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Gordon Berry's avatar

Great historical perspective Sir..

War is evil, but producers of war are eviler in all their insanities - they are the ones to blame.

The amorality of all the Trumpians is horrific - most of us thought we had overcome such monstrosities after 2 decisive world wars.

Daniel Solomon's avatar

One way to weaken them is to diminish them in spirit and in number. Hoping the 2nd Amendment issue will help do both.

The most vulnerable aspect is the Epstein issue. Every Congressional Republcan except one signed to get all the evidence.

Daniel Solomon's avatar

FLASH: NYT 2:00. Live Updates: Millions of Pages of Epstein Documents Released

The release of files from the federal inquiry into Jeffrey Epstein is the largest to date, and includes thousands of videos and photographs. Times reporters are sifting through the material.

Khanna, Garcia say if the AUSA memos aren't produced, a prima facie case of obstruction of justice warranting contempt of Congress actions.

Daniel Solomon's avatar

Meidas says it has identified documents that were withheld.

William Farrar's avatar

And? Unless Ro Khanna turns the documents over to the media, identifying them is a nothing burger.

If a criminal is identified, and he isn't arrested, what then?

William Farrar's avatar

And who is going to arrest the Attorney General, Pam Bondi arresting herself. Give me a break.

William Farrar's avatar

The only reason they signed is because Trump told them to, otherwise had he not, and it went to a vote, a lot of Republicans would have been exposed. It is act, a sham, Mike Johnaon, Trump, Bondi had a month to work out a response to the petition to advance HR 4505.

Pam's role is to stonewall and redact. She was given 30 days to turn over the files,, she failed to comply, a subpoena is suppose to be issued, who is going to enforce the subpoena. Will Bondi arrest herself.

You are intelligent and you know what I say is a fact and logical, so why do you continue to push a false narrative

Bondi is not going to release all of the Epstein files, and no one can force her, not even Congress, because she isn't going to arrest herself., not for contempt of congress, not for failing to obey a subpoena, a summons. You know this, so why do you perpetuate a falsehood.?

William Farrar's avatar

To make it worse, our military is corruptedJAGs are becoming federal prosecutors in Minneapolis. Experts warn it’s new territory

Military lawyers have served as special assistant U.S. attorneys before, but never like this

Dozens of military lawyers have been temporarily assigned as federal prosecutors to support law-enforcement surges in Minneapolis and other cities, a novel arrangement that is stretching an overworked judge advocate general corps and drawing concern from legal experts. https://www.defenseone.com/policy/2026/01/jags-are-becoming-federal-prosecutors-minneapolis-experts-warn-its-new-territory/411064/?utm_source=sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=mil-ebb

The Marines have already been deployed in L.A., the National Guard has been federalized by Trump, so what is next, "the few, the proud, the Marines" busting down doors, breaking windows to kidnap liberals as domestic terrorists. The 83nd Airborne, Trump's body guard, rounding us up and carting us off to one of theose concentration camps being built by our tax dollars. Talk of boiling the frog.

We tolerate one insult at a time, accept gradualization, then wholesale oppression is normalized.

alis's avatar

Homan is saying they will work smarter not meaner.....

Smart is a joke when it comes to the psychos and sickos in this regime. They're living their Nazi murder fantasies. The order to deport 3000 per day came directly from our very own Goebbels, Stephen Miller.

Tiny Liam's treatment has become another symbol of the sickness and rot within DHS/ICE. Homan is corruption personified---what happened to the $50,000?

Mean people suck! See you in the streets.

Lorenzo's avatar

When African refugees risk their lives on rickety boats to come here to the Canary Islands, they are immediately cared for. They are mostly young African men. You can often see them being escorted on walking tours of the city, or sometimes being taken to the water park for a day at the pool. Here in Spain, they are not seen as invaders, but as human beings. The ugliness and criminality were there before the election, but Americans voted for it anyway. What does that say about Americans? What does that say about the United States f America?

Daniel Solomon's avatar

That was it was like here in Baghdad By the Sea under the old "wet foot dry foot" policy -- only for Cubans.

Hatians, many others objected.

Sir Okie Doke's avatar

A better term is from the "American War" as the Vietnamese call it.

The term of art is: "In-Country."

