Jeff Tiedrich writes one of the funniest blogs I’ve seen. He uses the F word liberally, and as you know, that is a no-no here. This one made me laugh so much that I decided to share it with you. With a few words clipped. This is not the entirety of his column. Open the link.
He writes:
when world leaders meet, do you think they draw straws, and the loser has to go to the White House to do a press conference with Donny Convict?
at this point there’s no other logical reason why someone with a country to run would step onto an airplane and fly halfway around the world to sit next to a halfwit.
what’s the upside? best case scenario, you’re stuck there with a fake smile plastered on your face as Commander Crazypants blithers incoherently, and you get to go home without sparking a major international incident. worst case, you end up like Zelensky, tag-teamed by Donny and some shithead who f—s furniture.
the thing is, you never know what you’re getting yourself into — and yesterday was Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin’s turn to play Batshit Bingo.
hey, here’s a little-known fun fact: did you know that the Article II powers of the US Constitution confer upon a president the ability to decide who gets to be a Jew?
“Schumer is a Palestinian as far as I’m concerned. he’s become a Palestinian. He used to be Jewish. he’s not Jewish anymore. he’s a Palestinian.”
oh, how charming. with the implication that there’s something terrible about being a Palestinian, Donny manages to be both antisemitic and bigoted at the same time. talk about efficiency in government!
at this point, Prime Minister Martin must be eyeing the exits and reassessing every life choice that brought him to this moment.
well, hold onto your hat, Micheál — it gets batshittier.
“everything is transgender. everybody is transgender. that’s all you hear about.”
f…king hell, not this evil bullshit again. Donny’s got transgender on the brain. was there even a context for this? how does transgender come up in conversation with the leader of Ireland? ‘hey Micheál, was St. Patrick trans?’
no, everyone isn’t transgender. less than one percent of the population identifies as trans. it’s a rounding error away from zero. the only reason that it’s “all you hear about” is that Donny and the Republicans never shut the f..k up about it.
enough with this imaginary moral panic. look how upside f..king down our world has become: last week, cops in Phoenix followed some woman into a Walmart bathroom for the unspeakable crime of not appearing adequately feminine.
I’ll bet PM Martin never imagined he’d be sitting next to a madman and listening to him whine about Barack Obama.
“Obama was a disaster. you know, they have with Obama, he gave them sheets. and I gave them anti-tank missiles. you know that, right? it’s called javelin. you know the javelin? I’m the one that gave them the javelins. people don’t say that. and then they say, ‘oh, Trump has a great relationship with Russia.” I’m the one that gave them the javelins. Obama gave them sheets. it’s an expression. he gave sheets, I gave javelins.”
sheets? what on God’s green earth is Sundowning Grandpa Befuddlepants on about with Obama and sheets?
this: “Obama gave sheets” is a fever-swamp hallucination that Donny has been yammering about for literal years. to hear Donny tell it, the sum total of Obama’s foreign aid to Ukraine was a pile of tatty old bed linens. of course, it’s a delusional, but what else is new?
and by the way, Donny gave javelin missiles to Ukraine after he got impeached for trying to extort Zelensky by withholding them. weird how Donny always leaves that part of the story out.
but Donny remains obsessed with Obama. how ironic is it that he and his tyrant Klansman father were fined by the federal government for refusing to rent their apartments to black people, and now Barack Obama gets to live rent-free in Donny’s head?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
#Felon47 is doing everything in his power to render the U.S. a pariah among nations. Now why would anyone — except #Putin, of course — want to do that?
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Jon: Well, if Russia and China have a REAL star wars, then Trump is ready to jump in and abscond with both of their countries while they are at it.
Also–looking forward with a predictable Trump GPS–here’s my guess about Social Security. They cannot just take away money–and so, listening to 60 Minutes tonight, at the end they said the Trump Administration is “clawing back” 100 percent of overpayments instead of just asking for 10 percent back–by withholding future payments.
But here’s the GPS–my guess is that they are going to claim that huge numbers of recipients were “overpaid” (whether they were or not, and probably not), then because they are closing SS offices, and firing everyone who would be on the other end of the phone, people who got Royally/Screwed would have to jump through exhausting administrative hoops to get their payments restored–and many probably wouldn’t even try.
It’s a relatively common ploy of fraudulent businesses to make it so difficult to get justice that people just quit trying–the “return” on such practices for the businesses is a given. And the older person is stuck with the psychological damage that such injustices commonly visit on a person.
