It seems that what used to be disqualifications are now job requirements for federal agents.
"Video of the shooting, obtained by the Minnesota Reformer, shows a SUV stopped at an angle in the street as a pickup truck with emergency lights on approaches and stops in front of it. Masked ICE agents exited the truck and immediately ordered the woman to get out. As the officers started to pull on the door handles of the SUV, the woman backed the SUV up and then started to pull away, forcing an ICE officer who had stepped in front of the driver-side bumper out of the way. The officer drew his gun and fired three shots in quick succession into the car. The SUV continued down the street a short distance before crashing."
ICE Shoots and Kills Woman in Minneapolis: Video shows ICE officers were trying to pull the woman out of her car when she started to drive away, leading an officer to fire three shots through her window.
I just watched a video of an ICE agent shooting dead a woman in her car, in Minnesota.
Then I read a statement about the shooting from President Trump, who claims that he's watched the video and it shows that she "violently, willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE Officer who seems to have shot her in self defense".
The video is readily available online. It clearly shows that the Officer was in no danger of being hit by her slow-moving vehicle. He fires three shots, one of them through the very corner of her windscreen - the bullet-hole is on video - the others through the side window, which appears to have been open.
Who are the Rs going to believe? Their president, or their eyes?
And I am happy to announce that I will be continuing my habit of posting comments which contain no less than one grammar, spelling, orthography or stylistic mistake in the new year ...
Regarding " narcoterrorism", apart from the obvious Netflix reference (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcos), I always feel that these compound words are coined because they roll of the tongue so easily and thus become popular.
That's a perfect diagnosis of He, Trump. What I'd like to hear in addition is a diagnosis of those Americans who suffer from Trump Worship Syndrome.
For all I know, TWS sufferers may not actually disagree with Pro Bono's list. They might merely not care about it because they have a list of things that their Orange Jesus is doing for them. It would be interesting to know what's on that list.
Alternatively, TWS sufferers might in fact dispute Pro Bono's diagnosis. It would be fun to hear one of them do so, if we had one commenting here.
bc, just a short note to thank you for answering. I'm getting most of my information from podcasts as opposed to written pieces, (which I think is a bad thing for everyone, it's difficult to nail down particular points), and most of them are talking about the precedent of Panama and Noriega, but the information is so scattered that, coupled with the inability to accept anything that comes out of admin mouths as being true or not makes it difficult to follow, which makes me think parsing all this is baasically a fool's errand.
Further to our earlier discussion about Fiona Hill's testimony, this is from a new piece by Anne Applebaum in the Atlantic yesterday headlined "Trump's 'American Dominance' May Leave us with Nothing". Gift link to the whole article follows.
Back in 2019, Fiona Hill, a National Security Council official in the first Trump administration, testified to a House committee that Russians pushing the creation of spheres of influence had been offering to somehow “swap” Venezuela, their closest ally in Latin America, for Ukraine. Since then, the notion that international relations should promote great-power dominance, not universal values or networks of allies, has spread from Moscow to Washington. The administration’s new National Security Strategy outlines a plan to dominate the Americas, enigmatically describing U.S. policy in the Western Hemisphere as “Enlist and Expand,” and downplaying threats from China and Russia. Trump has also issued threats to Denmark, Panama, and Canada, all allies whose sovereignty we now challenge.
Oh my God, you think nothing this administration does can still shock you, and then you see this in today's NYT:
On the fifth anniversary of the pro-Trump mob attack on the Capitol, the Trump administration created a new page on the official White House website that represented the president’s most brazen bid yet to rewrite the history of the Jan. 6 riot with false claims aimed at absolving him of responsibility. The site blames Capitol Police officers, who defended lawmakers that day, for starting the assault; Democrats, who were the rioters’ main targets, for failing to prevent it; and former Vice President Mike Pence, who rejected falsehoods about the 2020 election, for allowing the results to be certified.
Controlling Venezuela is aimed at making money - he hopes to be paid to bestow oil rights. Kidnapping Maduro is to encourage foreign presidents to toady to him and to bribe him.
