Judicial temperament

Emil Bove III in mid Roman Salute

Here’s some interesting and important material on the “judicial temperament” of Trump’s favorite unprincipled legal Pitbull, Emil Bove III, from an op ed in today’s New York Times. Bove is about as MAGA as they come, apparently deeply drawn to the intoxicating scent given off by America’s Greatest Winner Ever, or, at least, what he can get by loyal proximity to Jeffrey Epstein’s close friend.

In 2018 a defense lawyer, speaking on behalf of a group of colleagues, including several former prosecutors, wrote to a supervisor in the U.S. attorney’s office complaining about Mr. Bove’s “unprofessional and unethical” behavior. One former assistant U.S. attorney quoted in the email said that Mr. Bove was “a prosecutor version of a drunken driver — completely out of control” and that Mr. Bove was “quick to bully and threaten.” Still another said that he “seems totally hung up on a power trip.”

That complaint was followed by an incident that appeared to vindicate these warnings, when a federal judge dismissed a prosecution supervised by Mr. Bove after a request from the U.S. attorney’s office. In the case, which involved charges that the defendant had evaded sanctions imposed on Iran, the judge found that prosecutors had attempted to bury exculpatory evidence and then lied to the court about the matter. The misconduct was so severe that the U.S. attorney’s office, even after a jury verdict in its favor, chose instead to end the prosecution.

Then a group of his colleagues complained that Mr. Bove showed uncontrolled anger and was abusive toward subordinates, and they asked that he be demoted from a supervisory role. Mr. Bove was not demoted, but he decided to leave the U.S. attorney’s office shortly after that, in 2021.

Unlike many of his colleagues in the Southern District, Mr. Bove found a soft landing not at a major New York law firm but at a midsize firm in suburban New Jersey. In short order, though, Mr. Blanche asked Mr. Bove to join him in a new venture: a tiny law firm devoted to the criminal defense of Mr. Trump.

At his confirmation hearing, Mr. Bove portrayed his decision to defend Mr. Trump as an act of courage. “All manner of evil and negative consequences were sort of foisted and thrown at Todd and I regularly as we had to make a decision, and many others didn’t have the courage to make to stand up for what was right,” he said. He added, “That was a decision to fight for what was right and fight for the rule of law.” Mr. Blanche and Mr. Bove lost Mr. Trump’s criminal case in Manhattan, but as far as their career fortunes were concerned, they won big, securing themselves their next jobs. . .

. . . Mr. Bove fired about two dozen federal prosecutors in Washington who had brought cases against Jan. 6 rioters, and he endorsed the view that these prosecutions [he himself prosecuted many of the J6 cases] were a “grave national injustice.” Asked at his hearing whether Joe Biden won the 2020 election, Mr. Bove conceded only that Mr. Biden was “certified” as the victor.

Sound about right for a lifetime seat on the federal appeals court, one step away from replacing Alito or Thomas, after their perfectly legal (6-3, suckers!) prospective and retrospective blanket lifetime pardons from Trump? Even a flagrantly criminal pardon, sold to the highest bidder, is cool, as long as the president does it in his official chair at the Resolute desk. So saith the MAGA Six. Emil Bove III would certainly agree. That’s called judicial temperament in MAGA world.

Boof, displaying judicial temperament at his confirmation hearing

Fascism-induced depression

The lessons of history? Hogwash! Factual things that can be observed and are part of the public record? Never existed! Cause and effect? Not applicable here. Reasoned discussion versus passionate fact-free partisan anger? No contest — fact-free partisan anger, ANGER! Demonstrated Russian determination, over the course of three presidential elections, to get an American political party into power? Russia, Russia, Russia! Hoax, hoax, big, fat, commie, fascist hoax! Books? BURN THEM!