I’d put money on it. CBK
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I will not bet against you on that one. I’m on SS & can possibly weather the storm. I’m just hoping that enough of his Maga faithful are hurt badly enough to maybe shake them out of their brainwashed delusions to get them to rebel against the Mad King. Sad!
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loved2teach: I already saw a headline referring to them “clawing back” SS overpayments–I didn’t link on the article, but under the circumstances of them licking their lips over SS $$, I would be surprised if they didn’t come up with some related ruse scenario for their outright theft.
I hate to say it, but I think you are right about MAGA having to really feel the problem personally, and at least financially, before they get off their delusional duffs. CBK
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Donny DimWit is also obsessed with powerful women.
The Traitorous Felon and convicted rapist calls Senator Warren Pocahontas. but when anyone calls him anything by your majesty, he goes ape shit.
He calls Nancy Pelosi Nervous Nancy
AOC Evita
Would you believe that wiki has a list of insulting nicknames used by the lifelong cheater and liar for anyone who won’t bow down to him and do as they are told.
More than 80. I didn’t think the super thin skinned malignant narcissist could remember that many names.
List of nicknames used by Donald Trump – Wikipedia
Wikipediahttps://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › List_of_nicknames_us…
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I clicked on that list of insulting nicknames by Diaper Don, and it’s a lot longer than 80. That was just one category.
They are divided into categories depending on the jobs. those that won’t kowTow to the family crime boss. have.
His nickname for himself: A very Stable Genius.
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SCHUMER DID THE SMART THING
STOP AND THINK ABOUT IT: If the Republicans’ continuing resolution didn’t pass, the government would have shut down and when benefits like Medicaid get cut — the Republicans could have blamed the Democrats for the cuts because the Democrats didn’t vote for keeping the government operating.
ON THE OTHER HAND: Because Democrats DID vote to keep the government open, the Democrats can now blame the Republicans for the cuts to Medicaid and other benefits because Medicaid wasn’t even mentioned in the Republican budget resolution, so the cuts are made by the Republicans’ own choice.
So, the Democrats who voted for the Republican resolution have put the Republicans in the position of getting 100% of the blame for the coming cuts in Medicaid and other popular programs.
IN ADDITION, if the government had shut down, Musk would have the perfect excuse to furlough thousands of federal employees as “non-essential”, plus their departments would have been furloughed and the employees would never be rehired and their departments would never operate again.
BUT, by keeping the government open, all those thousands of employees keep their jobs and their departments continue to operate.
FINALLY, if government funding had stopped, the federal courts could have run out of money and shut down, leaving no court to rule against whatever Trump wanted to do.
SURE, it would have “felt good” to “strike back” against the Republicans and vote down the Republican plan, but that would have played right into the Republican game plan for firing people, for closing federal agencies, for shutting down the pesky courts, and for blaming the Democrats for the loss of services to the public.
Progressives and other Democrats who didn’t vote for the Republican resolution need to understand that politics is a chess game of complex moves that require moving sideways and backwards to reach your goal and that leading with your emotions leads to defeat in politics.
So, “progressives” need to STUDY THE POLITICAL CHESS BOARD CAREFULLY before making moves, then make their moves with their heads, not their emotions.
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I agree with much of this except I would say that ALL choices had bad outcomes and Schumer’s choice was just as much for the right reasons as the people who voted against cloture did so for the right reasons.
What astonishes me is how easily too many on our side get propagandized into doing the right wing’s dirty work for them – again and again.
The Republicans leave the Dems with two equally bad choices. There are good arguments to be made for why BOTH choice will have very bad outcomes.
And too often we blame the bad outcome on the Dems who voted for the option that prevailed, instead of blaming the Republicans for only offering two equally bad choices.
It is perfectly reasonable for someone to criticize Schumer for choosing the option with very bad outcomes #1 instead of the option with very bad outcomes #2 that they wanted. But sometimes we shoot ourselves in the foot and act as useful idiots for the far right by blaming the Dem for the very bad results that would have happened NO MATTER WHAT because the Republicans have been empowered and there is NO option that is not terrible.
The Republicans are to blame for the results, not Schumer. Just like the Republicans would be to blame when Trump used the government shut down to close the entire federal judiciary (“non-essential employees”) and declare martial law, and it would not be the fault of all the progressive Democrats who voted for a shut down knowing that would be the result.
