John Cole Presents “This Fucking Old House”

I took the afternoon off from politics because it is all so grim and it isn’t going anywhere for a couple years if ever, so there is no fucking need to waterboard myself with sewage every fucking day. I understand that as a white straight male this is not a luxury everyone has, but I do and I am going to use it. At any rate, Joelle and I decided that this was the trike she wanted, so we drove up to Phoenix and bought it.

The list price of the bike is 1600 bucks, which is more than I spent on my first two cars, but they did tell us that sometimes they have discounted models if they are scratched, so we asked and sure enough they had one. And the discount was ridiculous and I couldn’t even find the scratches, so with the discount and 50 bucks off for a veterans discount, and it came to 849 dollars, which is extraordinary and we feel very lucky to get a brand new bike for half off. By the time we sell the current bike she owns, it will be down to only putting out 5-600 bucks or so, so I am super jazzed about that.

Oh, and we got the Lectric:

I like the baskets so she can schlep things to work and back. We’re both pretty excited at the deal we got.

So We Bought a BikePost + Comments (37)

This is insanity:

I restarted the visa process and returned to the same immigration office at the San Diego border, since they had processed my visa before and I was familiar with it. Hours passed, with many confused opinions about my case. The officer I spoke to was kind but told me that, due to my previous issues, I needed to apply for my visa through the consulate. I told her I hadn’t been aware I needed to apply that way, but had no problem doing it.

Then she said something strange: “You didn’t do anything wrong. You are not in trouble, you are not a criminal.”

I remember thinking: Why would she say that? Of course I’m not a criminal!

She then told me they had to send me back to Canada. That didn’t concern me; I assumed I would simply book a flight home. But as I sat searching for flights, a man approached me.

“Come with me,” he said.

There was no explanation, no warning. He led me to a room, took my belongings from my hands and ordered me to put my hands against the wall. A woman immediately began patting me down. The commands came rapid-fire, one after another, too fast to process.

They took my shoes and pulled out my shoelaces.

“What are you doing? What is happening?” I asked.

“You are being detained.”

“I don’t understand. What does that mean? For how long?”

“I don’t know.”

That would be the response to nearly every question I would ask over the next two weeks: “I don’t know.”

My first thought was “Can you imagine trying to get this through IRB?”

My second thought was this is a white pretty lady from Canada who did EVERYTHING right. And this is how she was treated. We’re never going to see those people shipped to El Salvador again. This is crazy and terrifying.

If we do recover from this, ICE and Homeland Security need to be abolished and their legal duties redistributed to either existing or a new agency, and every single working there currently needs to be forbidden from working in the new departments. Clean start with new people. Hopefully people with a fucking moral and ethical code.

Eat Your Heart Out Milgram and ZimbardoPost + Comments (152)

The details of the people sent to the prison camp in Venezuela are getting worse and worse they literally are just grabbing brown people off the street and shipping them to a brutal prison because… reasons:

Last month, Jose Franco Caraballo Tiapa, a 26-year old Venezuelan migrant who was seeking asylum in the U.S., showed up to his routine check-in with Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Dallas, Texas, when authorities detained him, his wife told ABC News.

Ivannoa Sanchez, 22, told ABC News she believes her husband is one of the hundreds of Venezuelan men who this past weekend were sent by plane to El Salvador under the Alien Enemies Act.
hez, the couple crossed the U.S. border in November 2023 and surrendered to authorities. After claiming asylum and being detained for a few days, ICE released them and ordered them to check in routinely with the federal agency.

Sanchez said the couple had gone to several of their scheduled check-ins without experiencing any issues. But on Feb. 3, Tiapa was not allowed to return home with his wife despite being scheduled to have his first court appearance in his asylum case in March.

Sanchez provided ABC News with documents that confirmed Tiapa’s scheduled appointment with an immigration judge on March 19.

“He went to his routine ICE appointment and he didn’t come out,” Sanchez told ABC News.

And they won’t stop, and they are ignoring judges orders, and it is terrifying. And I have not heard one Republican say anything.

Remember a while back when we weren’t allowed to call them Nazis?

Disappearing PeoplePost + Comments (57)

This happened over the weekend:

A kidney transplant specialist and professor at Brown University’s medical school has been deported from the United States, even though she had a valid visa and a court order temporarily blocking her expulsion, according to her lawyer and court papers.

Dr. Rasha Alawieh, 34, is a Lebanese citizen who had traveled to her home country last month to visit relatives. She was detained on Thursday when she returned from that trip to the United States, according to a court complaint filed by her cousin Yara Chehab.

Judge Leo T. Sorokin of the Federal District Court in Massachusetts ordered the government on Friday evening to provide the court with 48 hours’ notice before deporting Dr. Alawieh. But she was put on a flight to Paris, presumably on her way to Lebanon.

In a second order filed Sunday morning, the judge said there was reason to believe U.S. Customs and Border Protection had willfully disobeyed his previous order to give the court notice before expelling the doctor. He said he had followed “common practice in this district as it has been for years,” and ordered the federal agency to respond to what he called “serious allegations.”

Deporting foreign doctors or scaring away foreign born doctors so they don’t even come here is as good a way to collapse the rural health care in this country and just getting rid of medicare and medicaid. Also, folks, it is time to start travelling with a burner phone.

FAFO- Rural Health CarePost + Comments (134)

Felt like we could use one.

Do yourself a favor and watch the Bill Burr special on Hulu/Disney.

Saturday Night Open ThreadPost + Comments (160)

You know who has been getting a lot of shit from me and others but who kept his house in order while Chuck folds? Hakeem Jeffries.

My position is the Republicans are going to do what they want anyway, so don’t make it easy and don’t give them anything until they negotiate in good faith. They will own the shutdown.

Friday Morning Open ThreadPost + Comments (253)

I don’t want to talk about politics for the obvious reasons and if you don’t know why I am hopping mad tonight, bless your heart and don’t read the fucking news you sweet summer child. In lieu of a post, here is Steve sitting on my head because it is 50 degrees outside and raining and everyone is cold:

I love that cat so much.

Thursday Night Open ThreadPost + Comments (60)