Maybe this is what Bannon meant when he advised King Lear Jet to flood the zone with shit.
2 weeks ago
David Brooks is too much of a coward to actually look at the evidence and try to render any judgment. Doing that would destroy his ability to find the right angle to flatten any difference and equivocate.
Meanwhile, since we were discussing who these people in masks are, and what motivates them...
Nine days later, impatience got the best of me. For the first time, I logged into USAJobs and checked my application to see if my drug test had come through. What I actually saw was so implausible, so impossible, that at first I did not understand what I was looking at.
Somehow, despite never submitting any of the paperwork they sent me—not the background check or identification info, not the domestic violence affidavit, none of it—ICE had apparently offered me a job.
According to the application portal, my pre-employment activities remained pending. And yet, it also showed that I had accepted a final job offer and that my onboarding status was “EOD”—Entered On Duty, the start of an enlistment period. I moused over the exclamation mark next to “Onboarding” and a helpful pop-up appeared. “Your EOD has occurred. Welcome to ICE!”
The other gem in this piece:
When Donald Trump took office, ICE numbered approximately 10,000. Despite this event’s lackluster attendance, their recruitment push is reportedly going well; the agency reported 12,000 new recruits in 2025, which means the agency has more new recruits than old hands. That’s the kind of growth that changes the culture of an agency.
Enjoy!*
*If you are a masochist.
2 weeks ago
Maybe they thought they would simply make their escape after having had their activist fun.
Yeah. "Activist fun." I'm sure that there are some thrill seekers sprinkled through those crowds - mostly energy drink aged males looking to prove their courage - but given all we have seen of this administrations violence and disregard for civil rights and the rule of law, most all of those folks who are showing up are there despite the danger.
Moms with young kids being so well known for seeking out potentially deadly encounters just for fun because they saw it on the internet...
Fuck that guy and his glib dismissiveness. Fuck his lack of empathy for anyone outside of his own in-group. I wish him a heavy lesson in karma.
2 weeks ago
The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity
2 weeks ago
I read this book about the border militias back when it first came out as part of a research project that I put on hiatus in favor of more focus on environmentalism and climate change.
I think the ICE and BP recruiting campaign under this administration is squarely aimed at bringing these border militias and the other racist/nativist paramilitary groups into the federal law enforcement community.
It also fits well with all of the recruitment that the alt-right and the white power folks and the Christian nationalist were doing with veterans and law enforcement. There's a lot of snuggling up going on.
Then there's this tweet from Friday, an ICE recruitment ad featuring the turn of phrase "We will have our home again" plastered over an image of a man on horseback and a stealth bomber flying in the distance. That's a reference to the song "We'll Have Our Home Again," a white supremacist anthem favored by the Proud Boys.
The song in question having been recorded by right wing folkish Odinists - the neo-pagan equivalent of the Christian Identity lowlife that were so prevalent in the MI militia scene that gave us OK City.
2 weeks ago
I'm under the impression that US Border Patrol in particular has always been a Hive of Scum and Villainy (thank you Obi Wan).
I know that there are humanitarian groups working along the southern border to provide water and other humanitarian aid to undeclared migrants in distress, and that BP has been known to destroy their caches when they find them (for one example).
I think ICE has been less gleefully punitive in their policy as an institution than has BP, but that may also be a product of my selection process for reading, so...
2 weeks ago
At first Fox was blaming all the disruptions on Antifa, but after this weekend the new Enemy of the People is "organized gangs of wine moms."
Everyone please update your codices accordingly. This has been your Two Minutes of Hate.
2 weeks ago
Charles WT - have you read the BJ AI series that Carlo Graziani authored?
[Should be read, and not just left to an LLM to synopsize ;) ]
2 weeks ago
Here's the other half of the revolutionary agenda that MAGA/P2025 is pursuing that will continue to obstruct any rebalancing that a flipped congress may attempt to legislate. It's going to take years for this bolus to pass.
When Mr. Trump’s policies are temporarily blocked by district court judges, appeals courts can issue “administrative stays,” temporary rulings that effectively reverse the lower court’s orders and let contested policies take effect. Administrative stays are supposed to be temporary but can remain in place for weeks or even months. In many cases, they are replaced by a more lasting stay, known as a “stay pending appeal,” that remains in place while the appellate court considers the case.
The Times analysis tracked both kinds of stays, as well as the final rulings that appellate courts made after considering arguments from both sides.
Mr. Trump’s nominees sided with him consistently across all three kinds of rulings, voting in his favor 97 percent of the time on administrative stays, 88 percent of the time on stays pending appeal, and 100 percent of the time on final rulings.
