I had no idea that Thiel was involved with Opus Dei. He is openly gay and a Republican—a completely nonsensical, filthy-rich man. He calls himself a libertarian, the fool's gold of politics, and is the Chairman of Polintar, deeply involved with the US Intelligence Community. Everywhere you look, religious extremism is coming over Jefferson's Wall, and our liberty is disappearing one brick at a time. For what? To return to the Middle Ages when church and state were one? It may be time to revisit the storming of the Bastille.
Their response in TX is pathetic but they’re lying and saying it’s wonderful… and many folks will buy that line. The voters in Kerr County overwhelmingly supported T and refused to spend $ given to them by Biden… bc they hated him. They also refused to return $ bc it may be used for something g they didn’t agree with and refused to fund alert systems even after offered a partial grant. The owner of the camp disputed the fema flood map and won so he could expand the camp and make more $. The corruption and callousness extends deeper than just the feds….but they are the head of the spear. The children suffered and died in the end which is the tragedy. The vulnerable and the innocent always suffer. The only reason TX is getting any help is bc Abbott is up 🍊axx and complicit… and the DOJ requested election maps be redrawn to further gerrymander to favor republicans… and Abbott was all too happy to comply masking it as a special legislative session to discuss flood response.
They turned down Arkansas and n Carolina for help, after T lied about Biden’s females not helping n Carolina during election. And people bought that and drank the kool aid. My sister in law lost her home in FL w back to back hurricanes last year and got the $40k from fema under Biden, voted for T anyway. Today she’d get 0. People are entrenched in this cult and don’t see what’s happening… like frogs slowly boiling.
I’m so sick of this bloated billionaire criminal whining about what a victim he is! He runs to scotus and whines and they give him the candy he shouldn’t have anyway.
I’m feeling today that there will be no accountability for these horrible people and acts… ever!
Ana, these regimes ALWAYS fall. ALWAYSALWAYSALWAYS. It may not happen on our timeline, but it WILL happen. Hold onto that hope and keep working toward the world we want.
As we look ahead to America’s 250th next year, there is a mood akin to “staying together for the kids” in the national culture. FEMA’s impotence in Texas is absolutely scandalous. If we get landfall from even a minor hurricane and FEMA does nothing again we might see things break down.
Someone posted a picture of the “Senior Official Performing The Duties of FEMA Administrator” yesterday and I thought he was a Z grade movie villain. He’s ignored Texas. What will he ignore next?
I cannot stress enough that Project 2025 called for every bit of this. Every time Noem says, "The states need to handle these disasters," that was the through-line of Project 2025's disaster response, weather prediction, and federal flood insurance. It gutted all of those things and stated it very clearly and unambiguously. They didn't lie to anyone about what they intended to do if given the chance to govern.
So yes of course, when we have a hurricane (and we will most certainly have at least one major storm make landfall), it will be more of this. Because this isn't about FEMA or NOAA or NWS or the National Hurricane Center or federally funded flood insurance. The lower-level folks who are still there are doing the best they can with what little tools they have remaining. This is about gutting the federal government's response to all disasters and cutting all federal support so that these systems fail. Which will cause more Americans to lose their homes, often their most significant asset. Insurance will become impossible to obtain, leaving us to the old system of fire protection where only those who could afford to pay the high fees got their fires put out. Last year, I said they would apply this model to every single solitary public service: Trash removal; road maintenance; bridge repair and maintenance; firefighters of all types; coast guard rescuers; all education; and more. The only thing that won't be left to the states is policing; they will all be subject to a federally-funded militarized secret police force. That and weapons are the sole things US taxpayers will be paying for in the coming years...besides all the grift and corruption happening at the top.
Seriously. I just got off a call with Big Tent, and I'm going to do a timeline for them to establish credibility. Because no matter how many things I get right, I have to reintroduce myself to groups over and over. So I'm going to write a piece for them that is essentially "On this 2024 date, I said they'd do this Project 2025 thing. On this 2025 date, they did this Project 2025 thing."
By that point, they were so unpopular they were hiding at Versailles. All that gold and gilt didn’t save them.
My husband was talking about European architecture the other night. How so many of these significant structures happened because monarchy and nobility and oligarchy and church acting as state. They are living monuments to this ancién regime that refuses to die.
