… in the shadowy recesses of Great Replacement Theory social media, where Stephen ‘Naziferatu’ Miller is both a crony and a celebrity.
Trump pissed off the boss:
"Stephen Miller, Trump’s deputy chief of staff for policy and an architect of his immigration policy, likewise voiced concerns Thursday about Trump’s comments, according to a person with knowledge of the discussions"— Joe Sudbay (@joesudbay.bsky.social) June 13, 2025 at 10:06 AM
===
I don't know how many times these people have to say "non-whites are not americans unless they are part of my inner circle, we want to do ethnic cleansing" before people start listening bsky.app/profile/pale…
— Adam Serwer (@adamserwer.bsky.social) June 13, 2025 at 6:50 AM
==
"The [GOP] bill contains the resources [Miller] needs to replay Los Angeles over and over and over again. If it doesn’t pass, he’ll lose his fix, like a junky whose stash gets flushed down a toilet."
@brianbeutler.bsky.social tells Rs who's bidding they're doing
www.offmessage.net/p/the-greedy…— Greg Sargent (@gregsargent.bsky.social) June 12, 2025 at 8:09 PM
===
It falls to White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller to keep all the plates spinning, a role he happily embraces, but which comes with the inherent challenge of putting the “mass” in mass deportations.
— David Kurtz (@davidkurtz.bsky.social) June 10, 2025 at 11:04 AM
===
And so it was that ICE officials found themselves being berated by Miller in late May that their arrest numbers weren’t high enough and the rhetorical focus on the worst of the worst needed to shift on the ground to focus on all undocumented immigrants, the WSJ reports:
— David Kurtz (@davidkurtz.bsky.social) June 10, 2025 at 11:04 AM
===
"Agents didn’t need to develop target lists of immigrants suspected of being in the U.S. illegally, a longstanding practice, Miller said. Instead, he directed them to target Home Depot, where day laborers typically gather for hire, or 7-Eleven convenience stores."
— David Kurtz (@davidkurtz.bsky.social) June 10, 2025 at 11:04 AM
===
That kind of indiscriminate enforcement action has had the effect of sweeping up documented and undocumented, citizen and noncitizen, workers and criminals in a Kafkaesque crackdown that was sure to enflame tensions in immigrant and minority communities that were hardest hit.
— David Kurtz (@davidkurtz.bsky.social) June 10, 2025 at 11:04 AM
===
An important point here is that the first truth is very much Trump, the second is absolutely -not- Trump.
— Schnorkles O'Bork (@schnorkles.bsky.social) June 12, 2025 at 3:27 PM
===
In fact I'd go so far to say that the complete disregard of even trying to sound like Trump in the second post (lmao "idyllic communities?" c'mon.) demonstrates that the writer (likely Miller) is kind of reeling.
— Schnorkles O'Bork (@schnorkles.bsky.social) June 12, 2025 at 3:29 PM
===
If the Stephen Miller freakshow is too much even for Ron Johnson (!) it’s probably worth confronting Republicans with the ugly truth: they aren’t being bullied into supporting “the MAGA agenda.” They’re being bullied into helping a sadistic degenerate get his fix. www.offmessage.net/p/the-greedy…
— Brian Beutler (@brianbeutler.bsky.social) June 12, 2025 at 8:00 PM
Baud
Cuckold says what?
schrodingers_cat
Elected Rs will fall in line, like they always do. If they don’t no one would be happier than I.
schrodingers_cat
How long to do we have see the MAGA protestors on the right hand side?
trollhattan
Ron Johnson has a moment. It’ll pass, because Ron Johnson.
Wonder if Tuberville has tired of his role making Ron Johnson second-stupidest senator?
RevRick
Yesterday, ICE conducted a raid at a fire remediation construction site arresting 17 men in Bethlehem PA. It of course provoked a counter demonstration. But the raid itself illustrates the cruel stupidity of the policy.
The May 2nd fire displaced 135 residents plus several first floor businesses, and the workers were busily repairing the damage so that those residents and businesses could soon return. But now that work has ground to a halt and the company contracted to do the repairs will have to find a new crew. Who knows how long that will take.
This is just a small example of what will grow into a huge problem. Trump’s first tweet shows that he senses that his deportation policy may not be the wisest move. Immigrants are a significant chunk in agriculture, construction, hospitality and meatpacking. Remove them from those workforces, and you quickly develop shortages on the supermarket shelves, unchanged sheets at hotels and nursing homes, and construction projects grinding to a halt. And that will create a vicious cycle of job losses and inflation.
trollhattan
NYT engages in accidental journalism.
Archon
One of these days I hope someone can explain to me how the people who voted for Trump to lower prices thought that tariffs and mass deportation would help with that.
I suspect that prices were an excuse more than a reason because I REFUSE to believe Trump voters were that ignorant on how the American economy works.
RevRick
@Archon: Have you seen photos of crowds at Trump rallies?
Suzanne
@Archon: They think mass deportation will raise their wages and lower housing costs. They think tariffs will result in higher profits for American firms and thus American workers will get a higher wage.
Marc
A rare interesting article on Gizmodo, check out People Over Papers: The Creator of ‘Waze for Ice Immigration Raids’ Speaks Out. Or, click over to the actual site.
jonas
@Archon:
Have you ever watched any of Jordan Klepper’s interviews of these people? Your mind just touches the void for a moment, they’re so stupid.
