Here’s one for the “every accusation is a confession” file — a new report from ProPublica suggests Trump and Bukele of El Salvador made a corrupt bargain so that both could appear “tough on crime” while funneling money to MS-13 gang leaders, including U.S. taxpayer funds. Just mind-boggling stuff:
In April, President Trump and Salvadoran President Bukele shook hands in the Oval Office to celebrate a deal to ship gang members to the notorious CECOT prison.
But a new ProPublica investigation found there’s more to the story. 🧵👇
— ProPublica (@propublica.org) June 12, 2025 at 7:06 AM
Roundup of the Bluesky posts from ProPublica below.
2/ Bukele has a reputation as a crime fighter. He’s jailed some 80,000 gang members. Crime rates have plunged.
It turns out, though, that he’s protected another set of gangsters: the leaders of the violent MS-13 street gang, U.S. and Salvadoran officials told us.
3/ In 2019, when Bukele was elected, crime was a big problem. So U.S. prosecutors say Bukele’s aides made a deal with the devil. They allegedly worked with El Diablito, alias for the head of MS-13, to trade money and power for votes and less violence.
4/ But there was a problem. In 2019, Trump had ordered the creation of Task Force Vulcan, a team of federal agents dedicated to dismantling the leadership of MS-13. When federal agents learned of the alleged deal, they began looking at Bukele and his allies.
5/ We uncovered a previously unreported request where federal agents spelled out their suspicions that Bukele and his allies might have diverted USAID funds to MS-13 as part of the secret deal.
6/ Agents prepared a request for a review of any U.S. bank accounts held by Salvadoran political figures. Bukele and 14 others were on the list.
7/ “Information obtained through investigation has revealed that” the Salvadorans were “heavily engaged with MS-13 and are laundering funds from illicit business where MS-13 are involved,” said the documents that we reviewed.
8/ The outcome of the request is not clear. But it’s a sure sign that federal agents were digging into corruption in the Bukele government.
9/ We asked DOJ, State, Treasury about it. All declined to comment. The Salvadoran government did not respond to requests for comment. In the past, Bukele repeatedly has denied making any deal with the gang.
10/ We found more signs that Bukele the crime fighter was fighting the U.S. investigation. Vulcan requested the extradition of 12 top MS-13 leaders – guys who allegedly ordered murders of U.S. citizens. Many were sitting in Salvadoran prisons.
11/ Bukele aides carried out a secret campaign to block the extraditions. “Bukele and his government are using the entire state apparatus to prevent these people from being extradited,” a person with knowledge of the Salvadoran judicial system told us.
12/ One judge appointed by Bukele allies ordered colleagues: “Do not work on extraditions at all,” the person with knowledge of the Salvadoran justice system told us.
To date, none of the MS-13 leaders has been extradited to the U.S.
13/ The campaign continued. Bukele and top aides threatened and harassed Salvadoran officials who were helping out the task force. At least eight of them had to flee the country for fear of retaliation, our sources told us.
14/ Why would Bukele want to protect the MS-13 leaders when he was rounding up their followers?
One possible explanation, sources told us: The gang leaders could testify in U.S. courts about the alleged pact. The street-level guys could not.
15/ To bring it back to Trump: The agreement to deport immigrants to El Salvador has effectively undercut the Vulcan investigation and shielded Bukele from further scrutiny, current and former U.S. officials told us.
16/ As part of the deportation deal, Bukele asked for the return of senior MS-13 leaders arrested by Vulcan.
The DOJ recently asked the court to drop charges against two top gang bosses, citing “geopolitical and national security concerns.”
17/ Here’s the White House response to all this:
“President Trump is committed to keeping his promises to the American people and removing dangerous criminals and terrorist illegals who pose a threat to the American public. We are grateful for President Bukele’s partnership.”
Here’s a link to ProPublica report. This has the makings of a regime-ending scandal had it occurred in “normal” times, but in Trump’s America, it’s just Thursday.
