Category Archives: Law and Justice

Anarchist Jurisdictions

A few thoughts about Trump’s obsession with violently occupying sanctuary cities, roughing up, handcuffing and sometimes even charging “Democrat” public officials (Black, Hispanic and Jew alike) and imposing his federal will, using the military, on all state and local governments, because they are godless communists who hate America and he is the democratically elected Unitary Executive who loves America and wants to save it from the savage, sick hordes of perverts in cities who make up the overwhelming majority of the American population (around 85%).

Recall that Trump’s pugnacious Attorney General, Bill Barr, declared places like New York, Chicago, LA “anarchist jurisdictions”. He and Trump threatened them, they would withhold tax dollars, paid by these jurisdictions, from coming back to them as Congress had appropriated. Using anarchist jurisdictions as his mantra, Barr sent out-of-uniform federal goon squads in unmarked vans to grab protesters off the street in Portland, overwhelmed with force and tear gassed peaceful protesters in DC to clear the way for an enraged Trump’s glaring photo op with a Bible. In one infamous, little reported incident, Barr even had a murder suspect executed by one of these squads.

In the case of the extrajudicial execution of a man suspected of killing a Trump supporter during a confrontation in Portland, Barr claimed the admitted antifa fighter had been shot to death after drawing his gun and trying to resist his peaceful arrest, as terrorists do. Eyewitnesses tell another story:

The Times article cited above details what actually happened in the “confrontation” that led to Reinoehl’s killing. Witnesses thought it was a mob hit, or a drug cartel execution. Reinoehl was walking toward his car, holding a cell phone and a bag of candy when the “confrontation” began. Two SUVs sped to the scene, cutting off Reinoehl’s car, four armed men leapt out and immediately opened fire. Nobody heard anyone identify themselves as police or yell anything else at the suspect. An unfired handgun was found in a pocket of Reinhoehl’s bullet riddled corpse, [proof that his killing by government agents was totally justified, as police investigators later found.]

Of course, who are you going to believe, the Lying New York Times, and twenty-two so-called “witnesses” who were interviewed by the paper, or men of unimpeachable integrity like Bill Barr and a president who, try as they might, simply cannot tell a lie?

source (me — citing to NY Times article)

There is always a bullshit “justice” story behind any political intimidation, oppression or corruption. The fake outrage story is particularly necessary to justify murder by governments.

The talking point that International Jewry planned and provoked the First World War, and the soon to be second, was a Nazi article of faith. It was propaganda gold, since many suspected it might be the case all along and even if the definitive book about it turned out to be fake, the truth it stated was still true. Repeat it enough times and it gains the ring of truth. “Why wouldn’t they do it?” became an obvious question.

Clearly, as exhaustively proved by the widely translated, perennially best-selling 1905 Czarist forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion [1], the leaders of a centuries old global Jewish conspiracy against Christianity met periodically, at midnight, in the Jewish cemetery in Prague, to advance their eternal plot to dominate and destroy good Christians. It was equally obvious, to the Nazi, that Bolshevism was part of this global Jewish vision of world domination by a genetically inferior, but intellectually cunning, eternal enemy of The People.

The politics of uniting a base by hatred requires giving a threatening, hateful name to an intended common enemy, a name that evokes fear. Anarchists came over from Europe in the early 20th centuries and were quickly portrayed as bomb throwing, anti-law terrorists bent on destroying America. A few were famously tried, amid great public fanfare, and executed for crimes they almost certainly hadn’t committed (Sacco and Vanzetti, to name two famous ones).

Everything old is new again. Who are the deranged and dangerous people resisting MAGA, the attempt of righteous people of faith to bring Christ, guns and paternalism back to the center of American culture and law? Anarchist, globalist, socialist, Marxist, fascists conspiring to use violent, criminal brown illegals to dominate rigged elections and bring about “majoritarian tyranny”, depriving the silent majority of their rights under cover of fake “democracy”.

Living in the intended Age of Fascist Irrationality, where insistence on lies by powerful psychopaths may NOT BE CONTRADICTED BY FACTS, this kind of incoherent horseshit is the food on which fascism feeds. If cause and effect are reversed, crucial details left out (the unfired gun remained in suspect’s pocket as he was shot repeatedly for threatening officers with a gun) if a lie is just as good as the truth, if told for the right reason, if what you see with your own eyes is a lie and what we tell you, even if contradicted by your own direct experience, is true, you’d better goddamned believe it. Or, insist on being right, and we’ll kill you. Your choice.