JML
@trollhattan: after publishing this accidentally correct information, the NYTimes leadership immediately started screaming, “But her emails!” and “Joe Biden is old!”
The bill the Current Occupant is trying to get rammed through might be the worst piece of federal legislation since…hells bells, I’m not even sure! Hoover and some of the tariff idiocy?
Suzanne
@jonas: Yes, and I think of this often.
SuzMom will sometimes remind me….. think of the most average person you know, and then remember that half of people are dumber than that.
Harrison Wesley
Is it safe?
MattF
Alexandra Petrie is back, for a certain value of back.
RaflW
Saw yesterday that a US Marine had his wife swiped by ICE, despite her efforts to work within the system. There’s an alleged paperwork violation from 2018. Criminals! You didn’t check box 21(a) with a No. 2 pencil, so: Kick her out! After detaining her in squalor!
It’s disgusting.
It’s also an opportunity to further erode Trump’s plunging approval ratings on immigration. Get these grotesque stories out more (news obvs covered this, that’s how I know. But the zone is shit-flooded, so repetition and smash-mouth is needed).
Chetan Murthy
Yesterday I was musing on the numerous examples we have of journos who made their careers being lickspittles (“that’s not spit they’re licking up”) to the Reichwing. MAGA Habs, Ken Vogel, lots of others. And I wondered: in recent memory have there been any journos who made their careers being the sockpuppets of progressive politicians that way? I cannot think of a single one. It’s as if journos know where the power is, and it sure ain’t with progressives. And that remains true regardless of which party holds the Presidency, which party holds the trifecta.
I say “as if”, but really, I think it’s just true.
RaflW
@jonas: I could barely stand to watch Jay Leno’s on-the-street JayWalking (not that I loved his show all that much, but I’d tune in for certain guests). I’ve long found people’s ignorance and stupidity much more unsettling than funny.
VFX Lurker
Shortly after November 5 last year, I spoke with a conservative co-worker. I mentioned that I had to change my computer upgrade plans from Summer 2025 to Winter 2024. I told him, “You know the cost of everything is going up next year, right?”
The shock on his face was genuine.
chrome agnomen
@RaflW: no child left behind!
Marc
@Harrison Wesley: Nothing is safe
Melancholy Jaques
@jonas:
I believe that for most, their ignorance is willful. I tried with several people – fellow teachers who are all college graduates – that there is no way that Biden opened the borders and let 17 or 20 or 21 million immigrants (the number keeps changing) into the country. We are in Los Angeles. We would notice.
They don’t care. They don’t reason it out. They don’t want to. They want their racist bully back on TV being cruel to people they do not like.
They are not stupid, they are looking the other way. The stupid things they say are their lame excuses.
Hilbertsubspace
@RaflW: Seems like a good time to remind people that Jay Leno and Klepper pick from the low end of responses. Tragically they are not true outliers though, no matter what anyone says.
azlib
Most people are not aware of how the US economy works and how complex it really is. Right now most economists agree the US has a labor shortage which is likely the biggest factor driving migration to the US. The labor shortage is why mass deporation is stupid. Sure, let’s deport the estimated 1/3 of the construction labor force. The percentage of undocumented workers in agriculture is likely highter. Any rational person who has looked at the problem knows mass deportation is not a solution. And besides ICE does not have the resources to pull it off in any case. So they are reduced to performative acts which destroys some people’s lives, but comes nowhere near being a mass deportation. Stephen Miller can scream all he wants telling ICE to increase their arrest numbers, but there are not the resources to do it.
Interesting Name Goes Here
@Hilbertsubspace: Anyone who has worked retail for more than 30 minutes knows that the Man on the Street skits are not outliers.
jonas
@RaflW: Yeah, I recall one episode of Jaywalking where he stumped some people with the question “How many moons does Earth have?”
Sigh.
RaflW
@Hilbertsubspace: Right. These people are able to get dressed and go about their day, they don’t seem to walk into posts or fall off cliffs. But (some of them) also vote, based on … vibes? What their dad or their friend tells them? A ticktoker? Ugh.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Archon: This the same nation that some guy from New York was able to create a major religion with a pair of magic stones, and convince thousands of women that being part of a hareem was awesome because the shared husband would be to exhausted from all the shiboking to beat them. None of this should be surprising. I mean Trump hasn’t talked thousand people into dying from exposure on the great plains while pushing hand cart.
RaflW
It’s just one piece, and neither of the reporters are on the politics desk, but maybe someone at the NYT has a glimmer of a clue?
news analysis
Trump Talks Big on Global Diplomacy, but His Goals Are in Tatters
The president said he would bring a quick end to the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, and get China to bend on trade and Iran on its nuclear program. Instead, conflict is escalating.
By Michael Crowley and Edward Wong | June 13, 2025 Updated 1:33 p.m. ET
Donald J. Trump may be known for his combative, vindictive style. But as a candidate for president in 2024, he cast himself as a man of peace. His toughness and the “respect” he enjoys from foreign leaders, he insisted, would enable him to settle conflicts almost with a snap of his fingers.
“My proudest legacy will be that of a peacemaker and unifier,” Mr. Trump said in his January inaugural address.
