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.

Yet More Dispatches From the War Fronts: Greenland vs. Da Mook of the North

The prize

Dispatches from the War Fronts

Editors' Note: We have been reporting on the Dear Leader's empire-building for weeks now, but there's yet another war he's planning from his Gold Flushing Throne at Merde-y-Lardo, in addition to the invasions of Canada, Mexico, and Panama.  This time the Great White Dope has once again turned his attention to the frozen north, where it fell on the strategically vital Gateway to Iceland: Greenland.  It actually happens to be a part of another country and its inhabitants want nothing to do with the Tangerine-Faced Fascist.  But when has that ever stopped him before?  

By War Correspondent Douglas MacArthur with
Special Greenland Correspondent Katrine Fønsmark in Greenland City [That's not the capital of Greenland, you idiots – K.F.]
 

Having already lost the Battle of Bacon and Eggs before it started, the Tangerine-Faced Fascist  is casting his insatiable eye at bright shiny objects to distract his base of racist poltroons.  His latest: Greenland.

Greenland?

It's a big island in the, um, Arctic.  That means it's basically cold and empty and covered with ice.  So why would the incoming President-for-Life want it?

We have a few guesses.  First, on the 99 cent Mercator projection he looks at from his Throne of Gold (only partly obscured by the classified documents stacked in front of it), it seems enormous:

When you're packing a tiny toadstool, according to Stormy Daniels (who should know), ginormous is good.

On such a map, Greenland looks bigger than the entire continent of South America.  There's only one problem: reality.  In fact, Greenland is half the size of South America.  On a map that compensates for the fact that the circumference of the Earth near the poles is far smaller than at the Equator (as predicted by the “Round Ball” hypothesis), the reality looks like this:

This Goode projection, in addition to having a cool '60s vibe, shows the true size of Greenland, albeit chopped in half.  But it's fair to assume that the niceties of topology are lost on the Tangerine-Faced Fascist, unless the globes being mapped are attached to a porn star.

Another theory is that Greenland is full of minerals that could be exploited to make the TFF and his cronies rich, which as as 49.87% of the voting public has declared is the only point of the U.S. Government.

But perhaps the stupidest and most dishonest explanation is that the U.S. must take over Greenland to protect us from the threat of – well, we're honestly not quite sure:

👀 🌍 WATCH: Trump’s former National Security Advisor now admits climate change is real to justify Trump’s threats to take over Greenland— “a highway from the arctic to the United States… a critical battleground of the future as the climate gets warmer…”

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— The Tennessee Holler (@thetnholler.bsky.social) December 29, 2024 at 11:20 AM

Sure, turning Greenland over to climate change deniers and drill baby drillers will definitely protect us all from the imminent threat of the collapse of Greenland's ice shelf.  That makes sense.

In fact, the threat of global warming on the Greenland ice shelf and thus anyone who lives on a coast is all too real.  As sanewashed by the New York Times, it's not a threat, it's an opportunity:

Because of warming temperatures, an estimated 11,000 square miles of Greenland’s ice sheets and glaciers have melted over the past three decades, an area roughly equivalent to the size of Massachusetts. That has huge implications for the entire world. If the ice melts completely, Greenland could cause sea levels to rise as much as 23 feet, according to NASA.

Greenland’s retreating ice could open up areas to drill for oil and gas and places to mine critical minerals, a fact that has already attracted international interest and raised concerns about environmental harms.

Such an event would also inundate places like New York City and Miami, but just think of the money to be made by drilling after the catastrophe!  And that's why the appropriate response to the imminent climate cataclysm is to seize Greenland.

The national security argument has been propounded by the Tangerine-Faced Fascist's hacks and shills, who insist that Denmark, who has lawful sovereignty over the place, cannot possibly defend it:

[Former TFF national security adviser Robert] O’Brien got the ball rolling on Saturday with a thread published to social media, insisting that Trump is “100% right again,” this time about Greenland. “If our great ally Denmark can’t commit to defending the Island, the US will have to step in, as [the president-elect] said,” he added. 

The idea that Greenland is a undefended frozen peach, ripe for the plucking, is bats*** crazy for so many reasons, beyond the lack of any current threat to the frozen wasteland.

Point one: there is a U.S. military presence on Greenland today, which seems more than adequate to the task of defense of the island:

 

The base is currently part of Steve Carrell's Space Force but we're sure that big golf ball will protect Greenland from all foes, extraterrestrial and otherwise.

Point two: the United States is already committed to defend Greenland from attack by a third party by the NATO Treaty, until such time (probably the next six months) as the disloyal Tiny Toadstool blows up that alliance, handing Putin a victory 80 years in the making.

Inexplicably, our mainstream media is reporting this insane futile land grab as if it were both rational and part of a great national tradition:

Over the past two days, President-elect Donald J. Trump has made clear that he has designs for American territorial expansion, declaring that the United States has both security concerns and commercial interests that can best be addressed by bringing the Panama Canal and Greenland under American control or outright ownership....

But the president-elect’s statements — and the not-so-subtle threats behind them — were another reminder that his version of “America First” is not an isolationist creed.

Colonialism: what could go wrong?

