Thanks for the reality check Thom. The America we are living in is a facade, appearances are being maintained while the new SS/GESTAPO are building concentration camps (seven of them authorized by the OBBB.
Does anyone ask, why it is, that Trump is pressing ahead with plans to defile not only the White House, but Washington DC and turn it in to a reflecting pool of his malignant self. Why his cabinet defines Congress, and insults the Senators who quiz them, and refuse to testify?
It is because they are insiders and they all know that there will be no consequences because Trump is not leaving, except on a gurney, and even then his replacement is a sock puppet,
I am even worried about the November elections. With all of the voter suppression laws, and activities planned by Trump and the Republicans, with voting machines and tabulators owned by Trump allies., with the weaponization of the National Guard and ICE.with Trump's DOJ, poised to investigate and file suit against any state, that doesn't give him a majority Republican congress., I am worried and can only pray (and I am an atheist) that a massive turnout, unlike ever seen before in history, will be so effective that not even the massive effort to steal the election, will succeed.
Sadly, the Nazification of Trump's America continues, and with a VEEP who falsely claims to be a Catholic - even to the Pope. Sorry JD, but your moral compass is stuck on hate and eugenics. This sort of disrespect for one's fellow humans is not Catholic, but Vance claims to be a convert (ya know like a naturalized Catholic) so he should be excused and not excommunicated. He lies so much, he had to put it all in a book to get rich off of some gullible MAGAs.
I cannot get over how different my life has been from Thom's and yet how similar have been our life experiences. Thom was in Berlin - I was in Dresden. I even got a chance to sit in Vlad Putin's KGB HQ chair after the USSR went to pieces over a too-pricey stupid foreign war - kinda like the US invasion of Iran today. I can vouch that Thom is not exaggerating. We real Americans better get woke by November, or our democracy will stay broke, once Trump declares the end of July 4ths. Oh! He already did? My bad.
Today, thanks to a tinpot Dick-Tater, we've become TV's "Mission Impossible's" Ghalea
Ghalea was a fictional African country threatened by a massive counterfeiting scheme in the Season 2 episode “The Money Machine” (1967). [Sounds like Crypto, to me.]
TV's M.I. show constantly invented Cold War–style nations rather than naming real ones..
Ghalea is one of the earliest and most prominent examples, and fans often cite it as a classic “Mission: Impossible fake country.”
We are nearly the U.S.G.
#VOTE each of them OUT #All 42 and Younger Year-old Trumps and Witkoffs to Boot Camp
I wrote about this on my Substack titled, "What's an autonomous surveillance tower?" a couple of weeks ago.
Auduril Industries founded by billionaire Palmer Luckey with major backing from Peter Thiel's Founder Fund got a contract for $367 plus million for the towers. Also another $20 billion for U.S. Army Enterprise Contract for the next 10 years.
This rapidly ascending police state status is a topic for a letter to the editor of your local newspaper and for social media or even local radio and TV. Thom has supplied the facts and many of the sordid details. This will hopefully scare the bejesus out of a lot of people, including those who have been kidding themselves that Trump's moves are just hot air and business as usual in a divided nation. These people are serious and they have been brainwashed to believe that the country is being overrun and threatened by dangerous outsiders and criminals.
No doubt Republicans are neo-fascists, but right-wing Democrats like Governor JB Pritzker of Illinois and New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill sicked their state police on protestors protecting ICE and brutalizing activists. I was at the Broadview ICE facility in Chicago and was fortunate only to be trampled by State Police. Others I was with were teargassed, beaten and tazed. Democrats did nothing to protect university heads who were placed under congressional inquisition and ousted for failing to combat "antisemitism" on campus, and It was Biden's thugs who arrested over 3000 student protestors and injured hundreds. And please remember Obama effectively ended Posse Comitatus under his NDAA of 2011 leaving the door open for Americans to be targeted by the military and federal agents anywhere in the world including on US soil. Immigrants in ICE detention centers were treated like they were in the gulag since the inception of ICE regardless of which party was in power. And as for accountability it was Obama who shrugged off the Iraq war torture memos and the crimes of Bush and Cheney by saying we have to look forward not back. Then of course neither Obama nor Biden could be prosecuted for their war crimes. We needed you and those with media megaphones to take action decades ago, but you were too busy telling the world the wonders of neoliberal sociopaths like the Clintons, Obama and Biden.
There also are widely used license plate readers that check every vehicle. And these aren't just for official use, the current New Yorker mentions a repro man who has one to see if a passing car is up for grabs. But it's mission creep, just like drug testing which began small and grew and grew into a very profitable business, a sick personal intrusion no earlier generation would ever have tolerated. In fact the Border Patrol program has strong similarities to the drug "war", with lots of money for participating police departments. Today if the TSA catches you with a wad of cash they'll confiscate it on "suspicion" of dealing, proof not needed. Just what country are these actions protecting anyway?
