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I leave it to you, my faithful readers. Because I can’t today…

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(Originally appeared on Voenix Rising 26 May 2016)

Ben and I were heading home the other day and as we were driving down Lincoln and crossed 22nd Street, I was reminded of a time—a lifetime ago, it seems—when my family almost bought a house in that neighborhood.

It was during eighth grade—or perhaps shortly after I’d graduated. Dad was rightfully proud of the work he’d recently done for Hallcraft on their new Biltmore Highlands subdivision, so one sunny Saturday we headed over to what seemed at the time to me like the far east side of the valley to check it out. I don’t know how the talk started, but before I knew it we went from looking at the model homes to being shown one house in particular a few streets over that my parents were actually considering buying. It was a large, beautiful three bedroom, two bath place with a courtyard entrance, a spacious kitchen and a large family room with a fireplace. The bedroom that was to be mine was significantly larger than my current room, eliciting no small amount of excitement on my part. The room also had two windows instead of one.

My enthusiasm was tempered somewhat by the fact that it would now actually cost to phone my best friend (apparently calling from certain Phoenix exchanges to certain Glendale exchanges back in the day incurred wasn’t free).

This move also meant that my sister and I would be transferring to a new school district, something I think caused my parents’ eventual decision to bail on that house and that particular subdivision.

We did end up moving into a new home a few months later, actually only about a half mile south of where we had been living, so the seed had definitely been planted. I’m sure economics were also a factor; we got a much larger house for less money in Hallcraft’s Bethany Heights than we would’ve gotten if we’d moved to Biltmore Highlands.

Ironically, even though my best buddy and I now actually lived closer to each other than we had previously with this move, after high school started we drifted apart and each went our separate ways. (I found out many, many years later that Neal—whom I’d known since 4th grade—transitioned to Angela sometime in our twenties. He’d always told me he’d felt like a girl trapped in a boy’s body, so this did not come as a huge surprise.)

What does all this have to do with the title of this post? Well, I got to thinking how different (or perhaps not) my life would’ve been had we actually moved to Biltmore Highlands and my sister and I had been forced into a new school district.

Obviously, I would never have met the people or made the friends I did if I’d gone to a different school than the one I did, but I wonder if life post-high school would’ve actually been that different. I’d still have undoubtedly gone to the University of Arizona in Tucson and had similar experiences. Or would I?

A currently popular idea in cosmology is that there are an infinite number of universes, each one calving off and growing on its own, depending upon what choices are made. And not just your choices, but multiply that by the billions of other souls on this rock and it boggles the mind. Multiply that by the number of possible planets and potentially sentient beings in the universe, and it truly becomes an unimaginable number.

So it’s always an interesting “what if” game to play. What if I’d actually gone to ASU instead of UofA, stayed in school and gotten my degree? What if I’d kept on going the night I walked out of The Joshua Tree and never met Dennis? What if Bernie and I never visited San Francisco—much less moved there?

I suppose there’s a certain satisfaction in knowing that if this multiverse idea is in fact reality that somewhere, maybe as close as the orbit of an electron—there are universes where Hitler was never born; where JFK was never assassinated; where you are just as likely to be President of the United States as you are to be living in a cardboard box under an overpass; a world where the Dark Ages never occurred and Christianity never gained a foothold; a world where you actually bought that Apple stock in the 90s; a world where mankind has already colonized the solar system and is moving out to the stars…

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once again, everything in the news is so unbelievably stupid that I don’t even know where to start. so I’m just going to spin the Big Wheel of Moron™ and see where it lands. ready? here we go.

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oh my god, could Preznit Fuckwit please shut his rancid anus-mouth?

Just spoke to Pres. Trump. I asked him if he had seen the video of Rep. Omar being attacked and sprayed by a substance.

“No. I don’t think about her. I think she’s a fraud. I really don’t think about that. She probably had herself sprayed, knowing her,” the president said.

I asked again if he had seen the video.

“I haven’t seen it. No, no. I hope I don’t have to bother.”

and just like that, Donny Convict continues his 79-year-long unbroken streak of being the worst fucking person on the planet.

can we get Wonkette’s Rebecca Schoenkopf in here for a minute? she’s so good at putting into words what we’re all feeling right now.

thanks, Rebecca.

this fucking guy. he admits he hasn’t seen — and doesn’t want to see — the video of the assault, but that doesn’t keep him from running his ignorant mouth about it.

he thinks the attack on Rep. Omar is a hoax, because of course he does. Donny hates Omar — because he’s a fucking racist — and, because he doesn’t have a single ounce of decency in his rotting body, he can’t even mumble some halfhearted third-grade-level statement about ‘bad. so bad. we’re all wishing her well.’

what kind festering cum-sock hears about a woman being sprayed with some noxious liquid and goes ‘oh yeah, I’ll bet she did it to herself.’ who the fuck even thinks like that?

you know what? I’ll bet by crying ‘hoax!’, Donny’s telling on himself again — because with as always with this shithead, every accusation is a confession.

look, I don’t want to be a conspiracy guy. it’s really not my thing. but for the life of me, I’m still trying to figure out how Donny’s blown-to-bits ear magically regenerated itself.

oh wait, we’re not done with Donny. Rachel Scott has another question for him.

