Category Archives: current events

South African billionaires gone wild

Here in the USA! USA!!! our culture has long idealized and revered the greediest psychopaths among us. A guy like Jeff Bezos, insatiably greedy, politically supple, unprincipled, is hailed as a genius and self-made billionaire (a billion is one thousand million dollars) for his innovation of successfully monetizing American consumerism and laziness. Jeff Zuckerberg got tired of being scolded by Democrats for allowing MAGA lies to go unchallenged for years on his fantastically successful “social media” platforms and decided to throw in with the rest of his self-interested ilk. He, like Bezos, takes no side politically, outside of maximized profits. Both of these American icons sat with Elon Musk, right behind Trump, as Orange Retribution was sworn in as dictator on day one. It’s hard to pick a worst among these psychotically greedy, destructive shit birds, but white South African raised billionaires Elon Musk and Peter Thiel deserve special scrutiny.

Thiel (worth a paltry $11,200,000,000,) amazingly also an “out” homosexual (I guess having enough billions is truly “fuck you, I’ll fuck YOU” money in MAGAland), groomed soul-dead opportunist JD Vance, putting $15,000,000 into his Senate campaign fund (in a race Vance won by 7 points) after employing him for a few years and making him independently wealthy. Vance stands for nothing but himself (watch his origin story, Hillbilly Elegy, on Netflix for a nice Hollywood snapshot) and will do whatever Thiel and his cronies tell him to do, because they share the same interests. Thiel insisted on Vance as the VP and overcame Trump’s reluctance to have JD as number two (Vance certainly smells like number two…) When it comes time for the billionaires to induce a fatal heart attack in MAGA’s hero, Mr. Trump, President JD will not miss a beat stepping up to do what he needs to do for his backers and himself.

Musk, with his unnatural, barely human laugh, told someone on a podcast that he was going to “fucking prison” if Trump was not elected president. His companies faced many legal sanctions for Musk’s flamboyant “fuck you” management style and his flouting of numerous federal laws, including every labor law on the books. Musk’s little joke had the ring of truth, he might well have eventually wound up in prison (if we had a justice system that operated, as Merrick Garland said, without fear or favoritism). The threat of prison for Musk’s criminal activities was nothing that a little $270,000,000 quid pro quo wager couldn’t fix, a little deal with the transactional fascist felon he threw his full support behind. Now, as head of a fictional government department, “DOGE”, he has the entire federal treasury database, and the personal financial information of hundreds of millions of us, under his greedy fingers. Heather Cox Richardson with a few pertinent points:

Vittoria Elliott of Wired has identified those associated with Musk’s takeover as six “engineers who are barely out of—and in at least one case, purportedly still in—college.” [Ages 19 to 24, see photo below — ed.] They are connected either to Musk or to his long-time associate Peter Thiel, who backed J.D. Vance’s Senate run eighteen months before he became Trump’s vice presidential running mate. Their names are Akash Bobba, Edward Coristine, Luke Farritor, Gautier Cole Killian, Gavin Kliger, and Ethan Shaotran, and they have little to no experience in government. . .

. . . Today, Musk reposted a social media post from MAGA religious extremist General Mike Flynn, who resigned from his position as Trump’s national security advisor in 2017 after pleading guilty to secret conversations with a Russian agent—for which Trump pardoned him—and who publicly embraced the QAnon conspiracy theory. In today’s post, Flynn complained about “the ‘Lutheran’ faith” and, referring to federal grants provided to Lutheran Family Services and affiliated organizations, said, “this use of ‘religion’ as a money laundering operation must end.” Musk added: “The [DOGE] team is rapidly shutting down these illegal payments.”

In fact, this is money appropriated by Congress, and its payment is required by law. Republican lawmakers have pushed government subsidies and grants toward religious organizations for years, and Lutheran Social Services is one of the largest employers in South Dakota, where it operates senior living facilities.

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Got to be careful with the wrong kind of Christians, eh, general? Lutheran family services, Godless cucks, no doubt. Why not let insane “Christians” like retired General Mike “Lock Her Up!” Flynn decide who is carrying out the Son of God’s wishes here on earth?

