Good Times at Gotham City

 

A Dictator For the Next 1000 Days

 

    (By American Zen's Mike Flannigan, on loan from Ari)

During last year's election, alarm bells sounded throughout the nation at 300 decibels when Trump told Sean Hannity that he would be a dictator only on Day One. One can only imagine how many MAGAts' heads would've popped in outrage if Obama had said that on the campaign trail in 2008 or 2012 or Biden in 2020. Or Kamala last year.

    Trump's first 100 days in office, a fake milestone if ever there was one, will happen on Wednesday. If we're going to recognize this manufactured milestone, then we must be truthful and clear-eyed about it and I don't have to wait until Wednesday to put out this post for the sake of day-to-day accuracy. On Wednesday, America will be a worse country than it is now and it will be even worse by Thursday.

     If anyone reading this wants to accuse me of liberal alarmism and mere hyperbole, then that's their right. But I think I stand on pretty firm ground when I say there has not been a single day when this shit show of an administration has made it possible for our country to be a better one than it was the day before.

     As I and others had noted when Trump made that shocking pronouncement to Hannity, no dictator would be content being one just for a day. After all, look at all the threats he'd made against his perceived enemies on the campaign trail, calling people "vermin" and vowing to set up concentration camps for all the people he wanted to arrest. That's something even this hyperactively evil administration can't do in a day.

     In these first 98 days, it has already become impossible for even the most dedicated, anal retentive person to come close to cataloguing Trump's countless crimes against democracy. And those are just the crimes we know about. As the old saying goes, "If you think you're cynical, trust me- you're not cynical enough."

     And, just as Hitler had made good on all his threats catalogued in Mein Kampf, every threat that Trump made at his countless rallies is being solidified into reality. His first day in office was a masterclass in authoritarianism, when he signed nearly 100 executive orders aimed at curtailing Americans' civil rights, rollbacks of regulations and other things guaranteed not to make America great again.

     Since then, things have steadily gotten worse, turning America not into something great, but a landscape that would make the most nightmarish dystopian novel look like Little House on the Prairie.

 

 When a Fiat Collides With the Omnibus of Democracy

Thanks to the Supreme Court giving Trump sweeping powers to commit any crimes he wished, provided they were considered part of his "presidential duties" (without specifying what those were or who got to be the arbiter what "presidential duties" are), Trump has been running the country by the closest thing we have to royal fiat. There's no discernible daylight between the ancient divine right of kings and how Trump views the presidency. He acts as if his vindictive, jaundiced will is legal and moral justification and no one has the right to criticize much less oppose him.

    Not too long ago, Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III, a Reagan appointee and poster boy for the Federalist Society, wrote a scathing rebuke of the Trump administration over its detaining, arresting and deporting US citizens and legal residents without due process:

     "If today the Executive claims the right to deport without due process and in disregard of court orders, what assurance will there be tomorrow that it will not deport American citizens and then disclaim responsibility to bring them home? And what assurance shall there be that the Executive will not train its broad discretionary powers upon its political enemies? The threat, even if not the actuality, would always be present, and the Executive’s obligation to ‘take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed’ would lose its meaning."

     Very good questions that have already transcended the merely rhetorical. Last Friday, right after Judge Wilkinson issued his opinion, ICE had illegally deported three children, all US citizens, in blatant violation of the 14th amendment, aged 2, 4 and 7 when their  mother was renditioned back to Honduras (she's actually from Cuba). The four year-old had cancer and had, until recently, been getting treatment for it. ICE had sent her back without any cancer medication nor any input from her doctors.

     As Adam Serwer once famously titled an article in the Atlantic, "the cruelty is the point."

    And these totalitarian renditions are hardly an outlier. In Chicago earlier this year, immigration courts violated the rights of 22 immigrants, one of whom being a US citizen, with the arrest warrants hastily produced retroactively. Then there was the case of Juan Carlos Lopez-Gomez, a 20 year-old US citizen who was arrested during a traffic stop in Florida and was held for days even after his mother produced his birth certificate proving he was born in Georgia.

    And, most notoriously, there was the recent arrest of Circuit Court Judge Hannah Dugan in Milwaukee which came within hours of the arrest of a former New Mexico judge and his wife. And then, of course, there's the infamous case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was arrested in Maryland and renditioned to El Salvador despite living here legally under protected status. Two federal courts, including the SCOTUS (which, in a stunning ruling, ruled 9-0 to return Garcia), demanded the Trump administration facilitate Garcia's return.

      Trump's response? He thumbed his nose at virtually all of them.