His aggressive interpretation of the phrase evokes the expansionism, or colonialism, of President Theodore Roosevelt, who cemented control of the Philippines after the Spanish-American War. And it reflects the instincts of a real estate developer who suddenly has the power of the world’s largest military to back up his negotiating strategy.

Mr. Trump has often suggested that he does not always see the sovereignty of other nations’ borders as sacrosanct. When Russia invaded Ukraine, his first response was not a condemnation of the blatant land grab, but rather the observation that President Vladimir V. Putin’s move was an act of “genius.”

We will concede that taking land that belonged to others is a great American tradition.  But we can think of other traditions that prevailed in 1803 and we fought a Civil War that claimed 400,000 lives to make sure they wouldn't come back.  Except in Alabama.

We knew Teddy Roosevelt.  Teddy Roosevelt was a friend of ours.  The Tangerine-Faced Traitor is no Teddy Roosevelt and it's not an act of journalism to compare the two.

What might constitute reporting would be to delve into what's behind the TFT's expansionism.  To be fair, the Times piece hinted at a couple, like money and in the case of Panama, revenge for their government's cracking down on his crooked empire there.

But there are many other explanations the Times won't touch.  The TFT's dementia could be so far advanced that he sees the entire world as a bucket of fried chicken, whose pieces he can devour at leisure.

A more sanguine view of his mental status would be that he knows he can't deliver on his oft-repeated promise to lower the prices of eggs and bacon and apples, which he said would be very easy before the election.  Now he's got to come up with lots of flashy trinkets to distract his voters from his failure to do anything to actually improve their lives.  But, hey, look over there, Greenland!

With the end of constitutional government only two weeks away, the most disturbing question is what else he will launch to entertain his angry racist base.

And when he unleashes the U.S. military under the Insurrection Act to round up undocumented (or other) immigrants and send them to desolate camps in the desert, look for our thoughtful mainstream media to tell us he is acting in the great tradition of President Franklin Roosevelt, who did the same thing to Japanese-Americans, many of whom were citizens, back in 1942.

Dispatches From the War Fronts III: We Stole It Fair and Square!

Our boys are ready to take our canal back!

 

 Dispatches from the War Fronts

Editors' Note: It turns out that the Dear Leader, laser-focused as ever on lowering the price of bacon and eggs to reward his loyal white working-class supporters, is starting wars faster than we can report on them. Just last week we brought you news about the second war the Tangerine-Faced Fascist intends to start once he is succeeded in his putsch. Not content with grabbing more of Mexico (without offering, as he did to Canada, to make it the 51st state for some obscure reason), he has focused his black Sharpie even further South, toward the Panama Canal, which according to him is ripe for the plucking. This week, we bring you the exciting third installment of our Dispatches. Spoiler alert: And there’s more to come.

By War Correspondent Douglas MacArthur with
Central American Correspondent William Walker in Panama City
 

“We stole it fair and square.” 

With this cogent argument, former California Republican Senator S.I. Hayakawa, a relic of the era when California was Republican and students were expelled just for protesting a war (can you believe it?), explained why he opposed President Jimmy Carter’s decision to return the Panama Canal to its country, Panama, back in 1979.

The controversy had been forgotten up until last week, but one of the largest and nastiest Republican disinformation campaigns in the long-ago pre-Reagan era (so before American was great) was the tumult incited by Republicans over the decision to give up US sovereignty over the Panama Canal Zone, a narrow strip of land bordering the Panama Canal and bisecting the country of Panama, which we conveniently created to then seize the strip for our glorious canal at the turn of the 20th Century.

This is what the Panama Canal Zone looked like. 

It's a little hard to see, but the Zone was a strip 10 miles wide stretching from ocean to ocean and  bounded by Panama on both sides.   

And if you were in Panama, it was like pre-1961 Berlin: there was a sign and a few MP’s but you could in many places cross freely between Panama and the Zone at the edge of the Panama City metropolis.  But like East Berlin outsiders (like Panamanians) were subject to random arrest and interrogation.  Eventually, the Panamanians tired of alien rule in the middle of their country and demanded the Canal back.  In 1977, President Jimmy Carter agreed.

The blowback was terrific.  Republicans used the deal as a cudgel to smear Democrats as unpatriotic surrender monkeys not to mention as a launching pad for their own ambitions:

Whatever happened to that guy?  (PS Once in office, he did nothing to undo the handover of the Canal Zone or the Treaties.)

Underlying the decision to hand back the Canal and terminate the Canal Zone was an indisputable military fact:  even though it was protected by 10,000 American troops and lots of impressive planes and stuff, there was no way to protect the Canal should the Panamanians decide to use force to take it back or in the meantime render it useless:

The Panama Canal is the United States' most important defense asset in Latin America but it is also highly vulnerable to a wide variety of threats, ranging from sabotage to nuclear attack.

Source: Central Intelligence Agency.

The Panamanians never had the Bomb, but they sure had the ability to knock a 50-mile canal out of commission with a single mortar.  So there was in fact no alternative but to negotiate the best deal we could with Panama and give them their country back.

That's what Jimmy Carter did and he got a pretty good deal to boot. Then he lost to the hack who built support by opposing the peaceful handover.

In the intervening half-century, the Panama Canal has pretty much worked as Carter said it would: just fine.

