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July 07, 2019


Pro Bono: Kim Darroch was quite right to resign

All I know about the British civil service comes from watching old "Yes, Minister" episodes, so would somebody please tell me what Darroch resigned FROM?

The post of ambassador? The civil service entirely? I have not seen a clear answer in news reports I've read.

Presumably, Kim Darroch is not in the same position personally as He, Trump. Losing his job does not put him in danger of going to prison, right? So I don't worry about the man's future.

I worry about the future of a society -- on either side of the pond -- that tries to govern itself on the "True, but so what?" principle.


He's resigned as ambassador, and will retire from the Civil Service - he's 65. He will enjoy a very comfortable pension.

Trump has emphasised that the USA will act without any consideration for its allies. Johnson has made clear that his idea of Brexit is a servile relationship with the USA. This is damaging to both countries.

I hope Johnson's behaviour will stiffen the resolve of most MPs not to allow him to have his way over a no-deal Brexit.

I don’t worry about Darroch’s future either.

It is what the affair signals about our likely next PM that disturbs me. There is a good exploration of it here, better than I could write:

Nigel: hard agree, as the kids say. That's a good piece. What a fucking shower.

Just as a bitterly amusing side note, when I watched Corey Lewandowski being interviewed on C4 news the other night, it gave me a sick laugh to hear him describe Sir KD as being "unprofessional" in what he said about the Trump administration: leaving aside the completely correct point Pro Bono (I think it was) made about everybody in the world essentially agreeing with Sir KD, it just went to show how absolutely clueless everybody associated with Trump is about absolutely everything. Anybody who has ever worked in an Embassy (among whom I am numbered) knows that it is exactly an Ambassador's professional responsibility to give an accurate assessment of everything relevant about the host country; there is no suggestion that they should mince their words or use euphemisms, on the contrary since confidentiality is assumed to be guaranteed (no longer) they are supposed to be as honest and accurate as possible. From now on, one can only assume, they will need the equivalent of an Enigma machine.


Or at least have computer systems that the Russians can't hack into.

I was told 72 virgins.

not that it matters one way or the other, but where did they come up with the number 72?

the prevalence of very specific, yet inexplicable, detail in religious beliefs fascinates and puzzles me.

among whom I am numbered

aha! there is a story in there, I am sure.

obwi contains multitudes.

72 (number)

I will merely say that this is how, when I told you Reagan had Alzheimer's when he was President, I was able to speak from direct personal observation.

2 x 3 x 2 x 3 x 2

what's not to love?

For the last couple of days, refreshing this page returned the same result every time with (IIRC) 143 comments. Same this AM. Then I go to the front page and it reports 200+ comments, many of them from the last two days. Has anyone else seen anything like that? (Or should I just blame my browser?)

Via somewhere:


Fresh from the gang rape that the filthy Republican Party cult has committed against the country and our government, the fact that this smug reptilian sickeningly self-righteous Randian cuck settled for sloppy seconds after p was safely zipped up will not faze the death squads.

He can call it "retirement" if he wants.

Has anyone else seen anything like that?

I have. I can't even see your comment, Michael Cain.

Nothing like that here.

Acosta is gone.

Look for another "acting" cabinet member for the next 2 years. Lest the new appointee also have skeletons in his closet. Which would probably appear in confirmation hearings, since nobody vets appointees any more . . . beyond whether they "look" the part.

and confirmation hearings are meaningless, since the GOP Senate is in thrall to the orange idiot.

"Meaningless" in the sense that even manifest incompetents are mostly going to get confirmed. (Although even there, a few have gotten nixed.)

But even so, they do provide an opportunity to haul some stuff into the open. So not totally useless.

The death squads will not treat these two pieces of filth with a lick of difference.


Extra-judicial, of course, because the judiciaries are infested by subhuman conservatives.

Corrupt Jesus Freak vermin heads for a border whitewashing:


Insane ratfucker Cruz emerges from concentration camps slightly recovered to from insanity tp merely "disturbed", as he toes the line between his execution by automatic weapons or whirling machetes when D-Day comes to be.

Meanwhile lickspittle virgin Jesus freak Pence convinced trump, with the former's tongue bathing the latter's perineum, to drop a conservative judicial nomination because the corrupt walking dead man nominated might have exposed Pence's biblically-inspired corruption, it being the text that inspires now three generations of subhuman conservative fascists in this geographically-concentrated population of fucking assholes.

This is why, since conservatives and dumbass libertarians have created such a polite society for the rest of us with their Second Amendment abominations, all should carry a fully loaded semi-automatic weapon to all and every encounter with republican conservatives.


And considering the fascists' phalanxed solidarity, attach a very large ammo clip to the weapon and disable the safety.

React with maximum force to the slightest provocation like an inner city white cop would.

P is going to eliminate the Director of Intelligence position.

In former days, when wry humor seemed a comfort, there was the obvious joke to be made there.

But with massive savage violence approaching from coast to coast, the government will need some smarts to prevent itself from being toppled and incinerated.

I am skeptical of all efforts toward health care reform, and this can be extended to reform in all areas involving the raw material: Americans, of which I am one .. so far.


