1.) I love Jennifer Welch of IHIP (I Love Pumps too). Jennifer has been getting a lot of attention lately because she seems to have tapped into something that the centrist Democrats have missed. Count me among the Dark Woke.
In this interview with the New Yorker, she explains that the Democrats have failed to connect their electorate. It’s about being too slavish towards corporations.
2.) Nick Cohen has a Substack called Writing from London where he describes what has happened to the UK after 40+ years of political mishaps with temporary retrenchments. In the wake of 16 years of Tory conservatism, severe austerity and then Brexit, he shows us here in America what we have to look forward to as the corporate world takes over. Here’s a sample, from today’s letter “Private profit, Public Squalor” :
Also, the image below would be mildly funny except there are no penguins in the Northern hemisphere. I know right?? It feels like that can’t be right. I had to look it up. It’s not the first time I’ve seen this mistake in the last couple of days so if you’re synthesizing video, engineer your prompt to use puffins, not penguins. 😬
This one is exactly what it feels like to spend 14 years as a child hostage to a religious cult;
Funny (not funny).
So much material, so little time:
Protests are picking up against Trump in Greenland, in Greenland and Denmark. It looks like the whole world is turning against Trump – except for the US Congress run by Republicans.
But pretty soon, Trump is going to get bored, especially if there are countries who aren’t sufficiently paying attention to him. So I think he’s going to start shaking the nuclear rattle in earnest. Maybe he’ll nuke some remote place in Nevada just to show we still have working material. Then he’ll sit back and watch the the Rockies, plains states, and the world run around like headless chickens while he watches TV in the executive dining room, sips his Diet Coke and fingers his mushroom.
Just a note here that I’ve caught Ruth Ben Ghiat on multiple YouTube channels lately. She says based on her research on autocrats and authoritarianism, the Trump takeover is speeded up. Most authoritarian regimes are more gradual than this so that the public feels unease but isn’t provoked to do anything about it.
But Americans are exceptional in this case. The power grabs and undermining of governmental institutions is so dramatic that it is causing a backlash. You can’t NOT see it, no matter where you are on the political spectrum. It’s obvious. I suspect that Democrats are partially in support of letting Trump’s and Miller’s worst instincts out of the bag so that Americans can see exactly what they voted for or didn’t vote for. We have to keep reminding people outside the US that this is a minority regime. Most Americans did not vote for Trump, project 2025, Christian nationalism or beta males strutting around Minneapolis acting like the cocks on the walk until someone super soaks them with water on a day when the temps are at -15°F.
So, get it all out of your system MAGA. Let your freak flag fly. Watch the world tell you where to shove it.
During a two-hour sit-down with multiple Times reporters on Jan. 7, Trump was questioned about why he won’t just send more American troops to Greenland — which is legal under a Cold War–era agreement — if his goal is to fend off foreign threats. The president replied by saying that he won’t feel comfortable unless he owns the island.
“Why is ownership important here?” Timesnational security correspondent David E. Sanger asked.
“Because that’s what I feel is psychologically needed for success,” Trump, 79, replied. “I think that ownership gives you a thing that you can’t do, whether you’re talking about a lease or a treaty. Ownership gives you things and elements that you can’t get from just signing a document, that you can have a base.”
“Psychologically important for me,” Trump answered. “Now, maybe another president would feel differently, but so far I’ve been right about everything.”
I get it. If you own the place outright, you can strip mine it without anyone getting in your way. You can put the Greenlanders on ice floes. You can keep all that loot and put it in a bank in Qatar. And if you are the president of the world’s most formidable superpower, you can send your military to Greenland to do the dirty work for you. You are answerable to no one.
He also said he wasn’t ruling out using nuclear force to get Greenland. Sort of like, “if I can’t have it, nobody can have it.”
I keep having to remind myself that a plurality of American voters deliberately gave him more power than anyone in the world knowing in advance that he was a bad guy. Forget the leopard eating the liberals’ faces. He doesn’t think anyone in the world deserves to live more than he does. It blows my mind how badly Trump voters underestimated him.
But what none of us saw coming was Donald’s real personality disorder diagnosis. It’s a word I’d never heard of until this year – Pleonexia.
See the video below for an overview. (The video creators aren’t presenting an actual DSM diagnosis but they are very accurate nonetheless) A couple of things stood out to me in it. We know of the Pleonexics who are also grandiose narcissists. Elon Musk would also fit into this diagnosis. But this description says that many Pleonexics prefer to fly under the radar and not call attention to themselves. Like Harlan Crowe and his boys’ club?
Pleonexia is what brought down the French aristocracy and the Russian tsar and his extended family. It is inevitable that the people at the bottom say they had enough and bring it all down.