The war in Ukraine could be ended in as little as 24 hours, he said. He would knock heads to reach an agreement between Israel and Hamas to stop the fighting in Gaza.
And he said he would strike a nuclear deal with Iran, “because the consequences are impossible. We have to make a deal.”
A day after Israel began a massive attack on Iran, however, Mr. Trump’s peace projects are in tatters. The fighting in Ukraine rages on and Mr. Trump appears to have lost patience with efforts to end that war. In Gaza, both Israel and Hamas cling to basic positions they staked out long before Mr. Trump took office.
And instead of announcing a new nuclear deal with Tehran, a president who often denounces America’s history of “stupid” Middle East wars is trying to navigate a dangerous conflict between Iran and Israel, the closest U.S. partner in the region.
“Five months in, Trump is watching prospects of U.S.-mediated negotiations between Russia and Ukraine, the U.S. and Iran, and Israel and Hamas crater. And he’s learning the hard reality that there are severe limits to U.S. influence, power and to his vaunted negotiating skills, especially when you don’t have an effective strategy and aren’t willing to use U.S. leverage to make it succeed,” said Aaron David Miller, a former U.S. diplomat who worked under six secretaries of state.
danielx
@azlib:
If the Big Beautiful bill goes through, there will be.
JoyceH
@azlib: And when you’re out doing field work or climbing around on a construction site, do you have your birth certificate in your pocket? This isn’t a war against illegal immigration, it’s a war against brown people.
Baud
@jonas:
No way someone didn’t drop trou in response to that question.
Elizabelle
Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin has announced he is deploying the National Guard for tomorrow’s No Kings protest.
trollhattan
@Elizabelle: Uh, why?
Elizabelle
@trollhattan: Cuz we can’t have any of that car burning and property destruction. You know. Like after sports victories.
Elizabelle
Switching to my laptop. Will share the story from the Virginia Pilot (Hampton Roads paper).
Baud
Soprano2
@Suzanne: FFOTUS said it himself, those millions of immigrants are occupying housing that could be occupied by “real Americans”. They actually pitched deportations as a solution to the housing crisis.
Melancholy Jaques
@azlib:
Most people are not aware that there is no such thing as “the US economy” separate and apart from the rest of the world. More people need to listen to Arthur Jensen’s speech to Howard Beale. Sure, there are a variety of impacts at one location or another, but the whole system is global and has been since Columbus came back alive.
trollhattan
In case anybody is keeping their California map with the pins and yarn up to date. The latest.
Marines looking at each other are like “We’re doing what?”
trollhattan
@Elizabelle:
The governor seems to have confused cause and effect. Is that a common trait?
trollhattan
@Baud:
That makes it really hard to steer and shift.
cain
@Archon: There isn’t any logic. It seems mostly vibes. Whatever it is, they just didn’t like Harris and did not want a black woman in charge. I think that’s about it.
Geminid
@RaflW: An interesting view from Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan:
Fidan is no starry-eyed idealist. He served as Erdogan’s intelligence chie for 11 years before being tapped for Foreign Minister in 2023. Fidan knows the region as well as anyone, and this is only the latest war to break out in the region since George Bush invaded Iraq in 2003.
Elizabelle
Youngkin to deploy National Guard for weekend’s ‘No Kings’ protests
Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s statement comes ahead of 2,000 protests planned against the Trump administration across the country. It is unclear where National Guard troops will be staged.
The Pilot illustrated this story with a photo of Youngkin speaking at a Trump campaign event, the Orange One off to his right. Sign on podium: TRUMP WILL FIX IT.
Uh huh.
Elizabelle
Southern Republican governors are truly concerned about “disrupting traffic,” are they not?
Or, are they worried about hundreds of motorists honking in support of the No Kings protesters? That could be audible to news cameras.
Also, signs on highway overpasses.
Verrry interesting. They have been comparing notes.
Chetan Murthy
@danielx: And he’s deputizing local po-po to do the work for him too.
Chetan Murthy
@JoyceH: I got a “passport card” the last time I renewed my passport (Mar 2024). And since April 2025, I carry it everywhere with me (in my wallet behind my driver’s license).
Chetan Murthy
@MattF: “like an ill-constructed cake” GUFFAW!
Geminid
@Elizabelle: My headline: “Foungkin’ Youngkin struggles for relevance.”
Gretchen
@Elizabelle: Governor of Missouri is deploying National Guard to protests in Springfield, Kansas City and St. Louis.
Elizabelle
@Geminid: Thank dog he can only serve one term. Time’s almost up!
Jackie
@MattF:
Oh I missed her, but I didn’t realize how much until reading this! Thanks for posting!
Elizabelle
@Gretchen: Thank you.
We should all keep an eye on which governors are prepositioning their state National Guard units.
At least it keeps a percentage of them out of Los Angeles, no?
They could not be doing this if the MSM was not covering the ICE protests as the second coming of Rodney King.
JML
@Elizabelle: of course he is. dude is super thirsty to become President, gotta appeal to the skull-cracking thug demographic!
Of course, he seem set on bungling his succession as governor and offending everyone in the process, so the charisma-free 1 term governor of VA will probably find himself on his knees before Thiel or Elon begging them to subsidize his pathetic ass.
Geminid
@Elizabelle: This is one instance where I regret Virginia’s one term limit for Governors. I would have liked to see Glenn Youngkin and Abigail Spanberger battle it out, head to head. She’s ruthless.