Americans are not only miserably incompetent at governing themselves, but as a class of fully dispensable assholes, we fuck up every other role we assume in society as well, including patienthood.

We're raised as a bunch of insufferable, pigfucking, never-satisfied dyspeptic me's, enslaved to autonomy.

There is me and me and me and me and me and me and me and me and me and me ... well no matter how many me's you place end to end, a viable polity cannot be produced, if the me's, that is, are Americans.

My favorite passage in the link:

"We ought to consider the possibility that if we exported Americans to those other countries, their systems might end up with our costs and outcomes. That although Americans (rightly, in my opinion) love the idea of Medicare for All, they would rebel at its reality."

The enemy is US and our worst export is US and when WE attempt to import ourselves to other countries, those countries should slap 500% tariffs on each of us and when we attempt our fatuously vainglorious transfer of the American "way of death" to other societies, they should embargo our asses and blockade our shores.

The experiment is kaputnik, which is the word Ben Franklin uttered under his breath to the question "What have you wrought?"

Like any sell side liar, he was humoring us for the commission with his published answer.

We are the U and the S in U.S.A and its spelled US Assholes and it rhymes with p, and that spells trouble.

Defund the entire laboratory and euthanize the rats and their fuckers.

Friend, either you're closing your eyes
to a situation you do not wish to acknowledge
or you are not aware of the caliber of disaster indicated by the presence of conservative republicans in your community.

P is going to eliminate the Director of Intelligence position.

And here, I thought you were making a joke.

Joke's on me.

"Jokes on me."


If only it was ONLY you.

This sentence from a piece about The Three Stooges:

"While Moe would then usually fake the (Moe)slap, he would sometimes do it for real to keep the others on their toes."


Once Moe or Curly threw a fountain pen across the stage as a gag and it stabbed Larry Fine in the back of his head and stuck there.

Everyone laughed anyway.

As republican businessmen tell OSHA inspectors who show up to investigate one of their workers having their arm torn from the shoulder socket by a safety-free piece of equipment:

"Anything for a laugh. The show must go on, hunh, fellas! But seriously, I've paid over your Congresspeople and Senators, so go easy."

Decent Americans at this moment are like moviegoers emerging from the movie theater into the light of day chuckling to themselves over the rueful message about their fate depicted in the movie "Dr. Strangelove", only to have Slim Pickens fall from the sky and flatten them on the sidewalk, followed by immediate thermonuclear annihilation.

We* continue to and shrug and put our faith in life's little ironies, just as all killing goddamned hell breaks loose.

*For all variables of "We", subtract those in the know, which means most here.

P is going to eliminate the Director of Intelligence position.

I didn't realize that Trump got to fire the directors of Hannity's and Carlson's shows. Those being, after all, the directors of the only places he goes for information about what's happening in the world.

I'm warming to the Romans' practice of crucifying those who practice corrupt crypto-Christian cult think:


I'm pretty sure Ivanka whored herself out to Falwell his support for her training lover, her Daddy:

Life's little bullet-shaped ironies:


From "Stoney The Road", Henry Louis Gates most recent book on Reconstruction, White Supremacy, and the many Rises of Jim Crow, a quote from President Andrew Johnson, the vermin traitor to the Constitution and all things American, except alcoholism.

I've changed the nouns, the objects of Johnson's racist contempt in the paragraph, to reflect how this country and our government shall move forward once the conservative movement is liquidated and Jim Crowed out of existence, refused the ballot, and relegated to a remnant, ignored, beaten to death if appearing in public and driving while Republican.

"But if anything can be proved by known facts, if all reasoning upon evidence is not abandoned, it must be acknowledged that in the progress of nations conservatives/republicans have shown less capacity government than any other race of people. No independent government of any form has ever been successful in their hands. On the contrary, wherever they have been left to their own devices they have shown a constant tendency to relapse into barbarism. In the Southern States, though certainly not exclusive to those locations, however, conservatives/republicans have undertaken to confer upon themselves privileged access to the ballot. Just now in the majority electorally by employing filthy cheating and corruption, it may be doubted whether as a class they know more than their ancestors, recently descended from the trees, how to organize and regulate civil society. Indeed, it is admitted that the conservatives/republicans of the Nation are not only regardless of the rights of property, but so utterly ignorant of public affairs that their voting can consist of nothing more than carrying to the place where they have been directed and paid to deposit it."

To put a finer point on the subhumanity of conservatives/republicans, Colonel Pat Donan, (Gates quoting, me making the quote accurate) the editor of a Lexington, Kentucky newspaper, declared of himself and his fellow conservative movement trash of that time and now. "No simian-souled, pale-skinned, straight-follicled, pencil-necked, thin-lipped, prehensile-heeled European Scots-Irish gorilla shall pollute the ballot box with his leprous vote."

Why, it's as if Donan was an eye-witness, his bowdlerized statement being so prophetic, to the 4th of July travesty at the Andrew Johnson/John Wilkes Booth Memorial and the recent right-wing Hitler Youth victimization conference at the White House the other day.

