Finally Friday Reads: Waking up to?

“So, a supposed desperately needed huge ballroom that seats anywhere from 650 to 1K people doesn’t include necessary parking for that kind of crowd? Seems a real estate genius would have thought of that. If only he hadn’t sold the hotel next door.’ @repeat1968, John Buss

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

Each news cycle brings us to yet another fresh hell. Considering the breaking news cycle is now endless, we’re suffering ongoing PTSD. I admit that I’ve always been a night person. However, I now sleep away as much of the morning as possible. Given that I teach in the evenings, it’s easy for me to hand over the morning to the Poland Avenue Rooster and the commuters from Chalmette bound for whatever the sons of overseers have planned for them on any particular day. So, yes, I’m late. It’s lucky my dog is very patient with me about morning walks.

The news from today is just as full of shock and awe as usual. We’re still blowing up fishing boats and watching the people’s house being turned into a tacky midcentury modern whore house. Who can be auctioned off next? Who is losing their livelihood and next meal today?  Today’s attack on hapless South Americans in boats is another demonstration of how far the illegal, expensive, murder of innocents will be allowed by rapists Trump and the Drunkard Secretary of “War” will go to attempt to overcompensate for their lack of true manhood. This is from the AP as reported by Konstantin Toropin. “US is sending an aircraft carrier to Latin America in major escalation of military buildup.” We’re a rogue, terrorist country now demonstrating that the rule of law is no longer our guiding North Star.

The U.S. military is sending an aircraft carrier to the waters off South America, in the latest escalation and buildup of military forces in the region, the Pentagon announced Friday.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered the USS Gerald R. Ford and its strike group to deploy to U.S. Southern Command to “bolster U.S. capacity to detect, monitor, and disrupt illicit actors and activities that compromise the safety and prosperity of the United States,” Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said in a social media post.

The USS Ford, which has five destroyers in its strike group, is currently deployed to the Mediterranean Sea. A person familiar with the operation told The Associated Press that one of those destroyers is in the Arabian Sea and another is in the Red Sea. At the time of the announcement, the USS Ford was in port in Croatia on the Adriatic Sea.

The person, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive military operations, would not say how long it would take for the strike group to arrive in the waters off South America or if all five destroyers would make the journey.

Deploying an aircraft carrier is a major escalation of military power in a region that has already seen an unusually large U.S. military buildup in the Caribbean Sea and the waters off Venezuela.

Hours before Parnell announced the news, Hegseth said the military had conducted the 10th strike on a suspected drug-running boat, leaving six people dead and bringing the death count for the strikes that began in early September to at least 43 people.

The move to deny Americans and bully them away from their ability to vote has begun. This move was announced by the JustICE department today. We are dismantling our democracy in plain sight. “Justice Department to Monitor Polling Sites in California, New Jersey.” All we need now are fierce dogs and ‘literacy’ tests.

” Today, the Department of Justice announced that it will monitor polling sites in six jurisdictions ahead of the upcoming November 4, 2025, general election to ensure transparency, ballot security, and compliance with federal law.

The Department, through the Civil Rights Division, enforces federal voting rights laws that protect the rights of all eligible citizens to access the ballot. The Department regularly deploys its staff to monitor for compliance with federal civil rights laws in elections in communities across the country.

“Transparency at the polls translates into faith in the electoral process, and this Department of Justice is committed to upholding the highest standards of election integrity,” said Attorney General Pamela Bondi. “We will commit the resources necessary to ensure the American people get the fair, free, and transparent elections they deserve.”

So, we can find funds to demolish the East Wing of the White House, carry out bombing of fishing boats, and harass voters, but we can’t pay any of our Federal Workers or Soldiers. How can this be? Charlie Savage has this political analysis of our current situation in the New York Times. “The Peril of a White House That Flaunts Its Indifference to the Law. The White House has made no legal argument explaining its bald claim that the president has wartime power to summarily kill people suspected of smuggling drugs.” It’s been a few foreign atrocities ago since I read the term “summary executions” used. If any of our rogue soldiers were caught doing this, they would be hauled in to a military tribunal immediately. What do we do with a rogue President?

Since he returned to office nine months ago, President Trump has sought to expand executive power across numerous fronts. But his claim that he can lawfully order the military to summarily kill people accused of smuggling drugs on boats off the coast of South America stands apart.

A broad range of specialists in laws governing the use of lethal force have called Mr. Trump’s orders to the military patently illegal. They say the premeditated extrajudicial killings have been murders — regardless of whether the 43 people blown apart, burned alive or drowned in 10 strikes so far were indeed running drugs.

The administration insists that the killings are lawful, invoking legal terms like “self-defense” and “armed conflict.” But it has offered no legal argument explaining how to bridge the conceptual gap between drug trafficking and associated crimes, as serious as they are, and the kind of armed attack to which those terms can legitimately apply.