But the America-first brainworm that devoured the Republican Party has now placed all this peace and prosperity at risk:

President-elect Donald J. Trump this week escalated his threats to retake control of the Panama Canal, falsely accusing Panama of allowing Chinese soldiers to control the vital shipping route and of overcharging American ships.

Mr. Trump has claimed Panama charges U.S. vessels “exorbitant prices” and warned that if they are not reduced after he takes office next month, he will demand that the United States be granted control of the canal “in full, quickly and without question.”

On Wednesday, Mr. Trump went on another tear. Announcing his choice for ambassador to the central American nation, Kevin Marino Cabrera, he accused the Panamanian government of “ripping us off on the Panama Canal, far beyond their wildest dreams.” ...

Coming soon to an ocean near you?

While it is unclear what prompted Mr. Trump’s recent obsession with the Panama Canal, some Republicans have long objected to turning it over to Panamanian control. When Ronald Reagan ran for president, he said the people of the United States were the canal’s “rightful owners” and brought audiences to their feet with the line: “We bought it; we paid for it; we built it.”

 “There’s a certain wing of the Republican Party that’s always been skeptical of the handover,” said Ryan C. Berg, the director of the Americas program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank.

“Complaints tend to crop up around the anniversary, and now that seems to be coming to a head because of the China issue and the desire to compete with China in the region,” he said.

The American military could certainly invade Panama with ease and seize the canal.  The difficulty is what happens the next day, as Republicans learned in Iraq and Afghanistan.

What would happen if the Tangerine-Faced Fascist actually tried to lean on Panama?  Would they just give up the sovereignty that they fought so hard to get?  Or is it more likely that they will look around for some outside help?  How hard would it be for Panama to grant base rights and other concessions to say China?

Nothing would put the lie more quickly to Republican dreams of conquest than Chinese naval bases in Panama City.  Or worse yet, in Balboa on the Caribbean side, able to threaten US interests from Honduras to say Merde-a-Lardo?

This doesn't mean that Il Douche will not try to foment a war in Panama, to go along with his planned invasions of Canada and Mexico.  And don't expect a newly-supine American media to sound the alarm.

It just could be that the long-cherished wet dream of Ronny Rayguns and his far right plug-uglies may become a reality.  It's just a reminder of the iron law of Republican history: it repeats itself, the first time as farce and the second time as catastrophe.   

🎇 🎇 🎇 🎇 🎇 🎇 🎇 🎇 🎇 🎇 🎇 🎇 🎇 🎇 

UPDATE, Dec. 30, 2024 – James Fallows, who was present at the creation during the Carter Administration, confirms that Jimmy Carter realized he had no choice but to hand back the Canal Zone on whatever terms he could extract from Panama:

In fact, one of the most important reasons the US began negotiations to “give away” the Canal nearly 60 years ago was mounting fear from the US military that it would become impossible to defend such a large, sprawling asset if local sentiment kept turning more strongly anti-American.

It’s common knowledge that the transfer deal was signed under Jimmy Carter. But the serious talks began under Richard Nixon, out of realpolitik concerns about guarding the Canal in the long run. These strategic issues weren’t a big part of the in-public debate in the 1970s about transferring control to Panama. But they were a huge, perhaps decisive background factor.

....“Taking back” the Canal would be an open-ended invitation to disaster, as with the Iraq war. Even talking about it shows that you’re out of touch with reality.

Dispatches From The War Fronts, Part II: To the Meth Labs of Montezuma!

Our advance forces are already scouting the invasion beaches

 Dispatches from the War Fronts

Editors' Note: Recently we brought you news about one of the two wars the Tangerine-Faced Fascist intends to start once he is installed as President-for-Life. This week, we give you a thrilling preview of the second front, where he expects to take on our wily adversary just south of the Rio Grande. 

By War Correspondent Douglas MacArthur with Fred C. Dobbs in Sonora
 
While one mighty expeditionary force invades Toronto, thus securing a happy and co-prosperous future for the troubled realm of Canada as America’s 51st state, to be named Trumpland, another will be aimed southward at Mexico, according to strategists close to the omelet bar at America’s new capital, Mar-a-Lago.

These sources, after careful consultation with incoming Secretary of Defense Pete “The Ladies’ Man” Hegseth and his chief of staff, Johnny Walker, say that detailed plans for the subjugation of Mexico are well advanced. 

Already there is talk of bombing in and around anyplace in Mexico where Party Animal Pete suspects that drugs are either being manufactured, distributed, or stored.  Which is anyplace.  According to Vox:
 
One of the hottest new ideas in Republican politics is, apparently, launching a war in Mexico.

Three recent articles — in Rolling Stone, Politico, and Semafor — traced the rise of the proposal from obscurity to the party’s highest levels, finding ample evidence of the idea’s popularity in the GOP ranks. 

Former President Donald Trump, for example, has been asking for a “battle plan” to “attack Mexico,” specifically targeting drug cartel strongholds in the country. Every single declared Republican presidential candidate has endorsed treating cartels like terrorist organizations. And in both the House and the Senate, leading Republicans have proposed authorizing the use of military force in Mexico to fight cartels.

