This is insanity:
I restarted the visa process and returned to the same immigration office at the San Diego border, since they had processed my visa before and I was familiar with it. Hours passed, with many confused opinions about my case. The officer I spoke to was kind but told me that, due to my previous issues, I needed to apply for my visa through the consulate. I told her I hadn’t been aware I needed to apply that way, but had no problem doing it.
Then she said something strange: “You didn’t do anything wrong. You are not in trouble, you are not a criminal.”
I remember thinking: Why would she say that? Of course I’m not a criminal!
She then told me they had to send me back to Canada. That didn’t concern me; I assumed I would simply book a flight home. But as I sat searching for flights, a man approached me.
“Come with me,” he said.
There was no explanation, no warning. He led me to a room, took my belongings from my hands and ordered me to put my hands against the wall. A woman immediately began patting me down. The commands came rapid-fire, one after another, too fast to process.
They took my shoes and pulled out my shoelaces.
“What are you doing? What is happening?” I asked.
“You are being detained.”
“I don’t understand. What does that mean? For how long?”
“I don’t know.”
That would be the response to nearly every question I would ask over the next two weeks: “I don’t know.”
My first thought was “Can you imagine trying to get this through IRB?”
My second thought was this is a white pretty lady from Canada who did EVERYTHING right. And this is how she was treated. We’re never going to see those people shipped to El Salvador again. This is crazy and terrifying.
If we do recover from this, ICE and Homeland Security need to be abolished and their legal duties redistributed to either existing or a new agency, and every single working there currently needs to be forbidden from working in the new departments. Clean start with new people. Hopefully people with a fucking moral and ethical code.
Steve LaBonne
Foreign nationals are just where they’re trying things out to see what they can get away with. It would be very naive to think that it will stop with them. We will see citizens disappeared, probably sooner rather than later. In fact I would be totally unsurprised to find out that it has already happened.
cope
I read the article and it’s not until near the end that she ties the treatment and lengthy incarceration of people to the fact that these are for-profit prisons paid by the number of people they hold. Our country really sucks at some things.
Steve LaBonne
@cope: More things every day! That’s how we become great again.
Lapassionara
@cope: talk about a perverse way to incentivize. Just a nightmare.
Josie
@cope:
I have always thought that for profit prisons was a terrible idea. Little did I know how terrible they could be. This is all such a nightmare.
TBone
@cope: for-profit prison orgs’ political donations (exactly what you’d expect):
https://www.opensecrets.org/industries/indus?ind=G7000
This graph in particular
Josie
@Lapassionara:
Ha! the same word to describe the indescribable.
Parfigliano
Wouldn’t hurt to maybe not look forward for a change and instead look back and prosecute a few govt officials.
Another Scott
There were stories a few weeks ago that ICE offices were given daily quotas on arrests. Aren’t meeting the numbers? Arrest someone anyway!
I assume that is what is driving a lot of this, but could be wrong.
Grr…
Best wishes,
Scott.
bbleh
Also, some of them are just not very bright and have a sadistic streak a mile wide.
Ksmiami
I’ve come to the conclusion that we cannot exist as a nation with the current levels of ignorance allowed.
Captain C
Re-upping this from a post of mine from a thread last night:
sentient ai from the future
So uh, who exactly are these private prison groups hiring to be guards, anyway? Like, ICE and all manner of police departments are hiring and have been for several years now. Who exactly is taking the positions with a private company then?
opiejeanne
That was the first thing I read this morning, John. Absolutely horrifying, absolute filth running things now.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@cope:
Au contraire! We’re great at doing exactly what was outlined in the article and how money in politics as TBone pointed out in #6 is the crucial enabler of the outsourcing of government functions for profit.
Mission Accomplished!
//
The Other Bob
When will folks start using second amendment remedies against ICE? These thugs showing up in plain clothes are flirting with a bullet.
WTFGhost
One thing we do need, at the very least, is a Nuremberg Exception to every OLC memo. “Please remember, if we would have prosecuted a Nazi, low level, or high level, for this, you are expected to refuse to perform this order, and loudly announce to all of your compatriots the precise reasons we would have hanged the eff out of a Nazi who did this. If this order concerns a prisoner, you are expected to protect the prisoner, with force where appropriate.”
(I believe, per UCMJ, if you see a prisoner being mistreated, you are not to merely “report” it, you are to cause that behavior to stop. I don’t think that means “ask nicely, then, speak somewhat harshly,” but I never served, so I’m not sure.)
WTFGhost
@The Other Bob: Trump has thought of that. He wants to have full military raids.
the pollyanna from hell
My reference to Jeanette Vizguerra below would have done better here. I’ll just add having her arrested by ICE hurts me also because I know and love her children.
No Nym
@WTFGhost: Why would the UCMJ be in effect in a private prison environment? Not challenging you, just not sure I understand your comment.
Steven Holmes
My Son is marrying a a lovely Norwegian it the next year or so, and there has been some discussion about where to have a ceremony and celebration, i think Norway looks better right now.
tam1MI
LA is supposed to be hosting the Olympics in 2028. Think any countries will let their athletes attend if the USA can’t guarantee their safety?
Ridnik Chrome
@cope: If I could be King of America for a day, one of the first things I would do would be to abolish for-profit prisons.
lowtechcyclist
This is just one little detail from the article that perfectly illustrates the insanity of having private prisons:
That’s the level they’ll go to, to squeeze a few extra bucks of profit out of helpless captives.
