Reclaiming our time

We'd be lost without the news media.  The British news media.

On the eve of NO KINGS, Margaret Sullivan in the Guardian points out that the response to the April 5 HANDS OFF protests against the Musk-Trump assault on the government was "something of a shrug."  She is not convinced that tomorrow will be covered any more energetically (unless someone gets shot by a Marine next to the 101, I suppose).  Our "news" organizations have displayed little but cowardice and a talent for appeasement this year, most recently in the dismissal of Terry Moran by the ironically named American Broadcasting Company.  There's always some corporate merger that's more important than telling the truth.

The Moran case reminded me of an article by Ariana Baio in yesterday's Independent.  You may have heard that Stephen Miller's hatred of Latinos began when a girl in high school refused to date him.  It's actually worse.  Cynthia Santiago, a child of immigrants, beat Miller for class president at Santa Monica High School in 2002, largely because he was already a nasty racist shit.  "Miller advocated for all announcements to be written in English only, claimed there were 'very few' Hispanic students in honors classes, and asserted that the school's political correctness would make Osama Bin Laden 'feel very welcome.'"  He was booed for asking, "Am I the only one who is sick and tired of being told to pick up my trash when we have plenty of janitors who are paid to do it for us?"  Class President Santiago is now an immigration lawyer in California fighting Trump's and Miller's mass deportations.

She just got some help that will enrage Trump.  One of Pope Leo's first appointments was Michael Pham, the new bishop of San Diego, himself an immigrant from Vietnam in 1981.  Bishop Pham has instructed priests and deacons in his diocese to accompany migrants when they go to court on June 20, International Refugee Day.  "The presence of faith leaders makes a difference in how the migrants are treated," he wrote.  Let's hope so.  Maybe manhandling and handcuffing a priest will get more airtime than a US senator.  

Trump is having a bad day.  The US Court of Appeals ordered him to quit stalling and pay E. Jean Carroll the $5 million.  His Big Beautiful Birthday Parade may be rained out.  And he had to TACO again, not tariffs this time but angry farmers and hotel operators whose workers disappear (or are disappeared) and can't be replaced.  Have some double-talk:

"Our great Farmers and people in the Hotel and Leisure business have been stating that our very aggressive policy on immigration is taking very good, long time workers away from them, with those jobs being almost impossible to replace.  In many cases the Criminals allowed into our Country by the VERY Stupid Biden Open Borders Policy are applying for those jobs.  This is not good.  We must protect our Farmers, but get the CRIMINALS OUT OF THE USA!  Changes are coming!"

Translation:  Having masked thugs roll up and arrest everybody brown is a disaster.  We are very sorry there is no one to deliver room service or pick oranges except MS-13, who prefer low-wage jobs to their usual activities.  Anyway, it's Biden's fault.  You just failed to notice for four years.  Not to worry, I ALONE WILL FIX IT.

That was yesterday, but Border Thug Homan says his orders haven't changed.  In fact, he looks forward to involving the National Guard once they put down the insurrection that isn't happening in Los Angeles.  And his putative boss Thug Noem suited up for an assault on the home of Sabrina Medina, a pregnant mother of four and US citizen, yesterday in Huntington Park.  The heavily armed ICEstapo said they were executing a warrant for her husband David.  Medina explained that her husband's name is Jorge, while one thug turned her doorbell camera away from the debacle.  That's the "raid" Noem was bragging about when Senator Padilla identified himself and tried to ask a question.  Just another day in the Turd Reich.

Sometime in May, the Arizona Daily Star reports, these clowns stormed into a federal building in Tucson and arrested a deputy US marshal because he "fit the general description" of someone they were after.  Other deputies vouched for him and he didn't get a free trip to El Salvador.  As Trump said of Senator Padilla, "He looked illegal."

Of course Trump's grasp of the wider world is equally chaotic, as he tries to pretend he knew all about Israel's

attacks on Iran while insisting it acted unilaterally.  This may be true -- other countries know that if you want to preserve the element of surprise you can't tell your plans to anyone in Trumpomuskovia (Ukraine's destruction of much of the Russian air force, for example).  Piss-drunk Pete would have told his lawyer, his wife and his favorite bartender before the first drones were airborne.  

Tomorrow is NO KINGS day and Wayne Ivey, two-headed sheriff of Brevard County, Florida, has a message for troublemakers:  "Throw a brick, a firebomb or point a gun at one of our deputies, we will be notifying your family where to collect your remains at.  Because we will kill you graveyard dead."  He seems...colorful.  You can be sure the usual suspects will insist that all the protesters are in the pay of George Soros, bused in from Canada or Greenland.  Equally, Trump thugs like the Proud Goys will be trying to provoke violence so the deputies, the police, the ICEstapo or some random Kyle Rittenhouse wannabe will have an excuse to kill you graveyard dead.  Practice self-discipline and self-care.  Anger and joy can co-exist.  And sing!  We have Bruce Springsteen, Neil Young, Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie and a tradition that stretches back to Julia Ward Howe.  They have Lee Greenwood.

Remember antifa?  For a while everybody the fascists hated was either BLM or antifa, sometimes both.  Antifa re-surfaced yesterday when Maxwell Frost and Margie Greene yelled at each other during a session of the Comer Committee.  He wanted to subpoena Kristi Noem about the assault on Alex Padilla and she began shrieking about MSNBC and antifa and it was -- well, if C-SPAN carried more screamfests like this the ratings would explode.  

It was Abuse the Democratic Governors Day at House Oversight and Timewaster Committee, and Mary Miller -- you remember her, she couldn't distinguish a Sikh from a Muslim last week -- accused J.B. Pritzker of not caring that an undocumented Guatemalan man killed two young women while driving drunk.  Pritzker reminded her that she approvingly quoted Hitler in 2021 ("Whoever has the youth has the future") and replied, "I am not going to be lectured by somebody who extols the virtues of Adolf Hitler."  "Reclaiming my time!" she replied.  He might have observed that drunken white Americans kill more people than all the immigrants put together, but he was probably tired of arguing with stupidity.  They just wear you down.

Everyone has limits and Rand Paul's were breached yesterday.  "The level of immaturity is beyond words," he complained.  "I just think it makes me lose a lot of the respect I once had for Donald Trump."  What could it be?  Erasing women and minorities from government websites?  Filling HHS with quacks, cranks and idiots?  Abolishing FEMA?  Fellating Putin?  Displaying contempt for judges and laws?  "I think I'm the first senator in the history of the United States to be uninvited to the White House picnic...it makes you wonder about the quality of the people you're dealing with."  Jesus, Rand, that's it?  Potato salad?  

He took time out from the three-legged race to pretend he knows what's going on. 

Iranian Empire?