When Republican terrorists are driving a train right toward 5 children tied to the tracks, and the only possible way to prevent the train from hitting those children is to hit a switch that causes the train to kill 100 people ages 21 – 35 tied to the other track, people may have different opinions on whether the Democrat should switch the train. That’s okay. But what isn’t okay is to act as useful idiots for the Republican terrorists and blame the Democrat for the deaths of whatever group you decided should not die. Blame the Republican terrorists.
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A few things:
To clarify, Obama sent sheets to Ukraine so that their klansmen didn’t have to burn crosses in dirty, tattered sheets.
Of course Schumer is Palestinian. Voluntarily or otherwise people slide in and out of ethnicity in ways that only trump can perceive. Rather like Kamala suddenly becoming Black.
I don’t know or care about St Patrick, but I’m really worried about transgender mice. Who knows what’s what and which is which if you see one scampering across the floor of your bathroom? Is it in the wrong loo? How do you get it into the one that matches its assignment at birth?
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William,
Key point: do not let transgender female mice play in female mice sporting events.
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ha!
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Sheets or missiles . . . Obama is just too damn black, and that’s all there is to it.
But really, folks, I never got over this one . . . Weird indeed.
and by the way, Donny gave javelin missiles to Ukraine after he got impeached for trying to extort Zelensky by withholding them. weird how Donny always leaves that part of the story out.
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I have been “corrected” on Twitter by Trumpers who boast that Trump gave Javelin weapons to Ukraine.
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Diane: It figures. BTW, there is a timely and relevant article in the New York Review of Books about “Ordinary Germans” who cheerfully volunteered to do the work at places like Auschwitz (March 27). CBK
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I posted this to a private group on FB, whose algorithms almost instantly labeled it as spam and deleted it. I created a second post describing your post and how to find it, but without the link. Hopefully that will suffice.
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Thanks, Lulu. I cut out all the F words.
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It wasn’t about the f-words. It was about the link to your blog. FB called that link spam.
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That’s crazy.
If FB calls a link to my blog “spam,” that explains a lot.
FB hired Campbell Brown at a high-level position at the same time I criticized her for being hostile to teachers’ unions, public schools, and teacher tenure. She was very outspoken and asserted that unions protected pedophile teachers. She supported charter schools.
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Going forward I will do two things.
If FB takes down the comment, it’s unlikely the post itself will be too.
As for Campbell Brown…you might be spot on there.
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Thank you. It makes no sense unless I was blocked. I used to get thousands of FB readers daily. One day they disappeared.
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I follow Jeff on Substack and followed him on Twitter (back when we were all there) and also on Bluesky. He rarely fails to make me laugh out loud. The guy is hilarious! But what he is writing about is not.
Sometimes it is Onion-esque in its “Can you believe he really said or did that?”. And unfortunately yes, he really did say or do that bad thing. I honestly don’t know how we are going to come through this unscathed. Excellent take, @quikwrit. I am sure you are probably right. Too bad Schumer didn’t do a better job of selling it.
I thank my lucky stars every day that I wake up in California and my kids are here too.
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Jeff makes me laugh out loud.
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NYT gives the authoritative report on the visit:
NYT 3/12/25:
Headline:
“3 Takeaways From Irish Leader’s Visit With Trump at White House: In a meeting with Ireland’s prime minister, President Trump gave no hint of backing down from actions that have caused fissures in the trans-Atlantic alliance.”
Opening paragraphs are the lede, telling us what is important:
“President Trump hosted Micheál Martin, the prime minister of Ireland, at the White House on Wednesday, with an escalating trade dispute with Europe hovering over the usual pomp and circumstance.
Official Washington, dappled in green, feted Mr. Martin at the traditional visit ahead of St. Patrick’s Day. But Mr. Trump gave no hint of backing down from actions that have caused fissures in the trans-Atlantic alliance.
In the Oval Office, Mr. Trump, seated next to Mr. Martin, railed against the European Union’s trade policies and regulation of American companies.
“The European Union treats us very badly, and they have for years,” he said.
END of opening.
Is there any difference between that NYT “anti-Trump” reporting and Newsmaxx/Fox News reporting?
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Trump suffers from malignant narcissism and advanced paranoia. Everyone is cheating him (us), as he cheats everyone. He has to get even for all the insults. Revenge! Vindictive! Our “friends” are not our friends! They are our real enemies! Our so-called enemies–Russia, Iran, North Korea–are our true friends. We must fight our false “friends” and make nice with our alleged enemies.
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The hits keep coming.
Trump Sends Hundreds of Venezuelans to El Salvador in Face of Judge’s Order
The Trump administration has sent hundreds of Venezuelans accused of being gang members to a prison in El Salvador, pushing the limits of U.S. immigration law by carrying out the deportations seemingly after a federal judge ordered that the flights not proceed.