Good thing prostitution is still illegal in most of the U.S.; I could see them renting female prisoners out as “comfort women.
ETA:
@Ridnik Chrome:
You and me both.
No Nym
I do think it is interesting that in the propaganda film they made of the El Salvadoran prison deportations, faces of prisoners were forced down and faces of the prison guards were covered. Trump’s people don’t want anyone to know who the parties are on either side of that story. Why El Salvador? Weren’t these supposedly Venezuelan gang members? I am rapidly finding myself unable to make a coherent story out of what I read and see, which I guess is the point of all the chaos.
Baud
@No Nym:
I believe Venezuela won’t accept them.
lowtechcyclist
@sentient ai from the future:
I’m guessing the people that no police force will take, no matter how badly they need the manpower.
JoyceH
Does anyone else think that Trump’s turn against Canada is too abrupt to bring even MAGA along with him? I saw a clip of an interview where he was saying that Canada is “so nasty” to us. No specifics of what Canada is doing that is so nasty. After decades of friendship, can his supporters just accept this about face without wondering?
Betty Cracker
@Another Scott: I think you’re right. I read somewhere that ICE stopped reporting arrest numbers last month because after the initial push, they were smaller than they were during Biden’s time. So they’re scooping up everyone they can, no matter how flimsy the pretext. It’s monstrous.
Also, I gotta think the regime’s behavior will absolutely hammer economies that depend on foreign tourism. Florida will be in a world of shit. We have tons of Canadian snowbirds and international visitors, and the state budget depends on fleecing them in lieu of a state income tax.
chrisanthemama
JFC–that is completely Kafkaesque.
Old School
@Captain C:
A Google search turns up a few articles, but they are mostly about players and fans getting visas. Not them being thrown into detention.
The Red Pen
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that this person was Canadian. Trump has a bizarre obsession with Canada.
CaseyL
@JoyceH:
His supporters would accept as truth his claim that he is Jesus Reborn.
Anonymous At Work
I run an IRB. I use Milgram and Zimbardo in my lectures. However, I most closely tie what Republicans have been doing to the Nuremberg Trials, specifically the one against IG Farben and the one against Krupp where a company was seized without compensation (that no German wanted to buy) and Board of Directors members were sentenced to hard labor for profiting off of crimes against humanity.
Betty Cracker
@JoyceH: Yes. Rachel Maddow showed a clip of a panel of MI Trump voters being asked a bunch of questions about the first couple of months of Trump 2.0. Don’t know how representative they are, but they were appalled by lots of things, particularly how Trump is treating Canada.
I was at a family thing recently that was attended by a number of small-c conservatives, some of whom probably voted for Trump. They were mad as hell about the mass firings of federal workers and Trump’s dumb threats against Canada. Anecdata, but my sense is only the hardcore cultists are along for this ride.
karen gail
It really shouldn’t surprise anyone that something like this is happening; after all the “good white christian” people had no problem with treatment of Native Tribes, had no problem (until after the fact) of putting people in interment camps during WWI and WWII based on country they came from. Let’s not forget that we are and were willing to look the other way at what was happening in military prison camps until people posted pictures of abuse nor the number of non-white people who end up dead or in prison for things that white people get away with.
The Red Pen
@JoyceH: I think it’s going to hurt Trump. People like Canada. It was easy to “other” minorities but Canadians generally look and act like Americans so white Canadians are hard to demonize for the Trumpers.
Years ago, during one of the perennial discussions of “illegals,” I read a comment from a woman who said that she was an illegal alien nanny in Los Angeles for many years before getting a Green Card. She was a white Canadian. She said that the topic of illegal immigrants would come up pretty frequently, it being Southern California and all, and she would often volunteer that she herself was an illegal immigrant. More than once people just flat out told her: “We’re not talking about you.“
pacem appellant
My wife is attending a Romance conference next month. Several British authors have already pulled out. Because why would they put themselves at risk? The US done fucked up hard last November. Even my noisy MAGA father is being silent. There won’t be anything left to save in 2028. America is finished. RIP.
mapanghimagsik
@Betty Cracker:
We had a Florida vacation planned. Now were staying in State
rikyrah
See the thing is…
Why not just have her book a plane to Canada in front of you.
lowtechcyclist
I’m really looking forward to the irony of any commemorations this May of the 80th anniversary of our victory over Nazism in WWII.
coin operated
I work with several Canadians (most of them in Toronto) and you better believe every last one of them have heard of Jasmine Mooney. Talk about an own-goal…they picked a blonde-haired, blue-eyed young woman for their deportation fuckery, and the damsel-in-distress news cycles works just as well in Canada as it does here.
No Nym
@rikyrah: I think the cruelty of putting this woman in hell for two weeks was the point.
Authoritarians have a sadistic streak. If I were a Canadian or really from anywhere else, I would not risk coming here now.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Josie: I agree. For-profit prisons are like for-profit education. Every dollar spent on the institution’s mission is a dollar out of the share-holder’s pocket. Lots of room for abuse.
Anyway
@rikyrah:
yes, they could have just denied her entry but instead detained her for over 10 days. that’s nuts! Stephen Miller must be so thrilled …
Alce _e_ardillo
rikyrah
If you want them out the country, and you have them on a VISA LIST -YOU KNOW WHERE THEY ARE.
then send them notification that they have, what, 15 days to get out of the country.
Period.