When public discourse, from a presidential administration, becomes a series of denials of reality (no need for the Department of Education, FEMA, USAID, The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Epstein “victims”, Congress, any court but the Supreme one, etc.) we are living under the dark shadow of fascism. Fascists depend, like malevolent narcissists and psychopaths in general, on creating the reality that makes their absolute, unchallengeable power look inevitable. Make Incoherence Great Again!

When the Department of Justice, whose top ranks, purged of all J6 rioter prosecutors (except for Emil Bove III, oddly enough) are all lawyers who defended the president in impeachments and criminal trials, and demonstrated their fawning obsequiousness to the boss (oh, yeah, Bove was one of the best at this), treats the transgressive president as their client, it’s a quick slide down the rest of the slippery slope to American fascism.

It keeps you up at night, at least it keeps me up sometimes, the crawling thoughts of what this experiment in democracy has come to, how many ways it is under attack by determined, well-organized uberwealthy mad men and mad women and their accomplices. Mad is an easy word (though it appears to describe virtually all of our most public-facing billionaires), some of the political opportunists who work for Trump are a little bit crazy, though all of them are supremely ambitious, see a chance to hold a prestigious, powerful job they are not qualified for by sucking up to a mad CEO, and compete for who can be most useful to the “cause”, the “president’s agenda” (the advancement of which is now the stated mission of DOJ).

Marco Rubio, Trump’s loyal Secretary of State, chaired the Senate Committee that issued a voluminous three volume report on more than a hundred instances of Russian interference in the 2016 election [1]. Rubio’s committee detailed the dealings of then Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort (pardoned felon), former partner of Trump ally Roger Stone (pardoned felon), and Konstantin Kilimnik, a member of Putin’s spy agency indicted by Robert Mueller. Of course, no American journalist would ask Rubio about that report he wrote the introduction to, as his boss dithers between outward support for Putin and occasionally scolding Putin over “killing too many people in Ukraine.” It’s certain that Rubio would dance away from the inconvenient question (the truthful answer to which would undermine his own authority) and defer to the boss, cite Truth Social and echo Trump’s constant catcall of “Russia, Russia, Russia!” We are in the era of “I know you are, but what am I?” politics.

We see this in history everywhere fascism has taken over. Watch the excellent American Masters documentary on Hannah Arendt on soon-to-be defunded PBS. The horrors Arendt escaped in Nazi Germany, and her thoughts about the rise of totalitarian movements, have an eerie personal familiarity to us right now. You can see it HERE, free until July 26.

Hannah Arendt scholar Roger Berkowitz says, in the documentary:

Arendt saw this, she was there, she was living there [Germany, as the Nazis rose to power]. And so many of her friends said ‘oh, well, he’s just crazy, he’s just making things up, and don’t worry about him, he can’t win, he’s just creating fantasies’. But fantasies sometimes are what we want, and especially at times of economic, cultural, social and political despair, people, they were lonely, they were needy of meaning and belonging and that’s what Hitler was giving people.

Hannah Arendt writes:

A most cherished virtue is loyalty to the leader, who, like a talisman, assures that ultimate victory of lie and fiction over truth and reality . . . The Nazi movement recruited their members from this mass of indifferent people whom all other parties had given up as too apathetic or too stupid for their attention. The result was the majority of their membership consisted of people who never before had appeared on the political scene.

Having lost virtually my entire family to the “ideology” of a madman, Mr. Hitler, I tend to take the steady creep of American oligarchy/fascism personally. It is a fight to resist the depression this “fuck your fucking facts, fuckface” regime imposes by their aggrieved insistence on the right to irrationality and the exercise of unlimited power to carry out their masters’ wishes. The donkey they are riding to the finish line is charismatic conman Donald J. Trump, because he’s the only one who can mobilize a good portion of the desperate masses to serve the 1%. When they are done with him, he’ll be disposed of. Nobody in a fascist state has any real loyalty to anyone else, everything is transactional. The philosophy is let the most ruthless rule.

