Project 2025 — TSA abolition — p. 158

These Nazi dickheads, convened by Charles Koch and his rarefied ilk at the radical right Heritage Foundation, published a detailed 920 page blueprint for explicitly transforming the US to a fascist oligarchy — the infamous, largely implemented Project 2025.   The liberty loving billionaire mantra is privatize and corporatize, for maximum profit for the few (fuck the many) and also, remove all regulations and immunize corporate wrongdoers (protect the super wealthy at all costs!). 

Here’s the Project 2025 plan for the TSA (see link above at 191).   Compare this to their long running plan for the destruction of the US Post Office, and every other agency dedicated to providing public services or aid to those in need.

TRANSPORTATION SECURITY ADMINISTRATION (TSA)


The TSA model is costly and unwisely makes TSA both the regulator and the regulated organization responsible for screening operations. As part of an effort to shrink federal bureaucracies and bring private-sector know-how to government programs, TSA is ripe for reform. The U.S. should look to the Canadian and European private models of providing aviation screening manpower to lower TSA costs while maintaining security. Until it is privatized, TSA should be treated as a national security provider, and its workforce should be deunionized immediately.

TSA could privatize the screening function by expanding the current Screening Partnership Program (SPP) to all airports. TSA would turn screening operations over to airports that would choose security contractors that meet TSA regulations and would oversee and test airports for compliance. Alternatively, it could adopt a Canadian-style system, turning over screening operations to a new government corporation that contracts screening service to private contractors… Blah blah fucking blah…

If he can do this, without Congress, (and we don’t know if he can or not, since the source is Fox News), why didn’t this painted orange turd do it a month and a half ago? Rhetorical question…

“I do believe I’ll be having the honor of taking Cuba,” Trump said. “That’s a big honor. Taking Cuba in some form. Whether I free it, take it. I think I can do anything I want with it, you want to know the truth.”

Congressional Republicans showing spine, 2026 edition

A criminally insane madman, raised by a psychopath father who demanded his boys be “killers” (note: Frederick Christ Trump, the president’s father, was conceived in Bavaria before his father was deported from Germany for evading military service — Fred Trump, born here, was an anchor baby) is in charge of the world’s most powerful military. He runs it like dad’s second choice for heir used to run the family business, as an absolute ruler, even if a figurehead while the old man was still running things.

If his bones tell him to do it, he won’t hesitate to commit the military might of the US to whatever his bones tell him must be done. He will act — boldly, impulsively, unaccountably — even if the Constitution places democratic limits on his actions. If 100, or 1,000, or 100,000, or any number at all, American and foreign, have to die, so be it. The cause is not important. War is war, and as Mr. Trump has already stated, it “often” involves killing. Congress has the power to stop this madness by withholding funds for further war, but Republicans have been too afraid of their mad, vengeful leader to oppose him. The other day two Republicans in Congress attempted to stand up straight, a remarkable thing to see.

Yesterday, after a classified briefing, House Armed Services Committee chair Mike Rogers (R-AL), who backed the Iran strikes, told reporters that Congress members “want to know more about what’s going on, what the options are, and why they’re being considered,” adding, “And we’re just not getting enough answers on those questions.” Chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee Roger Wicker (R-MS) commented: “I can see why he might have said that.”

Wow.

While Trump continues with the cute answers to serious questions, when he’s not snapping reporters’ heads off or making violent threats, (he makes the best threats), along with being adorable with the cute remarks:

. . . Trump simply began the Iran war without consultation with Congress, and administration officials have refused to appear at hearings, instead briefing Congress behind closed doors. At an annual fundraising dinner for Republican members of Congress, Trump appeared to acknowledge he was violating the Constitution. He spoke of the “tremendous success” of what he called his “military operation” in Iran. He continued: “I won’t use the word war ’cause they say if you use the word war, that’s maybe not a good thing to do. They don’t like the word war because you are supposed to get approval. So I will use the word military operation.” source for both quotes

Adorable, Donnie.

Coherence in the face of brutal, incoherent force

In a habeas corpus case last month, a district judge in West Virginia, Joseph Goodwin, granted the release of a poor devil illegally rounded up, denied due process, rendered, and unlawfully imprisoned for a civil immigration violation in a privately owned detention center by Stephen Miller and ICE. The judge wrote this crystal clear condemnation of the lawless behavior of DHS, and freed the illegally detained man. The writing is beautiful and the legal analysis is consistent and completely coherent.