More from my interview with President Trump last night: I asked the president about Sens. Tillis and Murkowski calling for Sec. Noem to step down.

“Well, they’re both losers. You know, what can I tell you? They’re terrible senators. One is gone and the other should be gone,” he said.

he’s such a charmer. once again, Donny can’t just brush it off and go, ‘yeah well, that’s just your opinion, man.’

he’s so spite-fueled and broken-inside that he has to go scorched earth.

you simply must check out Senator Tillis’ reaction to being called a loser.

CNN’s Manu Raju: “the president called you a loser.”

Tillis: “I am thrilled about that. that makes me qualified to be Homeland Security Secretary *and* senior adviser to the president.”

let’s be clear-eyed about this, Thom Tillis is not our friend. he’s as xenophobic as they come. he’s totally down with ICE rounding up immigrants and shipping them to who the fuck cares, and he thinks they should be doing more of that shit. he’s just mad at ICE Barbie and Nosferatu McGoebbels for fucking up.

still, his response to Donny is so perfect that it’s hard not to be heartbroken about it.

well, that was fun. let’s give another spin to the Big Wheel of Moron™.

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after his humiliating shitcanning and banishment from Minneapolis, you might have hoped that Obergruppenführer Greg Bovino would have had the decency to scamper back into his cigar box, close the lid, and never be heard from again.

fat chance. the Itsy-Bitsy Nazi is so high on his own supply that he stopped off at Mount Rushmore and took a victory lap.

“team, behind me are a few individuals there. that’s the original ‘turn and burn,’ the folks that help make American. but you know what? I’m very proud of what you, the ‘mean green machine,’ are doing in Minneapolis right now, just like you’ve done it across the United States over these past tough nine months. and I want you to know, you’re the modern day equivalent of ‘turn and burn.’ it makes me very proud. I also want you to know that I’ve got your back now, and always. I love you. I support you, and I salute you.”

I’ll bet that speech is even more impressive in its original German.

‘turn and burn,’ by the way, is Gestapo Greg’s pet name for the fascist shit he’s pulled in Minneapolis, Los Angeles and elsewhere. and this racist little fireplug is so arrogant, he thinks the dudes carved into Rushmore — George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln — would be totally be high-fiving him for his lawless behavior.

how delusional is that?

free clue for the Fascist In A Teacup: no, no, no, no, and fuck no. none of those homeys would approve of your banty rooster antics. stop shitting all the over Constitution and pick up a fucking history book, Greg. you might learn something.

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ok, let’s spin Big Wheel of Moron™ one last time.

tonight, Donny and his Slovenian rent-a-wife are attending a Kennedy Center screening of the Melania movie — the so-called ‘film’ that everyone knows is going to be a twenty-megaton box office disaster.

at its London premiere, it sold one ticket.

one ticket! now comes the part where we throw our heads back in laughter. ready?

and now comes the part where the worthless scribblers of The New York Times corruptionwash that shit.

come on, Grey Lady — stop pulling your punches. nobody is ‘questioning’Amazon’s motives. everyone knows exactly what this is all about: naked corruption. it’s Jeff Bezos burning through millions of dollars in order to curry favor with Dear Leader.

Melania Convict is the least-interesting person on the planet, and nobody — absolutely nobody — was clamoring for a documentary about her.

despite that, Bezos gave Melania FORTY MILLION DOLLARS for the rights to her ‘story.’ Amazon spent five million dollars on production, and another thirty-five million on promotion. that’s eighty fucking million dollars for a film which is predicted to take in about one million at the box office.

one hand washes the other, am I right? blatant corruption doesn’t get any more blatantly corrupt than that.

oh, and in England, where the premiere sold one ticket? rejoice, everyone — UK ticket sales have skyrocketed to six!

Vue, a major European cinema operator, is offering nine showings (451 seats in all) at its multiplex in York, England, from Friday through Sunday, one analyst noted. As of Wednesday, it had sold six seats.

now here’s a question for you all: do you think these two lovebirds will take separate cars to the screening?

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and now for your hero of the day — some obscure songwriter who probably no one’s ever heard of, Bruce Springsteen.

 

I wrote this song on Saturday, recorded it yesterday and released it to you today in response to the state terror being visited on the city of Minneapolis. It’s dedicated to the people of Minneapolis, our innocent immigrant neighbors and in memory of Alex Pretti and Renee Good.

