ICE Agent Decides He Wants Kids After Seeing Incredible Love And Devotion Of Parents Begging Him Not To Take Their Child
theonion.com/ice-age…— The Onion (@theonion.com) January 31, 2025 at 11:00 AM
- At The Onion, ICE agents protest the brutal conditions as they are forced to stand for hours outside the homes of suspected immigrants.
- Clickbait satirist Reductress explains why it’s impossible to get anything done quickly in government unless you want to do really bad stuff.
- Juanita Jean has 9 more reasons why it’s okay to panic now.
Key revision:
UPDATE BELOW: Musk also takes over US Treasury payments system. - In Letters from an American, historian Heather Cox Richardson details how illegal access to your records has been given to Elon Musk employees. Officials who try to interfere this unlawful breach are fired by the Trump administration.
My thought: Who needs a Nigerian prince, when Musk can go direct?The Richardson analysis is now available in audio format, as she narrates in podcast.
- North Carolina pastor John Pavlovitz explains why the data breach is so critical:
This gives them the ability to not only cut-off money from any programs they decide to (government programs, veteran benefits, pensions) but the ability to access your personal finances. (They already attempted a funding freeze last week, which was only reversed by public outcry.)
— John Pavlovitz (@johnpavlovitz.bsky.social) February 3, 2025 at 9:00 AM
They are literally a hair's breadth from them having no barriers to all our life savings and retirement funds.
PLEASE respond by applying pressure to your local and state officials.
No one is coming to save us. We are the last chance we have.
— John Pavlovitz (@johnpavlovitz.bsky.social) February 3, 2025 at 9:00 AM
- Infidel753 studies the origin and effects as Elon Musk turns out to be one of the strangest of humanoid creatures.
Key caution:
If you have plans to fly within the US any time soon, I strongly suggest that you cancel them. Elon Musk is about to start buggering up the air traffic control system, bringing to that already understaffed and over-strained service the same dingbat managerial philosophy he’s brought to his exploding rockets, exploding cars, and Twitter. - Vagabond Scholar remembers International Holocaust Remembrance Day and the authoritarianism and hatred behind it. He has no trouble discovering current similarities.
- Dave Dubya documents key actions as Trump and company repurpose law enforcement away from actual law.
- So Trump folks get started on stopping every program they can:
The announcement freezing everything
(veterans, food for little kids, health programs, schools, hospitals, shelters, air safety, and most anything for seniors)The court ruling
(No you can’t end everything!!)Rescinding the freeze
(We didn’t mean it!)Rescinding the rescinding
(We didn’t mean we didn’t mean it, we only meant we didn’t mean to say we meant it)The court ruling will be challenged
(We can too end everything)Reaffirming the freeze
(We actually did mean it)Except now it’s a review of all programs
(We sort of sideways mean it)Hackwhackers brings us Tim Walz, with the most direct response so far:
- The Moderate Voice provides some legal clarity, explaining court decisions overturning Trump tromps on American rights after he tries overruling Congress on program freezes and overturning the Constitution on birth-right citizenship.
- Frances Langum brings us an actual working journalist who says the obvious about Trump blaming minorities for the DC crash:
Key reality (quoting Pete Muntean of CNN)
What he has said is not only unprofessional, unpresidential, inconsiderate of the status of this investigation, but frankly, it is just unhinged that he could even say with any sort of certainty that diversity, equity, and inclusion policies had any part to play in this accident. - Newly confirmed Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth says the Blackhawk helicopter involved in last week’s crash was on a re-training assignment for a continuity of government mission: a mass evacuation of federal officials and employees in case of a catastrophe that could threaten the existence of US government itself.
Tommy Christopher has the transcript as a befuddled Trump clarifies:
Key clarification:
I don’t know what that — what that refers to.
But I — they were practicing, they were — they do that. They call it practicing, and they were — and that’s something that should be done. It’s only continuity in the sense that we want to have very good people, and that has to be in continuity, and that’s what they referred to.Are we reassured about basic competence yet?
- Disaffected and it Feels So Good predicts last week’s air disaster will become a pattern. Trump style reckless incompetence will cause more tragedies, after which Trump will blame Biden, Democrats, and (above all) minorities.
- According to Ant Farmer’s Almanac, there was no surprise at the sudden appearance of a new portrait in the Oval Office.
- Right Wing Watch brings us Michele Bachmann who, to be fair, missed the George Orwell week of her high school equivalence classes. She gushes that Trump’s big screen presentation to the World Economic Forum was almost like Big Brother:
- Our favorite Earth-Bound Misfit has a few numbers on how much Trump tariffs will cost you.
Apparently the hit on Maine will be so high, Senator Susan Collins is threatening to become very concerned.
- Vixen Strangely takes JD Vance to the woodshed for lying with vigor in order to get us into a trade war with Mexico and Canada.
Key refute (Quoting journalist James Surowiecki):
“Mexico” does not send a ton of fentanyl into our country. Mexican drug cartels do. And the idea that there’s a fentanyl spigot that the Mexican and Canadian governments can just turn off if they try hard enough is childish, magical thinking.Key Goose and Gander:
We deal these drugs in the US. We are slopping over the brim with guns and sell them to the cartels. Where is our accountability? - Ted McLaughlin at jobsanger concisely explains when tariffs are useful and why Trump’s tariffs, specifically, are bad for the US.
