Nazi bullshit, 2025 style

Some still consider it controversial to call our angry American authoritarians Nazis.  Read any history of the Nazi movement and their seizure of power and you will encounter many similarities, including an eerily familiar cast of characters across both regimes.   Loyalty to an infallible (if also insane) megalomaniacal Leader was the first, and last, rule in Nazi Germany, it is the only rule for government work in Trump’s America.  A nonentity like Himmler, or Eichmann, or dozens of other obsequious, supremely ambitious mediocrities, could rise to the top of the Nazi hierarchy by showing the ruthlessness to loyally do whatever vicious, destructive, atrocious action (Aktion in the original German [1]) Hitler suggestd needed to be done.  

I know one argument against this administration being like the Nazis is that these current fascists have not set up concentration camps (although they allocated $45,000,000,000 for the construction of private detention centers by some of Trump’s biggest donors, one of which Pam Bondi used to work for) and certainly not death camps!   I say, give them time, and the power to do it, and everything their predecessors did will be done.  It took the Nazis more than five years to really get rolling with the mass imprisonment in a network of concentration camps and then a few more years before they rolled out the first death camps.  These things take time, the public will freak out if death camps are set up too soon. If you doubt their murderous motives, ask family members of some of the 500,000 or so already dead from Trump/Musk/Vought’s/Federalist Society’s unconstitutional cutting of USAID funds allocated by Congress for food and medicine to ravaged nations on other continents. Or the families of the people executed on those boats Trump’s Secretary of War  blew up in international waters.

Look at the actions of each regime at this point in time and distinguish if you can between early Nazi abuses of authority and a Blackhawk helicopter delivering heavily armed masked ICE agents on to the roof of a Chicago apartment complex, goons who proceeded to break down doors and lead 300 residents out into the street in zip-ties, including naked children.  Something like five people were actually arrested in the end (or maybe ICE had warrants for five when they emptied the entire building).   Lights, camera, AKTION!   Tear gas, pepper spray and rubber bullets to disperse small, peaceful crowds, brutalizing and body slamming older women, old men, young men, young women, traumatizing children,  wearing masks and no badges, throwing nonviolent folks on the ground to be handcuff and cursed at.  Nothing to see here, you fucking cucks! 

Let’s look at a couple of the most prominent and influential Nazi-style influencers in Trump’s malodorous inner circle, verify their Nazi bona fides.

Take a hateful bigot like Stephen Miller, a weak and rage-filled worm elected by nobody, wielding hatred and a burning ambition to inflict pain on those he loathes.  Very powerful due to his outsized ability to influence the needy Mr. Trump with strategic flattery and tactical rage, he sets cruel immigration policies not dissimilar to early Nazi policies toward minorities.   He is said to be the great mind behind the brazen (in his mind audacious) war crime of killing foreign nationals on boats, on the same rationale former Philippine strongman Rodrigo Duterte is currently on trial at the International Criminal Court for using — suspected drug dealers must die, no arrest, no trial, say they’re doing it and kill them.  Here’s Miller:

On Saturday afternoon, [Stephen] Miller posted: “The issue before us now is very simple and clear. There is a large and growing movement of leftwing terrorism in this country. It is well organized and funded. And it is shielded by far-left Democrat judges, prosecutors and attorneys general. The only remedy is to use legitimate state power to dismantle terrorism and terror networks.” source

We’ll leave aside the recent finding by the pre-Patel FBI that most domestic terrorism, and virtually all political violence, are from right wing extremist  groups, most identifying as white Christians.  That paper was removed from the internet by alert Trump lackeys, since it unfairly attacked good extremist groups loyal to the president and his “agenda”.  No more right wing violence, it’s “a growing movement of leftwing terrorism”.   Dr. Goebbels is smiling in hell right now at the audacity of America’s Big Lie party.