Alce _e_ardillo
@Anyway: You can just see him fapping…..
oldgold
@karen gail: Trump’s antipathy towards Canada is strange. An antipathy, at least a couple of years ago, not shared by most Americans
“In a 2023 Gallup poll, Canada was ranked by American respondents as their favorite nation in the entire world, with 88% support—ahead of Great Britain, France, and Japan.”
rikyrah
@Another Scott:
Imma say this with my whole chest….
they could round up as many as they want…IN RED STATES…
But then, they would be disrupting RED STATE EMPLOYERS OF THE UNDOCUMENTED.
Melancholy Jaques
@Betty Cracker:
Were they surprised Trump was hurting people other than the people that they wanted him to hurt?
Jay
@sentient ai from the future:
So, the For Profit Prison MO is:
Find a shitty county with mass unemployment, rural and remote, with low land values.
Bring in big outside Contractors(duh) to build the Prison cheap and fast.
Hire locals for $1 more than what Walmart pays and “train” them in house, mostly through online video’s.
Do not provide any medical, dental or psychological care.
Charge inmates usury rates for everything from dental floss to phone calls.
Sell their labour cheap and dirty, while “paying them” just enough per hour to make it “legal” ($0.01 per hour).
Bill the Feds and State $400K annually per warm body.
Report earnings of $3.6 billion dollars a year.
Jay
@Alce _e_ardillo:
Current Events.
BellaPea
I saw the visuals of the South Americans. being deported and was horrified. Why are they dressing these guys up in identical clothing and shaving their heads, for God’s sake? Shades of the Nazi prison camps. And speaking of private prisons, Tennessee has four Core Civics private prisons, and their records are shameful and have been for years. R legislators refuse to let any kind of reform or watchdog programs exist. It is supremely shitty.
Betty Cracker
@Melancholy Jaques: Mostly they were pissed that he wasn’t doing anything to bring prices down.
Leto
John Oliver did a lengthy report on for profit prisons two weeks ago. YouTube, 24 mins.
Betty Cracker
Speaking of hardcore Trump cultists, I’ve mentioned in comments our neighbor is one. Luckily, our properties are separated by fairly dense vegetation and an alligator-infested slough, so we don’t interact often. But he said hello to me while I was opening the gate yesterday, and he was wearing a cult t-shirt that featured a photo of Trump with a raised fist and bloody ear. The slogan was something like “God blocked the bullet for a reason.” These people are fucking nuts.
Melancholy Jaques
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
When I was young & idealistic to a fault, I really believed in the public-private partnership policies that was all the rage because they promised efficiency & greater freedom. Plenty of old guard Democrats argued that it was a prescription for corruption, but they were the old guard, what did they know about the future?
I was young &
idealisticstupid.Melancholy Jaques
@Betty Cracker:
So they were really stupid.
Steve LaBonne
@Betty Cracker: No doubt an “Evangelical Christian” who never darkens the door of a church.
Steve LaBonne
@Melancholy Jaques: Pay your own employees directly for a service or pay a profit-taking middleman to hire people to provide it. Golly, I just can’t decide which one is more efficient. (But I definitely know which one generates more campaign contributions.)
Another Scott
@Betty Cracker: I was flipping channels on the radio this AM and briefly heard some commenter on C-Span say that the only people upset with what DOGE [sic] is doing are probably personally fleecing the government.
There are too many people like that out there… :-(
Best wishes,
Scott.
Gretchen
@Steve LaBonne: since they won’t give us a list of the people on the flights, there’s no reason at all to believe that there were no citizens caught up in the action.
Steve LaBonne
@Gretchen: I fear you are very correct.
p.a.
“The eighteen-year-old Erika S. went out on to the streets of Hamburg shortly after the announcement of Hitler’s death to see how people were reacting. ‘Strange,’ she reported, ‘nobody wept or even looked sad, although the beloved, honoured Leader, whom the total idiots regarded almost as a God, is no longer alive . . . Strange . . .”
Excerpt From
The Third Reich at War
Richard J. Evans
https://books.apple.com/us/book/the-third-reich-at-war/id357995171
This material may be protected by copyright.
Gretchen
@Betty Cracker: That’s an especially nefarious explanation for the deportations. If they’re having trouble meeting their numbers, scooping up people who shouldn’t be arrested would bump the numbers. But it would eventually come out that they shouldn’t have been arrested – unless they’re hidden in an El Salvadoran prison.
Spc
@Captain C: I’ve been thinking the same thing.
Ksmiami
@Jay: let the midnight special shine a light on me…
Citizen Alan
@sentient ai from the future: Based on my one-time representation of some guards at GEO Group in Holly Springs, MS, who were subjected to random strip searches because their boss was an asshole. My impression was that they were mostly decent people, but they were, to a person, lucky to have gotten a high school diploma (assuming they did; there may have been one or two with a GED).
prostratedragon
@Another Scott: Might be what’s driving the groundlevel officers, but the point of that quota demand would be precisely to normalize.
lowtechcyclist
@Gretchen:
I guess it depends on whether they actually kept records of who they deported (unlike last time with the child separations) and whether they give up those records when the courts demand them.
Absent those records, we’d have no way of ever finding out if they just opened the plane doors and pushed a bunch of them out while flying over the Gulf of America.
prostratedragon
@WTFGhost: It can cost your career. You still might not regret speaking up.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
Apparently, perpetual presidential spoiler Jill Stein got arrested for protesting and assault in St. Louis. Sadly, she is unlikely to be deported. <- I kid. I don’t think she should be deported
https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-courts/article_6f8c95a7-b614-4fd7-8835-90b144219ea2.html#tracking-source=home-top-story
Citizen Alan
@Gretchen: I am 100% certain that when this is all over we’re gonna find that US citizens died after spending years in a Central America gulag because they skin was dark and they didn’t have their ID handy.