Antiseptic judicial rhetoric cannot do justice to what is happening. Across the interior of the United States, agents of the federal government—masked, anonymous, armed with military weapons, operating from unmarked vehicles, acting without warrants of any kind—are seizing persons for civil immigration violations and imprisoning them without any semblance of due process. The systematic character of this practice and its deliberate elimination of every structural feature that distinguishes constitutional authority from raw force place it beyond the reach of ordinary legal description. It is an assault on the constitutional order. It is what the Fourth Amendment was written to prevent. It is what the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment forbids.

The Petition for Writ of Habeas Corpus filed by Petitioner Anderson Jesus Urquilla-Ramos, [ECF Nos. 1, 26], brings just that circumstance before this court as a discrete case and controversy. This court will decide it as such. But I will not pretend, through careful procedural language, that what is at issue here is a technical question of statutory interpretation. The overarching issue is whether the federal government may deploy anonymous agents to seize persons on American streets and highways for civil violations, without warrants, without identification, and without any process before or after. The Constitution does not permit that. The remainder of this opinion explains why.

In our constitutional republic, governmental force derives its authority from the Constitution. But that authority is not unlimited. The Government’s power is legitimate only because it is derived from the People and exercised through law by identifiable public officers answerable to the public and to the courts. The structure of the Constitution guarantees visibility. Both the officer and the force he employs are traceable to authority delegated by the People and subject to the limits imposed by law. When the Government uses force against the public, the citizen can recognize the officer as a lawful representative. The public can evaluate the act. The judiciary can later review it. Every stop, arrest, detention, and use of force can be tested against the Constitution’s protections. Not so here.

For these reasons and the reasons that follow, Petitioner’s Amended Verified Petition for Writ of Habeas Corpus (“Petition”), [ECF No. 26], is GRANTED. The court FINDS that both his Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures as well as his Fifth Amendment right to due process have been violated. Immediate release is the only relief sufficient to remedy Petitioner’s unlawful detention.

The judge grants relief to the illegally imprisoned man in no uncertain terms:

Therefore, the Petition for Writ of Habeas Corpus, [ECF No. 26], is GRANTED. Petitioner is ORDERED released immediately from civil immigration custody. Respondents are PROHIBITED from re-arresting and detaining Petitioner absent significant change in circumstances to justify detention or subject to the determination of a neutral and detached
decisionmaker.

The court DIRECTS the Clerk to send a copy of this Memorandum Opinion and Order to counsel, any unrepresented party, and the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of West Virginia.

The court further DIRECTS the Clerk to post a copy of this published opinion on the court’s website, http://www.wvsd.uscourts.gov.

Judge Goodwin’s entire decision is here, well-worth a read. Thanks to Hawk for pointing this out on youTube.

Shit sandwich

I love the way the New York Times implies that Trump, who is as empathetic and ethical as his long-time friend Jeff, really wanted to, and actually did, give masses of Americans significant tax breaks, when 99% of the tax cuts went to people who are already billionaires. You’ve got to love the poker face on that Grey Lady…

Putin uses Trump as a sex toy

The classified military documents the cash-strapped Trump most likely sold to trusted buddies like Putin, Mohammed bin Bonesaw and others probably helped the Russians give Iran the exact locations of strategic targets. The Art of the Deal, yo.

It’s the incoherence, stupid

Lying is one thing, and it’s a bad thing, most of the time. Without trust, there’s not much basis for dialogue or friendship. You can lie to spare someone’s feelings, but outside of that, it’s hard to think of a good lie. The truly corrosive thing in human relations is incoherence. If someone insists on an incoherent version of events, no communication is really possible with that person. The only healthy course of action is to understand you’re dealing with someone who is incoherent and disengage.

You can never persuade an incoherent person to listen to nuance or to compromise based on shared reality because their need to believe what they believe is impervious to reason. They are incoherent because they have no emotional choice but to believe what they believe, 100%. Doubt would crush them, because, in any dispute based on what is really going on, they have no ammunition, outside of a blind, angry insistence that they’re right. Being wrong in any detail of anything is an intolerable humiliation they will never submit to. In a war with such brutal stakes, incoherence is truly their only play.