An ambitious right-wing hater like the well-paid Heritage Society “ideologue” Russell Vought, author of the chapter on presidential power in the almost universally despised Project 2025, has been angling to take the reins of the US budget for a long time.  Now that he has them he is rushing to exploit the Trump shutdown to advance his extreme agenda of finally destroying the “administrative state” and replacing it with one run by a transactional, greedy, Executive, immune from criminal liability, with absolute powers.   This suddenly intoxicatingly powerful asshole calls this arrangement “radical constitutionalism” for some reason.  

In 2022, Vought argued that the United States is in a “post constitutional moment” that “pays only lip service to the old Constitution.” He attributes that crisis to “the Left,” which he says “quietly adopted a strategy of institutional change,” by which he appears to mean the growth of the federal government to protect the rights of all Americans. He attributes that change to the presidency of President Woodrow Wilson beginning in 1913. Vought advocates what he calls “radical constitutionalism” to destroy the power of the modern administrative state and instead elevate the president to supreme authority. source

Pamela Jo Bondi and Kashyap Pramod Patel speak aggressively, angrily and often incoherently, for themselves, their breath tainted by where their mouths have been.   Trump has now hired 31 former FOX “personalities” and producers (of propaganda) — the inspirational, highly qualified Secretary of War and Makeup and the new, fond of wine, US Attorney for DC, to name but two.   The list of unsubtle ass kissers is too long to make here, but Emil Bove III, Todd Blanche and the world’s most obvious “bottom”, cherub faced liar and hater, uber-Christian, adorably fey MAGA Mike Johnson, all deserve mention.  Sorry Alina, Lindsay, Lindsey, et al. 

[1]  Aktion:  A German military or police operation involving mass assembly, deportation and killing; directed by the Nazis against Jews during the Holocaust.

(source Museum of Tolerance, or as they will soon be forced to rebrand themselves, after making a handsome payment to Trump’s “library” for defaming Hitler, Museum of Woke, Cuck Losers!)

For once, AI actually had a better capsule summary:

In Nazi terminology, “Aktion” referred to a violent operation against civilians, often used as a euphemism for mass murder operations, such as those carried out during the Holocaust. It was a way to disguise the true nature of their actions from the public and the victims.

Sound familiar?

Housing discrimination is cool with President Project 2025

It’s hard not to be distracted by the constant tantrums, threats, rage tweets, flashes of madness, impulsiveness, dementia flights, war on the constitution, criminal abuse of his office, obstruction of justice, contempt of courts (all now legal for him, as long as done in conjunction with a cabinet member, see Trump v. US, 6-3, cucks) searches, indictments, arrests and brilliant AI internet trolling of his enemies by the very stable genius, President Project 2025. Behind him is a trillion dollar network of American fascists who make most of the big decisions, as laid out in detail in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025. The blueprint for American fascism Trump lied about knowing anything about as a candidate, though he claimed to disagree with some of it (“the weave”).

Thousands of these true believers (they’ve gone by ‘movement conservative’, ‘alt-right’, ‘neo-con’, ‘John Birch Society’ and many less flattering names) are well-paid political operatives — lawyers, legislators, judges, influencers and lobbyists — acting on behalf of what Sheldon Whitehouse calls the “creepy billionaires” (creepy, in part, because mass death for others is a negligible price, in their collective opinion, to pay for the permanent protection of their vast privileges). There is an entire major political party now in thrall to their united will. Presumably there are also millions of enraged young white men, neither wealthy nor politically sophisticated, ready to follow their charismatic TV star leader into battle, as thousands did on January 6th. For a moment, let’s forget about Trump and look at what the network he works for is having him do.

Just as there was a long game by the American far-right to reverse the limits on presidential criminal audacity imposed by law after Richard Nixon was forced to resign in disgrace, just like the myth that slaveholding states didn’t start the Civil War, or fight for the cause of slavery, MAGA represents a return to the good old days when Blacks, Hispanics, Gays, Women, Voting Rights Advocates and others, innately inferior to white Christian men, “knew their place”. Ultimately, MAGA/Project 2025 is a return to the world the “Originalists” (an infinitely supple legal theory created by the same folks who brought you Project 2025) fondly imagine — a just constitutional order based on the judicious compromises that allowed certain rich people to own others they could treat however they wanted to.