Chetan Murthy
Today’s Digby: https://digbysblog.net/2025/06/13/a-fake-front-page-from-just-before-the-2016-election/
Goddamn, The Boston Globe was on-point.
Bill Arnold
The wikipedia page on remigration is worth a skim. It is a very actively edited page.
Remigration is a far-right European concept of ethnic cleansing[1] via the mass deportation or promoted voluntary return of non-white immigrants and their descendants, usually including those born in Europe, to their place of racial ancestry, often with no regard for their citizenship or legal status (as of 2025/06/13)
Wikipedia said largely the same thing at the end of 2024.
Elizabelle
Another interesting data point: WaPost conservative columnist Kathleen Parker has discovered Hannah Arendt.
It’s a good column, with absolutely no bothsidesing. Will excerpt it for you in a moment, and provide a gift link.
Kudos to Kathleen Parker, who has put up some shambolic content over the years.
Chetan Murthy
@Elizabelle: If Churchill could embrace Stalin, I guess we ……
Geminid
@JML: I expect Youngkin will find himself on his feet, addressing county- and state- level Lincoln/Reagan Day dinner audiences all over the US. He’s good at that kind of thing.
RaflW
@Melancholy Jaques: I’ll be a pedant and say that trade connecting far flung peoples goes back to at least the 5th century BCE.
Gloria DryGarden
@Chetan Murthy: you raise an interesting, though unpleasant point.
it appears there’s a whole lot more big money, and thus power, connected to right wingers and their interests. Big money power, is serving big money power.
Don’t journalists have a code of ethics?
Lobo
Refer to Miller as President Miller. Make him the face of the administration. Everybody hates him like Musk and Cruz.
RaflW
@Geminid: Sadly, Trump’s childish, tantruming impatience means diplomacy will be undermined, dispensed with, or hurried along to stalemate.
Chetan Murthy
Ha. Ha. [sigh] It seems that for the preservation of our Republic, we need to remove the profit motive from journalism. Which [I’m not a fool] nagahapen.
trollhattan
@Gretchen: What, no Ozarks? They’re protestin’ up in them hollars, governor!
Elizabelle
Internet is hiccupping, so no excerpting. But:
GIFT LINK: WaPost, Kathleen Parker today:
This writer warned us about tyranny years ago. Will we listen now?
PBS film on Jewish philosopher Hannah Arendt offers vital lessons on totalitarianism.
This one is interesting for how she spells out some parallels between Trump and aspiring dictators before. There is a very small amount of bothsidesing: these disaffected souls — and she admits they are mostly men — were disrespected by The Elites. That said, it’s one long sentence in a straightforward op ed.
Gloria DryGarden
@RaflW: farther back than that. There’s an entire book about the fall of international trade around 1100 bc. Sumerian, Egyptian, Anatolian, and Levantine. Read it for a history class, I’ve got the book around here someplace, author did lots of talks and interviews.
when their interdependence fell apart, prosperity went downhill, too.
Gloria DryGarden
@RaflW: not going to have much international leverage left, if T finishes his destruction of USA including all the proj 2025 stuff his backers want.
Geminid
@RaflW: I’m glad someome knows how this war will turn out!
More seriously,Turkiye is worth keeping your eye on. This war is happening right next door to them.
And Tom Barrack, Trump’s Ambassador to Turkiye and Special Envoy for Syria is worth watching too.
Barrack is a longtimeTrump ally and has a lot of clout. If Mike Hucabee called the White House, Susan Wiles would likely say, “Talk to Mario.” If Barrack calls, Wiles might say, “Tom, he’s got some time next hour., how about 2:30.” Or if its a good time, Wiles might patch him right in to Trump: “Mr. President, Tom Barrack on line one.”
Gloria DryGarden
On raising incomes by 2.3% for the top 10%, I did a little math.
for a millionaire, 2.3% of 1 million annual income is $23,000/ year. That’s an entire annual income for many people. For people who live on even less, it’s veritable riches. I know this.
Jackie
@Chetan Murthy: Fake yesterday; true today.
Elizabelle
And an even better GIFT LINK from the WaPost: Kathleen Parker linked to this 2017 analysis of Hannah Arendt that is very good.
How Hannah Arendt’s classic work on totalitarianism illuminates today’s America
published December 17, 2016
Author: Jeffrey C. Isaac is the James H. Rudy professor of political science at Indiana University at Bloomington and editor in chief of Perspectives on Politics, a journal of the American Political Science Association.
Amusing. This article was from a recurring WaPost feature called Monkey Cage. Takes its name from an HL Mencken quote: “Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey–cage.”
FWIW, Monkey Cage was published for nine years, until December 5, 2022.
Ken B
@Geminid: A lot of folks think Fleece Nazi is interested in running in ‘28.
Haven’t seen anything to convince me they’re wrong.
Baud
@Ken B:
Lots of people will be running in 2028.
Jeffro
oh
well
MattF
@Elizabelle: Rather than argue with Parker, people should read Arendt for themselves. She wrote a lot and it’s all edifying. Her main point is always that one should think about politics, history, and culture— and she taught that by example. And that knowing more, and thinking harder is the better and the more moral thing to do, regardless of where that leads you.
trollhattan
Now we have to declare war on the UK for this egregious Jolly Rancher slander.
