You are cordially invited to your lynching, Mayor Wu

 

By Spy City Hall Bureau Chief Jimmy Burke with Immigration Correspondent Emma Goldman

Boston Mayor Michelle Wu, juggling a full time job, a new baby, and a re-election campaign, is now forced to put aside all three because the Republican stooges in Congress have issued an invitation she can’t refuse: to attend her own lynching in Washington DC on Wednesday, March 5.

The supposed point of the invitation is to hear from her on how the Boston Police handles undocumented immigrants as part of its crime-fighting strategy. And if you believe that, you’ll believe that the Republican regime in Washington is a legitimate competent government.

The invitation, backed by the threat of a subpoena, was issued by Republican plug-ugly and bully James Comer, who spent the last two years investigating the “Biden crime family” and coming up with bupkis. He and his fellow screaming bigots are eager to yell at the Mayor about Boston’s reputation as a crime-ravaged “sanctuary city” in front of television cameras.

The term “sanctuary city” has no particular meaning, although it is generally thought to encompass jurisdictions in which the police are instructed to fight crime and leave civil immigration enforcement, like civil tax enforcement, or civil labor-law enforcement, or civilian environmental-protection enforcement, or any other f***in’ kind of civil enforcement of federal law to the responsible federal agency.

The term “crime-ravaged” does have a particular meaning. In the case of Boston, it means that

“We saved you a tree, I mean a seat, lady!”

Boston is on track to end 2024 with the fewest number of homicides in nearly seven decades, mirroring a national trend of decreased violent crime and bolstering its status as one of the safest large cities in the United States.... “In the entire time that I’ve been a police officer, going back since when I came on, the city has never been safer, period, when it comes to crime, particularly violent crime,” Police Commissioner Michael Cox said at a news conference. There were 24 homicides in Boston through Dec. 22, according to Boston Police data — a 33 percent decline from 2023 and the fewest in 67 years. Boston is an outlier among similarly sized US cities: In 2023, there were 150 homicides in Louisville, Ky.; 132 murders in Las Vegas; 73 homicides in Portland, Ore.; 85 in Denver; and 38 in El Paso, Texas.

So whatever Mayor Wu is doing about crime, it seems to be working admirably. By the way, with a murder rate six times that of Boston, Las Vegas could really use the exciting new residency of FBI Supremo Kash Patel.

That’s the reality. In the paranoid fantasy world of white bigots who have found employment with the Tangerine-Faced Fascist, Boston is a hellscape of violent crime, caused by the Boston Police’s failure to round up undocumented immigrants and turn them over to the federal body snatchers:

On Wednesday, Republican members of the US House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform released what was effectively an ominous teaser trailer for the March 5 hearing, in which lawmakers claim Wu, along with the mayors of Chicago, Denver, and New York City, will be “held publicly accountable” for their cities' policies. The video served as a preview for the grilling Wu and the other three mayors are expected to endure by conservative lawmakers, who will likely argue the cities are less safe because of their laws that ban local police from complying with requests from US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, to detain people based solely on their immigration status.

Yeah, no.

A few reality checks are in order:

First, what the Republican immigrant-persecutors are bitching about is something not actually under the control of the Mayor. The Boston Police cannot just lock up immigrants because the federal body-snatchers want them to. Amazingly, in a free society the authority of the police is bounded by law. In the Commonwealth, the law is that:

Why don't Republicans like Mayor Wu?
(Photo: Wu Campaign)

...as defined in a 2017 decision by the Supreme Judicial Court, which held that “Massachusetts provides no authority for Massachusetts court officers to arrest and hold an individual solely on the basis of a federal civil immigration detainer.” The practical impact of that SJC decision is that Massachusetts law enforcement can’t hold people just because ICE asks them to. (The reference to “court officers” has been interpreted to mean all law enforcement agencies.) If there is probable cause to believe a crime has been committed, and a warrant is issued, Boston Police partner with state and federal law enforcement agencies — including ICE. But if there’s no criminal warrant, an individual cannot be kept in BPD custody.

You could look it up.

So in fact Mayor Wu can’t instruct the police to hold suspected undocumented immigrants in the absence of a reason based in state criminal law. You’d have to be an idiot to claim otherwise. That doesn’t stop loud useless white men, though:

[Wu]r drew Homan’s fire after she said...that local authorities will not assist federal mass deportation efforts,... “Either she helps us, or she gets the hell out of the way, because we’re going to do it,” Homan shot back Monday in an interview on the conservative news outlet Newsmax. “She’s not very smart, I’ll give her that,” Homan said of the Harvard College and Harvard Law School graduate.

Hey f***nuts, this is Boston and the Globe isn’t going to let you get away with attacking the brainpower of someone with two Harvard degrees. (That doesn’t mean she’s right; it just means attacking her as dumb says more about the speaker than the Mayor).

Never mind the law. The decision to instruct the Boston Police not to interrogate people about their immigration status is rooted in, wait for it, public safety:

Under Boston’s existing laws, Wu has said, law enforcement will not be required or expected to participate in mass deportations of residents who have not been involved in “serious criminal activity.” Advocates for such policies argue they are important tools for community safety: if undocumented immigrants fear deportation every time they interact with local authorities, they may be less likely to report crimes, supporters say.

Ya think? If the undocumented believe that the Boston Police will turn them over to ICE, that essentially puts them outside the law. If a victim of crime thinks they’ll be detained based on their immigration status, how can they be expected to report crimes like domestic violence? And how can they be expected to otherwise assist the police in any other criminal matter? 

So Mayor Wu is doing nothing more than following Massachusetts law, as she is required to do. 

Why then is she going to be strung up by Republican white men next week in Washington?

Three terrible reasons.

1.  The Republican white supremacist and woman-hating base enjoys nothing more than the spectacle of beating up on a woman of color.  That she is much much smarter than they are is only a bonus.