Speaking of warlordism, on Tuesday Trump announced that he’s getting rid of FEMA after the current hurricane season ends and will instead disburse disaster relief directly from the White House. Here’s a gift link to a TPM member newsletter that breaks down how that works. An excerpt:
This has always been the centerpiece of Trumpism even more than authoritarianism, a kind of fiscal warlordism. Disaster relief dollars are a relatively minor expenditure. But we see it aimed at universities, the cut off of funds generally to California and the forced deployment of National Guard and Marines to Los Angeles. The blue states essentially fund the war against themselves.
It’s important to note that the fact that blue states disproportionately fund the federal government only aggravates the more general pattern, which is targeting states viewed as domestic enemies.
It’s not too much to say that this puts the whole national civil compact under immense and perhaps unsupportable stress. Blue states disproportionately fund the federal government. But what they get back or whether they get anything back is up to Donald Trump.
“Perhaps unsupportable” is right. And while blue states will bear the brunt of Trump’s hostility for obvious reasons, he’s not going to be generous to red states either. He thinks that money is his.
Open thread.
On The Road – Winter Wren – Gozo Countryside- Part 1: Għasri
cope
And we are supposed to be a species destined to leave Earth and colonize other worlds? That assumes facts not in evidence.
YY_Sima Qian
Trump’s disgusting speech at Fort Bragg has been discussed, but the response by [some of] the elite troops in audience, & the orchestrations that the commanding officers made to accommodate the visit, are truly frightening. From Adam Isacson:
Ksmiami06
Blue states need to secede now and align with Canada.
Jackie
@YY_Sima Qian: Apparently the troops attending were cherry picked; ie Trump/MAGA supporters. Also read MAGA merchandise was being sold nearby. Disgusting and frightening, IMO.
schrodingers_cat
The current WH incumbent is more a mafiosi than a warlord.
schrodingers_cat
@Ksmiami06: Of course because partition solves all problems. Just ask India-Pak-Bangladesh
NotMax
Morning downsizing diversion. An auto obsession.
Why? Better to ask why not?
;)
sab
Everything with Republicans in office is Yikes!y.
Winding up my dad’s estate: we had an overpayment in unemployment from 2019. I rolled it forward every year. Turns out the statute of limitations to collect ran from the first year. So I cannot get a refund, since 2019 is long past, although the account just closed yesterday.
Ohio government stealing from the little law abiding guy to benefit the very rich probably out of state guys.
Actually I am okay with this because my dad’s nurse’s aide got full unemployment after dad died.
O. Felix Culpa
@YY_Sima Qian: Yes, the undermining of military neutrality in domestic politics is greatly alarming. I hope that some higher-ups have a serious conversation with the commanding officers of these soldiers.
ETA: I wonder if OO is around to speak to what the military response normally would be in this situation.
Suzanne
He wants to be like Daddy giving out allowances. God.
As always, I could point out that a future Dem president could have a blast screwing over red states, but we wouldn’t do that. Which is, after all, why we’re Dems.
YY_Sima Qian
@Jackie: Isacson noted that at the end of his article.
That is a break down in basic discipline encouraged by brown nosing elements of the officer corps. We’ve seen where that road leads in the end, in Russia & Israel.
Not sure we can count on the US military (at least not all of it) to defend the Constitutional order if the sh*t hist the fan.. IIRC, the more “elite” units of the US military: SOFs, Rangers, airborne/air assault, aviation, etc., are predominantly white & skew conservative. Many among the officers of the USAF are downright reactionary & Christofascist. One hopes the ranks & file operating the nukes are more sane.
BlueGuitarist
Thanks BC!
a small preview on this very blog, may 15
https://balloon-juice.com/2025/05/15/lest-we-forget-wilmar-abrego-garcia/
comment 22,
comrade scotts agenda of rage
“Reputation as a crime fighter” is always a dog whistle.
We use it here as well.
Baud
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
Only when I’m in superhero mode.
Kirk
I rather hate saying this but technically the soldiers did nothing wrong.
The rules to follow are in DOD 1344.10. Put simply, the soldier must not participate in partisan political activity while in uniform or representing themselves as military. BUT – they have to “know” prior to the event what it was.
And a president speaking on a topic with soldiers in the background is not in itself a partisan political activity.