The irreversible gravity of killing, coupled with the lack of a substantive legal justification, is bringing into sharper view a structural weakness of law as a check on the American presidency.

It is becoming clearer than ever that the rule of law in the White House has depended chiefly on norms — on government lawyers willing to raise objections when merited and to resign in protest if ignored, and on presidents who want to appear law-abiding. This is especially true in an era when party loyalty has defanged the threat of impeachment by Congress, and after the Supreme Court granted presidents immunity from prosecution for crimes committed with official powers.

Every modern president has occasionally taken some aggressive policy step based on a stretched or disputed legal interpretation. But in the past, they and their aides made a point to develop substantive legal theories and to meet public and congressional expectations to explain why they thought their actions were lawful, even if not everyone agreed.

I keep seeing that Monty Python skit in my mind. “Nobody expects …” The stacking of the Supreme Court, the complete cowardice and compliance of all Republican elected officials, and the responses of the Democratic Party, which seems lost in Wonderland at times, is something no one from the founders forward ever completely expected. Even when we’ve seen things inch towards totalitarianism, the institutions of governance would eventually pull through. Now we seem to capitulate on all fronts except with lawsuits brought by private lawyers to key judges. Even when we win the lawsuits, however, Trump just ignores things. It’s hard to see the impeachment remedy even being discussed with the current, feckless Speaker of the House. Please take time to read that article.

The Department of Homeland Security has turned into the Gestapo.  I always had a problem with the creation of that Department and felt it would be likely open to abuse at some point, but I never had this on my dance card.  “DHS Tries To Unmask Ice Spotting Instagram Account by Claiming It Imports Merchandise.”  Again, the most interesting information comes from alternative media sources these days. In this case, it’s 404 Media. The big media companies are too busy paying for the Ballroom Atrocity.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is trying to force Meta to unmask the identity of the people behind Facebook and Instagram accounts that post about Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) activity, arrests, and sightings by claiming the owners of the account are in violation of a law about the “importation of merchandise.” Lawyers fighting the case say the move is “wildly outside the scope of statutory authority,” and say that DHS has not even indicated what merchandise the accounts, called Montcowatch, are supposedly importing.

“There is no conceivable connection between the ‘MontCo Community Watch’ Facebook or Instagram accounts and the importation of any merchandise, nor is there any indicated on the face of the Summonses. DHS has no authority to issue these summonses,” lawyers with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) wrote in a court filing this month. There is no indication on either the Instagram or Facebook account that the accounts are selling any type of merchandise, according to 404 Media’s review of the accounts. “The Summonses include no substantiating allegations nor any mention of a specific crime or potential customs violation that might trigger an inquiry under the cited statute,” the lawyers add.

A judge temporarily blocked DHS from unmasking the owners last week.

“The court now orders Meta […] not to produce any documents or information in response to the summonses at issue here without further order of the Court,” the judge wrote in a filing. The move to demand data from Meta about the identities of the accounts while citing a customs statute shows the lengths to which DHS is willing to go to attempt to shut down and identify people who are posting about ICE’s activities.

We know the Trump Criminal Syndicate is all about the grift. Here are some thoughts by Sidney Blumenthal writing at The Guardian.  “Donald Trump has built a regime of retribution and reward. The president’s purges and attacks on his enemies have developed into a system in which injustice is made routine.” Nice use of alliteration there!

Donald Trump’s voracious desire for retribution has quickly evolved into a regular and predictable system. In the year since his election, the president’s rage and whims have assumed the form of policies in the same way that Joseph Stalin’s purges could be called policies. Figures within the federal system of justice who do not do his bidding are summarily fired and replaced by loyalists. Leaders who have called him to account or are in his way may face indictment, trial and punishment. Opponents have been designated under Presidential National Security Memorandum No 7 as “Antifa”: “anti-American”, “anti-Christian” and “anti-capitalist”, and threatened with prosecution as a “terrorist”. Meanwhile, many aligned with him escape justice, whether through the hand of the Department of Justice (DoJ) or the presidential pardon power. Now, he demands compensation for having been prosecuted to the tune of $230m from the DoJ budget.

Each of the cases involving prosecution of Trump’s enemies and, on the other hand, the leniency extended to his allies has its own peculiarities of outrage. But whatever their unique and arbitrary perversities, they are expressions of what has emerged as a technique. These episodes are not isolated or coincidental. Trump’s purge of DoJ prosecutors and FBI agents, accompanied by his installment of flunkies in senior positions, started in a rush and quickly assumed a pattern, but has now been molded into a regime. The justice department and the FBI have been remade into political agencies under Trump’s explicit command to carry out his wishes. Injustice is made routine. It is the retribution system.

