Week of the Sky Palace Wonder Bribe
Habeus Corpus Corpse, Free Speech Deports, Explain the Plane, Aborting Birth Citizenship

So, just for giggles, he asks an AI chatbox what a president should do if he wants to abolish democracy and establish an authoritarian state.

The AI answer is startlingly exact.

Gosh!
Whatever could it all mean?

Laura Ingraham is of special interest, as she says Trump would not technically be defying the Supreme Court if he relies on the lawyers he employs to instruct him as he insists on being instructed.

A more extensive audio version is also offered.

CalicoJack in The Psy of Life has specific actions individual citizens can take to stop the normalization of fascism.

Key topics:

1. Suspending Habeas Corpus
2. Due Process
3. “I Don’t Know”
4. What’s To Be Done About It?

• Anti-Pope MagaDopes (He’s supposed to be woke!)
• ICE (“a gang of Proud Boys”)
• Qatarites (Is too a word!), their plane, and the sucker who wants it.
• Stephen Miller (“Goebbels look alike”)

@Silkgengar shows Trump articulating what he regards as an attack on Chuck Schumer.

His logic is that anyone who wants Palestinians treated humanely must be a Palestinian, and anyone who is a Palestinian cannot be Jewish.

Schumer wants Palestinians treated humanely.
QED

She then proceeds to commit vivisection on any officer of government who nominates a candidate for a critical position before he has an idea who he is selecting.

He totals up results Trump will not like from Americans who increasingly do not like Trump.

Key reasoning:
To get around this, the plane is actually being given to the U.S. Air Force, so not directly to an individual. And the fact that it will eventually be given to the Trump Presidential Library, according to an analysis by Trump’s own team, makes everything hunky dory. That Trump gets to use this thing should, the argument goes, be in no way construed as a personal favour that might require some sort of corrupt reciprocity. Got it?

Right Wing Watch brings us Hank Kunneman who is a prophet. We know it because God told him that personally.

And would a prophet who hears from God lie about being a prophet who hears from God?

It seems the ultimate reason Trump was right in accepting Qatar’s plane gift:
It’s a sign of God’s favor.

Well then…His will be done!

Key concluding note:
If anyone in Qatar wants to give my library, the Wigderson Library & Pub, a jet plane, I am open to being corrupted.

Key reasoning on firing (WH spokesperson Karoline Leavitt):
There were quite concerning things that she had done at the Library of Congress in the pursuit of [diversity, equity, and inclusion] and putting inappropriate books in the library for children…

Key unfortunate reality:
[T]he Library of Congress collects according to a list of principles to enable it to perform research for members of Congress and to keep a record of the American people. It is not a lending library. In order to conduct research at the Library of Congress, researchers must be at least 16 years old.

Historian Heather Cox Richardson ties the loose ends.

The real reason for Elon’s activities have been more sinister than might be apparent.

The analysis is also available in audio format, as Richardson narrates in podcast.

Misfit also has memes, one of which brings to me a fond memory:

Around a table with a few friends before worship, I asked if anyone wanted coffee. One young lady raised her hand and said, “I like my coffee the way I like my men.”

I couldn’t resist. “Murky and bitter?”

Misfit brings something better:

And there’s more!

As Trump deports genuine refugees for expressing sympathy for Palestinians, sympathy that Trump insists must be antisemitism, white South Africans are invited to become refugees in the US without the usual lengthy investigatory vetting. Naturally, a virulent anti-Jewish propagandist is among them.

Makes you think. Is it possible something else accounts for the difference in Trump policy on sanctuary?

OH! And Elon Musk’s AI chatbot starts bringing up unsupported allegations of South African ‘white genocide’ in response to completely unrelated queries.

From Section 1 of the 14^th Amendment:
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.

The Claremont Institute has long pushed the legal theory, unaccepted most everywhere outside of Claremont, that the 14^th Amendment does not really mean what it says. They have filed a Friend of the Court argument to an adjacent, but not directly related, debate before the Supreme Court.

Jason Linkins objects to the balance‑over‑truth headline in The New York Times that gratuitously offers the theory a promotion out of fringe kindergarten.

A participant summarizes the approach of much of mainstream news:

Key hope:
I hope enough white people here are willing to stand and say the same thing in the face of this vile, corrupt Administration. America cannot be purged of the variety and plurality that have made it a flawed but still radiant beacon for the world.
 
We need to leverage our privilege and disrupt our circles of influence and do all we can to partner with the rest of the diverse humanity here, to ensure that this nation does not become a White Evangelical fever dream.

Amen!

driftglass remembers a Sinatra movie with a similar pattern involving brainwashing.

Key involuntary repetition (Frank Sinatra)
Raymond Shaw Is the Kindest, Bravest, Warmest, Most Wonderful Human Being I’ve Ever Known in My Life. Raymond Shaw Is the Kindest, Bravest, Warmest, Most Wonderful Human Being I’ve Ever Known in My Life

The Bubblegum Crucifix Award:
…the tackiest, dumbest, most idiotic, most hateful, most bizarre thing said or done to promote religion in the public forum…

First honor goes to restricting gay rights as the way to love our neighbors.

One problem. US car manufacturers that Trump says he is protecting say the not‑quite‑an‑outline will destroy US companies, along with US jobs.

Mainstream reports seem to support Iron Knee’s evaluation.

From CNN:
Instead, the “deal” Trump announced is more like a memorandum of understanding.

Yup. The agreement is an agreement to consider eventual agreements, whenever details are worked out in largely undefined future negotiations.

We’ve heard this enough for it to become a truism:
It’s easier to break things than to build them.

The implied corollary is defeatism. If vandals have an infinite advantage, why do anything but hide?
Brian Beutler deconstructs that implication. It ain’t necessarily so.

Key issue of scale:
Not every act of destruction is like the leveling of a city, and not every act of rebuilding requires clearing out rubble and laying new foundation.

Key alternate path:
[T]hose of us who stand against them can acknowledge the damage they’ve done and maintain a posture of dignified defiance and resolve. We can commit to rebuilding faster than they imagine possible.

An audio version is included.

In my own experience, encouragement seems to help.