The ostensible excuse for starting such a war is the plague of fentanyl being smuggled across the border, almost always by U.S. citizens:   

 

Of course, the real reason that America is suffering from an invasion of fentanyl is because lots of Americans, including we suspect more than a few who voted for the Tangerine-Faced Racist (or would have if they weren’t so gorked out on drugs) enjoy taking fentanyl.  No one is going around kidnapping unsuspecting upright citizens and forcibly injecting them with the crap.  America has a drug problem, sure enough: we love us our drugs!

Whether that can be cured by bombing Mexico remains an open question.

We suspect that the real reason for going to war with Mexico isn’t fentanyl.  Or even the supposed invasion of desperate refugees seeking asylum in a country almost equally desperate for workers, as billionaire Republicans will admit:

A company owned by two of Donald Trump’s top mega-donors has routinely brought dozens of its workers from Mexico to staff its warehouses in Wisconsin and other locations even though they do not appear to have permission to work in the US, according to a Guardian investigation.

Uline – a giant Wisconsin-based office and shipping supply company controlled by billionaires Liz and Dick Uihlein – shuttles in its own workers from Mexico....

You don't say.

We suspect the real reason is that the Tangerine-Faced Fascist and his gang of drunken hooligans think that beating up on little brown people is fun, especially the women and children.  It also make you look strong and powerful, as any Storm Trooper will tell you.

Lest you think this is a recent example of Republican insanity, in fact it is a reprise of the real reason why President Dick Cheney and his front men and accomplices, many doing business today as our Wonderful Republican Allies, thought it would be just a swell idea to start a war with Iraq, despite the fact that it had zero involvement in the September 11 attacks on America.  

Smashing Saudi Arabia or Syria would have been fine. But we hit Saddam for one simple reason: because we could, and because he deserved it and because he was right in the heart of that world.

That was foreign policy genius and Iraq warmonger Tom Friedman explaining that the reason to start a war with a country was to show how strong the United States was. Also there were terrorists in the neighborhood, just a few hundred miles away in other countries. 

By the way, it turned out great. Except for the 400,000 dead, the $2 trillion burnt and the fact that Iraq is a vassal state of that supposed sponsor of worldwide terrorism, Iran.

But Mexico is no Iraq and if the Tangerine-Faced Fascist rains death and destruction from the air on anyplace in Mexico that Tulsi Gabbard tells him is in the neighborhood of a drug dealer, what could those Hispanic weaklings do about it?

So far, according to Reuters, Mexico's President Claudia Sheinbaum does not appear cowed by the Tangerine-Faced Felon's threats to protect Mexico whether it likes it or not, even though she is of the gender that the TFF like to rape (digitally – please don't sue!) in department stores:

The drunken drug-addled psychopaths scarfing down sh***y gristly steaks at Merde-y-Lardo may not realize that the United States has already invaded Mexico numerous times.  The first one yielded Knott's Berry Farm and Las Vegas, so that constitutes a win.

The third time didn't go quite as well,  Fortunately, thanks to our extensive archives we can bring you our reporting from March 1916:

PANCHO VILLA ON THE RUN, PERSHING SAYS

🦅 🦅 🦅 🦅 🦅 🦅 🦅 🦅 🦅 🦅

The Mexican Bandit Won't Be Able to Hide from the Mighty U.S. Army 

🦅 🦅 🦅 🦅 🦅 🦅 🦅 🦅 🦅 🦅

Our Boys Enjoying the Tequila and the Senoritas! 

 

By Our Special Correspondent
Via Telegraph from Chihauhua

Our splendid Army has already achieved a magnificent success in the expedition to bring that notorious Mexican brigand and terrorist, Pancho Villa, to justice at the end of an all-American noose.

This correspondent accompanied our brave lads as they crossed into Mexico without opposition and established a forward operating base at the strategic hub that is Colonia Dublan.

The commanding General John Pershing, showing the dash and initiative that marks the leonine Anglo-Saxon race (as compared to the sluggish untrustworthy Hispanic), wasted no time in pursuing Villa, ordering a powerful column of American cavalry 60 miles south to bag the bandit.

Our brave boys on the attack!

The brilliant American plan contemplated a multiple-column operation to encircle and trap Villa and his gang of desperadoes.  General Pershing, showing the tactical genius that so marks American military leadership, boldly decided to move one column by train to its designated location.

Despite the brilliance of the scheme, it was frustrated as usual by the laziness and inanition of the local population, which refused to supply the railroad with the fuel needed to advance.  As a result, manly American troops had to stop every few miles to chop the needed firewood. 

Eventually, the rickety Mexican locomotive, lacking the power of its counterparts north of the border, broke down completely, forcing our troops to debark and proceed on horseback.

Once in position in Barbicora, the American troops learned that the perfidious Villa, instead of standing and fighting like a man, had slipped away into the countryside.  Whereupon our boys commenced a thirty-two day search of the vicinity, frustrated by the lack of cooperation from the surly, untrustworthy locals.

Our troops, having surrounded Villa on one side, learned that he had retreated south to Guerrero.  Although the dashing 7th Cavalry reached the rebel stronghold without serious losses, their movements were spotted by the Villa bandits in the town, who safely fled into the nearby mountains.  

After wisely staging a retreat to reequip and rearm, the American expedition expects to resume the pursuit and remains confident of its eventual success.   