Click the image below to read updated version on Substack

At least there are presently no private companies building a network of concentration camps here, outside of The GEO Group and Core Civic, who got no bid contracts for their important work for ICE [2]. Well, at least there are no concentration camps here for US citizens, at the present time. We have critical Americans calling Alligator Alcatraz (Alcatraz was a prison for convicted criminals on an island) Alligator Auschwitz (a famous Nazi death camp in Poland for people simply deemed enemies) but is the Florida detention center in the Everglades really a death camp? All we know is this:

Over the weekend, Democratic lawmakers were finally given a tour of Alligator Alcatraz, the hastily erected tent city–immigrant detention center in a Florida swamp. What they reported seeing is barbaric.

Detainees are confined to cages enclosed by chainlink fencing with three unhygienic, open-air toilets for 32 people. There is no escape from the oppressive heat, humidity, and swarming mosquitoes. Though lawmakers were not allowed to meet with any of the detainees, they could hear them begging for help.

Dan Rather

Now, my friends, go back to sleep, if you can.

[1] “We found irrefutable evidence of Russian meddling,” Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., acting chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in a statement, directly refuting President Donald Trump’s repeated assertions that Russian interference was a “hoax” perpetrated by Democrats.

The committee, however, did not find any evidence of a coordinated scheme between the Trump campaign and Moscow, Rubio said.

[2] from that article:

Private prison executives are forecasting hundreds of millions of dollars in new ICE profits. Since Trump’s reelection in November, CoreCivic’s stock has risen in price by 56% and Geo’s by 73%.

“It’s the gold rush,” Michael A. Hallett, a professor of criminal justice at the University of North Florida who studies private prisons. “All of a sudden, demand is spiraling. And when you’re the only provider that can meet demand, you can pretty much set your terms.”

Geo’s former lobbyist Pam Bondi is now the U.S. attorney general. It anticipates that all of its idle prisons will be activated this year, its executive chairman, George Zoley, told shareholders.

Trump 2024 sweep of swing states highly unlikely

Click on image above for updated, improved version of this post

As George Carlin pointed out years ago, obscenely wealthy white men don’t need to meet in a smoke-filled room to hatch a conspiracy, all they have to do is simply keep acting in their common interest. Kick in a tax-exempt billion here and there to buy politicians and influence public opinion and you can control government policy, pack the Supreme Court with right-wing zealots from a far-right judicial fraternity, and fund all other measures needed to consolidate your power and privilege. Use dark money to buy political attack ads and create “grassroots” groups that gather angry, ordinary Americans and televise their coordinated nationwide protests against a Black president (formerly known as mulatto, half-white, anyway) on all of the corporate news outlets simultaneously. Consolidate media so that one script of right-wing talking points is read by thousands of trusted local anchors. Blame liberals for the biased media, and for rigging elections, pedophilia, etc., and continually vilify rare left-wing billionaire George Soros. We’ve been living in an escalating cacophony of well-funded right-wing propaganda for decades, with unregulated social media, AI and finally, an emotionally unregulated, colorful maniac front man/conman for the billionaire class as the final touches. The perfect shit storm.

There were many highly suspect irregularities in the 2024 presidential election that are outlined in the video, and this analysis barely touches on the sudden drop in mail-in ballots in 2024. We learned in the weeks before the election that Harris led in swing states in the early voting (every one of which she suspiciously lost, by virtually identical margins) This thorough analysis of the several pronged GOP attack on voting does not focus on the significant drop off in mail-in ballots under Trump megadonor Postmaster Looey DeJoy, which, by itself, was capable of wiping out a Kamala Harris majority. I’ll get back to that below.

Voters Cast Fewer Mail Ballots

One of the most noticeable trends this year was the sharp decline in mail-in voting, particularly in states that enacted significant barriers to absentee ballots. These declines may also be influenced by other factors, such as the easing of the COVID-19 pandemic and the increased availability of in-person early voting options.

