No, I won’t shut up about flamingos. Not today, when the depraved and evil governor of Florida will welcome the vile and demented president of the United States for a ribbon-cutting ceremony to open a concentration camp in the Everglades. I will never shut up about flamingos! [gift link]
Largest group of flamingos in a decade spotted in Florida Everglades
The largest group of American Flamingos seen in Florida in more than a decade was recorded late last week.
Mark Ian Cook, a wildlife and scientific photographer, posted on Facebook that he saw a group of 115 flamingos along the coastline of Florida Bay in the Everglades on Friday. It was the latest indication of the iconic bird’s renewed interest in the Sunshine State, where the native population was obliterated more than a century ago.
Cook was taking part in an aerial survey of birds in Florida Bay when the flamingos were first spotted. He said helicopter pilot James Davies “pointed out a large group of Roseate Spoonbills in the distance, which isn’t an unexpected sight in this area. Except on closer inspection we realized they weren’t spoonbills, they were a group of 115 flamingos.”…
While flamingos are being seen more, there has been no documented nesting in Florida since the late 1800s or early 1900s.
“I think we all are eagerly waiting and hoping that that’s going to happen,” (Julie Wraithmell, executive director of Audubon Florida) said. “And, you know, it still could. But the first step is the bird staying through the season and being able to make a living here, so to speak.”
Friends, someday, we’ll tear down that concentration camp in the Everglades and send its architects to the Hague. And flamingos will build nests where crimes against humanity once occurred. For me, at least, pink is the color of hope!
Open thread!
On The Road – Deputinize America – Melbourne I – 2024
Baud
🦩👍
Suzanne
I, for one, welcome our new pink overlords. Better than what we’ve got now!
NotMax
Happy Canada Day!
Elizabelle
Agree. Hope is the thing with feathers.
Felon47 and DeSantis are the things without shame.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
Any material on what might be causing the rebound? Good environmental (and species) news is so rare.
Gvg
I remember when I saw roseate spoonbills first feeding in roadside canals in Orlando. It was about 90 or 91 after a storm. I thought it was an escape from Sea World not a native and called them to ask. Near Sand lake road. I started seeing more on my way to school every morning in the low lying areas (poorer neighborhood because more mosquitoes and a bit more flood prone). Shortly after I moved up to Gainesville for more school and started seeing wild turkeys which had also been rare for decades but have now made a comeback. It made the papers back then, now they are common.
Baud
If only someone had warned them.
Spanky
@Baud: The question is, how many are ok with that?
Raoul Paste
Thanks, BC. First thing I’ve seen this morning
Gvg
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: less pollution probably. Less road runoff. We had amphibian die off too, and that was attributed to pollution causing fatal mutations. Evidently amphibians display weird mutations like two heads before they die and cellular damage that scientists can see pretty easily when exposed to even low doses of chemicals, so they are considered a good monitor species of what is going on. When frogs and such disappear, it means pollution is increasing, and it impacts those that feed on them plus other species also die out but aren’t as easy to see why, but we can assume.
Getting rid of leaded gas made a huge difference here. The leaded gas emissions left a residue on the roads that washed into the system with every rain. We are a watery state ecology with a shallow water table. We also put in air standards and enforced sewer standards. Prosperity helped too. People don’t remember how poor Florida used to be pre WWII and the air conditioning era boom of about the 70’s. But from what Iunderstand, it was unleaded gasoline that saved the most.
Splitting Image
Of interest to comic book fans: Former Marvel editor-in-chief Jim Shooter has passed away.
He became editor-in-chief in 1978 when the company was hurtling into bankruptcy and every other comic book company except for DC and Archie was shutting down. He set up the royalty program that made Marvel creators get paid what they were worth for the first time and helped build up the direct market which kept the industry afloat for the next forty years and led to new independent companies entering the market for the first time since the 1950s.
Next to Lee, Kirby, and Ditko, it’s hard to think of anyone who deserves more credit for Marvel being what it is today. He also helped create the Transformers and the G.I. Joe franchise.
lowtechcyclist
I for one hope that the construction of Alligator Auschwitz goes about as well as Swamp Castle from Monty Python and the Holy Grail:
Before they get to the fourth attempt that (in MP&HG) finally stays up, presumably both Hair Furor and DeathSantis will have both moved on to other ventures, and their successors will have given up on this one.
SiubhanDuinne
@Suzanne:
pink > orange
Suzanne
@Gvg: I did the Disney marathon in January, and there were four giant vultures just sitting in a tree and chillin, around mile 16. Disconcerting but cool AF. Is it typical to see vultures there?
Suzanne
@SiubhanDuinne: 💯.
Though, in the more recent pictures I’ve seen, he’s looking less orange and more of a color I associate with baby shit.
Bg
There used to be a pair of Flamingos living in the butterfly conservatory in Key West. They would stand side by side in the pond, moving their heads from side to side and squawking simultaneously
Betty Cracker
@Suzanne: We have tons of vultures and buzzards here in the swamp, and thank goodness — the place would be a mess without them! I think they look kinda cool with their gnarly bald heads!
BlueGuitarist
Thanks BC and BJ
Love all y’all
Suzanne
@Betty Cracker: Those vultures were awesome. I mean, by mile 16, one is feeling slightly less than comfortable, so I was thinking to myself, “Well played, vultures, you figured out that the odds of someone dying at this event are not zero,” so that was possibly a little bit dark. But I really enjoyed seeing them nonetheless.