Greenland is a greatness project - he wants his legacy to include expanding the territory of the United States
In reality, Venezuela doesn't traffic significant amounts of illegal drugs to the USA - look at the map. The US doesn't need to own Greenland to meet its security needs: Denmark has always co-operated with the US. But facts about his purported justifications are irrelevant to him, because those justifications are not his real reasons.
bc, I’m glad your reasoning has more to do with conditions in Venezuela than with your trust in the current administration.
I'm hoping bc will tell us what her reasoning is (or will be) about the menacing of Greenland (or its takeover), given her extraordinary comments about the US occupation in WW2, bearing in mind for example that Greenland has been Danish longer than the United States has existed. Not to mention that 85% of the Greenland population (which is 56,000) have rejected the suggestion that they should be part of the USA. And an opinion about the comments by Steven Miller about this issue would also be welcome.
It’s becoming clear through statements by Rubio and Miller, that the goal is hemispheric dominance by the US for the sake of dominance.
I've been saying since about February that the actions of the administration make some sort of weird sense if you assume the goal is Donald, First of His Name, Emperor of the Americas. There are lots of parallels to historical empires. Vassal states are to produce raw materials and consume manufactured goods. Citizens of the vassal states don't easily acquire citizenship in the dominant country.
Perhaps not all of the Americas, though. Like the historical Monroe Doctrine, Trump's version is very heavily Atlantic- and Caribbean-centric. There is an interesting test case: a shiny new deep-water port built by China opened in Chancay, Peru late in 2024. Bolivia has already signed a deal to increase their lithium production and ship it to China through that port. Estimates are that very soon there will be a million shipping containers per year of consumer goods shipped directly to South America through Chancay. There also appear to be lots of EVs going there as well in big roll-on/roll-off ships.
Somehow I’m in the spam bucket after a comment with no links or anything else I can imagine would flag it.
Freed it. Spam filters are the magic sauce in commercial blogging software. Good ones make sites usable. The companies don't reveal how it works, so there's no reliable way to warn people about what not to do. That's actually understandable: if the spam-detection algorithms were revealed, the spammers would be working even harder to find ways to defeat them.
It's becoming clear through statements by Rubio and Miller, that the goal is hemispheric dominance by the US for the sake of dominance. Of course, there's no commitment to freedom or elected government--they oppose that here and they sure don't support it elsewhere. Trump, in rare bursts of honesty, has stated his motive: he sees money for himself. He has been planning for a while now to broker a deal with oil companies to give them access to Venezuela's oil and he will want a percentage for himself beyond the money already paid to his election campaign.
"And Miller’s observations about what makes the world go around is how we get world wars. The man is a cancer on the nation."
I some sense Miller is right. The real questions is - how do you use the power you have? What kind of world do you want to live in? How do you maintain power and have some measure of influence over what happens around the world?
Miller's problem is that he sees the realities of strength, force, and power to mean that might makes right. You simply take what you want because you can without really thinking through what the long-term repercussions of your actions are.
GftNC's Atlantic link includes some discussion of this - how the world order post-WWII has led to wealth, prosperity, peace, and freedom to degrees never seen in human history. That's not to say it's all been perfect - far from it. But it's been better overall than ever before.
If you want to be the bully that everyone wants to kill, even if they're afraid to say so until they think they have a decent chance, and you want to live in a world that is a mix of chaos and repression, depending on where you are, I guess you can buy into Miller's worldview. But you might change your mind when you're eventually dragged through the streets and ripped to pieces.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “2026, as f**ked up as 2025”
ICE "agents" are all thugs. Their MAGAt apologists are all scumbags. That is all.
--TP
"
It seems that what used to be disqualifications are now job requirements for federal agents.
"Video of the shooting, obtained by the Minnesota Reformer, shows a SUV stopped at an angle in the street as a pickup truck with emergency lights on approaches and stops in front of it. Masked ICE agents exited the truck and immediately ordered the woman to get out. As the officers started to pull on the door handles of the SUV, the woman backed the SUV up and then started to pull away, forcing an ICE officer who had stepped in front of the driver-side bumper out of the way. The officer drew his gun and fired three shots in quick succession into the car. The SUV continued down the street a short distance before crashing."
ICE Shoots and Kills Woman in Minneapolis: Video shows ICE officers were trying to pull the woman out of her car when she started to drive away, leading an officer to fire three shots through her window.
