Is your community on this map?

ICE is spending hundreds of millions of dollars to buy up industrial warehouses all around the country. These are planned concentration camps.

Among the proposals for these camps is the construction of biohazard incinerators.

The one in Minnesota, in Shakopee, has been blocked so far by community activism. That one was a bit surprising: Shakopee is mainly known for Valleyfair, a seasonal amusement park, and the Minnesota Renaissance Fair. It would have kind of wrecked the family weekend if the kids had to deal with smoke from the crematorium drifting over the celebration.

We’re one short step away from building ICE death camps.

Epstein left a slime trail everywhere he went

I got up this morning, checked the news, and saw this awful face staring out at me. Auggh.

Plumbing the Epstein files is like diving into a sewer. Another name that keeps coming up is Ken Starr, the evil prude who prosecuted Bill Clinton, and became good buddies with Epstein.

Starr, who died in 2022, was a close personal friend and professional contact of Epstein, and was the key lawyer who helped Epstein clinch a plea agreement in 2008, which is how Epstein avoided federal sex-trafficking charges and served a reduced sentence.

On 23 August 2018, Epstein appeared to ask Starr about a report that was to be released about Kavanaugh and the Starr investigation. Starr responded: “No writing for now. The release should be a non-event for Brett. I get criticized in one portion of the report, but no finding of illegality.”

Too bad we can’t dig him up and kick his corpse around. But Brett Kavanaugh is still around, unfortunately, and his name gets thrown around in the Epstein files quite a bit.

Jeffrey Epstein sympathized with Brett Kavanaugh during the then-supreme court nominee’s contentious 2018 confirmation and even suggested Republicans should have been harder on Christine Blasey Ford, who had accused Kavanaugh of sexual assault.

Epstein called the pending judiciary hearing “a trap!”, adding “Iye [sic] been through many of these. MANY!! She will cry, make sordid allegations. Say she feels bullied, fearful, traumatized. Every thing bad in her life was s result of the rape attempt. Suffered anxiety! Her relationships with men etc. this is a very special skill set needed.”

His suggestion was that even more intense defamation of the victim was necessary. He identified with Kavanaugh, and said that he had also been through MANY!! similar accusations (I wonder why a serial rapist and pedophile had such frequent experiences…). One has to wonder about the similarities, though.

Those of us who opposed his nomination to the Supreme Court are further vindicated, at least. Now, how can we get this mini-Epstein thrown off the court for good?

The Minnesota governor race will be a blend of boring and insane

We had our caucuses this week, which started with an unfortunate announcement: Walz has stepped down and will not be running for governor. Who will run, who will win?

On the DFL side, it’s a cakewalk. Amy Klobuchar, our senator, is running for governor, and the party caucuses approved by giving her 79% of the vote. She’s OK, she won’t propose anything radical, even though we need radical right now. I feel like we’ve had an anointing of the status quo. I’ll vote for her, no question.

On the Republican side, we’re getting the crazy.

Republican house speaker Lisa Demuth actually won the caucus straw polls and is likely to be the leading candidate. Kendall Qualls came in second. Mike Lindell was in third place, but you know he’s going to be trotting around the state, speaking like the lunatic he is, and will draw lots of public attention and maybe get a Trump endorsement.

Lindell is not going to win. He’s not in this to win. He’s in it for the grift.

Lindell, the CEO of MyPillow, spent more than half the money he raised for his campaign last year buying copies of his book, according to Minnesota Campaign Finance Board data released Tuesday.

That’s right. He’s taking in any donations and using it to buy copies of his book, which launders the money into his own pocket. What a deal.

At least it’s another reason Lindell doesn’t have a chance of winning.

Don’t believe Tom Homan

He claims he is already reducing ICE presence in Minneapolis, that he’s getting cooperation from county jails, and that they aren’t harassing random citizens anymore.

White House border czar Tom Homan announced Wednesday that he’s immediately pulling 700 federal agents from Minnesota, citing “productive discussions” with state and local officials and “unprecedented cooperation” from county jails.

The Trump administration official, who recently took over Operation Metro Surge, said the reduction in agents is the result of “smarter enforcement, not less enforcement.” He pledged to continue to enforce immigration laws, with the goal of helping the president “achieve mass deportations.”