So, while it’s despicable, it’s no shock that President Project 2025 has appointed a pliable puppet/”DEI hire” to head the Department of Housing and Urban Development who will roll back enforcement of the Fair Housing Act, the law that Trump and his landlord father violated for years (before and long after its passage in 1968), in the name of fighting what would later be called DEI — Diversity, Equity and Inclusion– among their tenants. Trump and his father, Frederick Christ Trump, eventually settled DOJ’s discrimination case against them, after a rip-roaring public legal battle in which they were represented by the monstrous Roy Cohn. In the settlement the Trumps agreed not to continue their racist violations of the Fair Housing Act without admitting they had ever violated it. Now, the NY Times reports (read article by clicking on image below):

Got to love the look of the sycophant Trump appointed to head the agency, superficially perfect casting:

HUD Secretary Scott Turner apparently believes, along with Trump, the Heritage Foundation, Charles Koch, Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Jared Kushner and MAGA world (not to mention the Ku Klux Klan), that Diversity, Equity and Inclusion is a sickness, like the vaguely defined yet highly contagious “woke mind virus”, that must be eradicated. DEI, we are told, is an anti-American commie myth perpetrated to place unqualified inferior non-white, non-male people in power to bring down White America. To believe this requires a few leaps of faith, or leaps of idiocy.

First you must believe that there is no need for diversity in hiring, that everything is already equal between white men, women and so-called “people of color” in government and in the private sector. There has never been discrimination in the USA (“all men are created equal” — duh!), and racism, if you want to talk about racism, is directed toward persecuted white Christian men only (a claim made by the original KKK, too, protectors of white Christian women). Equity, which means fairness, is another way of accusing beleaguered Christian white men of being unjust and unfair! Inclusion is a sneaky way to manipulate the gullible into believing that some people are being systematically excluded!

DEI is, according to our homegrown fascist movement, just like Critical Race Theory, a divisive and false ideological “theory” that makes the world much more sinister and complicated than it actually is. Those who are in charge are there because of merit, they’ve earned the right to be in charge. Just look at Trump’s cabinet! DEI is filthy anti-meritocracy that needs to be killed!

There has been no substantial push back from Democrats on this simple principle that is it fair, just and decent to remedy historic prejudice by promoting qualified people long excluded by unfair institutional practices.

There is a lot to push back on when dealing with Nazis, granted, and the fascist right, with a four year running start as their front man escaped criminal liability for clear crimes, is spraying their propaganda from high powered hoses 24/7 as heavily armed masked agents from multiple federal agencies terrorize innocent people in various cities. But like the need for Democrats to have a Shadow Cabinet — experts in each field to immediately and publicly respond to the latest policy depredation from the brains behind Project 2025, enacted by their idiot front man — we need to counter the bullshit about the amorphous “danger” of DEI — and ending DEI being somehow a noble goal for government — with facts. No? Otherwise you have bloated fascists like Bill Barr warning Blacks that the cops won’t protect them unless they start to show some fucking respect.

USAID, dead, and mass killing

Speaking of the crazed onslaught of Project 2025’s audacious plan to make America as fascist as the Old Confederacy was, Big Balls and his enthusiastic young friends helped Trump loot and close down USAID, with the estimated 103 HOURLY deaths that resulted from their elimination of claimed “waste, fraud and abuse”. This massive, silent death toll (2,472 DAILY, 17,305 weekly, 74,160 monthly), caused directly by Project 2025 priorities, has not been reported on in months.

Every day the dismantling of USAID creates a silent 9/11 death toll (or twice the number of deaths Hamas terrorists inflicted on Israel on October 7 [1]), directly caused by the actions of the Trump administration, as President Project 2025 wildly, incoherently attacks his enemies, anybody who does not obey his every childish whim. The last reporting on the shuttering on USAID, which is projected to cause the atrocity of 14,000,000 preventable deaths in the next five years, was months ago. Too much horror to process, as there always is when Nazis are on the march, but process it we must if we are to remain human.