I spent a bunch of time in Naples, FL, last year for a project. Mostly working, but got out a little bit. Saw not enough birds and too many Republicans.
Another Scott
@Gvg: +eleventy billion.
When I moved to NoVA in the late ’80s, one never saw chipmunks or foxes or bald eagles or ospreys or … Now, they’re very common. Ellie screams at the foxes every morning and every evening. :-/
I do worry, though, about the lack of obvious insects.
When I was a kid growing up in Cobb County, we had masses of grasshoppers and similar things in the yard of our apartment building, and bug splats were perpetual on the car windshield. Now, at least around here, bugs in the yard and on the windshield seem pretty rare. :-(
And, of course, yesterday there was a door-to-door saleslady trying to get me to sign up for some monthly bug treatment that included spraying around the house and spreading some stuff in the yard… :-/
No can do, no I can’t go for that…
Life works really, really hard to find a way, if we let it. There’s still work to do to get the balance closer to sustainable.
Thanks.
Best wishes,
Scott.
ColoradoGuy
@Suzanne: Yeah, His Orangeness looks more like well-weathered mahogany these days. For a guy that hates Black people, he’s looking kinda dark himself. Almost blackface, except in HDTV color.
eclare
@Elizabelle:
Yes, Emily Dickinson described it perfectly.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Betty Cracker: At first I thought “vultures and buzzards” was a metaphor for those attending the ribbon cutting.
Betty Cracker
Florida Republicans are the worst!
They have chosen the form of their destructor. Alligators and pythons shall feast upon them! ;-)
Suzanne
@ColoradoGuy: The way his skin looks is so fucken weird. (And I say this as someone with skin sensitivities/allergies and a family history of skin cancer, so I spend a fair amount of time at the dermatologist and reading about skin care, so take that for what it’s worth.)
Like, the area around his eyes is much paler than the rest of his face, which indicates using a tanning bed. But then the color looks different every time and splotchier, which indicates makeup. But…. doesn’t his dermatologist tell him how to apply skin care so his skin would look more consistent?! Doesn’t he have retinol and vitamin C?! Get yourself a BeautyBlender, man. Do it for the country.
lowtechcyclist
@Betty Cracker:
Another thing I’m wondering about Alligator Auschwitz is, where will they get the construction labor to build it? An increasing proportion of construction workers these days fail the proverbial paper bag test. They’d be easy (and ironic!) pickings for ICE. That might slow construction down considerably.
lowtechcyclist
Maybe if he looks almost as horrible as he is, low-info voters might make the connection.
MazeDancer
Pink is good. So are feathers.
Is it possible anyone could slip and fall in during the ceremonies? Orcas hate billionaires. Maybe alligators aren’t crazy about the GOP.
Librettist
@Suzanne:
Spray tan booth?
catclub
Dermatologist? Tell him?
No, probably does not have one, and if he did, he is smarter than the doc.
Another Scott
@Suzanne: There was some time in 2017 when he briefly had someone else do his hair and it looked almost like human hair for a change.
I think s/he lasted about 3 days, because it was soon back to the weird swoopy mess.
We live in the weirdest timeline. I don’t like it.
Grr…
Best wishes,
Scott.
different-church-lady
FUCK EVERYTHING BUT FLAMINGOES!!!
Another Scott
@MazeDancer: Relatedly…
Phys.org:
Best wishes,
Scott.
different-church-lady
@Another Scott: Here’s a fun game: try to figure out whose hair it is without reading the rest of the thread…
Mustang Bobby
It sounds better in the original German.
different-church-lady
@Baud: You gotta remember that half of them are idiots who think the Democrats are the threat.
Geminid
This morning’s Politico Playbook has an item about a seven-figure ad campaign the advocacy group “Protect Our Healthcare” is poised to air in 10 Republican House districts. The Democratic-affilliated group says they’ll run the ads if the Republicans incumbents vote for the the Medicaid cuts in Trump’s budget bill, and provided a link previewing the ad.
The ten Republicans include David Schweikert (AZ); California Reps. David Valadeo, Young Kim and Ken Calvert; New York Reps. Mike Lawler, Nick LaLota and Anthony Gabarino; as well as Pennsylvania Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick, Rob Bresnehan and Ryan Mackenzie.
Bresnehen and Mackenzie flipped Democrat-held seats last year by very narrow margins. Bresnehan beat Rep. Matt Cartwright by 6200 votes votes out of 385,000 votes cast, while MacKenzie beat Rep. Susan Wild by 4,060 votes out of 403,000 votes cast.
Suzanne
@lowtechcyclist: It never makes sense to me when people have money and time (either their own, or a stylist’s/professional’s), and still manage to look like crap.
Jeffro
@Splitting Image: thanks for this note! RIP Jim. I’m going to make my co-workers call me “Nemesis Lad” today in his honor. =)
(In all seriousness…he did write a few of my childhood faves, that AVENGERS #161 featured in the article being one of them)
Jackie
@lowtechcyclist:
ICE detainees? IOW, immigrants prison labor.