Georgia, for example, passed S.B. 202 in 2021, which introduced new voter ID requirements for absentee ballot applications and return envelopes, among other provisions. As a result, mail-in voting plummeted. In 2020, over 1.3 million mail ballots were cast in Georgia – making up 26% of all ballots. In 2024, that number plummeted to 286,000 ballots, or just 5% of the total votes cast.

Similarly, Florida – a state known for its high rate of mail voting – saw a drop in absentee ballots after the passage of S.B. 90, which introduced stricter ID requirements and reduced the number of drop-off locations. In 2020, Florida had over 4.8 million mail ballots (44% of total ballots). In 2024, that number fell to just over 3 million (28%). Texas, where absentee voting laws were tightened under S.B. 1 in 2021, also saw a dramatic decrease. In 2020, nearly 1 million mail ballots were cast in Texas (9% of total ballots) compared to roughly 342,000 (3%) in 2024.

I’ll be keeping my eye on this Rockland County case (mentioned in the video) which appears to be on a very slow track to resolving the underlying issues raised by plaintiffs who claim their votes for Harris were not counted, or were counted for Trump, in Rockland County — it’s on the calendar for August 29, 2025, as the judge considers the Rockland County Election Board’s motion to dismiss.

We are witnessing the chaos, lawlessness and terror unleashed by unqualified anti-government loyalists serving as the federal government, on behalf of a clearly unhinged CEO. The theory is to keep turning up the heat. Create enough misery, financial and health insecurity, food insecurity, stoke enough hatred, turn up the heat on the frog pot to close to boiling and the more violent among us will react with violence, at which point, endgame, welcome to the Libertarian States of Charles Koch, Jeff Bezos, Peter Theil, et al.

Speaking of unhinged, revenge-fueled maniacs, I knew it was only a matter of time until Dear Leader got back to settling his ancient grudge with his longtime enemy Rosie O’Donnell…

FBI director Kashyap Pramod Patel’s birthright citizenship appears to be airtight, at the moment, as long as he doesn’t do anything stupid or disloyal.

Loyalty to Kashyap, not the Constitution

A highly problematic report from the highly problematic New York Times:

It’s no longer a gratuitous comparison, MAGA is, in every essential way, the National Socialist German Workers Party who had such stupendous success during the early years of World War Two. The requirement of a personal loyalty oath to your superior officer (see, e.g., Führereid or Führer Oath) flows directly from the Führerprinzip, the irrefutable idea that all authority and power flows downwards from the infallible Leader through his chosen chiefs. It is supported by that old motto of the Third Reich, Führerworte haben Gesetzeskraft, “the Leader’s word is law” since the Leader is the ultimate expert on every subject.

You don’t advance in this hierarchic, loyalty-based system where you may never question orders unless you accept that you’ll be punished severely if you disagree with the boss — on any grounds. Principled dissent, or — as some might claim — acting on conscience, or in obedience to constitutional limits of power, forbidden. Defiance of authority is a fatal violation of the loyalty oath you are duty-bound to keep, in an authoritarian party. If part of your duty is to faithfully tell any lie you’re required to tell (and now, as then, there is required language you must always use when asked certain questions — Sprachtregelung [1]) , then you are part of a totalitarian regime.

Make no mistake, these grossly unqualified, radically ambitious extremists in charge of Trump’s federal government are National Socialists, our own homegrown modern American Nazis (though the FBI director’s immigrant parents both emigrated from Uganda, Kash is a birthright citizen, for the moment). Motivated by personal ambition and a blind willingness to do whatever they’re asked to do, these guys, Kashyap, Pete, RFK Jr., Kristi, Pam, Marco, Tulsi and so on, will do whatever their Leader, and Stephen Miller, tells them to do. The same goes for the slim majority in Congress and Charles Koch’s Supreme Court super-majority.

Right now a few Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee face an agonizing decision about who to believe and who is lying. A whistleblower, a recently fired (for candor to the judge, as an officer of the court), highly respected, fifteen year nonpartisan employee of the DOJ who has now corroborated the main allegations of his complaint — or the president’s recent criminal lawyer and former acting AG, current nominee to a lifetime appointment to the federal appeals bench.