2.  Spineless Republican weirdos and toadies like to perform their sadism and cruelty to amuse and delight their cruel and sadistic overlord, King Tiny Toadstool.   

3.  Cheap loudmouths like the Tangerine-Faced Fascist and his knee-breakers like Tom Homan have been running their mouths about how they are going to scoop up millions of undocumented immigrants and bulldoze them into the sea, like a reboot of Soylent Green.

To the body snatchers, it's kryptonite

But so far the numbers demonstrate that they have conspicuously failed to achieve their evil goal.  They lack enough jackboots and whips to get the job done.  Even worse, many immigrants are now aware of their legal rights, including the right to tell ICE body-snatcher to sod off in the absence of a civil warrant (which they also know does not permit the goons to break down your door).

The body-snatchers need an excuse to explain away their lack of success.  The easiest excuse is that they're being frustrated by the likes of Michelle Wu, even though she (a) a girl, (b) not white, and (c) according to Homan, not very smart.

If your mighty deportation machine can be stopped by a little dumb girl who doesn't look like a 'Bama sorority rush captain, maybe you're not as big and strong as you claim to be.

But by tormenting her before a national audience, you can pretend to be big and powerful and strong and white.

Comer and his Republican lynch mob are simply following in the footsteps of their Fascist ego ideal, Mussolini. Old Benito, until he was strung up in a Milan gas station, always strutted around as if he were actually big and strong.  Until he was confronted by people who weren't impressed and weren't going to be bullied.

Like Mayor Wu.

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It's the dementia, stupid!

By Spy Pentagon Bureau Chief Douglas MacArthur reporting from his new office at the Pentagon City Cinnabon with Medical Correspondent Vincent Boom-Batz, M.D.

After four weeks of unrelenting Blitzkrieg against all institutions of democratic government in the United States, our great bulwarks, the free press and the Democratic opposition, are, like the French Army in 1940, beginning to realize that there is a problem here.

At first our great Democratic Generals didn’t see the problem with a Panzerkorps in the Ardennes. Gen. Amy “Hot Mess” Klobuchar advocated a strategy of bipartisan cooperation sprinkled with standup comedy. Gen. Ruben Gallego suggested reaching out to the armored spearheads racing toward Abbeville. And bugler John Fetterman, like Gen. Gamelin, declared all was lost even before Paris had fallen.

Now with the enemy at the gates, the mood has changed. Recently, in the New York Times, where up to now fifth [Surely, fifth-rate? – Ed.] columnists like Bretbug urged us to embrace the New American Order and blamed the assault on Biden’s pardon of his son, began to sing a different tune:

They told us they would smash the institutions that safeguard our democracy. And that is exactly what they are doing.

Many Americans chose not to believe what they were saying. Will we now believe what we are seeing?

To be clear, “they” are not just Donald Trump and his billionaire co-pilot. Over the past half-century, an anti-democratic movement has coalesced in the United States. It draws on super-wealthy funders, ideologues of the new right, purveyors of disinformation and Christian nationalist activists. Though it pretends to revere the founders and the Constitution, it fundamentally rejects the idea of America as a modern pluralistic democracy.

The natural tendency in a functioning democracy is to look for ways to “work across the aisle” and “agree to disagree.” But appeasement now would be a mistake. This anti-democratic movement has no interest in compromise. Any concessions will help consolidate the powers of a lawless presidency and entrench a new, kleptocratic, authoritarian form of government in the United States.

Ya don’t say.

A precious few of shrewder Democrats have also figured out that we are in mortal peril:

"We have a responsibility as a party to block absolutely everything when they are putting a match to the federal government." — @aoc.bsky.social on IG live just now

— Pablo Manríquez (@capitol.press) February 3, 2025 at 10:46 PM

Others including Thomas Zimmer have correctly noted that the multipronged Republican attack is generated by an uneasy alliance of enemies with disparate goals and interests, ranging from re-establishing white supremacy to undoing a century’s worth of progress in using government to ameliorate human suffering to establishing a monolithic theocracy between the Mediterranean and the Jordan through ethnic cleansing to bringing about the end of life on Earth as we know it:

Bipartisan problem-solving, 1940

But the most plausible interpretation, I believe, is that it isn’t just one thing. The assault is coming from several directions. There are the reactionary elites mostly aligned with Heritage and Project 2025; there are the America First nativists; there are the techbro feudal barons. There is also, let’s not forget, Donald Trump as a slightly idiosyncratic factor, driven entirely by a sense of grievance, a desire for revenge, and his personal obsessions (tariffs, for instance; and the urge to install a politics of domination both domestically as well as on the world stage). All of these different factions of the Trumpist Right have been let loose on the government. Invoking the will of the president, they have declared themselves masters of the world. It is genuinely unclear how much coordination there is between them. Their actions add up to an often chaotic, but nevertheless comprehensive assault on the constitutional order. Less the execution of a single master plan – and more a MAGA feeding frenzy.

As Mr. Zimmer notes, the attack depends both on speed and on overwhelming us on a number of fronts. We can’t defend Flanders and Sedan at the same time, especially when the enemy may open half a dozen new fronts (the Office of Personnel Management?) simultaneously

Of course a few great strategists like Harvard Law Professor Noah Feldman have told us not to worry about Panzer divisions reaching the English Channel because we will be saved by our Maginot Line of federal courts. Some have indeed fought back effectively.

There is of course no assurance that these courts, static and passive by nature, will be able to meet all the threats, or that their bent Republican masters on the Supreme Court will support their defense, or that the courts will act before millions overseas suffer and die in the siege of USAID. But those are problems for lesser mortals than Prof. Feldman.