Eventually, the Americans gave up the chase and went home, leaving Mexico to its own devices.  The good news was that this same Army having sniffed powder and shot in Mexico was well prepared to take on the German Army in the killing fields of France, which also turned out great.

If you're interested in the brilliant Mexican Invasion of 1916, you can read the official U.S. Army history here.  

This time the crack-addled [Surely, crack? – Ed.] military masterminds will likely employ a different strategy: long-range bombing of Mexican targets.  How it will end and how many innocents will die are of course unknown.  But, in the great tradition of Republican military geniuses like John “Bomb Iran” Bolton, what happens after the bombs fall is not their problem. 

Billionaire Republican plutocrats seize power and it's the fault of - Democratic elites!

By Meta-Content Generator A.J. Liebling

Before the year and American democracy ends, we thought we'd take a look back at the post-election explanations for why a candidate who ran on a platform of decency, integrity, tolerance, hope, and economic opportunity lost to a demented corrupt Russian-owned rapist.

It's taken a while for us to calm down enough to go back to the election aftermath.  Let's see how far we can get before our blood pressure threatens to blow off our heads.

The prevailing narrative, at least on the op-ed pages of our supposedly great newspapers, was that Democrats were a party ruled by a shadowy elite who were fatally out-of-touch with the hopes, dreams, fears, and goals of average Americans.  Average white Americans, that is.

Having recently downed a hearty breakfast, we can cite only a couple of examples before getting queasy.  Here's that well-known anti-elitist and champion of Italian deli meats, Professor David Brooks:

We were going to summarize his argument, but we couldn't find one. It seemed to be that Trump voters held a grudge against supporters of Democratic policies which they equated with “elitism.”  The meat in his logical sandwich was the oft-expressed resentment against Democrats and those perceived to benefit from Democratic policies.  Like, you know, Black people.

That might suggest an alternative explanation for white support of a white racist.  Not to Il Professore.

You might be shocked to know that Brooks had the explanation – those nasty Democratic elites – before he had the outcome he was trying to explain.  Back in 2023 he explained that those nasty elites were responsible for offenses such as enforcing the Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education, opposing the Vietnam War, and “building systems that benefit only themselves,” like Medicare and the Affordable Care Act.

It sounds cracked but you can read it here.

His sister in bloviation, journalism's Norma Desmond, inveighed with all the fury of two-terlet Irish (and that's a lot of fury) against those loathsome elites who always looked down on middle-class Irish-American cop daughters who had to go to Catholic University instead of Harvard:

Democratic candidates have often been avatars of elitism — Michael Dukakis, Al Gore, John Kerry, Hillary Clinton and second-term Barack Obama. The party embraced a worldview of hyper-political correctness, condescension and cancellation, and it supported diversity statements for job applicants and faculty lounge terminology like “Latinx,” and “BIPOC” (Black, Indigenous, People of Color). ...

“When the woke police come at you,” Rahm Emanuel told me, “you don’t even get your Miranda rights read to you.”

There were a lot of Democrats “barking,” people who “don’t represent anybody,” he said, and “the leadership of the party was intimidated.” 

So the Tangerine-Faced Fascist won because 49.87% of those voting were sick of being corrected over their use of language.  

There are two things going one here.

First, as someone else observed (and we tried to find them but we couldn't), the ones who are most butthurt about being called out for their insensitive use of pronouns or epithets are the very same bloviators who grace our op-ed pages.  They're pissed off, and if they're angry, then brother you better believe that everyone else should be too.

By the way, what happened to Rahm Emanuel when the woke police came after him?  Unlike Laquan MacDonald, shot dead by a white Chicago policemen he did not threaten with deadly force, nothing.  Also unlike Laquan MacDonald, the outrageous injury to Rahm Emanuel was not covered up by – wait for, Rahm Emanuel, one of Maureen's many non-elite buddies. 

The second thing is that Maureen had her finger on something.  Something vile.  It's true that many TFF voters were angry because they felt that they weren't being allowed to say certain things.  Like calling Black people n*****s.  Of course, they clean that up a little for public consumption in a New York Times focus group:

We're not too sympathetic to their anger, to put it mildly, but there's no doubt many white and Latinx voters cherish their right to impose racial slurs on the rest of us.  How Democrats should appeal to these very fine people remains a mystery.

And before we leave Kevin's sister: how tf is Michael Dukakis, who rode the subway to his job as Governor in a $99 suit and makes broth from old turkey carcasses, an elitist?  Maureen must be listening to the voices in her head again.

Prof. Brooks knows whom to blame.

No one can accuse America's great white bloviators of originality.  Stigmatizing Democrats who seek social justice and a world in which not 100% of the rewards are siphoned off by a tiny, um, elite of crackpot plutocrats has been a mainstream Republican position since at least 1968, when it was weaponized by the former champion of divisiveness and disloyalty, Dick Nixon.