[1] or a daily toll of about 3.5% of the estimated 67,099 deaths (as of this post) in Gaza during Netanyahu’s war against civilians to destroy Hamas.

The Short Enemies Within List

The Enemy Within, those living in Bill Barr’s Anarchist Jurisdictions that do not support White Christian Nationalist Autocracy, need to be subjected to lethality by the buffed up all-male, all-heterosexual US military, according to the Commander-in-Chief and Secretary of War. Nothing out of line, it’s totally normal for the American President to urge 800 assembled generals and admirals to use Chicago, New York, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Portland, LA, etc. as training grounds for “maximum lethality” unbound from the international laws of warfare. There’s no such thing as war crimes when you’re out to destroy evil, according to these two embodiments of the warrior ethos.

“San Francisco, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, they’re very unsafe places and we’re gonna straighten them out one by one,” Trump told hundreds of senior U.S. military officers packed into a hall at the Marine Corps base in Quantico, Va.

“This is going to be a major part for some of the people in this room. That’s a war too. It’s a war from within,” Trump said.

source

Enemies, after all, need to be punished. Death by military fire power is too good for us.

Meanwhile, here are some of Trump’s top personal enemies, targeted for vengeance

Remember the staged arrest of Newark Mayor Ras Baraka under Acting State Attorney Alina Habba, on charges that were dismissed days later? He was arrested, after a tour of the ICE facility in Newark, for standing on the sidewalk in front of the place. On direct orders from Todd Blanche, Deputy Attorney General, recent Trump criminal attorney and benefactor of convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell, ICE agents were instructed to cuff Baraka and their leader told the force, as they went to grab him for not violating any laws “if you have body cams, turn them off.” It’s on videotape, it’s been on television. Representative LaMonica McGiver is facing 17 years in prison for objecting to the illegal arrest as ICE went nuts trying to cuff the mayor in the middle of a crowd of legislators and citizens. She is charged with assaulting heavily armed, masked ICE officers, at least one of whom was yelling “back up or I’ll shoot!”.

Christopher Krebs is a good one. A Trump appointee, his crime was announcing that the 2020 election had been secure and that the results were accurate. An enraged Trump immediately fired Krebs for this statement. I wonder what his alleged criminal liability will be, under an insane and desperately obsequious Trump DOJ. An outline of Krebs’s betrayal of Trump:

As CISA’s director, Krebs was the “administration’s most senior cybersecurity official responsible for securing the presidential election”, held on November 3, 2020.[9] Sidney Powell, an attorney for Trump and Michael Flynn, asserted on the Lou Dobbs and Maria Bartiromo Fox News programs that a secret government supercomputer program had switched votes from Trump to Biden in the election, a claim Krebs dismissed as “nonsense” and a “hoax.”[10] CISA created a website to debunk election-related disinformation, much of which was being promoted by President Donald Trump and his allies.[11] On November 12, it was reported that Krebs expected to be fired from his position.[12][13]

On November 17, 2020, Krebs said in a tweet that “59 election security experts all agree, in every case of which we are aware, these claims (of fraud) either have been unsubstantiated or are technically incoherent.”[14] Trump fired Krebs via Twitter the same day, because the “recent statement by Chris Krebs on the security of the 2020 Election was highly inaccurate, in that there were massive improprieties and fraud”. Trump provided no evidence of this fraud.[14][15]

Wait a second, some of Trump most evil enemies are missing from this short list. Where’s Jack Smith? Fani Willis? Here is Fani’s unpardonable crime:

On February 10, 2021, Willis launched a criminal investigation into Donald Trump‘s attempts to influence Georgia election officials—including the governor, the attorney general, and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger via a telephone call—to “find” enough votes to override Joe Biden‘s win in that state and thus undo Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election.[26][27][28] In January 2022, she requested a special grand jury to consider charges of election interference by Trump and his allies.[29][30] In May, a 26-member special grand jury was given investigative authority and subpoena power and tasked with submitting a report to the judge and Willis on whether a crime was committed.[31]

It’s not like there was a tape recording of a phone call to Georgia Secretary of State Raffensperger in which Trump urged him to find 11,780 votes to reverse Biden’s Electoral College victory in Georgia. Oh, wait…

Anyway, righteous white men in Georgia shut down the uppity Fani Willis’s case, removing her office from jurisdiction over all matters Trump-related in the end.