One difficulty facing resistance forces is figuring out the intentions of the enemy’s Tangerine-Faced Leader. Zimmer suggests rage, grievance, and retribution. Others believe him to be a pawn in the hands of Boer fighters like Leon Musk or Stalinist strongmen like his buddy Putin. Still others see him as a classic dictator interested in power, glory and plunder, like Vlad the Impaler.

We have an explanation that passes the test of our old buddy Bill Occam.

We submit that’s he’s bats**t crazy because he’s demented. 

There is actually a definition of dementia, which is normally diagnosed unlike say infectious disease by its symptoms. They include: 

a generalized, pervasive deterioration of memory and at least one other cognitive function, such as language and an executive function, due to a variety of causes. The loss of intellectual abilities is severe enough to interfere with an individual’s daily functioning and social and occupational activity....

Let’s just take a few examples and see how they match these warning signs of dementia.

Recently, the patient has hatched a scheme to solve the long-standing conflict in Gaza by moving the indigenous population somewhere else against their wishes, selling the territory to him, and letting him use other people’s money to redevelop it as a playground for the rich and disgusting. Think a super Merde-a-Lardo on the Mediterranean.

This idea requires forgetting the entire history of the Israel-Palestine Conflict since 1947, not to mention the legal and moral prohibition on forcibly expelling a native population.  You can trace its roots to the Likudnik wet dream of expelling the Palestinians and taking over their lands, including Gaza and the West Bank. It has remained an inchoate Likud talking point because its proponents know it is crazy. They are content to limit themselves to a creeping annexation of those territories and giving the Palestinians a choice of exile or permanent second-class status. This is both cruel and contrary to the teachings of the religion they profess, but it’s not insane.

Maybe he's barking mad!

In our patient’s version though, the Palestinians are to be removed by force by Jordan and Egypt. These are two countries that have absolutely no interest in relocating the Palestinians to their own countries, where they will be a powerful destabilizing force, and have no means of forcing them to do so. Due to his loss of executive function, the patient cannot articulate or carry out the series of steps needed to make this nightmare a reality.

The icing on this beautiful fantasy cake is the grandiosity of its proponent, who apparently advocates putting him in charge of the now depopulated territory, where other rich people will build fancy resorts with his name on them.

Simple greed and callousness, although his stock in trade, cannot explain this bizarre fantasy.. We submit that it betrays a loss of cognitive function with fatal signs of detachment from reality, grandiosity, and mania.

And yet that is just one thing.

Consider the patient’s willingness to let an unelected ketamine-demented billionaire take over federal agencies, rewrite their code, steal their data, and fire their employees, all in violation of federal law.  Talk about a loss of executive functioning, Chief Executive version.

When asked he betrays no knowledge of what is going on or why it is dangerous. Yet he continues to let the billionaire plunder undisturbed because he believes falsely that it is all being done on his command.

If a rich old lady walked into her bank and asked for piles of cash to distribute to the nice young men who promised to take care of her, the bank would freeze her account and report her to Protective Services because they would have credible evidence of her incompetence.

What more evidence of our patient’s incapacity could there be?

We could cite other examples of his bizarre out-of-touch behavior that go beyond his normal cruelty and callousness. He responded to questions about visiting the cite of the National Airport plane crash by asking if the reporters wanted him to swim in the Potomac. Hint: they were not.

He fired the Board of the Kennedy Center on the paranoid theory that the productions at the Center were attacks on him. Asked if he had seen any of these shows, he replied he had not, and could not in fact remember any of them.

 Finally last week we saw the first signs that the reality of a demented President is beginning to break through to some in the media. The editors of The Bulwark, who just 20 years ago bought into and spread an insane fantasy about Saddam Hussein dropping A-bombs on Disney World to justify an illegal, bloody, and disastrous invasion, printed a good piece by Will Saletan concluding “He really believes this lunacy. He’s deranged.”

But our media lords and ladies are still propounding the narrative that the President is bold, aggressive, and unconstrained.

The same media, who trumpeted on A1 that every stutter and misstep by President Biden proved he was a gibbering idiot, even though every single action he took until January 20 was apparently reasonable and well thought out, can’t bring themselves to state this obvious truth.

They need help. 

From whence will their help come? It can only come from the Democratic opposition. If every day Speaker Jeffries and Pops Schumer and their allies led with the consistent message that the day’s fresh outrages were traceable to Presidential dementia, sooner or later even the feeblest media outlet would have to report it.

Sooner or later, when everyone starts noticing that the Emperor is striding around the White House with his Tiny Toadstool flapping in the breeze, public opinion will start to shift. When the story is accompanied by higher prices on tariffed goods and finished products made with those goods (like cars!), some portion of the 49.87% might finally catch on that they voted not for a bold, aggressive leader who would hand out free eggs and dollar-a-pound bacon, but a madman.

It might not save what’s left of our democracy, but at least we would all be living in the real world. Unlike the self-appointed Chairman of the Gaza Redevelopment and Gambling Authority.

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EDITORS' NOTE: To settle litigation between Donald Trump and The Massachusetts Spy Media Group (C.I.) LLC arising out of the Spy's description of Trump as a “corrupt tangerine-faced racist rapist Russian stooge” and a “demented felon bent on subverting America and robbing it blind," Spy Media Group has agreed in exchange for dropping the litigation, it will provide Trump with $25,000,000 in free advertising.  To be clear, the settlement does not contain any admission of liability, nor does it prevent Spy Media Group from continuing to refer to the Tangerine-Faced Fascist as a racist sex offender and Russian agent.  Here's the $25M kiss:

Check out these great shows streaming nonstop on Trump+, now available on every channel, streaming platform, and news site now and forever!

