The Battle of Chicago has begun

It is not bringing glory to the fascists.

In the pre-dawn hours of September 30, federal agencies coordinated a large-scale immigration enforcement action targeting a five-story apartment building near 75th Street and South Shore Drive, according to a Department of Homeland Security official. The DHS said that 37 individuals were arrested and that the operation involved the U.S. Border Patrol, FBI, and ATF.

The agency claimed the building and surrounding area were tied to activity by the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, and that those arrested included people allegedly involved in drug trafficking, weapons offenses, or immigration violations.

Ebony Sweets Watson, who lives across the street from the building, told WBEZ Chicago that she saw federal agents dragging residents, including children, out of the building without clothes and loading them into U-Haul vans. She said the children were separated from their mothers.

Assaults on apartment buildings to tear naked children from their mothers is not very photogenic, especially when the assailants are armored up and masked. Were the children members of Tren de Aragua? Were they armed and selling drugs? I could believe that there were a few individuals in that building who were suspected of “drug trafficking, weapons offenses, or immigration violations,” but that doesn’t warrant harassing and harming and terrifying the innocent people who lived there.

Follow the rule of law or GTFO, ICE.

Church shooting in Minneapolis

Another mass killing, this time at the Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis. It was horrifying: the killer opened fire at a group of kids in the school, killing two and injuring 17 before they killed themselves. No more horrifying than every other school/church/public killing with freely available weapons, but one thing will enrage the right wing: the shooter was a trans woman.

It’s more complicated than that, though, although we are already getting the usual fingerpointing at everything but the gun culture.

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem also confirmed the identity of the suspect, calling Westman a “deranged monster.”

“This level of violence is unthinkable. Our deepest prayers are with the children, parents, families, educators, and Christians everywhere. We mourn with them, we pray for healing, and we will never forget them,” Noem said in a statement.

Yeah, they were a bad person who committed a deeply evil act, but quit pretending it’s unthinkable: it happens all the time, it’s become routine, and all we’re ever supposed to do is “pray”…which never works. We don’t know why the killer snapped, but there is evidence that this was the end result of long-festering issues in this person’s life.

Two videos, posted Wednesday morning and since removed by YouTube, show someone flipping through dozens of pages of notes dated over the course of several months, which include what appears to be doodles of weapons, middle fingers, and expletives. There are also repeated references to killing.

The videos, which depict handwritten journals and a display of high-powered weaponry, paint a portrait of a person with a rambling and deeply nihilistic outlook, according to analyses by law enforcement and ABC News.

The writings in the notebooks and on the firearms, which are written in a blend of Cyrillic alphabet, English and other languages, indicate a series of grievances, anger and ideations of harm to self and to others.

The writings also appear to show overt references to other high-profile school shootings and shooters.

In one notebook, there is a sticker that says “defend equality” with an LGBTQIA flag, overlaid with a gun. A gun also has writings against Israel.

Taking up a full page of a notebook is a hand-drawn birdseye view of the inside of a church with pews. The drawing appears to show the interior layout of Annunciation Church.

In one of the videos the shooter refers to personal depression and apologizes to family members.

“Depression,” “nihilistic,” “grievances” and “repeated references to killing”. This person needed serious help. Were they given any? From this article it’s not clear.

Their mother was retired from a job at the Catholic church, and they’re clearly obsessed with the church, given that they targeted it. I came away from reading about them feeling that a significant problem here was conflict with the church’s position. Maybe rather than blaming transness for the shooting, we should consider Catholicism to be the problem?

Nah, this was a crisis that can’t be pinned to one single cause. Trust me on this though: the media will blame anything but easy access to guns and hateful religious beliefs.

Some people think the innocent are still criminal

Someone named Dewey took exception to my article about a prison being reopened, and quickly fired off a “rebuttal”.

Aw, cry more. Criminals belong in prisons. People who illegally enter homes belong in prison. People who illegally enter businesses belong in prison. People who illegally enter the country belong in prison.

Sure, criminals belong in prison. Listing crimes that get people arrested doesn’t impress me. By the way, he forgot “People who riot and commit violence against the police and vandalize the US Capitol belong in prison.” Or “People who rape women and sexually harass young women belong in prison.” The problem is that these penalties are not justly applied.