We are in the ultimate battle of a war with people who have been organizing, planning and spending billions for decades to promote their “project” — dismantling American democracy and appropriating everything in the ensuing hellscape. Their project is to return the country to the glory days of the Gilded Age, when Robber Barons were unrestrained by the petty “pain” of the 99% and before women and minorities could vote. Make America Great Again, you know?

Here’s scholar Timothy Snyder with excellent ideas for how to fight back to preserve, and strengthen, our besieged democracy, which is in the midst of a hostile takeover by unelected billionaire sociopaths.

Fired Inspectors General, DOJ lawyers, FBI agents

Not surprising, when you have a compulsively lying, serial fraudster, criminally-inclined front-man for a cabal of infinitely covetous billionaire psychopaths as CEO of the Executive Branch, that laws, norms, fairness, merit, competence, anti-corruption enforcement, routine law enforcement will be cast aside as needed. Trump’s recent firing of eighteen Inspectors General, even ones he appointed, and his vindictive pursuit of anyone involved in any of his multiple federal prosecutions, or the prosecutions of those who loyally attacked Capitol police on his behalf, disgusting as it is, was also completely predictable. Legal guardrails are as hateful to career criminals as the public disclosure of the evidence of those crimes, as “accountability” itself.

Here’s one of the fired Inspectors General (non-partisan government watchdogs tasked with ensuring federal agencies are run efficiently, without intimidation, fraud, corruption, waste, lawlessness) describing the duties of the Inspector General.

Any Department of Justice lawyer who worked for Special Counsel Jack Smith in any federal prosecution of Trump was also summarily fired, without rational cause or the process they are entitled to as federal employees. Those who fight back will win reinstatement, eventually, and back pay and all the rest, but it will take years in court. Meanwhile, Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, The Mercers, Charles Koch and so on (ably assisted by the ‘apolitical’ Bezos and Zuckerberg, Disney, Paramount, Hitlerco, et al), will press their advantage, based on their front man’s bold, audacious, even insane initiatives. After all, the 6-3 extremist majority on the Supreme Court has already made it a matter of Constitutional law that an immoral or criminally insane president may commit any crimes in connection with his core, official duties, without fear of prosecution for those crimes. so why not push the envelope? Figure that out of the box Constitutional interpretation out, James Madison.

Note that the Department of Justice was founded in 1870 to enforce federal civil rights laws in the former Confederacy and throughout the United States.  Its mission has often been sidelined by racist Supreme Court decisions (the essential 14th Amendment was put into a judicial coma, for formerly enslaved individuals abused by states, for almost a century, though corporate “personhood” was birthed, under a perverse reading of the 14th Amendment, during that same period) and has not always lived up to its name.  On the other hand, DOJ is an independent agency dedicated to enforcing the Constitutional rights of Americans and prosecuting violators of federal law.  Until now.  Its mission, according to the Trump-appointed lawyer acting as its head (with a Trump criminal defense lawyer as his deputy), for the DOJ and FBI alike, is “to assist in implementing the President’s agenda faithfully.”  Translates nicely from the original German führerwortes haben gesetzeskraft — the leader’s word has the force of law.

Now Project 2025/Koch/MAGA turns its attention to, eh, disloyal FBI agents who gathered evidence and helped bring violent January 6 criminals/martyrs who savagely attacked law enforcement to “injustice”. Life is dark under the shadow of the swastika and morality inverted. It is time to shed as much light as possible, to as many people, as any of us can reach.

Why fascists hate journalists

The first things a dictator on day one does is purge perceived enemies and consolidate the press to control the flow of information the public may get. Control the news, weaponize information/disinformation, control public opinion, control reality. First US commercial air disaster in 16 years, days after you decapitate the FAA by firing the head of air safety, his deputies and freeze hiring of air traffic controllers? “Incompetent, nasty Black bitches who, through illegal DEI, replaced expert white Christian men, resulting in mass casualties!” was POTUS’s very strong, equally ignorant and lying, opinion, as the bodies of children were being recovered from the Potomac River. That’s how you drive the news!