Stay free.

and just like that, Springsteen continues his seventy-six-year-long unbroken streak of being fucking awesome.

let’s give it a listen.

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this is going to be my closing message for the foreseeable future:

practice self-care. do what you need to do to keep sane. if that means you need to disengage with my daily posts for a while, I get it. this community of ours will still be here when you return.

to all the people who have signed on in the days since the election, welcome aboard. settle in as we all try to deal with the shitfuckery that’s ahead of us.

we are all in this together, and we are all here for each other

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From Doug at Still Blowing Bubbles:

Breakfast At Mrs. Rigby’s

A man came in while I was chewing eggs, and it’s a seat-yourself restaurant, but a instead of sitting down he approached one of the waitresses and said, “Excuse me.”

“Hi,” she said. “You can sit anywhere.”

“Well, there’s a problem,” he said. “I can’t pay, but I’m expecting a check in the mail within the next few days. Would it be OK if I paid later?”

He was in his 40s, balding, skinny, not black but not quite white — maybe Mexican, maybe something else. He was asking Angela, a waitress who’s taken my order dozens of times, and she’s always nice. Being nice is her job, and she was nice to this guy. Without even a second of hesitation she said again, “You can sit anywhere, and pay when you can.”

A meal on credit, no questions asked. Apparently, I was eating breakfast inside an episode of The Waltons.

When Angela came to my table a little later, leaving the bill, I offered to pay for that guy’s breakfast. Said it quietly, so as not to embarrass him.

“Aw, that’s sweet of you,” she said, “but it’s not necessary. He’ll pay when he can.”

“Do you know him?”

“Well, I don’t ‘know’ him, any more than I know you, but he’s a regular. He’ll pay when he can.”

Saw a similar exchange once at Bob’s Diner in Madison, but it startled me then and it startles me now. This is America. You don’t expect kindness like that.

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are you ready for some sweet, sweet MAGA-on-MAGA violence?

I sure hope so, because Donny Convict’s merry band of sewer clowns are running around in a panic right now. they screwed the pooch bigtime in Minneapolis, and they know full well that Obergruppenführer Greg Bovino’s isn’t the only head that’s going to roll — and so they’ve all locked themselves down into self-preservation mode. even better, the knives are out and they’re starting to turn on each other.

it’s a glorious fucking sight to behold.

Kristi Noem wants to make one thing perfectly clear: she was only following orders.

Noem has complained to others that she feels she’s being hung out to dry over the episode and has made sure to emphasize she took direction from Miller and the president, a source told Axios.

wait a minute — Nosferatu McGoebbels is telling ICE Barbie what do to? since when does the Secretary of Homeland Security take direction from White House Deputy Chief of Staff?

Miller’s power extends to de facto oversight of Noem, though she’s a Cabinet secretary who technically outranks him.

do you need any more proof that Dear Leader is just a demented figurehead who they drag out to make incoherent speeches and sign whatever papers they put in front of him, and that Nosferatu McGoebbels is really running the show?

this lame-ass excuse that Little Miss Hair Extensions was only following orders — where have we heard that before? oh yeah — at the Nuremberg trials.

now here’s a pro tip for Stephen Miller: if Kristi ever invites you out back to the gravel pit ‘because she has something she wants to show you,’ run as fast as you can in the other direction.

Cricket, am I right? Cricket? Cricket?

Noferatu, for his part, is covering his ass regarding the summary execution of Alex Pretti. he’s all ‘nuh-uh, it’s Homeland Security’s fault.’

Specifically, Miller said, Bovino’s crew was supposed to divide its force into two groups: One unit was supposed to handle the arrests of specifically targeted “criminal aliens” and the other squad was in charge of crowd control to keep “disruptors” from interfering.

oh, how convenient. after spending days screeching about how Pretti got what was coming to him, because — according to Miller — he was a ‘domestic terrorist,’ he’s changing his story. now it’s ‘Pretti got gunned down because ICE was doing it wrong.’

fuck off, Nosferatu.

meanwhile, Democrats — along with Republicans Thom Tillis and Lisa Murkowski — have a message for Preznit Fuckwit: fire the puppy perforator, pronto, or we’ll impeach her.

Top House Democrats on Tuesday told Donald Trump to fire Kristi Noem or they would launch impeachment proceedings against the homeland security secretary, in response to the weekend killing of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, as two Republican senators join calls for her to resign.

here’s the beauty part: House Democrats threw Donny’s own mob-boss language back in his face, closing their statement with ‘we can do this the easy way or the hard way.’

I fucking love that.

more like this, please.

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we should probably do a wellness check three-hundred-and-forty-seven-year-old human fossil Chuck Grassley.