Also, people are allowed to enter the country and, for instance, apply for residence or for asylum. Just being in the country doesn’t make a person a criminal.

I’m sure you’d love to completely eliminate the prison system and switch to the honor system, but you’re not in charge, thankfully. Obama was a rockstar who deported over 3 million illegal aliens and did so without the nebulous “due process” you liberals love to whine about.

I’m not lobbying to completely eliminate prisons, but do find it wasteful to reopen prisons that were declared redundant and shuttered over a decade ago. Why reopen a prison unless you’re planning to throw more people into it, in a country with declining levels of crime?

“Due process” is not nebulous. It’s a specific legal process that requires that the state demonstrate criminality and give the accused an opportunity to present their case in court.

Trump probably isn’t competent enough to get even close to that record level of deportations, but any number helps. Beyond him, the people’s minds are changing rapidly. You’re going the way of the dinosaurs. It would be best that you accept that fact.

Why should I accept the fact that injustices are being done? I will oppose them to the end.

Nightmare scenario

There is an app called Tea which purports to be a tool to protect women’s safety — it allows women to share info about the men they’ve been dating.

Tea launched back in 2023 but this week skyrocketed to the top of the U.S. Apple App Store, Business Insider reported. The app lets women anonymously post photos of men, along with stories of their alleged experience with them, and ask others for input. It has some similarities to the ‘Are We Dating The Same Guy?’ Facebook groups that 404 Media previously covered.

“Are we dating the same guy? Ask our anonymous community of women to make sure your date is safe, not a catfish, and not in a relationship,” the app’s page on the both the Apple App Store and Google Play Store reads.

When creating an account, users are required to upload a selfie, which Tea says it uses to determine whether the user is a woman or not. In our own tests, after uploading a selfie the app may say a user is put into a waitlist for verification that can last 17 hours, suggesting many people are trying to sign up at the moment.

I’m already dubious — they use a photo of the applicant to determine their sex? That’s sloppy, and I can see many opportunities for false positives and false negatives.

But that’s not the big problem. The Tea database got hacked…by 4chan.

Yes, if you sent Tea App your face and drivers license, they doxxed you publicly! No authentication, no nothing. It’s a public bucket, a post on 4chan providing details of the vulnerability reads. DRIVERS LICENSES AND FACE PICS! GET THE FUCK IN HERE BEFORE THEY SHUT IT DOWN!

Congratulations. Your personal info has just been delivered to the worst collection of slimy sleazebags on the internet.

I’m just shocked that this app went live without the most rigorous evaluation of its security. You’re collecting scans of driver’s licenses with selfie photos, with only the most rudimentary precautions? What else? Social security numbers, bank accounts?

The perils of listening to Marjorie Taylor Greene

Oklahoma is deep in the heart of Tornado Alley — this is where weather forecasting is a matter of life or death. It’s also a place infested with militias and right-wing “patriots” who have fully embraced a belief in mysterious government-controlled weather control machines. You can imagine the conflicts that emerge when the state builds weather prediction gear, and you have groups of people who are convinced the gubmint is intentionally targeting civilians with deadly tornadoes. Those groups are trying to destroy weather radars and cell phone towers.

A man who, years ago, became convinced a child sex-trafficking ring was operating at an abandoned cement plant in Tucson has moved to Oklahoma and found a new target: radar systems he believes the military and media use to control the weather.

Michael Lewis Arthur Meyer, who leads the anti-government group Veterans On Patrol, claimed credit for the July 6 sabotage of the weather radar system of KWTV-TV, Channel 9, in Oklahoma City. Meyer did not vandalize the station’s radar system himself, but had posted pleas on his group’s Telegram channel asking for others to join his cause.

Security footage posted by the television station showed a man tossing a bag over a chain-link fence, climbing it and damaging a power supply. The video then showed the man spray painting over the lens of a security camera.

You can see this idiot vandalizing the power supply for a weather radar.

The ringleader for this gang of vandals, Michael Lewis Arthur Meyer, has his own justification for the destruction.

“Eliminating directed energy weapons that are embedded in our infrastructure is not going to harm a single American,” he said. “It will take away a loaded weapon pointed at the American people.”

And of course he is a raving Christian Nationalist looney.