"
Their president of course. Eyes give fake news.
"
I just watched a video of an ICE agent shooting dead a woman in her car, in Minnesota.
Then I read a statement about the shooting from President Trump, who claims that he's watched the video and it shows that she "violently, willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE Officer who seems to have shot her in self defense".
The video is readily available online. It clearly shows that the Officer was in no danger of being hit by her slow-moving vehicle. He fires three shots, one of them through the very corner of her windscreen - the bullet-hole is on video - the others through the side window, which appears to have been open.
Who are the Rs going to believe? Their president, or their eyes?
"
And I am happy to announce that I will be continuing my habit of posting comments which contain no less than one grammar, spelling, orthography or stylistic mistake in the new year ...
"
Regarding " narcoterrorism", apart from the obvious Netflix reference (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcos), I always feel that these compound words are coined because they roll of the tongue so easily and thus become popular.
Other examples are:
Islamo-fascism
Islamo-gauchisme
"
Pro Bono:
Trump wants four things:
That's a perfect diagnosis of He, Trump. What I'd like to hear in addition is a diagnosis of those Americans who suffer from Trump Worship Syndrome.
For all I know, TWS sufferers may not actually disagree with Pro Bono's list. They might merely not care about it because they have a list of things that their Orange Jesus is doing for them. It would be interesting to know what's on that list.
Alternatively, TWS sufferers might in fact dispute Pro Bono's diagnosis. It would be fun to hear one of them do so, if we had one commenting here.
--TP
"
bc, just a short note to thank you for answering. I'm getting most of my information from podcasts as opposed to written pieces, (which I think is a bad thing for everyone, it's difficult to nail down particular points), and most of them are talking about the precedent of Panama and Noriega, but the information is so scattered that, coupled with the inability to accept anything that comes out of admin mouths as being true or not makes it difficult to follow, which makes me think parsing all this is baasically a fool's errand.
"
No worries, MC. I appreciate the assistance.
"
Now I can see it, but it still has “awaiting approval” or whatever the exact wording is.
I didn't notice that unspamming it left it waiting for approval, rather than just releasing it completely.
"
Further to our earlier discussion about Fiona Hill's testimony, this is from a new piece by Anne Applebaum in the Atlantic yesterday headlined "Trump's 'American Dominance' May Leave us with Nothing". Gift link to the whole article follows.
Back in 2019, Fiona Hill, a National Security Council official in the first Trump administration, testified to a House committee that Russians pushing the creation of spheres of influence had been offering to somehow “swap” Venezuela, their closest ally in Latin America, for Ukraine. Since then, the notion that international relations should promote great-power dominance, not universal values or networks of allies, has spread from Moscow to Washington. The administration’s new National Security Strategy outlines a plan to dominate the Americas, enigmatically describing U.S. policy in the Western Hemisphere as “Enlist and Expand,” and downplaying threats from China and Russia. Trump has also issued threats to Denmark, Panama, and Canada, all allies whose sovereignty we now challenge.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/01/trumps-american-dominance-may-leave-us-with-nothing/685503/?gift=cx0iluuWx4Cg7JjlT8ugCchlIvK22pg7_84-w9eIkzs&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share
"
The memes are on the Maduro...
The EU is upset because the water bottle Maduro is holding doesn't have an attached cap.
"
Oh my God, you think nothing this administration does can still shock you, and then you see this in today's NYT:
On the fifth anniversary of the pro-Trump mob attack on the Capitol, the Trump administration created a new page on the official White House website that represented the president’s most brazen bid yet to rewrite the history of the Jan. 6 riot with false claims aimed at absolving him of responsibility.
The site blames Capitol Police officers, who defended lawmakers that day, for starting the assault; Democrats, who were the rioters’ main targets, for failing to prevent it; and former Vice President Mike Pence, who rejected falsehoods about the 2020 election, for allowing the results to be certified.
"
Trump wants four things:
Controlling Venezuela is aimed at making money - he hopes to be paid to bestow oil rights. Kidnapping Maduro is to encourage foreign presidents to toady to him and to bribe him.