Mustang Bobby
Die Regierung genehmigt Alligator Alcatraz: Floridas von Alligatoren bewachtes Gefängnis für illegale Einwanderer. Umgeben von Sümpfen und Pythons ist es ein One-Way-Ticket ins Unglück. Hol dir unser Merchandise und unterstütze die rigorose Bekämpfung von Kriminalität an den Grenzen! Nur begrenzt verfügbar – hol dir deins, bevor die Alligatoren es tun!
Spanky
Ya hates to see it, I tells ya:
BlueGuitarist
@Betty Cracker:
@lowtechcyclist:
Thanks for labeling it a concentration camp
and for the Alligator Auschwitz moniker.
DeSadist literally touted the showers
Gloria DryGarden
open to suggestions…
RevRick
@different-church-lady: I wince every time we dismiss or denigrate voters who didn’t vote our preferred way as morons or idiots, because in order to win elections we will need their votes.
In family systems theory this is called triangulation, where person A criticizes person B to person C, asking C to agree that B is terrible. It ain’t healthy.
Albatrossity
Send more flamingoes our way, please! They are very popular here in Flyover Country as well!
Spanky
@Gloria DryGarden: It would be a shame if the stage collapsed and they all fell in.
JML
@Splitting Image: Huge bummer about Shooter; I met him at a con and he couldn’t have been nicer or more gracious to fans. (a legitimately huge guy BTW, so not just a giant in the world of comics) I had several comics for him to sign, from different eras of his career, and with a couple of them as soon as I pulled them out, he immediately went into storyteller mode, started telling bit about the behind the scene aspects to their creation. Was very generous with his time, told lots of stories about his time at Marvel especially, talked about the craft of storytelling…I was already a fan of his writing, and after that I really became a big fan of him as a pro and a person. Eff cancer.
It’s made me a little sad that he’s gotten so little recognition (not even a “special thanks to” in the credits most of the time) during the rise of the MCU, because he was so important to so many of those stories and the characters that formed the foundation of the work. He had multiple important runs as the writer on Avengers, and under his watch as EIC you saw creative peaks for so many characters: Simonson on Thor, Claremont & Byrne on X-Men, Byrne on FF, Miller on Daredevil, Claremont & Sienkiewicz on New Mutants, Michelinie & Layton on Iron Man, Stern & Buscema on Avengers, DeFalco & Frenz on Spider-man, just to name a few. And for the first time in forever, he actually got books out of time.
And that’s just his Marvel period: I looooved his work at Valiant, a company that would not exist without him, with characters that he created or co-created that are still being published today (30+ years later), and he got screwed so hard by the corporate shitbags who controlled the money. Ironic, considering even the people who crapped on him throughout the industry (for making them do their jobs and not just turn out hack-work much of the time) never ever accused him of screwing them on money. Never.
Bummer.
narya
@ColoradoGuy: @Suzanne: @Another Scott: I remember reading that he won’t let anyone do his hair or makeup (though I don’t remember where I read that; Noel Casler, maybe?), because he doesn’t trust anyone to do it “correctly.” As his brain gets mushier, his ability to manage it keeps degrading, which is apparently pretty common. I just avoid the look or sound of him whenever possible.
marklar
Folks, while we should raise the alarm and stand against the prison camps being set up in the Everglades, please do not compare it to Auschwitz. Over 1.1 million people were murdered there. Murdered. Murdered. For being Jewish, gay, disabled, Roma, etc. Murdered.
Please stop it.
narya
@marklar: How about Korematsu Kamps? Better analogy? (Your note is important, and I’m taking it seriously, not mocking, in case that’s not clear.)
Bex
@Geminid: I love the collection of surnames in the ad. Most of them have ancestors that were reviled at one time, and look at them now. Because of my ancestry, I have heard about “No Irish Need Apply” signs. Think about that Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@lowtechcyclist: what makes you think this thing is going to be built and isn’t just some giant grift?
Jive turkin
@Betty Cracker: I know Godwon himself has said that there are exceptions to his law. I am confident he would not object to calling people selling t-shirts to celebrate someone’s misery allows them to be compared to Nazis. I feel like it is almost an obligation to compare these people to Nazis. I became a full time Florida resident two years ago (health and family reasons). I moved here from Maryland where the GOP is an afterthought. First time In my life I’ve lived in a red state. Politics here as suck.
davek319
@lowtechcyclist: I I don’t want them to move.Want them to pay for their crimes up to and including hanging for treason.
Every kidnapping, every death, every bribe, every illegal act and proclamation needs to be read out while this unconstitutional usurper, the GOP electeds to the dogcatcher and ALL the other Fox News traitors are forced to stand with heads shaved in Tyvek boxers and singlets in the Florida
rikyrah
Good Morning Everyone 😊 😊 😊
marklar
@narya: No offense taken. Korematsu Kamps, Alligator Alcatraz, etc. are all apt.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: A lot of those people– though not as many as when Biden was President– think democracy is under threat not from Trump but from liberals doing voter fraud with illegals in white vans.
Professor Bigfoot
From your keyboard to God’s very own monitor, with a cc to all the other gods past, present and future.
suzanne
@narya:
I think this is how all of us are coping.
Soprano2
@Baud: I keep saying I feel like Cassandra, so much so that I quit telling people what I thought about stuff like this. They looked at you like you were crazy if you said you thought FFOTUS wanted to be a dictator. Many people have to see something actually start to happen before they’ll believe it’s real.