Last year, Meyer was part of an effort in North Carolina after Hurricane Helene for posing as an aid worker to encourage locals to tear down cell towers and attack the military.

“When the military plays God with the weather, they’re mocking our Heavenly Father by calling one of his most favorite instruments a ‘weather weapon,'” Meyer added.

Veterans on Patrol has their own page on the Southern Poverty Law Center. It’s not just weather forecasting that they hate!

Not only do we continue permitting the slaughter of our own Children in Abortion Sacrificial Centers…
Not only do we permit altering our Children’s DNA with Globalist Vaccinations that kill and sterilize…
Not only do we permit Government Agencies like CPS to abduct Children from their Parents…
Not only do we permit the Captivity, Rape, and Abuse of Migrant Children being trafficked by Catholic Charity Services…
We now permit Afghan Pedophiles to bring their Child Rape Victims for further Abuse on our own Soil…
Americans will reap horrible consequences for continuing to allow God’s Children to be defiled and abused.
I ask everyone to Pray for the Children… and I ask my Father to destroy this Nation for perpetuating evil equal to Sodom and Gomorrah.
Americans will not fight for these Children… May our Father in Heaven bring His Righteous Judgement upon this Satanic Nation claiming to be under Him
PREPARE YOUR FAMILIES.

Read that whole page. He has a long history of insane conspiracy theories and active destruction.

Here’s one odd thing: google Michael Lewis Arthur Meyer. There are lots of news stories about the guy being arrested, not showing up at court hearings, just generally running about sowing chaos. None of the arrests seem to have stuck! I found news of his arrest back in 2018, right up to 2025, yet journalists today are just calling him up and getting these insane comments. Meyer said his group was monitoring Oklahoma radars closely and claimed that there were no laws that could prevent them from destroying the radars. This is an open, vocal right-wing terrorist who is allowed to continue his rampage with no significant impairment of his ability to blow shit up. All I can think is that he’s very clever about getting idiotic dupes to do his dirty work for him, like the goober in that video.

Just in case you spot this sanctimonious nutcase in your neighborhood, here’s a photo.

Michael Lewis Arthur Meyer


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Lock him up!

Run, if you see this in a car

Vance Boelter is cooked. You can see a detailed list of all the evidence he left in his wake, as he fled, and it’s overwhelming. This is going to be a short trial.

I was horrified at the glimpse of the contents of his car.

Who lives like this? If your car contains four (at least) rifles on your seats and stuffed loosely into plastic buckets, your life has taken a sad and desperate turn. When he set off on his shameful tour of legislators’ homes, he could have just looked to his right and seen that he was a wrong, fucked-up person.

This man served in the North Dakota senate for 54 years

The state of Minnesota would like to put up a wall along our border with the Dakotas. Or, at least, we’d like you to know we don’t have anything to do with them. I don’t know, I kind of cringed away to the east learning about this story.

Prosecutors said Holmberg traveled at least 14 times from 2011 to 2021 to Prague, Czech Republic, to pay for sex with adolescent-age boys. In court last year, Holmberg admitted to paying young male masseuses, some of whom he had sexual contact with at an alleged brothel. But he claimed not to know for certain how old they were.

Acting U.S. Attorney Jennifer Klemetsrud Puhl said the crime was “an assault of the dignity of many young boys.” And the majority and minority leaders in the North Dakota Legislature described Holmberg’s crimes as “evil” in a statement that vowed additional resources to law enforcement to help combat increases in criminal sexual assaults and human trafficking, KFGO reported.

Not just the Czech Republic: he was a roaming predator, criss-crossing the country and traveling abroad to abuse boys.

Records previously obtained by The Associated Press show that Holmberg made dozens of trips throughout the U.S. and to other countries since 1999. Destinations included cities in more than 30 states as well as Canada, Puerto Rico and Norway. At least one of Holmberg’s trips to Prague was state-funded through a teacher exchange program, the Klemetsrud Puhl wrote in court filings last week.

“Holmberg’s offending conduct over the course of decades … can only be described as corruption,” she wrote. “That is, he used his position to serve his own ends.”

His position is what makes this even worse: he has a long history as a distinguished state senator in the North Dakota senate.