What we know about Emil Bove III is that he’s a fierce and unapologetic Trump loyalist who represented the president in all the weaponized criminal witch hunts against the Leader. More recently, as Acting AG in the present administration, he appeared personally in federal court to deny that there was a quid pro quo to drop federal charges against corrupt-looking NYC mayor Eric Adams in exchange for Adams giving ICE access to the sanctuary city. He also told the judge that even if there had been a quid pro quo, the court still couldn’t stop DOJ from dismissing the indictment against Adams. Bove told the Senate Judiciary Committee, under oath, that he can’t recall if he told his lawyers to be evasive and obstructive in court or to simply ignore court deadlines and orders, like Judge Boasberg’s order not to send 230 non-criminal immigrants to a terrorist torture prison in El Salvador.

At least one GOP senator may have a hard choice to make, because the Boss really, really wants his bellicose myrmidon, which proved over and over that he’s willing to lie for him, on the Supreme Court when Alito or Thomas leave. We’ll have to keep an eye on this one.

A loyal man who never violated his oath

[1] Sprachregelung is a German language term meaning “speech code”. It refers to a formal or informal agreement, or order, that certain things should be expressed in specific ways in official communications by an organization or by a political entity. It can also cover such concepts as agreed “lines-to-take”, talking points, and the exertion of message discipline. An example came in January 1945 when Ribbentrop sent emissaries to contact the Western Allies in Sweden and Switzerland, aiming to negotiate a separate peace; they carried with them a list of Sprachregelungen to ensure they gave the same message. Wikipedia

Glitchbots gone wild!

Elon Musk, a quirky humanoid glitchbot who does his best to appear human, recently corrected his AI creation Grok to stay away from the woke virus of political correctness. Ooops, over-correction (or maybe not).

Fucking Nazi glitchbots, the future of Artificial Idiocy, modeled on the moral obtuseness of their glitchy creators.

Words matter the most in incoherent times

Hannah Arendt pointed out that Nazi bureaucrat Adolf Eichmann’s inability to speak, except for cliches, revealed his inability to think. Language is an indispensable tool for discussing and understanding the world around us. Fascists deliberately distort and oversimplify language. This destruction of language is an essential part of destroying the ability to think critically. Critical thinking, like Critical Race Theory, is a deadly threat to would-be tyrants. Here’s a small, insignificant example of the blurring of language in the service of a point of view.

A MAGA podcaster interviewed Kash Patel, just before he became FBI director, Kashyap wearing a grey T-shirt with K $ H in large letterboxed letters, over the words “Fight with Kash”.

Interviewer: “You say the FBI has Epstein’s list. They’re sitting on it. That doesn’t seem like something you should do. You’re protecting the world’s foremost predator. That seems like an evil thing, regardless of who may be embarrassed in the release of that list. Why is the FBI protecting the greatest pederast, the largest scale pederast, in human history?”

Kashyap Pramod Patel: “Simple. Because of who’s on that list.”

I was surprised to learn that Kashyap wasn’t always a revenge-fueled man of infinite ambition. In fact, back in the day, the upper caste Indian Hindu, son of an immigrant from Uganda whose family tree is traceable back 18 generations in Gujarat, was kind of woke. Wikipedia informs us: Patel attended Garden City High School and his senior-year quote was “Racism is man’s gravest threat—the maximum of hatred for a minimum reason”, by Jewish theologian Abraham Joshua Heschel.

Make of that what you will. Patel has obviously evolved a long way from his quoting Martin Luther King Jr.’s friend Abraham Heschel days.

To set the record straight on language, though. Words have specific meanings and uses. Losing nuance is a step toward incoherence, especially dangerous in an age where a solid 40% consider passionate incoherence superior to a reasoned factual argument, for purposes of moving masses of confused people to concerted action. This solid incoherence embracing 40% owns most of the guns in America.