Asking for soldiers who have a particular political bias is against rules, but that’s higher. It creates a document trail for alleging leader bias in later discipline and promotion activities. More practically it encourages thinking that “He’s putting me on point because he knows I am (or am not) a Trump supporter.” That’s a short step from fragging among other bad consequences.
I despise Trump and his team for this. It destroys trust both within and without the military, weakening it for decades going forward.
Baud
I read that Bukele was insanely popular because El Salvador really had the type of bad gang problem that Republicans think exists here. It’ll be interesting to see if his relationship to Trump ends up biting him in the ass.
espierce
@Ksmiami06:
Really? Cutting and running is not the American way, is it?
Stand tall and resist these assholes!
Lord Fartdaddy (Formerly Mumphrey, Smedley Darlington Mingobat, et al.)
Something else that can’t even mildly surprise any sentient being. Worst fucking people in the world…
Elizabelle
All these scandals will have cumulative damage. It is just taking longer than usual, because the GOP and too many institutions are broken.
Steve in the ATL
Reminds me of Rudy Giuliani using the power of the US Attorney’s office to run the Italian mob out of New York…to make room for his sponsors, the Russian mob. These people….
Drunkenhausfrau
Wait, wait, wait… am I senile or is this not the plot of Tom Clancy’s Clear and Present Danger? President making deals with drug lords/war lords? In any previous timeline of our republic, this revelation would bring down a presidency, right?
rikyrah
Good Morning Everyone 😊 😊 😊
gene108
@Suzanne:
I want this to change. I want the next Democratic president to be authoritarian, embrace the unitary executive theory of presidential power Republicans want to promote, have a meme coin, and direct the government to go after Republican states and businesses supporting Republican politicians.
We’re never going to beat Republicans regularly enough for them to feel a consequences for fucking up the country.
Governing as an authoritarian and fucking them over may be the only way to force guardrails be put back up limiting government overreach and a respect for institutional norms.
rikyrah
Crooked folks hang together 😒😒😒
So, yes…I believe the stories about the deal
Steve in the ATL
@gene108: and go after megachurches’ tax exemptions!
gene108
@Baud:
I don’t know squat about El Salvador.
If cutting deals with MS-13 is what he has to do to bring crime rates down, good for him.
The problem with U.S. international reporting is imposing our views onto countries facing very different situations with very different histories.
@Steve in the ATL:
I don’t think NYC would’ve had such a dramatic revival in the 1990’s, if the Italian mob still had its claws in everything.
Gvg
I suspect Trumps incompetent cheapness in not spending on red states will really be something that bites him in the end. That Arkansas Governor and some of the others could turn on him and if the timing was right and things were clearly bad in her state, could lead a revolt against him from the conservative side. He is clearly old and lots of people want to take over. I don’t think he has the mental agility anymore to fight off a really determined surge.
Doesn’t mean the person who starts the fight will end up in charge, but he has not been that generous. Real leaders have been better at it than him.
Melancholy Jaques
@YY_Sima Qian:
We see a lot of people and institutions “failing the test” but none of them – not the FTFNYT, WaPo, CNN, elected members of congress, owners of major corporations, judges or justices – believe they failed anything. Most of them are enthusiastic supporters of Trump and everything he is doing.
Instead of saying they failed a test, we ought to just recognize that they turned out not to be what we thought they were, what we expected them to be. Recognize it and figure out how to deal with it.
Steve in the ATL
@gene108: then praise Jesus for the Russian mob!
Enhanced Voting Techniques
I will one up you all on this crap; these ICE raids are really about getting rid of MS-13 rivals in the drug distribution network. That’s why the hoods in all the ICE agents because they have MS-13 members mixed up in them. The whole arrest anything that looks Hispanic is just a smoke screen.
Also, this was Miller so frantic to get the arrest numbers up, because he made a deal with the devil and MS-13 can really fuck Miller shit.
Steve LaBonne
On the potentially bright side, Trump is not necessarily making friends in the military.
Scout211
More on the troops in service to Dear Leader TACO:
We have to read it in The Guardian of course.
. . .