I was picking up on Trump's gilding of the White House. It's petty as most of his efforts are, nevertheless, there is a parallel. The monuments of state - our capitol building, the national cathedral - all follow suit as living monuments that may last beyond the governmental structure that created them. Regardless, we're on the "Highway to Hell."
What matters depends on context. Some choices wear well while others come to memorialize relative insignificance. This could be why choices should less immediate and more in the context of history. Remember Ozymandias? It has been ever thus.
I go back to the writings of American psychologist Gustave Gilbert, who covered the Nuremberg Trials. He was stunned by the utter lack of empathy and humanity exhibited by the Nazis on trial. He wrote, "Evil, I think, is the absence of empathy."
I've been a victim of this absence of empathy hiding behind insincere "thoughts and prayers." I've watched Christian Nationalists systematically attack empathy as weak and sinful and pathetic. I'm not sure how off-putting much of this inhumanity is for people anymore, because if it were truly off-putting, it wouldn't have been allowed to proceed this far. It's like I said the other day: Bad people succeed because good people can never imagine how bad bad people can be.
This intellectual laziness and failure of imagination will be written about often as historians pick through this wreckage.
“Bad people succeed because good people can never imagine how bad bad people can be.” So very horribly true…especially of those purported people of “god.”
Obviously not; as I have said before, the Lyudmila Pavlichenko formulation applies to the vast majority of the MAGAT voters: as Pavlichenko said to the Time magazine reporter in 1943, her targets "are fascists not humans." The best index to the irremediable magnitude of MAGAT hatefulness is the post-Katrina Pew Poll that shows fully 77 percent of the nation's white adults in furious denial of the blatant, sometimes deadly white-supremacist bigotry overwhelmingly evident in the Bush II Regime's so-called "relief" effort -- in actuality an ethnic cleansing. (MAGAT = acronym for MAGA Terrorists or MAGA Trumpites, pronounced like "maggot.):
We are all humans, whether we act humanely or not. I am hoping that most will at least attempt to not sacrifice their own humanity in the service of the oppressed, no matter how monstrous the evil we confront. And it is monstrous indeed.
I don’t think we need to storm the Everglades Concentration Camp. One small hurricane will do it. It’s the loss of life that is horrifying to think about.
Right. It is designed to sweep everyone away, and this government will then be like, "Who was there? We don't know. They were nobodies. Maybe the alligators ate them all. Let's move on and strip Rosie O'Donnell of her citizenship." Sigh.
While we will be more effective without such violence, I do have to tout my husband's genius. More than a decade ago, we were friends with a French Master chef who created a pommes frites guillotine for Bastille Day at his restaurant. The potato stood in for the head, and they were cut up into french fries that fell into hot oil. This happened in July in the hell-hot South. Outside. So the person operating it HATED HIS JOB. (I forgot to say in my initial comment reply that this french fry guillotine was my husband's invention.)
One of the biggest mistakes we made in the wake of the Civil War was not executing Confederates. I firmly believe those complicit with this treason against our Constitution should be tried and, if found guilty, executed for their crimes of treason.
I had no idea that Thiel was involved with Opus Dei. He is openly gay and a Republican—a completely nonsensical, filthy-rich man. He calls himself a libertarian, the fool's gold of politics, and is the Chairman of Polintar, deeply involved with the US Intelligence Community. Everywhere you look, religious extremism is coming over Jefferson's Wall, and our liberty is disappearing one brick at a time. For what? To return to the Middle Ages when church and state were one? It may be time to revisit the storming of the Bastille.
Yes. They are ushering in a new tech version of feudalism. The Middle Ages is the goal.
Their response in TX is pathetic but they’re lying and saying it’s wonderful… and many folks will buy that line. The voters in Kerr County overwhelmingly supported T and refused to spend $ given to them by Biden… bc they hated him. They also refused to return $ bc it may be used for something g they didn’t agree with and refused to fund alert systems even after offered a partial grant. The owner of the camp disputed the fema flood map and won so he could expand the camp and make more $. The corruption and callousness extends deeper than just the feds….but they are the head of the spear. The children suffered and died in the end which is the tragedy. The vulnerable and the innocent always suffer. The only reason TX is getting any help is bc Abbott is up 🍊axx and complicit… and the DOJ requested election maps be redrawn to further gerrymander to favor republicans… and Abbott was all too happy to comply masking it as a special legislative session to discuss flood response.
