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First! (Not that it matters) 🙂
Soon we will be having circus clowns, mud wrestling, MMA, and casino night at the Kennedy Center — uh, I mean the Trump-Kennedy Center. Many people tell me that they’re looking forward to it, it will be big, bigger than it’s ever been!
“…we’re going to do something on Greenland, whether they like it or not…”
And all the goodfellas nodded and smiled.
“My own morality….It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
And all the goodfellas nodded and laughed.
“My own morality…”
Not sure whether to laugh or cry.
Trump is evidently flooding Minnesota with federal agents…appears to be looking for a fight.
Prayers for the state would be advisable…
Michael,
He’s waging war against the state. The governor was right.
Prayers will continue.
Captain,
I cry, then I need redemptive laughter at the absurdity beyond anything either Kurt Vonnegut, Jr or Samuel Beckett could’ve written.
Wall Street journal reports: 13 instances of agents firing at or into civilian vehicles since July, resulting in 8 people shot, 2 dead, only one was armed and never drew their concealed weapon, at least five shot were U.S. citizens.
See the attached article titled “The Government Unconstitutionally Labels ICE Observers as Domestic Terrorists” from the Cato Institute:https://www.cato.org/blog/dhs-policy-threatening-arresting-ice-observers-violates-their-rights
I’ve deliberately ignored the news cycle today…I’m too sad. But, a judge did restore daycare funds Trump snatched away. That is som good news (10 of my Hispanic church kids are in those programs, and they are all citizens.)
I haven’t read the WSJ article itself because paywall. I’ve found excerpts, and social media comments, that seem to say the article suggests or says that in these shootings of civilian vehicles ICE agents circle the vehicle and box it in. They then escalate the attack with contradictory orders by different agents to the vehicle operator, meaning that no matter what the vehicle operator does they are disobeying one or another of the agents’ orders, putting the operator in a Catch-22 and giving the agents legal cover to fire their weapons. This is exactly the tactic we witnessed in the video of the killing of Renee Good. Some comments also gave a name for this tactic: Kill Box.
RIP Bob Weir
My soul waits for the Lord
more than watchmen for the morning,
more than watchmen for the morning
Robert F,
The video of the Renee Good shooting is a perfect example of that. It also means that lawyers, Congressmen, other LEO agencies, politicians can use that to go after ICE training, the leadership, etc and get injunctions, damages, and force these clowns to back off. Especially when such contradictory orders violate established procedures. Rest assured what ANY bureaucrat hates is violation of procedures. Why hire more ICE agents if the ones we have are effing incompetent and CANNOT follow their own procedures? Sounds like a failure of leadership? And all the complaining about leftists and criminals will not change that fact and be an adequate defense.
RFK Jr. is saying that the feds are going to require any store that accepts food stamps to double the amount of “whole foods” available to customers in the store. What that means is that fewer stores in poor neighborhoods will accept food stamps, so families, with children, will be able to purchase less of the only foods accessible in their poor, food-desert neighborhoods with food stamps. That means they will eat less food, poor children will be eating less. Do they imagine that all of American neighborhoods have richly stocked food stores in them rather than only corner bodegas and fast food restaurants, or do they know what they are doing and actually intend to decrease federal food aid by starving poor families, including children?
Ra’ al Ghul,
I’m not convinced the agents aren’t competently following orders of their bosses; written procedure is one thing, but what happens when a whole department, DHS in this case, goes authoritarian is that the procedures aren’t worth the paper they’re written on. Procedure is a pretense and facade of legitimacy that no agent is expected to respect with their actions. I think we’re reaching a point where law suits won’t mean anything to this administration and its corrupt departments; they already have been very devalued.
In the past I heard so many liberals saying that we can trust the American military leadership not to follow illegal or immoral orders from Trump and his people. And I still hear them saying it, even after all we’ve seen the military do at Trump’s command without so much as a peep. I never believed it for a minute. The military obeys orders; it is not a democratic institutions by nature, only when compelled to be; it responds like a trained horse to an expert jockey at the command of authoritarian leadership. It is reverting quickly to habit and nature.