I've raised my price target on Facebook to $2000 per share, but only if they are fined an amount equal to their total market worth, their entire management team goes down in a fiery plane crash, and an asteroid is due to hit their corporate headquarters tomorrow at noon, if those events do not occur, then I would sell the stock because it'll just be dead money:


Just wondering:

The concentration camps were happening in Germany, and the people did nothing about it. We assumed that they didn't want to, and there was some evidence for that.

The concentration camps are going on in America, and the people are doing nothing about it. Many of us want to (according to people posting on Twitter) but nothing is being done. What if we stormed one of them? If as many people who showed up for the Women's March showed up at one facility (we would have to choose one, and focus) and plan to break in, and escort people out, how about that?

I don't know how to organize that. But what if we could do that? Would we do that? If people had a couple of weeks to prepare?

So, just to follow up on my previous comment:

There's been a lot of consternation about "The Squad" versus "Pelosi".

What if adherents of "The Squad" and/or "Pelosi" go storm the concentration camps? Or compete finding the soldiers to do that. Seems like a win/win.

My dad flew a plane on D-Day, and survived the invasion of Europe. About half of his friends didn't.

We are cowards. We claim to oppose Nazis, but we really don't want to go there, do we?

When my dad was alive, I had a conversation with him. I asked him whether he was afraid. He laughed, and said Yes, I was afraid!

And yet, he flew mission, after mission, after mission, as his friends went down.

Bravery, for sure. Also, discipline.

We don't know what that is. (Including me. But I am gritting my teeth to learn so that I can get out of this life with some dignity.)

according to people posting on Twitter

Twitter is most definitely not real life.

it takes almost no energy to be a committed Twitter activist.


Civil disobedience has a long history in this country. This sounds like a proposal for another iteration. (Although my knowledge of history isn't strong enough to reveal whether "break out", as opposed to something more passive, has precedent. As civil disobedience; I'm thinking we don't want to recreate John Brown's Raid. Not right off the bat.)

It would probably be worthwhile to do some training ahead of time. I don't know whether we'd see a reprise of Bull Connor's fire hoses. But stun guns and batons see a certainty. And firearms not unlikely, especially if the demonstrators have "weapons" -- i.e. equipment to actually break in. Want to have people prepped on how to respond. And, more important, how not to respond in order to get maximally effective news footage.

Also want to have some recon in place. First, want to make sure to hit one on the facilities still stuffed, not one which has been mostly cleared out. Also want an idea of the physical layout, so as to move towards the right part of the building.

Finally, want some lawyers standing by, with motions, etc. drafted and ready to go. Ditto bail arrangements set up.

And, of course, cameras. Perhaps best to be selective on alerting the media; wouldn't want to give Homeland Security a head start. But lots of cameras, preferably continuously uploading to the cloud, so the pictures can't get suppressed.

In short, actually implementing this, successfully, is going to take more than just telling the Park Service you want to schedule a Women's March.

Adding to wj's list...some kind of plan for the aftermath would be a good idea too. As in, legal and other kinds of aid for the people freed from the facility. Portland, Maine, might be able to provide some tips, although I don't suppose you can teach bigheartedness and a welcoming attitude.

This strand of conversation makes me realize all the more clearly that the camps are in part deliberately designed to provoke outrage, and to further tweak some of us with the difficulty of figuring out how to do anything constructive about them while the outrages pile higher and deeper in the meantime.

Our (the US's) incarceration rate is the highest in the world, more than double Russia's and more than five times that of China. (Not that I'm not skeptical about what they're counting...e.g. Uyghurs in camps?) Never mind the racial disparity in the prison population. Where has the outrage about that been hiding for lo these past many decades...?

From a few days ago:

Addressing an overflowing town hall of 650+ in Peterborough, NH @ewarren said “It’s not enough to knock the current occupant out of the White House. Things were broken before he ever got there...a country that is healed & in good shape does not elect a man like that to president”

You know, I have to half take back what I said about deliberately provoking outrage. Above all, the camps are there for the sake of the cruelty, the hatred, and the fear. Provoking helpless outrage (while drawing attention from other outrages) is just gravy.

And as russell wrote recently, we all do what we can.

I should have stayed away from this conversation; if nothing else, I don't like my own contribution, and if it weren't against custom, I would take the two previous comments down.

The Warren comment stands, though. And as usual, the "wrs."

Speaking personally, I've valued your contributions - apart from anything else, I hadn't seen that Warren comment, she couldn't be more correct.


I'd phrase it that it was about deliberately provoking glee in Trump's supporters. The outrage is, as you say, strictly a side benefit. Except in so far as it creates further glee. But the focus in developing the policies was entirely on the bigots.

I have no direct experience with civil disobedience, but I have some exposure to it. Very good friends of mine were very active in the Catholic Worker community in the 80's, and I know their stories and had the opportunity to basically "ride along" on a couple of events.

Their focus at that time was mostly nuclear disarmament and our anti-Communist policies in South and Central America. Actions that they, or people in their community, took included trespassing on White House grounds (to pray) to provoke arrest, chaining themselves to and throwing blood on a public entrance to the Pentagon on the Feast of the Innocents to protest our South and Central American policies, and trespassing on and doing minor vandalism in nuclear sites.