“Tried asking Chuck Grassley, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, whether it’s appropriate for ICE to enter homes without a judicial warrant. ‘Ask a constitutional lawyer,” he said. ‘I’m a farmer.’”

oh, for fuck’s sake. Chuckers has been a member of the Senate — and chair of its Judiciary Committee — for nearly two hundred and forty-one years, and he’s claiming he has no idea how the Constitution works? he was in the room when the damned thing was being written.

hey, did anyone think ICE would actually restrain themselves in the wake of Obergruppenführer Greg’s shitcanning? me neither.

look at the fuckery they were up to yesterday.

“1/27/2026 – Minneapolis – ICE just attempted an illegal entry into the ECUADORIAN CONSULATE to abduct someone. They did not have a warrant.”

wait a minute. under whose authority are they pulling this shit? is this the work of Tommy ‘Bags-o-Cash’ Homan? fun fact: ICE has no jurisdiction whatsoever to enter a foreign consulate. they can’t just wander in there willy-nilly and do whatever the fuck they want.

per The New York Times.

Ecuador’s foreign ministry said it lodged a formal diplomatic protest with the United States after a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent attempted to enter the country’s consulate in Minneapolis without permission on Tuesday morning.

Employees of the consulate stopped the agent from entering, the Ecuadorean foreign ministry said in a statement Tuesday night. Under the Vienna Conventions, to which the United States is a party, foreign consular buildings are off-limits to law enforcement from the host country without authorization from consular officials.

so now ICE is going be starting international incidents, because they’re so horny to deport some hapless day laborer? take a cold fucking shower, you morons.

while we’re on the subject of ‘international incidents,’ can somebody please explain to me why we’re sending masked ICE thugs to Italy? explain it to me like I’m five years old — because this makes no goddamned sense.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents will join a security team from the State Department at the Olympics “to vet and mitigate risks from transnational criminal organizations.”

excuse me? ‘risks from transnational criminal organizations’? at the fucking Olympics?

what kind of fever-swamp fairy-tale nonsense is this? I swear, the people running our government are high on their own supply, farting out the most nonsensical reasons for doing anything, and expecting us to buy it. go peddle that shit elsewhere, you dumbfucks, we’re all stocked up.

can you imagine masked, poorly-trained goons running wild in the streets of Milan? Italy can, and they want no part of this fuckery.

Antonio Tajani, Italy’s foreign minister, told reporters that ICE agents would not be allowed to deploy on Italian streets.

oh, and speaking of masked and armed ICE thugs, get ready for the saddest story you’ll ever hear in your life.

Morale is “plummeting” among federal law enforcement officers tasked with carrying out the Trump administration’s aggressive anti-immigration operation, as they complained that long hours, ambitious arrest quotas and hatred from the public, according to reports.

oh boo fucking hoo. dry your fucking eyes. nobody twisted your arms and forced you to become willing participants in deadly fascism. what did you think would happen after you kidnapped children and murdered innocent bystanders in cold blood? that we would throw flowers and give you a standing ovation?

oh please, grow the fuck up. actions have consequences, you crybabies.

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the kind staff at the White House Assisted Living Facility allowed Sundowning Grandpa Befuddlepants to make a day trip to Iowa, so he could have a playdate with some of his cultists. wasn’t that sweet of them to humor a frail old codger?

oh look — Dear Leader is now wearing one glove, to hide his rotting hand.

tell me, who wore it better?

President Pudding Cup’s brain is fried. get ready for the most fucked-up lesson in ‘how a bill becomes a law’ ever.

“China will be sending me a bill very shortly supporting year-round E15 to my desk, and I will sign it without delay.”

holy. fucking. shit. China. is sending. Donny. a bill. to sign. it hurts my brain just to type that out.

hey Donny — is China in the room with us right now?

Donny also met with a bunch of big, strong Iowans yesterday — and you’ll never guess what they were doing while in the hallowed presence of Dear Leader. that’s right, they were blubbering like babies

 

“I just left a great group of people from Iowa and half of them were crying as they talked to me. I don’t think they’re crying because I’m doing a bad job. you know, [unintelligible] cry if you do a bad job. they were crying because I’d done a good job. ‘sir,’ they said ‘sir, you brought our country back.’ crying, crying.”

fact check:

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which bring us to our hero of the day: this brave heckler at Donny’s Iowa rally, who kept shouting ‘release the Epstein Files’ — and never stopped shouting it, even as she was being eighty-sixed from the rally.

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this is going to be my closing message for the foreseeable future:

practice self-care. do what you need to do to keep sane. if that means you need to disengage with my daily posts for a while, I get it. this community of ours will still be here when you return.

to all the people who have signed on in the days since the election, welcome aboard. settle in as we all try to deal with the shitfuckery that’s ahead of us.

we are all in this together, and we are all here for each other.

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I don’t know if there’s any interest here, but I’m starting to cull the herd. This is one of my favorite players, but I also have it in blue, so one needs to go. I have a couple more that I’ll be throwing up here and on eBay in the coming days (including recorders).