ETA: And Steve LaBonne beat me by a minute.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@gene108: If Bukele eliminates MS-13 rivals, then there are no gang wars in El Salvador. Bukele not a politician, he is a businessman so the East Indian Company solution.
jonas
Just declaring an end to FEMA and deciding to distribute disaster relief funds himself is of course wildly illegal. These are Congressional prerogatives, but the GOP has simply agreed to let Trump be a dictator, underscoring again the massive failure of imagination on the part of the Founders who could not have conceived of an entire political party becoming so corrupted that they all agree to just tear up the Constitution and reimpose a monarchy. But here we are.
YY_Sima Qian
@Melancholy Jaques: Agreed, but the US military is pretty much the last line of defense for the Constitutional order, not sure I really want to contemplate the scenario where that line is unreliable.
A lot of the federal/state/local law enforcement are already Fascist-adjacent. Although the LAPD has exceeded my low expectations w/ the current anti-ICE protests, perhaps offended by the Feds intervening unrequested.
Josie
@Ksmiami06:
You’ve been pushing this sort of stuff for ages, despite other commenters explaining over and over again why it isn’t feasible. You are boring.
Eyeroller
@jonas: I and some other commenters have repeatedly pointed out that the Holy Founders were told at the time that this was unrealistic and their response was basically “Nuh uh! Only Top People will be elected or appointed!”
There was no formal science of psychology then but it’s not like people were unaware of human nature, and it was also clear that parties had already formed despite the denials. Some of the “design” and “checks and balances” failed immediately and others (like the Supreme Court declaring itself an unelected superlegislature) happened within a few decades.
YY_Sima Qian
@Steve LaBonne:
@Scout211:
Good to hear about the dissatisfaction among the Marines/NG ranks & file.
Incidentally, a bit of lesser known history from the Tiananmen Square crackdown in ’89:
Using the military to suppress domestic unrest is damaging all around.
Professor Bigfoot
@cope: Robert Heinlein himself said that it would happen, but that the humans who did it might not speak English.
From here it looks like China understood the assignment.
Salty Sam
I had a conversation in December with a friend who is a retired officer in the Airborne Rangers, to address this very question (“If ordered, will troops open fire on American citizens?”). His take was the reverse: that officers and “the brass” are well drilled in the UCMJ, and their oath to the Constitution, while the rank and file are typically volunteers from economically depressed areas, particularly in the South, predominantly MAGA, and so may not be as reliable.
Thats not to say there are no MAGA officers, and who knows which way this could go when the fat is in the fire? I have no military experience- I’d love to hear OO’s take.
schrodingers_cat
@Professor Bigfoot: China is a dictatorship. They are not colonizing space either.
Professor Bigfoot
@Ksmiami06: You realize, of course, this would men constant warfare along that border, right? Like as in ‘Burning Kansas.’
If this nation splits up, there will be neverending war— guerrilla and otherwise— all along that border.
If the Confederates had been successful in that partition, don’t you think there would be raids and reprisals all across THAT border?
Steve LaBonne
@YY_Sima Qian: We have to hope this current attempt to use the military for fascist purposes fails and generates significant backlash. Otherwise I am betting on troops being sent to a large number of cities on Election Day 2026.
Another Scott
@Kirk: Thanks.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Eunicecycle
I read that Trump also did not want any fat soldiers on camera at Ft. Bragg. Or maybe that was the SecDef.
Ksmiami06
@schrodingers_cat: there’s going to be blood either way
Professor Bigfoot
@schrodingers_cat: We’ll see about that. As I was just remarking to a former colleague, we both know Chinese engineers will copy the living fuck out of anything— but the clever sumbitches then improve on that design.
I literally watched a lot of China’s infrastructure get built over the years from 2012 to 2018; and saw that India’s did not seem to keep pace.
I thought at the time (and let me say LOUDLY I could be wrong as two left shoes!) that it was because India was the world’s largest democracy, and they’ll dither and bicker over what infrastructure to build where and that’s healthy; whereas in China the Party could say “build that bridge, design that high speed rail, I don’t give a damn about it being profitable” and it would happen.
(I haven’t been to India since 2018 so much can change in a short time… and damn me but I miss it!)
Ksmiami06
@Professor Bigfoot: we are disintegrating anyway. States that can should just become part of canada. Besides I’d rather have border low level violence than the genocide I foresee.