The words pedophile and pederast are not interchangeable, though both describe adult men who sexually prey on often unwilling underaged victims. These fuckers have very specific tastes. Epstein and his guests were powerful, lust-crazed monsters who did terrible, lifelong damage to many vulnerable, groomed, underaged young women and girls, but I’ve never heard it alleged, except by a MAGA podcaster, that serial rapist Jeffrey Epstein was a pederast.

Not that it makes much difference to the abused boy or girl. If you’re raped as a child, do the sexual predilections of your rapist really matter?

Words and nuance do matter, though, especially in this incoherent age of MAGA and its worldwide analogues. Incoherent, fervently believed rationales for doing things generally lead to bad endings for everybody involved.

More on FBI director Kashyap Pramod Patel, from his most recent incarnation (from Wikipedia):

In April 2017, Patel began working for the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, then led by Representative Devin Nunes.^[5] As an aide to Nunes, Patel investigated the theory that Ukrainians were promulgating information about Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections.^[13] The New York Times later reported that he was the primary author of the Nunes memo,^[9] which alleged that Federal Bureau of Investigation officials abused their authority in the FBI investigation into links between associates of Donald Trump and Russian officials, seeking a warrant for Carter Page, an advisor to Donald Trump, and relying on claims made by Christopher Steele, a British intelligence officer who was allegedly paid by the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign.^[14] The memo’s veracity was highly questioned, but it bolstered Patel’s standing among Trump allies.^[13] In April 2018, the deputy attorney general overseeing the investigation, Rod Rosenstein, asked whether Patel had traveled to London the previous year to interview Steele; according to the Times, he did not provide a definitive answer.^[15]

and

Documents provided to the House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack and accounts of officials allege that Patel discussed security at the Capitol before and during the January 6 Capitol attack, and that he repeatedly contacted Mark Meadows, Trump’s chief of staff, on the day of the attack.^[40] He was in [Gauleiter Stephen] Miller’s office during the attack.^[41]

In April, Trump devised a plan to oust FBI director Christopher A. Wray and to appoint William Evanina to lead the bureau, while Patel would become deputy director. Attorney General William Barr halted the plan, threatening to resign.^[42] In January 2021, Axios reported that Trump sought to appoint Patel as the deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency in December 2020. In response, CIA director Gina Haspel threatened to resign.^[43] At the annual Army–Navy Game that month, Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, confronted White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, repeatedly and loudly asking whether Patel was going to replace Wray or Haspel.^[44] In the final days of Trump’s presidency, Mike Lindell, the founder and chief executive of My Pillow, went to the White House; Jabin Botsford, a photographer for The Washington Post, captured a document Lindell was holding that read, “Move Kash Patel to CIA Acting”.^[45] In April 2022, Patel told an audience that he had advised Trump to fire senior Department of Justice officials.^[46]

This is from Steve Bannon’s ad for a movie, based on a book by Kashyap Pramod Patel that contains a partial enemies list, produced by Steve Bannon:

From Steve Bannon and the visionary team behind “Clinton Cash”, this groundbreaking film will leave you on the edge of your seat. “Government Gangsters,” based on the best-selling book by Former Deputy Director of National Intelligence Kash Patel, pulls back the curtain on the sinister world of corrupt bureaucrats, government officials, and their media accomplices, as they conspired to bring down a sitting President, Donald J. Trump, and all those who support him. This explosive film uncovers the depths of deceit and manipulation they employ daily, betraying the very system they vowed to protect. “Government Gangsters” is not just a film-it’s a revelation that will forever alter your perception of government. May we never need another film like this.

Rupert Murdoch: Epstein conspiracy debunked!