NCIS: GUANTANAMO

Join Special NCIS Agents Alina Hubba-Hubba and Mel Gibson as they fight crime in the tropical paradise that is Guantanamo Bay.  In the first episode, they train their machine guns on the first deportation flight of hardened criminals from the mainland U.S., include a 12-year-old shoplifter and an 18-year-old who got into a fight with her brother over a cellphone.  Once safely behind barbed wire, these dangerous illegal aliens are put to working by performing for a visiting delegation of VIPs including Supreme Court Justice Clarence “My bags are packed” Thomas and Harlan Crow.  Hilarity ensues when Thomas catches Hubba-Hubba sunbathing on the beach in her teeny weeny polka-dot bikini.  No soda can is safe!

THE XY FILES

America is threatened by an invasion of alien trans creatures lurking in our bathrooms and on our athletic fields.  Fortunately, Special Agents Nancy Mace and Lauren Boebert are on the case, using their big brains and bigger fake cans to protect us from these un-American scourges.  Each week they bust down toilet stall doors in Capitol bathrooms and demand to see the right stuff.  In the first episode, they investigate reports that a 16-year-old trans girl is playing field hockey in Fairfax County Virginia.  After strip-searching all members of the team in the cafeteria, they find the culprit, who wins over Agent Boebert by showing her how to perform a hand job that no one can see.  Co-starring Dr. Phil.

HEGSETH AFTER DARK

From the former NBC Studios in the Pentagon, suave ladies' man and guy's guy Pete Hegseth hosts this relaxed after-hours party-style talk show featuring he-man guests like Hulk Hogan and Joe Rogan and bodacious “dancers” from all branches of the armed services' favorite strip clubs.  Join Pete and his guests as they perform goofy party stunts like blindfolded axe-throwing and scrambling America's nuclear strike forces just for s***s and giggles.  On the first show, Pete and his boys conduct a live demonstration of the Army's new tactical wet T-shirts and booty shorts.  Guess what – the guys give them two, um, thumbs up!  Each week, watch Pete's Mom try to sneak in and spoil the fun only to be stopped by armed Marine Guards.  And we don't want to give away too much, but just wait for the crossover episode with NCIS:Guantanamo.  When you see (and hear!) Pete and Alina alone together in the Bachelors' Quarters after lights-out, you'll scream “anonymous smears!”

 

ELLIOTT NESS AND THE NEW UNTOUCHABLES

Public Enemy Number 1

You loved him in the 50's as an incorruptible Treasury agent leading a small band of honest agents keeping America safe from illegal alcohol.  Now he's back, played by Jon Voight, leading a new squad of pardoned January 6 insurrectionists protecting America from untariffed avocados and tomatoes.  The tommy guns are blazing as The New Untouchables riddle smuggled vegetables with lead, not to mention those driving the trucks as the Jan. 6 Shaman leads the cheers.  Later Ness and his team will man the dangerous northern border in Detroit to save America from the menace of untaxed Canadian auto parts.  In an exciting two-part episode, Ness ignores the advice of deep-state bureaucrats and invades Canada to kidnap the head of the smuggling syndicate Justin “My Son Baron” Trudeau.  When you watch the thrilling conclusion, there will be tears in the your eyes and you'll say “Thank you, sir.  I've never seen waterboarding like this!”  

Due to extreme violence, Trump+ has rated this series Perfect Family Entertainment.

 

THE DR. BRAINWORM SHOW

Dr. Brainworm

He's not a doctor, but he plays one as Secretary of Health and Human Services.  Every day Bobby Kennedy, Jr. and his brainworm host an informative wellness-related gabfest.  Must-see episodes include  “The health benefits of heroin,” “Ten delicious healthful dinners you can make with roadkill, ” “Can raw milk cure STD's?  It did for me!”, “Improve your mood by driving your ex-wife to suicide,” “Larry David got vaccinated and look at him!” , “When should you start your baby on steroids?”, “Prevent tooth decay by brushing with ivermectin,” and “Stuff I supposedly read somewhere.”  Featuring an all-star array of guests, including President Donald Trump touting the health benefits of fried chicken, Cheryl Hines's tips for better living through all-day immersion in an isolation tank, and Olivia Nuzzi with her headlights on high.

 

BREEDERS' CUP STARING J.D. VANCE AND THE WASHINGTON HILLBILLIES 

Who wants to breed?  We do!

Jimmy Don and his fellow hillbillies have arrived in Washington from the backwoods of West Virginia and the Transvaal and they're ready to shake things up!  To inspire white men and women to breed white babies, thereby preventing the collapse of Western Civilization as we know it (in the wise words of Jefferson Davis), Jimmy Don hosts this exciting reality series in which three teams from Utah, Idaho and Kentucky compete to see who can drop the most white babies.  There's plenty of fun and controversy, including whether the Utah team has an unfair advantage because they can inseminate multiple wives in one afternoon, or whether the Kentucky team can use Elon Musk's sperm to breed a race of backwoods super meth-heads.  Winners get food stamps, free self-driving Cybertrucks to crash into their trailers and a year's supply of Jimmy Don's Manscara.  When you need to hide your beady dead eyes, just use Jimmy Don's Manscara!  And look for a very special guest star who tells the breeding women, “You're inseminated!”

 

ICE STATION ERIC 

Take that, Denmark!

Thrilling high-tech action-adventure series shot on location in Greenland starring expendable second son Eric Trump leading a highly-trained strike force to conquer that resource-rich island in the name of the United States.  Using advanced technology (an iPhone), Eric is followed every step of the way by Ladies' Man Pete Hegseth issuing instructions from the Pentagon Op Center (except when Jasmine is on the pole), and supported by the US Space Force, already on the ice in Greenland.  

While our supposed allies, led by weak emotional women and beta soi boys like Keith Starmer, dither uselessly, Eric and his team roll across the mighty island, claiming the ice and snow, and all that lies beneath it, for Dad and Country, but mostly Dad.  In one special episode, Eric is joined in battle by number one failson Donny Jr., who leaves in disgust after finding out the island's supply of snow was not what he was expecting!  