There is truth and there is such a thing as a lie. We have all experienced these things in our personal lives. The difference between the truth and a lie is generally easy to spot, as long as you have accurate information. If you have a full picture of what took place you are free to believe whichever one you like, but embracing a lie does not make it true. January 6, 2021 was a violent riot, a vicious attack on law enforcement that sent more than 100 officers to the hospital. The violence was based on an incendiary lie, deliberately spread during a $50,000,000 ad buy, and the attack was fomented by the man who knew he lost the election. This is true, no matter how many times you force your loyalists to call it a peaceful day of love.

This is where the press comes in, reporting truthfully or hedging to ensure the continued flow of corporate profits. In its compromise corporate media repeats that there is “an honest conflict” about whether the events we all saw were a riot, an insurrection, or merely “legitimate political discourse”. Say it until people who witnessed the ugliness are sick of arguing about which is true and which is a lie and check out in frustration.

For an alcoholic, sexually assaultive, manifestly unqualified White Christian Nationalist Secretary of Defense to proclaim that Black History Month will no longer be recognized by the Pentagon is not at all surprising, though it is sickening. Unless you believe that even though 150 years ago there was minor prejudice against some Blacks by a few Whites, and that even though Blacks are arguably imprisoned, and unarmed Blacks killed by law enforcement, in disproportionate numbers, that there is really no serious issue of ongoing institutional racism in our perfect nation (though Black women are mostly, well, nasty… as POTUS always says).

Choose your reality, but what is true remains true and what is a lie is still a goddamned lie, no matter how fervently you pray for it to be the truth, no matter how many of your tribe embrace it as true, no matter how many lying officials proclaim it.

Trump has long vilified and attacked all critics. He has always trained his beady eyes on any critical media, media that, for example, reports truthfully on the evidence of his misdeeds. He calls his campaign’s 140 documented contacts with Putin before the 2016 election a hoax, the closing of his fraudulent university, his fraudulent charity, his defamation of a woman he sexually assaulted, his clear violations of the Espionage Act, his two impeachments, his January 6 call to political violence, his pardon of those who gouged the eyes out of police officers, all fake news. He refers to all non-far rightwing media as “lying liberal media” (translated from the original German lugenpresse) and “the enemy of the People.” He should know, he is the people, the dictator is always the embodiment of all of us. That the dictator must terrorize and often kill many of us is a small price to pay for him to be the true embodiment of all of us.

Dan Rather wrote an excellent piece about how essential access to true information is to democracy, to keeping ourselves out of the clutches of destructively greedy, heedless madmen who want to keep us in the dark so their nefarious schemes may prosper. He nails our current challenge — bypassing crass corporate profiteering by media conglomerates who kowtow by paying millions to a wannabe tyrant who sues and threatens them, to get the journalistic truth of what we face into public discussion that we, the public, may act in an informed manner when selecting the government we consent to.

Dan writes:

They [the framers of the Constitution] enshrined freedom of the press in the very first amendment to the Constitution, up at the top of the Bill of Rights — not because they were great fans of journalists, but rather because they knew, as Thomas Jefferson put it, that “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free … it expects what never was and never will be.” source

Self-portrait of an imbecile

The self-portrait referred to above is the petulant, childish quote in the selection below, here’s a short set up.

Moments after a tragic midair collision that killed everyone aboard a commercial plane and a military helicopter, while victims’ bodies were being fished from the Potomac River, the master salesman, Donald J. Trump, went to work, as presidents always do at times of national tragedy. Here’s Heather Cox Richardson, quoting his spiteful eight year-old level, eh, analysis of the situation:

Late this morning, Trump spoke to reporters about the crash, saying “We do not know what led to this crash but we have some very strong opinions and ideas, and I think we’ll probably state those opinions now.” That opinion was that the people responsible for the accident were not of “superior intelligence.” He claimed that his Democratic predecessors had lowered standards for air traffic controllers (although the language he quoted from the FAA website was from his own time in office). “[W]hen I left office and Biden took over, he changed them back to lower than ever before. I put safety first. Obama, Biden, and the Democrats put policy first. And they put politics at a level that nobody has ever seen, because this was the lowest level. Their policy was horrible and their politics was even worse.”