Anyone remember Spiro T. Agnew, Nixon's Vice President?  When he was not stuffing his pockets with crisp honeybees from Maryland contractors, he was used to make the case that the real elites were Democrats:

[Nixon] dispatched Agnew to map out a cultural description of another enemy, the op-ed unfriendlies and the network mandarins of what was beginning to be called the media. The views of “this little group of men” who “live and work in the geographical and intellectual confines of Washington, D.C., or New York City,” Agnew noted darkly, “do not represent the views of America.” He inscribed himself in history, and in famous-quotation anthologies, forever, when he said, “In the United States today, we have more than our share of nattering nabobs of negativism. They have formed their own 4-H club—the hopeless, hysterical hypochondriacs of history.”

The exuberant playfulness of Agnew’s language (as scripted by William Safire) seemed to signal that the bluster need not be taken too seriously.

You'll be shocked, shocked to learn that the flack who led the attack on anyone daring to criticize Nixon and his expansion of the Vietnam War went on to a glorious career as, wait for it, an op-ed columnist for The New York Times! 

What began as an attack on a free press was expanded to cover any and all opposition to the Republican project of plutocratic rule under the flag of white supremacy.

It was a bit of rhetorical ju-jitsu because then as now it was successfully used by Republicans to hide their ruthless campaign of enriching the rich through tax cuts and deregulation while further impoverishing the working class.

The result was 40 years of increasing income inequality until hapless old Joe Biden managed to turn it around just a bit:

 In fact, as any fool (other than those employed as a columnist) can plainly see, the return of the Tangerine-Faced Fascist was fueled by elites.  Billionaires like Leon Musk, Dick Uhlein and lovable Miriam Adelson together coughed up more than $400,000,000 to con the plebes into voting for a man and a party ruthlessly devoted to f***ing them over.

And it worked.  Now that the TFF is about to seize power for good this time, other billionaires, including the steroid-enhanced nerds Bezos and Zuckerberg, have kissed the orange taint and pronounced it delicious.  

The bottom line: America's plutocratic elite, in wallet and deed, have lined up to support the Tangerine-Faced Insurrectionist.

Our mainstream media seems unable to cover the objective truth: the average wage-earners are indeed being screwed by elites.  Just not the ones with the inclusive pronouns.

Dispatches from the War Fronts: 54-40 or Fight!

 Dispatches from the War Fronts

Editors' Note: For many years one of the Spy's most well-loved or at least tolerated features was its war correspondence.  For most of this century, America has been either engaged in or preparing for pointless bloody war.  Sometimes both.  And the Spy was there:

 

Unfortunately, that wet blanket Joe Biden ended all the fun by getting out of Afghanistan and failing to replace it with something equally otiose like attacking Iran.

But thanks to the wisdom of 49.87% of the voting American electorate, we're back in business.  This time, the warmongers are pointing us away from distant desert sands and much closer to home.  Today, we'll look at one of the fronts of our next glorious defense of freedom!

By War Correspondent Douglas MacArthur with Canadian Correspondent
Ramona Flowers reporting from Canada's capitol, Toronto. [That's not Canada's capitol, you nitwit – Ed.]

Never one to let legal niceties like not being in office yet to hold him back, President to be for Life Donald J. Trump has already moved boldly to make America great again by realizing its long-held dream of conquering, wait for it, Canada:

This thrilling image of our 47th and last President standing at the Canada-Switzerland border looking out at the Matterhorn has naturally led to speculation that, ever laser-focused on average working class Americans, Trump wants to give them plenty of lebensraum, albeit on the cold side.

The speculation was also fueled by reporting of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's groveling journey to America's capitol, Mar-a-Lago, to beseech the Orange Rapist for relief from Trump's threatened 25% tariffs on all Canadian exports to the US, including oil and lumber.  

Was Trudeau really worried about tariffs or was he just seizing on any excuse to escape the bitter December in Canada's capitol, Canada City?  [That's not Canada's capitol, either – R.F.]

We may never know. What we do know is that, in response to all this begging, various media sources reported:

Donald Trump reportedly suggested to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau that if he didn’t like the tariff the president-elect threatened to impose, perhaps Canada could become the 51st state and Trudeau could serve as its governor. Trudeau laughed nervously at the apparent joke.... 

Has Donald Trump ever elocuted a joke in his life?  Of course not.  He makes threats, he dishes out insults, he boasts, he lies, and he leers.  But a joke?  Not so, Pete Hegseth breath.

We think he means it.

The question is why. I mean, as countries go it's perfectly nice.

It's right there.  It has oil and white people, two things the Tangerine-Faced Racist likes.  And as every high school senior in Boston knows, the drinking age is 18.  Road trip!

And on the dollar-store Mercator map the TFR stares it at Mar-a-Lago, it looks huuuuuge!  He may also be able to discern that Canada has a long coastline.  Lots of them.  He probably thinks that there will be plenty of prime oceanfront property on which he can build one of his crapcan golf course resorts with Saudi money.

Imagine the size of the resort he could build on say Baffin Island.  He may not be aware that a lot of that coastline has a few disadvantages that limit its value as a resort venue:

That's not ideal golf weather.  When it's that cold, the ball sticks to the tundra, making it impossible for him to cheat by kicking it  back to the green.

He also might want to think what would happen to his narrow House and Senate majorities even if Canada joins as a single state (it's about as populous as California).  Those two Senate and 50 House seats aren't likely to go Republican.

The Tangerine-Faced Fascist may think he can bring Canada to its snowshoes merely by strangling its economy.  He better hope he's right because an invasion might not turn out exactly as he hoped.