BellyCat
The full article in The Guardian is chilling. Profit motives galore for detentions with little or no cause and remedy withheld because there is zero oversight.
Citizen Alan
I do. I don’t even care where. Drop the treasonous witch on a deserted island in the South Pacific with a few cans of beans and no can opener.
Deputinize America
https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/trump-administration-presidency-03-19-2025#cm8g3zpp600003b6m00wpspqd
Shorter Boasberg: “If you try that again, you’re really gonna get it! I mean it this time, I’ll bust your butt!!”
Our Federal judiciary is pathetic and made up of a bunch of preening fucking cowards full of thunder, but when it comes to accountability to power, they’re collapsing in trembling, whimpering puddles of indecision.
prostratedragon
@No Nym: The Salvadoran president made a goofball inappropriate comment about the prisoners that made me think something like Condor is forming where they can find pliant governments. Which Venezuela maybe isn’t here, believe it or not.
Deputinize America
@lowtechcyclist:
Here’s my chilling thought – I can see them shipping American citizens down “by mistake”, even average white folks who protest.
prostratedragon
@The Red Pen: Maybe someone should try convincing him that Trudeau is no longer the prime minister.
lowtechcyclist
@Deputinize America:
If opposition to what they’re already doing is anemic, it would only be a matter of time.
WTFGhost
@No Nym: We already should have had that Nuremberg Exception stamped on every OLC memo before we elected W. Now, we’ve trained lots of people to be the kind of people we used to hang.
Near as I can tell, that’s why Obama couldn’t order prosecutions. A memo from the OLC is considered binding, unless a court has specifically overruled it. For Obama to prosecute torturers, he’d have had to prosecute people who were following orders the highest authority (barring court review) had declared lawful. You know McConnell was slavering at the bit for that fight.
So: because we trusted an incurious clod who lavished attention on the press, which totally wasn’t in the tank for him, the twin towers fell. Because he was an incurious clod, he was, unsurprisingly, a coward when he was caught out, and he fought with a coward’s weapons, including lies and incipient fascism. Were there any walls preventing Trump, they fell during W. Also, Moscow Mitch! You *OWN* this! Suck it, you despicable excuse for an unflushed (let’s cut this off right here, it’s a gross expansion on “the best part of him ran down his mama’s leg.”)
(I’m sorry – late with the pain meds, and the pain causes… interesting imagery sometimes. Was Eraserhead a kind-of cliche movie for you too, like the kind of dreams you had over the past few weeks patched together with some anxiety over impending fatherhood?)
prostratedragon
@pacem appellant: There is still a Germany. It is even fairly well-regarded (though maybe teased a bit sometimes) and very prosperous.
prostratedragon
@lowtechcyclist: Lord, less than two months off.
Melancholy Jaques
@Steve LaBonne:
Like the undertaker at the beginning of The Godfather, I believed in America.
WTFGhost
Random thought: could you flashmob call/fax/email/postcard bomb-ardments, like “What is your endgame in supporting Trump’s unfettered, uncontrolled access to Putin with no oversight? Did you make a side deal with Putin for readouts of his calls?”
“Now that DOGe is destroying the payments system for Social Security and Medicaid, do you have something to say to impacted residents of your district, now, so everyone can see what your messaging will be? Are you going with Trump and Musk’s excuse that it must be fraud, or abuse, or that a person’s livelihood is wasteful?”
“How many aviation accidents does it take, and how many bodies will need to pile up, before we think Musk and Trump are hiding things at the FAA? A specific number, on bodies, would be appreciated – every life is so very precious.”
opiejeanne
@pacem appellant: Louise Penny, a popular Canadian author, has said that she doesn’t feel safe here and won’t be returning until there is a dramatic change for the better.
Terry Pratchett told me his wife refused to visit the US after a couple of trips during W’s administration, because of the way they were treated entering.
prostratedragon
@Alce _e_ardillo:
Kafka.
RaflW
@No Nym: “Why El Salvador?” It is basically a state-run ‘for profit’ prison. They have capacity, a sympathetically right wing authoritarian leader, and the US pays to have these people (illegally) held there
This whole thing makes Rubio on of the worst of the intentionally criminal members of the Admin. He knows it is wrong (see above link) and does it anyway.
As I said the other day, there’s a non-zero chance that the Marco Rubio of today would have detained and ejected his own parents, in a scifi, time machine sort of situation.
prostratedragon
@Betty Cracker: Kinda like God hardened Pharaoh’s heart?
gene108
The conditions described in those detention centers reads like something out of The Gulag Archipelago regarding cold cells, lights always on, lack of privacy, disorientation due to lack of information about what’s happening to you, and inadequate supplies like beds and blankets.
NotMax
@Deputinize America
Does Stormy Daniels speak Spanish?
//
Jay
@prostratedragon:
Good luck with that.
https://www.wonkette.com/p/laura-ingraham-knows-how-broken-trumps
To no avail.
prostratedragon
@lowtechcyclist: In Argentina, tidal backwash eventually gave them away. Though of course most bodies have still not been found from those flights, it did help give reasearchers the conviction to hunt down records which, as with slave schedules, tell at least some of the story. There’s always going to be a trace.
WTFGhost
@No Nym: I’m not sure how high up it goes, but it goes pretty high that non-citizens, who are not on US ground, have limited or no rights, ref: Dred Scott for idea-stock.
