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It’s just another crazy day in the USA. Our “president” is a madman who has surrounded himself with sycophants and assorted insane groupies. The news today is just as insane as it was yesterday and the day before and the day before that. What else can I say? Here’s what’s happening as of this morning.
President Trump asked advisers directly last week: Where were the prosecutions that he wanted to see?
He had been hearing from allies that the Justice Department wasn’t moving aggressively against the people who had investigated and prosecuted him, according to people familiar with the matter. Chief among them was former Federal Bureau of Investigation Director James Comey.
Senior Justice Department officials told him the evidence against Comey wasn’t a slam dunk, and prosecutors in Virginia didn’t want to bring the case. Other White House officials worried that such a case could end badly.
Trump told the DOJ officials to make the best case they could, officials said. He said any lack of evidence was just like what he faced in his own criminal cases, the people said.
On Thursday, Attorney General Pam Bondi delivered, extracting from a grand jury a two-count indictment against Comey related to five-year-old congressional testimony. Comey says he is innocent. The grand jury appeared to have some doubts, rejecting one additional count against Comey.
In the process, Bondi has effectively transformed the Justice Department in Trump’s second term, from an independent enforcer of the law into an extension of the White House that has pursued Trump’s foes and their associates with relish.
The Comey family is in Trump’s crosshairs.
Comey, who oversaw the initial 2016 investigation into the Trump campaign’s alleged ties to Russia that dogged much of the president’s first term, has emerged as one of the Justice Department’s biggest targets for retribution along with his family.
In July, it fired Comey’s daughter, Maurene Comey, who had been a star federal prosecutor in Manhattan, with a supervisor telling her only that the decision “came from Washington.” On Thursday, Troy Edwards Jr., a son-in-law married to another daughter, resigned from the U.S. attorney’s office in Alexandria, saying that he was doing so to uphold his oath to the Constitution.
“My family and I have known for years that there are costs to standing up to Donald Trump,” Comey said in a video after his indictment. The longtime Republican served as a senior Justice Department official in the administration of President George W. Bush and was nominated as the FBI director by President Barack Obama, before Trump fired him in 2017….
…Comey’s indictment thrust the Justice Department into uncharted territory, with Trump’s clearest breach yet of rules designed to insulate the agency from partisan pressure after the Watergate scandal roiled the agency more than five decades ago.
Tensions over the case came to a head last week after some administration officials, including Ed Martin, a Justice Department official pursuing cases of interest to Trump, privately told the president that the Justice Department was slow-walking cases against Trump critics, people familiar with the discussions said.
The Trump-appointed U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia, Erik Siebert, had told colleagues he didn’t see a case against Comey or Democratic New York Attorney General Letitia James, people familiar with the matter said.
Last Thursday, an administration official called Siebert and told him he would likely be fired.
Kat, Cat, by Katherine Ace
According to the WSJ, AG Pam Bondi and Deputy AG Todd Blanche defended Siebert, but to no avail. Trump replaced Sibert with Lindsey Halligan, an insurance lawyer who had never prosecuted a case. Halligan then presented the case to a grand jury by herself and obtained 2 indictment of Comey. Only 14 of 23 grand jurors voted to indict him on 2 of 3 counts. Apparently, Bondi is in the Trump’s dog house now, although he’s telling people he still likes her. Trump said yesterday he expected and hoped for more indictments of his political enemies.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Lindsey Vaala expressed confusion and surprise at some points during the seven-minute court session when a federal grand jury impaneled in Alexandria, Virginia, returned the indictment of former FBI Director James Comey Thursday night.
According to a transcript of the proceedings obtained by CBS News, Judge Vaala asked the newly named interim U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan — a former Trump personal lawyer — why there were two versions of the indictment.
A majority of the grand jury that reviewed the Comey matter voted not to charge him with one of the three counts presented by prosecutors, according to a form that was signed by the grand jury’s foreperson and filed in court. He was indicted on two other counts — making false statements to Congress and obstructing a congressional proceeding — after 14 of 23 jurors voted in favor of them, the foreperson told the judge.
But two versions of the indictment were published on the case docket: one with the dropped third count, and one without. The transcript reveals why this occurred.
“So this has never happened before. I’ve been handed two documents that are in the Mr. Comey case that are inconsistent with one another,” Vaala said to Halligan. “There seems to be a discrepancy. They’re both signed by the (grand jury) foreperson.”
Halligan didn’t know why two versions had been published and claimed she had only seen the one with two indictments–which she had signed herself, presumably because no line prosecutor had been willing to do so. The questioning went on for awhile.
I wonder who Halligan will find to prosecute the case? Will she do it herself? Comey has a very good attorney, Patrick Fitzgerald, remember him? He was the special prosecutor in the CIA leak case during the George W. Bush administration.
The indictment of James Comey, ordered up by President Donald Trump in a breathtaking breach of Justice Department independence, is being welcomed with glee in MAGA circles.
But the case against the former FBI director and longtime Trump nemesis may quickly end in disappointment — and even humiliation — for the prosecutor who was conscripted by the president to bring the charges.
Nataliya Bagatskaya, A Glass of Milk
The bare-bones indictment secured by that prosecutor, Trump loyalist Lindsey Halligan, is exceptionally weak, former prosecutors and legal experts say. Fundamental problems with the case itself — as well as the unusual events that preceded the indictment — will make it difficult to bring Comey to trial, let alone secure a conviction.
Former federal terrorism prosecutor Andy McCarthy called the charges “poorly done” and predicted they will be thrown out by a judge well before any trial.
“The whole thing is just bizarro,” McCarthy said. “This is the kind of thing that should never ever happen. … This case should never go to trial because it’s obvious from the four corners of the indictment that there’s no case.”