 

The Orange Hulk 

In what's virtually a case of life imitating art, the current "president" has been running roughshod over the government like an orange hulk only without the Hulk's usual charm and intelligence. And just to give a vague idea of Trump's rampant criminality, over 120 courts at the county, state and federal level (including, again, the SCOTUS) have tried to rein in Trump from illegal arrests and deportations to firing federal workers. At least two of those judges, Boasberg and Paula Xinis, have already begun investigations into whether to launch criminal contempt of court charges against Trump's lawyers.

     In a matter of weeks, Trump's already gone after governors, corporations, media outlets, universities, judges, lawyers, law firms, advocacy groups and even ActBlue, which helps fund Democratic campaigns. In a dispiritingly large number of times, knees were bent and heads bowed. One law firm gave Trump $100,000,000 in free legal representation. ABC bought him off with a $15,000,000 bribe, even though any lawsuit Trump would have brought against them, ABC would've won.

   Trump is nakedly running a protection racket. If anyone runs afoul of him, it's "Nice company/network/university/law firm you got here. Be a shame if something... happened to it."

  But there's hope. More than 400 university presidents signed an open letter criticizing the administration for cracking down on universities like Harvard and trying to stifle free speech by threatening to cut off their federal funding, which is a violation of the First Amendment. Hundreds of law firms have filed an amicus brief, or a friend of the court, supporting Perkins Cole's opposition to Trump's threats.

    Yet that's not enough. Not nearly. Former presidents, vice presidents, Cabinet officials and others have to rise up against the fascist nightmare that this nation's rapidly turning into. Democrats in Congress may be relatively powerless to stop this power grab but that's not to say they're entirely powerless and without options. Democrats need to do more than hold rallies. Yeah, what AOC and Bernie are doing is great but can any of us honestly say that their rallies have changed a damned thing?

     Change starts with awareness and awareness begins with telling the people what's going on under their noses. That starts with holding daily press conferences, telling the people what crimes have been committed by this criminal junta on each and every day in their good names, with their tax dollars. It starts with letting voters know how much the Republican party hates their own voters, how much they loathe democracy. They need to be told how spineless they truly are in not standing up to this criminal syndicate masquerading as an administration.

     But the Democratic Party doesn't have the heart for that or any meaningful opposition. And we may not even survive the next 100 days, much less until the 2026 midterms. And if Democrats want that blue tsunami that everyone's praying for, they need to show Democratic voters they deserve the majority in Congress. It all starts now because we're running out of time, fast.

Will the Real Leader of the Free World Please Stand Up?

     What does it say when the so-called leader of the free world shows less life and vigor than the dead Pope Francis?

     It's long been an article of faith that every single time without fail that when Trump goes on an overseas trip, he will find some way to embarrass us on the world stage. We saw that back in 2017 when Trump went to the G7 summit in Sicily, when he was so tuckered out after two days that he had to follow the other six world leaders in a golf cart.

     He hardly showed any more life at Pope Francis's funeral a few days ago in Rome, in which he was spotted nodding off. It was bad enough that he was the only one in attendance who wasn't wearing black, which everyone knows you're supposed to wear at a funeral. But he couldn't be bothered to stay awake at the funeral of the Catholic leader because it simply wasn't all about him. Thank goodness he wasn't tapped to deliver a eulogy because it would have inevitably devolved into how much he won Pennsylvania by in 2020.

 

     Things didn't get off to a good start when Ukrainian President Zelenskyy showed up and was greeted by a round of applause. Trump? When he showed up, no one paid him any notice whatsoever. In fact, the one who did notice his presence was Zelenskyy himself when Trump wanted to sit down with him for about an hour before the funeral started. To make matters worse, he was savaged by Cardinal Re during the homily. It was a miracle Trump was even seated in the front row. 

     (However, Trump's first row seat wasn't so much based on his or our prominence on the world stage as much as it's due to this: "Past Vatican funerals have seen the leaders arranged into alphabetical order based on their country, per the French interpretation... In French, the United States is actually written Etas-Unis, which means this places Trump near the top of the list rather than towards the bottom.")

     We don't know what exactly was said between Trump and Zelenskyy but it was probably something along the lines of, "Please just give up Crimea! Putin's sending me pictures of my grandchildren sleeping in their beds!"

      Even though statesmanship and presence on the world stage ought to be major considerations when electing a president, MAGA instead gave us and inflicted on the rest of the world a narcoleptic honey badger who unerringly finds some way to humiliate us on that stage. And whatever Trump does, it always benefits Russia and Putin in some way, which alone gives me pause and prevents me from concluding that Trump is incipiently demented.

     And, yes, he's definitely lost a step or three since he ran for office a decade ago. But it can't be ignored, the fact that everything Trump does, says or proposes will make Putin happy. Whether it's pulling us from the INF treaty, threatening to pull us from NATO, insisting every year without fail that Russia be allowed back into the G7, withholding money, weapons and intelligence from Ukraine, these are the things that make Russian state media cheer and jeer Trump simultaneously.