Shot While Escaping, by George Grosz (circa 1936):

[1]

Sources employed

Source material for the forgery consisted jointly of Dialogue aux enfers entre Machiavel et Montesquieu (Dialogue in Hell Between Machiavelli and Montesquieu), an 1864 political satire by Maurice Joly;[9] and a chapter from Biarritz, an 1868 novel by the antisemitic German novelist Hermann Goedsche, which had been translated into Russian in 1872.[1]: 97 

Literary forgery

The Protocols is one of the best-known and most-discussed examples of literary forgery, with analysis and proof of its fraudulent origin dating as far back as 1921.[10] The forgery is an early example of conspiracy theory literature.[11] Written mainly in the first person plural,[d] the text includes generalizations, truisms, and platitudes on how to take over the world: take control of the media and the financial institutions, change the traditional social order, etc. It does not contain specifics.[13]

. . . On October 27 and 28, 1919, the Philadelphia Public Ledger published excerpts of an English language translation as the “Red Bible,” deleting all references to the purported Jewish authorship and re-casting the document as a Bolshevik manifesto.[55] The author of the articles was the paper’s correspondent at the time, Carl W. Ackerman, who later became the head of the journalism department at Columbia University.[56][54]

Great, important bit of reporting on Trump’s 2024 “mandate”

If you believe that the vastly unpopular, eternally angry, distracted, greedy, “transactional”, lying, increasingly deranged 47th president happened to win every swing state (a rare feat in any presidential election), by virtually identical margins (all just above the recount margin) and that the 20,000,000 ballot decline in mail-in ballots, (the first time the number hasn’t increased since 2008), had nothing to do with Trump megadonor/postmaster DeJoy’s refusal to segregate mail-in ballots or postmark them when they arrived, voter suppression laws in every red state, single drop boxes in counties of millions of voters, fake drop boxes, Russian bomb threats to Democratic precincts on Election Day, had nothing to do with Trump’s narrow victory in 2024, then the piece linked below probably won’t interest you.

To anyone who finds the narrow victory of a convicted felon (who escaped two other massive felony convictions — one for treason, under the Espionage Act, the other for a long campaign of fraud and inciting a riot to overturn election results — thanks to partisan judges he appointed), given carte blanche by an activist, partisan 6-3 Supreme Court stocked with members of a far-right judicial fraternity serving the interests of the top 0.2%, a bit suspicious, the factors laid out in this article will be of great interest to you — and hopefully lead AGs in those swing states to open investigations.

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The failure to question so many suspicious factors in the first presidential election following an attempted coup by the winning candidate, including multiple frauds (fake electors, illegal pressure campaigns to state officials to change votes, tampering with voting machines, defaming election workers, etc.) and a violent insurrection at the Capitol, led by the former and current president, leaving aside Palantir and Musk, and their sophisticated data mining and influence operations that make Cambridge Analytica’s Brexit techniques look primitive, results in blaming the Democrats for a failed campaign, blaming Joe Biden’s slowness to step aside, blaming democracy itself for giving us a dangerous maniac president we can’t deny won fairly.

The endlessly corrupt Trump’s years of angrily lying about a “rigged”, “stolen” 2020 election, and making acceptance of that lie a condition for serving as a Republican official, have silenced anyone in his party, the corporate media, and virtually all of the Democratic party, from expressing reasonable suspicions or making charges related to what appears to be an energetically “engineered” election result. Critics probably fear appearing as delusional as sore losers like Trump, Kari Lake and the fully pardoned J6 rioters. Say what you like about their despicable techniques, but Nazis are always good at cowing opponents, especially if there are billions in corporate profits and fundraising involved.

What lying, ignorant, loyal Kristi Noem said before Senator Padilla was wrestled out of the room for asking a question

Context is everything in life. A person cannot determine cause and effect, or the nuances of who is in the right and who is wrong, without the context and sequence of what happened. The sequence of events is an observable set of actions and reactions, the justifiability of these actions and reactions is what lawyers argue over in trials. Leave out the cause, or something in the sequence of events, or even just create doubt about whether it happened just that way, and the effect can be made to seem completely insane, the person making the complaint a lunatic and a nuisance. This is a basic principle of all psychopaths: win the argument by removing context, deprive the other person of their right to do anything.