So, “not on US grounds” like Gitmo sounded really really bold and evil, so El Salvador said “you’re not half as evil as we are!” so, apparently, ‘we’ said “great!”, like Tony the effing Tiger who could eff Trump for all I cared. Assuming consent and all. And, you know, furry Tony all done up manly, like Trump LOVES, and not an actual example of Panthera tigris. Because, obviously, Trump wouldn’t survive such truly macho loving.
Not that it would be sick and wrong to imagine such a thing, friends – his fans picture him as far more manly than a mere tiger named “Tony”.
(I’m sorry – but I have already laughed more this morning than I have in a week regarding the violation of a confessional sea mammal, and if you laugh, you’ll be more ready for the horrors that lie ahead! Just, uh, (don’t say ‘not at me’ only a loser says ‘not at me’)notatme AND DON’T FORGET TO TIP THE WAITSTAFF!)
(That’s both loserdom humor and permission to find my humor not entirely to your taste. Which is good, I hate it when someone says I taste f… okay, okay, fine!)
rikyrah
TC BUTLER
@todd_butler
You see how Andy Beshear couldn’t even say VP Kamala Harris’s name. Called her Trump’s opponent. That some straight up bullshit. Now that is the “moderate” that MLK was talking about.
5:35 AM · Mar 19, 2025
https://x.com/todd_butler/status/1902307976263651421
🐝 Sigmundine🐝
@Sigmundine2
I’ve noticed a deliberate belittlement, erasure & condescension toward Kamala Harris. She was thrown into an unprecedented situatio, did a tremendous job & got close to the same number of votes as Trump. I’m putting the Democratic Party on notice. Don’t disrespect Kamala Harris.
https://x.com/Sigmundine2/status/1902347678878454121
WTFGhost
@Betty Cracker: Only the most pathetic leader imaginable tries to demand a particular scorecard metric.
Anyone who didn’t realize what a colossal mistake it was first time they tried to make the demand, it’s grounds for termination, and an argument can be made for extreme prejudice.
rikyrah
CoffeyTimeNews
@CoffeyTimeNews
BREAKING:
Top Tesla investor calls for ‘divisive’ Elon Musk to step down as CEO as stocks keep plunging
And so it begins.
5:37 PM · Mar 18, 2025
https://x.com/CoffeyTimeNews/status/1902127224024662121
Chetan Murthy
I know this is racist of me think this, but ….
The illegal detention of this Canadian has affected me far more than the detention of that German, or Indians, or people from other countries. Somehow, it feels much, much, much closer to home, much more like “it could happen to me.”
Sigh. Ugh. I guess, when and if I travel overseas, I’d better get an immigration lawyer on retainer first: someone who’s dealt with ICE and such.
Cathie from Canada
@tam1MI: Canadian tour companies are cancelling their Blue Jays bus tours now too. I cannot imagine why athletes and tourists would come to the World Cup or the Olympics now.
sab
@Parfigliano: We can’t do that while T***p people control the department of justice.
Also to did Scalito’s inventzed qualified immunity doctrine apply to ICE agent’s as well as cops?
rikyrah
@Captain C:
they do not need to come.
Uh uh
randy khan
@JoyceH:
The MAGAs are faithfully posting about how Canada has been abusing the U.S. with tariffs for years. They’re practically whirling dervishes.
Martin
@Cathie from Canada: Athletes will still come. China and Russia hosting didn’t deter that. But spectators may not come.
lowtechcyclist
@rikyrah:
The weird thing is, Tesla’s stock price is almost exactly what it was six months ago. Not sure what caused that particular bubble in its stock price in the first place, but there’s no reason to believe Tesla, Inc. is worth any more than it was six months ago.
Hell, it’s up about 60 points (from $175 to $235/share) from this time last year. And even that price was ridiculously overinflated.
pajaro
@Deputinize America:
Judge Boaberg is there to apply the law, not make you feel good. You don’t know anything about him, or about what the law requires in this case. As far as I can tell, he’s trying to figure out the facts, and allow both sides to make the legal arguments to which they might be entitled. Sorry that your timetable says otherwise.
The only place in our system where there’s been even a small amount of responsibility, let alone accountability, is in the judiciary. Judge Boaberg and his staff have almost certainly received multiple death threats, as have those in Congress who have tried to do the right thing.
Martin
@lowtechcyclist: Tesla was seen by some investors as ‘can’t lose’ in this election. Either Tesla would win by Musk currying Trumps favor or Tesla would win by Dems pushing for more EV uptake.
That really speaks to how fucking stupid most investors are.
Jay
@randy khan:
Quite the imaginary world they live in,………..it’s always 1984 there.
prostratedragon
How’s that grip holding up, Donnie?
Martin
@pajaro: OTOH, I don’t think it’s out of bounds to note that a system that works entirely in arrears is vulnerable to bad actors that will simply act faster than the legal system allows itself to. It is one of the things in our society that is objectively less efficient than it used to be. Digital communication doesn’t allow courts to achieve rulings faster or discover evidence faster, though it does allow courts to be more thorough and presumably achieve more reliable justice. But the courts couldn’t put back together the families that Trump destroyed in his first term. Move quickly enough and you can outrun the courts and find refuge in that ‘look forward not back’ political state that Democrats and many judges are so fond of.
JBWoodford
@Alce _e_ardillo:
I would rather not, thankyouverymuch.
Ruckus
@JoyceH:
After decades of friendship, can his supporters just accept this about face without wondering?