While the precise timing of the deportations remained unclear, White House officials celebrated the transfer they had carried out to a notorious Central American prison. U.S. courts, however, have just begun to wrestle with the serious legal questions raised by a new executive order that Trump officials hope will help them carry out many more rapid-fire expulsions.
President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador posted a three-minute video on social media on Sunday of men in handcuffs being led off a plane during the night and marched into prison. The video also shows prison officials shaving the prisoners’ heads.
The Trump administration hopes that the unusual prisoner transfer deal — not a swap but an agreement for El Salvador to take suspected gang members — will be the beginning of a larger effort to use the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to rapidly arrest and deport those it identifies as members of the Tren de Aragua gang without many of the legal processes common in immigration cases.
The Alien Enemies Act allows for summary deportations of people from countries at war with the United States. The law, best known for its role in the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, has been invoked three times in U.S. history — during the War of 1812, World War I and World War II — according to the Brennan Center for Justice, a law and policy organization. American officials familiar with the deal said that the United States would pay El Salvador about $6 million to house the prisoners.
On Saturday, Judge James E. Boasberg of Federal District Court in Washington issued a temporary restraining order blocking the government from deporting any immigrants under the law after President Trump issued an executive order invoking it.
In a hastily scheduled hearing sought by the American Civil Liberties Union, the judge said he did not believe federal law allowed the president’s action, and ordered that any flights that had departed with Venezuelan immigrants under Trump’s executive order return to the United States “however that’s accomplished — whether turning around the plane or not.”
“This is something you need to make sure is complied with immediately,” he said.
A lawyer representing the government, Drew Ensign, told the judge that he did not have many details to share, and that describing operational details would raise “national security issues.”
The precise timing of the flights to El Salvador is important because Judge Boasberg issued his order shortly before 7 p.m. in Washington, but video posted from El Salvador shows the deportees disembarking the plane at night. El Salvador is two time zones behind Washington, which raises questions about whether the Trump administration ignored an explicit court order.
On Sunday, Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said in a statement that the judge’s order had “no lawful basis” and was issued after the deportees “had already been removed from U.S. territory.” Earlier in the day, Mr. Bukele posted a screenshot on social media about Judge Boasberg’s order and wrote, “Oopsie… Too late.” Secretary of State Marco Rubio later shared Mr. Bukele’s post from his personal account.
Judge Boasberg’s order to turn flights around came after he told the government earlier on Saturday not to deport five Venezuelan men who were the initial focus of the legal fight. The Trump administration is appealing that order.
Attorney General Pam Bondi criticized the judge on Saturday night in a written statement that said that he had sided with “terrorists over the safety of Americans,” and that his order “disregards well-established authority regarding President Trump’s power, and it puts the public and law enforcement at risk.”
On Sunday, the government of Venezuela denounced the transfer, saying that it flew in the face of U.S. and international laws, adding that the attempt to apply the Alien Enemies Act “constitutes a crime against humanity.”
The statement compared the transfer to “the darkest episodes of human history,” including slavery and Nazi concentration camps. In particular, the government denounced what it called a threat to kidnap minors as young as 14 by labeling them as terrorists, claiming that the minors were “considered criminals simply for being Venezuelan.”
The government of President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela has presented an obstacle to the Trump administration as it plans to step up deportations — and to target suspected Tren de Aragua members — because for years it has not regularly accepted deportation flights. In recent weeks, Mr. Maduro has gone back and forth on whether his government will accept flights of Venezuelans deported by the United States.
As a result, the Trump administration has sought alternative destinations for Venezuelans, including the naval base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, where it has sent migrants including accused gang members, though it has since removed them from the base.
In an unusual turn, El Salvador has presented Mr. Trump with another alternative.
In early February, while Secretary of State Marco Rubio was visiting El Salvador, Mr. Bukele offered to take in deportees of any nationality, including convicted criminals, and jail them in part of El Salvador’s prison system, for a fee.
Mr. Rubio, who announced Mr. Bukele’s offer at the time, said that the Salvadoran president had agreed to jail “any illegal alien in the United States who is a criminal of any nationality, whether from MS-13 or the Tren de Aragua.”
Officials from both the United States and El Salvador revealed that the deal with the Trump administration also included the transfer of suspected members of the Salvadoran gang MS-13 who were being held in the United States awaiting charges.