The Jeffrey Epstein client list, clearly used for political blackmail, that was on Pam Bondi’s desk recently, as she told reporters, turned out not to exist. Poof! No Dershowitz, no Clinton, no Trump, no matter how many times these creatures were guests on Epstein’s plane to his sexual paradise island in the sun (paradise for his clients, that is.) Epstein’s suicide? Not suspicious, AT ALL! Case closed. So saith one of the megaphones of Australian salt water crocodile Rupert Murdoch. And why would he lie, he owns FOX for fuck’s sake? Conspiracies debunked, by Kash Patel and Pam Bondi, bitches!

Start spreadin’ the “news”

Nothing to see here, libtard cucks!

The power (or lack of power) of “social media”

There is something very sinister, and wildly unlikely, about a widely hated, corrupt, incompetent, often incoherently weaving almost eighty year-old ‘very stable genius’ sweeping every swing state in 2024, swinging 88 crucial districts blue to red, while zero went the other way. This was after lackluster rallies during which he repeatedly told his sparse crowds not to bother voting, that the election was in the bag. What bag? This organization lays it out in grim detail (and still more detail here).

Not included in their detailed analysis is the 20,000,000 “drop” in mail-in voting (first non-increase in mail-in since 2008) supervised by Trump megadonor/postmaster Looey DeJoy. This persuasive YouTube video, posted 3 months ago, has 6,100 views. The organization has posted just this one video.

On the other hand, this video, posted a week ago, funny as it is — well, check it out and look at the numbers.

All I can think of to say about this is “USA! USA!!!”

FDR on the recipe for fascism

This is the reason Project 2025, Koch, Heritage, the Federalist Society, et al (really all the same entity), need to turn up the heat on ordinary American citizens, make them hungrier, more insecure and out of work. Publicly, brazenly terrorizing innocent “illegals”, and roughing up opposition elected officials (without consequence) is a great way to increase general fear and outrage. Have masked ICE agents spray a landscaper with mace, tackle and repeatedly punch him once he’s in handcuffs, let his US Marine sons make their pleas on social media — the thirty year resident of the US, a taxpayer, is going to Sudan, Louisiana, Texas or maybe Alligator Auschwitz.

Once you have created and normalized this kind of mass outrage and stirred public panic, rounding up peaceful immigrants and rendering them to war zones in Africa and elsewhere, or Central American torture prisons (CECOT) or outdoor concentration camps (GEO Group and other private prison and detention corporations just got billions in the One Big Nazi Bill to build a network of concentration camps), you’ve lit the fuse for resistance. It is very easy to turn that resistance violent for purposes of Mike “Q Anon” Flynn becoming head of weaponizing martial law.

A gigantic masked secret police force with massive funding, and under the exclusive control of the (OK, admittedly insane) Unitary Executive — the perfect stick with which to stir the shit pot the far-right has been filling for years, lately with high powered firehouses of fecal mendacity.

Arbeit Macht Frei, baby

This is what happens when Nazis take power (not that our American Nazis have done so just yet, but they are lurching toward seizing all power, now with a vast budget for secret police and privately owned concentration camps). Every arm of government and state-allowed media is quickly used to convince citizens that the Nazis have their backs, (the better to prepare those backs for the long knives, these are Nazis, after all). This email arrived at 11:38 pm last night, not long after the glorious “The Act” won by a massive four vote landslide in the House. The subject line was:

Social Security Applauds Passage of Legislation Providing Historic Tax Relief for Seniors

This email quotes the encouraging, if not entirely trustworthy, words of the new CEO of Social Security, a man worth a mere $547,000,000. Here’s the skinny on Mr. Bisignano from Wikipedia (Commie Front Group almost as dangerous as NPR and The New York Times!):

Bisignano is consistently rated as one of the highest-paid CEOs in the United States. In 2017, The New York Times reported that his compensation exceeded $100 million.^[20] In 2019, his compensation was estimated at $40 million.^[21] In December 2022, Bisignano signed a new contract with Fiserv to remain as president and CEO until 2027.^[22] In 2023, Bisignano’s total compensation from Fiserv was $27.9 million, up 57% from the previous year and representing a CEO-to-median worker pay ratio of 380-to-1.^[23] source