He continued: “The FAA, which is overseen by Secretary Pete Buttigieg—a real winner,” apparently forgetting that the former transportation secretary was part of the Biden administration and left office on January 20. “Do you know how badly everything’s run since he’s run the Department of Transportation? He’s a disaster…he’s just got a good line of bullsh*t.”

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The impulsive narcissist’s very strong opinions and ideas are that, regardless of what actually caused the disaster, Blacks, Hispanics and Women are incompetent because they are inferior to white, Christian, loyal white supremacist men who admire billionaires.   OK.  Narcissists are entitled to asshole opinions just like anyone else. What those asshole opinions had to do with the air disaster, the first involving a commercial airliner in 16 years, is a separate question. These Nazi types never miss the chance to create an opportunity to advance their destructive worldview.

Of course, there are also facts as well, and sometimes facts speak louder than reflexive other-blaming spouting of “very strong opinions” based on an insanely ignorant worldview.  Below are a few facts that we might have strong opinions about, even if we are uncritical enough to agree, with the Department of Defense under Fox weekend news host Pete “Deus Vult” Hegseth, that Black History Month is a bad idea because it makes little white Christian kids (and military personnel) feel guilty to learn about the history and struggles of a viciously persecuted minority here in the land of the free and the home of the White.

“[W]hen I left office and Biden took over, he changed them back to lower than ever before. I put safety first. Obama, Biden, and the Democrats put policy first. And they put politics at a level that nobody has ever seen, because this was the lowest level. Their policy was horrible and their politics was even worse.”

Human experience contradicts propaganda/lies

Bob Garfield, with an excellent tale illustrating this point below.   When you meet people one on one it is a much different thing than forming ignorant opinions about groups of people based on prejudice.   It is human nature to hire friends and people like you, if you have the chance to do so, but it is not always the best way to take care of important business, obviously.   We hear the new MAGA press spokeswoman lying about “illegal” diversity and inclusion programs in government hiring, and “sanity restored”.  Listen to this jolly crucifix-wearing blowhard:   

Then read Bob’s closing argument paragraph, read his post setting it up, and send it to anyone who is likely to benefit from it, or choke on it.

By encouraging and mandating diversity and inclusion, over time, the tribes intermingle. The sense of unfamiliarity subsides. Preconceived notions, suspicions and biases gradually erode. In that environment, segregation and old-boys’ networks see their bonds weaken, eventually generating the very meritocracy those racist and sexist Republicans are forever demanding. But, of course, they don’t want a meritocracy. They want hegemony, just like in the supremacist bad old days.

The Reading Times is an anthropological study for the ages. If you get a free sec, please forward this post to the piece-of-shit Klansmen now running our country. And may they choke on it.

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American Christian hero

From Dan Rather, saluting some of the many heroes among us and urging us to be the heroes we need to all become to resist this onslaught of organized, billionaire funded lies, hatred, irrationality, greed, blind, deadly vengeance and unlimited destruction.

FOR STANDING UP TO THE BULLY-IN-CHIEF
The day after inauguration, the new president traditionally attends an interfaith prayer service at the Washington National Cathedral. This year the televised homily was delivered by Bishop Mariann Budde, who has been the Bishop of Washington since 2011.

Budde addressed Trump, who was sitting in the front row, directly. “Mr. President, millions have put their trust in you. And as you told the nation yesterday, you have felt the providential hand of a loving God. In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy on the people in our country who are scared now.”

The look on the president’s face was worth more than a thousand words. To put it succinctly, he was displeased.