     On the hallowed ground of St. Peter's Square days ago, we got a glimpse of who the real leader of the free world was and it sure as hell wasn't Trump.

Fan Mail

 

     I just got this today:

     "I PROUDLY TELL YOU ROBERT THAT I HAVE ALL THE INFORMATION ON YOU I NEED; I KNOW WHO YOU ARE AND WHERE YOU LIVE. I HAVE TOLD YOU MULTIPLE TIMES TO STOP YOUR ONLINE PROMOTIONS. THIS IS YOUR FINAL NOTICE; IF YOU STILL CONTINUE WITH YOUR PROMOTIONS ON SOCIAL MEDIA, I WILL PERSONALLY VISIT YOU WITH MY GANG AND R*PE THE B*TCH IN YOUR HOUSE. IF I DON'T LEAVE HER WITH A BLEEDING AND PAINFUL P**SY AT THE END OF IT...I AM A HORNY GUY YOU KNOW! MY BOYS WILL BRING IN SPECIAL KNIFE TO CUT OFF YOUR BALLS TOO; THEN THE REST OF THE FAMILY WILL BE TAKEN CARE OF ACCORDINGLY. WE WATCH YOUR EVERY MOVE AND EVERYTHING YOU DO ONLINE; YOU CANNOT HIDE FROM OUR EYES!"

     I don't know what your problem is with my trying to sell my book online but it's not important. All that needs to be known about you is that you're a deranged coward and that you're too stupid, too ignorant and too illiterate to be taken seriously.

     You emailed me from an account named, "noreply@anonymousemail.eu", which prevents me from directly responding to you because you're such a wet-legged fuck weasel that you piss your semen-stained pajama bottoms at the very idea of someone counterpunching you. So, as you purport to know every move I make, it should be nothing for you to read this, so listen up, Chuckles, because I'm only going to say this once:

     The last guy who threatened to send a "gang" to my house was a right wing lunatic named Hal Turner. That was 17 years ago. You don't hear much from Fat Hal these days and I have a theory as to why.

     You see, back when Hal was threatening me in the comment section of this blog, when he vowed to send neonazis to my house, I stuck to my guns and stood up for myself and my family. The next thing anyone knew, Hal was getting his house on North Bergen, NJ raided by the FBI.

     Now, granted, Fat Hal did it to himself by threatening the lives of three federal judges in Chicago. Hal eventually got sent to federal prison in Cook County for that indiscretion. You can still read about it online.

     But it was what Hal did before that is what got him in hot water. You see, right before he threatened the lives of those three federal judges, he'd threatened the lives of well over 100 lawmakers, all Democrats, who had voted on a gun control bill. Knowing that Turner had already threatened to send balloons filled with poison gas to President Obama's inauguration (Yes, like Tim Burton's Joker) and that he was putting out instructions to make ricin bombs, I knew something had to be done.

      So one night, I went online and told every Democratic congressman I could find and warned them about Turner's threat. I included quotes from his blog and even included permalinks to the post.

     The next thing anyone knew, Fat Hal was standing in a courtroom in Chicago looking very subdued and contrite. P.S. The neonazis never came to my house but that's another story for another day.

      Now, right about now, you're probably wondering in that box of spiders that passes for your brain where I come into this. Well, I'm glad you asked.

      You see, right after Fat Hal got busted at his house, one of those congresscritters (I won't say who but they're no longer in Congress) got back to me and said they took my warning under more than mere advisement and reported Hal to the FBI. Once he was on their radar, it was just a matter for them to wait until he did something stupid. And, sure enough, he threatened those three judges.

     The FBI did the rest and by that time, the Feds didn't care much if he was on their payroll as a paid informant.

     Now, I tell you this not to brag (I didn't then and I'm not now) but to state a fact. And the fact is that after 20+ years as a political blogger, I know who to reach. I know how to research and I also know how to network. And even though the FBI is being run by an Indian goon named Kash Patel, it doesn't mean federal laws aren't still being enforced at the field office and resident agency level. And just today, I heard from a friend of mine in Idaho who gave me good advice on how exactly to report this to the people at the local FBI field office whose job it is to investigate crimes like the one you'd committed today.

     

     That department within the FBI is called the Internet Crime Complaint Center, or IC3. They're built to take down craven little assholes just like you, as well as bigger fish like rogue nation states. And if they can take down rogue nation states, they should have no problem putting cowardly fistfuckers like you out of business. (By the way, here's the link to their department should you feel the need to streamline the process and turn yourself in. However, in the likelihood you choose not to do so, I'll save you the trouble and turn you in myself as soon as I publish this post.).

