I like James O’Brien’s take on the recent contretemps.
I would also argue that if you’re claiming it was not a Nazi salute, then you are either a Nazi-sympathizer or so stupid you don’t recognize the significance of what you’ve done.
One interesting thing about it all, though, is that Musk has managed to steal all the attention from Trump. That’s the greatest sin anyone can commit.
A scene from the inauguration:
Some elections are important, some are not. But this one, this one really mattered and I just want to say thank you for making it happen…
then a bold unmistakeable Nazi salute.
Don’t try to tell me that was a slip of the entire goddamn right arm. That was a massive call out to the American fascist community. He knew what he was doing.
I have learned that the Asshole-in-chief has lined up a series of executive orders — he loves EOs, they allow him to bypass the pretense of democracy — to militarize the border. There will be more coming, no doubt to begin rounding up and throwing into cages anyone with brown skin and an accent.
Donald Trump will sign 11 border-related executive orders, including one authorizing the deployment of US troops to the border, Fox News reports.
The outlet reports that in one order, Trump will immediately direct the federal government to resume construction of the border wall, end Biden-era parole policies including the CBP One app, and bring back the so-called Remain in Mexico policy, under which asylum seekers were forced to wait in dangerous border cities while their applications were processed.
Another second order will order American troops to be deployed to the border under US Northern Command and “instruct the military to prioritize our own borders and territorial integrity in strategic planning for its operations,” according to Fox.
A third order will designate international cartels and organizations as Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs) and Specially Designated Global Terrorists (SDGT), which will allow for targeted action against members, including financial penalties.
The main thing he’s about, though, is grifting. They announced a new memecoin, named after Melania, to steal more money from American citizens. Jesus. It’s just a naked cash grab out there.
OK, I’m going to get my shoes on and dress up in many warm layers — it’s really, really cold out there — and shuffle over to the lab and spend the morning with my spiders, who have been refusing to lay any eggs for me. Even the spiders are refusing to bring more children into this awful damned world.
Oh, wait. There’s more.
Direct the military to prioritize the US border and territorial integrity
End the “catch and release” policy
Move to end birthright citizenship
End asylum and close the border to immigrants entering illegally
Reinstate “remain in Mexico” policy and building the border wall
10 executive orders on the border to be issued on Monday
Sign an executive order declaring a national energy emergency
Sign a memorandum on inflation which envisions an ‘all of government response’ to inflation
Sign an executive order saying that US policy will recognize two sexes: male and female
Will ensure official government documents, such as passports and visas, reflect sex accurately
Establish Department of Government Efficiency (Doge)
Restore death penalty in public safety
Has no specific target for the oil price
Sign an executive order ending federal government DEI programs
Will suspend refugee resettlement for at least four months
Will put an end to the electric vehicle mandate
Designate criminal cartels as global terrorists
Close the border, end DEI, the death penalty, ignore climate change, and declare by government fiat that there are only two sexes.
OK, now I’m closing my browser and getting the hell out of the house.
We are so totally screwed.
If you’re curious to know what the future holds for us, here’s a demonstration by Candace Owens.
She babbles about how the moon landing and dinosaurs were all conspiracies by satanists to destroy our faith in a god, based entirely on disconnected factoids floating like rotten little raisins in the pudding of her brain. I fear that this kind of thing is what the world sees when they look at Americans.
Have any of you foreigners popping in here got any good American jokes? We’ll probably affirm them all for you.
TikTok was banned. TikTok has been restored.
It’s hard to really care anymore. No matter what he does, the MAGA fan base will praise it.
First, Charlie Kirk wanted to ban the “evil CCP-compromised app TikTok”. Now he’s giving Trump credit for not banning it.
I just don’t give a fuck anymore what these people say.
Those Purge movies got it wrong. This is capitalism. We’re not going to legalize murder, but felonies, like theft and grift, are the crimes that will be indulged in, and it won’t help you to hide in a bunker. Your salaries, your retirement funds, your bank accounts are going to be pilfered and emptied into the pockets of the rich.
Trump has already started. It’s the day before his inauguration, and do you think he’s working on a high-minded speech and getting ready to take action to Make America Great Again? Ha. He’s launching a memecoin.
Man, there’s a lot of jargon in that video. I’m not and never have been into crypto, so a lot of it went over my head, but I can recognize the general thrust of what’s going on: Trump is going to use the authority of his position as head of the federal government to sell worthless trash to his followers. I won’t be buying it. Unfortunately, I’m still going to be sad for all the people he’s robbing, and I know this is going to do harm to the communities I’m part of.
As Joe Biden was getting his coat and leaving the White House, he has announced that he has ratified the equal rights amendment! Just like that! He can do that? What took him so long?
But legal experts contend it isn’t that simple: Ratification deadlines lapsed and five states have rescinded their approval, according to the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University’s law school, prompting questions about the president’s authority to ratify the amendment more than 50 years after it first passed.
Biden is leaning on the American Bar Association’s opinion, the senior official said, which “stresses that no time limit was included in the text of the Equal Rights Amendment” and “stresses that the Constitution’s framers wisely avoided the chaos that would have resulted if states were able to take back the ratifying votes at any time.”
This is an interesting bomb to throw back over his shoulder. Will Trump fight it? Is this another issue that will tear the Republican party apart? Will Zombie Phyllis Schlafly rise from her grave to haunt the halls of Congress?
I approve of the core principles of the amendment, but I also approve of any effort to sow chaos in the Trump administration.