I’ve had the misfortune to know many of these motherfuckers over the course of my long life. Some have been very good companions, everything is fine with them, as long as you’re conciliatory. You can laugh with them, enjoy a good meal, go on an adventure together, until any conflict arises. In the event of any kind of disagreement, unless you drop it immediately and pretend it never happened, you get a childish insistence that what happened never happened, they don’t remember, or understand, or that you’re a liar, or that they might have been lying when you quote them as saying they might have been lying, that they never called you a liar and certainly never said they might have been lying, etc. It can make your head spin when these creatures really get going.

I knew an old lady, 98 now (same age my mother would be if she was alive), since I was her son’s best friend in fourth grade, who often insisted on things that were incoherent. She had to believe, for example, that the nightmarish marriage her son fought in for almost thirty years was completely the fault of his insane ex-wife. It was one of those conflicts, you know, where only one person is to blame for all the ugliness and the other, the innocent party, simply made the mistake of engaging with someone who was a violently enraged lunatic. There was no reason, in the old lady’s version, for the furious wife’s rage, outside of her own troubles. Her husband had absolutely nothing to do with it, even if he was passive aggressive, habitually untruthful, a provocative weasel, etc.

In the end I did the only thing possible in the face of an insistence on an insane worldview. After hearing the same insane insistence that I must forgive even people incapable of regret, empathy or apology, I stopped taking her calls and wrote her a note which I put in the mail. Her response was a classic, a close variation on the one you will always get from someone who insists incoherence by way of the last word is simply fine and dandy and there will be no further discussion of the matter. I put the perfectly polished turd of her last word in a frame, nobody I know ever phrased it more to the point:

Incoherence, when it comes from the most powerful man in the world’s most powerful country, is truly fucking horrific.

This morning, Trump’s social media account once again blamed U.S. allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) for not joining his war, although NATO is a defensive alliance, designed to respond to an attack. The account posted: “Without the U.S.A., NATO IS A PAPER TIGER! They didn’t want to join the fight to stop a Nuclear Powered Iran. Now that fight is Militarily WON, with very little danger for them, they complain about the high oil prices they are forced to pay, but don’t want to help open the Strait of Hormuz, a simple military maneuver that is the single reason for the high oil prices. So easy for them to do, with so little risk. COWARDS, and we will REMEMBER! President DONALD J. TRUMP.”

This afternoon, Trump told reporters: “You know, we don’t use the strait…we don’t need it. Europe needs it, Korea, Japan, China, a lot of other people, so they’ll have to get involved a little bit on that one.” He also said: “I think we’ve won, we’ve knocked out their Navy, their Air Force. We’ve knocked out their anti-aircraft. We’ve knocked out everything. We’re roaming free. From a military standpoint, all they’re doing is clogging up the strait. But from a military standpoint, they’re finished.” . . .

. . . Aware that [Trump’s impulsive] war is historically unpopular, Republicans in Congress are refusing to exercise any oversight of the Pentagon and the White House. Megan Mineiro of the New York Times reported today that Republicans don’t want to expose disapproval of the war and so are simply cheering Trump on in public. Rather than holding public hearings that would allow the American people to hear the administration’s justification for the war and plans for its execution, as Democrats demand, Republicans are permitting the administration to inform Congress as it wishes, behind closed doors.

“You don’t want to show that kind of division to your enemy when you’re in the midst of a war,” Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) told Mineiro. “I don’t have a problem with the administration avoiding showing our enemy that they don’t have 100 percent support of the Congress.”

“They’re holding news conferences,” Senate majority leader John Thune (R-SD) told reporters last week, so there is no need for official hearings.  source

See, as long as FOX NEWS CHANNEL is covering the ongoing story, there’s no reason for debate in Congress. Unite behind the Commander-in-Chief or make yourself liable to the punishment for treason. Debate only aids our enemy, whoever that might be, and the Commander-in-Chief is the only one who determines who is an enemy and who deserves death, so stop being disloyal and just support our troops. So-called intellectuals, and so-called pragmatists, always insist that men of action have to explain themselves. That is the fatal liberal error of history, according to devotees of the incoherence of the will.