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Red Sony MZ-E75 Minidisc Player, Excellent Condition

For the uninitiated, please note this is a PLAYER ONLY, not a recorder. You’ll need to record your Minidiscs elsewhere. Unit is not mint, but is nonetheless in EXCELLENT condition as shown below. Battery terminals are pristine with no signs of corrosion and all functions work perfectly. The mechanism was recently cleaned and lubricated and includes a wired remote and 2 new gumstick batteries. It does NOT include an A/C Charger or AA battery sidecar, so you’ll need a separate battery charger (available on Amazon) to keep the gumsticks charged. Link to eBay auction.

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Just sayin’…

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[Artist’s page]

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Donate here.

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look, everything may totally fucking suck right now, what with the economy in tatters, our foreign policy circling the drain, and armed fascists running amok on the streets of our cities — but at least the president of the United States is crazier than a shithouse rat. so we’ve got that going for us.

let me give you fair warning: you are now about to enter Crazytown. population: Donny.

holy fucking shit. this is some seriously deranged stuff. it’s some Hitler-in-the-bunker-level ranting.

let’s see if I can rationally explain what Dear Leader is losing his shit over. the National Trust ⁠for Historic Preservation is suing Donny to block construction of the Epstein Dance Hall where the East Wing used to be.

The National Trust sued Trump and several federal agencies in December, arguing the project has proceeded without required approvals, environmental review or congressional authorization.

of course the project proceeded without going through any of those proper channels. that’s not how a Mad King rolls. Donny simply had a demolition crew just show up one day to tear that shit down, before anyone had a chance to react.

but what’s even worse for Donny is that the judge assigned to the case seems inclined to agree with the Trust.

At a hearing in a lawsuit brought by the National Trust ⁠for Historic Preservation, U.S. District Judge Richard Leon raised doubts about whether Trump had statutory power to tear down the East ‌Wing with plans to build a ballroom in its place without approval or oversight from the ⁠U.S. Congress.

Leon snapped, “Come on, be serious,” after a lawyer for the administration drew parallels to the construction of a pool during the Gerald Ford administration in the 1970s and to other smaller renovations.

and this is Donny’s reaction to being told ‘no’: to power-load an infinite series of diapers, and melt all the way down on his crappy app.

he’s a fucking child — one with a persecution complex. who fucking talks like this?

“But no, as usual, I got sued, this time by the Radical Left National (No!)Trust for Historic Preservation, a group that couldn’t care less about our Country!”

a delusional narcissist, that’s who talks like that. inside Donny rat-infested brain, the National Trust can’t possibly be an impartial organization tasked with the preservation of our historic landmarks. oh no — if you oppose one of Donny’s fuckbrained schemes, you’re now part of some mythical ‘radical left,’ hell-bent on destroying the country.

I’ll bet the staid bureaucrats of the Historic Trust never thought they’d be labeled ‘enemies of the state.’

but that, my friends, is now the guiding principle of the MAGAsphere: ‘if you disagree with me, you’re the enemy — and if you’re mean to me, I can’t help what comes next.’

let’s watch as Obergruppenführer Greg Bovino — that adorable little Fascist In A Teacup™ — applies this principle to the death and chaos he’s perpetrated in Minneapolis.

“when politicians, community leaders and some journalists engage in that heated rhetoric we keep talking about, when they make the choice to vilify law enforcement, calling law enforcement names like ‘Gestapo,’ or using the term ‘kidnapping,’ that is a choice that is made. there are actions and consequences that come from those choices.”

Gestapo Greg says what?

I’m sorry, Greg — are we hurting your fragile fee-fees by calling you and your lawless masked thugs ‘Gestapo’? well, here’s a free clue: maybe don’t act like Nazis, and we won’t have any reason to call you Nazis. if the jackboot fits, wear it, am I right?

and while we’re on the subject, maybe also don’t dress like you’re in some dinner-theater production of Springtime for Hitler.

but let’s look at the darker side of Obergruppenführer Greg’s message: ‘there are actions and consequences that come from those choices.’

excuse me? we’re now being warned to expect ‘consequences’ from the ‘choice’ of calling a fascist a fascist? on what fucking planet? that ain’t the way it works in America, pal. name-calling is not a capital crime. at least not yet it isn’t.

but this is the rhetoric we’ve been hearing from the Donnyverse ever since Renee Good got gunned down in her car. ‘look at what you made us do.’

“we gotta stop the hateful rhetoric. saying this officer is a murderer is dangerous. it’s just ridiculous. it’s just gonna infuriate people more which means there’s gonna be more incidents like this.”

that was Tom Homan, in the days following Renee Good’s summary execution, warning us to keep our mouths shut, if we don’t want more of the same.

once again, this is classic abuser language: ‘look what you made us do.’

getting back to Obergruppenführer Greg’s soundbite, where he whines about‘vilifying law enforcement’ — let’s be clear about one thing: the actions of the masked ICE thugs can in no way be called ‘law enforcement.’ no actual laws are being ‘enforced’ by ICE on the streets of Minneapolis. it’s state-sponsored terrorism, is what it is.