      Now, again, I don't care why you've made it your mission in life to keep me from selling my new book or how my doing so impacts on your miserable excuse for a life one way or the other. And again, I don't care. But your multiple threats, however real or not they are, is a serious crime. First, you threatened to rape my girlfriend.

     That tells me right there that you know shit about me aside from my first name, primary email address and that I'm doing social media promos. And that's because my last girlfriend died back in September 2023. She was creamated and is now sitting in an urn on someone's mantle in Vero Beach, Florida, so good luck making her pussy bleed, you filthy piece of shit.

     And I don't even care so much that you and your "gang" threatened to castrate me but then you follow it up by threatening my family? Dude, you plainly don't know how the world works but you don't threaten a man's family. Seriously, that just isn't done.

     Again, I don't know why you're so emotionally invested in ensuring that my new book doesn't sell but if you're really as crazy and committed as you pretend to be, if you really know where I live (and I doubt that), trust me when I say that if you darken my door, it will literally be the last mistake you ever make. I live in a gated community where access is absolutely impossible unless you have a key or passcode. The property is patrolled by armed private security. I'm surrounded by neighbors just feet from me. Now, I'm prepared to dismiss your crank letter as just that: A crank letter written by a social malcontent who gets his shits and giggles trying to terrify people into doing or not doing things for your own witless amusement.

     So here's what I'm going to do: After I report you to the FBI (and don't think that "anonymousemail.eu" domain will shield you for even a nanosecond when the FBI comes knocking on their door), I'm going on Facebook, on which I belong to scores of writing groups and I will continue putting up the permalinks to my book. Then I'll do the same thing on Twitter and Bluesky, using all the the hashtags I can fit.

     And, if you can really follow my every move then you'll have to sit there and watch helplessly as I put the word out about my new book. But do it while you can because you'll never know when the FBI will come knocking on your door, shitstain. Then, considering how horny you are, I'm sure you'll get plenty of action in the prison shower every night until your asshole is bigger than the super massive black hole at the center of our galaxy.

 

Addendum: 

     Just in case you thought I was bullshitting about reporting you, you incel cunt.

The Final Bullet is Out

     

     I've finally wrapped up the final edits for The Final Bullet, have submitted the file to Amazon for the paperback version and now it's on the market at a competitively-priced $9.99. The Kindle version will follow when I have my reformatter do his thing. What a long, strange trip this book has been. I've been living with it for about a year now.  

     Anyone who knows anything about my recent history would know this is the first book I've completed since my late fiancee, Barbara, began her final decline. It's my shortest novel by far (at about 74,000 words and change) and I was still barely able to finish it on account of her death gutting me so thoroughly. I used to publish a novel or two every year but this is my first launch in nearly four and a half years.

     It's kind of like getting thrown off a thoroughbred at Belmont and taking years to climb back into the saddle of a safe little pony on Coney Island. That's partly why I'm proud of this book. Barbara, always my number one fan and someone who'd read every novel I ever published, would have wanted me to do this, to keep writing. Her favorite authors included Malcolm Gladwell, Christopher Hitchens, Pat Conroy, Dennis Lehane, Barbara Ehrenreich, Olivia Goldsmith and others. In other words, people who could really write. So including me in her library among her favorite authors was always nothing but an honor. I took especial pains to make this Kelley McCsrthy standalone thriller a good read, to get into Kelley's psychology and motivations behind the controversial decisions she'll make in this story.

      I hope you enjoy this story as much as Barbara would have, as biased in my favor as she might have been. Every novel tells a story, obviously, but what most people don't realize is that every novel also has a silent story behind it. This is the story behind the story. The love of my life was taken from me by slow degrees and then abruptly when she died in that damned nursing home. It devastated me and I just couldn't focus on writing fiction. There were several times during the writing of this book when I cried over her and even months went by when I hadn't added a word to it.

      But Barbara's presence seemed to egg me on and tell me not to let this story fall to the wayside like all four of its aborted predecessors. The real life murder of JB Elwell and how Kelley approached the investigation in her final days with the New York Times was a story that had to be written. Plus, considering the emotional backdrop that hums like a silent current in the background gave me an almost moral imperative to not only finish and publish it but also to make it especially good, to polish it perhaps to the point where it might have even been her favorite novel out of all the ones I'd written. It's my fervent hope that you may love it, too.

     Now, back to our regularly-scheduled madness...

Here we go again

 

     Breaking: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth texts wife, brother, entire staff of Mother Jones, "I'm such a fuckup!" at 3:30 AM.

Mendacious Motherfuckers

    The two photos below show the depths to which this Hitlerism shit show of an administration will go to justify their mistakes and blatant illegality. Look at Kilmar Garcia's left hand. Then look at the supposed picture of Garcia's left hand that Trump is holding up to "prove" he belongs to MS13. Plainly, that's not Garcia's left hand and Trump knows it but he's still stubbornly trying to sell the narrative that he's a gang member.