Prior to the election, I think we were all aware that Joe Biden was an ineffectual waffler on Middle East issues. He would wag his finger and then do nothing but wobble along the status quo line. I had this wishful hope that Harris was just going along out of loyalty to her president — unfortunately, we’ll never find out if she would have changed the country’s course if she’d gotten out from under Joe’s feeble thumb. All we can know for sure was that Biden stood by doing nothing while children were murdered in Palestine.
Now ProPublica lists all the cowardice behind the Biden administration’s Israel policy. He kept saying one thing, and doing nothing.
Biden’s warnings over the past year have also been explicit. Last spring, the president vowed to stop supplying offensive bombs to Israel if it launched a major invasion into the southern city of Rafah. He also told Netanyahu the U.S. was going to rethink support for the war unless he took new steps to protect civilians and aid workers after the IDF blew up a World Central Kitchen caravan. And Blinken signaled that he would blacklist a notorious IDF unit for the death of a Palestinian-American in the West Bank if the soldiers involved were not brought to justice.
Time and again, Israel crossed the Biden administration’s red lines without changing course in a meaningful way, according to interviews with government officials and outside experts. Each time, the U.S. yielded and continued to send Israel’s military deadly weapons of war, approving more than $17.9 billion in military assistance since late 2023, by some estimates. The State Department recently told Congress about another $8 billion proposed deal to sell Israel munitions and artillery shells.
“It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that the red lines have all just been a smokescreen,” said Stephen Walt, a professor of international affairs at Harvard Kennedy School and a preeminent authority on U.S. policy in the region. “The Biden administration decided to be all in and merely pretended that it was trying to do something about it.”
“Don’t you dare bomb that Palestinian town!” Israel, without hesitation, bombs the town. “Oh, OK, here’s a billion dollars worth of bombs to replenish your supply.” Over and over again. The article talks a lot about all these “red lines” the US was drawing in the conflict, and how US credibility was constantly diminished because Israel didn’t care and knew they’d get all the money they wanted, no matter how far over the line they crossed.
The article doesn’t end on an optimistic note.
On Nov. 14, more than a year after the war started, Human Rights Watch released a report and said that Israel’s forced displacement of Palestinians is widespread, systematic and intentional. It accused the Israelis of a crime against humanity, writing, “Israel’s actions appear to also meet the definition of ethnic cleansing.” (A former Israeli defense minister has also made that allegation.)
During a news briefing later that day, reporters pressed a State Department spokesperson, Vedant Patel, on the report’s findings.
Patel said the U.S. government disagrees and has not seen evidence of forced displacement in Gaza.
“That,” he said, “certainly would be a red line.”
Who in the world cares what red line the US draws anymore?
Biden was a weak president, but don’t expect Trump will be any better. He’s going to bluster and lie louder is all.
I spent the last several hours at the city council meeting for Morris, Minnesota, along with a huge mob of other Morris residents. The object of our political activism was a park, Morris’s East Side Park, which is kind of like the Central Park of our small town. It’s only 2 acres, containing a band shell, lots of trees, grass, picnic tables, and in one corner, some playground equipment. It’s a pleasant little place where lots of families play and where one citizen likes to look for spiders.
A local business, Superior Industries and West-Mor, enthusiastically and generously made plans to invest $2 million into turning Eastside Park into a destination park, paving over one bit of it to make a parking lot, building a massive and rather garish child’s playground paved over with poured-in-place rubbery polymer, and chopping down about 16 of the trees. One problem: they didn’t bother to tell us residents until about a month ago, although city council knew about it before we did.
Many of us descended on the council meeting tonight, talking for hours, the overwhelming majority of us presenting objections. We weren’t given enough time to review the proposal, it had been rushed through the council without going through the usual protocols, this was going to change the character of the park, there were other locations that would be more suitable, the location was far too small, etc.
One weird thing is that the proponents of the park were now emphasizing that it was going to be an inclusive park with handicap access. No one is against inclusion, and I failed to see what was particularly inclusive about a climbing structure and swing sets and slides, and they didn’t say what was more inclusive about it than the existing park, but OK.
The arguments didn’t matter. The council had already made up their minds. They ignored the will of the people and voted to approved the plastic monstrosity that will replace the grass and trees in the park.
I shouldn’t have bothered.
The civil war sundering the Republican party continues. Steve Bannon minces no words in his hatred of Elon Musk.
“I will have Elon Musk run out of here by Inauguration Day,” Bannon, a former Trump White House adviser, told the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera in an interview published on Wednesday. The article was flagged on Saturday by Bannon’s former employer, Breitbart, which published excerpts in English.
“He is a truly evil guy, a very bad guy. I made it my personal thing to take this guy down,” Bannon said. “Before, because he put money in, I was prepared to tolerate it; I’m not prepared to tolerate it anymore.”
I am made extremely uncomfortable by my agreement with Steve Bannon, and I hope he and Musk engage in a game of mutual annihilation. I also appreciate all the irony he is delivering.
In addition to Musk, Bannon blasted David Sacks and Peter Thiel, who also have roots in apartheid South Africa.
“Peter Thiel, David Sacks, Elon Musk, are all white South Africans,” Bannon said. “He should go back to South Africa. Why do we have South Africans, the most racist people on earth, white South Africans, we have them making any comments at all on what goes on in the United States?”
You know, Bannon’s gripe with Musk is over those H-1B visas, that allows some well-educated brown people to live and work (and be exploited) in the USA, polluting his vision of an all-white America — yet white South Africans are the most racist people? Come on, guy. Racists are diverse, too, and both Bannon and Musk are equally racist, just in different ways. Racism is a spectrum, ranging from red-faced, rummy-nosed blustering MAGAts to pale flabby bros with sketchy facial hair. Kumbaya! Now go murder each other. I don’t want to see anything left but a pair of tails.