Ksmiami06
@Josie: im in los angeles now. How does california thrive if the state is under attack from the federal government simply for having a different and better belief system?
Omnes Omnibus
@Ksmiami06: No kings!
Omnes Omnibus
There is no normal response to this situation. I would say this should have been a resignation issue for the senior commanders.
sab
I have protested occassionaly since high school in 1968.
Not doing it this year because I have other responsibilities. Winding up my dad’s estate. If I get arrested nobody else can do my job there. Could hire people at vast expense to do it badly, but I can do it well for free.
Husband just came home wirh new drivers license photo. It is horrible. He looks like he could eat small children. He is thrilled. Just the picture he wanted. SIGH.
Professor Bigfoot
@jonas: To be fair, they probably couldn’t imagine one of the descendants of their slaves to be elected President.
Most probably couldn’t imagine them able to vote.
And just might approve of these methods to keep control of their country in the hands of white men.
Gloria DryGarden
I am wondering what ideas folks have for rectifying this situation, where
“Blue states disproportionately fund the federal government”
And then to have the government turn against those blue states. I know there are tiny echoes of a rumor suggesting a general strike…
Melancholy Jaques
@Ksmiami06:
I’d rather align with Mexico. Better weather, better food.
Suzanne
@gene108:
There’s (more than) a few problems with this, but one of the biggest is that most of us Dems don’t want to be this way. We’re not authoritarians, by and large, in any arena of our lives. They are, and their politics are downstream of this.
I think of this as well, when commenters here make a statement about Dems needing to come together and put divisions aside and to cheerlead for our candidates. We fundamentally aren’t those people! It is never a thing we will be good at!
I think often about something Al Franken said, about Republicans love the country the way children love their parents, and Dems love the country the way adults love their parents.
Melancholy Jaques
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
Usually means swaggering asshole who uses a lot of bellicose language and supports police violence.
Trivia Man
@YY_Sima Qian: last night i argued with my brother about the bases going back to their old names. Infuriating conversation. He told me i was misinformed. “They arent being named for confederate heroes, it is a completely DIFFERENT Robert E Lee and Hood and …”
Gloria DryGarden
@Eunicecycle: makes me want to get a contingent of fat ladies, or fat mixed gender folks, to show up at some trumple event. Like those drag queens did at the Kennedy center.
Like trump is in any position to judge.
speaking of cherry picking your audience, and vetting the viewers you let in to your event, so they’ll all be positive, I had a doctor from Hong Kong, who was in the crowd to see the queen drive through. He said they had to be vetted, the crowd was carefully checked.
Seems like a monarchy thing to do…
WereBear
@Ksmiami06: So… You want to comply.
And make it Canada’s problem.
I see flaws.
Barry
@cope: “And we are supposed to be a species destined to leave Earth and colonize other worlds? That assumes facts not in evidence.”
If I were and honest and sane Elon Musk, the first step to colonizing space would to *not* Putinize the USA.
WereBear
@Barry: Personally I don’t see how we cannot. It’s in our genetics. We came down from the trees to a different life.
Like the most successful invasive species, we should learn to moderate. Become mutually supportive, like the bacteria who sorts our nutrients and directs our immune system.
But MAGA is cowardly, like their leader. So they ally with danger, pretending their face won’t get eaten.
Melancholy Jaques
@YY_Sima Qian:
I don’t say this to be contentious, but we, the people, are the last line of defense for a Constitutional order. And of all the people and institutions that turned out not to be what we thought they were, what we expected them to be, the (mostly white) people of the United States are the most disturbing.
Gravenstone
Anyone want to bet it’s even simpler than this? Guessing that Bukele started sniffing around MS13 and the folks at the top told him that he and his would meet grisly ends unless they paid proper protection. Fittingly ironic that the USAID monies supposedly diverted to them have now been cut off by Trump v2.
Professor Bigfoot
@Ksmiami06: Actually, no, we’re not.
We’re gerrymandered out the wazoo; but there are millions ‘pon millions of Dem and Dem leaners in “red” states, and we’re being hijacked, but we’re too integrated for that as these morons will learn sooner or later.