The issues that could doom the case include the overt political pressure by Trump to bring the indictment, Halligan’s own inexperience, peculiarities in the indictment itself and even a five-year-old technology issue.
Even before James B. Comey, the former F.B.I. director, was indicted this week, legal experts were already questioning whether the case might be vulnerable to an uncommon but powerful legal attack: allegations that President Trump, who has long called for Mr. Comey to be jailed, had pushed the Justice Department into opening an improper vindictive prosecution.
Such speculation gained at least a little steam this week after Mr. Trump weighed in on the charges, which center on whether Mr. Comey lied to Congress, in a manner that seemed to prejudge his guilt.
“Whether you like Corrupt James Comey or not, and I can’t imagine too many people liking him, HE LIED!” Mr. Trump wrote on social media on Friday morning. “It is not a complex lie, it’s a very simple, but IMPORTANT one. There is no way he can explain his way out of it.”
The remarks by Mr. Trump were not the first time he had shared — or over-shared — his opinions about whether Mr. Comey should be prosecuted, evincing what defense lawyers may seek to argue was a political animus by the Justice Department.
By Stu Morris
Last weekend, in an even more pointed social media post, Mr. Trump ordered Attorney General Pam Bondi to immediately get to work prosecuting Mr. Comey and two of his other enemies, Letitia James, New York’s attorney general, and Senator Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California.
“They’re all guilty as hell, but nothing is going to be done,” Mr. Trump wrote, adding, “JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!”
While vindictive prosecution motions are notoriously difficult to win, the president’s voluble vitriol and his incessant need to be on the attack could provide defense lawyers with an avenue to protect the very people he most wants to punish.
“Ironically, by demanding the prosecutions, Trump may have undercut any possibility of success by providing the people on his ‘enemies list’ with a built-in defense,” Joyce Vance, a former U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Alabama, wrote in a recent blog post on the subject.
Use the gift link to read the rest if you’re interested.
Trump has chosen the next city to get his fascist beatdown–Portland, Oregon.
President Donald Trump said Saturday he will send troops to Portland, Oregon, “authorizing Full Force, if necessary” to handle “domestic terrorists” as he expands his controversial deployments to more American cities.
He made the announcement on social media, writing that he was directing the Department of Defense to “provide all necessary Troops to protect War ravaged Portland.”
Trump said the decision was necessary to protect U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities, which he described as “under siege from attack by Antifa, and other domestic terrorists.”
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for details on Trump’s announcement, such as a timeline for the deployment or what troops would be involved. He previously threatened to send the National Guard into Chicago without following through. A deployment in Memphis, Tennessee, is expected to include only about 150 troops, far less than were sent to the District of Columbia for Trump’s crackdown or in Los Angeles in response to immigration protests….
The ICE facility in Portland has been the target of frequent demonstrations, sometimes leading to violent clashes. Some federal agents have been injured and several protesters have been charged with assault. When protesters erected a guillotine earlier this month, the Department of Homeland Security described it as “unhinged behavior.” [….]
“We’re going to get out there and we’re going to do a pretty big number on those people in Portland,” he said, describing them as “professional agitators and anarchists.”
President Donald Trump said Saturday that he will send troops to Portland, Oregon, and to immigration detention facilities around the country, authorizing “Full Force, if necessary” and escalating a campaign to use the U.S. military against Americans that has little modern precedent….
Portrait with Cat by Arsen Kurbanov
Portland has been a target of right-wing politicians for the way it has handled racial-justice protests as well as its homeless population, tolerating encampments in the central part of the city. But Trump will again encounter the dynamic he did when he deployed the National Guard in Los Angeles — a military deployment in a state run by a Democratic governor who objects to the decision and will have grounds to fight it in court.
It was not immediately clear whether Trump plans to deploy active-duty troops, National Guard members, or both, to Portland. As was the case in similar discussions in other cities, there are legal limits to how he can do so.
One official familiar with the discussion on Saturday said defense officials were seeking clarity on what Trump desires in this situation. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak frankly about private planning.
President Donald Trump has dispatched federal agents to Portland, local elected officials said in a hastily scheduled press conference on Friday night. Those agents have amassed at the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement office on the South Waterfront and have been observed in other locations across the city, officials said.
“We now have a sudden influx of federal agents in our city,” Mayor Keith Wilson said. “We did not ask for them to come. They are here without precedent or purpose.”
Over and over, officials described the agents’ arrival as an attempt to goad residents into a confrontation that would give the president a pretext for a military crackdown.
“This is the ‘Don’t take the bait’ press conference,” said U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.). “Their goal is to create an engagement—an engagement that will lead to conflict. President Trump has one goal. His goal is to make Portland look like what he’s been describing it as. Let’s not grant him that wish.”
The phalanx of local officials assembled at Westminster Presbyterian Church in Northeast Portland—ranging from the majority of city councilors to two members of Congress—admitted they weren’t sure whether the federal ingress into Portland consisted of military officers or merely agents from the Federal Protective Service.
More details at the link.
We may soon learn how much damage Trump has done to the National Weather Service.
Some National Weather Service staffers are working double shifts to keep forecasting offices open. Others are operating under a “buddy system,” in which adjacent offices help monitor severe weather in understaffed regions. Still others are jettisoning services deemed not absolutely necessary, such as making presentations to schoolchildren.
The Trump administration’s cuts to the Weather Service — where nearly 600 workers,or about 1 in every 7, have left through firings, resignations or retirements — are pushing the agency to its limits, according to interviews with current and former staffers.
By Ramy Salah Hefny
The incoming head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has promised to prioritize filling those jobs, and the White House recently granted the Weather Service an exemption from a government-wide hiring freeze. But as the Atlantic hurricane season peaks and wildfires ramp up in the West, hundreds of positions remain vacant, staff said. Forecasters are currently watching two storms, including one that could pose a threat for the eastern United States by early next week.