     He wants you to forget that at its heart this is a due process issue, that they brazenly denied Garcia his fourth and sixth amendment rights barring the government from illegal search and seizure not to mention the right to a speedy trial and to face his accusers. Garcia got none of that and was hastily stuffed on a plane even as Judge Boasberg tried to ground the flight.

     If Garcia was that much of a threat, the fascist goons running CECOT wouldn't have released him. And right wing rodeo clowns like Scott Jennings can say there was a "legal" deportation order all the livelong day. But that bullshit deportation order had no legal standing because, again, they denied him at least two of his constitutional rights. If the government had a case against him, then why wouldn't they give him his day in court, to face and challenge his accusers and the right to habeas corpus?

     You cannot legally accuse someone of being in a gang then deport them without evidence or due process, even if you're talking about a foreign national who has protected status and a legal work permit. There is no moral bottom to this administration in its stubbornly fighting on a hill of their creation, one they should know they will die on.

Kilmar Abrego Garcia No Longer in CECOT

     Senator Chris Van Hollen's efforts in El Salvador, one of the many places in the world where human rights, and humans, go to die, is the latest example of the old adage that if you punch Nazis enough times, they will fold faster than a dropped accordion.

     Bottom line: Kilmar Abrego Garcia is no longer in CECOT. This doesn't mean he's free. But he's been transferred to a facility that's not CECOT.

     Sen. Van Hollen traveled to El Salvador a few days ago and demanded to meet with Garcia. At first, the government wouldn't allow that or even give Van Hollen a chance to speak with him over the telephone or to even enter the prison. Then Van Hollen gave a press conference that essentially tore the Trump administration a new one.

     Before anyone knew it, pictures of Van Hollen speaking with Garcia began circulating all over the internet. Then the senator revealed something astounding: Kilmar Abrego Garcia told him he was no longer being held in the CECOT gulag and had been transferred to someplace less horrible.

     Garcia and his family has Van Hollen to thank for this. Van Hollen was the only US Democratic lawmaker to travel to El Salvador and to put pressure on their NeoNazi government. At around the same time Van Hollen was in San Salvador, a delegation of right wing lawmakers also traveled to the country and even posed for pictures in front of the inmates in their cells and putting them up on their social media accounts. They were allowed into the notorious prison. Van Hollen wasn't.

     Not only is this an extraordinary turnaround, one can't ignore the timing of it all. 

 

     Just a couple of hours ago, Trump assembled a few Cabinet members as human scenery behind him and delivered a masterclass in smearing and lying. After telling Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt to grab a piece of paper, he then fumbled and bumbled his through it, claiming Garcia was a member of MS13 (he's not- He belongs to a union) and a terrorist (he's not) and even a trotted out an old protective order from four years ago that Garcia's wife had taken out on him (they've since gone to counseling) in order to justify deporting him to a banana republic dictatorship.

     By this time, Trump must have known that Garcia had been released from CECOT and transferred to another facility because the pictures of Van Hollen speaking with Garcia in what appeared to be a cafeteria over a cup of coffee had already begun making the rounds.

     Basically, Trump is paying a swarthier version of Hitler to incarcerate an inmate he no longer has.

     Bloomberg reported recently that up to 90% of the people we'd kidnapped and renditioned to El Salvador's torture palace were not affiliated with any gangs whether it was Tren de Aragua or MS13 or had any criminal records. Let's do a fact check:

     Again, the closest that Garcia has come to joining a street gang was when he joined a labor union through his job. He has no criminal record. The bullshit deportation order was based on a pack of lies. And whatever went on between he and his wife four years ago certainly doesn't give any administration the right to deport him to a foreign gulag. If that were true, Trump would also have to deport all other woman-beating psychopaths he's favored over the years. He was here under protected status when he proved that his family was in danger from gang activity and he was even given a work permit. And when the deportation was being challenged in court, the lawyers for the administration confessed that he was arrested and detained by ICE due to an "administrative error", which alone ought to have set him free.

     Instead, the administration doubled, tripled and quadrupled down and rushed him out of the country hours after the judge ordered him and other illegally detained people to be set free. Then they had the nerve to say the judge no longer had jurisdiction because Garcia was already in El Salvador. When the judge demanded information, they essentially stonewalled him and refused to hand it over.

      That Judge, James Boasberg, had found two days ago that he had grounds to prosecute Trump's lawyers for contempt of court and Judge Paula Xinis isn't too far behind. Just yesterday, Judge Xinis said she'd never issued a criminal citation in nearly 20 years on the bench but she's weighing it now. Naturally, this has resulted in the typical and predictable puerile name-calling from the Nazis in Trump's Fourth Reich. Said Seattle PI:

     "All this happened as administration officials made public statements disparaging the judges. Trump aide Stephen Miller described Xinis as a “Marxist judge” who “now thinks she’s president of El Salvador.” President Donald Trump had earlier called Boasberg a “Radical Left Lunatic Judge” in a social media post and demanded his impeachment."

