Former President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle Obama released a statement about the murder of Alex Pretti.
Will we hear from former President George W. Bush?
Archives for category: Evil
Former President Bill Clinton released the following statement about what’s happening in Minneapolis and other places, as Trump unleashes the armed, masked ICE agents to arrest, harass, and murder our fellow citizens in pursuit of undocumented immigrants .
Well said. Where are other retired Presidents, Vice-Presidents, Senators?
Please speak up, Former Presidents Bush and Obama.
Simon Rosenberg posted this video of Alex Pretti saluting a veteran who died at the Veterand Administration hospital in Minneapolis as an ICU Nurse. For those of you who haver been in an intensive Care Unit, it is a super-emergency room where parents are sent when they are in life-threatening situations. Some make it, some don’t. That’s where Alex Pretti worked.
Please watch the video of Alex thanking a veteran for his valor.
Station KARE in Minneapolis reported:
MINNEAPOLIS — The man shot and killed by a federal agent in Minneapolis on Saturday has been identified as Alex Pretti.
The Associated Press reported Pretti’s parents confirmed his identity, and that he worked as an ICU nurse.
State records show Pretti was issued a nursing license in 2021, we’ve also confirmed he worked for some time at US Dept of Veterans Affairs as a nurse.
Pretti was an American citizen.
Before Pretti’s killing, Governor Tim Walz activated the Minnesota National Guard to assist local police in maintaining safety.
The Minnesota Star Tribune reported that Pretti had criminal record. He had parking tickets. He was a licensed gun owner.
Just moments earlier, Border Patrol Cmdr. Greg Bovino said at a press conference that the man who was killed “wanted to do maximum damage to agents.”
Walz rejected that as a false narrative.
“Thank God we have video,” Walz said. “It’s nonsense people. It’s nonsense and it’s lies.”
When killed by 10 shots, Alex Pretti did not have a gun in his hand. An ICE officer removed his licensed gun, which he never drew.
The video is startling. Between 3-6 armed, masked ICE agents surround a man, wrestle him to the ground, throw punches at him while he seems to be completely immobilized.
Then shots ring out, and the detainee is dead.
The Department of Homeland Security says he was armed and dangerous. The ICE agents killed him while defending themselves.
The sheriff said he was 37 years old. He believes the victim was an American citizen.
Yesterday, Minnesota held a general strike to protest the military occupation of Minneapolis. There were no incidents of violence.
Some Minneapolis businesses have opened their doors to help people who need to get out of the tear gas or pepper spray.
State and local officials have demanded that the federal government pull ICE out of Minneapolis.
Trump has prepared 1,500 US military to join the 3,000 ICE agents currently in Minneapolis, to subdue protestors. .
Is this America or Germany in 1933?
Hail and farewell, 2025!
Before that year is entirely forgotten, I want to say that it was one of the worst years in my life.
I learned in college that a sample of 1 is not useful for science, but it means plenty to me.
A year ago, a monstrous, lying braggart was sworn into office. A grifter and conman returned to fill his pockets and those of his family and friends, to double his net worth and to accept emoluments from foreign countries, send armed men to inflict brutality on blue cities, disregarding the Constitution.
In only one year, he has shredded our nation’s standing in the world, inflicted terror on our cities, alienated our allies, abandoned efforts to improve the environment, attacked our schools and universities, gloried in bigotry, and devastated the federal civil service.
He sends federal agents or the National Guard into urban districts, to terrorize the residents. People are snatched from their cars, their workplaces, the streets, even as they protest that they are citizens, that they have rights, that they want a lawyer. Their protests are ignored as a pack of masked men grab them, handcuff them, throw them to the ground, punch and kick them in their heads and bodies. Some are detained and disappeared into a network of prisons, then deported without due process. Some are imprisoned for days or weeks, then released.
Is this America? Never in my life have I been stopped by military officers and asked for my papers,
The cold-blooded murder of Renee Good was followed not by an investigation or apology but by smearing her and her wife as terrorists who were somehow responsible for her fate and deserved to die.
Who are these masked men? Why are they so violent? Are they Proud Boys? KKK? J6 insurrectionists?
Every day, I wonder if this is how decent Germans felt as Hitler took power and destroyed civil society.