I can believe that they have reduced the number of ICE agents, but it still leaves 2000, outnumbering local police.

Working with the counties is a good idea, except then they’re only going to pick up immigrants that have committed a crime. They won’t achieve their deportation quotas that way, so I don’t believe a word of it. We do have red counties that would eagerly turn over any brown people that were arrested for jaywalking or murder, but then, why would we need any ICE at all?

Operations have become more efficient through coordination with county jails that are allowing ICE to take custody of undocumented immigrants who have committed crimes before they’re released into the community, according to Homan.

“Rather than having whole teams out looking for a criminal alien who was just released, now we have one agent at that jail picking that person up. That, and the operation has been successful in the number of arrests, so the target list is reducing.”

Homan can’t resist threatening us with another ultimatum.

He added that his goal is a “complete drawdown” as soon as possible, but again said the end of Operation Metro Surge is “largely contingent upon the end of the illegal and threatening activities against ICE and its federal partners that we’re seeing in the community.”

NO.

Protesting is not an illegal activity, and we’ll continue to oppose the criminal and racist goal of achieving “mass deportations”. We like our immigrant neighbors, we are most of us descended from immigrants, we don’t share Stephen Miller’s horrific white nationalist vision, so get the fuck out of here.

“renovations”

Donald Trump has announced that he is closing the Kennedy Center — pardon me, the Trump Kennedy Center — for two years starting this July. This is for necessary renovations, he says. He also says he’s awaiting approval from the board.

The president said that this would take effect July 4, pending approval of the board, a group that he has appointed and made himself the chairman of.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and make a bold prediction that on July 5, he will start “renovating” with backhoes and bulldozers, that he will proceed with no plans for what renovations will be done other than a vague demand for more gold-plated geegaws, and further, that no one in congress will raise a hand in protest, and the laws regulating historical buildings in Washington DC will be ignored.

Another prediction: the building doesn’t actually need major renovations, but that this demolition will occur solely because artists around the world are cancelling engagements at anything with the Trump name on it, and he finds this embarrassing.

He really is determined to leave his mark on the country, even if it is only a mark of shame.

They aren’t coming back, you know

Conservatives hate science. This is why they slashed budgets to science agencies, and put lunatic ideologues in charge of the NIH, NSF, and the environment, with the clear intent to cut the knees out from under science education and policy. Jessica Knurick is precisely right on this matter.

You can also see it in the staffing of all of these critical science organizations.

It’s like science got pushed off a cliff when Trump took office.

Perhaps you would like me to reassure you that once we throw the rascals out and elect responsible politicians who respect the role science has played in American prosperity, we’ll just hire them back. No, sorry, this isn’t like rehiring workers at the Amazon warehouse. A science hire is accompanied by a large investment in equipment and personnel. I’m at a small liberal arts college; when I was hired here, I was also offered tens of thousands of dollars in startup money to set up my lab the way I needed to be able to do my work. I was dirt cheap. I’ve known colleagues who were offered hundreds of thousands of dollars, and even a few who got somewhere near a million dollars, to cover the ancillary costs of setting up a major lab.

It’s not as if a custom lab and technicians and instruments are sitting around waiting for someone with the expertise to do cutting edge research to show up. This stuff needs to be assembled at great cost to fill a need.

The people are also not generic tools you can swap in and out. We pay science staff peanuts for years, and we hang in there to do the work we love — we generally don’t have a massive financial cushion to weather heavy shifts in employment. Some of those laid off personnel are going to leave the country, looking for work in a nation that doesn’t disrespect science, while most are going to simply give up, get a job at that Amazon warehouse or switch to writing software. Their hearts are broken by the American science establishment. They’re not going to revisit this occupation shown to be willing to discard them if an orange moron gets elected or a con man with half his brain eaten by worms gets appointed.

That is a graph of disillusionment. It would take decades and a new generation to repair it, if we even had the will to bring science back. Given that the damage is being delivered right down to support for grade school education, don’t even count on a single generation being enough.

It’s not just a few people being let go. It’s the demolition of a cultural heritage of science.