That last earned some folks some years in jail, and plans had to be made for, basically, fostering some folks' kids. I rode along on the Feast of the Innocents event, and it was preceded by very careful and thorough training of the participants. Some folks who were visibly angry were asked to not participate, to limit the possibility of escalation to violence.

In most cases, the consequences for the folks involved in this were more or less trivial arrest - overnight in jail, you get to give your speech at arraignment, and they generally send you home with a fine. I know quite clearly that many of the folks involved earned careful monitoring by various federal agencies. Most of the Catholic Worker folks were white middle class people, plus some religious who were also mostly white. It can be a different picture if you're not in that demographic.

In any case, there is ample precedent for the kind of thing sapient is calling for. Not only precedent, but actions targeting ICE facilities are going on now - the ICE detention center in South Boston was the site of a protest about two weeks ago, that resulted in downtown traffic coming to a stop and 18 arrests.

As an aside, I'm tempted to ask, "They stopped downtown Boston traffic? How did anyone notice?".

A while ago I suggested that turning around the crap that Trump and the (R)'s have injected into public life was going to require more than talk, probably more than votes. It was probably going to require getting in the way of it, perhaps absolutely literally. Marty found this somewhat risible, but my basic observation is that sometimes changing public policy requires changing people's hearts and minds - getting people to recognize that something they thought was right or at least OK, was actually wrong - and that most times when that has happened in our history, no small part of that change has come from people just getting in the damned way.

Often at a cost of jail, or social rejection, or a beating, or death.

Sometimes we have to be shamed into changing, and sometimes that requires somebody bearing the brunt of our collective stupidity on their own lives or even their own bodies.

It's not a joke. It can be a very difficult path to take, and may not turn out the way you thought it would. And there's no guarantee of success. There is, on the contrary, an almost certain guarantee of no immediate success.

So, we may be at one of those points. It's up to every individual to decide what they are willing to take on. I encourage everyone to take on whatever they can.

And best of luck to us.

To add a more personal note, my wife and I have discussed this, and our deal is we have to pay off the mortgage before I can go get arrested.

Welcome to modern dinner conversation.

If there was ever a privileged suburban white guy compromise, that is surely it. But it's also a pragmatic calculus of what I, and we, can afford, here and now. In the meantime, I send money, and write get out the vote postcards, and show up at legal protests, and vote. I will probably donate some hours to common cause and/or league of women voters later in the year.

And, when I retire, maybe I'll go to jail.

Everyone can do something. Do what you can.


I'll offer my opinion, FWIW.

Things are rarely about just one thing. But Trump is a textbook bully, and he appears to richly enjoy pushing people's buttons.

So yes, I'm sure that trolling the libs is one of the goals.

He's a nasty SOB, and stuff like this is milk and honey to him. In my opinion.


I think that often, rather than changing people's hearts and minds, it's a matter of making it impossible to continue to ignore something that they already know is unacceptable. By putting in front of them pictures of people like them getting arrested while protesting it.

That's what made the Freedom Riders critical to the Civil Rights movement. Suddenly white people in the North were seeing on their evening news other white people getting mugged by the police in the South. Black people getting mugged was, after all, "old news" and didn't make the network shows. And wouldn't have had the same impact if it did.

So yeah, gotta have people getting in the way. But also gotta have some of them being folks the people you want to influence will relate to. Get a couple of white evangelical preachers being arrested on camera and it will, like it or not, be more effective than a hundred Latinos getting arrested. Having the numbers is important. But who you have is more important. Unfortunate, but true.

Not even in my protest days did I ever find so many people protesting for something they then turn around and deny they believe in.

ICE is arresting and detaining and deporting people who are illegally in the country. Without them our borders are certainly open. Anyone who lives in South Texas can take you to 20 places people just walk across the border every day.

The people being arrested have come with a visa and stayed or just walked across. They mostly meet none of our immigration criteria.

Supporting those people not being deported is supporting open borders. You cant have it both ways.

I'm going to extend the benefit of the doubt and introduce the idea that what people object to is not that anyone who crosses the border is not allowed to just stay here with no questions asked, but rather the way people are treated once they are in the immigration system.

If you want to argue with people who want "open borders" you will have to go elsewhere, because none of those people appear to be here.

This point has been made a number of times, so if it fails to register at this point, I will no longer be able to extend the benefit of the doubt.

You don't get to tell other people what they "really think".

It keeps being made, but that isnt what is being protested this weekend. Protesting ICE is not protesting conditions in the border facilities.

So, I'm just listening to what people "really say".

FWIW, I can walk, in less than an hour, to a number of majority-immigrant neighborhoods. People whose first language is not English, but Spanish, or Haitian Creole, or Hmong, or Vietnamese, or God knows what. Maybe Gaelic.

There is nothing specifically South Texan about immigration issues.

Everyone understands that the number of people coming over the southern border from Central America is a huge strain on the resources of immigration agencies in that area. There are ways to address that in a humane and respectful way. None of those ways are being employed.

If you want to defend the actual policies and actions being implemented on the southern border - and elsewhere - go for it, and good luck to you.