      For good measure, Trump also piled on Van Hollen, claiming he was (Oh, the irony) "begging for attention."

      Folks, at the heart of this fascist disappearing of brown people is due process. And, not only that, what this administration has done to Garcia is a violation of his fourth (illegal search and seizure), sixth (due process) and potentially 14th amendment (citizenship) rights. None of those people on those flights that Judge Boasberg had ordered grounded or turned around ever saw the inside of a courtroom let alone access to a lawyer. And El Salvador's dictator, President Bukele, happily accepted them because Trump paid him, regardless of their legal status or criminal records or lack thereof.

     Garcia getting out of CECOT was a huge victory and it showed that if the right people push back hard enough, even Nazis will quickly develop an appreciation for optics. The next step is to get Garcia home, as well as all the other men on those flights who were also illegally detained, arrested and renditioned.

"Homegrown Criminals Are Next"

     So there Orange Julius Caesar sat in front of his newly-gilded fireplace in the Oval Office, playing the Lard of the Manor for a tinpot dictator named Nayib Bukele of El Salvador. Bukele is the very delineation of a banana republic strongman that Trump openly admires, the type of strongman that he aspires to be.

      The conversation inevitably turned to Kilmar Abrego García, the El Salvadoran immigrant who was illegally arrested and extraordinarily renditioned to El Salvador's infamous gulag, CECOT. Trump categorically refused to allow any serious discussion of letting Mr. Garcia go because Trump still clung to the lie that he was a criminal, a terrorist and a member of MS13.

     In point of fact. Mr. Garcia does not have a criminal record, had not been charged with a crime and there isn't a shred of evidence to even suggest that he belongs to MS13 or any gang. It's a fact-free allegation that the Trump administration manufactured to cover up a fuck up or a clear, knowing violation of Garcia's civil rights. The allegations are ironic in a way because Garcia and his family were granted protected status back in the first Trump administration when he succeeded in convincing the State Department that they were in danger of reprisals of gang activity in their native El Salvador.

     After Garcia was kidnapped and renditioned back to his native country in handcuffs, ankle and waist chains, it was appealed and a lower court, presided over by federal judge Paula Xinis, ordered Garcia returned back to the United States. The Trump junta ignored her, even going as far as to say that since Garcia was in El Salvador, she no longer had jurisdiction over the matter.

     Just days after that, Garcia's case was brought before the Supreme Court and, in a stunning reversal, the court ruled 9-0 against Trump and also ordered that Garcia be returned.

     During that Oval Office dog and pony show, Stephen Miller was present and delivered a jaw-dropping monologue on how the high court actually sided with the Trump administration when anyone with a working eye and ear could see that the court unanimously ruled against it.

     For his part, Bukakke said, “How can I return him to the United States? I smuggle him into the United States? Of course I’m not going to do it.” He knows damned good and well he wouldn't have to "smuggle" Garcia back into the country.

 

 

      Then Trump added a truly dystopian twist to the whole thing by asking Bukele to build five more prisons like CECOT. (CECOT has a 40,000 bed capacity), meaning Trump's planning on deporting at least 200,000 to El Salvador. He mentioned "homegrown criminals" (like him, for instance), sending the irony and projection meters off the charts.

     The deal that Trump's criminal operation had struck with Bukele's CECOT gulag is so secret, not a word of it has been released to anyone, which alone shows you what a scummy, illegal deal it was from the start. It's been accused of countless human rights abuses and the inmates there are not given the chance for rehabilitation. There are no books, no visitors are allowed, and the inmates are kept behind bars for literally 23.5 hours a day. They're not even allowed to go outside.

     Essentially, it's a giant roach motel. You check in but you can't check out. When you're sent there, you're sent there to die.

     As proof that this is a black prison site, Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen recently went to San Salvador to see about effecting Garcia's release. Not only was he unable to talk to Garcia directly, he wasn't even allowed to talk to him over the phone. In fact, he was turned away from the prison. In short, he was given no proof that Garcia was even still alive.

     At this point, it doesn't even matter if the Trump administration made an honest mistake (as if such a thing is possible with this criminal enterprise) or deliberately railroaded an innocent man who was allowed to live here legally and given a work permit. What makes this so blatantly evil is that the Trump administration still insists on selling it, as if violating legal migrants' and American citizens' rights will somehow make America Great Again.

     Keep in mind that Trump is planning on having a big Soviet-style parade, something the Pentagon wouldn't allow him the last time. This will be on April 20th (coincidentally, or not, Hitler's birthday), the day universally acknowledged will be the day Trump announces an invocation of the Insurrection Act, which is the only federal law on the books that legally bypasses Posse Comitatus.

