(Somehow I don’t think Gerard Butler could have put it any better.)
David Shuster of Rebel HQ brings us the story of Elizabeth May, an MP of Canada’s Green Party, letting Cantaloupe Capone have it, you might say, over his claim to make Canada the 51st state (would that we should be so lucky)...definitely a master class in putting Combover Caligula in his place, something that nobody in our institutions of government and our courts – as well as our lapdog corporate media of course – is capable of inflicting...one of these days, someone is going to write the story of these wretched developments with Our Treasonous Orange Pustule, and it will be one of unmatched and unrivaled, bald-faced cowardice...
...and David Pakman informs us that (sad face), gosh, #45/#47 won’t be able to end the Ukraine war within 24 hours after all...and only a single-digit-IQ’d life form would have believed that anyway, which automatically includes most red states and parts of “Pennsyltucky” I know...and “100 days” will become 100 more days, and then 100 more days, etc...and that “20 year entry to NATO” scenario for weapons to Ukraine sounds exactly like something this incoming regime might propose, lowdown as it is, and it would indeed embolden authoritarians around the globe...
...and Dem U.S. House Rep Pete Aguilar with Ted Lieu (both of CA) discuss the Laken Riley bill (named after a young woman killed by an immigrant) that was passed by the U.S. House with a lot of Dem support (and all U. S. House Repugs voted for it including Bri-Fi)...this to me is yet another “Trojan horse” of a bill, you might say, where it comes seemingly gift-wrapped with good intentions, yet it’s really insidious given that it makes it easier to arbitrarily detain immigrants who may or may not be guilty of non-violent offenses...or, as Dem U.S. Senator Alex Padilla of California put it here, “As currently written, I’m a no (on a Senate vote) because it opens the doors for people simply being charged without a conviction, to be detained and deported, that includes minors, that includes Dreamers, that’s shoplifting a pack of bubble gum,” Padilla told NBC News’s Kristen Welker on “Meet the Press.”
(It should be added that the immigrant accused of killing Riley, a college student, had a prior conviction for shoplifting...so of course, as far as Repugs and chicken Dems are concerned, that’s the grounds right there to go after any immigrant accused of any offense, regardless of how comparatively small it may be. Of course, never mind that the vast amount of crime in this country is committed by legal residents as opposed to immigrants as noted here, but that’s another discussion.)
Leave it to the “party of Lincoln” (and again, chicken Dems) to NEVER fail to politicize a tragedy for political gain. Yes, it’s terrible that this young woman had her life taken from her, but as noted here, Riley is just the latest in a sorry procession of young white women used in the name of political opportunism. Or, to put it another way...
“I think (his daughter's death) is being used politically to get those votes,” Jason Riley, Laken Riley’s father, said in an interview. “It makes me angry. I feel like, you know, they’re just using my daughter’s name for that. And she was much better than that, and she should be raised up for the person that she is. Riley also said he was a supporter of Trump and criticized the country’s immigration policies under Biden.The story doesn't tell us if Riley knew that Trump killed the Lankford/Murphy immigration bill in the Senate, but that's yet another tangent I know...
Rob Tibbetts, the father of Mollie Tibbetts (a 20-year-old killed while jogging in her hometown in Iowa), directly criticized the use of her death to defend conservative immigration policies.With that setup done, here is the Aguilar/Lieu clip...
“I encourage the debate on immigration; there is great merit in its reasonable outcome. But do not appropriate Mollie’s soul in advancing views she believed were profoundly racist,” Rob Tibbetts wrote in 2018.
...and Jesse Dollemore informs us of a cop in Flori-DUUH! (someone named Tristan Macomber) who apparently drove a police cruiser into another car while watching p*rn (the driver Macomber supposedly hit was stopped for a school bus – that is indeed the cherry on the icing of this sh*t sundae as far as yours truly is concerned, along with the fact that Macomber was allowed to resign)...and I’m not a bit surprised that the fellow cop (Peyton C. Grinnell) who allowed Macomber to quit is a Trump supporter...to be honest, I think Jesse is a little hard on the news report here, particularly since this network has to worry about being sued (for almost any reason in this day and age), but his overall point about “Cop-aganda” is right, I’ll admit...and apparently, state rep Taylor Yarkosky and Sgt. Grinnell go back pretty far as noted here...if Yarkosky has gotten over his dependence on alcohol, good for him, but Yarkosky’s furious back-pedaling from donating to former President Obama is disgusting and gutless...also, Jesse is right that there were Nazi sympathizers in the “America First” movement, but there were a lot of other folks across ideological boundaries also, including future presidents JFK and Gerald Ford as noted here...
...and heading in a westerly direction, it looks like Repugs in “the land of the yellow rose” have finally woken the f*ck up to the threat to businesses of proposed mass deportation – a lot of good that does now...and yeah, I think Ben Meiselas of the Meidas Touch Network is right; that 8 percent number is absurdly low IMO...and yeah, abolishing the DOE fits into all of this insanity also...and if the economic impact of rounding up immigrants was $17.7 billion 20 years ago, just imagine what the impact would be now (I think Meiselas is exactly right to say that the Repugs calling the shots in that state don’t want to know the true economic impact as of now...$150 billion may be correct at this point, though we don’t know of course)...pretty good summary of the insanity at about 11:52 (unemployed Trump voters screwing themselves over, same for MAGA business leaders...you all deserve what you get...and staying in this locale, it looks like everything is indeed bigger, even the craven, unpatriotic idiocy of this guy)...
...and if I’m ever looking for a band to perform on a dusty, desolate hill somewhere, I hope I run into these folks (and she’s got chops, I must say).