Your move, Donny.
Ken B
@Gloria DryGarden: Sounds like 1177bc, The Year Civilization Collapsed, by Eric Cline?
Elizabelle
Interesting. The Monkey Cage eventually developed into the free website, Good Authority. No paywall, and it’s got lots of interesting articles.
https://goodauthority.org
Gloria DryGarden
@Geminid: what kind of clout does he have and how valuable are his services?
meaning, is he competent? Is he only working for ants interests?
Elizabelle
@MattF: Absolutely.
And thank you for the link to the much easier to read, but no less insightful, Alexandra Petri. She is a treasure. The Atlantic is lucky to have her. The Bezos Post’s loss!
Shana
@RevRick: here in my upscale section of Fairfax County VA it will start hitting home when the lawncare and house cleaning companies start having to pull back on their schedules. Then maybe the asshole up the street who had a sign reading “I’m voting for the felon” in her yard since the day after the verdict will start complaining. Leopards eating faces and all that.
RaflW
@Elizabelle: Most of it is good. But she leaves easter eggs like this shit.
1. Kathleen, you work as a pundit at an elite org full of journalists. As a writer! Jesus.
2. Are these people elite, Kath? Stephen Miller went to Duke. Sen Josh Hawley: Stanford & Yale. Elon Musk is worth obscene amounts of money. Leonard Leto has exercised almost total, personal control of the Federal bench across multiple terms of GOP presidencies. But you know Parker thinks of elites as Al Gore or Greta Thunberg. So tedious!
What Arendt warns of is really important. If Parker’s column reaches some of WaPos (slightly) more conservative readers, great. But I can’t stomach crap like “…Los Angeles confronts violent protests against National Guard and military deployments for migrant arrests” as if the violence is not 98% state-operated.
Nope, nuh uh, can’t.
Gretchen
@Jackie: Wow. That was a column. Especially the ending. Sniff.
brantl
@trollhattan: even as it was better than their previous reporting, it’s still pretty much sucks Trump‘s last Bill hurt regular people and enriched rich people. In fact, the tax cuts for regular people were temporary. The tax cuts for corporations were permanent.
cain
@Elizabelle: Thank you for sharing, this is a great find.
RaflW
@Geminid: Oh, I think Trump’s inability to countenance more than a couple months of diplomacy is a bad variable, not anything predictive whatsoever!
Baud
according to Blue sky, the Marines have been deployed to guard a federal building far from the action.
Gloria DryGarden
@Ken B: YES! Thank you!
His talks are good. The book was detailed, hard to get to the main points because of wading through it all, but fascinating. Cool stuff.
This princess marrying across the waters into that kings family, sunken ships with huge numbers of amphorae of useful valuable goods. Etc. Have you heard some of his talks?
If I were a novelist, I long to write books about women’s lives and connection to religion in Sumerian city states.
Splitting Image
@Chetan Murthy:
David Simon?
A couple of Bernie Bros would fit the bill.
Although if you were looking for a reason why “Bernie Bros” spend more time attacking the Democrats than the Republicans, a good one is that if they want to buy a bigger house at some point, attacking the Democrats leaves the option open to say “the party left me” and go over to Fox.
cain
@Elizabelle:
I think at this point Kathleen is now a woke reporter.
Ken B
@Gloria DryGarden: Yeah, I’ve seen some of his talks online.
He recently (last year?) released a revised edition. He also has a new sort-of sequel book out, After 1177bc the Survival of Civilization . It’s pretty much what it sounds like, looks at the civilizations that survived.
Matt McIrvin
@Bill Arnold: Our indigenous nations would like a word.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
It does seem like Miller is the co-President of Month.
Elizabelle
@cain: You are welcome! We can check it out and share good stories.
Geminid will like that one top story today concerns Turkey.
gene108
@Archon:
I also refuse to believe Trump voters are stupid. To do so takes away their agency to make decisions as adults. “Can’t really blame John Smith for his Trump vote, he’s dumb and easily mislead” is what labeling Trump voters as stupid or ignorant does.
@Chetan Murthy:
This dynamic is because Republicans represent the views of the vast majority of white men in this country, who have always held significant power.
Republicans’ core group of supporters are white men.
People on here say the core of the Democratic party is black women. They’ve never had much power in politics, business, etc.
Basically, whose approval of what a journalist writes can elevate a career? It’s clearly keeping white men happy.
Elizabelle
@RaflW: Kathleen gonna Kathleen.
But look at how clearly she ties Trump’s actions to what previous dictators have tried and done.
She may not be writing as much for us as for those who are consider themselves “conservative” and are starting to realize “oh, shit!”
Baud
@Elizabelle:
ah, yet another No Bauds website.
Gloria DryGarden
@Elizabelle: “
Create an account to redeem your FREE article
Gloria DryGarden
@Ken B: I’m going to need to read that…Thanks!
is his revised edition more readable? Have you looked at it?
gene108
@RaflW:
I wonder how many people spots like that have to cutout because they are not jaw droppingly ignorant.
Omnes Omnibus
@Baud: If I were the OIC I would opt for that. “There! We’re protecting federal property. Fuckers.” Nowhere near anyplace where they can be asked to do anything stupid or illegal.
Elizabelle
@Gloria DryGarden: Right, that is awful.