After the service, he vilified Budde on Truth Social as a “Radical Left hard line Trump hater” and demanded an apology — an apology for being asked to be merciful, while sitting in a church. Budde, mercifully, declined to respond.           Source

This is the greatest example in recent current events of an actual Christian calmly facing down a nasty, brutish, petulant, transactional two year-old anti-Christ type determined to bend the world to his will, using bullying lies and an army of unreasoning, transactional Christian hypocrites as his sword and shield. If mercy toward the oppressed isn’t at the heart of the teachings of Jesus Christ, then my name is Donald Fucking Trump, Interfaith Pope of all Christian martyrs, living, dead, real and imaginary.

Pete Hegseth, number one at the Department of Defense, proud white Christian , with his Crusader tattoos and hatred of “others”, will tell you Jesus hated homosexuals, the poor, women, snitches, Jews, the meek, the weak, gun regulators, prosecutors, government watchdogs, demonic Democrats, advocates of human equality, anyone who questions his personal savior, Mr. Trump, an infallible emissary of God who has never been mistaken.  So will dark-skinned fascist liar Kashyap Patel, with his published Enemies List (a brown skinned guy Trump and Hegseth would normally mock as he got beaten up), Jewish Nazi Stephen Miller (another one Pete and Donald would ordinarily spit on), Trump’s personal lawyer (literally), employee of Qatar and Attorney General pick, Pam Bondi, and all the rest of those who claim to love the inimitable taste of their master’s never washed “ring”.

This is a moment when we all need to become the best heroes we are capable of becoming. Despair is not an option, it is a luxury that only helps evil triumph over the rest of us.

Decapitation strike

Military strategists often seek to take out the leadership of their enemy’s forces. They sometimes refer to this as cutting off the head of the snake, decapitation. If the leaders are gone, the movement they led is much easier to defeat. Smart modern day tacticians usually go for decapitation as their first option.

We are in the midst of watching our own government, from intelligence, to law enforcement, to health and welfare, to education, to infrastructure, to energy, to science, to media, worker safety, climate disaster mitigation, women’s rights, immigrant’s rights, rape victim’s rights, police safety, being decapitated by the appointment of manifestly unqualified reality-denying partisans for every crucial cabinet position.

Their chief “qualification” is publicly insisting that a fair election with record voter participation was stolen from their leader, who, according to an incoherent conspiracy theory, actually won and was cheated out of victory by a cabal of bipartisan pedophiles. That there is absolutely no evidence of the 2020 election being rigged, unfair, stolen, is absolutely no problem for the ambitious, brazen, unqualified creeps who are vying to make dimwitted megadonor Betsey DeVos look highly competent in her cabinet position as Secretary of Education.

During the 2016 campaign our current president’s circle had 140 documented contacts with Putin’s people. Trump had to pardon people convicted after Mueller referred them for criminal indictment. Mueller could not prove every legal element of criminal conspiracy, partly because of lack of cooperation and destruction of evidence by contemptuous witnesses and participants. He did, however, note that Putin’s folks worked in coordination with Trump’s, at least 140 times, to advance their mutual political fortunes.

In an election he lost by 3,000,000 votes Trump, with help from Putin, and likely MBS, managed to win every single electoral district he needed to capture the Electoral College, shades of the social media engineered Brexit victory (Sloppy Steve Bannon was connected to that one too). Trump maintains close ties to his Russian benefactor, with whom he spoke numerous times between Trump’s two totally legit presidential wins, though the former KGB officer regards the American president, not unfairly, as a vain and easily manipulable useful idiot. Putin is now openly contemptuous of his witless American henchman.

Also, keep in mind, Mueller found numerous instances of Obstruction of Justice from Trump and his people and stated that he could not exonerate him for obstruction, even if he couldn’t charge him (due to Robert Bork’s Nixon-era OLC memorandum about the DOJ not indicting a sitting president). Trump’s response was to appoint corrupt theocrat Bill Barr to obstruct justice by, among other things, repeatedly lying that the Mueller Report had totally exonerated Trump of all wrongdoing. Team Trump does nothing but obstruct justice, law, decency, norms, common sense, the will of the vast majority of Americans.