But don't freaking chime in to tell us all what we do or don't believe in, or what "ways" we can or cannot have.

that isnt what is being protested this weekend.

WTF do you know about "what was being protested"? What the goals or purposes of the protests were?

Did you attend any? Talk to anyone involved?

Watch the news reports on TV? Read about it in FB?

Our treatment of immigrants is shameful. It's freaking barbaric. If we continue down this oath well turn ourselves into monsters.

Defend how we treat the people who come here, I freaking dare you. If you don't want to do that, then you have no argument with the people who object to it.

I m not telling you what to do, I am nothing what you're doing.

"There is nothing specifically South Texan about immigration issues"

The neighborhoods you can walk to do not resemble any part of Texas. The grade school I went to in Dallas is now 98% Hispanic, that's in a neighborhood in a pretty big city that is 48% Hispanic, 300 miles from the Rio Grande. My Mom lives there, my brothers and sisters. We are regularly part of a community that is predominantly Hispanic.

I live in a fairly mixed race area on the Mass RI border, mostly Portuguese and Puerto Rican. These are my neighbors. It ain't Texas. FWIW

Dude, whatever. Good for you.

We are treating people who want to come here like beasts. I don't give a shit if they've entered the country illegally, they are in our custody and should be treated with the respect and consideration due to human beings.

Go ahead and explain why that is not so if you like.

I think we shlould treat them fairly. Every surge creates overcrowding, every 4.6b helps, I dont see anyone mistreating people by chouce, these are the same border patrol folks that have been dealing with this as best they can with mixed results since long before Trump was President, or Obama, we were having these discussions since at least 1980.

Root out bad seeds,open more facilities, close the border, fix the laws so there is rational policy, quit demonizing people trying their best.

Tell me what's wrong with that?

I dont see anyone mistreating people by chouce.

Well that settles that, then. We have Marty's all-seeing, all-knowing word that no bullies have ever been attracted to careers where they can bully with impunity.

People trying their best...to cover their asses.

I'm sure they're all kindly saints.

Let me change that statement a little. In general, I dont believe people are mistreating migrants by choice. There are exceptions at all levels, thus root out the bad seeds.

The government went to court to argue that children don't need soap, toothpaste, or blankets.

Yup, we're doing our best.

"quit demonizing people trying their best."

Show us how.


Yes, and when people tried to donate supplies to the detainees, the donations were rejected, with DHS falsely claiming that they were not allowed to accept them.

Basically, people are suffering from purposeful cruelty, and we are asked to "vote them out" as our only solution? We can't wait that long, betting on the possibility that Putin isn't going to succeed in managing the election again.


This is definitely true. And one-off misguided attempts are not likely to help.

As russell said, not everyone can do everything, but we all need to do what we can. And I do wish we had a specific effort to mobilize people to actually try to use nonlethal force, the power of many people, to get them out.

Of all the government employees conservatives have respect for and don't mind overpaying and not kvetching about, it's the ones wielding the spear of authoritarian rule.

If government scientists and IRS auditors carried semi-automatic weapons and came knocking on our doors at odd hours, think of the love.

What rot.

Marty may or may not feel entitled to be treated like a human being. So I don't know whether he'd squeal like a stuck pig if he were ever treated the way "people trying to do their best" are treating brown-skinned Spanish-speaking migrants.

I admit it's possible that Marty would, if so treated, stand on his pro-authoritarian principles (like he did when rent-a-cops beat up that airline passenger or that thug Republicon candidate decked a reporter) and suffer in silence whatever indignities The Authorities chose to heap upon him.

But I tend to think that Marty would instead feel put-upon -- given that, being a maternity-ward immigrant, he has been endowed by his Creator with certain inalienable rights.

As for the one policy that would guarantee no unauthorized across-the-border immigrants could live long in the US, namely a mandatory national ID card, Marty says "Meh". Open borders for fair-skinned Norther European visa overstayers is what that amounts to.

But don't tell Marty. As a human being he deserves to pursue happiness by fooling himself.


root out the bad seeds.

This group has 9500 members. That's about half the border patrol.

Immigration enforcement has become a dysfunctional and toxic organization. I'm sure there are people there who are trying to do their best, but they are apparently obliged to separate kids from their parents, make people - including kids - sleep on concrete floors, allow infants to sit in shitty diapers for hours, tell people to drink from toilets, not provide them with toothpaste toothbrushes and soap, not provide them with a place to bathe.

And on and on and on and on.

So people's good intentions don't really amount to a bucket of warm piss.

It's fucking broken. And it is fucking broken in a way that obliges us, as a nation, to treat human beings like shit. Systematically and as a matter of policy.

That is what people object to.

"You all want open borders" is bullshit. Show me one person on this board calling for open borders. You'll find a stray comment from CharlesWT, which he has subsequently explained is not actually his position anyway.

All of this crap comes from Trump and the likes of Stephen Miller and Sebastian Gorka and the rest of the fucking fascist clowns in the executive who think they have special magical genes that brown people don't have.

This is poison, and it's damaging the nation. Time to quit meeping about people who want "open borders" and start getting pissed off at the assholes who are requiring all of the good civil servants with "good intentions" to treat human beings like animals.