Can you make up something, and not give them your real email? Let me know.
Fuck Jeff Bezos. That would be my account name. I am not aware of other news sites that do that.
Omnes Omnibus
@gene108: Stupid people have agency.
Elizabelle
@Baud: Noticed that. Alas.
Gloria DryGarden
Servitude
Omnes Omnibus
@Elizabelle: I’d give them Steve in the WTF’s email. That should do the trick.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Ken B:
Cline’s 1177 BC book is a good read.
For those who don’t want to get the book, this article is a good overview:
https://www.haaretz.com/archaeology/2015-04-13/ty-article/.premium/1177-bce-the-year-civilization-was-destroyed/0000017f-e124-d568-ad7f-f36f09770000
One of the most enduring academic debates from that era surrounds the so-called “Sea Peoples”
Gloria DryGarden
@Elizabelle: wonderful to learn of this.
an article from 2017 jumped out at me from the bottom of their front page “
Courts can be undermined in these 3 ways. This is how to protect them.
Gloria DryGarden
@Matt McIrvin: no kidding
Elizabelle
@Omnes Omnibus: You know it.
@Gloria DryGarden: Yes! We can’t share good content from there.
Gloria DryGarden
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: I’m trying to open this article. Do I need to subscribe, register for my free 6 articles?
(I’m used to turning away at the point of registering, though in this case it might be worth it..)
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Gloria DryGarden:
Archive link:
https://archive.ph/hunSJ
WTFGhost
@Chetan Murthy: Well, liberal folks don’t like propagandists, in general. It seems gauche to do something like that. I’ve heard plenty of liberals bashing (Michael Moore?), and I’ve heard another opinion, “WTF, he’s a propagandist, just like anyone on the right! What’s the problem?”
And I realized that I myself didn’t like that idea. But I also realized that, while I don’t have to support propaganda, I don’t have to slam those who are pushing a leftie viewpoint with the same journalistic integrity as appears on Opinion pages, which is to say, “only some.”
Anyway: we do have to celebrate some level of propaganda, for the same reason Wrigley’s gum celebrates gum chewing, which is a healthy habit, helping with tooth and mouth health.
Um. That is to say, we should at least be okay with “leftie advertising,” where we make it sound like “chewing gum” or “leftie politics/policies” are the keys to heaven, without any awkwardness or shame.
Now, that’s the easy part, *thinking* of the solution. Next comes the *hard* part, funding the operation. It’s not easy when ABC news fires a guy for saying “Miller runs on hate, pure-D hate” which, IMHO, isn’t a sign of personal animus, but simply a sign of keen observation.
That said: notice how quickly the righties went crazy over the word hate, which proves it should be used a lot more, especially about Trump.
Geminid
@Gloria DryGarden: Barrack is knowledgeble, with a history as an operator in the region going back to the 1970s. He seems to have a lot of authority on Syria matters. Barrack is worth looking up.
Baud
nice protest sign
Baud
oops
Jeffro
I couldn’t be happier with Youngkin tying himself ever-closer to the orange dementia patient.
Now if only Kemp was equally dumb…(sigh)…
WTFGhost
@Archon: If you see enough people, whom you normally trust, tell you something over, and over, and you don’t understand it, it’s perfectly reasonable to assume those good, fine, people at Fox News understand the issue better than you, and to trust them.
For example, when Condi Rice said that the aluminum tubes were for centrifuges, I thought maybe she had secret knowledge that the IAEA didn’t have. As it turned out, she didn’t – she was just a lying sack of crap. And yet, even though I knew she was likely lying, I couldn’t quite disbelieve her, until the inspectors got in and found, “oh, yeah, just like before, these were for rockets; there’s boatloads of documentary evidence for rockets, and no evidence of a nuclear program. Also, the tubes were impossible to use for centrifuges, just like we said *before* the invasion….”
The few times I’ve see Fox News segments, I could see how they would help people, who had trouble with the truth, come to accept the comforting FN lies.
Timill
@Ken B: Revised edition was 2021(!)
Now you’ve read the book, get the t-shirt… (no financial interest, but mine should be here next week)
Ken B
@Gloria DryGarden: I don’t think it’s particularly easier or harder to read, he was basically updating the book to reflect new scholarship\finds. Also, his thoughts on a few things had changed somewhat over the years.
I read the newer version shortly after it came out, and don’t remember a lot of changes, but it had been probably about ten years since I read the first edition.
A couple of other books you may find interesting. Michael Wood wrote In Search of the Trojan War, which is largely focused on Troy, the Mycenaens, Homer, and the Hittites. It’s engaging, readable, and has lots of good photos. It was originally written as a companion to his documentary series of the same name (which is also well worth watching). When Wood did the show/wrote the book, his theories about the war were not well received by the experts in the field. He ended up being more right than they were. He doesn’t say much about that in the book, but in the series you can see it on some of their faces when he conducts his interviews.
Drews writes about the end of the Bronze Age, and is pretty focused on advancing his theory that the cause was a change in the nature of warfare. He makes a good argument, but he’s too focused on his theory. I think the changes in warfare that he documents did play a part, but I don’t think it was the only (or major) factor.
I only have wood and Drew’s in dead tree editions and I’m at work. If you have more questions about them, I pull them out once I’m home.
Sorry this is so long.