Even if the Dems retake the reins in both the White House and Congress, these judges will be in place to flip this behavior and obstruct implementation of any counter-agenda.
This is why the Project 2025 crowd have continued to support this administration. Judges get lifetime appointments, and they are counting on their conservative Christian judges to prevent any socially liberal changes from being implemented, and to fast-track any dismantling of the changes they cannot prevent once the GOP manages to regain control of either of the other branches for however long.
MAGA/P2025 believe an alt-history version of the US where the founding fathers were Christian nationalist, and We the People refers only to the "legacy Americans" who are Judeo-Christian western civilization chauvinists. No one else deserves representation.
3 weeks ago
hsh - Well, sure. The question is – how many people are so motivated? I know this crew plays almost exclusively to their base, but everyone else is seeing it, too. Everyone, the base and otherwise, is seeing the other videos.
But Vance et al act as though the first-person video from the shooter is a slam dunk of some sort. Do they really believe that? Or is it just a performance to bolster the belief that it is in the minds of the willing?
At this point, given what we have observed over the last year, we should probably conclude that this administration and its supporters in Congress have become a revolutionary government. The loyal will support the revolution, and as long as the local and federal authorities continue to treat the administration as legitimate, they will be used as tools of the revolution. Any local or state opposition will be treated as an attack on the sovereignty of the president, and they will continue to wield the sanction of state violence against those people until they are forced to stop.
They believe that if they have 3% of the nation under arms for their side, they can force their will. Veterans and active duty military comprise 6% of the population, and nearly a quarter of all law enforcement. Military and law enforcement voted 70/30 in favor of Orange Julius. About a third of the US is still on board with all that the administration is doing.
A third of the population that contains two thirds of the people under arms in the nation is a potent revolutionary force.
We can vote them out, sure, but I think that will force a constitutional crisis with a lot of unknowns, and that revolutionary force will remain.
3 weeks ago
If a viewer is motivated to believe Ross, then they will take the moment where the phone jerks upward as an indication that Ross was hit by the vehicle. Viewed in isolation, that video would allow someone to believe the narrative reported by Noem and Vance.
I just watched a documentary about women war correspondents in WWII. One of the current war correspondents said that when she arrives at a scene of conflict, one of the first things she does is look for someone she identifies as being her equivalent in that place and situation to give her a point-of-view she can connect with.
MAGA's version of that is to put themselves in the shoes of the ICE/BP enforcers and impute good faith to them and bad faith to the people who are obstacles to the enforcers. With that as a starting point, this video will justify Ross violence in their minds.
The converse, that ICE/BP are acting in bad faith, is too disturbing to contemplate.
3 weeks ago
You know it's bad when you have Bulgarian friends checking in with you and saying how much they are glad that they did not emigrate to the US - all while worrying about Putin in their own back yard.
3 weeks ago
Plato is out at Texas A&M because of the Symposium, not the Republic. It's Aristophanes' speech about the Myth of the Androgyne.
More news about the sort of people that ICE is happy to have working for it:
https://www.texasobserver.org/ice-prosecutor-racist-account-back-at-immigration-court/
Maybe this is what Bannon meant when he advised King Lear Jet to flood the zone with shit.
David Brooks is too much of a coward to actually look at the evidence and try to render any judgment. Doing that would destroy his ability to find the right angle to flatten any difference and equivocate.
Meanwhile, since we were discussing who these people in masks are, and what motivates them...
https://web.archive.org/web/20260113135117/https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2026/01/ice-recruitment-minneapolis-shooting.html
The other gem in this piece:
When Donald Trump took office, ICE numbered approximately 10,000. Despite this event’s lackluster attendance, their recruitment push is reportedly going well; the agency reported 12,000 new recruits in 2025, which means the agency has more new recruits than old hands. That’s the kind of growth that changes the culture of an agency.
Enjoy!*
*If you are a masochist.
Maybe they thought they would simply make their escape after having had their activist fun.
Yeah. "Activist fun." I'm sure that there are some thrill seekers sprinkled through those crowds - mostly energy drink aged males looking to prove their courage - but given all we have seen of this administrations violence and disregard for civil rights and the rule of law, most all of those folks who are showing up are there despite the danger.
Moms with young kids being so well known for seeking out potentially deadly encounters just for fun because they saw it on the internet...
Fuck that guy and his glib dismissiveness. Fuck his lack of empathy for anyone outside of his own in-group. I wish him a heavy lesson in karma.
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity
I read this book about the border militias back when it first came out as part of a research project that I put on hiatus in favor of more focus on environmentalism and climate change.
https://uapress.arizona.edu/book/the-law-into-their-own-hands
I think the ICE and BP recruiting campaign under this administration is squarely aimed at bringing these border militias and the other racist/nativist paramilitary groups into the federal law enforcement community.