     People, this is not a question of whether or not we're in a Constitutional crisis. We are in one. Trump is thumbing his nose at one federal judge after another and now he's doing it to the Supreme Court itself. He's preparing to deport hundreds of thousands of legal migrants and even American citizens for expressing opinions he simply doesn't like.

     This is not how a president is supposed to act, this is not supposed to be how a democracy acts. Abrego Garcia was not given any due process whatsoever. Nor will any of us if and when we get ensnared in Trump's insane, paranoid dragnet.

"Buffoonery"

 

     This morning, MSNBC pundit Stephanie Ruhle was on The 11th Hour with Ali Velshi. As everyone knows, Ruhle used to be a money person on Wall Street and successfully ran a hedge fund before getting her own show on MSNBC. So, if you care at all about these things, when Ruhle starts talking about high finance and the economy, one would do well to listen to her.

     Velshi broke the news this morning that Trump had once again caved and announced some major exemptions on the ridiculous 145% tariffs that he'd imposed on them days ago. The exemptions consist of electronic devices and components such as microchips, cell phones, computers, etc. In other words, as Ruhle swiftly pointed out, the things that we actually buy from China in bulk.

      I think it would be a little short-sighted to crow over this as another example of how senile Donald Trump is and how easily he caves. Before pronouncing Trump as incipiently demented, one first must ask, "Who benefits from this whipsaw style of economics and tariffs? And what value do these people have to the White House and vice versa?"

      Well, to comprehensively answer that, we have to look far beyond just the Chinese tariffs and look at what's been happening on Wall Street over the last week. Trump and his senseless tariff wars have been the single biggest driver behind the Dow Jones losing well over 10 trillion dollars of its value. In fact, if you look at the 10 biggest Dow Jones losses in history, nine of them belong to Trump and some of those losses happened in the past week, such as when the Dow lost a catastrophic 2231 points in a single day.

     So, who benefits from this yo-yo-ing of the stock market? In a word, short sellers.

     If you're the president, as Trump is successfully pretending to be, in order to make the always jumpy Wall Street panic, all you have to do is to announce steep tariffs on every nation on earth (except if you're Russia, Saudi Arabia or Israel). This will result in panic selling on the part of investors. Panic selling in sufficient numbers makes the share price of the affected stocks dive-bomb.

     But if you have an in with the global criminal enterprise posing as a presidential administration and you know exactly when there will be a sudden moratorium on those steep tariffs, then all you have to do is to buy up those stocks while they're still artificially cheap then sell them off when the stock market goes from bear to bull again, such as when Trump abruptly announced the 90 day moratorium on tariffs.

     The problem with that scenario is that would involve a crime called "insider trading", which is still, technically, a felony on the law books. The problem with that is that whatever enforcement mechanisms we have in place to prevent that sort of thing, like the SEC and DOJ, are stuffed with some of the worst psychopaths and fellow crooks that Trump could get his short fingers on.

     It's fallacious to assume that these so-called regulatory and enforcement bodies will do anything about this obvious stock market manipulation and set up for insider trading. And, with a criminal organization like Trump's, insider trading in the face of massive stock manipulation isn't a potentiality as much as it's an inevitability.

     But if you look at just the effect these games are having on Wall Street and Main Street, you're still not looking at the big picture. One of my Facebook friends, Renee S. DeCamillis, put up a video by a woman who follows Russian state TV. And this woman translated and gave us the abstracts of a Russian news show that featured six officials from the Russian government. And these six Russian officials were quite frank about what Trump was doing to the US economy and they were laughing themselves sick.

      The damnable thing was virtually everything they were saying was true. These Russian douchebags were essentially giving everyone who could follow them a roadmap of how Trump is wrecking the US economy. And they could afford to laugh because, once again, the "Independence Day" tariffs that Trump had imposed on virtually country on earth exempted Russia. They wouldn't affect their economy or their stock market.

     Another thing to keep in mind is that, far from affecting just stocks and futures, Trump's reckless drunk driving of the economy is affecting the bond markets. Now, in case you don't know anything about the bond market, here's a quick breakdown:

     Treasury bonds are essentially the backbone of the US economy. That's the long and the short of it. People have been buying Treasury bonds for decades as a way of showing their confidence in the dollar, which, at least until recently, was the world's default currency. It used to be much more common to see people buying safe, secure Treasury bonds than selling them.

     Yet, that's precisely what we're seeing these days. Longtime bond holders are now selling off enormous numbers of their government bonds, meaning that if this frightening trend continues, it'll cripple the US economy, perhaps permanently. And why are people selling off their Treasury bonds like crazy?