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Krazee-Eyes Kash Patel: “you cannot bring a firearm, loaded, with multiple magazines, to any sort of protest that you want. it’s that simple. you don’t have a right to break the law.”

BZZZT! wrong answer.

Under the Second Amendment and MN Stat. 624.714, permit holders may legally carry firearms in public, including during protests. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that public carry is a constitutional right. Carrying a firearm does not legally constitute “inciting violence.”

I’m so old, I remember what Republicans loved the shit out of people who brought guns to protests.

remember these shitwits?

these MAGA morons were so mad about being asked to lock down and mask up against COVID that they festooned themselves with weapons of mass death and protested inside the Michigan Statehouse.

nobody arrested them. nobody shot them point-blank in the back of their head. in fact, the entire wingnut outrage-industrial complex lauded them as patriotic heroes of freedom.

and how about these fucknuts?

this is Patricia and Mark McCloskey, reacting in most perfectly normal way to protesters who were simply passing by their house. these paranoid weirdos weren’t gunned down on the spot. in fact, they were honored as keynote speakers at the 2020 Republican National Convention.

and when teenage incel Kyle Rittenhouse brought a weapon to a protest and actually killed people, do you know who defended his ‘right’ to do so? Kash Patel.

“Kash Patel on Kyle Rittenhouse: ‘Where is the due process?’”

excuse me, but where the fuck was Alex Pretti’s due process? he kept his weapon holstered, never drew it, never brandished it — and now he’s dead, thanks to Obergruppenführer Greg’s Gestapo.

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our one saving grace amidst all this carnage may well be Donny’s compulsion to overreach and clownfuck his own agenda.

it turns out that Second Amendment absolutists fucking hate it when you try to tell them where they can or can’t bring guns.

“But we must also maintain our core values as a nation, including the right to protest and assemble.”

let’s be clear: Senator Ricketts is not our friend. he’s an asshole who is totally down with ICE disappearing immigrants off the streets of our cities. but he does draw the line at the summary execution of protesters. lucky us.

holy shit, Donny’s even pissed off the NRA. here’s their response to Bill Essayli, one of Donny’s hand-picked MAGAfied US Attorneys, who said, ‘if you approach law enforcement with a gun, there is a high likelihood they will be legally justified in shooting you.’

“This sentiment from the First Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California is dangerous and wrong. responsible public voices should be awaiting a full investigation, not making generalizations and demonizing law-abiding citizens.”

oh, and the nonsense that Bill Essayli farted out about cops being legally justified in shooting anyone possessing a gun? it’s completely fucking wrong.

The U.S. Constitution (particularly the 2nd, 4th, and 14th amendments) prohibit officers from shooting citizens merely for possessing a weapon that is not an “imminent threat”. This was reaffirmed in Graham v Connor, which says force must be reasonable.

Donny’s moving too fast, being too reckless and breaking too much shit in the process. none of the fuckery Donny is perpetrating is sustainable, and very little of it is popular.

I’ve said this before, and I’ll keep saying it — because I will never stop believing it’s true: someday, this war’s gonna end.

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here are your heroes of the day: the good people of Nuuk, Greenland.

that’s a message the whole world can get behind.

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this is going to be my closing message for the foreseeable future:

practice self-care. do what you need to do to keep sane. if that means you need to disengage with my daily posts for a while, I get it. this community of ours will still be here when you return.

to all the people who have signed on in the days since the election, welcome aboard. settle in as we all try to deal with the shitfuckery that’s ahead of us.

we are all in this together, and we are all here for each other.

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Quote from a Minnesotan: “ICE has made the classic NAZI mistake. They have invaded a winter people… in the winter.”

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I don’t care if some of you are tired of the Tiedrich posts. If you don’t like it, go elsewhere. Seriously.

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yes, again.

once again, masked thugs who have been conditioned — not trained, but conditioned — to shoot first and think never have gunned down a civilian in cold blood.

and, once again, the vile shitstains responsible for all this fuckery have asked us to — no, I’m sorry, they’re demanding that we disbelieve what we’re all seeing with our own eyes.

here’s what we know so far:

militarized government thugs were patrolling the streets of an American city and harassing its residents — just as the framers of our Constitution intended. they wore masks to hide their identities — just as the framers of our Constitution intended.

five of the masked thugs approached a man who was recording them, pepper-sprayed him, and roughly shoved him to the ground — just as the framers of our Constitution intended.

as the man struggled to get away, one or more of the masked thugs drew his weapon and shot the man several times, killing him — just as the framers of our Constitution intended. as the man lay face-down on the ground, more shots were fired into his lifeless body — just as the framers of our Constitution intended.

it was just another fucked-up day in these United States of Brutal Fascism.

as with the state-sponsored killing of Renee Good three weeks ago, the worst people in the world immediately started lying their insipid faces off about what had happened.

they blamed the victim — Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive care nurse — painting him as the latest Radical Leftist Lunatic™ to get what was coming to him.

here’s some truly Orwellian shit from Obergruppenführer Greg Bovino, everyone’s favorite bite-sized fascist.