Do his supporters think positive about anyone that doesn’t support who they do/think he should? Yeah I’m going with NO. I’d bet if you don’t support their choice for leader you are pure shit to them. It is, if you’ll excuse the concept, a red line they cannot cross.
Today’s conservative party is about taking this country back to a time that in reality, they have never lived in. Because it’s at least 150 years ago. Why? Because this country (and many others) is moving on to the what next century – oh wait, we’ve been in it for going on 25 yrs now. But they really, truly, absolutely want to go back to a time that no one alive has lived in. Politically the right has lost a lot of power and that does not sit well with them because the things they want really have been wrong since the founding of this country. It’s just taken this long to get from the old ways to the concept of what this country was founded on. Even if the founding fathers were thinking differently. Did the founding fathers mean ALL Human Beings were equal? Did we have slavery in this country? My concept is that we have taken a very long time to live up to what those documents actually say. And my thought is that some are still trying to stop us from living up to what the documents actually say. I’m an old and we learned about those documents when I was in elementary through high school. I lived in a town in SoCal that had all shades of humans that lived there. We were taught that all humans belonged in the concept of our founding documents. That is ALL humans.
Now sure I understand that racist pricks don’t think people that don’t look like them are human, but they are absolutely 100000% wrong. Most animals (yes we are animals…) do have differences between animal to animal. We humans do. Skin color, hair color, languages….
That in NO WAY make some less or not human beings. Dogs come in different sizes, shapes, hair length, colors… So do humans, so do many animals. Some are more different, some are far closer in how they look. Does not make them any less the animal they are.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Martin: If our justice system didn’t operate at a snails pace, Trump would have been in prison rather than Washington
Captain C
@rikyrah:
I bet there’s significant overlap between people who do this and people who demand that she Stand Up and Lead the Revolution (on their terms) while not having voted for her (or talked lots of shit about her during the campaign).
Captain C
@rikyrah: If I were FIFA I would be seriously considering taking the World Cup from the USA and perhaps giving it exclusively to Canada and Mexico to share. Followed by banning the USA from the competition.
Ruckus
@Betty Cracker:
These people are fucking nuts.
Worse than just nuts. They are fucking insane.
And that is from someone who used to be a mental health counselor. There may be a number of causes, the worst of the worst have a long list of rational reasons why they are completely insane.
First is they were not raised well, they learned, if at all, that they were the best of the best so everyone else must be inferior. And skin color is an obvious difference and was used in this country to create slavery. Many people may have lived in situations that suggested that ending slavery was a bad idea. Racism is one of those rationalities and has been with us for/since/before the founding of this country. And the founding fathers didn’t seem to recognize that this should have been stated in the founding documents. Because leaving it out got them a segment of workers who either did or were treated horribly and even killed for trying to be what they ALWAYS SHOULD HAVE BEEN, accepted and part of the concept. People that had been here prior to their arrival, Indians, were completely disrespected and wars fought to get rid of them.
This concept of only the people that looked like the early arrivers were the real citizens started very early on in this countries history. Look at the concept of slavery. It NEVER should have gotten off the ground. But it did, it was not only allowed it was accepted. No matter what that piece of paper says.
Miki
@Martin: Have you read the order? The judge pushed back hard against the (imo Rule 11 sanctionable) motion by DOJ raising, for the first time, the “possibility” it “might” raise a new defense to following the prior order, giving DOJ 24 hours to fish or cut bait. This is the same judge who’s being threatened with impeachment by MAGATs, as well as, no doubt, multiple credible physical threats. IMO, accusations of cowardice/footdragging for the Orange Shit Stain are premature, at best.
Considering that context, read this.
Chetan Murthy
I think you’re being entirely too kind to your justice system. But otherwise, I agree with you.
Timill
@Ruckus:
Could you expand on what you mean here, please? It reads to me as though you think slavery was an uniquely American institution, and I’m sure you don’t think that.
JoyceH
@Timill: It seems to me that the US was at least somewhat unique in their development of race-based slavery. The founders saw slavery as a temporary and necessary evil that they expected to wither away as the nation developed. But as the cotton economy developed the south still needed a large workforce for miserable backbreaking work and no history of serfdom. To justify it to themselves they developed the dogma that the negro race was inherently inferior and suitable only to slavery. It’s that inherent inferiority myth that’s bedeviled us all these years – the Romans certainly didn’t consider their Greek slaves inferior, they were often tutoring their children.
pajaro
@Martin:
Hell yes, you can say that the legal system can’t fix all of society’s ills, and that it works too slowly, given the magnitude of what Musk is doing. But that’s not the fault of the individual judges, many of whom have stepped up and done their job, which is more than we can say about many of the people in Congress or, God knows, the press.
Darkrose
@Martin: Some athletes. Rubio’s State Department has said they’ll refuse visas to people unless their documentation matches gender assigned at birth, so no trans athletes will be showing up.
Jay
@pajaro:
Kinda, sorta.
We have been watching this shit show for 8 years, 2 months.
Not a single Judge has issued sanctions or contempt rulings against a single DJTdiot Lawyer, be it DOJ or private, no matter what stupid they have tried to pull.
Every Federal Judge knows very well that the DOJ “lawyer” is gonna pull a “dog ate my homework” delay on Day 1.
No US judge will ever hold them accountable.
Martin
@Miki: Yeah, I’m aware. I’m not trying to criticize this judge necessarily but when the DOJ tells him to fuck off, what’s he going to do about it? Issue an arrest warrant for the DOJ controlled US Marshals to execute? Hold another hearing on what remedy there should be which the DOJ will again ignore?