So far, exhausted employees have maintained weather monitoring and forecasting almost without interruption, staff said. But many are wondering how much longer they can keep it up. If the government shuts down next week when funding runs out, many employees could also find themselves working without pay, at least temporarily.
“We have a strained and severely stretched situation,” said Tom Fahy, legislative director for the National Weather Service Employees Organization, the union that represents the agency’s workers. The Weather Service has a famously dedicated workforce, he said, but workers can put in only so many long hours and extra shifts. “There’s a breaking point.”
Fahy said two offices — one in California’s Central Valley and another in western Kansas — no longer have enough staffing to operate around the clock. And, he added, “there are still a dozen offices across the country that are operating on reduced staffs.”
Use the gift link if you want to read more.
Pete Hegseth’s power play
I’m sure you’ve heard about the weird meeting Pete Hegseth has order hundreds of top military officers to attend in person.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s surprise gathering of hundreds of generals and admirals in Virginia next week is being called so he can describe the administration’s reinvention of the Department of Defense as the “Department of War” and outline new standards for military personnel, according to half a dozen people familiar with the planning.
“It’s meant to be a show of force of what the new military now looks like under the president,” a White House official told CNN.
The meeting is expected to resemble “a pep rally” where Hegseth will underscore the importance of the “warrior ethos” and outline a new vision for the US military, said three of the sources. He is expected to discuss new readiness, fitness and grooming standards the officers are expected to adhere to and enforce.
“It’s about getting the horses into the stable and whipping them into shape,” said a defense official familiar with the planning. “And the guys with the stars on their shoulders make for a better audience from an optics standpoint. This is a showcase for Hegseth to tell them: get on board, or potentially have your career shortened.”
WTF?!
Hegseth’s team is planning on recording his speech and releasing it publicly later, three of the sources said, and the White House is planning to amplify it, the White House official said.
As of Friday, there were no plans for Hegseth to make a major national security-related announcement as part of the meeting, all of the sources said, making it even more surprising that he has ordered the officers to attend in person and leave their posts for what will essentially be a major speech.
By Ektarina Yastrebova
As of now, there isn’t expected to be a weapons showcase for the officers as President Donald Trump suggested, according to the White House official and one of the sources familiar with the planning. Trump is not currently planning to be involved or attend the meeting on Tuesday, two officials told CNN.
The original idea for the unprecedented gathering of generals and admirals was Hegseth’s, the White House official and one of the sources familiar with the planning said. Hegseth later let the White House know about the plans, but Trump himself knew very little about the details when he was asked about it in the Oval Office on Thursday, the White House official said.
I’m no military expert, but isn’t it kind of dangerous to have our enemies know that all those top generals and admirals will be in one room for an hour or so?
US military officials are reportedly bracing for possible firings or demotions after the Trump administration’s Pentagon chief, Pete Hegseth, abruptly summoned hundreds of generals and admirals from around the world to attend a gathering in Virginia in the upcoming days.
The order to attend the meeting, which has been described as unusual and unprecedented, was reportedly issued with little explanation – and prompted military personnel stationed overseas to have to make last-minute travel arrangements.
A Pentagon spokesperson confirmed the upcoming gathering to the Guardian, saying that Hegseth “will meet with his senior military leaders”, but did not provide any further details.
According to the Times, the Pentagon informed congressional committees overseeing the military on Friday that Hegseth intends to use the gathering to share with “most senior service members his intent for the department”, including new guidance on “military fitness standards and several other areas of interest”.
Sources cited by the Post say that Tuesday’s address will be the first of three short lectures by Hegseth. The second, the Post reported, will reportedly focus on the defense industrial base, and the third on deterrence.
Well, we’ve definitely thrown the dice and entered the Darkest Timeline. Every day brings something shocking and awful. Most of the professional folks have either resigned or been removed from their positions. What we have left are the usual assortment of incompetents, loyalists to Dotard Donald, and the usual grift machine. The DOJ is basically the Don’s personal enforcers now, skating outside the law.
The arraignment date for James Comey is October 9. He will be booked as he was indicted on Trumped-up evidence, including an indictment that includes words that he did not say. Yam Tits has given the press a chance to witness his gloating and using the term “sick, radical left people,” which is about as weird as him taking aim at the Antifa philosophy as some kind of club with a membership list and dues. Meanwhile, what remains of the cult has stewed their brains in this shit so long, it’s impossible to believe they haven’t all lost their minds.
So, the Comey Timeline includes his last-minute maneuvers concerning Hillary Clinton that definitely contributed to Orange Caligula’s first Reign of Terror and Stupidity. You may check our archives for that travesty of justice. However, it’s not difficult to separate his karma from Yam Tit’s likely illegal indictment campaign. So, let’s go there. This is from the SubStack “Public Notice”and Lisa Needham. “The tragicomical indictment of James Comey. In a sane country, this thing would be laughed out of court.”
For the last few days, the indictment of former FBI Director James Comey felt inevitable, so when news of it dropped Thursday night, it wasn’t as much a surprise as a confirmation that the Trump administration is completely out of control.
ABC News broke the news Thursday that Comey had been indicted for obstruction and making a false statement in relation to his 2020 testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee. NBC News reported that the charges are based on testimony Comey gave in a September 30, 2020, hearing. During it, Sen. Ted Cruz asked Comey about his 2017 testimony, when Comey said he did not authorize former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe to leak anything to the press. Comey stood by what he testified three years earlier, but MAGAs are convinced he lied.
Ryan Goodman of Just Security has a good rundown on Bluesky of the flimsy basis of the charges against Comey, which can basically be summed up as “Ted Cruz misunderstands or mischaracterizes things or both.”