What is happening to my country? To our Constitution? To the rule of law?
As I watch our values and rights degraded by power-mad politicians, I fight to preserve my body.
In the spring, I learned after my annual mammogram that I had breast cancer. I learned that I had invasive ductal cancer in my right breast, which required surgery. The post-surgery analysis revealed that not all the cancer was removed. The “margins” were not clear. So back I went for another surgery on the same site.
Radiation–five straight days of it–followed. it left me tired, but otherwise apparently successful.
I was reluctant to take a daily pill of anti-cancer medicine because of the numerous side effects. But I did and I suffered the predicted side effects. I had pain in my hips and joints. That was November.
Meanwhile I had a new mammogram. It showed that I had a new cancer, this time in my left breast. The surgeon recommended another surgery, and this time she got it all out. It was a tiny tumor, different from the first one. But a cancer nonetheless.
Radiation begins today, January 20, the first anniversary of Trump’s return to office. What a coincidence, cancer in my body, cancer in our nation.
It has been a nightmare year, for the country and for me personally. To make matters worse, our beloved dog Mitzi died. Through all of the personal trauma, my wife Mary stood by me steadfastly, through thick and thin, demonstrating her determination and love.
In a few weeks, we expect to get another dog. We will survive.
It remains to be seen whether our country will survive a second Trump term, another round of brutality inflicted on our norms, our values, our fellow citizens and our neighbors, our faith in our electoral system and our laws.
Norman Batley hosts a podcast called “Life Elsewhere with Norman B.” He is based in Tampa, Florida. The program is widely distributed through WMNF and NPR. He asks great questions, and I was thrilled to be invited to be on his show.
Paul Krugman, a Nobel Prize winner in economics, wrote regularly for The New York Times. Now he writes a blog at Substack. In this post, he characterizes the deepening dysfunction of our president, Donald Trump.
Things are not going well politically for Donald Trump. The polls show him underwater on every major issue. And while he insists that these are fake, it’s clear that he knows better. He recently lamented that the Republicans will do badly in the midterms and even floated the idea that midterms should be canceled.
And as January 6th 2021 showed, Trump simply can’t stand political rejection. He will do anything, use any tool or any person at his disposal, to obliterate the sources of that rejection.
So as we head into the 2026 midterm season, the best way to understand U.S. policy is that it’s in the pursuit of one crucial objective: Propping up Trump’s fragile ego.
What was the motivation for the abduction of Nicolás Maduro? It wasn’t about drugs, which were always an obvious pretense. By Trump’s own account it wasn’t about democracy. Trump talks a lot about oil, but Venezuela’s heavy, hard-to-process oil and its decrepit oil infrastructure aren’t big prizes. The Financial Timesreports that U.S. oil companies won’t invest in Venezuela unless they receive firm guarantees. One investor told the paper, “No one wants to go in there when a random fucking tweet can change the entire foreign policy of the country.”
The real purpose of the abduction, surely, was to give Trump an opportunity to strut around and act tough. But this ego gratification, like a sugar rush, won’t last long. Voters normally rally around the president at the beginning of a war. The invasion of Iraq was initially very popular. But the action in Venezuela hasn’t had any visible rally-around-the-flag effect. While Republicans, as always, support Trump strongly, independents are opposed:
And now the story of the moment is the atrocity in Minneapolis, where…an ICE agent killed Renee Nicole Good by shooting her in the head.
Trump and his minions responded by flatly lying about what happened. But their accounts have been refuted by video evidence which show an out-of-control ICE agent gunning down a woman who was simply trying to get away from a frightening situation. Yes, MAGA loyalists will fall into line, preferring to believe Trump rather than their own lying eyes. But public revulsion over Good’s murder and Trump’s mendacity are high and growing.
A president who actually cared about the welfare of those he governs would have taken Good’s killing as an indication that his deportation tactics have veered wildly and tragically off course. He would have called for a halt of ICE actions and made sure there would be an objective and timely federal investigation into this national tragedy.
But for Trump, ICE’s violent lawlessness is a feature, not a bug. Sending armed, masked, poorly trained, masked and out-of-control armed thugs into blue cities is, in effect, a war on Americans, just as January 6thwas a war on American institutions. In effect, Trump would rather savage his own people than be held accountable for his actions.