And best of all, you don't have to pay one penny in monthly fees to enjoy this steaming pile of entertainment. You pay for it with the diversion of your tax dollars to support Trump thanks to his ownership of the federal payment system and exciting new taxes on groceries, building supplies, and other necessities you use every day!  

It's yuge!

Rule by Decree: It Worked Great Before!

By Legal Correspondent Saori Shiroseki
with Spy Archivist Aula Minerva

Ninety plus years ago, readers of The Massachusetts Spy were greeted at their breakfast table on March 24, 1933 by the following dispatch:

GERMAN CHANCELLOR
TO RULE BY DECREE

Reichstag Adjourns Indefinitely;
Gives Schickelgruber Dictatorial Powers

Some Critics Say This Could Be Bad for Reich Opponents Like the Jews and Other Aliens! 

By Cable from Berlin Correspondent Charlotte Ritter
with further information from The New York Times Wire Service and the Associated Press

BERLIN, March 23 – Bending to the unstoppable will of Germany's new Chancellor, Adolf Hitler, the German Reichstag voted to hand over to him and his gang of Nazi goons unlimited power and then adjourned itself, likely forever.

The move followed days of fundamental changes in Germany, including mass pardons of Nazis who attacked Americans, that in effect ended German democracy and introduced a new era of total one-man rule in which any and all laws could be enacted or repealed simply by Executive Order of the Chancellor.

In his address to the Reichstag, Herr Hitler ran through a familiar litany of grudges and animosities, and vowed retribution on Communists, Jews, and others whom he said were poisoning the blood of Germany.  Many observers doubted however that Hitler would be able to carry out his more extreme ideas which face opposition from prominent German businessmen.

But so far Germany's powerful business tycoons have rushed to support the new regime, whether out of fear or belief that Hitler's inflationary pro-growth policies could revive the moribund German economy.

Hitler's right-hand man, Reichstag Speaker Hermann Goering, said that reports of beatings and imprisonment of political opponents was nothing more than “fake news” and that those who published such stories would be treated with “barbarity,” and their publications banned from the German mails.

Continued on page 8

ADV'T – Why pay rent when you could blow it all on nine big races at Wonderland?  Take East Boston El!

How'd it turn out?  Like this:

Speaking of rule by decree, the week that he was inaugurated, President Donald Trump announced that he had the power to repeal the 14th Amendment's guarantee of birthright citizenship by decree.  The guarantee is contained in the first sentence of that post-Civil War amendment.  See if you can figure out from the obscure legal jargon used by its drafters what they intended to accomplish:

“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”

The provision was drafted to ensure that the recently freed slaves (and their children) would enjoy the rights of citizenship denied to them by a bent Supreme Court's decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford.

When America's new Leader tried to undo that promise by Executive Order, it did not take long for a judge appointed by St. Ronald Reagan of Bitburg to reach his conclusion:

In a hearing held three days after Mr. Trump issued his executive order, a Federal District Court judge, John C. Coughenour...sign[ed] a restraining order that blocks Mr. Trump’s executive order for 14 days, renewable upon expiration. “This is a blatantly unconstitutional order,” he said.

“Frankly,” he continued, challenging Trump administration lawyers, “I have difficulty understanding how a member of the bar would state unequivocally that this is a constitutional order. It just boggles my mind.” 

The blatant assertion of a Presidential right to repeal sections of the Constitution he didn't like provoked intense outrage from all Americans with a vested interest in protecting Constitutional rights, like the press, which the normally authoritative New York Times summarized as follows:

Yeah, that should protect our sacred Constitutional rights.

Similarly, a well-known geyser of Washington conventional wisdom, Leigh Anne Caldwell, reviewing Trump's first week on NPR's Here and Now, thought the biggest news of the week was that Republicans were “euphoric” over the barrage of decrees, including the unconstitutional ones.

Over at The New York Times, the maestro of hot takes, Peter Baker, told us that the key takeaway of the new President's first days is that he is ruling like a king, without trifling to explain why that's a bad thing.  Maybe someone could have explained to him the difference between monarchy and tyranny.  Too bad he doesn't have our old buddy Will Shakespeare in his contact list.

For some reason, the geniuses at the Times seem to take comfort in the idea that the Tangerine-Faced Fascist is a lame duck, because he can't run again under the 22d Amendment.   That amendment clearly and unequivocally limits Presidents to two terms.  As clearly as 14th Amendment protects birthright citizenship.

Life after the First Amendment is repealed by decree

Which lead us to ask: if the Tangerine-Faced Fascist can repeal the 14th Amendment by executive order, why can't he do the same with the 22d? Who would stop him?  Can you imagine a single Republican Secretary of State who would refused to put him on the ballot on 22d Amendment grounds?  And who would have standing to challenge in court his quest for a third term?  Are you confident that the Republican-bent Supreme Court would stop him?

If the Tiny Toadstool can get away with repealing the 14th Amendment by Sharpie, what provision of the Constitution is safe?

Already his hard right supporters are targeting the First Amendment prohibition on establishment of a state religion by asking the Supreme Court to allow public funding of religious charter schools.  It was a religious school that taught Brett “It's locked!” Kavanaugh how to treat women, so that's going to be one vote in favor.

Pretty much everything we hold dear in the Constitution is up for grabs.  Already Clarence “Leaving on a Jet Plane” Thomas has questioned First Amendment protection for a free press, by wondering if the time has come to reverse Times v. Sullivan, because he is mightily aggrieved over the press coverage of his many ethical lapses.  

There's nothing keeping the Tangerine-Faced Traitor from promulgating an executive order repealing First Amendment limits on libel.  Given his own record of filing frivolous suits to suppress press coverage he doesn't like, some of which have resulted in big-ass settlements by cowardly media barons like Disney, we think the chances are better than even.