All irrelevant! Tens of millions of sick, dangerous enemies didn’t vote for Trump, who got a mandate in another rigged election he should have won by at least 300,000,000 votes! Treason, bloody treason! (to an insane tyrant, anyway).

Comedic genius plays to quiet room

This great opening, comic gold, like the new, real 24 karat ornamentation in the Oval Office, was met with restrained laughter from the 800 top US military leaders forced to assemble at Quantico, from around the world, for a speech/photo op by the newly dubbed Secretary of War and the commander-in-chief himself.

As with any comedian, you really need to hear the bit from the comic’s own mouth. The laugh comes from the music of the delivery.

If I were them, I probably wouldn’t have done more than laugh politely either, although personally, not being a military man myself, I find the gag darkly hilterious.  Got to give props to our Genius-in-Chief, whether those stodgy generals and admirals are cool enough to get his sharp sense of humor, after their long, compelled journeys, or not.

Listen to this brilliant deadpan parody of Joe Biden at the debate Mr. T improvised for his audience of 800 military leaders

The master continues his brilliant work, owning the cucks, as he forces them to shut down the government, with some puckish AI and a nice cut and paste of a sombrero and mustache for the hapless brown skinned guy! 

USA!  USA!!!

Here’s Heather will the full story

The Madness of President Project 2025

Mr. Trump’s agitated, increasingly irrational dementia doesn’t get 1% of the media attention former president Joe Biden’s occasional gaffes, stumbles, age-related hesitations still get.

It’s as if by his longtime assertion of brash incoherence Trump has inoculated himself, perhaps with one of Dr. Brainworm’s non-harmful, anti-scientific health injections, against anyone questioning even the most insane things he says or does. It’s just Trump being himself. Take two Tylenol and call me in the morning, when you have autism.

Heather Cox Richardson, American historian writing for future historians, records some of the latest insane Trump actions, posts and pronouncements, in her most recent Letter from an American. If you don’t subscribe to her free nightly email, you really should, her perspective is super well-informed and often illustrated with fascinating historical parallels. She is also a brilliant writer. Here’s the last paragraph of last night’s impressive inventory of floridly insane actions by the Commander-in-Chief:

Late this afternoon, Trump praised his remodeling of the Oval Office to include copious gold fixtures, some of which match polyurethane appliqué available from the home improvement store Home Depot. On social media, Trump posted: “Some of the highest quality 24 Karat Gold used in the Oval Office and Cabinet Room of the White House. Foreign Leaders, and everyone else, ‘freak out’ when they see the quality and beauty. Best Oval Office ever, in terms of success and look!!! President DJT”

source

Innocuous enough, out of context, perhaps, a vain compulsive old liar bragging about his impeccable 24 karat taste. But read along with everything else this increasingly mad, impulsive, vindictive man has done the last few days, weeks, months and years and the many objectively false things he repeatedly, angrily insists are true, it sends a chill up the old spine.

The good news, such as it is, is that in order to remain the smartest man in the room (always very important to Trump, as he has said, in moments of candor) he’s had to surround himself with fools and spinelessly ambitious people willing to meekly perform being even stupider than old Stupid Is As Stupid Does. To me, that collection of loyal incompetents is one of our greatest advantages in this perilous moment.

The cream of the wealthiest 1% who are dying for a permanent one party government run by a corrupt, pliable authoritarian, to protect their vast, inheritable privileges in perpetuity and screw everybody else, have a very problematic front man for their Project 2025 in America’s President Project 2025.