So in Trump’s mind, Renee Nicole Good’s murder is at most collateral damage, in service to his insatiable need to dominate and feel powerful — so insatiable that he is attempting to create an alternate reality, claiming that that Good ran over an agent although there is irrefutable video evidence that she didn’t.
And when one set of lies doesn’t work, he switches tactics – changing the topic, deflecting, and spouting even more lies. Thus, just hours after Good’s death, Trump proclaimed that he was seeking a huge increase in military spending:
It’s a near certainty that Trump’s assertion that he arrived at an immediate 50% increase in the military budget after “long and difficult negotiations” is yet another lie. There’s been no indication whatsoever that a massive increase in defense spending was on anyone’s agenda before he suddenly posted about it on Truth Social.
So what was that about? Given the timing, it’s clear that Trump’s announcement was yet another exercise in self-aggrandizement, as well as an attempt to grab the headlines away from Good’s killing. But what’s also important to realize from Trump’s announcement is that he is now clearly conflating the size of the US military with his ego. Evidently the sugar rush of Maduro’s capture has left him wanting more and more military validation, particularly as his poll numbers tank.
So here’s a warning to the US military: if you continue to indulge the sick fantasies of this man, he will drag this country into more and deeper international morasses to feed his need for glory. Do what Admiral Alvin Holsey, an honorable man, did – stand down and refuse an illegal order. Here’s a warning to the Republicans: if you continue to allow this man to perpetrate war against his own people with impunity through the actions of ICE, you will be remembered as cowards and hypocrites. Here’s a warning to all his other enablers: if you do not do something to stop this madman, you will go down in history as traitors to this country.
And here’s a warning to those directly perpetrating Trump-directed atrocities: He will not be in power forever, and I expect and hope that you will be held accountable, personally, and prosecuted to the full extent of the law.
Perhaps the strangest feature of Trump’s invasion of Venezuela is that he left the leadership of the regime in place, removing only Maduro and his wife. Four of the six Venezuelan leaders who were indicted for criminal activities are now running the country.
On the one hand, Trump avoids the problem of a renegade army and security apparatus, which can help repress the citizenry while the U.S. schemes to steal their oil.
On the other, the Maduro regime continues to be thuggish and corrupt.
The Economist magazine conducted a poll in Venezuela and found that most people were pleased that Maduro is gone.
The polling shows that Mr Maduro, who presided over torture and economic collapse and brazenly stole the presidential election in 2024, was deeply hated. Just 13% of respondents even mildly opposed his capture. Strikingly, more than half of them said their opinion of America had improved after the raid.
Its deputy editor Robert Guest wrote this commentary in the January 10-16 issue::
Outside a supermarket in Caracas a few years ago, I saw national guardsmen checking people’s identity before they were allowed in. The logic was that, courtesy of the revolutionary government, the state-owned shop sold essential groceries at below-market prices. So you needed men with truncheons and tear-gas to make sure shoppers only came in on their state-appointed shopping days.
Nicolás Maduro’s dictatorship was one of the most thuggish in the world. It was also one of the most economically incompetent. When I walked into that shop, half the shelves were bare and none of the groceries that were supposed to be on sale for less than they cost to make were, in fact, available. A combination of price controls, socialist dogma and industrial-scale corruption had dramatically impoverished a once-prosperous country. The economy shrank by 69% under Mr Maduro—a swifter decline than would normally occur during an all-out civil war. Small wonder Venezuelans in Miami danced in the streets when Donald Trump kidnapped Mr Maduro and whisked him to a courtroom in New York. But they were not dancing in Caracas, for fear of being arrested and tortured. For though the despot is gone, the rest of the regime is still in place.
Heather Cox Richardson obtained a pamphlet written during World War II for our troops overseas. Its purpose was to explain the tactics of fascists: how they gain power, how they lie to distort reality, how they use hatred to divide and conquer.
The pamphlet is insightful, incisive, and remarkably relevant to the world we live in now.
What we are learning is that “It can happen here.” We must arm ourselves with knowledge to preserve our democracy.