“We have sent 2 dangerous top MS-13 leaders plus 21 of its most wanted back to face justice in El Salvador,” Mr. Rubio posted on social media on Sunday. Mr. Rubio added that “over 250 alien enemy members of Tren de Aragua” had also been sent to El Salvador, which “has agreed to hold in their very good jails at a fair price.”
The two MS-13 men mentioned by Mr. Rubio were an accused top leader indicted in 2020 on Long Island on federal charges including terrorism and an accused gang member charged in Newark in February with entering the United States illegally.
The first, Cesar Humberto Lopez-Larios, was among 14 of the gang’s highest-ranking leaders who were charged on Long Island in 2020. He was arrested last year in Texas and has since been in U.S. custody awaiting trial.
The second, Cesar Eliseo Sorto-Amaya, was arrested in February on charges that he entered the United States illegally — for the fourth time since 2015. He was wanted on double aggravated homicide charges in El Salvador, where he had been sentenced in absentia to 50 years in prison. The U.S. charges against both men were dismissed on Wednesday, according to court records that were unsealed on Sunday.
The prosecutors in Mr. Lopez-Larios’s case offered the following reasoning in a letter to the judge for seeking the dismissal of the charges against him. “The United States has determined that sensitive and important foreign policy considerations outweigh the government’s interest in pursuing the prosecution of the defendant,” the letter said.
The two men’s transfers have raised concerns among some U.S. law enforcement officials, who fear that those individuals, once out of U.S. custody, could escape or issue orders that may endanger witnesses in both countries, according to people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal discussions.
Mr. Bukele came to power on promises to crack down on gang violence and MS-13. His success in restoring safety has won him broad support in El Salvador and around Latin America, but critics say that it has come at the cost of human rights.
By imposing a state of emergency, the Salvadoran leader has sidestepped due process and ordered sweeping arrests that have ensnared thousands of people without any affiliation to criminal groups, critics say. Under Mr. Bukele, the prison population has soared and abuses, including torture, have been documented in the system.
Mr. Bukele has promoted his iron-fisted approach by posting dramatic photographs from his country’s prisons that resemble those shared this weekend: They often feature scores of tattooed inmates with shaved heads held in handcuffs and forced into submissive poses.
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So Trump and his apologists thumb their nose at a federal court order. What consequences, if any? With every passing day, Trump looks more and more like a fascist.
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No worries, the headline here informs us that this may not be a big deal at all:
“White House Denies Violating Judge’s Order in Deporting Venezuelans”
I read the article as the NYT intends – as a “both sides” issue. The White House denies doing anything wrong by deporting violent gang members who are in this country illegally and a district Judge says they should not have deported them. There are lots of quotes from Republicans explaining why this is perfectly fine. I guess the NYT reporter couldn’t find a Democrat to say that Dems support keeping violent undocumented immigrant murderous gang members in this country instead of deporting them to keep Americans safe.
The framing of this story is reflected in the headline. Trump White House denies they did anything wrong and here are all their statements about how they are protecting Americans.
The framing is all about whether – in their rush to accomplish the things that Trump has promised Americans he would do and protect Americans from illegal criminals who are violent criminals – Trump might have rushed to deport violent criminals. At the very worst, maybe Trump rushed the deportations.
If that’s a big deal, you wouldn’t know it from this article, where Trump is, at most, “pushing the limits” of immigration law.
This article certainly makes the important debate clear: Should Trump be able to deport hardened criminals who are illegal immigrants or not?
Maybe the NYT reporter did actually try to get a quote from someone other than the multiple trustworthy Republicans who understand the grave danger of these hardened criminals being in this country illegally.
Imagine having to be a Democrat arguing the “con” side — we Dems say America must keep those hardened criminals here, we demand it!
This entire article amplifies the right wing narrative that Trump is the first president working to keep this country safe from dangerous murderous gang members here illegally.
This article makes me think that the Biden administration had no interest in doing anything to stop murderous gang members and were happy to let them roam free in this country.
This entire article’s underlying premise is that Trump is willing to “push the limits”
of immigration law to keep Americans safe. Unlike Biden and the Democrats.
But I realize that there are people who believe this extremely anti-Trump article will certainly rile up every American in this country to protest Trump working hard to protect Americans by deporting murderous gang leaders here illegally.
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We know from previous articles that about half those arrested are not violent criminals and some have never been arrested. I wonder if they had hard evidence this time.
But the judge did order them to stop the deportations and to back any airplanes that had taken off. And they defied his order.