But believe me, John Brown’s body may lie moulderin’ in the grave, but his spirit marches on.
You are wishing for fire and destruction, my friend, whether you realize it or not.
Professor Bigfoot
@Omnes Omnibus: I’m concerned that it doesn’t seem to have been, though.
Well, more like disturbed.
YY_Sima Qian
@Professor Bigfoot: My two cents are that the key difference between India & the PRC (& other “developmental states” of E/SE Asia) is not democracy vs. autocracy, but a yawning disparity in state capacity, the emphasis on “developmentalism” in the latter (meaning the rulings elites are not just motivated by rent seeking & extraction), & the former’s lackluster performance in developing human capital (which is downstream of state capacity, as well).
As disastrous as Mao’s Great Leap Forward & the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution were, he (or more precisely, the CPC leaders/bureaucrats of his era) nevertheless oversaw massive improvements across the board in human development during ’49 – ’76, from education to life expectancy to nutrition (albeit from a very low baseline, the result of decades of civil wars, foreign invasions & pervasive misrule). Deng’s reforms would not have borne fruit so quickly if there Chinese population had not already achieved adequate levels of literacy, numeracy & health.
Finally, the corruption that plagued (& continues to plague) India are the often the kinds associated w/ “theft” (both petty & grand) & “speed money”, all of which are extractive in nature. OTOH, much more of the corruption in the PRC is of the “access money” kind that facilitates & stimulates economic activity that circumvent overly restrictive rules & regulations. Perhaps that difference is downstream of the “extractive” vs. “developmental” mindset.
Of course, the uncomfortable fact (from the perspectives of the liberal democrat, or the socialist democrat, or the democratic socialist) is that the E/SE Asian developmental states almost invariably saw their economic take offs start under authoritarian (some softer than others) governments: Japan (a de facto one party state under the LDP), South Korea (under successive right wing military dictatorships until the ’80s), Taiwan (under the the right wing hard authoritarian regime of Chiang Kai-Shek & Chiang Ching-Kuo until the early ’90s). the PRC (still ruled by the hard authoritarian CPC regime), Vietnam (still ruled by the hard authoritarian CPV regime), Singapore (still dominated by the soft authoritarian PAP), Indonesia (during Suharto’s rein), & Malaysia (under Mahathir), etc.
Then again, South Korea & Taiwan continued to grow quickly after democratization, & have now reached high income status.
gene108
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
Expropriate El Salvador’s wealth to Great Britain?
Go to war with countries trying to crackdown on the El Salvadoran opium trade, so they don’t lose a lucrative stream of business?
He’d have to be a lot worse to rival the British East India company.
YY_Sima Qian
@Melancholy Jaques: Point taken. What I mean is that the US military is the last line of defense before a hot civil war becomes the last recourse, which is of course by definition a collapse of Constitutional order.
YY_Sima Qian
@Trivia Man: WTF?!
schrodingers_cat
@Ksmiami06: Read about the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947. They didn’t have as many guns as we do in the US. The violence was not low level. Even according to conservative estimates over million died and several million were displaced.
The event looms large over the subcontinent even though it happened over 75 years ago.
gene108
@Eyeroller:
In the Founders defense, there is no system of organization that cannot be subverted, when everyone in charge decides to subvert the system.
Systems, organizations, institutions, etc. are no better or worse than the people running and working in them. Hire bad people and the organization becomes bad.
For reasons that are beyond my comprehension, the entire Republican party has become corrupt authoritarians, and roughly half the voters in the country are okay with it, as long as they are not personally affected.
I do not know what to do, when such a large part of the country stops thinking democracy and accountable leadership no longer matter, which is where we are.
O. Felix Culpa
@schrodingers_cat: This person is always calling for eliminationist bloodshed from the comfort (and safety) of their keyboard.
Omnes Omnibus
Some commenters are ghouls.
gene108
@Ksmiami06:
@Professor Bigfoot:
Britain’s partition of Ireland resulted in 70+ years of conflict.