Holmberg served 45 years in the North Dakota Senate. He resigned in 2022 after The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead reported on his many text messages with a man in jail in connection with child sexual abuse material. Holmberg chaired two powerful legislative panels, including the Senate’s budget-writing committee.

Because he’s wealthy and privileged and a Republican, and also 81 years old (he’s been playing this vile game for a long time), lawyers tried to argue that he should only get a 3 year sentence. The judge would have none of it, and he’s going away for ten years. That’s still not enough, given this one final twist:

In 2012 and 2013, Holmberg posed as a teenage boy in an online chatroom for teens who had undergone circumcision, and misled and manipulated a 16-year-old Canadian boy into sending him explicit photos, the filing said.

The full story of the relationship is unclear because the boy later took his own life in 2021, “but no doubt Holmberg’s conduct contributed to his struggles,” Klemetsrud Puhl said.

Yeah, he can die in prison. No loss.

Would you believe he was reimbursed by the North Dakota senate for his sex vacations? He was. He led the senate and personally approved all of his expenses.

The Eichorn saga is sinking into the abyssal depths

Remember Justin Eichorn? The Minnesota Republican who was caught in a sting trying pick up 16 year old girls? This is what he looked like before his arrest.

Update: here’s his latest available photo:

Yikes. That man is not coping well. He’s also in even more trouble: he tried to get an accomplice to go to his apartment before the police, in order to get a gun he lied about, and to get rid of a laptop. They failed. The police haven’t yet said what was on the laptop, but I think the fact that he would try to hide the evidence is incriminating in itself.

You know, I don’t feel any need to erase my browser history if I’m ever arrested — it might be weird, and it might trigger a few WTFs, but there’s nothing illegal on it.

Another twist of the knife: Eichorn’s wife has filed for divorce. This guy has ruined his life.

Egregiously predictable

The fellow to the right is Damion Surles, a little-known troll whose previous claim to fame was distributing a doctored, fake photo of Kamala Harris standing next to notorious pedophile and rapist Jeffrey Epstein.

You all know exactly where this story is going, right?

Damion Surles, 40, was identified as the suspect who allegedly interacted inappropriately with a minor.

Surles was arrested on Aug. 15 and charged with first-degree rape and child sexual abuse.

He was booked into the Jackson County Jail.

Man, there’s such a strong correlation between MAGA Republicans and child rape. It’s almost as if you’d expect their president to also be guilty of sexual assault…oh, wait.

Another one! Ricci Wynne.

A MAGA influencer known for posting sensationalized videos of homeless people in San Francisco was indicted Tuesday on federal charges of producing child sex abuse material.

Ricci Wynne, 39, known as Raw Ricci to his more than 100,000 Instagram followers, was first arrested in November and charged with pimping and pandering by procuring, HuffPost previously reported. He was taken into custody alongside a woman shortly after arriving at San Francisco International Airport.

The Minnesota Republican party is full of these guys

Here in lovely, thawing Minnesota, our Republican representatives tried to outlaw opposition to Trump’s policies, on the grounds that anyone who questions the Supreme Leader must be a victim of an illness, Trump Derangement Syndrome. Reverse it, flip it, change it around — I think the real derangement is the failure to see that Trump is a monster wrecking the government and the nation.

Today, one of the Republican sponsors of that bill was arrested, and it wasn’t for proposing a stupid law, nor was it for his haircut (which would be justifiable grounds, I think).

State Sen. Justin Eichorn, R-Grand Rapids, was arrested in Bloomington on suspicion of soliciting a minor for sex.

Bloomington Police led Eichorn, 40, to believe he was talking to a 16-year old girl and then met the senator and arrested him Monday near the 8300 block of Normandale Avenue, according to a Bloomington Police Department press release.

Gosh, I guess if you were out cruising for teenage girls, that whole stretch from Normandale to the mall on France Ave. to the Mall of America would be a likely place. That guy, who looks like a low-rent Chris Elliott, should at least wear a hat, though, or expect to be laughed at.

Maybe someone should investigate the other sponsors of the bill, Eric Lucero of St. Michael, Steve Drazkowski of Mazeppa, Nathan Wesenberg of Little Falls, and Glenn Gruenhagen of Glencoe…oh, wait. Gruenhagen! I know that name!