Why are we all guessing at what the charges are based on when the indictment is available? Well, because Lindsey Halligan, one of Trump’s myriad former personal attorneys and currently his handpicked acting US attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, didn’t really see fit to include much in the way of detail.
The indictment clocks in at 1.5 pages, and you can read the whole thing in about 30 seconds if you have some time during a commercial break. Here’s the entirety of the explanation of the first charge:
On or about September 30, 2020, in the Eastern District of Virginia, the defendant, JAMES B. COMEY JR., did willfully and knowingly make a materially false, fictitious, and fraudulent statement in a matter within the jurisdiction of the legislative branch of the Government of the United States, by falsely stating to a U.S. Senator during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing that he, JAMES B. COMEY JR., had not “authorized someone else at the FBI to be an anonymous source in news reports” regarding an FBI investigation concerning PERSON 1.
2. That statement was false, because, as JAMES B. COMEY JR. then and there knew, he in fact had authorized PERSON 3 to serve as an anonymous source in news reports regarding an FBI investigation concerning PERSON 1.
That’s it. That’s the whole of Count One, alleging false statements within the jurisdiction of the legislative branch under 18 U.S.C. 1001(a)(2). A source told CNN that this is related to “Arctic Haze,” an FBI investigation into leaks that ultimately appeared in four news articles.
Republican Lawmakers are obviously playing victims along with Lady Lindsey, doing the usual pearl-clutching hysteria. Nebraska Republican Don Bacon is one of the few speaking like he’s confused by the Darkest Timeline, too. Here’s another one that’s deeply off the reality vector. This is from The Guardian. “Republican Arizona lawmaker makes post calling for execution of Democratic congresswoman. John Gillette on X called for ‘people like’ Pramila Jayapal to be ‘hanged’ in response to her video on anti-Trump protests.”
An Arizona Republican state representative who has expressed support for January 6 insurrectionists on Wednesday called for a Democratic congresswoman to be executed, as a response to a video clip.
The comment on X by state representative John Gillette of Kingman, Arizona, first reported by the Arizona Mirror, was a reaction to a short clip drawn from a YouTube video in March by US representative Pramila Jayapal, a longtime Democratic congresswoman representing Washington state, entitled “The Resistance Lab.” In the video, Jayapal discusses preparations for street protests against the Trump administration.
“Until people like this, that advocate for the overthrow of the American government are tried, convicted and hanged … it will continue,” he posted.
Nothing in either the clip or the longer video actually suggests Jayapal is advocating for the overthrow of the US government. The video carries explicit calls for non-violent protest and discussed with alarm a rise in political violence in the US.
Gillette’s comment is a continuation of a string of inflammatory far-right online invective by the Mohave county Republican and retired army reserve command sergeant major. Gillette has defended January 6protesters, who were intent on violently overturning Trump’s defeat by Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election, as “political prisoners” and described Muslims as “terrorists”.
It also reflects a widening call among Republicans to criminalize protest and speech critical of the Trump administration.
What fucking country is this? Here’s another Gestapo move by the ICE thugs. “ICE agents point guns at bystanders during violent arrest in Maryland. “What’re you gonna do? Shoot me?” one witness yelled. “Go ahead. Shoot me.” This analysis is by Maris Kabas writing for “The Handbasket”.
For about nine minutes Wednesday morning, ICE agents pinned a man to the ground in the middle of a Maryland intersection. It was broad daylight as he screamed in anguish and shouted for help in both Spanish and English. When bystanders gathered to bear witness, agents briefly brandished their guns and pointed at them, with one officer appearing to keep his finger on the trigger for several minutes after. According to witness Raphi Talisman, “It looked like he was trying to calm himself, but at the same time, his gun was brandished and he was ready.”
Talisman posted to Facebook Wednesday a more than nine minute video he’d just recorded at the intersection of Hamilton St. and Queens Chapel Rd. in Hyattsville, just 6.5 miles from The White House. The freelance photojournalist captioned it: “The video I took of them speaks for itself. Ice treated the man they arrested like an animal! I just dropped my son off at school and I was coming home when I saw this. Notice the Ice officer pulls his gun out.”
Talisman’s video, along with others reviewed by The Handbasket, begin while the incident is already in progress, with the man face down in the middle of the intersection just beyond a crosswalk while two ICE agents physically restrain him. Just before he began recording, Talisman was sitting in his car when he saw a man run into the intersection with the two agents chasing him. Once they tackled him to the ground, Talisman got out of his car and began recording.
The Handbasket spoke to Talisman by phone Friday morning to get additional context about the violence he witnessed. He said after seeing videos from around the country this year of ICE brutality, he’d been waiting for something like this to happen in the town he calls home. “It felt totally familiar and I think a lot of people are primed for it, especially if you live in an area that has a diverse population, and if one is following the news and just paying attention,” Talisman said.
In the video, agents can be seen kneeling on the man’s back and crushing his neck. At one point the gun falls out of one of the agents’ holsters and after scrambling to grab it, he points it at the crowd of people watching and filming his brutality. His partner briefly draws his weapon and aims at the crowd, too, while the man on the ground repeatedly yells “I am American!” Talisman estimates there were about 30 witnesses gathered at the scene, with many others driving by.
After about 20 seconds, the first officer aims his gun towards the ground, with one hand resting on top of the gun and the other appearing to still be on the trigger. He remains in this position for another seven minutes. “What’re you gonna do? Shoot me?” one witness yells. “Go ahead. Shoot me.”
At least four additional agents arrive on the scene to help keep the captured man on the ground while their armed colleague gazes menacingly at witnesses and takes heaving breaths. At one point you can hear the man on the ground yell “I live in America! I love you America!” None of the agents on the scene would provide their badge numbers or names when asked repeatedly by witnesses.
