This is the best speech, just from a pure rhetoric perspective - its sophistication and persuasiveness - that I've seen a politician deliver in a good long while. Really recommend watching or reading the whole thing.
From Senator Chris McDaniel: “Lately, some folks have taken to calling ICE “the Gestapo.” It sounds fierce. It feels righteous. But it isn’t true, and it isn’t harmless. The Gestapo was a secret police force. No warrants. No courts. No lawyers. And no appeals. People vanished in the night, not because they broke the law, but because the law no longer meant anything. The knock on the door was the sentence. ICE isn’t that. Not even close. ICE is a public agency enforcing laws passed by elected officials. Its agents file reports. They seek warrants. They lose cases. Judges stop them. Lawyers challenge them. Some detainees go home. That’s not tyranny. That’s bureaucracy, for better and worse. You can hate immigration policy. You can argue enforcement is too harsh, too sloppy, or too broad. You can work to have the law changed if you wish. That’s a republic doing what it’s supposed to do. But when you call ordinary law enforcement “the Gestapo,” you cheapen real evil. You turn history into a slogan and suffering into a metaphor. And once every badge is tyranny, no tyranny is left to recognize. In Mississippi, I was raised to believe words should earn their weight. This one hasn't yet. It throws around the language of dictatorship while living under a system where courts still rule, lawyers still argue, and the government still loses. That difference matters. Because the day enforcement becomes secret, unchecked, and answerable to no one, we won’t need to borrow names from history. We’ll know exactly what we’re dealing with. And we’ll wish we’d kept our words honest.”
“ICE isn’t the Gestapo. The Gestapo was…” (proceeds to describe qualities that apply to what ICE is currently doing)
“America is the wealthiest nation on Earth, but its people are mainly poor, and poor Americans are urged to hate themselves. To quote the American humorist Kin Hubbard, 'It ain’t no disgrace to be poor, but it might as well be.' It is in fact a crime for an American to be poor, even though America is a nation of poor. Every other nation has folk traditions of men who were poor but extremely wise and virtuous, and therefore more estimable than anyone with power and gold. No such tales are told by the American poor. They mock themselves and glorify their betters. The meanest eating or drinking establishment, owned by a man who is himself poor, is very likely to have a sign on its wall asking this cruel question: 'if you’re so smart, why ain’t you rich?' There will also be an American flag no larger than a child’s hand – glued to a lollipop stick and flying from the cash register. Americans, like human beings everywhere, believe many things that are obviously untrue. Their most destructive untruth is that it is very easy for any American to make money. They will not acknowledge how in fact hard money is to come by, and, therefore, those who have no money blame and blame and blame themselves. This inward blame has been a treasure for the rich and powerful, who have had to do less for their poor, publicly and privately, than any other ruling class since, say Napoleonic times. Many novelties have come from America. The most startling of these, a thing without precedent, is a mass of undignified poor. They do not love one another because they do not love themselves.”
reading slaughterhouse 5 for the first time and i was absolutely knocked senseless by this passage, which is so true and relevant that it feels like it was pulled from a history book
He orders extrajudicial killings. He sent troops into our cities. He terrorizes citizens with ICE raids. He raised taxes without congressional approval. He has ruined American farmers and ranchers. He plans to starve the vulnerable. He demolished our house.
Remove him from office.
It has been said before, but it bears repeating: the elderly who’ve worked their entire lives to get $800 a month on Social Security aren’t bankrupting America. It’s tax-evading billionaires like Trump who are bleeding this country dry.
Every day, it seems like we tick a little bit closer to midnight.
Would be great if the GOP Congress would quit sleepwalking through this.
cover of The Stone Witch of Florence: A Novel by Anna Rasche
October Books: Fictional Witches
This month I am focusing on books that have to do with fictional witches.
#booksky
#bookchallenge
Day 16: The Stone Witch of Florence: A Novel by Anna Rasche
It turns out that, all this time, Rob Schneider has been portraying characters who were *smarter* than he really is.
WH allows criminal bribe anonymity
Periodic reminder that this scheming half-wit Goebbels isn’t even a lawyer.
Here's a gift link to the New York Times' coverage of the initial Tea Party rallies in April 2009 which inspired the media to treat it like a massive movement.
Check out how tiny the crowds were:
Philly: 200
DC: "several hundred"
Boston: 500
Austin: 1,000
Houston: 2,000
Trump regime gleefully adopts "remigrate," a euphemism for ethnic purging peddled by European white nationalists, now DHS's snide jab at migrants amid racist memes and slurs. #StopDeportations
Just received my DNA results and apparently my lineage can be traced back to a pumpkin patch nestled in fog on a cool October day with the sound of crows in the distance.
Bring your frog costumes. Be silly. No violence. Make fun of him. Make everyone laugh at him. Remind him and the world that he's small, petty, and stupid.
This is a professor at Rutgers who teaches a class on the history of anti-fascism. He also teaches about human rights. He has received multiple death threats and been doxed. He is relocating to Europe for his safety. This is where we are in the US now. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...
Today my @nytimes.com colleagues and I are launching a new series called Lost Science. We interview US scientists who can no longer discover something new about our world, thanks to this year‘s cuts. Here is my first interview with a scientist who studied bees and fires. Gift link: nyti.ms/3IWXbiE
I’m starting to think they might not have been serious about wanting to stop fentanyl smuggling and child sex trafficking
NO LOYALTY OATHS IN HIGHER ED!
Trump's attacks on our universities are an attempt to consolidate power. This loyalty oath directly undermines our right to academic freedom & goes against every democratic principle our country should uphold.
Please click below, sign, & share.
#DefendHigherEd
No one signs up for the National Guard thinking, “One day, I’ll invade Oregon.”
A former DOGE staffer developed an AI tool that hallucinated the size of Veterans Affairs contracts.
For example, it concluded that more than a thousand deals were each worth $34 million, when in fact some were for as little as $35,000.
(Published June)
NEW statement from Dow Jones, the parent company of The Wall Street Journal:
"We have full confidence in the rigor and accuracy of our reporting, and will vigorously defend against any lawsuit."
Wishing all the powerful people consolidating wealth, harming the populace, and imprisoning opponents a very happy Bastille Day
Here's my take on the perfect pun.
It must be clever, but not too clever.
If it's not clever, it's stupid, and people think you're stupid.
If it's too clever, people don't get it and they feel stupid.
If it's "right" clever, people get it after a second, and feel clever for doing so.
Congress abdicated its role as a separate and independent branch of government on January 20 while also relinquishing all oversight responsibility, so it’s entirely appropriate for Johnson to show that he has surrendered his gavel to the executive.
Whether by design or by habit, he keeps us on our heels. He can say anything and it's gospel - news media will not fact check or push back. And by the time the Dems get around to fact checking, it's either 'fake news' or well past the news cycle and another fat lie has dropped.
Nobody hates their country more than fake patriots.
56 years since this was published and it’s truer today than ever.