Matt McIrvin
@marklar: It’s a good point, and it’s good to be careful in phrasing, but it’s not yet clear to me that the people who go to this new place won’t be murdered. The Germans in the Holocaust had a lot of ways of killing people and some of them were euphemized as mere detention.
Elizabelle
@marklar: Agreed.
Alligator Alcatraz puts it firmly on US soil.
rikyrah
Happy Canada Day 🇨🇦
MazeDancer
@Another Scott:
Interesting point. While I understand – and have been on the receiving end of – the cat gift analogy, wondering if Orcas just think humans are weak and stupid. And some take pity.
“See, small flabby thing, if you eat and get stronger, maybe you could swim like normal creatures, and not pollute the seas with your floaty flotsam.”
Also, humans have pathetic teeth, comparatively. Maybe they’re offering to pre-chew.
They Call Me Noni
@Baud: No kidding. Project 2025 something something.
lowtechcyclist
@RevRick:
Interesting. I didn’t know it had a name (not that that’s surprising: if it exists, there are people studying it, and they come up with nomenclature) but it’s something I remember realizing at some point in my very first couple of months as a Christian, that I should form my own opinion about Person B and see them through my own eyes, rather than taking Person A’s word about them.
No blinding flash of intuition or anything, but it’s a bit of wisdom that’s held up well over the years since.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
Here’s what is more of a typical depressing piece about species decline:
https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2025/06/decline-apex-scavengers-human-disease-risk
Maybe they’re all relocating to the Everglades. Sounds like a PhD dissertation that needs doing.
Baud
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
Baud
@Geminid:
I’ve started seeing a ton of TV ads opposimg the bill.
JCJ
@Albatrossity: A couple of years ago there were some pink visitors in Wisconsin. I would have thought Lake Michigan would be too cold for them, no matter how late in the summer.
https://apnews.com/article/flamingos-wisconsin-lake-michigan-beach-614fabe236ce2f2da86b12e1edb4510a
Professor Bigfoot
@Spanky: Doesn’t matter.
The time to stop it was when Americans* were warned.
It’s too fucking late, now.
Betty Cracker
@Jive turkin: Welcome! We need every rational voter we can get!
lowtechcyclist
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
I hope I didn’t suggest that it would actually be completed. I really don’t expect it will. Building stuff in a swamp is very difficult, obviously, and I expect even getting building materials to the proposed location would be a challenge.
But even a grift requires them to go through the motions of trying to get it built. They can keep the money coming as long as there’s some appearance of progress. But if there’s none, even its supporters will pull the plug.
p.a
My assumption is some of that number is MAGAtypes thinking the threat is from the left: “vote fraud”, immigrants, replacement theory etc. So maybe not that hopeful a number.
RaflW
I’ve been feeling really down. Some of that is some health stuff that is unresolved, but a lot of it is our ruinous Republican politics.
But BF and I also had a really good Pride Sunday, attending our huge Twin Cities parade, and later having six friends over for bbq and a swim in our townhouse pool.
Then this morning I read this really hopeful piece from the Texas Observer. The Rio Grande Valley as Heart of LGBTQ+ Resistance and Joy. Not to harp on a topic that has been rehashed here many times, but that column really gets at why we cannot just blow off ‘the red states’.
They contain multitudes. And joy & resistance and a path forward!
Betty Cracker
@marklar: Do you think it’s okay to call it a “concentration camp?” It seems to be technically accurate, but I don’t want to inadvertently reduce the impact of that term in the context of the Holocaust.
RaflW
@Spanky: But also, how many are coming at that conclusion from entirely the wrong direction (Joe Biden stole the 2020 election!1!11 😵💫).
The questions need to be more specific, IMO. Though the headline number should attract some needed attention anyway.
frosty
@Albatrossity: Your article is from October 2023. September is when a pair ended up near Chambersburg, PA. Same hurricane blew flamingoes off their course all over the place.
lowtechcyclist
@davek319:
That was ‘move on’ in the sense of no longer being involved in this particular prison project. I concur that they need to pay for their crimes in ways that involve long-term incarceration at a minimum.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@marklar:
Thank you for pointing this out. I can ‘Go Godwin’ with the best of them but the comments show a not-unusual superficial knowledge of the murder machine apparatus setup by the Germans.
Anyone not wanting to spend years reading on the Holocaust and everything that went into it, this is a good piece that helps differentiate between concentration camps, extermination camps and how a lot of murder and incineration went on at all levels:
https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/nazi-concentration-camp-system
RaflW
@Betty Cracker: I think, especially in the context of the Bodacious Backwards Bill funding ICE and other fascist priorities for extra tens of billions of dollars, yes we do need to grapple with the Florida camp being a concentration camp.
A 75 year old man who has been in the US 60 years died in custody this week. A woman lost her pregnancy in detention this week. We don’t have to have actual killing machines in the camps for them to have turned deadly. And it will get worse, as these cruel people running these facilities dehumanize the detainees and deny them the most basic duty of care.
eta: I am using the general term concentration camp. I don’t see that as calling DeSantis’s evil facility equal to a German death camp. But concentration camp seems right to me, and it should shock the conscience and be utterly unacceptable. We cannot let it be softened or normalized.
Professor Bigfoot
@lowtechcyclist: Unless, of course, they use the prisoners as the construction labor.