When I refer to Noem lying, consider her false claim, immediately after her squad forcibly put Padilla face down on the ground and senselessly handcuffed a citizen who was not resisting, legally detained or arrested, that Senator Padilla didn’t identify himself. He loudly said his name and title, on video, as Noem’s heavy handed security team started. Noem’s lying claim is contradicted in real time, it’s on videotape for fuck’s sake. This lie is far from her first as HHS Secretary, do a quick search for many more.

Her ignorance is reflected in her under-testimony definition of habeas corpus: the president’s constitutional right to detain anyone he deems an enemy. In fairness to the Secretary [1], maybe she meant enema. She’s an ignoramus, but loyal as hell.

Heather Cox Richardson, with another crucial detail about the ugly fascist strongarming of a peaceful senator the corporate media is scrupulously avoiding (corporate persons will be corporate persons, that is, psychopaths highly focused only on their own best interests):

While much focus has been on the assault [on Senator Padilla] itself, what Noem was saying before Padilla spoke out is crucially important. “We are not going away,” she said. “We are staying here to liberate this city from the socialists and the burdensome leadership that this governor and that this mayor have placed on this country and what they have tried to insert into the city.”

In other words, the Trump administration is vowing to get rid of the democratically elected government of California by using military force. That threat is the definition of a coup. It suggests MAGA considers any political victory but their own to be illegitimate and considers themselves justified in removing those governmental officials with violence: a continuation of the attempt of January 6, 2021, to overturn the results of a presidential election.

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“We are not going away,” Noem said. “We are staying here to liberate this city from the socialists and the burdensome leadership that this governor and that this mayor have placed on this country and what they have tried to insert into the city.”

In fairness to someone with Noem’s intellectual and moral capacities, she may not realize that she is parroting Nazi positions in her devotion to the Führereid [1] that was the condition for her obtaining a position she is wildly, tragically, unqualified for. She is an international security threat dressed up as a MAGA Barbie Doll, so cute with those hats and sassy outfits.

“We are not going away,” Noem said. “We are staying here to liberate this city from the socialists and the burdensome leadership that this governor and that this mayor have placed on this country and what they have tried to insert into the city.”

[1] from Wikipedia: The Hitler Oath (German: Führereid or Führer Oath)—also referred in English as the Soldier’s Oath[1]—refers to the oaths of allegiance sworn by officers and soldiers of the Wehrmacht and civil servants of Nazi Germany between the years 1934 and 1945. The oath pledged personal loyalty to Adolf Hitler rather than loyalty to the Weimar Constitution of the country.

[2] Almost put in as the international security and anti-terrorism credentials of Homeland Security Secretary Kristy Noem the CV of her fellow cabinet member, Tusli Gabbard, the Director of National Intelligence nobody but Putin can trust:

I wrote (and deleted):

She has long been friendly with Vladimir Putin and routinely echoes his talking points on US mass media. As a member of Congress she flew to Syria to visit with Syrian dictator Bashar Al-Assad, and returned defending him, even as he continued his murderous war on Syrians to cling to power he eventually was forced out of.

There’s also this:

Gabbard launched her 2020 presidential campaign running on an anti-interventionist and populist platform, but dropped out and endorsed Joe Biden in March 2020. Previously, she also served as vice-chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) from 2013 to 2016 but resigned to endorse Bernie Sanders for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination. After her departure from Congress in 2021, Gabbard took more conservative positions on issues such as transgender rights, border security, and foreign policy. In 2022, she spoke at the conservative CPAC conference and left the Democratic Party.

Trump’s perverse veneration of slaveholders = fascist gold

Historian Timothy Snyder reminds us that Trump’s veneration of oath-breakers and traitors, guys like Confederate commander Robert E. Lee, (or, for that matter, insurrectionist rioters like Trump’s pardoned J6 Day of Love crew), is intended to create a false narrative about the past in order to dominate the present. Fascist politics frames everything as a death struggle, an eternal battle of the wills, between us and our sick, evil, dangerous “enemies” (whoever they may be that day). In the case of Trump, the enemy is any American who opposes his right to rule like the CEO of a privately held company his father gave him.

