory for us in our country."
Weirdest use of the term “victory” I’ve ever seen.

Gotta say, he’s expecting a lot more from the appeals process than he’s ever gonna get. His lawyers kept a lot of his wack-a-loon out, because they knew the judge would NEVER let it in, and that would hurt them with the jury (because it was NOT evidence). You can’t appeal for what you didn’t ask for at trial. And since he had no evidence, the appeals court would never order a new trial on those grounds, anyway.

Anyway, this recitation of an election now five years gone is not going to distract people from masked ICE agents kidnapping people off the streets and disappearing them.
Context note: DOJ doesn’t turn over evidence to Congress if they have a viable investigation in the works.
N.B. “Alarming allegations” are not evidence, either. They don’t want to take any if this to court. They just want to scream and shout and flap their arms.

I know we’re supposed to be “very afraid” of this stuff. 🙀 But it’s not really flying clear of the internet or FoxNews, whereas the DOJ demanding Colorado turn over 5 years of election data (the statutory requirement is to maintain 22 months of federal election data)* for what is clearly a fishing expedition, not even an investigation into a particular claim. (If Colorado says “I don’t think so,” the DOJ is gonna have fun in court. Well, until they tell Alito and Thomas it’s all about Trump’s double secret unitary executive powers…), really deserves more of our attention. I doubt it will ever get there, though. None of this is meant for court. But some of it is a more serious abuse of power, than the rest of it.

Watch the donut, 🍩 not the hole.🕳️ 


*Can you say “Tina Peters”? I thought you could.
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As Directed By Acting President Stephen Miller

 I’ve seen this movie:

Last week, the Secretary of Defense authorized the mobilization of up to 700 DoD military personnel in support of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Florida, Louisiana, and Texas.

These service members, drawn from all components and operating in a Title 10 duty status, will provide logistical support, and conduct administrative and clerical functions associated with the processing of illegal aliens at ICE detention facilities. They will not directly participate in law enforcement activities.
I know how it turns out.

Abbott sent NG troops to the Texas border years ago. I think some of them are still there. Many got do bored (they had essentially nothing to do with), they went home (AWOL) or attempted suicide.

I don’t expect active duty personnel to do that. But I don’t expect to have a lot to do. I do expect they have military jobs they need to be doing. So it’s a lose-lose all around. 
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MORE COPIUM!!!

We pause for a commercial break as Jake Tapper pleads with you to please buy his book: Now back to our regularly scheduled programming…
Eric Trump: My father has always been very direct: I don't want to go to war… but we are going to have the greatest and strongest military on Earth and if we ever have to use it we are going to knock the hell out of them.. My father is a man of his word
🌮
“Well, considering that I’m the one that developed ‘America First,’ and considering that the term wasn’t used until I came along, I think I’m the one that decides that,” Trump told him. “For those people who say they want peace — you can’t have peace if Iran has a nuclear weapon. So for all of those wonderful people who don’t want to do anything about Iran having a nuclear weapon — that’s not peace.”
Ummm...
The term was coined by President Woodrow Wilson in his 1916 campaign that pledged to keep America neutral in World War I. A more non-interventionist approach gained prominence in the interwar period (1918–1939); it was also advocated by the America First Committee, a non-interventionist pressure group against U.S. entry into World War II.
Donald Trump is large and in charge! Or… not:
“You know, the measure of a politician is how well he can get contradictory parts of a coalition together to believe in him," Scherer said, "and the challenge of governing is, when you start governing, you have to make choices, and this is clearly a key moment for his coalition, and I think it has bothered him. I mean, he's spoken out to me on Saturday, he was speaking about a couple of times yesterday in Canada. He's tweeted about Tucker Carlson recently. I think he feels very strongly and he's been consistent for weeks now that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon and that the option of military force by the U.S. has to be on the table."

"There is a significant part of his base that sees in that statement a return to sort of the Bush doctrine of the early 2000s," Scherer added. "I mean, that's where Tucker Carlson is coming from. He felt very burned by the invasion of Iraq, and we're going to see how that plays out over the coming days."

Trump's base has been famously loyal to the president, but Scherer said he's also faced down critics from inside the Republican Party since entering politics. He said Carlson's challenge stood out as notable.

Carlson, the ex-Fox News host, suggested on Monday that if Trump gets involved in Iran it could be the end of his presidency. Other outspoken right-wingers, including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), have said that involvement in foreign wars runs contrary to the America First agenda.

"What is different is Tucker Carlson is actually basically an intimate of President Trump, and after the election last year, Tucker was down at Mar-a-Lago for weeks," Scherer said. "He's very close to the president's son, he's very close to Robert F. Kennedy, he was part of conversations about the formation of the government. If you go back to his time at Fox and after he left Fox he was the most Trumpist of the people there, but, again, the Trump message has always included more more people than any one policy can contain, if you look at tariffs and lowering taxes or anything along those lines."

"So this is a breaking point," Scherer added. "I mean, Tucker was on different web show yesterday saying that if Trump goes through with this, this could be the end of his presidency. So the stakes are pretty high, and these are very strong words being exchanged between the two men."
I guess this explains why Eric and Jr. are suddenly visible again? Or is it just that Trump has no concept of governing at all? And that’s becoming clear even to the Katzenjammer kids?

Both and a little bit of neither, I reckon.
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