We’ve had bases in Greenland since the Cold War and everything was all ticketyboo. Why is there a problem there now that threatens our national security. I don’t get it. Make it make sense. I’m not into the Grinch fooling Cindi Loo Who tactics.
What is the issue with Russia and China(??) using the north arctic passage?
Is Trump just trying to get his tiny hands on Greenland’s natural resources? Is it because they realize that Greenlanders are not going to accept blankets and beads for the wealth under their ice? Is it because they think Denmark is a small country of no significance and NATO wouldn’t dare go up against us?
Ok, so more than one question. But they all need answers. Plus, you know, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
There are a metric tonne of people (ok, about 50) at the bus stop this morning. That can only mean two things. One of the regular buses is very, very late. It looks like is mine.
I try to get in by 7:30am. That way I can buy the big latte and sip it slowly as I clean out my inbox and get my presentations lined up and ready to go. But if the bus is late, I get all Stephen Miller cranky.
Yesterday, I replaced the bag I was using. It was heavy when empty. Now I have to cart around my lunch and there just wasn’t any room for it.
Whine, whine, whine.
Need coffee.
Also, I heard that DHS is using some Nazi slogan on their podiums these days: “One of us, All of you”. It’s a warning about collective punishment. Not sure I would have done that, Kristi. In a country with 420,000,000 guns, it could so easily be misinterpreted.
In the meantime, I’m watching a lady across the aisle eyes half closed, singing softly while she conducts a gospel song and I’m listening to some classics.
We are all connected.
Music to walk to work to (even if you’ve forgotten your umbrella):
And what constitutes disrespect? Well, it’s whatever Donald Trump says it is. Or whatever his agents think it is.
This is why you don’t give the keys to the most power in the world to someone who doesn’t recognize people as autonomous human beings who can disobey.
It can happen to anyone. Eventually, even MAGAs most faithful followers are going to have to decide whether to follow whatever Trump tells them or disobey in order to protect their lives and livelihoods.
And at that point, merely giving one of his fully immunized paramilitary agents the stink eye can get you killed.
That’s why you MAGA voters were told to have a backout plan. But you just laughed and laughed and called us crazy because nothing bad happened during his first term.
Other bloggers and podcasters call you idiots. I try to avoid calling you that because most of you are smart enough to know better.
It’s not necessarily stupid to do things to other people that cause them harm unnecessarily. It’s just evil.
The release of this damning video as an attempted exoneration reminds me overwhelmingly of the release of the video of the murder of Black jogger Ahmaud Arbery in February 2021 in an attempt of one of the murderers to prove they had acted in self-defense.
In that case, the district attorney for that circuit told police that the video showed self-defense and declined to prosecute. When the story wouldn’t go away, one of the murderers apparently thought that everyone else would agree that the video exonerated the killers. His lawyer gave the video to a local radio station. The station took the video down within two hours, but the public outcry over the horrific video meant the killers were arrested two days later. A jury convicted them, and they are now in prison, two for life without possibility of parole, one for life with the possibility of parole after 30 years, when he will be about 82.
In the case of the murder of Ahmaud Arbery, the murderers and their protectors were clearly so isolated in their own racist bubble they could not see how regular Americans would react to the video of them hunting down and shooting a jogger.
In the case of the murder of Renee Good, the shooter and his protectors are clearly so isolated in their own authoritarian bubble they cannot see how regular Americans would react to the video of a woman smiling at a masked agent and saying: “That’s fine, dude. I’m not mad at you,” only to have him shoot her in the face and then spit out “F*cking b*tch” after he killed her.
This is the heart of the problem.
Believe it or not, true MAGA voters are not the majority. That might come as a small shock to them in the coming days. They comprise only about 33% of the American public.
Trump and his Republican backers have played a long game for over 40 years to capture the government. Democrats and independents failed to keep them in check because they either were not paying attention, didn’t put the plot together in time, or were too captured by wealthy Wall Street interests to GAF. And here we are.
But that doesn’t mean MAGA is popular or admired or even feared. It just means that like Trump, they have surrounded themselves with yes men and flatterers in the media who will praise them for “being authentic” and “saying what they really think” and not being “politically correct”. They’ve been given permission by Fox News and right wing radio and podcasters to let their ids take over without any checks on their speech or behavior. Then they’ve been praised for that behavior.
The split in Congress makes them feel more powerful than they actually are. It’s the result of decades of gerrymandering and taking over state legislatures.
As long as they remain in their bubble, they’re completely insulated from the rest of the country and the world that will not tolerate any more violence against American citizens and other countries and human beings. Trump and MAGA would need to completely shut down any independent media sources and turn off the internet before they even come close to achieving the kind of superiority they think they already have.
When they do that, we’ll become like Iran and it will be too late for guys in pick up trucks to finally get a clue.