Trump announced recently to a carefully selected group of MAGA soldiers, at Hegseth-renamed Fort Bragg, that he is ignoring a bipartisan law Congress overrode his veto to pass, and renaming US military bases for the violent racist scoundrels who led an army against the USA to preserve “The Peculiar Institution” (slavery). By law, he has no power to do this. As bellicose, in-your-face, strongman propaganda? Gold.

The selected troops assembled for his video op applauded as Trump promised to change the name of former Fort (Robert E.) Lee back from its current name (in memory of a black military heroes) [1]. He’s constantly appealing to the unhealed heart of the Old Confederacy, which was never defeated, in the minds of the descendants of those who lost the Civil War they still claim Northern aggression started.

Trump’s most devoted base is largely down in Dixie, among white Evangelical Christians.   The former Confederacy is bright red on the electoral map, and for the same irrational reason — the claimed God-given right of one Christian race to rule all the others.  In the mind of his base, Trump’s not going to let those goddamned black criminals who are eating the dogs, eating the cats, eat our goddamned pets and rape our women.  NOT ANYMORE!

Robert E. Lee, the American general who led Confederate troops in an actual war against the United States (most American casualties ever), is on a US postage stamp, for fuck’s sake. His former slave plantation became Arlington National Cemetery, but only after his death. A US military base was long named after this motherfucker. We don’t remember Lee as Benedict Arnold, we remember him as a refined and dignified southern gentleman who, out of loyalty to his home and family (many of whom apparently were horrified when he turned down Lincoln’s offer to lead the Union army) took up the glorious Lost Cause, protecting the rights of wealthy “planters” to own certain human beings and do with them as they pleased.

It’s Trump’s dream too. To do as he pleases, always, with no restraint from anyone because he is entitled, as a result of being born rich and the heir to a highly successful psychopath who bailed him out over and over from the results of his own hubris and stupidity. He has never been held accountable for anything he’s done in a long life of contempt, dishonesty and crime (the turd will be 79 on Saturday). He won Trump v. US, after all (consider the power of the name of that lawsuit) — not only is he the first president legally allowed to commit crimes if he believes they are part of his duties as Leader, but, perhaps even more sweet to the transactional, very stable business genius, no presidential pardon, even if bought and paid for outright, publicly and with receipts, can ever be challenged in court.

His $130,000,000 birthday present to himself, on the taxpayers’ dime, is a Soviet style military parade. He’s had sturdy fences constructed all along its route (to avoid another J6 when DC was completely unprepared for the illegal, unpermitted march he had planned and announced while whipping up the crowd to violence) and made sure no permitted protest is allowed within earshot of this North Korea-style spectacle he has planned for himself.

After all, traitors and sick, dangerous criminal maniacs prevented this parade during his first term, he has a right to it and he will have it, thank you very much. He’s publicly warned protesters that he’ll smash them hard in the fucking face if they try to rain on his big, beautiful birthday parade. He’s doing everything in his considerable power to provoke the violence that will allow him to do what his hero, Mr. Hitler, did when seizing power– invoke a national emergency and mobilize the military and secret police against any citizen who does not raise his arm in a proper Trump salute.

In this difficult moment, when this desperate and doddering dictator wannabe, who has already done such damage to the country while unable to pass anything in Congress or win a lawsuit in any court he doesn’t own 6-3, is playing his last card — provoking violence — we all have to keep our heads. It would be easy enough for Trump’s lackies to arrange to have a few dozen pardoned J6 rioters (perhaps even the dog dick who proudly marched the Confederate flag through as the others ransacked the Capitol, or the horned Q-Anon Shaman himself) join each protest and throw rocks, or fire guns at, cops. Putin wouldn’t hesitate, nor would any other dictator. I put nothing past these motherfuckers who make a career of lapping at their Leader’s colon.

Call me Anne Frank, but I am putting my faith in the better angels among us. The stakes are known to everyone, and I’m counting on the restraint of good people here in America resisting this wave of evil. If I’m wrong, I’ll try to send y’all a postcard on the way to Camp Donald J. Trump.