The current Republican playbook is obstruction, particularly of damaging and disqualifying information about the president’s unqualified appointees. Recall that the highly partisan, radical legal opinions of Boof Kavanaugh, written while serving in the White House counsel’s office for Cheney and Bush, were OFF LIMITS! to Congress during his confirmation hearing. Thousands of unseemly files were hidden from the public, in the manner of the sham six day FBI “investigation” of hundreds of tips about Kavanaugh’s blackout drinking and sexually embarrassing attempts to “get some” from unwilling women, who, though named in the tips, were also not interviewed.

Pete Hegseth might be an alcoholic who gets publicly shitfaced from time to time, and who had to pay at least one woman $50,000 not to rat him out to the police over alleged non-consensual sex, which she considered “rape”, but only, as he keeps insisting, because fucking woke billionaire Jew liars are smearing him, along with ugly women he wouldn’t impregnate with Mike Pence’s dick, and who are, in any case, also bound by the terms of iron-clad NDAs.

Well, at least Vladimir Putin is laughing his humorless ass off. There is that, I suppose.

The Nazis were also a cult

Every cult is held together by unwavering faith in the infallible wisdom of their charismatic leader, and the favor God has clearly bestowed on him. If the leader cannot be wrong, and his leadership is ordained by God almighty, conforming to his will can never be wrong. In the Third Reich, Hitler’s Thousand Year Reich, the Führer’s word was law. An army of Nazi lawyers (no other kind was allowed during Nazi rule) made sure that Hitler’s every gassy opinion was codified into German law where Nazi judges (the only judges in Nazi Germany) made sure the leader’s will was done. You can see this dynamic at work in cults of every size, the cardinal rule is that the will of the leader may never be questioned without severe, terrifying punishment for the questioner.

Cults abide by an insider’s worldview, members see the world through the eyes of the cult leader.  Where millions may have seen live coverage of the brutal medieval mayhem caused by violent rioters who attacked outnumbered police and sent 140 to hospitals, these special rioters are beloved of their cult leader.  He told them he loved them as he reluctantly asked them to stop ransacking the Capitol.  He insists that their justified violence was part of a day of love the likes of which has never been seen in America.  They heeded his invitation to come to a rally he promised would be wild.  They roared as he stood behind bulletproof glass, in front of the wall he’d built around the White House, and recited dozens of knowing lies about a stolen election.  They marched off ready to do battle for this lie when he exhorted them to fight like hell or they wouldn’t have a country anymore.  They fought the police in trial by combat.  People died.   The joint session of Congress was halted for hours as an armed mob threatened lawmakers and the president watched it all on live TV for several hours, as his vice president hid from a lynch mob calling for his blood, after he tweeted that Mike Pence betrayed them.

After initial public condemnation of their insane leader, his party came around. The leader of the RNC, and every elected member of their party, quickly united to retool the violent, criminal breaking and entering and trespass that stopped certification of Biden’s win into “legitimate political discourse”. The leader called the rioters persecuted heroes, patriots and martyrs, and promised to use his powers to free them on Day One. Free them he did, every last one of these violent dupes. These battle hardened felons will now serve as the core of his personal militia.

It calls to mind the deal the current president struck with the Taliban not long before he left office the first time, kicking and screaming, after sixty lost lawsuits, a far-ranging criminal conspiracy and inciting a riot, what his AG pick brazenly referred to the other day as the “peaceful transfer of power”. As part of the Trump-brokered deal for US withdrawal from Afghanistan something like 5,000 violent Taliban prisoners held by the Afghan government would be released from prison. A few of them blew up some Marines as Biden was evacuating Americans from Afghanistan, and that stain was always smeared across Biden’s legacy, along with the Taliban’s immediate retaking of Afghanistan. That’s leadership, cult style, making sure to fuck your successor in every possible way, with an eye toward regaining power.