Which would be right in keeping with these Nazi bastards, now wouldn’t it?
lowtechcyclist
@Soprano2:
I think when things have been more or less the same for generations, it’s hard for us to get our heads around the notion of abrupt and drastic change.
I certainly knew intellectually that Trump 2.0 was going to be a lot worse than Trump 1.0, but it didn’t really hit home until the DOGErs destroyed USAID in the opening days of this Administration.
frosty
@JCJ: September 2023. Same time ours arrived in PA. Hundreds of birders flocked (sorry!) to see them but I thought it was too far to drive. Oops.
lou
The Miami Herald had this lovely article about the people who did a Carl Hiassen character move and live in the wilds of the Everglades near the new concentration camp.
They say alligators and Burmese pythons aren’t the danger Florida officials seem to think it is. But the camp will be a hazard to all the wild life they see regularly, including bears and birds. I didn’t read that closely about the location and it’s in the Big Cypress?
prostratedragon
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
Similar, from the Holocaust Museum encyclopedia:
Matt McIrvin
@p.a: If you read the article, they break it down by Democrats and Republicans, and note that the number of Republicans saying it is down from the Biden years. That probably means the party breakdown is a pretty good proxy for how many people think it’s “illegals” voting, Democratic fraud, etc. and who’s concerned about Trump. At this point it seems it’s mostly the latter.
Ruviana
@ColoradoGuy: He’s going for the Bobby Kennedy look.
prostratedragon
@RaflW: So there is a distinctiin, per the defs that comrade and I posted, between a concentration camp, which these arguably are, and a killing center. Dachau and Auschwitz-II (Birkenau) are example of the latter, but not all Nazi camps, even including Auschwitz-I, were set up as killing centers.
ArchTeryx
@Betty Cracker: They’re also one of the most sweet natured birds of prey you’ll ever meet. If you ever meet a vulture in a rehab center, they will rock your world. So totally, utterly unlike the cartoon stereotypes.
I’ve had the privilege of getting to scratch one’s head and neck. They liked it so much they preened my ear in return! Try that with a hawk or eagle.
Too many people think vultures are opportunistic monsters that are harbingers of death and misfortune. All they are are friendly janitors cleaning up the messes NOTHING else will touch.
And they love fresh meat.
YY_Sima Qian
Zohranomics has been much discussed here & elsewhere, but I would take what Isabella M. Weber has to say very seriously:
Enhanced Voting Techniques
The British beat Hitler to that with the Boar War.
catclub
I feel that if we vent/denigrate here we are less likely to do so
in actual interactions with said idiots.
catclub
@Matt McIrvin: here is a link without going via bluesky
https://www.npr.org/2025/07/01/nx-s1-5452527/poll-democracy-trump-immigration
Betty Cracker
@ArchTeryx: Yes! I do think of them as nature’s janitors. Glad you got to meet one.
Betty Cracker
@Ruviana: RFK Jr. looks like a catcher’s mitt with eyes.
Baud
@catclub:
People are entitled to criticize their oppressors if they want to IMHO.
Ruviana
@Betty Cracker: And F47 is jealous!
SiubhanDuinne
@Professor Bigfoot:
🎶 🎵 Mister, we could use a Trickster god like Murphy again 🎵 🎶
BlueGuitarist
@marklar:
with respect, and empathy, and doubts about my ability to express this clearly
When I thanked lowtechcyclist earlier for using a different name than the Republican branding, i wrote, then deleted, a reference to my opinion that the phrase was not disrespectful to my family members or the millions of others murdered there by Nazis.
I may have misunderstood when my one relative who survived the camps told me that it was almost impossible for me to understand the depravity of human conduct, but the lesson I took from those conversations was that we must do more to fight fascism, fight it earlier, smarter, harder, braver.
bjacques
@Betty Cracker: How about Gator Gulag
Somewhat related…shots fired:
https://edition.cnn.com/2025/07/01/economy/jerome-powell
Redshift
@Suzanne:
A friend of mine works for NBC, and heard from the makeup people that he tells them how to do their job. Professional makeup artists specialized in making people look good on TV! So no, I think he’s always sure he knows better than the experts and doesn’t listen to advice from anyone.
Redshift
@ArchTeryx: I once worked in an office building overlooking a highway, where we were on the top floor with balconies in the corners. Vultures taking a break from looking for roadkill would hang out on the railings. On rainy days, they’d get under the ledge right outside the window. The windows were mirrored, so if you didn’t move too fast, you could get right up to the window and watch them from a foot away. It was awesome, they are very cool looking.
J.
If the project can’t be stopped, I hope DeSantis, Trump, and all of their cronies/enablers are the first people to be incarcerated there, preferably with a bunch of hungry alligators and mosquitoes.
Another Scott
@JCJ: I was surprised to see parakeet/parrot like birds in the wild north of the Loop in Chicago in the early-mid ’80s.
Monk Parakeets.
Nature finds a way.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Betty Cracker
@Redshift: That tracks. I’m the last person on earth to advise people on makeup since I don’t use it myself, but even I know you’ve got to BLEND.
Trump doesn’t blend. You can see the fish-belly white color at the hairline and jowl line surrounding the unnatural orange center of his hideous face.
Also, the piece of shit spends half of his miserable life cheating at golf, and though he wears an ugly MAGA hat outdoors, you’d think the sunlight would give some natural color his mottled old hide. Sadly, no!