[1] “In the actual history of the United States, one war is central: the Civil War. Trump, who has never seen the point of the Union Army defending the republic, now seems now to have moved on to the position that the Confederacy should have won. He promised to rename Fort Gregg-Adams, the first base named for African-Americans, to Fort Robert E. Lee. The base in question hasn’t been known by the full name of the confederate commander since 1950. Lee was a traitor, an oathbreaker, a defender of slavery and the commander of a force whose mission was to break up the United States of America.” source

Mass murder of children? Chill, bro

Talk about a “disgusting abomination” (Elon Musk’s petulant name for Project 2025’s Big Ugly Bill that will kick millions of working and disabled Americans off their health insurance programs and let more children go to bed hungry in the richest country in the world, among other abominations)… the first actual casualties of the world’s wealthiest insane refugee from the end of White Supremacy Apartheid in South Africa, in his role as head of an illegally constituted government “department”, are the non-white children of Africa.  Who would have thought an insanely greedy megalomaniacal proponent of the Great Replacement “theory” would be instrumental in killing tens of thousands of black and brown children by starvation, toxic water and disease?  An estimated 103, mostly children, are dying EVERY HOUR.  24 hours after I post this more than 2,400 more poor people will be dead.

American corporate media is tastefully silent about the ongoing mass deaths– mostly children, that Trump’s illegal impoundment of funds allocated for USAID are causing worldwide.  It’s as if all the world’s children are now Palestinian children, born into a world of terrorism, and the media of the world can’t bear to report on their maiming and killing.

In officially parting from the insane white supremacist Musk, Trump’s White House leaked the shocking news that superfreak AI glitchbot, often almost, semi-convincing human impersonator Mr. Musk, who appears whacked out of his mind during awkward public appearances, was actually high as a cyberkite on a daily cocktail of mind-altering drugs. 

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse had a good image of these destructive, lawless, whining, endlessly transactional and combative “winners” during a committee hearing: 

“It strikes me that what we have here is a team that has taken the field and engaged in unprecedented numbers of fouls, unprecedently flagrant fouls, and when the refs blow the whistle on the unprecedented number of fouls the partisans of the team committing the fouls call out the referees for the unprecedented number of whistles they blow.”

Sounds about right.  USA!  USA!!! Make America violent and suicidal again!

The Musk, Bezos, Thiel, Koch, Zuckerberg of their day considered a 500,000 soldier fascist coup d’etat against the New Deal in 1933?

Ever hear of the so-called Business Plot? Wealthy financiers, after their wild speculation and World War caused the Depression, planned to hire an army of World War I veterans to stage a coup and oust the hated FDR and his commie New Deal. They admired fascism, hated unions, collective bargaining, child labor laws, the forty hour work week and all the rest of those anti-American “reforms” and tried to hire retired Major General Smedley Butler to lead the half-million man army and assume dictatorial powers. Check this super short video out and then go google Smedley Butler, who laid out the plot and named the traitors in Congress.

Or read the Wikipedia entry on the Business Plot, also called the Wall Street Putsch, at first dismissed by the NY Times as a “gigantic hoax”, later confirmed as true when a Congressional Committee found:

In the last few weeks of the committee’s official life it received evidence showing that certain persons had made an attempt to establish a fascist organization in this country. No evidence was presented and this committee had none to show a connection between this effort and any fascist activity of any European country. There is no question that these attempts were discussed, were planned, and might have been placed in execution when and if the financial backers deemed it expedient.

This committee received evidence from Maj. Gen Smedley D. Butler (retired), twice decorated by the Congress of the United States. He testified before the committee as to conversations with one Gerald C. MacGuire in which the latter is alleged to have suggested the formation of a fascist army under the leadership of General Butler.

MacGuire denied these allegations under oath, but your committee was able to verify all the pertinent statements made by General Butler, with the exception of the direct statement suggesting the creation of the organization. This, however, was corroborated in the correspondence of MacGuire with his principal, Robert Sterling Clark, of New York City, while MacGuire was abroad studying the various forms of veterans organizations of Fascist character.[47]

Would you be surprised to learn that none of these fascist businessmen ever faced any kind of accountability for planning an armed insurrection against the duly elected president and his administration? Is it surprising that a plotted fascist coup d’etat in 1933 (the year Hitler took power in Germany) is virtually erased from American history? They are trying the same thing now, only with much more sophisticated means than an army of trained soldiers at their disposal. Everything old is new again, as they used to say.

In other news:

source

For some reason people are saying “idiocracy” a lot lately

Hard to imagine why an administration stocked with glaringly unqualified attention seekers and opportunists who publicly pretend to worship the stupidest, pettiest man ever to be US president has its common sense questioned. Trump Derangement Syndrome by Deep State deep fake AI cuckbots, no doubt.