One final thing:
No one in America voted for Stephen Miller or his law of the jungle and this country is NOT the Belgian Congo.
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Corrections on my part: 1.) it wasn’t the Senate chambers they were breaking into. It was the House. 2.) It looks like the person who shot her is not wearing a uniform like a Capitol police officer. He’s dressed more like a secret service agent.
Watch this video of the shooting of Ashli Babbitt. This is not the one that was uploaded immediately after her death on YouTube. That one was extremely graphic and upsetting which is probably why it was taken down. In this angle, you can see the Capitol security officer to the left of the screen. He moves from further up the hallway to almost flush with the door.
At the time this happened, I was on season 4 of The Walking Dead. That’s what this reminded me of. It was like a horde of walking dead were breaking in to yet another safe place that the remnants of the human race were holed up. The regulars who survived were armed with nothing but ice picks.
In other words, that security officer was definitely in danger. One of the insurrectionists shouted “He’s got a gun!” shortly before Babbitt was shot. But the insurrectionists were not deterred just like the mindless horde of walking dead. They just kept smashing and growling, sometimes intelligently, sometimes not. They had what looks like crowbars. The glass was shattering out of a row of three windows looking onto the hallway.
And there was ONE security agent all by himself who is tasked with keeping the horde at bay while Representatives were evacuating or crouched in the aisles of the House Chamber listening to the noise outside. If that security agent had been less of a deterrent and hadn’t slowed down the horde, at least long enough for them to get Ashli’s body out of the way, he might have had to fight them all by himself.
This angle doesn’t show Ashli’s blood gushing from her neck Charlie Kirk style. It doesn’t show the look in her eyes and it doesn’t show her friends looking initially confused about how badly she’d been hurt.
But here’s what I saw. I saw a dangerous scenario with one person standing between the violent mob and House members. Does anyone doubt how violent, aggressive and out of control they were? These aren’t people who are reassuring the officer that they weren’t mad at him. These people were like Jack Torrence breaking down the door in The Shining with an ax reassuring his wife Wendy that he was going to bash her fucking brains in.
The horde knew he had a gun but it didn’t seem to register. It didn’t stop Ashli from jumping on the sill to be the first one through.
The security officer fulfilled his only duty here. He wasn’t there to harass the rioters or arrest innocent people peacefully standing up for the rights of others. He had ONE job and he did it. He protected our legal Constitutional Representatives and their duties as he was authorized to do. That’s it.
He did not mutter “fucking bitch” and as far as Ashli being unarmed, would you stop to ask how many in that horde were carrying firearms? They were already using what looks like crowbars to smash the glass. Was he supposed to stand there alone and let them come in when he didn’t have riot gear on? He could have been beaten to death and how would that help him protect our Representatives??
That horde wasn’t there to exercise free speech. They were there to destroy it at the behest of Donald Trump. That’s who killed Ashli Babbitt. Trump knew about the security personnel in the Capitol. He knew eventually someone would get hurt or killed. He just didn’t care. That’s why Ashli Babbitt was killed.
The security officer had more of a right and obligation to shoot that gun once than ICE Agent Ross, who had exactly zero authority to do anything at all on a snowy neighborhood street in Minneapolis. He should have called the local police to get Renee Good to stop blocking traffic. She would have gotten a citation or they would have been able to physically remove her by towing her car, with her in it if necessary. Aggressively commanding her to get out of her car wasn’t in ICE’s job description. She’s an American citizen just getting in their way. That’s not a capitol crime requiring an immediate death sentence.
Now, I realize that no one on the MAGA side is going to read this and god knows that by now, they never let a set of facts get in the way of their overly emotional response to anyone who doesn’t fit into their narrow definition of human being, which seems to stop at their immediate family members, but only the ones that think like they do, and Donald Trump. They will do anything to protect Donald. We will never in a million years understand why they think he needs this protection and why he can’t defend his “own morality” without their help.
But there is a good reason why the Capitol Security Officer who shot Ashli Babbitt will never spend a day in jail and ICE Agent Ross most certainly will. It’s because of the law. One person was protecting it for the benefit of all of us and one was ignoring it for the glory of one. And that is also why it’s being said that the difference between the death of Ashli Babbitt and Renee Good is fascism.
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See this conversation at The Bulwark between Jonathan Last and Tim Miller about “bad thoughts” Miller had in the shower the other day. Quick Summary: would it have been better for all of us if there were more deaths on Capitol Hill on January 6, 2021? In other words, what if the Capitol police hadn’t held back? Would the outrage over a blood bath on both sides have been the thing that finally pushed us over into immediate punishment for Donald Trump?
This was a really good conversation weighing the pros and cons and one we should have had back in 2021. It’s their version of the Tolkien test.
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The Confluence 