BlueGuitarist
@ArchTeryx:
good to see you
Geminid
@lou: I read that “Alligator Alcatraz” is located 43 miles west of central Miami. Thst scales out on a map to be close to the Big Cyprus national.preserve as well as the Miccosukee Native reservation.
The facility is being built on a large airport with an 11,000 landing strip that was meant to be a major airport but now operates as a pilot training facility.
It doesn’t sound like there’s a lot of construction involved; theyre mainly seting up tents, trailers and porta-potties. I’m not sure what kind of provisions are being made for potable water. Or medical care for that matter.
DeSantis says a similar facility is planned for a military base 300 miles north, Camp Blanding(?).
Old Man Shadow
I don’t have the hope you do that any of these motherfuckers will ever see significant consequences no matter how far things go.
Betty Cracker
@Geminid: News reports I’ve seen show tents, porta-potties, etc., already in place, and our repulsive president is en route now, which gives the impression the camp is ready for operations. But of course, everything is a show with these frauds, so who knows?
kindness
It’s poor zen but it sure would be nice to force Trump to swim his way out of an alligator infested pond.
Steve LaBonne
I hope the flamingos don’t give up on us like Douglas Adams’s dolphins.
JeanneT
@Professor Bigfoot: Prisoners building the facility: That is very much what I fear and expect…
Belafon
@Matt McIrvin: It didn’t start out as a death camp. People get that confused and it allows people here to think we’re not doing it as bad as the Germans.
Belafon
@Elizabelle: Yes, but it also makes it sound like the people were convicted and put there because they’re dangerous.
Geminid
@Betty Cracker: They got the camp ready just in time for hurricane season.
I think part of the “reasoning” behind this camp is that it will be so miserable people waive all rights and volunteer to be deported. I got that impression with the detention of Rumeya Ozturk, the Turkish grad student grabbed off the streets of Somerville, Mass. and held at a private prison in northwest Louisiana. It seemed like the feds wanted to wear Ozturk down. Some tactics like taking her Koran were petty but denying Ozturk her asthma medication was not.
The Turkish government did not make a public fuss about Öztürk’s detention, but their Consul General for Houston visited Ozturk several times. That may have helped her circumstances some. It also showed Turks their government was on her side. There is a Turkish guy, Bora Bingol, I talk to on social media from time to time, and when I asked “Bora Bey” about Ozturk, he said the video of Ozturk’s arrest went viral in Turkiye and people there were pretty hot about it.
I lost track of the Ozturk case once she was released, but now I want to see what she’s said since then about her ordeal. Maybe I’ll check out Massachusetts news sites to find out, once the Middle East settles down which may not happen very soon..
Matt McIrvin
@BlueGuitarist: In taking about lessons of the Holocaust there’s always a balancing act between avoiding trivializing the enormity of it by seeing it everywhere, and being so insistent on the uniqueness of it that we might miss an actual repeat.
They Call Me Noni
@ArchTeryx: There is a landfill not too far from us so the “landfill birds” as I call them fly over our place fairly often. My g-granddaughter calls them eagles.
Belafon
I don’t want to ever diminish the holocaust. Isn’t the point, though, to prevent it from happening again? What we have to convey to people not like us is that we’re on the path that led to the horrors in Germany, and trying to be all precise about exactly what we are doing will not convey that. The point is to prevent the next set of horrors, not document what we’re doing. Our internment camps in WW2 were concentration camps, just named differently to keep Americans from feeling bad.
Jeffro
c’mon karma, do your thing…
Tony Jay
I’ve just looked up at the TV screen in my office and there’s a sweaty old man in a cheap red cap saying something that clearly isn’t comprehensible English while a colony of alien ferrets in a human skinsack twitch and flex next to him in their best approximation of human laughter.
You can gauge exactly how fucked in the head America’s radical Right is by remembering how many of them looked at those two and voted for them.
Steve LaBonne
@Jeffro: Karma had its chance when Trump caught COVID, and it fucked up royally.
BellaPea
I read a long article in Rolling Stone on my newsfeed about all of the taxpayer money Dump’s flunkies are using to make him feel important: the military parade, the “thank you” TV commercials with that bitch Noem, expensive additions to the White House decor. I am beyond furious these days, I am LIVID. All of this time, money, effort, and adulation for one vain stupid old man with dementia.
Baud
I thought he was already dead.
scav
Somehow we should have expected that all red-blooded ‘merkans needed to be entirely in favor of masked police raids and concentration camps was that little bit of showbiz sparkle provided by a reality TV show host. What the Nazis did wrong was to hide the camps, not bring out the bling and the showboating, that unique Hollywood touch.
Joey Maloney
@RaflW: Ann Frank didn’t die in a gas chamber; she died of typhus contracted from the awful unhealthy living conditions and starvation regime. I fully expect that is what we’ll see in Alligator Alcatraz – to the extent any news gets out of it at all. I expect it to become a black hole with no oversight of any kind.
And god help any women or children that end up there. Rape and abuse is rampant in the legitimate prison systems.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: You may have mixed him up with any number of similar figures (Pat Robertson, Oral Roberts).
Jim Bakker still lives.
Splitting Image
@Baud:
Fuckin’ A, man. Oral Bill finally got the money he needed.
Baud
BlueGuitarist
@Matt McIrvin:
yes. Thanks.