It also fits well with all of the recruitment that the alt-right and the white power folks and the Christian nationalist were doing with veterans and law enforcement. There's a lot of snuggling up going on.
More fun!:
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/trump-administration-posts-echo-rhetoric-linked-to-extremist-groups
The song in question having been recorded by right wing folkish Odinists - the neo-pagan equivalent of the Christian Identity lowlife that were so prevalent in the MI militia scene that gave us OK City.
I'm under the impression that US Border Patrol in particular has always been a Hive of Scum and Villainy (thank you Obi Wan).
I know that there are humanitarian groups working along the southern border to provide water and other humanitarian aid to undeclared migrants in distress, and that BP has been known to destroy their caches when they find them (for one example).
I think ICE has been less gleefully punitive in their policy as an institution than has BP, but that may also be a product of my selection process for reading, so...
At first Fox was blaming all the disruptions on Antifa, but after this weekend the new Enemy of the People is "organized gangs of wine moms."
Everyone please update your codices accordingly. This has been your Two Minutes of Hate.
Charles WT - have you read the BJ AI series that Carlo Graziani authored?
https://balloon-juice.com/category/science-and-technology/artificial-intelligence-carlo/
[Should be read, and not just left to an LLM to synopsize ;) ]
Here's the other half of the revolutionary agenda that MAGA/P2025 is pursuing that will continue to obstruct any rebalancing that a flipped congress may attempt to legislate. It's going to take years for this bolus to pass.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/11/us/politics/trumps-appeals-court-judges.html?unlocked_article_code=1.DlA.MMri.p_Ld7V7iZp4E&smid=url-share
Even if the Dems retake the reins in both the White House and Congress, these judges will be in place to flip this behavior and obstruct implementation of any counter-agenda.
This is why the Project 2025 crowd have continued to support this administration. Judges get lifetime appointments, and they are counting on their conservative Christian judges to prevent any socially liberal changes from being implemented, and to fast-track any dismantling of the changes they cannot prevent once the GOP manages to regain control of either of the other branches for however long.
MAGA/P2025 believe an alt-history version of the US where the founding fathers were Christian nationalist, and We the People refers only to the "legacy Americans" who are Judeo-Christian western civilization chauvinists. No one else deserves representation.
hsh - Well, sure. The question is – how many people are so motivated? I know this crew plays almost exclusively to their base, but everyone else is seeing it, too. Everyone, the base and otherwise, is seeing the other videos.
But Vance et al act as though the first-person video from the shooter is a slam dunk of some sort. Do they really believe that? Or is it just a performance to bolster the belief that it is in the minds of the willing?
At this point, given what we have observed over the last year, we should probably conclude that this administration and its supporters in Congress have become a revolutionary government. The loyal will support the revolution, and as long as the local and federal authorities continue to treat the administration as legitimate, they will be used as tools of the revolution. Any local or state opposition will be treated as an attack on the sovereignty of the president, and they will continue to wield the sanction of state violence against those people until they are forced to stop.
They believe that if they have 3% of the nation under arms for their side, they can force their will. Veterans and active duty military comprise 6% of the population, and nearly a quarter of all law enforcement. Military and law enforcement voted 70/30 in favor of Orange Julius. About a third of the US is still on board with all that the administration is doing.
A third of the population that contains two thirds of the people under arms in the nation is a potent revolutionary force.
We can vote them out, sure, but I think that will force a constitutional crisis with a lot of unknowns, and that revolutionary force will remain.
If a viewer is motivated to believe Ross, then they will take the moment where the phone jerks upward as an indication that Ross was hit by the vehicle. Viewed in isolation, that video would allow someone to believe the narrative reported by Noem and Vance.
I just watched a documentary about women war correspondents in WWII. One of the current war correspondents said that when she arrives at a scene of conflict, one of the first things she does is look for someone she identifies as being her equivalent in that place and situation to give her a point-of-view she can connect with.
MAGA's version of that is to put themselves in the shoes of the ICE/BP enforcers and impute good faith to them and bad faith to the people who are obstacles to the enforcers. With that as a starting point, this video will justify Ross violence in their minds.
The converse, that ICE/BP are acting in bad faith, is too disturbing to contemplate.
You know it's bad when you have Bulgarian friends checking in with you and saying how much they are glad that they did not emigrate to the US - all while worrying about Putin in their own back yard.
Plato is out at Texas A&M because of the Symposium, not the Republic. It's Aristophanes' speech about the Myth of the Androgyne.
Too gay for Texas.