YY_Sima Qian
@gene108: Lest we forget, American merchants provided stiff competition to the British East India Company in the opium trade:
The roster is a Who’s Who of Boston Brahmin families of the 19th century, as well as those from other Northeastern cities.
schrodingers_cat
@Omnes Omnibus: Or trolls. Deliberately sabotaging reasonable debate.
O. Felix Culpa
@Omnes Omnibus: True.
Thank you for your reply to my military question. Seems to me that some military heads should roll– in a figurative, non-ghoulish way– in response to that incident.
schrodingers_cat
Off the topic hilarity: Tankie feverdreams that are not even wrong. Appeared on my TL from one of the Indian (from India) leftie accounts I follow. I don’t know where to begin..
America Is The #3 Military Now
gene108
@Gloria DryGarden:
Federal spending in states involves things like military bases, federal offices like the large IRS center in Kansas City, MO, and welfare benefits.
A Democratic state general strike might be interesting. Otherwise I don’t know what to do. Cutting welfare benefits, ie federal payments, to Republican states isn’t going to make Republican politicians invest in their state to increase the standard of living.
gene108
@Suzanne:
There are many problems with my idea. I’m approaching a “burn it all down” mindset, because I cannot see our current situation really changing.
Republicans do something bad. Democrats gain power. Right-wing propaganda machine goes to work riling up Republican voters, and turning other voters away from Democrats. One or two election cycles later an even more revanchist radical right-wing Republican party is back in power.
Rinse and repeat from here to infinity.
I don’t see this changing.
gene108
@Trivia Man:
Fort Bragg is now named after Roland L. Bragg, a WW2 paratrooper.
Trivia Man
@YY_Sima Qian: Exactly! He is still on about ‘democrats are to blame because they ran a bad candidate. And hillary never visited wisconsin’. He is proud he didnt vote for trump OR harris. “MY hands are clean!”
Trivia Man
@gene108: wink wink
YY_Sima Qian
Since this is an Open Thread, there was a tragic crash of an Air India Boeing 787-8 flight (to the UK), shortly after take off from Ahmedabad in Gujarat, w/ 242 on board. The plane crashed into structures on the ground, leading to more casualties. However, at least one passenger survived.
Gloria DryGarden
If you’ve got some time this long video-45 mins- connects varied family structures to the type of government and ideology that is accepted. Ie, who tends to become socialist, or communist, or fascist. A good look at deeper roots.
Family structure drives ideology video talk
Steve LaBonne
@YY_Sima Qian: Since this was a Boeing Dreamliner, I’m half waiting to hear that some crucial part fell off the plane.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@gene108: I meant; create a monopoly, ending the gang warfare in El Salvador, then bribe Trump to end the war on drugs by escalating it on every other cartel getting El Salvador a monopoly in the US.
Trump goes along because Putin is broke ass now, and El Salvadorian money is as green as Russian. Also Trump racist hicky base are all drug dealers/addicts themselves, so Trump figures they will love it because of the market stability and reduced chance of getting killed (more so if ICE is used as the enforcers instead)
Captain C
@schrodingers_cat:
Shooting mass drone waves and glide bombs at blatantly civilian targets is of course the best example of this. Do these people believe what they say or just not give a fuck about the truth like Republicans?
eta: the quote is from the linked article.
Mr. Bemused Senior
@Captain C: I recall a planned press release from the very beginning of the invasion. It read like something from Pravda, a glowing description of the quick victory and the warm welcome from ordinary Ukranians (population of ” little Russia”).
I guess it’s the same PR agency.
Aziz, light!
@Captain C: Tankies are the same everywhere. Do they have posters of Stalin on their bedroom walls?
schrodingers_cat
@YY_Sima Qian: Baud posted about it in one of the early morning threads.
Captain C
@Aziz, light!: Probably with little hearts and JS + [tankie’s initials] written on them in red sharpie.
brantl
@gene108:
If cutting deals with MS-13 is what he has to do to bring crime rates down, good for him.
Oh, sure, that won’t turn into a problem, will it?
schrodingers_cat
@Captain C: They are believers. If you argue with them they will accuse you of working for the CIA.
Captain C
@schrodingers_cat: Keeps them from having to think for themselves and self-reflect.
schrodingers_cat
@Captain C: You got that right.