     Because when Trump began these needless trade wars, the new Prime Minister of Canada, Mark Carney, quietly held meetings with other nations and unions such as Japan, the EU and others. They didn't beat their chests and bellow and bluster and deliberately tank markets to enrich a handful of short sellers. No, instead, they held meetings and calmly discussed how they were going to prepare to lead a new world order without the United States at its head. Don't forget, Prime Minister Carney, while no blushing liberal, nonetheless used to be the governor of the Bank of Canada and, before that, the Governor of the Bank of England. In other words, a money guy who knows what he's taking about regarding high finance. 

     In other words, they're leaving us in the dust and their initiatives are simply devaluing the dollar. When the dollar gets devalued, American confidence in that currency will drop and people will begin dropping their bonds like so many hot potatoes. And that makes Russians gleeful.

     And, putting aside the very strong likelihood that Trump and his family are benefiting from short selling by using insider trading tactics,  just the way that Trump is tanking a strong economy that he inherited from Biden is grounds right there for a third impeachment or, better yet, invoking the 25th amendment and getting him out of office permanently.

Are We Great Again, Yet?

    This was last Friday, when the Dow Jones lost 2231 points in one day. Note that was 5.5% of the Dow Jones's value, or over $6 trillion. This was the day after Trump announced his 10% baseline tariffs on every land mass that wasn't named Russia, Israel or Saudi Arabia. Part of this panic on Wall Street was driven by the news that China was going to hit us with a 34% retaliatory tariff on all US goods effective today.

     It's impossible for anyone to divine what's going through Trump's Adderall-addled brain or what passes for one. No matter how completely insane his actions are, he can always find idiots in his administration or right wing circles who will obediently bend themselves into pretzels to justify or rationalize it.

      Apparently, wiping over $10 trillion dollars off Wall Street's value in order to wage needless and unjustified tariff wars on our allies and other nations are one of those things that makes perfect sense in Trump's Bizarro World.

      And it's equally impossible for me to divine why exactly he's doing this when he should know that higher tariffs on goods coming into the US will simply mean higher prices for Americans. This will surely lead to a recession, if not a depression the likes of which we haven't seen since the last Depression of the 30s.

      Granted, you would be hard-pressed to find a rank and file American who has any sympathy for Wall Street and its heartless, avaricious oligarchs. But if this trend continues, it'll only be a matter of time before Wall Street's sinking financial fortunes begin to be felt on Main Street, just like in 1929.

      And, except for deliberately tanking our economy to somehow strengthen Russia's, one is at a loss to see what Trump's end game is. Maybe, as David Brooks wrote nine years ago, it could merely be that Trump's brain is just an empty jar containing a few fireflies that intermittently light up.

Merch of the Penguins

 

     At this point, it's as if Donald Trump is daring us to call him out on his obvious dementia. His laughable Independence Day was him unveiling his sweeping 10% tariff on every nation on earth, including the Heard and McDonald Islands, which are populated solely by penguins. It's resulted in China imposing a 34% retaliatory tariff on all US goods starting this Tuesday. (Trump hit China with a 54% tariff). 

     Yes, Trump and his idiot advisors have declared a trade war on penguins.

     As if that isn't a rationale for putting Trump's pudgy limbs in four point restraints, there's the not-so-funny effect of how this is affecting not just our economy but the global economy. First off, Wall Street, again, went into a free fall, losing 1400 points in one day, or 3.5% of its value. If that doesn't sound like much of a drop to you, just consider the palmier days of last month when the Dow Jones lost just 1000 points and lost two trillion dollars.

     This is happening because either the morons surrounding him are either True Believers in this Heaven's Gate style of economics or are too afraid to call him out as the financially illiterate shit for brains he truly is.

     There are precious few people on the Beltway who are willing to take him aside and make him understand that tariffs on other countries result in higher prices for the American consumer, of whom Trump simply doesn't give a shit. It will result in revenge tariffs and some of these countries will simply choose not to trade with us in order to avoid the unnecessary tariffs being imposed on them.

     Donne Dumbo has never realized you can't use tariffs as a mob boss tactic because when you unfairly raise them on other countries, they will retaliate, they will restrict or terminate any trade agreements with us and, on a large enough scale, it will result in a recession or even a depression. You don't have to be a Nobel Prize-winning economist to know that international trade, as with everything else on the world stage, is a delicate balancing act that has to be handled by trained professionals, policy makers and competent statesmen.

     Donald Trump, obviously, is none of those things. In fact, we're talking about a guy who'd filed for bankruptcy six times, including bankrupting all of his Jersey casinos, a business model that's predicated on getting people to give you vast sums of money and expecting little to nothing in return.

     And putting Trump in charge of anything is like being strapped to a chair while being in the same room as a chimp with a machine gun.