Or he could issue a decree repealing the portions of the Sullivan ruling applying the First Amendment to the states, which would in this era of the Intertubes permit any state to throttle free speech nationwide.

Once you acclimate the press and the public to the idea of repealing the Constitution by Executive Order, there's no telling how far you can go. 

In the past, others have gotten as far as Stalingrad.

Broken News: We Won't Survive "Journalism" Like This

By Meta-Content Generator A.J. Liebling with
Spy Chicago Bureau Chief Walter Burns

As America prepares to inaugurate a new era of lawless kakistocracy on Monday, what institutions can we rely on to help us fight back?

If you said our free press, we've got two $250 face value Trump Inauguration Tickets for you.

With 48 hours to go, the front page of today's New York Times platformed two stories about the transition that sent us to the vape pen.  

Let's start with their valedictory for Joe Biden.  It will be recalled that Biden inherited a country from the first term of the Tangerine-Faced Fascist ravaged by a pandemic that would eventually claim over 1,000,000 lives, a death toll inflated by the incompetent self-serving response of the TFF and his minions.

In four years, Biden crushed the pandemic and restored the economy.  During his term,  more than 16 million jobs were created and the world-wide post-COVID inflation tamed.  Despite narrow legislative majorities, he pushed through legislation that helped millions recover from the twin plagues, authorized a massive reconstruction of the nation's wretched infrastructure (a fact obvious to anyone who travels someplace like Europe or Asia), and took meaningful steps towards limiting the imminent threat of climate catastrophe, on display in Los Angeles and Florida.

In the realm of foreign affairs, Biden rebuilt our nation's reputation and credibility, ended an insanely prolonged war in Afghanistan hindered by his predecessor's inept peacemaking that released thousands of Taliban fighters, rallied the world to stand up to Russian aggression in Ukraine and just this month finally achieved a cease fire in Gaza that will relieve at least for a while the immense suffering of Gazans while returning many hostages to their families.

Quite the record for a man who turned 80 in office.

Two days before ending his term with honor and dignity, Biden was treated to the following on page A1 of The New York Times: 

The story turns out be a nothingburger about how Biden's aides were worried that he looked old on television: his gait had slowed due to age and injury, his voice was soft, his lifelong stutter sometimes caused him to mix up words, and he looked pale because he wouldn't slather on drugstore browser.  We were going to quote some of its most disturbing findings but that was all there was.

Absent from this account was how this stumbling old fool managed to rack up all of the legislative and foreign policy achievement we just listed.  Maybe they had to cut that for space.

On that very same front page Times readers were treated, if that's the right word, to a profile of The Tangerine-Faced Fascist's senior immigration adviser: deranged hatemonger Stephen Miller, who turned his anger about the failings of his own family into in an insane lust to torment immigrants who never did anything to him except mow his lawn:

 He's got plenty of clout and he's set to use it as an attack dog.  Kinda like Heinrich Himmler.  

As evidence for how wonderful and powerful Miller is, the Times reported that Miller forced megalomaniac Harvard weakling nerd Mark Zuckerberg to grovel at Miller's jackbooted feet to ensure that the Tangerine-Faced Fascist would not bring the hammer down on the dorkmeister's pisspoor social media networks.  Zuckerberg duly turned over his lunch money, just like he did every day in high school and college, and promised to allow disinformation and hate speech to flow like hog waste from his sites.  

To some this appears to be a horror story about the misuse of government power to bully a rich dick into abandoning efforts to keep hateful s*** off his websites.  To the Times, it's “clout.” 

The story continues for hundreds of words about how powerful Miller has become, by sucking up to a corrupt subversive sex offender about to become President, while building his own network of like-minded shills and toadies to enable him to carry out his reign of terror against immigrants.  We'll skip the fulsome praise about how Miller, unlike the Tangerine-Faced Grifter and his family, has not cashed in on his supposed influence.  Yet.

Since the obvious purpose of this crapcan story was to get on Miller's good side with the hope that he will continue to blab to the Times (a process ambitious but oddly credulous Times reporters embrace in lieu of real reporting), there was no room in the story to tell us who Miller is and what he wants. 

Which is:

Tell us, more, Atlantic:

Of course, if the goal were simply to draw voters’ attention to the border, there are plenty of ways to do it that are less controversial (not to mention, less cruel) than ripping young children from the arms of asylum seekers and sticking them in dystopian-looking detention centers. But for Miller, the public outrage and anger elicited by policies like forced family separation are a feature, not a bug. 

What do you call someone who revels inflicting pain and suffering on others because of who they are?  We can think of a number of epithets but none of them involve clout.  Even an attack dog bites only on command, not because he enjoys chomping on people.

Congratulations, New York Times.  You lead the mainstream media pledge class.  And Mr. Bezos and his Washington Post?

After realizing that the future of his vanity bomb shvantz-in-space project depends on him being on the good side of the Tangerine-Faced Fascist, Bezos decided, totally not in a 'roid rage, to muzzle the Post's endorsement of Harris-Walz, bring in a former Rupert Murdoch taint-polisher to crush the staff, and then when the staff and Post readers revolted, bring in a new marketing genius to make things right again:

A slide deck [marketing executive Suzi] Watford presented to executives this week explained the origins of The Post’s new mission statement in greater detail. “Storytelling,” the deck says, should “bring a relentless investigative spirit, backed by credible sources, to deliver impactful stories in formats the world wants,...” Reaching all of America will require The Post to “understand and represent interests across the country,” it says, and “provide a forum for viewpoints, expert perspectives and conversation.”

Ms. Watford, who joined The Post in May, also laid out big-picture goals for the company. Among them: reach 200 million paying users, which the slide deck described as a “Big Hairy Audacious Goal,” or “B.H.A.G.”