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Both the men sent to El Salvador sound like they are likely pretty bad men. But the issue is the possible flouting of the order. If the timing of events show the planes had not landed prior to 7pm on Saturday, someone in the administration should be held in contempt and ordered to return these men.
I no longer really know what to say in response to any of the insanity I read about every hour. It’s literally stunning.
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FLERP, there were more than two men on the flight. There were more than 200. Are they all violent criminals? Are some of them innocent? If they are violent criminals, Trump’s lawyers should be able to prove it. They still should get due process.
Or does the Trump Justice Dept decide who is a criminal and should be deported without a trial?
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I think we know how the Trump DOJ would answer that question. They actually voluntarily dismissed an indictment against one of these guys.
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Unfortunately, I suspect most Americans would not be particularly upset at Trump’s “possible” flouting of a judge’s orders to achieve the mission the American people elected him to do – deport violent, murderous criminals illegally in this country.
I agree that what is going on has serious, frightening ramifications — but none of that is in the article.
The implicit premise of the article is that Biden didn’t do anything about undocumented immigrants who were part of violent and murderous gangs – they were just left to murder American citizens. I assume that isn’t true at all. I assume the Biden administration either jailed or deported violent criminals who were undocumented. I assume they did it through due process instead of simply rounding up lots of innocent people who just “seemed” like they were probably part of a gang, or some neighbor who didn’t like them said they were. But perhaps that’s wrong, and someone who only had the information in this article would be correct in assuming that Biden kept violent criminals walking the streets and Trump is “possibly” flouting a judge’s order to do what Biden wouldn’t do and keep Americans safe.
When presented with the narrative favored by Trump and the Republicans, most Americans believe something needs to be done about all these violent illegal immigrants and Trump is doing something to protect Americans that – at worse – might “possibly” be flouting the orders of a liberal judge. That’s the narrative in this story.
When presented with the narrative that Trump and Republicans have successfully suppressed in the liberal media because it is “too biased”, many Americans don’t support Trump’s policies. So the facts and questions that would be part of a story with the “banned for being anti-Trump narrative” are not included in stories like this.
I suspect many Americans would feel differently if they understood that the question is: Do you agree with Trump that we should spend hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to send ICE into schools and people’s homes to round up every hardworking, law-abiding undocumented immigrant and immediately deport them within days, or should we continue Biden’s policy of only deporting the violent criminals who are undocumented while the hardworking, law-abiding undocumented immigrants who have been here for decades would get due process?
Or, “do you agree with Karoline Leavitt and President Trump that there is no difference between undocumented immigrants who are hardworking law-abiding people you know and undocumented immigrants who are violent, criminal gang members? Do you agree with Karoline Leavitt and President Trump that every undocumented immigrant – no matter how law-abiding – is as much a criminal as a violent gang member, and they should all be rounded up and immediately deported together since they are all criminals? And do you agree with Trump that he should also immediately deport law-abiding green card holders if Trump doesn’t like their politics?
The NYT writes far too many supposedly “negative” articles like this one that present the most problematic actions of Trump by framing them with the Republican narrative. Trump is deporting undocumented violent criminals because Biden didn’t do anything about them. Doge is an organization with highly qualified people there who are experts in rooting out fraud and waste and making our government more efficient, and Trump and Musk’s motives are always to serve the cause of rooting out waste and save taxpayers money – even when they occasionally get it wrong.
Yes we are marching to fascism with the manufactured consent of too many Americans. And that consent is manufactured through articles like this one. If this article is the rabidly “anti-Trump” view, then fascism is here.
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Details are murky but this is potentially very serious. Gift link below. (Warning apparently this reporting is no different from Fox News or Newsmaxx.)
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FLERP: The fascist playbook is to put up something that the public would like while subverting or breaking the law to do it. (This is the plane-full of “bad” immigrants.)
THEN, according to the playbook, you have the beginning of a pattern of law-breaking–a foot in the door or a camel’s nose under the tent, so to speak . . . that you can repeat, refer to, and make into a habit, so that over time while “the people” are busy doing their thing and praising that criminals are being expelled, it gets to where it doesn’t matter what the content/context is–some will like what’s going on and some won’t; but the fascist knows that the principle of abiding by the law is already broken (and no one really knows what that means) . . . so that now it’s just a matter of everyone saying, “NO I didn’t mean that!” or “the public” just looking around with a “what happened” DUH look on one’s face while every honest and trusting person in the place gets screwed.