This comes a few days after this act of cruelty. NBC NEWSreports. “Video shows ICE with 5-year-old girl while agents attempt to arrest her father. The Department of Homeland Security said the father ignored directions to pull over and “abandoned” his daughter.” This is absolute cruelty and child abuse!
A video obtained by Telemundo Nueva Inglaterra shows Immigration and Customs Enforcement with a 5-year-old girl, whose mother says is autistic, while agents attempt to arrest her father near their Massachusetts home.
The video, provided to Telemundo Nueva Inglaterra by the girl’s mother, depicts the girl sitting beside an SUV with three agents nearby outside her home in Leominster last Tuesday. Her father at the time was inside.
The girl’s mother told Telemundo — which is owned and operated by NBCUniversal, the parent company of NBC News — that her husband called her while he was driving with their daughter shortly before the incident and told her he thought he was being followed.
Her husband, Edward Hip Mejia, drove home and “managed to run back into the parking lot of my house,” she said, and her daughter as a result was left with the agents.
“They took my daughter, she’s 5 years old. She has autism spectrum,” the girl’s mother is heard telling agents in the video. “Give me my daughter back.”
Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement that Mejia “ignored law enforcement emergency lights to pull over and drove back to his house. He fled from the car, gave officers the double middle finger, and darted inside his house. He abandoned his 5-year-old daughter in the car. Officers helped rescue the child and called local police to report the abandonment.”
Then there is this:
This has particular meaning to me. I’ve visited the Wounded Knee site many times. I was there, in 1974, when Russell Means ( Waŋblí Ohítika) and Lakota activists took over the Nebraska State Capitol. I spent time at the encampments and heard many stories of the horrible treatment of the indigenous people. I cannot believe we’re totally reversing history, where this massacre is once again a monument to white colonialism and racism. This is from The Independent. “Pete Hegseth says Wounded Knee veterans will be allowed to keep their medals. Secretary of War rules that U.S. troops who received America’s highest military honor for their part in the explosion of violence in which hundreds of Lakota Sioux were killed can hold onto their accolades.”What’s next? Statues of Custer everywhere?
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has ruled that U.S. Army soldiers who were awarded the Medal of Honor for their part in the Battle of Wounded Knee on December 29, 1890, will be allowed to keep them.
In a video posted to X Thursday, the secretary explained that Joe Biden’s administration established a special review panel to determine whether the combatants should have been rewarded for their part in the shoot-out, otherwise known as the Wounded Knee Massacre, in which as many as 375 Lakota men, wome,n and children were killed or injured, according to a 1990 Senate resolution.
Twenty-five U.S. Army troops were also killed, and another 39 were wounded. Nineteen people were subsequently awarded America’s highest military honor for their role in the bloodshed in South Dakota.
The Biden panel recommended in October 2024 that the medals should stand, but, according to Hegseth, his predecessor, then-secretary of defense Lloyd Austin, failed to act because he was “more interested in being politically correct than historically correct.”
“Such careless inaction has allowed for their distinguished recognition to remain in limbo until now,” the secretary continued. “Under my direction, we’re making it clear without hesitation that the soldiers who fought in the Battle of Wounded Knee in 1890 will keep their medals, and we’re making it clear that they deserve those medals.
The EVIL! It BURNS! One more and then I’m going to go take a shower to wash all of this off of me. This is from the SubStack “Scenes from a Slow Civil War” by Jeff Sharlet. “Rubber Glue Fascism. A close reading of “NATIONAL SECURITY PRESIDENTIAL MEMORANDUM/NSPM-7: Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence.”
The news cycle yesterday was still spinning around Kimmel, and tomorrow it’ll be busy with Comey. But in between came bigger news: the “memo” named in my subtitle. A “Terror Memo.” I don’t like sending traffic to this White House, but you should read it. In its expansive definition of “terror,” “Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence” may prove to be as much of an acceleration in this slow civil war as the assassination of Charlie Kirk.
I’m no lawyer. Just a journalist, long on the rightwing beat, and an English professor who likes to linger in the luxury of close reading. What follows is my preliminary pass.
First, there’s the form: an executive memo instead of an order. Even as this memo goes into much deeper detail than Monday’s executive order designating an amorphous anything called “antifa” as a “terrorist organization,” the memo, as a form, is looser, free of the need to cite constitutional authority. And yet it retains the “force of law”—perfect for the president who says “it’s not illegal if it saves the country.” And, given what appears to be the vast reallocation of resources called for the Terror Memo, another advantage of the form is that it doesn’t require the Office of Budget and Management to issue a “budgetary impact statement.” What’ll the tab be? Don’t ask. Such questions could, according to the memo, become subject to investigation.
Section 1 lays out the case for action, and from its very first words—”heinous assassinations”—it’s a subtle sleight-of-hand. Note the plural, assassinations. There’s Charlie Kirk, yes. “This was preceded,” the memo continues, “by the 2024 assassination of a senior healthcare executive… the 2022 assassination attempt against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh [and] two separate assassination attempts against my own life.” Excluded from the list is the assassination by a politically-motivated Christian nationlist of Democratic Minnesota state legislator Melissa Hortman and her husband, and the attempted murder of state senator John Hoffman his wife. Not all murders matter; but those that do, the memo declares, are a conspiracy hatched by forces far greater than the actual individual gunmen, little fish in whom the the memo shows no interest.
The real enemy, according to the memo, is “organized”:
This political violence is not a series of isolated incidents and does not emerge organically. Instead, it is a culmination of sophisticated, organized campaigns of targeted intimidation, radicalization, threats, and violence designed to silence opposing speech, limit political activity, change or direct policy outcomes, and prevent the functioning of a democratic society. A new law enforcement strategy that investigates all participants in these criminal and terroristic conspiracies — including the organized structures, networks, entities, organizations, funding sources, and predicate actions behind them — is required.
