Open Thread May 2 2025

 Posted by at 6:03 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
May 022025
 

Yesterday, I got the first email I’ve ever received from a political action committee called The Six PAC. It was formed in 2019 in California to support six progressive Democrats running there for the House. Now it feels the need to put effort into supporting birthright citizenship. I think just its name deserves recognition.  Also yesterday, a federal judge in Texas – who was appointed by Trump** – issued an opinion that using the Alien Enemies Act as the basis for deportations is illegal.  I’m sure you caught that -it was all over the place.

Dan Froomkin at Press Watch does a deep dive into the implications of The Mango Menace’s interview with Terry Moran of ABC. He’s not the only one looking at it – it is so revealing that it’s getting a lot of attention. It would be great if it would wake some people up.

POGO analyzes the relationship between surveillance and deportation. I mentioned Palantir a couple of days ago – this is a sort of a follow-up on that.

Heather Cox Richardson compares the first 100 days of FDR with the same time period of the current regime. Who loses bigly? You get three guesses and the first two don’t count.

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Open Thread April 30 2025

 Posted by at 6:00 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Apr 302025
 

Yesterday, the Contrarian posted a “Words and Phrases We Could Do Without,” as it sometimes does. The phrase was “Golden Age.” Of course what the Rockmelon Regime actually wants to duplicate is actually the “Gilded Age” – and I have a personal story about how different that is. I have never cared for turkey, but my aunt always made it for Thanksgiving and we always went to them for Thanksgiving = they came to us for Christmas. The part of the turkey I could basically stand was the part no one else wanted – the tail (you have probably heard some bigoted nicknames for it – I certainly have.) The first Thanksgiving I was not there because I was in the USMC, my uncle decided that a cute was to say “we missed you” would be to “gild” the tail of the turkey, mount it on a little block of wood, and send it to me, so he did just that. Of course he didn’t use actual gold, but gold paint – however, I suspect the results would be the same had he used actual gold – you can gild a turkey’s ass, but you can’t prevent it from rotting. And that’s why the term “Gilded Age” is so appropriate. However, if “Gilded” bothers Republican snowflakes, may UI suggest “Fools’ Golden Age” as a possible alternative? Also, this Borowitz is from Sunday but I haven’t completely trained tutamail yet on what is and isn’t spam, so I just found it – and can’t resist sharing.

I just found this Heather Cox Richardson also. You may have seen the information, but I don’t know who is better than a great historian to analyze it.

The ACLU put this up and out on Monday. But since today, Wednesday, is the actual Day 100, I don’t consider it terribly late. there’s a donate screen, but you can just scroll down past it. I suspect everyone who has the means is already giving.

Robert Reich mentioned Al Gore as one of the past Presidents and Vice Presidents he had not heard speaking publicly about the Rockmenlon Regime. Then he found this. I figure if he missed it, we probably all missed it – know I did – so here it is.

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