Fun fact: we've tried conquering Canada by force of arms.  It didn't go great.  Fortunately, thanks to our extensive archives we can bring you our reporting from November 1813:

AMERICAN FORCES STOPPED SHORT OF MONTREAL

🦅 🦅 🦅 🦅 🦅 🦅 🦅 🦅 🦅 🦅

Courage of Troops Not Matched by Quality of Generalship

By Our Special Correspondent
Via Post Express from Ft. Ticonderoga

Although the situation remains sadly clouded by uncertainty, reports reaching Ft. Ticonderoga suggest that the American forces failed to break through the Canadian defenders at Châteauguay, southwest of Montreal and short of the goal of the St. Lawrence River.

The American forces, under the command of a Southerner named Wade Hampton, whose family we can safely predict is destined for no great place in our nation's military history, attempted to ford the Châteauguay River on 26th Oct. last.

Gen'l Hampton squandered his splendid troops

The river crossing was made without serious opposition.  But the wily Canadians retreated into their forests and took advantage of such terrain to inflict serious injuries on the American columns.  Further, certain French-speaking forces taunted our soldiery with crude insults, followed by volleys of cows and other forms of livestock.

A portion of the Canadian forces remained on the southern bank of the river, thereby harassing the American flank.  Although the great mass of American troops and their brave Mohawk allies remained intact, the irresolute Gen. Hampton unaccountably lost his nerve and withdrew to the south, thereby abandoning the planned conquest of the great city of Lower Canada, Montreal.

The debacle was especially bitter because it followed hard on the heels of the smashing success of our forces in York, the largest city in Upper Canada, which had led the American forces to hope that the demise of British authority in Canada was at hand.

It is the view of this correspondent that with improved generalship, the American Army can return to the Canadian Front with the wholesome and entirely achievable goal of ridding the Great White North of the British enemy and embracing that land as part of our rightful inheritance, even if it takes another 200 years.

Of course, next time under the command of Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and his liberal administration of liquid courage, the results will undoubtedly be different.

From the Archives: Who is to blame for prejudice? Let's start with the victims!

Editors' Note:  Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!  When we were put on the spot and asked to list what we were grateful for as the flaming dumpster fire that is 2024 burns what was left of American democracy to cinders, we admit we had to think about it.  We decided that we were grateful for a few things: we haven't lost our marbles, our racist brother in Annandale hasn't taken over our columns, our billions in ill-gotten gains and squads of vicious high-priced lawyers render our publishing empire impervious to pressure from the New Regime, and to pad our pages we can always dip into our 254 years of archives.

Speaking of those archives, among the leading ridiculous narratives being pushed these days is that the wave of anti-trans bigotry fomented by the Tangerine-Faced Fascist and his legions of taint polishers is the fault of those who oppose that bigotry.  We wondered if there were any examples of such victim-blaming that we could find in our pages, especially during the days when we relied more heavily on third-party news sources.  And guess what: we found some!

December 16, 1933

By Charles Lindbergh
Chicago Tribune News Service

To get on the wrong side of Jewish activists is often to endure their unsparing criticism, whether in America or Germany.

After a Democratic congressman defended parents who expressed concern about Jewish athletes competing against their young Christian daughters, a local party official and ally compared him to a Nazi “cooperator” and a group called “Neighbors Against Hate” organized a protest outside his office.

When Martin Heidegger said that denying any relationship between race and biology was “deeply misogynistic and regressive,” a prominent Jewish lobby accused him of betraying “real science.” A few angry critics posted photos of themselves burning his books before patriotic German students at the University of Freiburg showed them how to run a book bonfire.

When the new Hitler Government convened a call with Jewish groups to discuss new limits on the participation of Jew students in university life, one powerful Jewish banker/activist fumed that the administration would be complicit in “genocide” of Jews.

Now, some Jewish activists say it is time to rethink and recalibrate their confrontational ways, and are pushing back against the more all-or-nothing voices in their coalition.

“We have to make it OK for someone to change their minds,” said Lessing Rosenwald, executive director of Advocates for Jewish Equality. “We cannot vilify them for not being on our side. No one wants to join that team.”

Efforts by Jewish activists to protest alleged Nazis backfired

Mr. Rosenwald, who grew up in a prominent Jewish family in Illinois, said that as painful as Herr Hitler’s election may be for the Hebrew Race, they should see the benefit in treating skeptics less like enemies and more like future allies.

“No Gentile wants to feel stupid or condescended to,” Mr. Rosenwald said.

The public does not appear to be growing more empathetic to the Jewish cause. Fewer Americans today than two years ago say they support some of the rights that Jewish activists have pushed for, like allowing children to apply to universities without regard to their religion.  And multiple recent polls have found that a considerable majority of Americans and German believe advocacy for Jewish rights has gone “too far.”

Other prominent Jews like Robert Lehman said too many activists today are distracted by counterproductive debates — boycotting Hearst Newspapers for example, and insisting that there are no reasonable objections to allowing Jews into their cooperative apartments and medical specialties.

Mr. Lehman noted that Jewish activists lost credibility with many Americans once they started accusing people of bigotry over restricited suburbs.

“We looked unreasonable,” she said. “We should be talking about the 7-year-old Jewess who just wants to play soccer with her friends.”