It’s critical to name this bait-&-switch: Using real acts of violence by a handful of unaffiliated individuals to launch an attack on the much greater strength of liberal / left “organized structures, networks, entities, organizations, [and] funding sources.” This isn’t about a manhunt to stop the next murderer before he can shoot; it’s a “new… strategy,” the deconstruction by state power of far less dramatic efforts to build the very step-by-step systemic rule-of-law resistance that is the opposite of violence.
Please continue to read the rest of this at the link. I think the Darkest Timeline includes Domestic Terrorism by the Trump administration.
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It has been a difficult week for me, my Aunt Celeste has been diagnosed with HER2 Positive Breast Cancer. Those who have been readers of the blog know that I am extremely close to my aunt, she is more like a sister to me. So I’m just posting cartoons today.
Stay safe…
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Will there ever be another slow news day in the U.S.? Every day we see more stunning news–violent incidents, embarrassing, chaotic, and illegal behavior from our “president,” shocks to the economy from Trump’s tariffs and mass deportations, and more. We have to survive 3 more years of this insanity. There are some hopeful signs. Trump is very unpopular and his poll numbers are dropping rapidly. There are also signs that he is having health challenges. But I think he has changed our country long-term by inflaming his followers with lies and disinformation. There is definitely a core group of about 30 percent of the population that clings to him no matter what. And one of the biggest dangers is the behavior of the Trumpists on the Supreme court. Anyway, on to today’s news and comment.
First, the breaking news. There has been a shooting at an ICE facility in Dallas.
— Three people were shot at an ICE facility in Dallas this morning, an ICE spokesperson confirmed to NBC News.
— Two people are dead, including the shooter, who died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, Dallas police said in a news conference. No ICE officers were hurt in the shooting.
— Round found near the shooter, who was dead when police arrived, contained messages that were “anti-ICE in nature,” Special Agent in Charge of the Dallas FBI Joe Rothrock said at a news conference. He added that the attack was an act of “targeted violence.”
— The victims’ identities will not be released at this time, but Rothrock said no law enforcement personnel were hurt during the attack.
— The shooter fired multiple rounds from a nearby roof or an elevated position down into the field office’s sally port, an ICE spokesperson confirmed.
— The motive behind the shooting, or what the shooter was targeting, is not immediately clear.
According to FBI Director Kash Patel, “Anti-ICE” was written on one of shell casings. This story is still developing.
It’s irrefutable now: Trump is nakedly following the playbook of autocrats like Vladimir Putin and Viktor Orban. As his poll numbers fall, he is rushing to lock in permanent power by punishing his opponents and intimidating everyone else into submission. Craven congressional Republicans and a complicit Supreme Court have abetted Trump’s destruction of our democratic safeguards and norms.
Yet Trump has a significant problem that neither Putin nor Orban faced. When Putin and Orban were consolidating their autocratics, they were genuinely popular. They were perceived by the public as effective and competent leaders. Just nine months into his presidency, Trump, by contrast, is deeply unpopular. He is increasingly seen as chaotic and inept. As David Frum says, this means that he is in a race against time. Can he consolidate power before he loses his aura of inevitability? Will those who run major institutions – particularly corporate CEOs – understand that we are at a crucial juncture, and that by accommodating Trump they have more to lose than by standing up to him?
To put it bluntly, is the Jimmy Kimmel affair the harbinger of a failed Trumpian putsch?
Krugman notes that Trump’s role models, Putin and Orban were popular during their takeovers, in contrast to Trump.
Trump’s net approval, by contrast, turned negative within weeks after taking office and has just continued to fall.
As G. Elliott Morris points out, his position looks even worse when you consider intensity. Almost half the public disapproves “strongly,” twice the share with strong approval.
Jimmy Kimmel
It’s clear that if Trump were subject to normal political constraints, obliged to follow the rule of law and accept election results, he would already be a political lame duck. His future influence and those of his minions would be greatly reduced by his unpopularity. But at this juncture he is a quasi-autocrat. He is the leader of a party that accommodates his every whim, backed by a corrupt Supreme Court prepared to validate whatever he does, no matter how clearly it violates the law.
As a result, Trump has been able to use the vast power of the federal government to deliver punishments and rewards in a completely unprecedented way. He has arbitrarily cut off funding to universities, refused to spend Congressionally-mandated funds, threatened to take away broadcast licenses, fired officials who are supposed to have job security, pardoned J6 insurrectionists, defied the lower courts, retaliated against those who have tried to hold him accountable, and enriched his family. This has created a climate of intimidation, with many institutions preemptively capitulating to Trump’s demands as if he already had total power.
But the fact is that Trump has not yet locked in his autocracy. Timid institutions are failing to understand not only how unpopular Trump is, but also how severe a backlash they are likely to face for surrendering without a fight.
Disney figured it out; we’ll see what happens with Sinclair and NexStar. Read the entire post at the link.
An unbowed Jimmy Kimmel took aim at President Donald Trump and FCC Chair Brendan Carr last night in a blistering, emotional return to ABC. Kimmel tore into the Trump administration for its “dangerous … anti-American” bid to have him canceled, and heaped praise on the conservative politicians and commentators who spoke up for freedom of speech. “This show is not important,” Kimmel said. “What is important is that we get to live in a country that allows us to have a show like this.”
Kimmel blended humor with invective. “I’m not sure who had a weirder 48 hours,” he deadpanned, “me or the CEO of Tylenol.” Robert De Niro made an appearance, playing a mafioso-style Carr issuing threats to ABC. And addressing the expected sky-high audience for last night’s show, Kimmel said: “You almost have to feel sorry for [Trump]. He tried his best to cancel me — instead he forced millions of people to watch the show … He might have to release the Epstein files to distract from this.”