My family was all but wiped out in 1943 by killers let loose by the Hitler regime. Of the fourteen siblings that included my maternal grandparents before Hitler came through, only two, my grandparents, survived. I was moved by Merrick Garland’s story of how this country had saved his family from the Nazis, the US did the same for mine. Accidentally, of course, because the last of them arrived before the restrictive 1924 immigration law that would have kept them in Europe for a bullet in the back of the head, or drowning in a swamp, like the rest of the family. Garland was the wrong man for the job, as we all got an inkling of when he meekly submitted to bullying from Lyin’ Ted Cruz. Cruz angrily asked him if the Nazi salute, given to Jewish school board members by angry parents who believed their country had been stolen from them, was protected First Amendment expression. Garland placidly agreed it was. Cruz might as well have sneeringly added “Jew” to the end of his hostile, disrespectful, Nazi friendly question. Garland’s name is now in danger of going down with Neville Chamberlain’s, although not quite yet, as the ending of this hideous chapter remains to be written.

There is truth, what actually happened:  dozens of frivolous, evidence free election lawsuits, a fake elector plot, a $50,000,000 ad buy to promote the lie about a stolen election, a plot by Republican congressmen to decertify the 2020 election results, a violent mob attack.   There is the cult’s version of what happened: no fake electors, no ad buys, no plot, no violence — only the glory that led to a resurgent MAGA nation after an overwhelming 49% electoral mandate in a perfectly fair election.   Voters who were not part of his loyal 35% base and cast ballots for him voted based on lies, deliberate disinformation spread by billionaires like Musk while the others remained as neutral as Switzerland or Sweden:  raping, sodomizing Black immigrants eating family dogs and cats, Biden inflation, high food prices, high gas prices, Climate change fraud, out of control violent crime, wokeness, Jewish space lasers causing wildfires, a global cabal of deep state pedophile cannibals (Jews) manipulating stupid minorities to vote for lying, out of touch elites, etc.

There is the truth, and there is this Nazi bullshit.  Kingmaker Elon Musk does a robust Nazi salute at the inauguration, a shout out to his German Nazi friends at the billionaires–only indoor inauguration.   If we are a country incapable of uniting against divisive lies, hatred and openly Nazi aspirations, we’re done for.   Me, I’m like Anne Frank, I guess, believing that the good in human hearts eventually conquers the evil inclinations unleashed by powerful psychopaths with ungodly gigantic megaphones, psychopaths who would willingly sacrifice millions of lives to ensure their permanent rule and the perpetuation of their lying version of history.

The view of people I trust on one of the darkest days in American History

First, the great Heather Cox Richardson, on heroism:

On April 3, 1968, the night before the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated by a white supremacist, he gave a speech in support of sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee. Since 1966, King had tried to broaden the Civil Rights Movement for racial equality into a larger movement for economic justice. He joined the sanitation workers in Memphis, who were on strike after years of bad pay and such dangerous conditions that two men had been crushed to death in garbage compactors.

After his friend Ralph Abernathy introduced him to the crowd, King had something to say about heroes: “As I listened to Ralph Abernathy and his eloquent and generous introduction and then thought about myself, I wondered who he was talking about.”

Dr. King told the audience that if God had let him choose any era in which to live, he would have chosen the one in which he had landed. “Now, that’s a strange statement to make,” King went on, “because the world is all messed up. The nation is sick. Trouble is in the land; confusion all around…. But I know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough, can you see the stars.” Dr. King said that he felt blessed to live in an era when people had finally woken up and were working together for freedom and economic justice.

He knew he was in danger as he worked for a racially and economically just America. “I don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn’t matter…because I’ve been to the mountaintop…. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life…. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land!”

People are wrong to say that we have no heroes left.

Just as they have always been, they are all around us, choosing to do the right thing, no matter what.

Wishing you all a day of peace for Martin Luther King Jr. Day 2025.

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Bob Garfield’s picture, and caption, worth 1,000 words

Robert Reich, with a few words of hope:

Not to mention the billionaires Trump is putting in charge of key departments to decide on taxes and expenditures, tariffs and trade, even what young Americans learn — all of whom have brazen conflicts of interest. 

They’ll all be on display today with Trump. Then, many will take their private jets to Davos, Switzerland, for the annual confab of the world’s most powerful CEOs and billionaires. 