And FWIW, it's great that you live in a diverse neighborhood, but Puerto Ricans are not immigrants, they are American citizens. And Portuguese people have been living in the area you live in since, not just before there was a United States, but before there was a permanent English-speaking community in North America.

It was nice of them to let us in.

Sing it, russell.


FWIW, the protest in Boston, and a similar one in NJ, was led by IfNotNow, a Jewish social action group. They usually focus on Israeli policy toward Gaza and the West Bank, apparently they are expanding their scope.

A place to start, perhaps, if you are looking for people engaged in non-violent direct action and civil disobedience.

The grade school I went to in Dallas is now 98% Hispanic..

Look, the neighborhoods in Queens and Brooklyn where my mother and uncles grew up is not just now majority minority, but overwhelmingly majority foreign born. Something like 20% of the population in Richmond Hill, which is where my grandparents lived when I first knew them, are not citizens.

The neighborhood in Queens where I worked after high school and during college is now 70% Asian.

The neighborhood in Salem where I lived when I first moved up to New England was than, and is now, largely Hispanic. Mostly Dominican Republic. Before it was Dominican, it was French Canadian, and at the time it was French Canadian, they were an immigrant population.

In my immediate vicinity, Lynn MA is 40% Hispanic and 8% Asian. Revere is mostly "white", which includes a lot of Hispanics and Russian immigrants.

When I first started working in software, it was basically middle class English-speaking white people. Now it's becoming mostly south Asians and Russians.

Shit happens. Places change. Some people think that's a good thing, some think it's a bad thing, some don't think it's one or the other, it just is what it is.

None of that has to do with how we treat people who come into our custody, especially when they intend no harm.

How we are treating those people is what people are objecting to.

My current gripe is with Asians. Or some small number of them.

Over two months ago, my favorite Asian supermarket changed hands, closed for renovations and hasn't reopened yet. Some of the stuff I got there is hard to find elsewhere. And what can be found doesn't compare in price and quality. :(

Dude, whatever. Good for you

Carter’s unappreciated (certainly by me - I was unaware of this bit of history) legacy:

OMG... We got spammed!

...And then we had the cleaners in.

Hey Tony, if you think s national id solves that problem without creating bigger ones I'm all for it.

I think everyone should have the option of a free id from someplace anyway. But then, I'm just your run of the mill authoritarian because I believe people who act like assholes shouldnt complain about consequences. i.e. Every example you list.

That includes Trump, based on his current tweet storm on the squad I think he should be impeached. It is the step too far. They are home, trying to fix a government they perceive as broken. Whole Pelosi has the right to point out they have more twitter followers than votes in the House, Trump has no right, actually he has an obligation not to, tweet blatant racist tropes at them. Censure should be immediate. Impeachment would be appropriate.

Good to be able to agree with you, Marty.

For a moment, I read one of the tweets and thought it was aimed at the UK....


what we should do is try to improve the situations in the places these people are fleeing.

can you imagine how bad things must be there to make you want to put on your shoes and walk across all of Mexico, in the summer?

but no, Trump cut aid to those places.

that is the course one would take if one wanted to increase the flow of refugees, not decrease it. but why Trump want that? it's not like immigration is the key to his electoral success.


I was very moved when I read the unexpurgated version in a tweet by Alyssa Rubin:

200 jews are shutting down the ICE immigration center because when we say never again we fucking mean it.

“I don’t care.”

And he appears not to be the only one.

Eric Eugene Wilkes was known to Detroit police for robbery and carjacking. Not for rape. Yet Wilkes’s DNA was in boxes scattered throughout the warehouse, even as he walked free. His DNA first arrived there more than 18 years ago, after he raped a woman waiting for a bus on December 26, 2000. It next appeared after another rape four months later. Three days after that, police shelved the untested kit from his third victim...


But refugees ARE the key to his electoral success! If they actually stopped coming, how would he get his fans worked up?

"Impeachment would be appropriate."

Too late, Marty. you can't back out on the bargain now. Impeachment won't be near enough appropriate for the vermin who bought you by slashing your taxes, especially when you didn't even have the good grace to vote for p, your benefactor.

Besides, p and his vermin will not leave office anyway because of some flimsy bullshit constitutional adherence to non-existent rule of law, at least not bi-pedally under their own forward motion.

Even when p is dead, the next you know he'll be off the slab and asking us "Why so serious?"


Think of the border security that could have been purchased, that is, if conservative motherfuckers hadn't walked out of and sabotaged every negotiated legislative immigration reform effort over the past 25 years in order to goose and oil up the subhuman, hateful republican base and ready it for p's racist, cocksucking demagoguery.

Who would it be among the filth you elected to legislative offices who are going to dare impeach the leader of the Republican Party, the greatest gift to those psychopathic ilk since the John Birch society went legit and signed up for all of those unmarked, anonymous postal boxes for their corporate and foreign campaign contributions?

They are doing their worst, and the bloody, catastrophic, brutal worst needs to happen to them.