ICE and CBP are "In-Country," slaughtering the hated "Ameri-Cong." [RIP Good & Pretti]

Donald Dump is the real vermin poisoning the blood of sane people worldwide.

I hear Liam's been deported in a CAVA bag to Epstein Island, for . . . Homan/Miller/Dump's perverted abuse?

VOTE for a good America, a kind America, a fine America.

Free Don Lemon !!!

Daniel Solomon's avatar

We learned a lot in "Nam. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvaEJzoaYZk

1. This is a big day. National Shutdown.

I don't know why all Dem taking heads seem oblivious. We need to wake them up!!!!!

NYT yesterday: There is a “national shutdown” planned for Friday that hopes to persuade people to stay home from school, work and shopping, and dozens of “ICE Out Everywhere” protests in towns large and small set for Saturday. Organizers hope that a sweeping show of resistance will convince the Trump administration to stop sending immigration agents to cities nationwide.

2. Meanwhile the fight is in the Senate. Dems are holding the line, but Senate Democrats announced Thursday they had struck an agreement with the White House to move forward with a plan that would see the Department of Homeland Security funding bill separated from a package of five other bills. Programs funded by the five-bill package would be funded until the end of September. DHS would be funded for two additional weeks to allow lawmakers to negotiate on other provisions in the package.

The Senate must get unanimous agreement to move forward with this plan if it wants to hold votes before Friday night's deadline. As it stood Thursday night, there seemed to be objections by senators on both sides of the aisle gumming up the works. From ABC News.

3. To be most effective, we need Congressional Republicans. The protests should be at the offices, homes of the four (4) Minnesota Republican House members.

Eadie Sharron's avatar

Funding DHS for even a day is a travesty of justice. Any democrat voting for this plan should go down in history as a lawless tRump sycophant. Not one penny of taxpayer money should go to defend ICE agents and Border Patrol.

William Farrar's avatar

Congressional Republicans are afraid of Trump and being primaried. The handful that showed some spine, are retiring. Call them write them contact them on their web page, but don't expect that they will pay attention.; They fear Trump and MAGA, not their constituent, unless they are Republican. My point is try, you must, but don't engage in self delusion and don't delude others.

My Senator is Patty Murray, I caught a whiff of her saying that she would support DHS financing, because it performed other important functions. Patty is so liberal, that a dude named Dennis Joyce (dec.) left Tacoma, Wa after he retired from Ft Lewis, and moved to Texas, because Patty was too liberal for him , he co founded the Southern Independence Party.

I dropped her a note via her web page, that if she voted for DHS funding I wouldn't vote for her.

She changed her position, but not because of me, I am positive it was because of ICE in Minneapolis.

G2's avatar

Its hard to believe that our country has produced enough angry vicious people to carry out this administrations violence against the most vulnerable among us - but we have. They have no compassion, only aggression and blind obedience to whatever Trump wants them to do. What's left of decency and democracy hangs in the balance. The protestors in Minneapolis are showing us how to fight back. I'm in.

docrhw Weil's avatar

You know my mother (1913-2012) saw a lot of the world in both her long life and her extensive foreign travels, from a teenager well into her 90s. She got a good view of Mussolini's Italy too. She used to laugh at how the Germans followed a bad leader and said that Americans would never become like that. (She also visited Trump Tower and laughed and laughed at its horrible interior decoration.) But she wouldn't be laughing now. One thing we've learned is that there are authoritarian personalities everywhere, people who like a little power and will suck up to those with more. Maybe we have less of them here than many places do, but we have enough for the current purposes.

Daniel Solomon's avatar

Some people predict that when the cult learns THEY are marks, they'll turn.

G.P. Baltimore's avatar

I’m sure that’s true. We are talking about fearful cowards. The ones who repress fear the most are usually the most vicious and angry—possibly at themselves for who they see themselves as.

They love to plot and plan so that no one blames them. They like to stay in the shadows until they feel it’s safe and they won’t be punished by acting out.

They also typically like guns, and other peoples’ destruction. They blame and want revenge in general.

People like this learned this behavior as survival. They stay in their minds and know very little about what truly is motivating either themselves or anyone else. They refuse to recognize their fear. But, they’re always thinking and believe themselves smart. They’re full of rage.

Believing they are fierce hunter’s of bad guys turns them on and gives them purpose and direction. But discovery of who they really are and threatening them brings out their true colors. They attack.

