4 thoughts on “Happy Friday the 13th”

1. Thank DOG for the potential nuclear holocaust.  Given what I see on my TEE-VEE, nonstop tRUMP worship and repeated oral media-gratification that would choke Stormy Daniels, ending it all as instant vaporization and ash are increasingly better life options for all.

   What can we all shove down donnie’s pie hole to elicit squeals of ¡Happy, Happy; Joy, Joy!

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2. Ruth Ben-Ghiat, writing yesterday –

   …Ominously, Department of Homeland Security head Kristi Noem used the language of coups and foreign occupations in describing the government’s ultimate goal for its “operations” in Los Angeles. "We are not going away," Noem said. "We are staying here to liberate this city from the socialist and the burdensome leadership that this governor and that this mayor have placed on this country," referring to Newsom and Bass.
   State propaganda is now coalescing around this rhetoric of occupation and liberation, as though Los Angeles were a foreign country like Iraq, targeted by the United States for regime change —an operation Noem’s comment about Newsom and Bass evokes.

   That makes the choice of the 2nd Battalion, 7th Marines, 1st Marine division for deployment on the streets of Los Angeles especially telling. This infantry battalion served in Operation Iraqi Freedom, as well as many other operations. According to a U.S. Northern Command press release that reads like a war bulletin, the battalion will supplement “soldiers from the 79th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, a California National Guard unit in a Title 10 status, in the greater Los Angeles Area.”

   …All of these choices tell us how important the ICE operations are to the identity of this nascent regime. The government is willing to do anything –arrest judges and elected officials, and even bring in an entire infantry Marines battalion –to remove any obstructions to mass deportations from state and local officials, the law, and the population protesting in the streets.

   This shows us how dependent this administration is on its fiction of an immigrant invasion. It needs this manufactured crisis to frame its power grabs as saving the nation and to pursue mass deportation as part of its racist population engineering schemes.

   Mr. Trump may have campaigned on ending “forever wars” abroad, but he is likely starting a new “forever war” at home, and so it is fitting that a battalion with experience in the “Global War on Terrorism” would be there at the inception.

   We can expect this constructed crisis will continue, because authoritarian history teaches that the emergency must never be over, the adversary is never defeated, and the number of enemies is always expanding.

   Yet as tyranny spreads, so does its opposite, and each action they take gives us information that can inform targeted protest strategies against them. This is already happening, from the Hands Off! Actions of April, to the anti-Tesla protests, to the upcoming No Kings demonstrations.

   The power and moral force of collective action, as seen on the streets of Los Angeles and countless other cities, has already forced the government into extreme actions. This is not a sign of their strength, but a revelation of their weakness.

   With each arrest, new heroes are created for our movement and our moment, with new visibility. Slowly, more eyes will be opened to the gravity of the situation and the preciousness of our rights and our freedoms. We are just getting started.

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   • When Franklin announced the birth of the Constitution he said, "A Republic, if you can keep it."

     The "you" was not the legislative branch or the judicial branch countering the abuses of the dictator in the executive branch. "YOU" means the citizens, the foundation of power in the Constitution.

     This is the fulcrum on which democracy teeters – the character of the people who may or may not show up over the next four years.

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3. It was inevitable that the 9th would stay the order. Next week they will decide. My prediction is that they will sustain the lower court. No matter what, it goes to the USSC. The question is whether the 9th will stay their own decision pending the USSC, If they do not stay their own decision, the USSC may decide to do it, or let Newsome have the National Guard back. For Trump to be creating crisis after crisis for the USSC has to be tiresome. Or does the majority relish the idea of ending the Republic?

   Item Two: I'm praying for rain. This may shock Gid as she has not heard from me for a while. (I was planning to go to DC but car problems delayed my departure.) So I'm gonna show up for "No Kings" in Sarasota.

   Item Three: Trump was totally out of the loop. Agree with Juan Cole. Trump has been talking out both sides of his mouth about who he's for but MAGA is locked into the idea os Palestinian genocide. 

   Item Four is an illustration of Trump trying to play to everyone simultaneously. Somebody with clout got to Trump for the cheap labor migrants supply. So Trump said what somebody wants to hear. Millet won't even consider it. So whoever Trump lied to will find out pretty soon that Trump's rhetoric was empty words. It's worth noting that the Saudis, UAE and Qatar are mostly Sunni and Iraq mostly Shei. So the crowd Trump was hanging out with last month would love to see Iraq de-fanged. But both sects of Islam resent Israel. If Trump's assignment (in exchange for a 747) was to make a no-nuke deal with Iran, he failed. Let's see if they take back the plane. But Trump is trying to please everybody in the mid-east. Quite possibly he will piss everyone off.

   As I said about item three, Trump lied about policy (picking up all migrants) to somebody who can hurt Trump. Will that come back to haunt him?

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