- Now it gets serious. The Borowitz Report has Mexico, Canada, and China in trade retaliation as they combine to cut off Elon Musk’s supply of ketamine.
Key outcry:
The decision drew howls of protest from Musk, who said that the ketamine embargo would interfere with his effort to make the federal government as efficient and profitable as X. - Wisconsin conservative James Wigderson begins with Trump’s new enthusiastic suggestion that Israel perform ethnic cleansing in Gaza. He goes on to mildly (for the most part) expressed, tentative (for the most part) regrets by prominent Trump supporters.
- At the Strategic Studies Book Club 6th century historian Procopius writes about how Roman general Belisarius pretty much crushed the Vandal Kingdom in North Africa, and how things deteriorated after Belisarius was gone.
I suppose the obvious lesson is that it is easier to conquer than to keep.
- Imani Gandy longs for better times
Being able to spell Punxsutawney without looking it up used to mean something.
— Imani Gandy (@angryblacklady.bsky.social) February 2, 2025 at 7:14 AM
- CalicoJack in The Psy of Life offers insights from his own personal experience since November on how to recover from disillusionment with Trump’s election.
- News Corpse sees Trump performing a tsunami of destructive actions, but with the lowest early Presidential approval since 1953.
- driftglass posts three headlines that pretty much define our politics.
- The Propaganda Professor finds he has, over time, changed his mind about transgenders, GMOs, prayer, institutional racism and more.
- Dave Columbo horrifies his virtual fictitious Republican with the help of Donald Trump
View on Threads - Iron Knee at Political Irony employs the talent of Jon Stewart to help Donald Trump make himself look stupid on trade and race.
- Juliet at Decoding Fox News has the clips to substantiate her summary of this week’s ideological chorus at the Fox network.
Key judgment:
The folks at Fox were quick to repeat and amplify the deranged tirades of our malignant narcissist president who blamed diversity, equity and inclusion programs for the recent catastrophic fatal crash of a military helicopter and commercial airline over the Potomac. When grieving families and shocked Americans needed words of sympathy and reassurance Trump was more than happy to terrify and provoke.For those of us who find reading a little easier than listening online, she also provides this.
- Julian Sanchez no longer regards The New York Times as part of the 4th estate
These are important wording choices. When you describe lawbreaking this way, you’re communicating to the reader that sure, maybe it’s TECHNICALLY illegal, but it can’t REALLY be that important. Nobody describes street criminals as “unbound by legal niceties.”
— Julian Sanchez (@normative.bsky.social) January 31, 2025 at 12:44 PM
This is basically sanewashing, but for criminality. It feels “biased” to bluntly but accurately say “The Trump administration has demonstrated it will break the law whenever it pleases.” So they look for ways to soften it. Just a little light illegality between friends.
— Julian Sanchez (@normative.bsky.social) January 31, 2025 at 12:55 PM
- Are Democrats up to the task of opposition? Brian Beutler seems less than completely confident.
I’ve become concerned in recent days that the Dems’ familiar conflict aversion has transformed from a misguided political theory—follow polls, “seem” nonpartisan—into something more like physical cowardice. www.offmessage.net/p/fear-itsel…
— Brian Beutler (@brianbeutler.bsky.social) February 3, 2025 at 9:54 AM
- tengrain at Mock Paper Scissors looks in the mail and finds a note from House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries with a coherent, sufficiently fierce, Democratic response to Republican efforts to “steal taxpayer money from the American people, end Medicaid as we know it or defund programs important to everyday Americans”.
Key cautious reassurance:
I’m not sanguine about 10-point plans that don’t include punching the Nazis, but he probably cannot say that in an official document. There’s a lot here to read (and read between the lines), so have at it. - In Scotties Playtime, ali redford posts a week’s worth of good news, beginning with words of hope that apply today from a much better Bobby Kennedy in 1966, speaking to students in apartheid era South Africa.
- M. Bouffant at Web of Evil sees Democratic ex-Senator Bob Menendez sentenced to 11 years for pretty blatant bribery, and seems somewhat unsympathetic.
- The new administration promotes Christian supremacy.
Well…
Maybe not all of Christianity.As PZ Myers notes, Trumper rulers now seem to have something against Lutherans.
Or at least any Lutheran charities. Seems they are suspiciously helping the least of these, including refugees and immigrants.
- In The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser, atheist Bruce is tiring of all the repetitive literature well-meaning Evangelicals keep sending.
Key question:
What do these evangelizers hope to accomplish with their books and tracts? Surely they can’t think that I will be won over to their side by reading second-grade religious material? - In Happiness Between Tails, da-AL reveals the role empathy plays in why she now tells of the abuse she endured as a child, and why breaking her silence is so important.
- With the caution that each life is different, Vincent at A Wayfarer’s Notes relates his experience with successful marriage: Fitting with another as a working process rather than happenstance. He expands on that thought to life itself.
- @whiskeywhistle98 goes AI to find what Bluey characters would look like as real people:
- Noted author John Scalzi has a brief but fascinating piece on how direct translations in literature (and presumably other genra) can easily miss critical cultural references, and how the best translators compensate.
- SilverAppleQueen has figured out how to fight norovirus. Has to do with disinfecting surfaces effectively. Meanwhile she has cute cats.
Personal update:
Sentencing for my assailant finally occurred. Went about as expected.
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