Despite everything you’ve articulated here, the entire Democratic establishment, from Clintonites like James Carville to the Obamaites at Crooked Media, and sundry members and senators, are melting down over the rise of actual *Democrats* courtesy of the DSA. Pro tip: more of what got us here won’t get us out of here. If they can’t bring themselves to help, they could do the nation, and posterity, a favor by kindly shutting up and letting committed defenders of democracy defend democracy.
The reader who commented that SCOTUS will find a way to stop a possible next Dem president frm firing all the thugs Trump puts as head of organizations of govt tht should be protecting us might be right, not sure…but it definitely will feel great whn the assholes get fired, nevertheless…also, once we have a Dem prez, and a Dem Congress, the 1st, absolutely 1st order of business MUST be to expand the court, impose 18 yr term limits and unavoidable ethics requirements…also, get rid of the filibuster no matter what. After that, make DC a state, and possibly Puerto Rico as well…we cannot continue to live in any kind of democracy under a Supreme Court that is entirely corrupt, which this one is. Just the immunity decision itself, coming AFTER it was so clear how many crimes Trump had already committed, should be enough to convince any Dem with a brain that SCOTUS cannot continue to exist in its current form…
The end of democracy is not coming, it has been here for decades. The Ttump regime is finally being completely up front about it. 80 million voters voted for him and the Republicans who support him. We sleepwalkied into oligarchy and we allowed white male supremacy to flourish. Now we are living in a country that is basically at the same plane as North Korea or Russia. The 1930s Nazis would have been envious of how easy it was for a full fledged corrupt fascist party to take over in such a short time.
With two branches of government completely on board, if Congress does not act are we not doomed? It is lovely to talk about looking out for you neighbor with videos and personal surveillance, but that leaves only " mass resistance" as the only answer. Can we find the will to ask ourselves "what if you find her dead on the ground"?
Our "national guard" is incapable of resisting being called up and out. Our local police may or may not stand with us. How many American citizens are they willing to "mow down"? How do we find out? March across the bridge to "Selma"....
For years I lived within the Border Zone (the southern border, of course, in those days there was no similar zone at the northern border). Every time I traveled beyond the zone (which I often did for business), I had to stop at one of those checkpoints, and every time it rankled me, the "your papers!" attitude. Every time I was stopped, I thought of my father, who fought against exactly this kind of thing during WW2. He told me repeatedly "you don't need to carry your citizenship in your pocket in this country." Since I'm privileged by my pale white skin, I rarely had to do more than stop for a minute or two. But the question was always asked: "American citizen?" and heaven forbid if one of my passengers had dark skin. Even for white skins, there were the delay in traffic for sometimes long lines, the K9s sending my dog into conniption fits and scaring the kids who were afraid of dogs. The whole travesty was maddening. And so un-American.
ICE is also now paying state and local police to help, and the money is staggering.
This is a Thom quote that says loud and clear - ANYONE AND ANYTHING CAN BE BOUGHT. If our local police and state police can be bought then heaven hep us. No one is safe.
Driving to White Sands National Park from Las Cruces, NM this past January, we passed through one of these citizen verification check points. Had to slow down to 5 MPH so the armed agent could peer in our window. Seeing two older white folks with bikes, he waived us through. But we were unsettled for the next week with the knowledge that the experience of others would not be so benign...
I also have been thinking about this matter. What has occupied my thoughts is how stupid so many Americans have become. They can see no farther than tonight's FOX broadcast that celebrates the apprehension of some poor soul who came here, and someone, somewhere, somehow described as a (fill in the blank as to the current boogie man of choice).
Do they think the thousands of newly hired, and armed goons who are promised a long, well-paid carrier in national security are just going to be "let go" after the aliens have been cleansed and the borders successfully shut????
Is DT's successor just going to say "Thanks guys, take care..." and ask them to turn in their guns and then discontinue making all the special IT gear made under billion dollar contracts with tax money paid to favored corporations????
These guys expect to be on the job, earning bonuses, and "moving up" into a federal position over the next twenty years!
They are going to need something to keep busy with. Whom are they going to "round up" over the next decades. after the last alien "rapist" has been purged?
"When they came for the Socialists, I said nothing, because I was not a Socialist.
When they... When they... When they...
And when the finally came for me, there was no one left to say anything."
Thanks for the reality check Thom. The America we are living in is a facade, appearances are being maintained while the new SS/GESTAPO are building concentration camps (seven of them authorized by the OBBB.