Who better to run Social Security than a man of the people from humble beginnings in Brooklyn? It’s not as though there’s any doubt that a great CEO is needed to oversee this gigantic federal spending program. His credentials are sterling. From the same Wikipedia entry (and please recall the source, these people, many of them atheists and criminals, no doubt, hate America and the 1%, irrationally):

In December 2024, president-elect Donald Trump named Bisignano as his nominee for commissioner of the Social Security Administration.^[25] On January 28, 2025, the Senate had received the message of withdrawal of nomination from the President, who later restored the nomination. Bisignano’s cold-hearted reputation towards his employees at Fiserv was raised many times, along with his hire and fire approach, as likely predictors of how he would be as a government leader. ^[26][27]

The Senate Finance Committee scheduled March 25, 2025, for Bisignano to speak and answer questions about his qualifications to be the commissioner for the Social Security Administration.^[28] The Senate voted on May 6, 2025, to confirm Bisignano as commissioner of the Social Security Administration, by a party-line vote of 53-47.^[1] and he was officially sworn in on May 7, 2025.^[2]

Bisignano had stated, according to an article in the Federal News Network:^[29]

[A]fter being tapped by the Trump administration to lead the agency, I don’t think the commissioner of Social Security is like a globally known title. It is to you, right? But, like, it wasn’t to me. I’m like, “Well, what am I gonna do?”. So I’m Googling “Social Security”. That’s one of my great skills, I’m one of the great Googlers on the East Coast…. I’m like, “What the heck’s the commissioner of Social Security?”

Political commentator Steve Benen said that “the fact that the new Social Security commissioner, up until recently, had no idea what the Social Security commissioner’s responsibilities entailed does not inspire confidence”,^[30] but “[a]n SSA official said Bisignano was ‘clearly’ making a joke about needing to Google the details and responsibilities of his new role”.^[31]

It’s not like Bisignano is another Trump mega-donor receiving a quid pro quo appointment like Looey DeJoy. It was his wife, HIS WIFE!

Bisignano is a long-time supporter of the Republican Party and of Donald Trump in particular. He has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to Republican campaigns, including a $125,000 contribution to Trump Victory in 2019.^[32]

His wife, Tracy Bisignano, also made significant contributions to the Trump 47 Committee, Inc. totaling $924,600 in October 2024.^[33]

We are all now in a harder fight, with increased political violence to be expected from newly deputized Klansmen and their ilk ($10,000 bonus to sign up for ICE, trade in pointy hood for face mask and get to brutalize those you hate under color of law, yee ha!) who will be part of a vast army of what, prior to Trump’s second term, would have been his Brownshirts, but now they can wear any shirt they want and get paid (with full health insurance) by the taxpayers of non-debtor states, those anarchist jurisdictions like NY, California, Connecticut, Massachusetts, etc.

[Example of “irony”] Example of the kind of brazen lies so-called “fact-based” Wikipedia peddles, when will the administration take steps to force youTube to stop amplifying its anti-Trump hate under videos falsely accusing loyal, America-loving Trump supporters of criminal activity?

Hey, yo, Happy Fourth of July, y’all. Or more precisely, Happy Trump Day — the giant, spiteful baby must be very proud of what he’s accomplished to celebrate our nation’s 249th birthday, in less than six months, with nobody’s help except for a cabal of America’s most fascistic billionaires/CEOS, far-right think tanks, extremist judicial fraternity appointees and a cult of true believers who love his shtick, which never gets tired for them. He can shoot a woman he just raped, in the face, on Fifth Avenue and they’d still buy his perfume, sneakers, bibles, NFTs, steaks, gold plated crypto coins, etc. The Supreme Court ruled that Trump can commit any crime he wants, as long as Pam Bondi, Kristi Noem, RFK Jr. or Pete Hegseth is nearby (making it an official act, LOL!) USA! USA!!!