“the suspect also had two loaded magazines and no accessible ID. this looks like a situation where an individual wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement.”

fact check: bull fucking shit, Pocket Nazi.

The Department of Homeland Security said the episode began after a man approached Border Patrol agents with a handgun and they tried to disarm him. But footage from the scene shows the man was holding a phone in his hand, not a gun, when federal agents took him to the ground and shot him.

so, let’s talk about that gun that Alex Pretti was carrying.

His concealed weapon was found only after he was restrained on the sidewalk, the videos show. It appears to have been taken from him before the agents opened fire.

according to Minneapolis police, he had every legal right to carry it.

“The only interaction that we are aware of with law enforcement has been for traffic tickets and we believe he is a lawful gun owner with a permit to carry.”

let’s be crystal fucking clear about this: the ICE thugs were never in danger. Pretti’s weapon remained holstered, and was never in his hand. what was in his hand was very clearly a cell phone. I mean, even low-wattage ICE morons can tell the difference, right?

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the very same people who have spent year fetishizing the right to carry weapons in public are shocked — shocked! — to discover that people are exercising that Constitutionally-protected right.

let’s gaze in awe as ICE Barbie once again drags the truth out back to the gravel pit and shoots it in the face.

reporter: “did the 37-year-old who had a license to carry, did he brandish a gun?”

Kristi Noem: “this individual showed up to impede a law enforcement operation and assaulted our officers. they responded according to their training and took action to defend the officer’s life and those of the public around him, and I don’t know of any peaceful protester that shows up with a gun and ammunition rather than a sign. this is a violent riot when you have someone showing up with weapons and are using them to assault law enforcement officers.”

can we please stop calling ICE ‘law enforcement officers’? they’re not enforcing any known laws on the books. what they’re doing is inventing their own laws on the spot — and playing judge, jury and executioner.

but I digress. answer the question, puppy perforator — did Alex Pretti brandish a gun?

fact check: no, he fucking well did not.

hey, you want to see what brandishing looks like? here’s some brandishing.

I’m so old, I remember when some teenage fuckbag showed up at a protest and brandished the shit out of an assault rifle. when he used that weapon to kill three protesters, the entire wingnut ecosystem made him an instant folk hero.

so, to recap: if you’re an anti-fascist protester with lawful, holstered weapon, too bad, fuck-o, it’s summary execution for you. but if you’re a MAGA dipshit openly spraying bullets into a crowd, you’re ‘a nice young man.’

shut up, Piggy.

and you can shut the fuck up, too, Couchfuck McGee.

“This level of engineered chaos is unique to Minneapolis. It is the direct consequence of far left agitators, working with local authorities.”

oh please, don’t piss on our heads and tell us it’s raining. the only people engineering chaos are the masked ICE goons who are going out of their way to harm as many Minnesotans as possible.

Uncle Tim Walz, can you please talk some sense to these shit-kazoos?

“speak out. bear witness and document legally. but I understand the risk in that. and I understand the courage that it takes to have people out there doing this. thank God we have video, because according to DHS, these seven heroic guys took an onslaught of a battalion against them or something. it’s nonsense, people. it’s nonsense and it is lies.”

you know thinks Little Miss Hair Extensions’ Department of Homeland Security has gone to far? the guy who invented the Department of Homeland Security, that’s who. he’s calling today’s DHS fascists — and he’s calling for Preznit Fuckwit to be impeached and removed from office.

“I helped to establish DHS in 2002 and 2003 and later had the homeland security portfolio as a White House Counsel and served as General Counsel of the Department. I am enraged and embarrassed by DHS’s lawlessness, fascism, and cruelty. Impeach and remove Trump—now.”

Democrats must to do whatever they can to shut this shit down — and it looks like they might actually follow through. look at Chuck Schumer.

Strongly-Worded Chuck has come about as close to losing his shit as I’ve ever seen him.

“What’s happening in Minnesota is appalling—and unacceptable in any American city. Democrats sought common sense reforms in the Department of Homeland Security spending bill, but because of Republicans’ refusal to stand up to President Trump, the DHS bill is woefully inadequate to rein in the abuses of ICE. I will vote no. Senate Democrats will not provide the votes to proceed to the appropriations bill if the DHS funding bill is included.”