Matt McIrvin
@Belafon: Yeah, at *best* this is like the American concentration camps where Japanese-Americans were imprisoned without trial and it’s probably worse.
Baud
comrade scotts agenda of rage
Vance broke the tie and Murkowski and Collins predictably voted for the bill.
Baud
ExPatExDem
Too late.
Baud
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
Collins didn’t.
Matt McIrvin
@Splitting Image: oh, did Jimmy Swaggart owe him money? Is a 900 foot tall Jesus gonna mug Jimmy on arrival?
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Baud:
Hah! Oops.
I”m guessing they didn’t need her vote. I’d bet money that if Murkowski had said she would vote no, Suzie Furrowbrows would have voted yes.
Not that it matters, it passed and the Beltway Media Corpse will continue to buy Suzie’s “concerned” schtick. Let’s hope the voters in Maine won’t.
catfishncod
@Belafon: @Professor Bigfoot:
Look down, look down / Don’t look ’em in the eye / Look down, look down / You’re here until you die
Spanky
I look forward to the photos of Republican senators laughing as they stand around a
beerscotch keg.Glory b
@Baud: I saw that other parts of the bill won’t be applied to other red states, North & South Dakota, Wyoming, Idaho and perhaps a few others won’t be subject to some of the Bill’s provisions.
Splitting Image
@Matt McIrvin:
Before they put Donald Trump’s brain in Bill the Cat’s body, Bill had a brief career as an evangelist. He told people that if enough believers sent him money, God would “call home” Jerry Falwell, Jimmy Swaggart, Oral Roberts. and Jim Bakker.
Only Bakker left now. Bill’s work is nearly done.
JWR
@lowtechcyclist:
Didn’t I read that this new prison, at least the prisoner / detainee part of it, would be built using heavy-duty tents with an old military base for floorspace? Slap in a few guard towers, some cinder block housing for the guards, and you’re done. What I wonder now is if it’s being built on an island, how are they gonna deal with weather events?
lowtechcyclist
@JWR:
Given their level of concern about the well-being of the detainees, I’d say they’re just not gonna bother.
Geminid
@Geminid: Speaking of Turkiye, Ragip Soylu has a good article in Middle East Eye that might imterest some people. It’s titled:
Link:
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/pkks-ocalan-no-israeli-dominance-through-kurds
The “leaked” minutes” were from Ocalan’s remarks to officials from the DEM Party who visiting him in prison this past April. The visit was part an ongoing process initiated by a statement released by Ocalan last December, that opened the door to a settlement of the war between the PKK and the Turkish state that began in 1984.
The DEM is effectively the political arm of the PKK in Turkiye, and its leaders in the National Assembly are currently working out constitutional reforms with the other parties as part of the settlement.
The PKK also has a lot power in Syria. Their related forces and institutions control much of Syria’s three northwestern Governates, which has functioned as the autonomous mini-state of Rojava. The future status of Rojava is now being worked out the central government.
After the Assad regime fell, there was a lot of loose talk in Israel about a Kurdish/Israeli alliance. I think was Ocalan’s reason for making those remarks about Israeli influence. They may have been leaked now because negotiations between the PKK and its allies with the Damascus government are at a sensitive point, but that’s just a guess.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
How you going to gift off of that? This the Trump admin here, everything is a profit center.
bjacques
@Matt McIrvin: that was Oral Roberts, I think. Houston comedian Ron Shock did a great routine about that. He was with the Texas Outlaw Comics (with Bill Hicks and Sam Kinison, Riley Barbour, Steve Epstein and Andy Huggins). Since Roberts said he and Jesus were staring eye to eye, Jesus must have been upside down. Either way, it would have been hard to miss from the highway.
Also, cultural fallout with the great MC 900 Foot Jesus, from Dallas.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=evXhpHvUzZ4&pp=ygUlbWMgOTAwIGZ0IGplc3VzIGFkdmVudHVyZXMgaW4gZmFpbHVyZQ%3D%3D
O Bliss it was, in that Dawn to be alive, but to be young was very Heaven!
zhena gogolia
Deleted.
Professor Bigfoot
@Belafon: They’re the same people who cannot see:
Nazi rhetoric: “Vermin!” “Poisoning the Blood of our Country!”
Nazi policies: “MASS DEPORTATION NOW!”
Nazi threats of political violence: “Proud Boys, stand back and stand by!”
Americans elected straight up Nazis; and are now shocked that those Nazis are doing Nazi shit. 🙄
Geminid
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: There’s good money to made setting up the tents and trailers. That was likely done through fat, no-bid contracts steered to insiders. Same with the port-a-potty contract. The big moneymaker might be a contract for private security guards. There’s plenty of money to be made here, and lots of ways to kick it back to officials.
MoCaAce
@Suzanne:
Because they are crap… that’s hard to hide.
BlueGuitarist
@ExPatExDem:
There’s work to do every day!
MLK:
“the time is always ripe to do what is right”
”the fierce urgency of now”
Professor Bigfoot
@Matt McIrvin: I like to remind folks that the OG Nazis didn’t just jump right out of the gate murdering people (well, other than each other in the Night of the Long Knives).
They worked their way up to it.
America’s still working its way up to mass murder.
Another Scott
@Baud: [Indeed,] It has to go back to the House and be passed there.
It’s not a slam dunk, though they probably will find a way to pass it.