And the foolishness of so many people looking to the intelligence agencies for support against Trumps dictatorial moves! Is memory so short! The CIA was helping to overthrow democratically elected governments in other countries right up into the 1970s, and was involved in numerous morally odious American military ventures in other countries after that. The CIA and other American intelligence agencies were never going to be our bulwark against something like the Trump movement, never.
Well, that’s one way to get rid of Jerome Powell: open a trumped up federal criminal investigation into the man that will tie him up so much in the effort to defend himself that he resigns his position.This is mafia stuff from the Oval Office.
Robert F,
Considering Trump’s success (or rather lack thereof) in using US attorneys and federal grand juries to get rid of Leticia James (they tried 3 times and FAILED BIG TIME), I suspect this more about PR for his cult followers. It is a poor attempt at bullying, and as we know, the best way to deal with a bully is to stand up and punch them in the nose. I am sure Jerome Powell is well aware of this.
Ra’s al Ghul,
I see Vance is now talking on FOX about ICE going “door to door” to determine immigration status of people across the country in the future. Better get your papers ready, and that includes American citizens both naturalized and born here. Do you remember all the right-wingers crying about how Obama and Biden were going to take their guns? Well, the people who voted for this Trump administration should know it’s not interested in taking their guns, it’s interested in taking them and their families, or having the right to. Now we have the very likely future GOP presidential candidate supporting the idea that every household in the US should be a possible target of ICE raids. This idea is fascism in its most unadulterated form.
I would suggest that the “deal” evangelicals made was not simply with a politician. It was a deal with power as such, brokered through fear of loss and sustained by resentment. Trump was not the cause of the crisis; he was the accelerant, the revealer and the beneficiary.
Such bargains always promise protection. They always exact a deeper price. And they are never neutral to the soul of the Church, which we are close to losing…
If ICE actually tries that, there will be a whole of ICE agents that will die. Without a Judicial Warrant to enter, everybody can tell ICE to eff off and if they actually try and enter without a warrant, many ICE agents will die. There a lot more Americans with guns and who know how to use them much better than those ICEholes.
Ra’s al Ghul,
Today I saw video of ICE deploying tear gas at a very busy Minneapolis intersection just so they could shake a car behind them that was observing and recording them. They dumped a tear gas canister, or two, and moved on, without any regard for the many pedestrians and other motorists on the street who had to flee to escape the astringent gas. They don’t give a flying f—- about bystanders, anymore than they do about the right of observers to track and record them. And you know they will not be disciplined by DHS; it’s more likely they will be rewarded and encouraged than disciplined.
I fear we are going to have a My Lai in an American city.
Each day the brutality of ICE and federal agents grows and gets bolder. Trump and his team are intentionally escalating the violence in Minneapolis. This is their proving ground for what they intend for the whole country. I expect martial law to be declared in Minneapolis, perhaps in all of Minnesota. We are on the express train to fascist hell.
Robert F
I read all the same stuff you do and see all the ICE “in my town” and protests on Reddit these days. I just have a real hard time seeing what you are seeing.
What I do see is more and more people becoming mobs and succumbing to the emotions of the moment. Like the Floyd moments they are growing into problems. Unlike the Floyd days the people today are facing men who are armed and have proven they will use force, legit or not.
Now what I really want to write was I am concerned about you. Your messages on this site are growing rapidly in the wrong direction for peace and mental health.
As difficult as it is, faith in God is supposed to bring us peace in a time of hell.
Seek someone who you can talk to face to face and not over media, but not to lament over what’s wrong in the world. That just fuels the depression further.
Just my thoughts.
Peace to you.
TH,
Thank you for your concern. I’m not sure what makes you think I don’t get counseling. Do you think counseling is a magical formula, and anyone getting it will be happy and at peace? In any case, I’ve never had peace or absence of depression in my life, whether under care or not. Faith keeps me alive; I don’t expect it to make me happy, especially in times that make my conscience recoil, but just to get me through, and it does that.
Yes, we see things very differently. I see ICE and the federal government bringing strife and violence to blue state communities; I see the lawlessness in the Oval Office and White House, not in the citizens of Minnesota. That my view is not yours does not constitute mental illness. You can consider me duly notified of your concern; you don’t need to repeat it for my sake.
God’s peace to you,
Robert
“Democracy is not dying in darkness. Republicans are murdering it in broad daylight.”
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