They turned down Arkansas and n Carolina for help, after T lied about Biden’s females not helping n Carolina during election. And people bought that and drank the kool aid. My sister in law lost her home in FL w back to back hurricanes last year and got the $40k from fema under Biden, voted for T anyway. Today she’d get 0. People are entrenched in this cult and don’t see what’s happening… like frogs slowly boiling.
I know. Frogs boiling is an oft-used image these days. And when it all collapses, they will blame anyone but themselves.
I’m so sick of this bloated billionaire criminal whining about what a victim he is! He runs to scotus and whines and they give him the candy he shouldn’t have anyway.
I’m feeling today that there will be no accountability for these horrible people and acts… ever!
Ana, these regimes ALWAYS fall. ALWAYSALWAYSALWAYS. It may not happen on our timeline, but it WILL happen. Hold onto that hope and keep working toward the world we want.
Thanks… I know they fall… but the suffering and pain in the interim is awful to behold.
I remember Reagan… he was so charismatic, but nothing like these asshats! This has been a long time coming I suppose. 😢
Yeah, that last sentence. Big problem, but one that we are necessarily eagerly looking forward to (and trying to bring into existence).
As we look ahead to America’s 250th next year, there is a mood akin to “staying together for the kids” in the national culture. FEMA’s impotence in Texas is absolutely scandalous. If we get landfall from even a minor hurricane and FEMA does nothing again we might see things break down.
Someone posted a picture of the “Senior Official Performing The Duties of FEMA Administrator” yesterday and I thought he was a Z grade movie villain. He’s ignored Texas. What will he ignore next?
I cannot stress enough that Project 2025 called for every bit of this. Every time Noem says, "The states need to handle these disasters," that was the through-line of Project 2025's disaster response, weather prediction, and federal flood insurance. It gutted all of those things and stated it very clearly and unambiguously. They didn't lie to anyone about what they intended to do if given the chance to govern.
So yes of course, when we have a hurricane (and we will most certainly have at least one major storm make landfall), it will be more of this. Because this isn't about FEMA or NOAA or NWS or the National Hurricane Center or federally funded flood insurance. The lower-level folks who are still there are doing the best they can with what little tools they have remaining. This is about gutting the federal government's response to all disasters and cutting all federal support so that these systems fail. Which will cause more Americans to lose their homes, often their most significant asset. Insurance will become impossible to obtain, leaving us to the old system of fire protection where only those who could afford to pay the high fees got their fires put out. Last year, I said they would apply this model to every single solitary public service: Trash removal; road maintenance; bridge repair and maintenance; firefighters of all types; coast guard rescuers; all education; and more. The only thing that won't be left to the states is policing; they will all be subject to a federally-funded militarized secret police force. That and weapons are the sole things US taxpayers will be paying for in the coming years...besides all the grift and corruption happening at the top.
It's almost like if someone had read Project 2025 and explained it line by line, people should have listened to her.
Seriously. I just got off a call with Big Tent, and I'm going to do a timeline for them to establish credibility. Because no matter how many things I get right, I have to reintroduce myself to groups over and over. So I'm going to write a piece for them that is essentially "On this 2024 date, I said they'd do this Project 2025 thing. On this 2025 date, they did this Project 2025 thing."
Most Americans still don't listen to me. I'm grateful for those who do.
Very apropos: The dictator/king hated his enemies, which amounted to anyone who dared criticize his gilded palatial existence at Versailles.
Its hall of mirrors. Jewel-encrusted, gold-leafed, silk-clad finery. Gardens bursting with bounty while French people starved.
By that point, they were so unpopular they were hiding at Versailles. All that gold and gilt didn’t save them.
My husband was talking about European architecture the other night. How so many of these significant structures happened because monarchy and nobility and oligarchy and church acting as state. They are living monuments to this ancién regime that refuses to die.
I was picking up on Trump's gilding of the White House. It's petty as most of his efforts are, nevertheless, there is a parallel. The monuments of state - our capitol building, the national cathedral - all follow suit as living monuments that may last beyond the governmental structure that created them. Regardless, we're on the "Highway to Hell."
I was making that comparison to Versailles also. I don't know why narcissists like to cloak themselves in gold.