And so, the democracy is gone, and we are swimming in fascism before we even know it. And “I told you so” has no meat on it. CBK
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Addendum to my note above: The hard talk of that ICE guy saying that they “don’t care about what judges think, they are “coming for the criminals”–this is just more fascist rhetoric that feeds the above ruse scenario.
Of course, people don’t want criminals to stay in the country–and if you go against it, then YOU are the enemy by (apparently) siding with criminals who aren’t even citizens–to those who don’t know the ruse they are buying into.
What “sticks” for the fascist, along with getting rid of the criminals, is the saying: “we don’t care what the judges think.”
Fascism and anti-democracy are just now getting baked in. So very sad. CBK
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Now in the DJT version of OUR White House. There is new gold vermeil figurines on the mantle and medallions on the fireplace, gold eagles on the side tables, gilded Rococo mirrors on the doors, and, nestled in the pediments above the doorways, diminutive gold cherubs shipped in from Mar-a-Lago. Even the remote control for the television down the hall is wrapped in gilt. CNN
Time for The Delusions of Grandeur To Graduate And Move On.
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Welp, Axios (and maybe others) is reporting that the White House intentionally disregarded the court’s order.
https://www.axios.com/2025/03/16/trump-white-house-defy-judge-deport-venezuelans
How it happened: White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller “orchestrated” the process in the West Wing in tandem with Homeland Security Secretary Kristy Noem. Few outside their teams knew what was happening.
They didn’t actually set out to defy a court order. “We wanted them on the ground first, before a judge could get the case, but this is how it worked out,” said the official.
The timeline: The president signed the executive order invoking the Alien Enemies Act on Friday night, but intentionally did not advertise it. On Saturday morning, word of the order leaked, officials said, prompting a mad scramble to get planes in the air.
At 2:31 p.m. Saturday, an immigration activist who tracks deportation flights, posted on X that “TWO HIGHLY UNUSUAL ICE flights” were departing from Texas to El Salvador, which had agreed to accept Venezuelan gang members deported from the U.S.
Hours later, during a court hearing filed by the ACLU., Boasberg ordered a halt to the deportations and said any flights should be turned around mid-air.
“This is something that you need to make sure is complied with immediately,” he told the Justice Department, according to the Washington Post.
At that point, about 6:51 p.m., both flights were off the Yucatan Peninsula, according to flight paths posted on X.
Inside the White House, officials discussed whether to order the planes to turn around. On advice from a team of administration lawyers, the administration pressed ahead.
“There was a discussion about how far the judge’s ruling can go under the circumstances and over international waters and, on advice of counsel, we proceeded with deporting these thugs,” the senior official said.
“They were already outside of US airspace. We believe the order is not applicable,” a second senior administration official told Axios
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More astonishing stuff happening today in this deportation case. From the NYT:
The Trump administration asked a federal judge in Washington to cancel a hearing on Monday about whether the White House had violated the court’s order barring the deportation of noncitizens without due process, but the judge immediately rejected the request and demanded the government show up to explain its actions.
Justice Department officials also took the extraordinary step of seeking to have the judge, James E. Boasberg, removed from the case, as the conflict between the judge and the administration escalated and threatened to become a constitutional crisis.
In a display of defiance, the Justice Department had filed papers less than two hours before the 5 p.m. hearing was to be held in Federal District Court in Washington, and told the judge that there was no reason for anyone to come to court because the administration was not going to provide any further information about the deportation flights.
“Because the government is not prepared to disclose any further national security or operational security details to plaintiffs or the public, the court should vacate the hearing scheduled for this afternoon,” lawyers for the Justice Department wrote on the administration’s behalf. “The government does not make this request lightly.”
In another remarkable move, the Justice Department wrote a letter to the federal appeals court that sits over Judge Boasberg, asking it to remove him from the case entirely given what department lawyers described as his “highly unusual and improper procedures.”
The two government filings came on a day of extraordinary resistance to the court by the administration, which has said that it has not violated Judge Boasberg’s order stopping the flights, but also that he had no authority to issue it in the first place.
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The administration simply doesn’t want to comply with Judge Boasberg’s orders and they will use every trick in the book or not in the book to avoid complying. He told them to turn around the planes that were entourage to El Salvador and they ignored him. They said it was not a written order. They think they can grab anyone they want and deport them without a hearing.
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Another Trump act of madness reported today.
Trump wrote a post on Truth Social at 12:45 am saying that Biden’s pardons of the J6 committee were invalid because they were signed by atropine, not individually.
He ranted about Biden being senile, not knowing what was going on, who knows who set up the auto pen….