Jackie
@Baud: Oooh GREAT idea! A roll of masking tape would create a lot of signs!
Gvg
@Archon: The evidence is that EVERYONE is that ignorant of how the economy works, including the very rich. Our richest people mostly inherited their wealth, although they usually claim they increased it. Regular business people never understood the economy, or that stupid idea of running government like a business wouldn’t have taken hold. In basic economics classes in college, what stuck with me the most was how much people had to argue with the professors about facts. They could not wrap their heads around provable statistics that went against their preconceptions and argued as if the professor could change the facts. They didn’t understand that it wasn’t an opinion, it was repeated measured results.
Now, predictions and more advanced things can be argued, but the basic first level stuff was not. Most college courses students took notes and tried to understand. Economics provoked arguments like it was promoting a different religious view.
Baud
Ken B
@Timill: Yikes! I didn’t realize it had been so long.
Liked the Sea People’s World Tour shirt.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Ken B:
It’s been decades since I read Drews book. It’s actually available to read online:
https://archive.org/details/endofbronzeagech0000drew/mode/2up
One review from back in the day:
https://www.persee.fr/doc/antiq_0770-2817_1995_num_64_1_1234
Drew’s book is an interesting read but as most reviewers of the day and since have said, it’s never been provable. Now that it’s online, I might have to reread it…like I have time to reread stuff with the stack of unread stuff.
The entire “iron weapons changed things” still gets back to the problematic origin and nature of the so-called “Sea Peoples” which as I noted above, remains an ongoing academic debate with no signs of ever concluding. :)
The wargaming rules and army lists I’ve been doing for a millions years, we have a “Sea Peoples” list with historical notes. Lengthy, doesn’t give any conclusions cuz their ain’t none but I’ll post em here for the helluva it:
Gvg
@Suzanne: in the middle of the baby boom work force when we had high unemployment deportation might have helped wages. Now when baby boomers have been retiring for awhile and our population growth would be down without immigration, when we just had near zero unemployment (under Biden’s smarter policies), this is a disaster.
I do think there is some left over resentment from that time. Grudges linger. I don’t think the point was made at the time that we kind of did it to ourselves (pretty much world wide) by having that baby boom after the depression and world war. Easier to blame foreigners always.
Tariffs-been so long since we had any, I don’t think most people know anything about them. They mean good things if your side is for them I guess. I wonder if most of our voters know more or are just following our party’s lead?
VFX Lurker
When I was younger and less informed, I admired Michael Moore for speaking out against G.W. Bush at award ceremonies. I thought he cared about people.
Then he told people to not vote for Hillary Clinton in 2016.
Then he stiffed and slandered Boston Light & Sound in 2018, drawing a sharp rebuke from film critic Leonard Maltin.
Now I think Michael Moore is a selfish dick.
Interesting Name Goes Here
@Omnes Omnibus: So let me ask this. Why are some of us so insistent on absolving said stupid people of that agency? Case in point – the discussion from last night. Somehow, people making a fully-informed decision to back a guy who they knew lies like you and I breathe and has repeatedly stated his hatred of them in particular deserve more consideration and understanding than the people rightfully calling them out for making that decision and helping create the current nightmare. Does that not seem wrong?
Gloria DryGarden
@Ken B: thank you. Very cool. I’m interested in the new thoughts on it. I’ll look into it then.
No, not too long, useful stuff. I’ll check Hulu for the show, although as soon as history is just about men an their wars, it’s a little hard to engage. But I’ll give it a chance.
Gloria DryGarden
@Gvg: ;it sounds like economics needs to be a series of required high school courses. So we can vote intelligently, instead of just being persuaded by skilled debaters and charismatic demagogue orators.
i tried to take Econ, and it was very hard to understand. I am sure there are educators who can simplify it or break it down into smaller steps so it can be grasped. Sounds important.
narya
Apparently the Marines have detained the first civilian citizen. Any guesses what color his skin is?
Ken B
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: Been a long time since I read him, too.
I don’t think he thought it was iron weapons so much as new tactics and some new types of weapons to go along with them (like the Naue type 2 sword).
Personally, I think that the collapse of the Bronze Age trade networks helped drive the wider adoption of iron. Bronze was expensive because it depended on the availability of copper, and more importantly, tin, but the empires and their trading provided the materials and supported the specialists to use them.
Once the trade routes were gone, folks needed to figure out how to work iron, which may have been much more available, but was much harder to make useful.
Also, I’m not aware of numerous finds of iron weapons until after the end of the Bronze Age.
TS
@cain:
100%, racist to the core – Comey and the media defeated Hilary Clinton, racism had that role with Kamala Harris.
opiejeanne
@Baud: II read that they’re in the Wilshire district. That is pretty far away from the protests.
TS
@RaflW:
He does not have people in his administration capable of the level of diplomacy needed. The reality of who is willing to work for trump.
WTFGhost
@VFX Lurker: Without a word of disagreement with what you’ve said, I’ll acknowledge only that I won’t bust Moore for bashing righties with fair-to-middlin’ honesty – no concerns about whether a particular bit of bashing was “unfair” or “not truthful enough”. If the right could cheer Limbaugh, we could cheer a selfish dick who was, at the moment, bashing the bad guys.