Kimmel came close to tears as he partially addressed his own comments — about Charlie Kirk’s suspected killer — which sparked the initial backlash from the right. “I want to make something clear,” he said, voice wavering. “It was never my intention to make light of the murder of a young man.” Later, he hailed the words of forgiveness that Erika, Kirk’s widow, delivered at Sunday’s memorial. “It touched me deeply,” Kimmel said. “If there’s anything we should take from this tragedy to carry forward, I hope it can be that. Not this.”
President Donald Trump threw a fit on social media on Tuesday night as late night TV nemesis Jimmy Kimmel headed back to the airwaves.
He said Kimmel should “rot in his bad Ratings,” called his show a “major Illegal Campaign Contribution” to the Democratic National Committee and threatened legal action against the “true bunch of losers” at ABC.
“I can’t believe ABC Fake News gave Jimmy Kimmel his job back,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social website about an hour before Kimmel’s return to television. “The White House was told by ABC that his Show was cancelled!”
Despite Trump’s claim, Kimmel’s show was suspended ― not canceled ― over comments the host made about the suspect in the public assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
“Why would they want someone back who does so poorly, who’s not funny, and who puts the Network in jeopardy by playing 99% positive Democrat GARBAGE,” he wrote. “He is yet another arm of the DNC and, to the best of my knowledge, that would be a major Illegal Campaign Contribution.”
Maybe because Kimmel is more popular than crybaby Trump?
Yesterday, Trump embarrassed himself and all Americans in an unbelievably bad speech to the U.N. It was truly horrifying, and a historic stain on our country.
Instead of a traditional public address from a world leader, U.S. President Donald Trump tilted back his badly-dyed hair-sprayed coif and howled at the moon for the better part of an hour during his speech to the UN General Assembly on Tuesday morning.
Well, not the better part. Definitely not the better part.
To describe the speech as insane, while accurate, would distract from just how extraordinarily packed with lies it was. How profoundly ignorant it was. How much damage it did to the United States’ standing in the world—it clearly marked a low point in America’s relationship with the United Nations and the international order we helped create in the wake of World War II.
From a purely U.S. political perspective, emphasizing how haggard and low-energy our rapidly declining president was is key. He made a point to note that an apparent mechanical issue with a UN escalator was an insurmountable problem, for example—most of the rest of us who are in fairly reasonable shape might have noted a stalled escalator is actually just a stairway that we could have walked right up.
But it would nonetheless, be a mistake, to ignore just how crazed the speech was. It was apparent from Trump’s opening moments when he railed about the UN’s broken teleprompter to the point later when he brought it up again in his broader condemnation of the UN as also broken, highlighting what he saw as its uselessness in not coming to his assistance in solving the famous seven global conflicts that we all know he did not solve. It was apparent in the fact that he argued that he deserves the Nobel Peace prize while noting he also takes great pride in discussing the attack he authorized on Iran, and those he has ordered against boats he claims without evidence were trafficking in drugs on the high seas.
The speech contained the most extensive condemnation of green energy and what Trump considers the climate change hoax that we have ever heard from a public official since possibly the invention of the steam engine. Science be damned. Oligarchs love fossil fuels or what Trump noted that he demands White House staffers refer to as “beautiful, clean coal.” Windmills, windmills on the other hand, are the pinwheels of Satan. (Someday we will get to the bottom of Trump’s anemomenophobia. Clearly, he had a bad experience with something that blew him the wrong way as a child. Or more recently.)
He defended his irrational, lose-lose global trading system destroying tariffs which in and of itself will soon be listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders as an extreme symptom of economic psychosis. He downplayed civilian casualties in Ukraine and explained this war wouldn’t have happened if there had been good leadership in the country—in front of President Volodymyr Zelensky, no less.
And there was so much more. He even claimed that he had settled 7 global conflicts and that everyone thinks he deserves the Nobel Peace Prize. Read more at the link.
Seven years ago this week, Donald Trump addressed the United Nations and began his remarks with an absurdity. “In less than two years,” the American president said, “my administration has accomplished more than almost any administration in the history of our country.” The boast, of course, was plainly false.
But just as important at the time was that everyone in attendance at the U.N. General Assembly recognized the rhetoric as silly — and some of the diplomats in the room started audibly laughing. The laughter caught the Republican off-guard and left Trump in a position he’d long hoped to avoid: the target of international ridicule.
In some ways, the Republican’s address was a handy encapsulation of where Trump stands in the fifth year of his White House tenure.
The Trumps struggle with a UN escalator.
Over the course of his remarks, he told strange lies about foreign investments in the U.S. He generated murmurs in the hall by declaring, “Our message is very simple. If you come illegally into the United States, you’re going to jail or you’re going back to where you came from — or perhaps even further than that. You know what that means.”
And for good measure, he claimed that unnamed “environmentalists” want to ban cows.
Perhaps most importantly, Trump told one of his favorite lies, bragging that international respect for the U.S. has reached all-time highs now that he’s back in power.
President Donald Trump broke from his prepared remarks at the United Nations on Tuesday to bemoan an inoperable escalator and a defective teleprompter, using the incidents to portray the global body as dysfunctional.
“All I got from the United Nations was an escalator that on the way up stopped right in the middle,” he mused, chopping the air with his hand.
But it turns out the cause was closer to Trump.
Stephane Dujarric, the U.N. spokesman, said a videographer from the U.S. delegation who ran ahead of him triggered the stop mechanism at the top of the escalator.
“The safety mechanism is designed to prevent people or objects accidentally being caught and stuck in or pulled into the gearing,” Dujarric said in a statement. “The videographer may have inadvertently triggered the safety function.”