Ruckus
@Timill:
No it was not a uniquely American concept. Not in any way shape or form.
However, and I am not, in any way shape or form saying or implying that slavery was OK. IT WAS NOT, IT IS NOT AND IT NEVER SHOULD HAVE EXISTED. Especially in a country where many of the citizens left countries with Kings or Queens with absolute power, the power of confinement, the power of firing squads or hanging, the power of life and death.
But that was wrong then and it’s wrong now. And in some countries that concept still exists. This ain’t one of them. At least in the law.
Humanity has for most of its existence given power to the monied. No matter if that was pocket change or the wealthiest. The people that could buy things became controlled to the people that sold stuff. The last 100-200 years has changed that in many places. Now that change was not always smooth nor rapid and often incomplete. It didn’t need to be but power is addictive. It needs controls/limits so that it does not get out of hand. And it still does on occasion because some humans think more of themselves than other humans do. Sometimes far more. We have one of those farting/fucking around in our national government now. The money man.
Money is the means, not the end goal. Sure it’s nicer to have some than not but it isn’t the end all be all of life. Or at least it isn’t supposed to be. But we are dealing with humans and not all of them are in any way a positive to other human beings. Some of them are pompous, arrogant, complete and utter assholes. If you look up assholes, you’ll find their picture. OK that’s not true but it very likely should be. Everything else is on line, why not them?
Jay
@Martin:
While Judges can issue sanctions and contempt rulings that probably will be ignored by the DOJ, State Bars and Law Associations have not ignored egregious conduct.
Miki
@Martin: Actually, I don’t know what he’s going to do. We’re not there yet. He crossed the Is and dotted the Ts today, all the while tossing the poo back at the DOJ in his order, which is his job.
IMO, total scorn at this judge is just not warranted – yet.
WTFGhost
@JoyceH: The other side of the story, the unspoken side, is, it is now Republican Party dogma that the reason white men can’t find a good job, and the accompanying status and (sexual partnerings), is because “everything has been dumbed down to give the jobs to unqualified minorities.”
It’s not that everyone in the US is a terrible racist, okay, nor, that every American racist is obscenely, horribly, bigoted, but it’s nevertheless likely true that the US has some of the most virulently bigoted people on the planet, who are proud and pleased, and feel especially blessed by God, for being such bigots.
In the 1970s, they turned all that bigot-energy into anti-abortion messaging, because naked bigotry wasn’t selling. Apparently, that’s Opus Deied them a Presidency with maybe just a *hair* more bigotry than they expected, but, that won’t bother them until poll numbers are affected.
Dr Daniel Price (Saint Vincent)
Canada’s Prime Minister should cancel the G7 summit scheduled for June 2025. Nothing good would result from holding the event as scheduled or from refusing to allow the fascist US leader entry to Canada.
Jay
@Dr Daniel Price (Saint Vincent):
6 of the 7 will have polite and productive discussions of trade and defense, make mutual agreements.
The 7th will make an ass of himself and pout in a corner.
It will be a good G7.
Dr Daniel Price (Saint Vincent)
@Jay: I instead expect some incident to occur that would provide a pretext for invading Canada.
Jay
@Dr Daniel Price (Saint Vincent):
I have pointed out before;
The US is outmatched, it’s what you can spare from your 2 million globally deployed, against 4 million, and you had to beg for help from The West against only 15,000 Talibs and 25,000 Saddam dead enders. Back then, you had allies. Don’t think the NORKs are going to answer the phone.
None of your previous 12 attempts have lasted longer than a snow fall.
Now Canada is currently signing contracts with EU Companies/Governments to offshore some of their weapons needs and production to Canada, so they can ramp up faster.
YY_Sima Qian
@Captain C: Then there is the LA Olympics in 2028…
The Red Pen
@prostratedragon: At this point, I think it would be a challenge to convince Trump that he didn’t just beat Obama in the election last year.
YY_Sima Qian
If people are still finding it inexplicable that Trump & the MAGA reactionaries targeting Canada, know that they conception of the U.S. is that of a 19th Century imperial power, & want absolute dominance & control over its sphere of influence. This is their idea of the American Imperium.
That is they want to absorb Canada & Greenland, & turn Mexico into a formal protectorate. That is why Rubio has been so busy traveling to Central America (small countries w/ no allies & w/ low state capacity to resist). The Caribbean may be next, though some of the islands are still European colonial possessions might cause a larger backlash. They’ll want to establish dominance over South America, too, in an openly stated Monroe Doctrine 2.0. However, those countries are larger, w/ high state capacity, stronger nationalist identities, & more integrated economically w/ out of region powers such as the PRC & the EU. There is also Brazil that can serve as a bulwark against U.S. imperialism, & it will have support from all of the major powers (the PRC, the EU, Russia, India, etc). The MAGA will have to try to subvert these polities by getting reactionaries into power, but even reactionaries are unlikely to be fully pliant to MAGA.
Abandoning Ukraine & Europe to Russia (& potentially Taiwan, South Korea & even Japan to the PRC’s sphere of influence) is merely the negotiation (in MAGA’s mind) between imperial powers to divide up the world, in return to their acquiescence of the U.S. dominating the Western Hemisphere. Except the PRC & Russia may be happy to take whatever unilateral concessions MAGA will make, they (especially the PRC) & EU/India/others will not want all of the Americas to be turned into a U.S. dominated & completely self-sufficient world island, from whose secure position the U.S. can then cause mischief in the larger world island of Eurasia + Africa. That is how MAGA envisions the U.S. remaining the dominant power in a world of ethno-nationalist multipolarity & able to maintain superior position over other powers.