Jake Sherman of Punchbowl News points out that — assuming that Chuck isn’t just Lucy-and-the-footballing us — all this could lead to another government shutdown.

“This ICE situation is a nightmare for the Senate. Cannot see a scenario in which Senate Dems can vote for this 6-bill package which includes DHS funding. Govt shuts down Friday. First Senate procedural vote likely not until Wednesday, giving them limited room to maneuver. House on recess. Any changes to the bill would require the House. Shutdown a real possibility at this point.”

so, fun week ahead.

I think it’s great the Democrats are finding their voices, but as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez reminds us, none of this shit is normal — especially the GOP’s total abdication of any responsibility to rein in Dear Leader’s excesses — and we should reject every attempt to normalize it.

“this really isn’t just about Democrats. this is about Democrats, Republicans, and independents. and I think, right now, in this moment, there has been this permission structure where we have all universally accepted that the Republican Party will simply just have no morals, or fall in line with the president of the United States — and we have to challenge that logic and rhetoric every single time. I believe that often times they are given a free pass, and this accepted logic just allows them to continue to vote without any resistance from the constituencies, because we’ve accepted some foregone conclusion.”

now for your heroes of the day: the brave — and I do mean brave — Minnesotans who used debris — and then their own bodies — to block an armored vehicle from advancing.

(video credit: Brendan Gutenschwager via Threads.)

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this is going to be my closing message for the foreseeable future:

practice self-care. do what you need to do to keep sane. if that means you need to disengage with my daily posts for a while, I get it. this community of ours will still be here when you return.

to all the people who have signed on in the days since the election, welcome aboard. settle in as we all try to deal with the shitfuckery that’s ahead of us.

we are all in this together, and we are all here for each other.

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Alex Pretti was murdered by ICE, in cold blood, without cause, and with giddy joy from his assassins.

For simply bearing witness to a neighbor’s abuse, for being the kind of person we all say we aspire to be, for being present to an imperiled stranger, he was executed in the street by our government.

It is as tragic and frightening as any day in my lifetime:

The complete disregard for his life by those thugs cosplaying as soldiers is beyond comprehension.

The utter contempt for his memory by this Administration is unrepentantly evil.

And what soon followed by supposedly patriotic, Jesus-following Conservative Americans is sadly predictable.

Like you, I’m finding words difficult for the waste of it all, the sickening deja vu of what’s unfolded, and the feeling that we’re slipping into something more dark than our minds can fathom.

One of the saddest things about today is that I can imagine the conversations right now by my former friends, distant family members, neighbors, and people I used to pastor:

“Oh, he was threatening them!”

“He came at them with a gun. They were just defending themselves.”

“He was another Leftist extremist!”

“That’s what you get when you attack officers.”

This is the mass delusion being curated again.

They will believe Trump and Noem and Patel and Bondi and Leavitt, and not their own eyes.

They will convince themselves that the truth is not the truth, because otherwise they will need to come to terms with the reality that they are complicit in this, that they have created this monster, that they have failed their nation and their faith, that everything we’ve warned them about for ten years is now here.

To avoid accountability, and the courage and change that would require of them, they will willfully choose a comfortable fiction; a fantasy that declares them patriotic and righteous, and anyone whose presence disturbs that story, the enemy.

And they will dig in their heels, double down, and descend further into cultic tribalism while trying to bury the cognitive dissonance they have created.

Actual, real, walking-around, business-owning, church-going, school board-attending Americans will choose to vilify slaughtered human beings instead of admitting they were wrong.

And they will look at the decent people across this nation, those with a conscience, those who refuse to deny reality, and they will say that we are the problem.

They will dehumanize us to the point that when we are beaten or kidnapped or executed, it will not elicit anything but the belief that we got what we deserved.

This is what Trump has done to a sizable portion of this nation, and it’s something the rest of us need to face with sober, unflinching clarity.

It’s not enough to grieve the loss of Renee Good and Alex Pretti; we must defend their memories.

We must not allow them to be slandered, mischaracterized, and dehumanized.

We must walk into our days and into every space in which we find ourselves, and we must speak truth about what is happening.

That is our responsibility as good people bearing witness to violence, just as they did.

This is the statement from Alex Pretti’s distraught family:

ICE killed him.

The Trump Administration slandered him.

Conservative Americans have joined them.

This has happened to Alex Pretti and his family.

It happened to Renee Good and her family.

It will happen to thousands and thousands of families, unless we decide that we not tolerate it another day.

I know you’d like me to tell you what you should do in response, but I’m unable to.

I’m still working through what my response will be.

These are matters of conscience, and they cannot be made from a distance, but within the cavernous places of our own hearts.

I can only tell you that we are all tethered together, that every one of us has a life to leverage, and that we will rise or fall together.

May we meet this moment with the best of ourselves.

1 comments