A resilient Minnesotan

An ugly old white man (I can say it, I’m one of them) took a seat in the front row of an Ilhan Omar speech, and then jumped up, shouted something unintelligible, whipped out a syringe, and sprayed something unpleasant and bad smelling on her. Then he was promptly tackled.

That’s a metaphor for something — ineffectual, horrible person making a stink and trying to disrupt a democratic event. Even more appropriate is the response by Omar.

Omar continued to talk after the disturbance, commenting: “We will continue. These f****** a**holes are not going to get away with it.”

Exactly right. Say it!

“We’re going to keep talking … just give me 10 minutes. Just give me 10 minutes. I beg you,” Omar told a man, who appeared to be security. “Please don’t let them have the show.”

“Here is the reality that people like this ugly man don’t understand. We are Minnesota strong, and we will stay resilient in the face of whatever they might throw at us,” she continued.

“Everybody settle down. I’m going to finish my remarks. It is important for me to continue to lead my Democratic colleagues in demanding her (DHS Secretary Kristi Noem) resignation. And like I said, if she does not resign, we are going to introduce articles of impeachment.”

I like representatives who have a clear idea of what needs to be done, and Ilhan Omar has that power.

Gruppenführer Bovino slinks away

We’ve gotten very familiar with Greg Bovino, the short stormtrooper who dresses in Hugo Boss and struts around the streets of Minneapolis surrounded by masked thugs — he’s almost comically chickenshit.

The Bovino gang of pathetic dumbshits

He’s going away. Apparently, we’ve finally gotten through to Trump’s narcissistic brain, and he’s become aware of the colossal PR catastrophe that is his Minnesota invasion, has chosen Bovino as his scapegoat, and is sending him back to California.

Sorry, California.

This is the way. Mock the executors of his policies to such a degree that even Trump begins to feel a faint hint of embarrassment, and TACO will look for a way to put the blame on someone. He’s even talking about a concept of a plan to maybe reduce the number of ICE goons in the state.

We should increase the pressure, not by getting any one else shot, but by making it clear that his anti-immigrant policies are failing and making him look weak. The next target: keep up the ridicule on Kristi Noem. I’d like to see her lose her status in this administration and go limping back to South Dakota.

Unfortunately, or fortunately, Bovino is being replaced by Tom Homan, a slobbering lunk who talks like he has a mouthful of marbles — or something — and is going to be equally easy to caricature. Isn’t it remarkable how so many of the Trump acolytes are like goofy comic book villains, with their ready suite of silly features? It’s Dick Tracy or Batman all over again.

Perfection.

It’s all lies

It’s hard to get going in the morning, because we’re all just swimming in lies. The administration lies non-stop — they’re repeating obvious lies over and over, despite the fact that we have multiple videos that allow us to see with our own eyes how false they are.

The echo is repeated over and over again by the media. Fox News only lies, and the lies are expanding into CBS News with the corruption named “Bari Weiss”. But occasionally they slip up.

Pam Bondi has delivered an ultimatum to Minnesota. They will pull ICE out of the state (they say…don’t believe them) IF we do just three things:

“You and your office must restore the rule of law, support ICE officers, and bring an end to the chaos in Minnesota,” Bondi wrote in the letter, which was published by The New York Times and other outlets. “Fortunately, there are common sense solutions to these problems that I hope we can accomplish together.”

To stop the crisis, Bondi directed Walz to repeal Minnesota’s “sanctuary policies” for migrants and share information on its welfare programs, which have been under scrutiny over alleged fraud in government-supported child care centers and million of dollars in funds stolen through a food aid program dating back to the pandemic.

She also requested access to the state’s voter registration records “to confirm that Minnesota’s voter registration practices comply with federal law.”

So she wants an end to policies that protect immigrants, and she wants unfettered access to all the state information on welfare and … voter registration? Donald Trump wants to be able to learn as much as possible about how our citizens vote. You know, our mostly Democratic citizens. This is a crude attempt to undermine democracy.

The state has told her no, flatly, which is good. I’d rather not have ICE knocking on my door because my record shows I’m a reliable, consistent Democratic voter and they want to intimidate people like me.

Impeach Pam Bondi. It would be a good start.