Storming Lindsay Graham (that's it? just storming? what are we going to do to him once we've stormed and are in his vermin face? Mug for the camera?) and the entire malign, murderous conservative movement across the globe simply will not be adequate justice.

Body odor squinching up the nostrils of fake Christian fascists will be the least of their problems.

That bad smell in the room is the corpse of the conservative movement rotting on its cloven hooves.



They are beside themselves, so now there are twice as many of them to aim at in the conservative mirrored fascist funhouse.

Some men? We won't discriminate against the subhuman conservative/republican women in the meting out of savage justice either, because we liberals are politically correct and egalitarian that way.


Lethal storming should have started a long fucking time ago:


This spitting, hissing head of the conservative movement poisonous snake was ripe for the lopping in 1994.

Now it's a murderous hydra.

Can Luntz formulate a synonym for "murderous" to place in the forked tongued mouths of conservative vermin?

By the way, Gingrich is on the money when he says p's racist mouthshitting is a good political move.

47% of the so-called conservative electorate, approximately, eat that shit for breakfast.

And the conservative movement knows there are 4% more who are developing a taste for it.

It's what for dinner as Civil War II engulfs them.


Most of the republican/conservative hydra-headed traitorous movement have their fake foreign papers, foreign ban accounts, and foreign residences ready to go at the drop of a hat when the gunfire gets too hot for them.

I suspect we'll find the frozen sawed-up hunks of Khashoggi in the restaurant larder freezers at Mar-a-Lago after Navy Seal SWAT teams (and this after the many vermin p-supporters in those units have been separated out and liquidated) shoot their way into and secure the Florida Kremlin.

nothing about Trump's latest outburst is new. this is exactly who he has always been.

but the GOP loves it.

HRC was just 40% too low in her estimate when she said half of them are deplorable.

We of course must understand that judging vermin from the past by today's standards, who were a product of their times and environment, is unfair, but nevertheless if they had been wiped off the face of the Earth then, we wouldn't now be living with their vile conservative posterity and the resurrection of the same fucking standards:


Hey look, a new way to storm:


There aren't any:




Can Natasha be far behind?

Natch, the p in trump's clothing seems OK with the TAC writer.

Under the category of "The Joke Is On Us", unveiled by Russell the other day, after the gathering of the subhuman tribes at the House of White Right Wing Pudenda, p once again mentioned his intention to revive the Fairness Doctrine.

The world is always unfair to conservatives. They are the victims of the Other, who they have dominated as victims in turn for thousands of years.

We must get rid of the Fairness Doctrine in order to be fair to conservatives; no, wait, now we must revive the Fairness Doctrine in order to be fair to conservatives.

No matter the facts of their small dicks, not that there is anything wrong with that, we must constantly come up with new units of measurement and measuring devices to put them over the edge in the game of centimeters vermin conservatives like to play in public restrooms, as they take dispiriting peeks right and left at the urinals.

It never stops. You gotta be the victimized underdog to keep the demagogic violent conservative grift in the majority.

This isn't the first time he has seized on the idea.


The author of the article, yet another dumbhatted NEWSMAX conservative, fears that Rush Limbaugh might be forced to invite liberals on to his Hitler Hour Show, and we can't have that.

I volunteer to appear on Limbaugh's show and deliver the other side of whatever fake issue he's bloviating about .. with my fists.

Disney heiress storms Disneyland:


Meanwhile, Area 51 undergoes a storming as well.


I'd find it funny if the Kardashian girls were eaten by aliens.

As pure research, natch.

there are perfectly good legal reasons why Trump should be impeached.

here's one.

White House counselor Kellyanne Conway will ignore a congressional subpoena at the request of President Trump, refusing to testify about a government watchdog’s findings that she broke the law dozens of times, the White House said Monday.

of course the Rule of Law Party is too busy defending the racist rapist from accusations that he's a scumbag to give a shit about the law.

the GOP is a cult.

So it looks like Trump has taken down the specific tweets telling the congresswomen to go back where they came from, but they were up long enough (I saw them on his twitter feed) for people to screenshot them. However, stand by for conservatives denying he said what he said. Even the craven poltroon BoJo was apparently induced, at a hustings earlier this evening, to call the comments "unacceptable", although he is currently denying that he didn't support Kim Darroch over the leaked emails/letters.

the GOP is a cult.

The question is....what should the House, like right 'effing now, do about this? (PS: Sniping at some freshman members who happen to be women of color, is, you know, not going to do much).

I'm open to suggestions....

Here's a few hairbrained ideas:

1.) The House should defund the position of any federal officeholder who ignores a subpoena.

2.) They should adopt a very extreme interpretation of their authority under Article 1, Section V.

3.) When the Senate fills up a District Court with lunatics, that district court should be abolished.

Just freebasing here...but the fact is this: The House needs to go to war.

Impeachment is the least they can do.

It's what for dinner as Civil War II engulfs them.

I might take Civil War II more seriously if you could get enough people to do Reconstruction III first.

Loomis doesn't hold back.