Stark Raving Mad

Heather Cox Richardson, not AI, describes the speech President Project 2025 delivered at the UN last week:

Trump’s speech went on to depict a fantasy world in which he had single-handedly saved the world. He claimed to have forged peace on two continents during his first term but said that “era of calm and stability gave way to one of the great crises of our time.” He then turned to the United States, claiming that “four years of weakness, lawlessness, and radicalism under the last administration delivered our nation into a repeated set of disasters. One year ago,” he said, “our country was in deep trouble, but today, just eight months into my administration, we are the hottest country anywhere in the world and there is no other country even close. America is blessed with the strongest economy, the strongest borders, the strongest military, the strongest friendships, and the strongest spirit of any nation on the face of the earth.”

And that was the frame for the next hour of rambling boasts and insults.

Trump claimed that he had reversed the “economic calamity” left by former president Joe Biden. He had brought down costs and inflation, he said, and economic growth and manufacturing were both booming. He claimed that in his four years, Biden had attracted less than $1 trillion in investment while he had secured $17 trillion. Tax cuts and deregulation had, he said, made the U.S. “the best country on earth to do business.”

“In my first term, I built the greatest economy in the history of the world,” he said. “We had the best economy ever, history of the world, and I’m doing the same thing again, but this time it’s actually much bigger and even better. The numbers far surpass my record-setting first term.”

Trump claimed: “On the world stage, America is respected again like it has never been respected before. You think about two years ago, three years ago, four years ago, or one year ago, we were a laughingstock all over the world.

source

Take courage, citizens

An insane bully has crippled one of our two political parties, rendered it a mere flapping appendage to his overbearing will.  The incoherence of the crazed leader is fervently embraced by his most ambitious and ardent followers, everybody else in the party simply does his bidding, out of fear of his rage.

He orders criminal acts because the Supreme Court already told him, the 6-3 winner of Trump v. US, that he’s allowed to do whatever crimes he wants as much as he wants and plus he “has his Article II” and no pardon, even if he sells it openly for $10,000,000, can ever be challenged in court  (see Trump v. US).

In spite of all the long-time professional prosecutors at the Department of Justice reporting that there is no righteous case to be brought against James Comey, (and others [1]) leading to the resignation (firing according to Trump) of President Project 2025’s own recent appointee who refused to bring this legally infirm indictment, he will appoint somebody, totally unqualified, to do what he wants them to do and they will do it.  With the cringing blessing of the righteous, blonde attorney general, Pamela Jo Bondi.

So James Comey is indicted the other day on two counts stemming from the same supposedly lying sentence, elicited by supreme weasel Raphael “Lyin’ Ted” Cruz a former debating champion.  The DOJ’s inspector general has already found Comey’s statement to have been truthful. Cruz tried to lay a clever lawyerly trap, during Trump’s first administration, but it didn’t work.  Still, it is good enough for Trump’s latest inexperienced Acting State Attorney. That single sentence of claimed perjury is the sum and substance of two serious, and extremely flimsy, felony counts against James Comey with a penalty of up to 25 years in prison. Yer typical Trump case.

Watch Lawrence O’Donnell explain that all to you in the first minute or two. Then watch James Comey address the country to express his resistance to tyranny and his confidence in the American system of justice and the strength of our democracy. 

Let it add a little bit of steel to your spine during these nerve-wracking days, (talk about the times that try men’s souls.) Let it be a tonic like that top rated Jimmy Kimmel monologue, like all acts of courage and clarity during a time of terror, cowardice and incoherence.

Woof, woof…grrrr!!!!

They’re eating the dogs. They’re eating the cats. They’re eating the pets!

[1] or NY Attorney General Letitia James, Senator Adam Schiff, Fed governor Lisa Cook, NJ  Representative Lamonica McGiver, or anyone else who catches the Orange Polyp’s evil eye.