On the Teleprompter:
As he began his speech, Trump also noted that the teleprompter wasn’t working. He joked that whoever was running the teleprompter “is in big trouble.”
A U.N. official speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue contributed that one to his side as well, saying the White House was operating the teleprompter for the president.
The day before yesterday, Trump gave an insane “health” press conference with RFK Jr. and Dr. Oz. JJ, in which they claimed that Tylenol as well as vaccines are causes of autism. JJ covered it in yesterday’s post.
Federal health officials are telling Americans no, they shouldn’t take Tylenol during pregnancy for fear of autism and yes, they should try a drug used in cancer care to treat children who have developed autism. The medical world disagrees.
“We were actually pretty alarmed by some of the output that was coming from the administration,” Marketa Wills, CEO and medical director of the American Psychiatric Association, said in an interview. At a remarkable White House briefing on Monday, President Trump and his top health and science officials said Tylenol use in pregnancy caused some cases of autism in children and said leucovorin, a form of vitamin B9, could treat the disease.
RFK Jr. and Trump claim to have found causes for autism.
The event has drawn a flood of pushback from medical societies, autism organizations, and pediatric experts through official statements, interviews, and social media. Much more research is needed on the claims about Tylenol and leucovorin in particular, experts emphasized.
Until more research is conducted, Wills recommends that doctors rely on professional societies, peer-reviewed research in medical journals, and resources like UpToDate and the Washington Manual for guidance on how to talk with patients.
John Whyte, CEO of the American Medical Association, pointed out that there were discrepancies between the bold statements from the president and other government guidance. “If I ignore the press conference, and I listen to what the FDA wrote to providers, I would say — you know what? It’s talking about the lowest dose for the shortest period of time, and that’s not a bad thing,” White said. “That’s different than what I heard at the press conference.” [….]
While President Trump repeatedly told women to “tough it out” rather than take Tylenol for fever or pain during pregnancy, medical experts said there are good reasons to consider the medication.
“Brains are impacted by fever,” Joia Crear-Perry, an OB-GYN and founder and president of the National Birth Equity Collaborative, told STAT.
There are also studies suggesting fever is associated with the risk of autism spectrum disorder, but it’s unknown whether treatment decreases that risk, Brenna Hughes, interim chair of obstetrics and gynecology at Duke University School of Medicine, wrote in an email to STAT.
Elon Musk has not been shy about putting much of his life on public display. The tech billionaire posts daily on his social network X, has cooperated with two biographies and often speaks on podcasts and at conferences.
But there is one part of his life that he has not revealed much about — his longtime estrangement from his father, Errol Musk, who has become increasingly outspoken about his family and business ventures tied to the Musk name.
Errol Musk
A New York Times investigation found that a significant factor in Elon Musk’s rupture with his father stems from accusations against Errol Musk of child sex abuse. The allegations have repeatedly spilled over into Elon Musk’s life as relatives have contacted him for help and he has sometimes taken action to intercede, according to personal letters, emails and interviews with family members.
The family’s troubles have entangled Elon Musk in a painful three-decade multigenerational saga that continues to trail him. The fallout has kept the 54-year-old mogul tethered to South Africa, where he was born and where Errol Musk lives, even as he has built a business empire in the United States and briefly ascended to political power as a close adviser to President Trump.
The allegations against Errol Musk involve five of his children and stepchildren, whom he was accused of abusing in South Africa and California, according to police and court records, personal correspondence, social workers and interviews with family members.
The earliest accusation was in 1993 when Errol Musk’s stepdaughter, then 4 years old, told relatives he had touched her at the family house. A decade later, the stepdaughter said she caught him sniffing her dirty underwear. Some family members have also accused Errol Musk of abusing two of his daughters and a stepson. And as recently as 2023, family members and a social worker attempted to intervene after his then 5-year-old son said his father had groped his buttocks.
Three separate police investigations were opened, according to police and court records, as well as family members. Two of the inquiries ended, while it’s unclear what happened in the third. Errol Musk, 79, has not been convicted of any crime.
The abuse allegations have caused strife within the Musk family, with some relatives turning to Elon Musk — who is Errol Musk’s eldest child — for help. Around 2010, one relative wrote Elon Musk a five-page letter about some of the accusations and implored him to intervene.
“We really need your advice, help and guidance in these matters because we daily see these children suffer,” the relative wrote in the letter, which was viewed by The Times.
Use the gift link to read the rest.
Those are my recommended reads for today. What stories have you been following?
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The Sky Dancing banner headline uses a snippet from a work by artist Tashi Mannox called 'Rainbow Study'. The work is described as a" study of typical Tibetan rainbow clouds, that feature in Thanka painting, temple decoration and silk brocades". dakinikat was immediately drawn to the image when trying to find stylized Tibetan Clouds to represent Sky Dancing. It is probably because Tashi's practice is similar to her own. His updated take on the clouds that fill the collection of traditional thankas is quite special.
You can find his work at his website by clicking on his logo below. He is also a calligraphy artist that uses important vajrayana syllables. We encourage you to visit his on line studio.
Republican Lawmakers are obviously playing victims along with Lady Lindsey, doing the usual pearl-clutching hysteria. Nebraska Republican Don Bacon is one of the few speaking like he’s confused by the Darkest Timeline, too. Here’s another one that’s deeply off the reality vector. This is from 
What fucking country is this? Here’s another Gestapo move by the ICE thugs. “ICE agents point guns at bystanders during violent arrest in Maryland. “What’re you gonna do? Shoot me?” one witness yelled. “Go ahead. Shoot me.” This analysis is by Maris Kabas writing for 
This comes a few days after this act of cruelty.
The EVIL! It BURNS! One more and then I’m going to go take a shower to wash all of this off of me. This is from the
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