If confronted with a truly just legal system that recognizes them for what they are acting like, their fear and cowardice shows up in a different way. It’s all attack, though. Defending themselves and blaming.

G2's avatar

Thanks G.P., I think you described them quite well. Appears that trump has his street thugs, brown shirts. Wonder if there's a SS type group awaiting orders to kill political opponents.

William Farrar's avatar

You know nothing about cults and the human mind. MAGA knows that they are Marks, they don't care, because Trump is delivering on the culture war. The dominance of white, male, Christianity

Gerald Lewis's avatar

That's them. What about "us"? Old, old story of the empty suits that are the logical army that, in this war with the political party of the couping fascists--the current democratic party--we witness yet again those who would rather lament in unison than fight back in like force. I have never voted for a Republican, but I learned in grade school that you deal with the bully by confrontation rather than cowering in compliance. Done by his peers, not by telling the teacher, which the bully only sees as a winning pause. A few days after a great man in Minneapolis was shot ten times in his kneed-down back, ten sitting democrats voted for furthur funding of ICE. Real, tangible hope has come forth by the martyred death of two brave souls in Minneapolis and by a full count in Minnesota. Listen to them and not to the inflated marshmallow Schumer, et al.

Tom Halstead's avatar

Evidently we can’t count on either of our two major political parties to halt and reverse the destruction done, the destruction clearly to come. If this isn’t who we are, who are we?

Daniel Solomon's avatar

Baloney.... We need to encourage the Democrats in Congress, not undermine them.

Tom Halstead's avatar

They’ve had plenty of encouragement.

Tom Halstead's avatar

They got all the encouragement they needed when they took their oaths of office.

Paul Jerome Lareau's avatar

The only encouragement that has any meaning in 2026 American Politics is a personal decision by all the individual legislators that it is worth it to their careers and the level of dedication to doing whatever is necessary to revive any of the now fatally injured American concept of legal and moral behavior. In our Republican vs. Democratic vs. being ignored, party leaders will support anything as long as they think it will benefit their party's future and their future elections.

Daniel Solomon's avatar

We're working on bills of impeachment. Need Republican support.

William Farrar's avatar

What politicians respond to Daniel is fear, fear of being primaried, fear of being ousted, the way to encourage them is by putting the fear of god into them.

Robert B. Elliott's avatar

The declaration of war against American citizens and the use of the language of war has not yet fully alerted the people to respond in kind and the Democrats to declare that they will establish the necessary defense against the relentless attacks. But either we get to that point or they win their war. Republicans are the enemy of the people and Trump is their phony, feckless general. It has come to do or die.

One of the weakest links in their chain is Bam Bam Pondi. Her cognitive dissonance has to be eating at her like a raging cancer in her stomach. She sees herself as a defender of the law and Constitution and as a woman, but she has seen the pictures and other evidence that prove Trump to be a pedophile. At some point she has to discover that she is being used and dragged into the sewer of Trump's evil deeds and power-seeking. She should be the focus of Democratic political and legal attacks, 24/7.

Kathy Hughes's avatar

We need to go to war against the flagrant corruption and lawbreaking of this regime. We can’t undo Trump’s pardon of meathead Homan though.

Ivan Light's avatar

Since we are powerless to resist, our option is mass non compliance,

style.

William Farrar's avatar

Not resistance at all. Jerry Weiss relies on a system that no longer exists.

William Farrar's avatar

We are not powerless to resist, but resistance takes courage, the willingness to take a hit.

The Iranians have shown the way.

Eadie Sharron's avatar

Does courage mean facing a firing squad? I'm old but I'm not ready to die. I've gone out, attended a vigil and a couple of protests. My life was not threatened. Would you consider that a wasted effort?

William Farrar's avatar

Courage means risking a firing squad. Think of all of the troops that go into combat. Think of D Day, Falujah. I too am old, but have lived a good life, and will not live for ever. I do not know the day or hour of my death, but it comes for all.

Don't get my wrong, Eadie, I never said protesting was a wasted effort. But I say don't expect protests to produce desired results.

Do you think the protests in Minneapolis have changed anything?

ICE is still there, arresting and kidnapping people, instead of Bovino, you have the man responsible for Bovino and the policy in charge..