I wondered: Did Trump sign the 1500 pardons for J6 insurrectionists individually or by autopen? Are they invalid?
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It’s insane.
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THIS IS WHAT TRUMP POSTED AT 12:45 am, March 17.
The President’s power to grant pardons is unlimited.
Trump here suggests that Biden’s signature was added to the pardons without his knowledge because he was senile.
Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump
The “Pardons” that Sleepy Joe Biden gave to the Unselect Committee of Political Thugs, and many others, are hereby declared VOID, VACANT, AND OF NO FURTHER FORCE OR EFFECT, because of the fact that they were done by Autopen. In other words, Joe Biden did not sign them but, more importantly, he did not know anything about them! The necessary Pardoning Documents were not explained to, or approved by, Biden. He knew nothing about them, and the people that did may have committed a crime. Therefore, those on the Unselect Committee, who destroyed and deleted ALL evidence obtained during their two year Witch Hunt of me, and many other innocent people, should fully understand that they are subject to investigation at the highest level. The fact is, they were probably responsible for the Documents that were signed on their behalf without the knowledge or consent of the Worst President in the History of our Country, Crooked Joe Biden!
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What an evil man.
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Here’s a convincing argument, supported by citations to authorities, that presidential pardons don’t need to be signed at all, much less “wet signed.”
https://reason.com/volokh/2025/03/17/pardons-and-autopen-signatures/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=bluesky
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The Washington Post or the Times quoted an expert on presidential pardons who said that it doesn’t matter whether they are hand-signed or auto-signed. And he said that they cannot be canceled by future presidents.
I am waiting for a reporter to ask if he hand signed the 1500 pardons for Jan 6 insurrectionists
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I think Trump pardoned the J6 rioters in a single pardon document. I think he did hand sign it, in his insane sharpie signature that looks like a heart attack on an EKG.
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Just more diversionary sxxt. The “meat” of the issue is to hang judges out to dry. CBK
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“National security concerns,” . . . now that’s rich. CBK
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Here’s a Bluesky thread on the hearing that just concluded, by the excellent legal reporter Anna Bower.
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Thanks for the thread, FLERP.
Fascinating.
Apparently the DOJ believes that the president’s decisions on foreign policy or national security are not subject to review. Is that a novel idea?
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This isn’t my area of law, but there are doctrines of “non-justiciability” and “political questions” that limit the extent to which courts may intervene in areas that are considered solely the functions of other branches of government. Foreign relations and national security are probably the quintessential examples of this. So no, not entirely novel broadly speaking. But this can be sliced and diced many ways. We have procedures for deportation that fall under laws enacted by Congress, and we have constitutional rights that apply to non-citizens. These are areas where courts are not merely permitted but required to adjudicate. “How may the U.S. conduct a military operation” is a good example of a political question that courts won’t get in the middle of. Deportations, I don’t think so. But as always with the law, there are arguments to be made.
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Diane: It’s about the other pillar of the tri-part structure–the courts must be made to seem innocuous. CBK
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Somehow, someway, our country needs a McCarthy era moment where some Republican of significance stands up & says, “The emperor has no clothes” & speaks out so strongly against the Mad King that others will stiffen their spine enough to join him & overthrow their Dear Leader by getting him the mental health assistance that he needs. That’s our only hope because the Mad King will never stop, nor will his megalomaniac backers like evil Stephen Miller, J D Vance, Steve Bannon, et. al.
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We need another Joseph Welch.
We did have Liz Cheney warn Republicans that their dishonor would live forever. They didn’t care. They still cowered to their Mad King Trump.
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Diane: Maybe I’m putting too much in the New York Book Review article–but FWIW, one of the writers in that review of new takes on Hitler’s Germany, relate that it’s more than a “fever” that can break.
It’s more about a long habit of cultural history, for instance, to the question “how could they have?” and “Were they abnormal?” “His answers could be summarized as: the Nazis were NOT ordinary people; they were ordinary German people, living in the firestorm of hatred and delusion ignited after World War I. . . . nuanced reflection . . . Nazi perpetrators and leaders were not freaks, but they had been brought up in a culture of rancid, self-pitying national paranoia after the defeat of 1918. Almost all the prominent Nazis came from middle class families with right-wing values–patriotism, antisemitism, fear of ‘bolshevism’–for whom righteous violence seemed a sign of manliness. ”
My thought is that there ARE some historical similarities and threads, even though for some, I still think it reeks of a Jim Jones’ type ignorant and absolutist fever. CBK
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