(That’s one problem with historical examples… history tends to ruin them after a time! So, forget about his early 2000 documentaries, anyone who said not to vote for Clinton in 2016 was, at the very least, too stupid to be listened to further. )
Gloria DryGarden
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: this part might make it extremely relevant for our current times
Thanks for those links. This might be some great bedtime reading.
Ken B
@Gloria DryGarden: Woods is about much, much, more than the war, and especially about more than people fighting.
He talks about the pioneers in the field, he talks about oral epics passed on without being written down (and some of the telltale signs of such compositions).
he ranges far and wide, but he never loses track of his main subject. The titles are a little dated, being very much of the seventies; adolescent boys will no doubt enjoy the brief flash of NAKED BOOBIES in the opening credits (blink and you’ll miss it). On the other hand, every woman I’ve ever watched it with has commented favorably on Michael Woods jeans.
It’s a great show, and makes you think.
geg6
@Archon:
They’re all around me. They are exactly that stupid.
🐾BillinGlendaleCA
@opiejeanne: They’re at the Federal Building in Westwood.
lowtechcyclist
@Lobo:
Stephen Miller having this much power sure wasn’t my idea of Miller Time.
Baud
Trump’s America
twbrandt
@VFX Lurker: Moore is self-aggrandizing hack. I just ignore him.
MagdaInBlack
@Baud: Yikes. I’m pretty familiar with that rail crossing, having driven that route to work for several years.
Martin
@trollhattan: Today has been nonstop sirens and national guard vehicles driving past my house.
Baud
update on military detention
according to another Blue sky post, the guy said no hard feelings.
Scout211
I don’t know if this has been discussed yet but The Daily Beast (web archive version) from Michael Wolff, who talks about Trump’s reponse to the attack on Senator Padilla
. . .
More at the link, plus another one of those over-the-top looney responses from Trump’s spokesgoon, Cheung.
TONYG
@Suzanne: Yes. But I think that the real point is that these people “think” whatever they’re told to think. They’ll believe that 2+2=5 if their cult leader tells them to believe that.
surfk9
O/T I just ate a BLT made with the first beefsteak tomato of the year from my garden. What a wonderful thing! It was so good. I hope everybody else’s garden is giving them good stuff as well.
Gloria DryGarden
@Ken B: I’ll look up where it’s showing. When people can make history come alive and be engrossing to non historians, it’s great. That takes some great skill.
blushing about the jeans; I have noticed men looking quite good in jeans. Especially 501s. It’s not after dark yet, so I’ll just say I will look.
Gloria DryGarden
@Martin: LA área?
@Baud: good. That’s a relief, anyway.
@surfk9: June 13, a beefsteak tomato? Already? When do you plant them? You must be south of the mason dixon line.
Timill
@Ken B:
Getting that, the Jason and the Argonauts World Tour and the Nero’s Fire and Rescue shirt.
“Fighting fires with lyres since 64 A.D.“
TerryC
@Chetan Murthy: I carry my passport in my right rear pocket, always. And it has a $100 bill tucked into it.
Uncle Cosmo
RHMM: Reinhard Heydrich’s Mini-Me. Pronouced “Roehm,” as in Ernst Roehm of the Brownshirts, but a sniveling coward.
surfk9
@Gloria DryGarden: We’re in Northern San Joaquin Valley, just south of Sacramento. My wife has a greenhouse and we get starts early and give them a month or two in the greenhouse and then plant them in the garden beds when the soil warms up.,
evodevo
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
Has always reminded me of the Viking Age in Europe – they weren’t using any different means/weapons than everyone else, but they instituted a reign of terror for a hundred years over a vast chunk of the European continent, ranging as far as Turkey. And ended up settling down and integrating in the local population over a wide area.
Gloria DryGarden
@Timill: Please make us a poem about the fires and lyres, and historic amusement bits..
Geminid
@Gloria DryGarden: We were talkung about Tom Barrack earlier, Barrack being U.S. Special Envoy for Syria as well as Ambassador to Turkiye. Barrack flew to Washington last Saturday to confer with Trump and Secretary Rubio, but he’s back in Ankara now with a hot war going on nearby.
Regarding that war, Barrack posted this on social media:
Barrack is quoting Mu’aviya, who founded the Umayyad Caliphate ~660 CE.
This all sounds like something from a dystopian Hallmark card series, but I think Barrack’s message is to the Iranians: that this war can be resolved through diplomacy, and the US is an adversary, not an enemy.
I thought this summary of Turkiye’s Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan’s statement today was a good counerpoint. From Clash Report:
Turkey and Iran are like geo-strategic frenemies, two Muslim nations of around 85 million some regionsl conflicts and rivalries. The two nations maintain decent relations though, and the Turks have good relations with the Trump administration. They’re potential middlemen between the U.S. and Iran.
The Turkish-Israeli relationship is strained, mainly because of the war in Gaza,. But those two countries keep several communication channels open, including one involving military “deconfliction” teams that operates on a 24/7 basis. That channel’s main purpose is to keep Turkiye and Israel from tangling in Syria.
Those teams have probably been busy the last 24 hours, because scores of Israeli jets have been flying over northern Syria and Iraq on their way to and from attacking Iran. The Turkish Air Force also operates in those areas from time to time, and they keep a close watch on that airspace.
Soprano2
@Gretchen: I’ll let you know if i see any of them tomorrow. There’s a big Pride event here tomorrow, too.