Monday Stuff

Leeja Miller brings us the story of #47 and ICE arresting a Wisconsin judge to send a message; she showed up with her lawyer for a hearing and was released, and the next hearing date is in mid-May – she wasn’t confined fortunately, but yeah, this is a typically outrageous Trumpist BS move...clip begins with a summary of recent Trump losses in court...once again, the Gropenfuhrer is trying to punish so-called “sanctuary cities,” and for those keeping score at home, the “sanctuary” movement sprung up in the ’80s in response to the immigration policies of The Sainted Ronnie R and is actually rooted in the Catholic faith, something that those “Republican Jesus” worshippers should be reminded of...glad to hear Miller point out that the beyond-ridiculous SAVE Act (which passed the House and was voted for by this guy) requires proof of citizenship to vote, which goes against the Constitution Repugs claim to love so much (and if you don’t want to believe me, then believe the Reagan-appointed judge who said that)...also, a New Hampshire judge came down against the efforts of our *preznit to force teachers to not say anything about DEI...and oh yeah, why am I not surprised to hear that the DHS of Dress-Up Kristi (“Unsafe At Any Speed” ) Noem basically doxxed Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s wife to the point where she had to flee to a safe house (the wife I mean)...and “Bobby Brainworms” wants an “Autism registry”? WHAAAA????...and oh yeah, I guess for sh*ts and giggles, Our Ruling Regime just defunded the National Prison R*pe Resource Center...and yeah, when it comes to DC legal stuff, you can just bet that Ed Martin will find his way into all of this awfulness, and he does so again here with trying to take over the DC bar oversight organization to try and engineer lawyerly consent for Mango Mussolini’s excesses (and if the @DNC could find its metaphorical butt with multiple sets of hands, they would actually listen to David Hogg and not just blow him off...and oh yeah, Carville needs to freaking vanish)...slightly NSFW/H...



...and Rachel Maddow brings us a rundown on the first 100 days of Bronzer Beelzebub, which actually were worse than we could have imagined somehow, marked by incompetent screwups starting with trying to freeze all federal grants, then listing the wrong person in charge of the FBI, and then accidentally listing the names of a whole bunch of recent CIA hires, and also not allowing the postal service to accept mail from China...oh, and on top of that, there was Elmo sacking a whole bunch of people at the agency handling our nuclear security before they had to try and rehire them, then misstating DOGE savings which were $8 million instead of $8 billion, and also trying to rehire fired agriculture workers handling our response to bird flu, then realizing we needed a COVID testing program after all after trying to end it, then reinstating legal aid for migrant children, and after that reversing a cut to a program helping the 9/11 first responders...and oh yeah, let’s not forget Elmo’s “what did you do last week” Email, and trying to cut cancer treatment and burial services for veterans, and the next day Elmo tried to eliminate prevention measures to combat the Ebola virus, then reversing course after putting hires for veterans’ crisis lines on hold, then Elmo deleting more alleged billions in savings, then walking back a direction from Yambo to fire thousands of federal employees, then having his GSA trying to un-sell 443 federal properties, then pausing tariffs on some products from Canada and Mexico, then scrapping cuts to Social Security phone services, then accidentally revealing a bunch of private info including Social Security numbers when releasing files related to the JFK assassination (this included Trump’s lawyer)...the whole thing with Jeffrey Goldberg getting looped into the Houthi attack plans came the following week, then accidentally sending Kilmar Abrego Garcia to El Salvador, then those ridiculous tariffs including the one against an island with no people but only penguins, then Bobby Brainworms accidentally firing US health staff and then trying to get them back, then revealing the 400% math blunder in Bronzer Beelzebub’s tariff calculations, then the National Park Service restoring the webpage devoted to the Underground Railroad during the Civil War, then reversing DOGE cuts to a Florida manatee refuge, then accidentally cutting funding to some life-saving UN food programs, then the sudden reversal on tariffs for every country except China, then blaming a “mistake” for setting off a confrontation with Harvard, then reversing course and deciding to fund after all critical weather data centers, and then we learn that Elmo’s choice to head the IRS lasted for 72 hours, and I think that brings us up to date on the f*ckups for now...



...and as a bit of an add-on to the Maddow clip, Chris Hayes tells us about Our Ochre Abomination and King Elmo gutting the NIH Women’s Health Initiative, started by Bernadine Healy under Poppy Bush...the initiative has had all kinds of practical benefits for studying the health of post-menopausal women, so yeah, our ruinous executive regime decided it had to go for more tax cuts and a trillion dollar defense budget...and yep, $10 million annually isn’t even chump change when compared against the entire U.S. budget...as Hayes says, chronic disease prevention is the point of this research (a concept that apparently was too difficult for King Elmo and his henchman to grasp)...



...and Robert Reich asks Is There A Cure for Trumpism...I’m not sure exactly what you can do when it comes to deep-seated racism, but there sure as hell is a lot to do about declining wages (are you paying attention, @DNC?)...Reich once again does a fine job connecting the dots on how the economic gains have gone to the cretinous rich bastards who have funneled some of that back into politics and using our institutions to formulate consent for right-wing BS policies (and yes, this does indeed go back to the infamous Powell Memo)...



...and apparently, you-know-who went to the funeral for Pope Francis and embarrassed this country once again (here)...Cantaloupe Capone deserves ridicule just about all of the time, but for this occasion of the passing of the vicar of Christ, I’d like to focus instead on the voluminous good works of our late pontiff and highlight this one in particular, where he consoled a young boy named Emanuel whose father had just died – we don’t know of course who will follow in the footsteps of Francis, but he definitely has big shoes to fill (in case the captions are hard to read, what the boy asked Francis was whether or not the boy’s father who had passed was in Heaven because the father wasn’t a practicing Catholic even though the father made sure all of his children were baptized, and Francis said in essence that he was)...



...and RIP sessions musician David Briggs, who, as the New York Times tells us, had a lot to do with establishing the Muscle Shoals, Alabama recording studio as a hub for R&B performers and groups...he performed on a whole bunch of tunes by pre-eminent artists back in the day, including this number.