September 15, 1964

by Jessie Helms
Beloved WRAL-TV anchor via North Carolina Newspaper Alliance

The North Carolina State University women’s volleyball team, which is at the center of a national debate over the inclusion of Negroes in college sports, advanced to its conference championship on Saturday without having played a single game in the tournament.

After a first-round bye, the team was preparing to play a semifinal match in the Appalachian Conference tournament scheduled for Friday, but the opposing team — South Carolina University — refused for the third time to play the Rebels because of their Negro player.

After NCSU beat Winston-Salem State University on Wednesday to qualify for the semifinal in Wilmington, the players celebrated by cheering and hugging. They talked quietly in a huddle, then cheered again.

Hours later the NCSU Rebels released a statement that read: “The decision to not continue to play in the  tournament was not an easy one. Our team overcame forfeitures to earn a spot in the tournament field and fought for the win over Winston-Salem in the first round on Wednesday. They should not have to forgo this opportunity while waiting for a more thoughtful and better system that serves all athletes.”

Protesters tried to keep a Negro player from competing

It was the seventh time this year that an Appalachian Conference team has backed out of a match against NCSU out of protest over the Negro player, who declined an interview request through a university spokeswoman. South Carolina, one of five teams to forfeit games against the Rebels this season, also forfeited two regular season games against them.

The university has not confirmed that the player is Negro (some claim that she is a mulatto or even a quadroon). But her involvement with the team prompted a teammate and her assistant coach to file a lawsuit earlier this month, trying to keep her from playing in the tournament — and also on white teams at all.

The Negro player’s affiliation with NCSU was published by a conservative website in April, surprising some of her teammates and opposing teams. And in the days and weeks to follow, the Rebels were struggling to find ways to comprehend the information as politicians addressed it in their campaigns. Negroes are allowed to compete in N.C.A.A. volleyball, even though their brute strength, caused by centuries of selective breeding of slaves, may exceed that of the white student athletes. 

In public forums, Senator Strom Thurmond and other conservative candidates vowed to find ways to bar athletes who were not classified as white at birth from college sports. Sen. Thurmond called the situation “so crazy.”

Marcia Blackburn, a senior player, and Virginia Cox, the assistant coach, along with 10 other white volleyball players, were the ones to sue thet Conference and its commissioner, the Rebels’ head coach and others involved with the university.

But a federal judge denied their request on Monday to bar the Negro player, clearing her to play, and on Tuesday another judge rejected the plaintiffs’ appeal, too.

Reaching the final without having played a game was exactly what Ms. Blackburn had hoped would not happen, she said last week in an interview, because the team would not have earned that berth.

“It wouldn’t be fair to all the other white teams, either,” she said.

December 1, 1970

by Diana Trilling
Commentary

...I say this as someone who has been called anti-woman, more times than I can count. For a decade now, I’ve been trying to balance a belief in the rights of women with my skepticism of some so-called “feminist” positions. I’ve written with a degree of sympathy about feminists who’ve been ostracized for wanting to maintain women’s-only spaces.   I dislike jargon like “a woman can do anything a man can do” that tries to mystify or elide the reality of biological sex. 

Occasionally, I receive angry or plaintive messages from feminists accusing me of helping America down a slippery slope that has brought us to our lamentable present, when discrimination against women has been normalized to a degree that recently seemed unthinkable.

 Over a dozen states now have laws restricting women's access to single-sex bathrooms. In the face of this onslaught against a women, there’s pressure on liberals to keep any qualms we might have about elements of progressive gender ideology to ourselves.

Feminists need to understand that there
are differences between men and women

That’s one reason, despite my interest in sex and gender, I haven’t written about these debates as much as I otherwise might have. But I’m increasingly convinced that this widespread reticence hasn’t served anyone very well. The basic right of ladies to live in safety and dignity, free from discrimination, should be uncontested. But evolving ideas about sex and gender create new complexities and conflicts, and when progressives refuse to talk about them forthrightly, instead defaulting to clichés like “women are no different from men,” people can feel lied to and become radicalized.

Rejection of progressive orthodoxy on gender can even become a lens through which people see the world; just look at Bobby Riggs. As the writer William Safire put it in an election postmortem, “I know people who haven’t been touched by this issue personally, for whom it was the only issue that decided their vote.”

There are some Americans, no doubt, who won’t be mollified by anything short of the erasure of women from the workplace. But others simply feel that progressives aren’t leveling with them, a perception Democrats might have been able to address with a bit more frankness.

Politically, nuance is a harder sell than certainty. But it’s more honest, and honesty is what’s needed in the face of a coming tsunami of malicious propaganda aimed at women and girls. To have a chance of weathering it, Democrats are going to have to do two things at once. They need to have some uncomfortable conversations about complicated subjects, while at the same time standing up for a minuscule minority that’s increasingly under siege. After all, the bullying of Shirley Chisholm — who has handled Republican cruelty with exceptional grace — is only the opening salvo in what is likely to be a far-reaching national campaign against female people.

Editors' Note: Actually, we're just f**in' with ya. These are all taken from transphobic crap recently published in The New York Times including pieces by Jeremy Peters, Michelle Goldberg, and Juliet Macur.