The big guy’s nominee for US Attorney for Washington, DC, Ed Martin, was not going to get out of committee, it turns out, a GOP senator finally had to put his foot down. At first Trump declared victory, announced he was going to make this loyal MAGA fighter UN ambassador (oh, wait, that was former national security advisor/Signal chatter Mike Waltz), while getting Alcatraz ready to house the sick criminals who had cynically weaponized the US government and viciously, unfairly prosecuted Trump and his loyal patriots who rightfully attacked Capitol police and sacked the US Capitol on a day of national awakening and great love. Here’s Heather Cox Richardson, with the details:

Trump announced he was moving Martin [a Missouri political operative with no experience as a prosecutor, who defended the January 6 rioters and fired the prosecutors who had worked on their cases, threatened to investigate Democrats and critics, and hosted a notorious antisemite on his podcast] into three roles that do not require Senate confirmation. He will become the new director of the Weaponization Working Group at the Department of Justice, an associate deputy attorney general, and a pardon attorney. “In these highly important roles, Ed will make sure we finally investigate the Weaponization of our Government under the Biden Regime, and provide much needed Justice for its victims,” Trump posted on social media.

To replace Martin, Trump has tapped Fox News Channel host Jeanine Pirro, who is passionately loyal to him. He noted among her qualifications that she “hosted her own Fox News Show, Justice with Judge Jeanine, for ten years, and is currently Co-Host of The Five, one of the Highest Rated Shows on Television.”

Matt Gertz of Media Matters for America recalls that the Fox News Channel took Pirro off the air after the 2020 election because of her conspiracy-theory-filled rants. In emails turned up in the defamation suit against the Fox News Channel for pushing the lie that voting machines had tainted the election results, her executive producer called her “nuts” and a “reckless maniac,” who “should never be on live television.” That lawsuit cost the Fox News Channel $787 million. . .

The administration appears not to be able to attract the caliber of federal officials to which Americans have become accustomed.

. . . When asked yesterday why he had nominated her [a surgeon general without a medical license], Trump answered: “Because Bobby thought she was fantastic…. I don’t know her. I listened to the recommendation of Bobby.” Today, Casey Means’s brother Calley, a White House advisor, went after Trump ally Laura Loomer for opposing the nomination, posting on social media that he had “[j]ust received information that Laura Loomer is taking money from industry to scuttle President Trump’s agenda.” Loomer responded: “You’re so full of sh*t.”

. . . White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller told reporters today that voters elected Trump to “deport the illegals” and that “Marxist” judges frustrating that effort are attacking democracy. In fact, Trump convinced many voters that he would deport only violent criminals, and they are now aghast at the scenes unfolding as masked agents grab women and children from their cars and sweep up U.S. citizens.

In The Bulwark today, Adrian Carrasquillo explained how podcasters, sports YouTubers, and comedians, including Joe Rogan, have brought the rendition of Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador onto the radar screen of Trump voters. Americans now disapprove of Trump’s immigration policies by 53% to 46%.

Miller made an even bigger power grab when he said “we’re actively looking at” suspending the writ of habeas corpus, a legal change that essentially establishes martial law by permitting the government to arrest people and hold them without charges or a trial. Legal analyst Steve Vladeck explains that Miller’s justification for such a suspension is dead wrong, and suggests Miller’s threat appears to be designed to put more pressure on the courts.

But in this chaotic administration, it seems worth asking who the “we” is in Miller’s statement. In the group chat about striking the Houthis, when administration officials were discussing—without the presence of either the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff or the president himself—what was the best course of action, it was Miller who ultimately decided to launch a strike simply by announcing what he claimed were Trump’s wishes.

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“Nothing to see here, I don’t know, ask Homeland Security, ask your mother, you’re nasty, you’re fake, I know you are, but what am I?”

Are we all created equal?

I believe we are. So does Heather Cox Richardson:

That decision [man born in America, to Chinese-born parents, is a US citizen — U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark 1898] has stood ever since, as a majority of Americans have recognized the principle behind the citizenship clause as the one central to the United States: “that all men are created equal” and that a nation based on that idea draws strength from all of its people.

On the last day of his presidency, in his last speech, President Ronald Reagan recalled what someone had once written to him: “You can go to live in France, but you cannot become a Frenchman. You can go to live in Germany or Turkey or Japan, but you cannot become a German, a Turk, or a Japanese. But anyone, from any corner of the Earth, can come to live in America and become an American.”