The origin of this system has been exposed in the complaint of three former senior FBI officials filed on 10 September in the US district court in DC against the FBI director, Kash Patel, and the US attorney general, Pam Bondi, for illegal termination in “a campaign of retribution against Plaintiffs for what Defendants deemed to be a failure to demonstrate sufficient political loyalty”. In the complaint, Brian Driscoll, the former acting FBI director, describes a conversation in which Patel “openly acknowledged the unlawfulness of his actions”.

Driscoll had tried to shield FBI agents from being fired, the complaint alleges. Patel told him that “they” – understood by Driscoll to be the White House and justice department – had directed him to fire anyone whom they identified as having worked on a criminal investigation against Trump. The complaint continues: “Patel explained that he had to fire the people his superiors told him to fire, because his ability to keep his own job depended on the removal of the agents who worked on cases involving the President. Patel explained that there was nothing he or Driscoll could do to stop these or any other firings, because ‘the FBI tried to put the President in jail and he hasn’t forgotten it.’” When Driscoll told Patel he was violating the FBI’s own internal rules, Patel allegedly said “he understood that and he knew the nature of the summary firings were likely illegal”.

Read more and weep at the link. Orange Caligula’s favorite presidential power is that of the pardon. He’s been going wild recently, letting white guys who commit high crimes out for no particular reason other than he relates to them and the crimes.  Plus, he loves the power. This is from AXIOS’ Steve Neukam. “Exclusive: Senate Dems move to condemn Trump’s Binance pardon.” This is the case where the evidence and crime were so obvious that the guy copped to the crime. Evidently, saying you’re actually guilty doesn’t count as being actually guilty in TrumpLandia.  That doesn’t even count the amount of the Bribes that bribed Trump for the pardon by throwing crypto at Trump Klan’s plan.

Senate Democrats are moving to officially condemn President Trump’s pardon of Changpeng Zhao, better known as CZ, the founder of crypto exchange Binance, Axios has learned.

Why it matters: Some Senate Republicans have already criticized the pardon, with Democrats eyeing rare bipartisan pushback against the White House.

• Trump’s pardon of CZ, who was facing four months in prison related to money laundering, likely provides a path for Binance to operate in the U.S. after more than a year of lobbying from the president.
• Democrats argue the pardon is blatant “corruption,” urging Congress to take steps to avoid similar acts in the future.
• The resolution was led by Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), two longtime Trump foes.

The big picture: The Trump family’s crypto empire has drawn the ire of Capitol Hill this year. Their connection to Binance is only intensifying the scrutiny.

• In May, World Liberty Financial, the Trump family’s crypto venture, announced that an Emirati state-backed venture fund would use World Liberty’s new stablecoin to complete a $2 billion investment in Binance.
• “We thank President Trump for his leadership and for his commitment to make the US the crypto capital of the world,” a Binance spokesperson said in a statement.

What they’re saying: Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) said this week that the pardon “is a bad signal.”

Let me know when “officially condemning” actually works with this asshole. He wears that label like a tribute. Another Democratic Governor has stepped up to the fight to contain the Trump Regime. This time it’s Michigan’s Gretchen Whitmer.  Her latest speech on the audacities committed by Trump is highlighted in this article in The Hill. “Whitmer: ‘No one is worried about building a ballroom’.” This is reported by Ryan Mancini.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) brushed off debate over the demolition of the East Wing of the White House and President Trump’s plans to build a ballroom, saying Thursday the focus should instead be on the government shutdown’s impact on federal workers in her state.

Whitmer appeared on MSNBC’s “The Briefing with Jen Psaki” to talk about the shutdown when the host shared an “insane split screen” that featured the East Wing’s demolition “happening while the shutdown is leaving so many workers without pay and critical benefits.”

“I just wonder, from your vantage point as a governor of a state, what are you making of that split screen?” Psaki asked.

“Well, as I have talked to people, I’m telling you right now, no one is worried about building a ballroom in Washington, D.C.,” Whitmer replied. “What they want is to make sure that they can feed their kids next week. And the longer the shutdown goes, the more precarious it gets for people.”

The governor said most Americans are “never going to step foot in a ballroom over the course of their lifetime.”

“But what they do every single day is try to feed their kids, make sure that they get a job to show up to, make sure that they don’t hit a pothole on their drive to work and they have to take money out of their rent or their child care to pay to fix their damn car,” she continued. “That’s why we got to stay focused on the issues that matter to people.”

On Thursday, excavators completed the demolition of the White House’s East Wing. Set to replace is a ballroom the Trump administration expects will be finished before the end of the president’s second term in 2029. Trump said this week the project would cost roughly $300 million, and the administration released a list of donors Thursday who it said it funding the project.

I’m really getting tired of these obvious steps back to Kings, autocracy, and huge wastes of money. Who the Fuck voted for this?

What’s on your Reading, Blogging, and Action List today?