Greenland is a greatness project - he wants his legacy to include expanding the territory of the United States
In reality, Venezuela doesn't traffic significant amounts of illegal drugs to the USA - look at the map. The US doesn't need to own Greenland to meet its security needs: Denmark has always co-operated with the US. But facts about his purported justifications are irrelevant to him, because those justifications are not his real reasons.
"
The memes are on the Maduro-asks-to-be-self-deported schtick:
"
And an opinion about the comments by Steven Miller about this issue would also be welcome.
J. K. Rowling hasn't yet admitted that Miller is the template for her Lord Voldemort character.
"
Now I can see it, but it still has "awaiting approval" or whatever the exact wording is.
"
There's also this.
https://thehardtimes.net/breaking/ice-accidentally-sends-maduro-back-to-venezuela/
Michael, my comment is still missing, which is weird. It's not that big a deal if it never shows up. Thanks for trying?
"
bc, I’m glad your reasoning has more to do with conditions in Venezuela than with your trust in the current administration.
I'm hoping bc will tell us what her reasoning is (or will be) about the menacing of Greenland (or its takeover), given her extraordinary comments about the US occupation in WW2, bearing in mind for example that Greenland has been Danish longer than the United States has existed. Not to mention that 85% of the Greenland population (which is 56,000) have rejected the suggestion that they should be part of the USA. And an opinion about the comments by Steven Miller about this issue would also be welcome.
"
Fake headline from social media:
Maduro says he’s in the country illegally, asks ICE to deport him.
Kinda appalling that, if he did, it might even work. (Although being deported to South Sudan would be only a small improvement for him.)
"
It’s becoming clear through statements by Rubio and Miller, that the goal is hemispheric dominance by the US for the sake of dominance.
I've been saying since about February that the actions of the administration make some sort of weird sense if you assume the goal is Donald, First of His Name, Emperor of the Americas. There are lots of parallels to historical empires. Vassal states are to produce raw materials and consume manufactured goods. Citizens of the vassal states don't easily acquire citizenship in the dominant country.
Perhaps not all of the Americas, though. Like the historical Monroe Doctrine, Trump's version is very heavily Atlantic- and Caribbean-centric. There is an interesting test case: a shiny new deep-water port built by China opened in Chancay, Peru late in 2024. Bolivia has already signed a deal to increase their lithium production and ship it to China through that port. Estimates are that very soon there will be a million shipping containers per year of consumer goods shipped directly to South America through Chancay. There also appear to be lots of EVs going there as well in big roll-on/roll-off ships.
"
Somehow I’m in the spam bucket after a comment with no links or anything else I can imagine would flag it.
Freed it. Spam filters are the magic sauce in commercial blogging software. Good ones make sites usable. The companies don't reveal how it works, so there's no reliable way to warn people about what not to do. That's actually understandable: if the spam-detection algorithms were revealed, the spammers would be working even harder to find ways to defeat them.
"
It's becoming clear through statements by Rubio and Miller, that the goal is hemispheric dominance by the US for the sake of dominance. Of course, there's no commitment to freedom or elected government--they oppose that here and they sure don't support it elsewhere. Trump, in rare bursts of honesty, has stated his motive: he sees money for himself. He has been planning for a while now to broker a deal with oil companies to give them access to Venezuela's oil and he will want a percentage for himself beyond the money already paid to his election campaign.
"
Somehow I'm in the spam bucket after a comment with no links or anything else I can imagine would flag it.
"
"And Miller’s observations about what makes the world go around is how we get world wars. The man is a cancer on the nation."
I some sense Miller is right. The real questions is - how do you use the power you have? What kind of world do you want to live in? How do you maintain power and have some measure of influence over what happens around the world?
Miller's problem is that he sees the realities of strength, force, and power to mean that might makes right. You simply take what you want because you can without really thinking through what the long-term repercussions of your actions are.
GftNC's Atlantic link includes some discussion of this - how the world order post-WWII has led to wealth, prosperity, peace, and freedom to degrees never seen in human history. That's not to say it's all been perfect - far from it. But it's been better overall than ever before.
If you want to be the bully that everyone wants to kill, even if they're afraid to say so until they think they have a decent chance, and you want to live in a world that is a mix of chaos and repression, depending on where you are, I guess you can buy into Miller's worldview. But you might change your mind when you're eventually dragged through the streets and ripped to pieces.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.