Week of Successful Peaceful Protests
No Violence (Except MAGA Attacks), More Epstein Blockage, More War on Boats, Revenge Prosecutions, Tariffs Explained (Yay!)

Key American ethic:
Get in good trouble, necessary trouble, and help redeem the soul of America.

That last got away, but the license plate was seen and the number recorded.

To this:

And, of course, Fox Folk:

Brian Beutler posts 22 succinct observations about the massive protests. The dozen that are not paywalled are worth the click.

He doesn’t care for protests, but sometimes feels compelled:
This is the only one that felt like a civic duty.

He suggests participation by us elderly folks was good:
I don’t mean “good” in a normative sense. I mean it in the sense that American politics is a relentless and tedious battle to disarm a fickle middle, which itself is very white and old and laden with biases. A mass movement is not going to persuade Donald Trump and JD Vance and Stephen Miller to behave better. It can convince a durable majority that these bad men should face consequences for their conduct.

She goes to history (as historians sometimes do) to discuss how current the Trump approach to governance violates bedrock American values going back to the founding.

Much of her report centers on the experiences of former Trump official Erez Reuveni, who was asked to make false representations in court. Instead, he resigned.

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

Frances Langum presents video as Trump’s proposal that his Justice Department pay him nearly a quarter billion dollars for the inconvenience of having been investigated for crimes before he took office.

The idea is too much even for Napolitano.

Succumbing to temptation, I shamelessly steal from Hackwhackers:

Instead, he sues because they investigated other crimes, a process suspended with the paper thin Trump election.

Now that he is in office, Trump, on one side, is negotiating with Trump, on the other side, for whether, and for how much, he should be compensated for the heartbreaking inconvenience.

Currently, he is proposing to himself compensation for himself from taxpayers of not quite a quarter of a billion dollars.

We’ll see if he provides a counteroffer to himself and, if he does, whether he then agrees to it.

I have an observation:

Key alternative:
At press time Canada is abandoning plans to burn down the White House in favour of Option B: winning the World Series.

He lists from the list.

…and asks why those same Republicans are blocking release of the Epstein files that they keep insisting will exonerate Trump.

Trump’s feelings are hurt, and so he does what he always does when his feelings are hurt.

First, he throws a temper tantrum, this time insisting the Reagan speech is a fake and Reagan never said those words.

Then he goes for what he imagines to be revenge, suspending talks with Canada on reducing those maniacal tariffs.

M. Bouffant at Web of Evil backs up the story with a few links.

OH!!
About that fake speech…

M. Bouffant digs in and finds the original speech:

Sorry mr Trump.
No Fake!
Sounds like Ronald Reagan had your number.

In a few sentences, economist Jeffrey Sachs makes it extremely easy to understand.

Posted by KOJAMF on BlueSky:

[Note] Don’t worry. We start with only a few seconds of Trump cringe:

Now wasn’t that easy?

Key headline:
Who Cares About Peace There are Drug Boats to Destroy!

More detail in Juliet’s audio version.

To avoid swearing in newly elected Democratic congresswoman Adelita Grijalva, Speaker Mike Johnson finally resorts to a medically induced coma.

Key bedrock principle (from the motion to dismiss):
The United States Constitution entitles individuals to speak out against the government and, in turn, forbids the government from retaliating against individuals for their protected speech. And bedrock principles of due process and equal protection have long ensured that government officials may not use courts to punish and imprison their perceived personal and political enemies. But that is exactly what happened here.

The fact that Congress voted in 2006 to extend the timeline for enforcing voting rights, with many southern representatives voting in favor, meant that racism had mostly ended, at least regarding voting rights.

And because racism was no longer a factor, provisions keeping states from monkeying around with voting rights were no longer needed.

Since those protections were not needed, they were unconstitutional.

If that part of their reasoning seems circular, welcome to the circle. The fact that the extension was passed meant it was unconstitutional.

Imani Gandy now takes a look at the newest reasoning before the court, as they consider Louisiana v. Callais.

The argument is that, as racist obstruction to voting is discovered, race-based remedies are no longer Constitutional because they would have to be used for too long. The reasoning below the reasoning is that the court is tired of hearing about racism. There has to be a limit.

Key right:
Now you may think Floyd was a criminal, a counterfeiter, a druggie, a domestic abuser or anything else, but the fact remains, being murdered by a sworn Minneapolis cop is not the sentence for any of that. It is interesting to see the scene of the crime. Floyd was a lot of things, but a murderer like Derek Chauvin he was not.

The Week In Stupid (Oct. 13-19),

including such luminaries as

Education Secretary Linda McMahon (There was a Tulsa Race Massacre?),

JD Vance (Those pro-Hitler, pro-gas chamber, Republican social media posts were just boyish messages),

our own Missouri Senator Josh Hawley of running from his own endorsed mob fame,

and more.

Key reasoning behind checks and balances (At 2:11):
The only way to break the deadlock of the separation of powers, checks and balances, federalism is through strong executive action.
 
That’s why you see Donald Trump signing executive orders like a dictator, because somebody had to take the wheel and pull us out of this gridlock created by our Founding Fathers.
 
And they created it to produce a king.
 
America needed exactly what our Founders intended: a strong man, a king who would break the deadlock and get America moving forward.
 
His name: Donald Trump.

As I point out in my own comment, his piece deserves a respectful read, including from those of us in the faith.

He points, in part, to their use of the murder of Charlie Kirk as a sort of Reichstag fire:

A while back, I suggested an unfortunate temptation within most religions:

Professor Mike is correct about the danger, as this sad tendency transmutes into a righteous organizational mandate.

I’m okay with a both-sides critique, but not as a reflexive premise. Bill’s focus on the right supports half of his criticism. I suspect without knowing that he could discover equally compelling examples on the left to make his all-are-to-blame more persuasive.

He does mention BlueSky, a form of social media separate from that-which-was-once-Twitter. That, Bill, is a comparison of ordinary folks blurting out random opinions, if you can blurt in print, with supposed professional journalists.

Something like this might have been a more truthful counter-balance:

I once pointed to a video apparently showing Michele Bachmann (remember her?) yelling to an enthusiastic crowd:

I checked and discovered the rally had grown beyond the protective overhang. And it was raining.

She had called out:

The sneering, smearing, lie made me kind of mad.
And I hated being mad on behalf of Michele Bachmann!

This week, she combines more fun, and funny, pictures from her trip to Norway, along with a delightful book review and two videos about how animals sense the world, and guest blogger Janet Stock, who doubles as a genre‑hopping author, writing about her adventure in reading an adventure book about the adventures of a Finnish troll struggling to survive a coming fireball from the sky.

My experience is that any note of encouragement is …well… encouraging.