Not since the Gilded Age of the late 19th century has such vast wealth turned itself into such conspicuous displays of political power. Unapologetically, unashamedly, defiantly.

This flagrancy makes me hopeful. Why? Because Americans don’t abide aristocracy. We were founded in revolt against unaccountable power and wealth. We will not tolerate this barefaced takeover.

The backlash will be stunning.

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And a very important reminder, from Timothy Snyder’s list of twenty important things to keep in mind during a time in history like the one we live in:

10. Believe in truth. To abandon facts is to abandon freedom. If nothing is true, then no one can criticize power, because there is no basis upon which to do so. If nothing is true, then all is spectacle. The biggest wallet pays for the most blinding lights.

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MLK Day 2025

As the nation observes the national holiday of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day (and racist legislators in Alabama and Mississippi also celebrate gentleman traitor Robert E. Lee), a billionaire-studded contingent will be on hand, in a warm room, the paying crowd and mass of police outside freezing, to witness the historic swearing in of a president who stole top secret government documents as he left the White House after fomenting a many tentacled criminal conspiracy culminating in a violent insurrection to prevent certification of his election loss.  Never in American history has this 1933 German scenario been played out:  a ruthless and vindictive dictator, hellbent on absolute power, found guilty of major crimes, implicated in deaths, being sworn in as the lawful head of state.   Brings to mind this expressive gif:

We have had racist presidents before.   I was taught that Woodrow Wilson was an important progressive president who started the income tax and was the moral force behind the League of Nations, forerunner of the UN.   What every Black person I’ve ever discussed Wilson with already knew, I had to learn.   Born in the South in 1856, he was a boy during the Confederacy and the Civil War.   He hated Blacks and ordered the resegregation of the federal civil service as soon as he got into office.  He also hosted DW Griffith, director of the groundbreaking 1915 cinematic epic Birth of A Nation, at the White House.  Griffith screened the first film ever shown at the White House.  I was subjected to much of this film as a  graduate student and will summarize what I saw.

After the Civil War, down in the persecuted southland, Blacks were strutting around, completely out of control.  They were rich, and gaudily flaunted their wealth, lording their newfound power over the downtrodden whites, who they bullied.  Good Christian white folks were being dominated by these overbearing Blacks and were legitimately intimidated, particularly since the Blacks were backed by a hostile army of Union soldiers with rifles and bayonets.  White women were in constant danger of rape by the out of control, savage  Black men.  It is likely that more than one struggling white woman was dragged off to be defiled off screen by the savage Blacks, as the white men watched in hopeless horror.

In reel two or three a noble group of selfless modern day knights arose, to protect female Christian purity from these sick, depraved former slaves, now domineering oppressors. They rode in on horseback, looking absolutely ridiculous in their stylized Ku Klux Klan regalia, the piano music swelled (it was a silent film) and soon these heroes were giving holy hell to the Blacks, who richly deserved it. My classmates and I were all relieved when the long class was over, though the film had another hour yet to go. The professor tried to get us to stay, I don’t think any of us did.

The racist progressive Woodrow Wilson, president of the United States and klan sympathizer, had this comment about DW Griffith’s groundbreaking masterpiece:

So the upcoming horror show with the current cast of depraved and destructive psychopaths, while sickeningly real, with their ability to write history in something much more powerful than lightning (for political purposes), also has to be kept in perspective. Extreme enough pain can jar us out of apathy and despair and mobilize us to find a cure.

When the finality of an ugly, senseless conflict with a group of my longtime friends, who refused to consider the truth before pronouncing an irreversible death sentence, became painfully clear to me, when the brutal irrationality of it hurt badly enough every single day, I had to wake up.  Waking up from a nightmare and recovering yourself can be hard, but if the nightmare is hellish enough, wake you it will.  

This upcoming shitstorm will wake enough of us up to fight it to a standstill and disable it in 2026, or indifferent fate will allow the very worst of human possibility moving forward.  For me, I don’t intend to leave any of this up to fate.