Grr…
Best wishes,
Scott.
WTFGhost
Apropos of nothing, @Betty, if you want to see the color of hope, look in the mirror – I don’t know if hope has a color, but you radiate hope well enough, that if it *does* have a color, we’d find it by studying you. Maybe we need a prism, to break out the wavelengths?
Geminid
@Geminid: DeSantis announced today that the planned detention camp at Fort Blanding will be able to hold 2,000 detainees. Camp Blanding sits on a 73,000 acre tract about 50 miles southwest of Jacksonville, in Clay County along the western side of the St. John’s River. It’s the Florida National Guard’s main training center.
The Wikipedia article on Camp Blanding had an item that caught my eye:
WTFGhost
@Professor Bigfoot: He’s right. And, see, it starts like it does with the Klan. First, they’ll murder a troublesome n-word. But soon, they discover there’s something much worse than an n-word, and that’s an n-word lover, because *those* people, you can’t just lynch, because they might have friends who care about their lives, and, those friends might have political power.
Once you’re ready to kill, say, both a migrant, and an m-word lover [sic], then you’re ready to be part of the secret police, and, if you don’t have high quality cop training, that’s fine… they’re not looking for high quality cops, they’re looking for the kind of people who want to be cops so they can be the head bully in the room.
These people are dangerous, and cunning, but rarely brave, except when backed by the “thin blue line” – and please remember, if Trump creates his own gestapo, they will both claim protection from, and brotherhood with, ordinary cops, the actual “thin blue line.”
Once that happens, if you’re not part of the evil, it’s time to remember what gun lovers *USED* to say about firearm self defense: Decide if it’s better to be judged by 12, or carried by 6. Are you willing to go to jail, if your 12 jurors judge badly, because at least you’ll be alive?
Because once you have secret cops who are ready to kill, no citizen is safe from the need to use self defense.
I recommend the .357 as a primary defense pistol, especially if you have one with a 3-4″ barrel. That’s a gun that has a “wrong side” to be on, and the person on the wrong side knows they’re on the wrong side. If they’re really dull, everyone within a 2 block radius will know, if you have to fire that mothah. A concealable 9mm luger is a good secondary weapon, if you only do pistols.
Still: a 12 gauge shotgun – a long arm – is what you want in most home defense situations. No matter how powerful you make a pistol, you’re shooting a *PISTOL*. You brought a pistol, because you couldn’t bring a “real gun” like a rifle or shotgun.
What about the AR-15? Well, I’d recommend you get a real rifle, one you don’t have to clean after every use, because the rifle you don’t have to clean every frickin’ time, is the one you’ll actually practice with, if you have CFS like me. Still: rifles are not good for home defense, because they’re too long, in general. A shotgun wins over the rifle, only because of buckshot, and the possibility of two full barrels of buckshot. (Use a double barrel if you can’t quickly and easily work the pump on a manual.) If not for buckshot, a pistol will usually do you close in, and a rifle outside of 50 yards.
Very few self defense situations occur outside the range of 50 yards. This is why krybaby killer kyle was such a total maroon, thinking he could defend property with an effing *rifle*.
Professor Bigfoot
@WTFGhost: Most of my pistol practice (9mm, ‘cause it’s been around for 100 years, and it’s been chosen by just about every military in the world— why argue with success? 😉) is at 5 meters, because as you say, most engagements are far shorter than that and besides, I don’t carry and there’s not a single sightline in my house that’s much more than 5 meters.
(I used to carry and might again, but at the time I decided I wasn’t willing to do the practice and training that I expect of anyone carrying a deadly weapon on his person— if you absolutely, positively, to save your life or others, HAVE to draw down— you’d damned well better be able to put steel on target. And it’s a whole lot more difficult than the movies would have one believe)
(PS- Our man Soonergrunt posted a couple of his targets once with a .45 at 10, 15, and 25 yards and it will be a LONG time before I can do what that man can do 😉)
I HAVE an AR, but I find them very <meh!>. Maybe because I’m an innate contrarian, since everyone has one I’m really not interested. That’s probably at least partly why I’m a Walther guy and don’t own a single Glock.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@ArchTeryx: Turkey Vultures rock! It’s impressive what nasty microbes they can eat and thus clean up the world. I have also read about how cool and loved they are in bird sanctuaries and rehab centers.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@Another Scott: There are successful colonies of Rose-ringed Parakeets living in London and Amsterdam. Startling when first seen (and heard!). The silhouette is unmistakably a parrot 🦜 with a long tail. I saw some (noisy!) in Hyde Park in London in May.
LAC
@RevRick: Sorry, not doing the turn the other cheek and allowing idiot trump supporters to denigrate our lives but pull out the violins when they finally wake up. They can get aboard, but I am not doing hand holding and lollipops. Maybe you all can afford that kind of grace, but some of us can’t. Because it will not be a genuine come to Jesus moment, but self interest.
Whatever gets them there, fine. But I am not worrying about their fee fees.
WTFGhost
@Betty Cracker: dear lord, put that way, I have to agree, it would be an honor to meet one, when fully alive, certain to remain that way, so you could appropriately honor the experience.
Jacel
@Splitting Image: Jim Shooter was also responsible for launching several entirely new slates of characters in Marvel’s New Universe titles and the later the Valiant and Defiant comic lines.