Let 'er rip.


draw up the papers, start the process. impeach the scumbag. let's get it all out there - Russia, subpoena defying, emoluments, racism, porn stars, threatening journalists, on and on and on. and if the Senate GOP wants to defend him, let them defend him on record. let it be known all around the world what exactly they support.

and if, at the end of it all, people still want to stick with him, we and everyone else in the world will know exactly what kind of country we are. and that'll be the end of the "shining city on the hill".

or, maybe we'll get rid of him.

let's find out.

[took me a bit to get here. but here i am.]


Impeach him. For all the reasons cleek cites, plus for contempt of Congress and generally impeding every attempt at oversight, plus obstruction of justice.

Kick him out then send him to jail. Along with the rest of his crew, and his kids.

If the Senate doesn't deliver, so be it. Enough of this crap.

What I fear is that Pelosi has let the moment elude her. So maybe call your own House reps and make it impossible for her to ignore.


Impeach him.

I'd be fine with starting formal i impeachment proceedings IF the other investigations go forward in parallel. In particular, I think the battles over Congressional subpoenas need to be settled. Against the next time we get a President inclined to stonewall like this.

And, of course, there are plenty of low-life scum in high places, other than Trump, who should get their misdeeds dragged into the open. So go for impeachment, sure. But don't let that shut down all the other work going on.

First, take a page from Frank Luntz: stop, immediately and forever, referring to He, Trump as "the President". Stop addressing Him as "Mr. President". Definitely never use the phrase "our President", in the House, on TV, or on the stump. Call him "Donald", or "Trump", or "the Birther in Chief".

Second, announce both publicly and officially that the House will no longer appropriate money for any agency that rejects a subpoena or withholds information from Congress. McConnell's tame judges can side with He, Trump all they want, but they cannot force Pelosi to give Him money.

(If the Republicons want to argue that it's unacceptable to defund the IRS, well ... let them make that case to their small-government-loving, tax-cut-worshiping "base".)

Third, get some practice impeaching. Start with Wilbur Ross, if He doesn't can him first. Proceed to Brett Kavanaugh; if perjury is not a "high crime and misdemeanor" nothing is.

Fourth, stop -- just stop -- indulging the fantasy that "getting things done for the American People" is something you can accomplish until both He, Trump and Mitch McConnell are gone. You're setting yourself up for shameless attacks by the Republicons: "Haw, haw! The Dems promised the moon and delivered bupkis!"

Finally, buy all the air time you can in South Carolina and play before-and-after clips of little Lindsey Graham on the subject of He, Trump. You can't embarrass the little twerp enough.


Just for JDT:

I have significant differences with Pressley, Tlaib, Ocasio-Cortez and Omar — perhaps even greater differences on the issues than I have with the president — but they are better Americans than Trump.
Personally I'd say that, massive as my ideological differences with AOC et al. are, they are still less than my disagreements with Trump. In spite of the fact that, on most issues, Trump has no position beyond the transactional -- what is, in this moment (because longer term than that doesn't appear to exist for him), better for Trump. Specifically, for Trump's fragile ego.

I have long been for impeachment. In fact, I think I may have stated even here that Obama should not made the peaceful transition of power to Trump until the Russian interference was investigated.

That said, impeachment will be a dog and pony show since Trump won't be removed. I still want it to happen, but I want to win whatever propaganda war will result. So the timing and the theatrics are extremely important. It needs to be dragged out, and loudly covered by the press. I'm concerned that it won't play out the way we want it to.

I think there is a duty to impeach him. But while we're at it (and I sure hope we do it, because if we don't, I'll be just as angry at Pelosi as are her current detractors) we should try to make it be an effective tool for 2020. I'm afraid that people will get bored by it if we start now. I was riveted by the Senate hearings on Kavanaugh, and thought the Dem Senators did a good job. The House seems to be a lot Gym Jordan screaming, and Democrats saying things that we all agree with, but sounding like saccharine cliches. Unfortunately, saying what we all believe gets boring. The American people will be bored by February.

Trump's behavior reads like an absurd work of fiction, but unless people are already moved by it, I'm not sure how they'll be more outraged by an impeachment hearing.

Again, I think it's absolutely necessary. But I'm worried that either it will go to shit or it won't happen at all, and that Trump will be reelected, and more atrocities will ensue. So, we have to impeach before we go the way of John D. Thullen's methods just to say we tried. We'll probably never get to the violence he suggests, because we'll just sit back and quietly be sick. As I sit back and wring my hands and bite my nails, I deeply hope that we rise to this occasion and stop this horrifying nightmare one way or another.


However it does seem a pity to miss the irony that the only Supreme Court justice ever impeached (Samuel Chase) was charged with letting his partisan leanings influence his judicial rulings. It may be too soon to charge Kavanaugh (though not some of his colleagues) with that. But only a fool or an astonishing optimist doubts that he will do so.


Yup...they don't have to limit impeachment to just the MF'er in chief. Wilbur Ross should be impeached. Lying to Congress is a crime. Two days of hearings then off to the Senate for trial, just to see how Mittens would vote is good enough for me.

This easy vote would also help the blue dogs grow a spine if she forces them to commit on such matters, for once committed, they may grow to like the exercise of their constitutional duty.


Where have you gone, Madame Defarge?

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