He continued: “We lead the world because, unique among nations, we draw our people—our strength—from every country and every corner of the world. And by doing so we continuously renew and enrich our nation. While other countries cling to the stale past, here in America we breathe life into dreams. We create the future, and the world follows us into tomorrow. Thanks to each wave of new arrivals to this land of opportunity, we’re a nation forever young, forever bursting with energy and new ideas, and always on the cutting edge, always leading the world to the next frontier. This quality is vital to our future as a nation. If we ever closed the door to new Americans, our leadership in the world would soon be lost.”

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Happy 4/20, y’all

With the same sick irony that had Trump’s second inauguration fall on Martin Luther King, Jr’s birthday, Easter Sunday, this year, falls on the 136th birthday of one of Trump’s main idols, Mr. Hitler. On a personal note, two years ago today I was wheeled out of the David Koch pavilion of the #1 hospital for orthopedics fourteen years in a row, into the sunshine of a nice spring day, with a brand new titanium and chromium left knee. Presently I am unable to walk around the block with my six year-old neighbor, which I miss. Seeing the world through the eyes of a bright young kid is a wonderful thing, particularly in springtime, as is being able to walk without pain.

But enough with the personal sob stories. Today is the day that the myopic intellectuals and reactionary lawyers employed by far right billionaires submit their arguments to the Leader for why he should impose a version of martial law under the 1807 Insurrection Act so that he can use the military to end these large demonstrations by US citizens increasingly organizing against Project 2025’s determinedly fascist moves. After all, Trumpie has already used emergency war powers to arrest, detain and deport US residents for indefinite stays in a cool 43 year-old dictator’s super-max prison for “terrorists”. What war, you ask? Dubya and Cheney’s “War on Terror” authorized by Congress shortly after 9/11 under the AUMF [1], an authorization that made the illegal invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq perfectly kosher and that never expires, apparently. If the president calls it “terror”, who is Congress to question that?

As soon as he was in the Oval Office Trump issued an executive order calling for a report, within 90 days, from the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of Homeland Security Director, assessing the need to invoke the Insurrection Act for the “emergency” at the southern border. Today is day 90 since inauguration day. Pete Hegseth and Kristi Noem will sign whatever report is put in front of them, one of the conditions for their appointment as Trump ass-lickers, the same condition accepted by everyone in MAGA.

Presumably, at some point today, probably this evening when the Leader is done cheating at golf to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus, the press will announce what Hegseth, Noem, Mike Flynn, Stephen Miller, Steve Bannon, Samuel Alito, Leonard Leo, Charles Koch et al have decided about the president’s right to invoke the 1807 Insurrection Act. I’m not a betting man, but it’s not hard to guess what this crew of insane, ethically compromised haters will endorse. Particularly now that public opposition to Trump’s purposefully mad leadership is mounting and even reaching some in his own party.

The likeliest outcome, it saddens me to say, is a conspiracy among these lawless maniacs, on the brink of their longtime dream of American fascism, to create a mass death event at some peaceful assembly, call it “terrorism,” blame several marginalized groups for the act they themselves organized and carried out, and bring down the curtain on American democracy once and for all with legally sanctioned state violence. State violence to repress violence they themselves provoke (and often perpetrate as an excuse for martial law) is the go to move of every dictator.

As former civil liberties advocate turned Nazi defender Alan Dershowitz said, defending Trump during his second impeachment for inciting an insurrection, that if the president truly thinks the Jews are using space lasers to unfairly destabilize his absolute rule, he has the right to do whatever he feels is necessary to stop them from using these immensely powerful imaginary weapons in a way that harms the nation. In the words of Nixon, echoed by John Roberts and the Five Moral Dwarves in the unironically captioned Trump v. US, “when the president does it, that means it is not illegal.”

Happy Easter to my Christian friends and may the mercy of the Eternal be upon us all as we wait for the ABC headline.

[1] Wikipedia: The Authorization for Use of Military Force is a joint resolution of the United States Congress which became law on September 18, 2001, authorizing the use of the United States Armed Forces against those responsible for the September 11 attacks. The authorization granted the president the authority to use all “necessary and appropriate force” against those whom he determined “planned, authorized, committed or aided” the September 11 attacks, or who harbored said persons or groups. Wikipedia