Nothing to see here! Witch hunt!

Would I be out of line, on the day thousands of the faithful are lining up for a mega-MAGA memorial service for slain MAGA icon Charlie Kirk, to note that these accidentally publicly divulged messages to his “apolitical” Attorney General come off as the ravings of an even whinier version of history’s own Mr. Hitler?

I hasten to add, to be scrupulously fair, that Bill Clinton got off a plane to speak, secretly, with Obama’s US Attorney General while his wife was a candidate trying to illegally steal the US election for president in 2016 after conspiring with George Soros!

One can’t be too careful these days.

Attempted fascist seizure of the FCC, a shock? Censorship is a Nazi’s dream

Many of the richest, most pathologically greedy white men in the world (and their corporate alter egos) have an irresistible impulse to control everything.  This is no conspiracy theory, just look around at what these self-interest blinded entities are doing.   One of the world’s most lucrative entities, Disney and its affiliated corporate “persons”, is vying to become number one (presumably tired of smelling like number two) planning to consolidate more power, wealth and influence by buying another major television network group.   They need Trump’s MAGA-headed FCC (president gets to pick the chairman) to approve their purchase of a huge swath of ABC — employer of nightly Trump exposer Jimmy Kimmel — or Nexstar, or some combination of corporate properties.  

It was easy for Trump’s FCC chair, a pugnaciously partisan chap named Brendan Carr, to lean on the morally flexible corporate “person” who owns Kimmel’s contract, during a far-right podcast, to immediately fire Jimmy Kimmel because, “nice little monopoly you’re trying to build here, shame if something happened to it…” Not long ago Carr tweeted his true beliefs about the First Amendment (under the Biden tyranny, one supposes) and the proper role of the FCC:

Trump and his mouthpieces say if you speak ill of the radical rightwing movement that included both the martyred Charlie Kirk and his murderer, you risk your livelihood, if not your kneecaps and your nose. Unlike in a defamation case, the truth of your statements, or the ones you quote, is no defense against the charge of illegal opinions. What is best for the ever more feeble president’s delicate ego is the only consideration. Desperate men do desperate things in desperate times. What’s the world coming to when Cucker Carlson begins speaking common sense truth?

During his monologue on Monday’s show, Kimmel said: “We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them, and doing everything they can to score political points from it. In between the finger-pointing, there was grieving. On Friday, the White House flew the flags at half staff which got some criticism but on a human level you can see how hard the president is taking this.”. . .

. . .Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker posted: “This is an attack on free speech and cannot be allowed to stand. All elected officials need to speak up and push back on this undemocratic act.” He pointed out that in 2023, Brendan Carr [1 — my footnote] himself posted: “Free speech is…the check on government control. That is why censorship is the authoritarian’s dream.” Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) warned of a coming campaign to “use the murder of Charlie Kirk as a pretext to use the power of the White House to wipe out Trump’s critics and his political opponents.”

. . .On CNN, conservative pundit David Frum called it “state repression.” On his show, right-wing activist Tucker Carlson said: “[I]f they can tell you what to say, they’re telling you what to think. There is nothing they can’t do to you because they don’t consider you human…. A free man has a right to say what he believes.”

source

Dan Rather wrote a very cogent explanation of the corporate side of this hideous “free market” canning of a popular comedian for poking fun at an increasingly unpopular wannabe dictator. There is already a lot of blowback on this fascistic over-reach, even Lyin’ Ted Cruz denounced the unethical, illegal, unconstitutional quid pro quo move as a mafia-style shakedown (see following post).

Trump clearly believes in free speech only for himself and those debased enough to publicly kiss his crusty ring. Whatever else you want to call the recently martyred Charlie Kirk, he was not actually a champion of free speech or open debate. He was a well-financed bully, who franchised his billionaire-funded MAGA youth movement on 800 college campuses. He often used the Bible, and his take on Christ’s teachings, to figuratively whack people in the head during his staged free speech cage matches. “Read Leviticus 19,” an Old Testament section he liked to cite to shut his critics’ mouths. Note Mr. Kirk’s flagrant violation of these commands of his white, Christian God, from Leviticus 19:

16 “‘Do not go about spreading slander among your people.