Does anyone ask, why it is, that Trump is pressing ahead with plans to defile not only the White House, but Washington DC and turn it in to a reflecting pool of his malignant self. Why his cabinet defines Congress, and insults the Senators who quiz them, and refuse to testify?
It is because they are insiders and they all know that there will be no consequences because Trump is not leaving, except on a gurney, and even then his replacement is a sock puppet,
I am even worried about the November elections. With all of the voter suppression laws, and activities planned by Trump and the Republicans, with voting machines and tabulators owned by Trump allies., with the weaponization of the National Guard and ICE.with Trump's DOJ, poised to investigate and file suit against any state, that doesn't give him a majority Republican congress., I am worried and can only pray (and I am an atheist) that a massive turnout, unlike ever seen before in history, will be so effective that not even the massive effort to steal the election, will succeed.
This, I am afraid is our last chance.
Sadly, the Nazification of Trump's America continues, and with a VEEP who falsely claims to be a Catholic - even to the Pope. Sorry JD, but your moral compass is stuck on hate and eugenics. This sort of disrespect for one's fellow humans is not Catholic, but Vance claims to be a convert (ya know like a naturalized Catholic) so he should be excused and not excommunicated. He lies so much, he had to put it all in a book to get rich off of some gullible MAGAs.
I cannot get over how different my life has been from Thom's and yet how similar have been our life experiences. Thom was in Berlin - I was in Dresden. I even got a chance to sit in Vlad Putin's KGB HQ chair after the USSR went to pieces over a too-pricey stupid foreign war - kinda like the US invasion of Iran today. I can vouch that Thom is not exaggerating. We real Americans better get woke by November, or our democracy will stay broke, once Trump declares the end of July 4ths. Oh! He already did? My bad.
I share your pessimism. Reading this newsletter I had to pause after each paragraph in awe and disgust....
Today, thanks to a tinpot Dick-Tater, we've become TV's "Mission Impossible's" Ghalea
Ghalea was a fictional African country threatened by a massive counterfeiting scheme in the Season 2 episode “The Money Machine” (1967). [Sounds like Crypto, to me.]
TV's M.I. show constantly invented Cold War–style nations rather than naming real ones..
Ghalea is one of the earliest and most prominent examples, and fans often cite it as a classic “Mission: Impossible fake country.”
We are nearly the U.S.G.
#VOTE each of them OUT #All 42 and Younger Year-old Trumps and Witkoffs to Boot Camp
Very interesting article!
Scary!
I wrote about this on my Substack titled, "What's an autonomous surveillance tower?" a couple of weeks ago.
Auduril Industries founded by billionaire Palmer Luckey with major backing from Peter Thiel's Founder Fund got a contract for $367 plus million for the towers. Also another $20 billion for U.S. Army Enterprise Contract for the next 10 years.
This rapidly ascending police state status is a topic for a letter to the editor of your local newspaper and for social media or even local radio and TV. Thom has supplied the facts and many of the sordid details. This will hopefully scare the bejesus out of a lot of people, including those who have been kidding themselves that Trump's moves are just hot air and business as usual in a divided nation. These people are serious and they have been brainwashed to believe that the country is being overrun and threatened by dangerous outsiders and criminals.
No doubt Republicans are neo-fascists, but right-wing Democrats like Governor JB Pritzker of Illinois and New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill sicked their state police on protestors protecting ICE and brutalizing activists. I was at the Broadview ICE facility in Chicago and was fortunate only to be trampled by State Police. Others I was with were teargassed, beaten and tazed. Democrats did nothing to protect university heads who were placed under congressional inquisition and ousted for failing to combat "antisemitism" on campus, and It was Biden's thugs who arrested over 3000 student protestors and injured hundreds. And please remember Obama effectively ended Posse Comitatus under his NDAA of 2011 leaving the door open for Americans to be targeted by the military and federal agents anywhere in the world including on US soil. Immigrants in ICE detention centers were treated like they were in the gulag since the inception of ICE regardless of which party was in power. And as for accountability it was Obama who shrugged off the Iraq war torture memos and the crimes of Bush and Cheney by saying we have to look forward not back. Then of course neither Obama nor Biden could be prosecuted for their war crimes. We needed you and those with media megaphones to take action decades ago, but you were too busy telling the world the wonders of neoliberal sociopaths like the Clintons, Obama and Biden.