The slide deck compares the 200 million target with efforts to land a man on the moon — and it is an ambitious goal: The Post currently has fewer than three million digital subscribers.

But it's not just bog-standard empty marketing bull****.  There are results.  The Post has announced a new columnist sure to draw in 197 million new users stat: long time Democratic hack, fixer, and bully Rahm Emanuel, whose commitment to free and open information is legendary:

WaPo went from winning a Pulitzer for documenting, quantifying, and contextualizing the American epidemic of racist and fatal police violence (for which they owe Wesley Lowery an enormous debt of gratitude) to the paper that hired the man who covered up such violence as mayor of Chicago. Neat.

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— Soraya Nadia McDonald (@sorayanadiamcdonald.com) January 18, 2025 at 9:39 AM

If Democracy dies in Darkness, as someone once said atop their website, it doesnn't get any darker than Emanuel's cover-up of a Chicago police murder of an unarmed Black teenager.

And it only gets worse.  The Los Angeles Times, once credibly regarded as America's number 3 newspaper, has been crushed by its reactionary owner, who also suppressed a Harris-Walz endorsement and has committed to providing metering of and compensatory praise in response to any negative thoughts about the Tangerine-Faced Fascist.

There are a few newspapers left doing something that resembles independent journalism, like the Philadelphia Inquirer (home to the great Will Bunch) and The Boston Globe (which features columnists who are almost always right, like Reneé Graham and Kimberly Atkins Stohr with columnists who are almost always wrong, like Dan Shaughnessy), but it's hard to expect them to have national influence.  And you could do worse than take the money you saved cancelling the Bezos Post and make a monthly subvention to The Guardian.

The Post's new columnist suppressed this evidence of police murder

On the air, the situation is if anything worse.  ABC, owned by media behemoth Disney, settled a worthless defamation claim against it for a $15,000,000 payment to the depraved adjudicated rapist.  CBS is planning to settle an even more ridiculous claim based on the supposed editing of Kamala Harris's 60 Minutes interview for big bucks, to make sure that the Tangerine-Faced Fascist doesn't try to block its sale to an entity controlled by David “Thanks Dad” Ellison, son of reactionary oligarch Larry Ellison.  Any guess as to what will happen to CBS News thereafter?

And poor CNN, owned by a conglomerate run by a clueless marketing master of the universe but under the influence of another reactionary oligarch, John Malone, is trying to placate the TFF by moving high-rated host Jim Acosta to the coveted midnight to 2 a.m. shift.

That leaves MSNBC, whose parent conglomerate Comcast has announced plans to dump it and other decaying cable channels into a spinoff likely to become bait for a private equity vulture to swoop in, strip out its cash and other assets, and leave a weakened remnant behind to collapse into its own debt.  Which is what they did to the Chicago Tribune.

And this media-centric overview ignores where most Americans get what they think is news: social-media giants already run by TFF supplicants who seem to regard prostrating themselves at where his feet would be were it not for his two-inch lifts as the height of, wait for it, masculinity.

Which leaves the reality based community left with precious little, including many new and not-so-new web-based outlets whose output is often excellent but whose reach we fear is limited to the faithful.

We all know that without reliable information and an honest press it is impossible for democracy to sustain itself.  We saw this as recently as November 2024.

What's the road back?  Friends, we don't know.  But we do know that before solving a problem we have to be clear about it.   The problem is that our mainstream media lack the courage and integrity to tell us what is happening all around us.  

And, despite what idiots are telling you every day in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and even The Boston Globe, we have to fight back.

It's the least we can do for Laquon Mcdonald, who never had a shot at raking in the bucks as a columnist for The Washington Postbecause he was murdered and the crime covered up by a white man who got the job.  This is known among the white men who uniformly run our mainstream and social media as “meritocracy.”

Treadmill to Political Oblivion: Democrats plot comeback by caving on locking up children!

By Immigration Correspondent Emma Goldman

For months, a few brave souls have warned that the inauguration of the Tangerine-Faced Fascist on January 20 would mark the beginning of the destruction of our constitutional democracy.

What they failed to warn us about, though, was that the demolition project would begin even earlier.  And the punch line: this descent into madness was made possible by, wait for it, your fellow Democrats.

Just last week, the House passed and the Senate opened debate on a terrible bill that would lead to the indefinite detention of anyone, including kids, including Dreamers, including parents of U.S. citizen children, possibly including permanent residents, who have been accused (not convicted) of any crime, no matter how minor.   Shoplifting shampoo (the bane of Pamela Pill's sheltered life)?  Lock 'em up and deport 'em!   

Hard to believe, we know.  Except, according to Slate:

This cross-party support might create the impression that this legislation really is what Republicans claim: a common-sense fix to a broken system that will keep undocumented criminals off the streets. But that is a gross mischaracterization. Rather, the Laken Riley Act would impose sweeping changes to the immigration system that raise serious constitutional concerns. It would penalize immigrants who live and work in the U.S. legally, subjecting them to indefinite detention without being convicted or even charged with a crime. And it would transfer a massive amount of power to state attorneys general and district court judges, who could effectively wrest control over immigration enforcement from the executive branch. These judges could, upon a state’s request, ban the issuance of all visas to residents of entire countries like India.

In short, under the guise of punishing a small number of lawbreaking undocumented immigrants, the act would curtail legal immigration and subject law-abiding immigrants to detention and deportation. It is baffling that so many Democrats would sign on to such a cruel and constitutionally dubious scheme.

Kids in cages: they're back...thanks to Democrats!

Even harder to believe, 48 Democratic House members and even more shameful 38 Democratic Senators voted in favor of the bill or at least letting it go forward.