Bill Arnold
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony:
The protest, though, was Saturday, April 27, 2024.
I presume that she is happy with the Trump administration that she helped elect, and its support of ethnic cleansing (so far hypothetical, excepting the aid blockade and turning off the electricity to the desalinization plant) by the Israelis. (Has the Trump administration spoken about ceasefire-breaking and subsequent mass killings of civilians?)
Jay
@YY_Sima Qian:
Okay, so you are saying I have to burn down the White Supremacy House again and leave the bodies of 25,000 ‘Mercans to rot in the fields and forests again.
Okay.
Dr Daniel Price (Saint Vincent)
@Jay: The man is profoundly stupid. He of course believes himself to be of superior intellect, such that opposition to his ideas is proof of their brilliance. Consequently, he digs into, doubles down, on his bad ideas, because he feels it necessary to act on those thoughts: if it comes to his mind, it must be genius.
YY_Sima Qian
@Martin: The PRC did & does no my target random foreign visitors for arbitrary detention just to fatten the bottom lines of a for profit prison industry. Russia didn’t do that during the 2014 Winter Olympics or the 2018 World Cup, though it is certainly not safe to visit now (might get press ganged to fight Ukraine or held as hostage).
Repubs in Congress had already made noises during the Paris Olympics to target Chinese coaches & athletes on charges of doping, when some Chinese swimmers did very well. Immediately there was discussion on Chinese social media & semi-state media that the U.S. could target the Chinese team during the LA Olympics. This was well before Trump’s reelection.
Trump will probably not touch that live wire, & will probably go as far as giving personal assurances to Xi, because he wants to oversee the pageantry of a successful Olympic Games. But athletes from smaller countries in LATAM, Africa & the Pacific Islands?
YY_Sima Qian
@Jay: That is their fever dream, not saying they will succeed. They will fail, it’s just the question of how much carnage along the way there.
Jay
@Dr Daniel Price (Saint Vincent):
Fran Lebowitz.
Everybody thinks that Canadians are nice polite people, who’s catch phrase is “I’m sorry”.
We have 40 million people and 127 million guns, and yes, that is a Government Stat, because legally you need an FAC and a gun permit, (per gun) to legally own a gun, or more than one, each gun needs it’s own permit . There is probably the same number of illegal guns in Canada, because USA, USA, USA!
I have 14 guns, several of which fall under various restrictions, but I am permitted, mostly because I am a serving member of the Seaforth Highlanders of Canada, recently reactivated to active status.
So I am a bit of a minority in the number of guns owned legally
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktSPMzKqVPo
YY_Sima Qian
@Jay: MAGA is probably envisioning a bloodless Anschluss, but probably has not factored in the possibility that Canada will put up a physical fight.
Sloane Ranger
@Captain C: This is probably a dead thread, but FIFA is one of the most corrupt organisations in the world.
Someone, most likely the US and or Mexican Football Association has paid out a lot of bribes to senior FIFA officials for the privilege of hosting the tournament.
The other thing to note about FIFA is that it is at least honest in its corruption. Once bought it stays bought.
Jay
@YY_Sima Qian:
You know that in WWI, we put the “war” into war crimes, right?
We dialed it back a bit in WWII, and Korea.
Sloane Ranger
@YY_Sima Qian: I doubt they would deliberately try anything with the athletes, providing they stick to the Olympic village and take the official transport to wherever they’re competing, they should be safe enough. But someone may be caught in a round-up if they leave the Olympic village to go sightseeing.
The people likely to be in most danger will be the fans.
YY_Sima Qian
@Sloane Ranger: Agree. However, at the rate things are going, how many fans will come for the World Cup & the Olympics? Especially the former, given the football fanaticism in LATAM.
Jay
@YY_Sima Qian:
Over 500,000 less border crossings from Canada into the US in less than 52 days.
90% of Canadians live within an hours drive of the US, where gas, milk, cheap cheese, booze and smokes are cheaper, so many Canadians do a cross border shot every week.
Not so much, anymore.
Medicine Man
@Jay: A Bullwinkle? Hell yeah, neighbour. Lived here my whole life. Grew up on the softer side of E. Van — 33rd and St. Catherines.
Jay
@Medicine Man:
East Van Halen, cool.
Ruckus
@JoyceH:
Not everyone travels. I used to fly for work in motorsports and traveled every week but 2 for a solid 8 months a year. The number of people I talked to who had a concept of the size of the country, just the shear number of people who had a concept of their neighborhood as normal who never traveled anywhere was to me astounding. Once went to check out my rent car and the clerk told me I was in the top 5% of renters with Hertz. I just had the regular Hertz card, not the spiffy, LOOK AT ME, I’m SPECIAL card. My point is that this country is a big country. There are all types of humans living here, some are rather good, some are the exact opposite. Being very good is a full time job of its own, and few people manage that. Our president is not even close and never has been. That car sales guy is actually far worse because he has no rational reason to act like he does. None. Nada. Het. Nein.
Ruckus
Divadias
I sent my passport in to be renewed early January to the Embassy in Madrid and was thrilled to receive it back in less than a month. My husband, is in process now and we wait with bait on our breathe on whether the powers that be will eventually stop renewing American Passports, if they don’t like you or how you are living.