There also are widely used license plate readers that check every vehicle. And these aren't just for official use, the current New Yorker mentions a repro man who has one to see if a passing car is up for grabs. But it's mission creep, just like drug testing which began small and grew and grew into a very profitable business, a sick personal intrusion no earlier generation would ever have tolerated. In fact the Border Patrol program has strong similarities to the drug "war", with lots of money for participating police departments. Today if the TSA catches you with a wad of cash they'll confiscate it on "suspicion" of dealing, proof not needed. Just what country are these actions protecting anyway?
Despite everything you’ve articulated here, the entire Democratic establishment, from Clintonites like James Carville to the Obamaites at Crooked Media, and sundry members and senators, are melting down over the rise of actual *Democrats* courtesy of the DSA. Pro tip: more of what got us here won’t get us out of here. If they can’t bring themselves to help, they could do the nation, and posterity, a favor by kindly shutting up and letting committed defenders of democracy defend democracy.
The reader who commented that SCOTUS will find a way to stop a possible next Dem president frm firing all the thugs Trump puts as head of organizations of govt tht should be protecting us might be right, not sure…but it definitely will feel great whn the assholes get fired, nevertheless…also, once we have a Dem prez, and a Dem Congress, the 1st, absolutely 1st order of business MUST be to expand the court, impose 18 yr term limits and unavoidable ethics requirements…also, get rid of the filibuster no matter what. After that, make DC a state, and possibly Puerto Rico as well…we cannot continue to live in any kind of democracy under a Supreme Court that is entirely corrupt, which this one is. Just the immunity decision itself, coming AFTER it was so clear how many crimes Trump had already committed, should be enough to convince any Dem with a brain that SCOTUS cannot continue to exist in its current form…
The end of democracy is not coming, it has been here for decades. The Ttump regime is finally being completely up front about it. 80 million voters voted for him and the Republicans who support him. We sleepwalkied into oligarchy and we allowed white male supremacy to flourish. Now we are living in a country that is basically at the same plane as North Korea or Russia. The 1930s Nazis would have been envious of how easy it was for a full fledged corrupt fascist party to take over in such a short time.
With two branches of government completely on board, if Congress does not act are we not doomed? It is lovely to talk about looking out for you neighbor with videos and personal surveillance, but that leaves only " mass resistance" as the only answer. Can we find the will to ask ourselves "what if you find her dead on the ground"?
Our "national guard" is incapable of resisting being called up and out. Our local police may or may not stand with us. How many American citizens are they willing to "mow down"? How do we find out? March across the bridge to "Selma"....
A very good and necessary question.
For years I lived within the Border Zone (the southern border, of course, in those days there was no similar zone at the northern border). Every time I traveled beyond the zone (which I often did for business), I had to stop at one of those checkpoints, and every time it rankled me, the "your papers!" attitude. Every time I was stopped, I thought of my father, who fought against exactly this kind of thing during WW2. He told me repeatedly "you don't need to carry your citizenship in your pocket in this country." Since I'm privileged by my pale white skin, I rarely had to do more than stop for a minute or two. But the question was always asked: "American citizen?" and heaven forbid if one of my passengers had dark skin. Even for white skins, there were the delay in traffic for sometimes long lines, the K9s sending my dog into conniption fits and scaring the kids who were afraid of dogs. The whole travesty was maddening. And so un-American.
ICE is also now paying state and local police to help, and the money is staggering.
This is a Thom quote that says loud and clear - ANYONE AND ANYTHING CAN BE BOUGHT. If our local police and state police can be bought then heaven hep us. No one is safe.
Driving to White Sands National Park from Las Cruces, NM this past January, we passed through one of these citizen verification check points. Had to slow down to 5 MPH so the armed agent could peer in our window. Seeing two older white folks with bikes, he waived us through. But we were unsettled for the next week with the knowledge that the experience of others would not be so benign...
I also have been thinking about this matter. What has occupied my thoughts is how stupid so many Americans have become. They can see no farther than tonight's FOX broadcast that celebrates the apprehension of some poor soul who came here, and someone, somewhere, somehow described as a (fill in the blank as to the current boogie man of choice).
Do they think the thousands of newly hired, and armed goons who are promised a long, well-paid carrier in national security are just going to be "let go" after the aliens have been cleansed and the borders successfully shut????
Is DT's successor just going to say "Thanks guys, take care..." and ask them to turn in their guns and then discontinue making all the special IT gear made under billion dollar contracts with tax money paid to favored corporations????
These guys expect to be on the job, earning bonuses, and "moving up" into a federal position over the next twenty years!
They are going to need something to keep busy with. Whom are they going to "round up" over the next decades. after the last alien "rapist" has been purged?
"When they came for the Socialists, I said nothing, because I was not a Socialist.
When they... When they... When they...
And when the finally came for me, there was no one left to say anything."