Why?  Ask Ruben Gallego and John Fetterman, both elected with massive support, financial and otherwise, from the progressive Democratic base:

Gallego has declared that the bill would exempt Dreamers brought here illegally as children, which is not true. He has asserted that it’s necessary because the Biden administration took “no action” on the border after the Covid-related Title 42 asylum ban lifted, which is simply false. Fetterman has suggested that the bill is “giving authorities the tools” to prevent killings like Riley’s. But that’s misleading, obscuring the fact that they already have those “tools.” And Fetterman has trafficked in the same distortions of immigration data that Trump does to portray a system more out of control than it is.

Fetterman and Gallego are both seen by pundits as having the magic key to winning working-class voters. So is such misleading public conduct OK in their eyes as a means for Democrats to reconnect with the working class?

The more cynical explanation, which is also what the untutored would call bulls***, is that acquiescing in this bill would allow Democrats to oppose even worse bills going forward.  Even worse?  Like what?  Firing squads? Waterboarding refugees?  How could things get worse?

Who knows, given the alleged source, if there's anything to this explanation, although it sounds wimpy enough to explain Democratic behavior.  If it really comes from one of Stephen Miller's stooges then it represents a warning that caving on this enormity won't help the Democrats with later, more horrible, proposals.

It sounds as if Democrats feel unable to resist because of the pressure to do something about immigration.  There's also pressure to do something about the price of eggs, but that wouldn't justify a bill authorizing looting supermarkets.  Or would it?

And without billions of new dollars for detention, the bill requiring detention of accused shampoo swipers would actually hurt public safety by forcing the body snatchers to release far more dangerous detainees:

There are a lot more people accused of shoplifting than of violent crimes. Since the Laken Riley Act requires ICE to prioritize shoplifters, ICE is telling legislators it would force them to fill detention beds with shoplifters and release others — even those accused of far more serious offenses.

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— Aaron Reichlin-Melnick (@reichlinmelnick.bsky.social) January 11, 2025 at 11:58 AM

Part of the pressure is that Republicans have named, with Democratic acquiescence, the bill after a woman killed by an undocumented immigrant who had been arrested for shoplifting.

Sure that makes sense.  He also had two eyes; maybe lock up all immigrants who match that description.  The logical extension of this line of, um, thought is that the only way to protect Americans from any crime ever committed by any immigrant is to catapult them all over the border.  And that might not work, because they could just sneak back in again.  So the only solution is mass execution.  Which would certainly be the final solution.

Of course the Republicans will use the death of a young woman, especially a white one, to demonize all immigrants, even though their crime rate is below that of native-born Americans and well below that of the incoming Trump Administration.  

But Democrats don't have to play along.  Adopting Republican framing hands them victory even before shots are fired.  Just call the bill the Secession Bill or even the Family Separation Promotion Act of 2025 because Republicans know that framing is toxic to them (which is why they are already trying to get out ahead of it on the Sunday softball games):

JD Vance: "This term is something you're gonna hear a lot in the next couple of months, the next couple of years -- family separation."

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— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) January 12, 2025 at 10:05 AM

Or just say that we need real immigration reform and this bill is just a worthless Republican stunt that will do nothing to solve the “problem” of immigration, whatever that problem is.  Or to bring down the prices of eggs and apples that were the supposed calamities fatal to Democrats last year.

Such craven acquiescence is consistent with the view of appalling number of Democrats, like Gallego and even bigger idiot Seth Moulton, who seem to think that the best response to the recrudescence of corrupt Fascist rule is try to find its good parts.

Interestingly, although Democrats have been told for decades that finding common ground is a political winner, Republicans never feel any pressure to do the same when Democrats are in the White House.  And no pundit has ever chided them for their policy of adamantine opposition.

We know how failing to act as an honest opposition party has worked before.  Let's turn the clock back to 2002 when Democrats went along with George W. Bush's insane ideas to cover up the fact that he had failed to protect the nation from terrorism, despite ample credible warnings.

So Democrats went along with two wars, one based on lies, torture, illegal detention, and all sorts of other outrages.

And what did it get them?

They got wiped out at the next two elections.  Their base was demoralized by their failure to stand up to Bush-Cheney insanity and they did not persuade anyone in the supposed great independent middle of the electorate.

Does anyone think this time it will be any different?  No matter what Democrats agree to, the Republicans will ensure it is never enough and hang every misbehaving undocumented immigrant around their necks in the 21st century equivalent of Who Lost China.

A better approach would be to say Democrats are happy to work on real solutions, but not insane crap that punishes immigrants, increases family separation,  undermines our systems of government, and fails to provide economic opportunity to anyone other than those bribing Kristi “Woof! Bang!” Noem to build private jails.

On their current course of craven surrender,  Democrats are poised to alienate the progressive base of the party.  Speaking of which, analysis of 2024 election shows that Harris-Walz lost not because of a huge burst of enthusiasm for the Tangerine-Faced Racist.  They lost because Democrats didn't show up the way they did in 2020:  

Voters in liberal strongholds across the country, from city centers to suburban stretches, failed to show up to vote for Vice President Kamala Harris at the levels they had for Joseph R. Biden Jr. four years earlier, contributing significantly to her defeat by Donald J. Trump, according to a New York Times analysis of preliminary election data....

The decline in key cities, including Detroit and Philadelphia, made it exceptionally difficult for Ms. Harris to win the battlegrounds of Michigan and Pennsylvania.

You would think the moral of this tale is make sure you are motivating your base, in part by opposing Republican insanity,

You would be right.

But then again you wouldn't be getting all those sweet, sweet live shots and interviews in the great tradition of craven Republican-aping Democrats like Holy Joe Lieberman.

A reminder to Gallego, Moulton, and the rest of the sellouts:  You could say a lot of things about Holy Joe.  One thing you could never say was that he was the Democratic nominee for President.