“‘Do not do anything that endangers your neighbor’s life. I am the Lord.

18 “‘Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against anyone among your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord.

33 “‘When a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them. 34 The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the Lord your God.

Of course, any devil with access to the internet can quote scripture — and cut and paste it. Just because Kirk slandered accomplished, brilliant Black women as lacking “mental processing power”, preached that gun murders were an acceptable, prudent price for the freedom to own guns, advocated for public, televised executions of the president’s enemies and was, to put it tenderly, no friend of foreigners residing among us, does not make him … uh, does not, he wasn’t… not a hypocrite. He was not NOT a hypocrite is all I’m saying.

His death was horrible and literally nobody deserves to die that way, but to call him a Christian martyr whose death demands national mourning and not a bad word said against the self-made millionaire White Christian Nationalist is false. 

“‘Do not lie.

“‘Do not deceive one another.

12 “‘Do not swear falsely by my name and so profane the name of your God. I am the Lord.

Leviticus 19.

Here’s Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post, definitively nailing the evil, mean-spirited, nasty, heartless, catty, possibly violent, definitely radical (and comedic) comments that got Jimmy Kimmel fired… in Kimmel’s own explosive, obscene words.

[1] Brendan Carr, chairman of the FCC, is a Trump-appointed Trump ass licker. Here’s his application to president-elect Trump, a la Bill Barr’s.

Heather:

On the podcast of right-wing influencer Benny Johnson on Wednesday, chair of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Brendan Carr said that Kimmel’s words were part of a “concerted effort to try to lie to the American people” and that the FCC was “going to have remedies that we can look at.” “Frankly, when you see stuff like this,” he said, “I mean look, we can do this the easy way or the hard way. These companies can find ways to change conduct and take action, frankly, on Kimmel, or there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”

Carr explained: “There’s actions we can take on licensed broadcasters. And frankly, I think that it’s really sort of past time that a lot of these licensed broadcasters themselves push back on Comcast and Disney and say…’We’re not gonna run Kimmel anymore…because we licensed broadcasters are running the possibility of fines or license revocation from the FCC.'”

The largest operator of ABC affiliates, Nexstar—which needs FCC approval for a $6.2 billion merger—said it would stop airing Kimmel’s show from its stations. Then ABC suspended Kimmel’s show.

Benny Johnson, the podcaster on whose show Carr threatened Kimmel, was one of the influencers Russian state media funded to spread propaganda before the 2024 election. After Kimmel’s suspension, Johnson posted on social media: “We did it for you, Charlie. And we’re just getting started.”

Transactional love

And the temporary triumph of enraged, heedless incoherence marches on. It’s no surprise that the most obsessively greedy in our nation, and their counterparts in foreign nations, would fall in line with a Nazi-like mob boss who promises them even more wealth — or the loss of it, and worse, for the capital crime disobedience to the Leader. A solid 65% of Americans oppose this kind of open tyranny, the percentage is probably much higher in the case of individual Project 2025 policies (e.g., cutting federal funds and closing rural hospitals so MAGA members will die — to give even more to those who already have hundreds, or thousands, of millions).

It is crucial in this sickening moment in our history to keep our equanimity as much as possible. We face a true catastrophe, but it is not a catastrophe until the curtain actually comes down. The constant roaring threats from these irrational, incoherent fascists are not quite the same as them actually being in charge, firmly and finally in control. Their crazed desperation to seize lawless power and put troops on the streets in Anarchist Jurisdictions before our next election tells us the outcome of this battle for America’s future is far from settled.

We must do everything in our power to remain calm, strong, and reasoning, in the face of desperately violent incoherence. We owe ourselves and the future the preservation of conversation, debate and discussion, rather than a centrally run AI based dystopia where only 1% get to thrive and enjoy life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.