If we ever create a world where We ALL People can determine what gets memorialized, I hope we will choose to remember what matters.
What matters depends on context. Some choices wear well while others come to memorialize relative insignificance. This could be why choices should less immediate and more in the context of history. Remember Ozymandias? It has been ever thus.
Perhaps you saw his Cabinet meeting where he was trying to deflect from Epstein-gate and started rambling about gold-leafing the crown molding.
Our literal “Highway To Hell” in Florida is US41…leading to Swamp Bastille,staffed by DeSantis’ SS.
“That’s because Gov. Ron DeSantis has given the contractors hired to run the Everglades detention center permission to ignore state law and staff it with contractor-employed correctional officers who haven’t been fingerprinted, passed a physical, or cleared a background check.” https://open.substack.com/pub/jasongarcia/p/alligator-alcatraz-a-legal-black?r=fqsxl&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email
I don't watch him. It makes my brain melt.
If anyone is on the Highway to Hell, it is DeSanctimonious and his ilk. (And now I will have that song stuck in my head for the rest of the day...)
MAGA eyes wide shut, as usual, but the scales are falling off some eyes, apparently (end of mixed metaphor.)
All of these actions are deliberate and premeditated. Their inhumanity is off-putting for many. Will it be enough to stop it?
I go back to the writings of American psychologist Gustave Gilbert, who covered the Nuremberg Trials. He was stunned by the utter lack of empathy and humanity exhibited by the Nazis on trial. He wrote, "Evil, I think, is the absence of empathy."
I've been a victim of this absence of empathy hiding behind insincere "thoughts and prayers." I've watched Christian Nationalists systematically attack empathy as weak and sinful and pathetic. I'm not sure how off-putting much of this inhumanity is for people anymore, because if it were truly off-putting, it wouldn't have been allowed to proceed this far. It's like I said the other day: Bad people succeed because good people can never imagine how bad bad people can be.
This intellectual laziness and failure of imagination will be written about often as historians pick through this wreckage.
“Bad people succeed because good people can never imagine how bad bad people can be.” So very horribly true…especially of those purported people of “god.”
Who are some of this moment’s worst people.
Obviously not; as I have said before, the Lyudmila Pavlichenko formulation applies to the vast majority of the MAGAT voters: as Pavlichenko said to the Time magazine reporter in 1943, her targets "are fascists not humans." The best index to the irremediable magnitude of MAGAT hatefulness is the post-Katrina Pew Poll that shows fully 77 percent of the nation's white adults in furious denial of the blatant, sometimes deadly white-supremacist bigotry overwhelmingly evident in the Bush II Regime's so-called "relief" effort -- in actuality an ethnic cleansing. (MAGAT = acronym for MAGA Terrorists or MAGA Trumpites, pronounced like "maggot.):
This country has never dealt with its racism. Should we survive this, I hope we don't make that mistake again.
We are all humans, whether we act humanely or not. I am hoping that most will at least attempt to not sacrifice their own humanity in the service of the oppressed, no matter how monstrous the evil we confront. And it is monstrous indeed.
Great article. Thank you. 😊
Thanks for reading.
I don’t think we need to storm the Everglades Concentration Camp. One small hurricane will do it. It’s the loss of life that is horrifying to think about.
Right. It is designed to sweep everyone away, and this government will then be like, "Who was there? We don't know. They were nobodies. Maybe the alligators ate them all. Let's move on and strip Rosie O'Donnell of her citizenship." Sigh.
We need to mimic the French Revolution, bring back the guillotine, and put a bounty on billionaires. The French did it, we can too.
While we will be more effective without such violence, I do have to tout my husband's genius. More than a decade ago, we were friends with a French Master chef who created a pommes frites guillotine for Bastille Day at his restaurant. The potato stood in for the head, and they were cut up into french fries that fell into hot oil. This happened in July in the hell-hot South. Outside. So the person operating it HATED HIS JOB. (I forgot to say in my initial comment reply that this french fry guillotine was my husband's invention.)
One of the biggest mistakes we made in the wake of the Civil War was not executing Confederates. I firmly believe those complicit with this treason against our Constitution should be tried and, if found guilty, executed for their crimes of treason.
Lol, was thinking similar. Anyone know were we can get a decent used one?
I can build one.