Beginning in 1943, the War Department published a series of pamphlets for U.S. Army personnel in the European theater of World War II. Titled Army Talks, the series was designed “to help [the personnel] become better-informed men and women and therefore better soldiers.”
On March 24, 1945, the topic for the week was “FASCISM!”
“You are away from home, separated from your families, no longer at a civilian job or at school and many of you are risking your very lives,” the pamphlet explained, “because of a thing called fascism.” But, the publication asked, what is fascism? “Fascism is not the easiest thing to identify and analyze,” it said, “nor, once in power, is it easy to destroy. It is important for our future and that of the world that as many of us as possible understand the causes and practices of fascism, in order to combat it.”
Fascism, the U.S. government document explained, “is government by the few and for the few. The objective is seizure and control of the economic, political, social, and cultural life of the state.” “The people run democratic governments, but fascist governments run the people.”
“The basic principles of democracy stand in the way of their desires; hence—democracy must go! Anyone who is not a member of their inner gang has to do what he’s told. They permit no civil liberties, no equality before the law.” “Fascism treats women as mere breeders. ‘Children, kitchen, and the church,’ was the Nazi slogan for women,” the pamphlet said.
Fascists “make their own rules and change them when they choose…. They maintain themselves in power by use of force combined with propaganda based on primitive ideas of ‘blood’ and ‘race,’ by skillful manipulation of fear and hate, and by false promise of security. The propaganda glorifies war and insists it is smart and ‘realistic’ to be pitiless and violent.”
Fascists understood that “the fundamental principle of democracy—faith in the common sense of the common people—was the direct opposite of the fascist principle of rule by the elite few,” it explained, “[s]o they fought democracy…. They played political, religious, social, and economic groups against each other and seized power while these groups struggled.”
Americans should not be fooled into thinking that fascism could not come to America, the pamphlet warned; after all, “[w]e once laughed Hitler off as a harmless little clown with a funny mustache.” And indeed, the U.S. had experienced “sorry instances of mob sadism, lynchings, vigilantism, terror, and suppression of civil liberties. We have had our hooded gangs, Black Legions, Silver Shirts, and racial and religious bigots. All of them, in the name of Americanism, have used undemocratic methods and doctrines which…can be properly identified as ‘fascist.’”
The War Department thought it was important for Americans to understand the tactics fascists would use to take power in the United States. They would try to gain power “under the guise of ‘super-patriotism’ and ‘super-Americanism.’” And they would use three techniques:
First, they would pit religious, racial, and economic groups against one another to break down national unity. Part of that effort to divide and conquer would be a “well-planned ‘hate campaign’ against minority races, religions, and other groups.”
Second, they would deny any need for international cooperation, because that would fly in the face of their insistence that their supporters were better than everyone else. “In place of international cooperation, the fascists seek to substitute a perverted sort of ultra-nationalism which tells their people that they are the only people in the world who count. With this goes hatred and suspicion toward the people of all other nations.”
Third, fascists would insist that “the world has but two choices—either fascism or communism, and they label as ‘communists’ everyone who refuses to support them.”
It is “vitally important” to learn to spot native fascists, the government said, “even though they adopt names and slogans with popular appeal, drape themselves with the American flag, and attempt to carry out their program in the name of the democracy they are trying to destroy.”
The only way to stop the rise of fascism in the United States, the document said, “is by making our democracy work and by actively cooperating to preserve world peace and security.” In the midst of the insecurity of the modern world, the hatred at the root of fascism “fulfills a triple mission.” By dividing people, it weakens democracy. “By getting men to hate rather than to think,” it prevents them “from seeking the real cause and a democratic solution to the problem.” By falsely promising prosperity, it lures people to embrace its security.
“Fascism thrives on indifference and ignorance,” it warned. Freedom requires “being alert and on guard against the infringement not only of our own freedom but the freedom of every American. If we permit discrimination, prejudice, or hate to rob anyone of his democratic rights, our own freedom and all democracy is threatened.”
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Notes:
https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/serial?id=armytalks
War Department, “Army Talk 64: FASCISM!” March 24, 1945, at https://archive.org/details/ArmyTalkOrientationFactSheet64-Fascism/mode/2up
Diane Ravitch's blog 