Bovino has done has job, training and acculturating ICE to CBP tacics and mentality and has been returned whence he came to El Centro, along with the agents that murdered Pretti.

Two steps forward, one half a step back, march,protest sure, but don't expect change, let him know that you aren't going silently into that concentration camp.

Protests alone aren't going to do it, a national strike, and boycott will.

Yesterday and today, are "don't spend your money day", well and good, except that it hurts Mom and Pop stores You need to boycott and strike the corporations that finance and support the Trump regime, like Amazon, Apple, Washington Post, anything and everything owned by Musk

Eadie Sharron's avatar

I am totally in favor of a general strike against corporations. Anything but facing a firing squad. I don't think I could do what those brave soldiers in combat did. They are not here to enjoy the freedoms they provided for everyone else.

William Farrar's avatar

Nobody wants to face a firing squad, none of those soldiers who barged off the ramp of the landing craft at Normandy expected to die, but shit happens, there is no life without risk.

You turn the key in the ignition and drive out into the highway, whether you arrive safety at your destination is unknown, you take a risk, life is a series of risk, safety is not assured.

Evil triumph's because there is no real resistance. Evil cannot triumph without submission.

As I mentioned the resistance against NAZIism, came too little, too late.and it cost Sophie Scholl and her friends their heads. Hitler succeeded because people would rather submit than perish.

Have you seen news reels of Hitler driving through towns, streets lined hundreds deep with people sieg heiling, do you think that all were enthusiastic supporters? I don't, at least half were people afraid for their lives and joined the crowd

That will happen here

Eadie Sharron's avatar

My mother's twin brother, a physician, fought in the battle of the Bulge. He was awarded a medal bay General Omar Bradley. Those people in combat were drafted. My uncle gave up his medical practice, his wife and 3 children to volunteer at age 40. I am not my uncle. You're born with that kind of courage. BTW, the risk you take driving a car does not equal the risk you take in combat. Are you willing to face tRump's thugs?

Daniel Solomon's avatar

Remember how the Soviet Union fell? Most Iron Curtain governments?

The formula. https://jerryweiss.substack.com/

Paul Jerome Lareau's avatar

The big question, when we choose to admit it or deny it, is whether or not today's America is what we tell ourselves it is, or whether it is quickly becoming just another shade of Russian philosophy.

Sidney Smart's avatar

I am reading the comments just like I said I would. Thank you everyone out there I covet your advice. We have to win the midterms, we have to win everything going forward. I've never seen anything like this before and at 78 I'm gob-smacked, yep, a new slang word to me.

Thank you

NEAL O'CONNOR's avatar

Excellent piece, Mr. Hartmann! If Trump and Homan have their way, we are doomed. And we'd deserve it. I can't wait until the next time I can vote against the Republicans!

Barry J Kaufman DO's avatar

You're a sick man Thom in saying that Obama conducted immigration enforcement "with courtesy and the law." Obama deported a record number of immigrants with his newly devised "expedited deportations," a euphemism for extrajudicial deportations allowing migrants to be removed without any opportunity for a hearing, asylum or otherwise. In addition to that unconstitutional and heartless practice, Obama conducted Christmas Eve ICE raids targeting migrant children and their mothers. He built cages for unaccompanied children migrating from Central and South America, keeping them in cages and sleeping on the floor for months at a time before sending them back to almost certain death (a policy espoused by then presidential candidate Hillary Clinton). He let ICE and CBP run roughshod over the rights of immigrants, with zero oversight of private detention facilities from which thousands of complaints of abuse, neglect and torture were emanating, He and Biden (who expanded Trump's Title 42 twice among other transgressions) set the stage for Trump's aggression, the only difference being he let ICE and CBP out onto the streets which affects white people adversely. When we wanted to abolish ICE in 2018 you joined the calls of Democratic leadership to reform ICE, something that of course was never even attempted and like reforming the police a quixotic task. Should anyone require more evidence or want to know of Obama and Biden's additional transgressions against immigrants, I offer a link to my Substack which is not monetized. https://barryjkaufmando.substack.com/p/youre-next-the-blowback-for-the-spiritual

Ian Ogard's avatar

ICE isn't about enforcing the immigration and customs laws. It's about denying life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It's about throwing the Constitution into a bonfire to make way for the president to become the dictator.