In a sit-down interview, Trump is invited to opine on a topic near to his heart, which has become the theme song of Republicans: horror over the idea that a nation of immigrants should  accept more immigrants. Meidas Touch News has the video.

“Nobody has any idea where these people are coming from, and we know they come from prisons. We know they come from mental institutions and insane asylums. We know they’re terrorists. Nobody has ever seen anything like we’re witnessing right now. It is a very sad thing for our country. It’s poisoning the blood of our country.” — Read on www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/10/5/2196058/-Donald-Trump-uses-Nazi-propaganda-to-support-abhorrent-views-on-immigrants

‘17 tapes’ are latest attempt by Republicans to smear Biden:

Have they heard these 17 tapes? No. Have they heard maybe 10 of the tapes? No. How many tapes have they heard? Zero. They’ve heard zero tapes. Because the whole thing is just another part of the extended fantasy tale that Rudy Giuliani brought to them years ago. Like the missing whistleblower and the fake “FBI document,” Republicans know this is all a lie. They just don’t care.

The form they have been hodling up as “proof” of these tapes is an unverified initial report form… It’s the notes some agent took when they received a tip, without any vetting of the contents or source. I’d personally love to know where the tip came from.

Beginning in 1943, the War Department published a series of pamphlets for U.S. Army personnel in the European theater of World War II. Titled Army Talks, the series was designed “to help [the personnel] become better-informed men and women and therefore better soldiers.” — Read on heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/may-29-2023

Fascism, the U.S. government document explained, “is government by the few and for the few. The objective is seizure and control of the economic, political, social, and cultural life of the state.” “The people run democratic governments, but fascist governments run the people.” 

“The basic principles of democracy stand in the way of their desires; hence—democracy must go! Anyone who is not a member of their inner gang has to do what he’s told. They permit no civil liberties, no equality before the law.” “Fascism treats women as mere breeders. ‘Children, kitchen, and the church,’ was the Nazi slogan for women,” the pamphlet said. 

Fascists “make their own rules and change them when they choose…. They maintain themselves in power by use of force combined with propaganda based on primitive ideas of ‘blood’ and ‘race,’ by skillful manipulation of fear and hate, and by false promise of security. The propaganda glorifies war and insists it is smart and ‘realistic’ to be pitiless and violent.” 

Tom the Dancing Bug: Center-Normalized News, two truths for the price of one news channel | Boing Boing:

there is no middle – WIL WHEATON dot NET:

Remember how much fun it was to harmlessly TP your friends’ houses? How silly and goofy it was to ding-dong ditch someone? Just to do silly, childish, ultimately harmless expressions of being a kid who’s fooling around? Or how about playing hide and seek? Remember how fun that was?

Thanks to the Republican fascists who have gerrymandered and suppressed their way into minority rule In 21st century America, any of those things will now likely get you killed by a paranoid gun nut who won’t suffer any consequences. And when it’s a white man who murders a BIPOC child, his state’s Republican governor will pardon any consequences that somehow slip past the barriers to justice they’ve built.

Pick a side. There is no middle.

You’re with the fascists and terrorists, or you are with the rest of us. There is no middle. There is no “both sides”. One side wants as much death and terror on the streets as possible. The other side wants all of us to have healthcare and a home.

What’s scarier than AI-created lies? AI-created truths about Donald Trump:

When President Joe Biden made the announcement that he would run for reelection, the Republican Party was standing by with an ad that used AI-created imagery to generate all their dark fantasies about what would happen in a second Biden term, from a zombie horde crossing the border to San Francisco being somehow “closed” because of so, so much fentanyl.

It wasn’t just that the ad used AI imagery. It was that nothing–absolutely nothing–in that ad had anything to do with the real world. Not one of the morbid fantasies in which the GOP indulged themselves was in any way an extrapolation of Biden’s policies. It wasn’t just fake images, it was fake images spawned out of wholly fake claims designed to keep Republican voters properly frightened and enraged.

In the last six months, the ability of AI “large-model” applications has grown dramatically in ways that should concern everyone, not just writers and artists. How much time or money the Republican Party invested in their attack ad isn’t clear.

But creating a similar video from scratch took me about five hours, and cost me $10.

Ohio GOP advances measure to make it harder for voters to pass abortion rights amendment:

In an effort to thwart abortion rights advocates and redistricting reformers, Republicans in the Ohio Senate approved a constitutional amendment on Wednesday that would make it harder for voters to pass their own amendments. The proposal still has to go before the full state House after Republicans passed it in committee there, though if it passes there as well, Ohioans will have the chance to weigh in on these new restrictions before they can become law.

However, Republicans are also trying to tilt the playing field in their favor by putting their amendment on the ballot in an August special election, when they hope turnout will be low. That election would take place ahead of a possible vote to enshrine abortion rights into the state constitution, which organizers are hoping to put before voters in November. If successful, the new Republican amendment would require a 60% supermajority to pass any future amendments, including the abortion measure—even though it would only take a simple majority to adopt the GOP's amendment.

Every dirty trick to Rule rather than Represent.

“The library is a safe place.” – WIL WHEATON dot NET:

“The library is a safe place.”

Why libraries? Because the library is so much more than a building with lots of books, internet access, 3D printers, D&D programs for kids, and all the other things. The library represents and offers equal access for everyone to all of those things. Not just the wealthy. Not just the privileged. Not just the in-group. It is a safe place for everyone to be curious, to find inspiration, to sit in the stacks, as far away from the door and the world as possible, and just quietly exist for a minute. (Don’t you love the way those books smell?) The public library is a safe place for all of us, whether we are a kid who feels invisible, a woman who is lost, or a New York Times bestselling author who has the privilege of sharing their story with you.

Ron DeSantis' “Stop Woke” act is stopped by Florida judge: “Positively dystopian” | Boing Boing:

"Our professors are critical to a healthy democracy, and the State of Florida's decision to choose which viewpoints are worthy of illumination and which must remain in the shadows has implications for us all," said Walker. "If our 'priests of democracy' are not allowed to shed light on challenging ideas, then democracy will die in darkness."

As part of Walker’s ruling, he used part of a George Orwell quote from the dystopian classic, 1984, to illustrate Dictator DeSantis’s version of Oceania: “‘It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen,’ and the powers in charge of Florida’s public university system have declared the State has unfettered authority to muzzle its professors in the name of ‘freedom.'"

Axios Fires Reporter for Calling out Ron DeSantis Event as “Propaganda”:

Sooner or later, the elite political press is going to run headlong into this pack of hyenas. It's going to be interesting to see who has learned to stand up for themselves in the years since 2016. This episode is not promising. In addition, more than a few people—and not all of them Democrats—have begun to wonder if DeSantis is getting soft treatment because he's seen as a failsafe option against a third candidacy from El Caudillo del Mar-A-Lago without being truly opposed to him.

Framing Funnies: “Culture Wars” | Jen Sorensen:

The term “culture wars” is used by many well-meaning people, including many progressive writers and activists I admire. It’s a convenient way to refer to a number of issues. But in this current political moment, I think it’s a highly misleading euphemism. What we are experiencing in America right now is an asymmetrical attack on basic freedoms — a fascist movement that thrives on targeting certain groups, erasing history, and spreading dangerous falsehoods through a vast media apparatus. To call this a “culture war” is to legitimize the contemporary GOP and its extremist counterparts as a coherent and authentic “culture” worthy of respect. This is a misuse of the concept of culture, creating a false equivalence between marginalized groups and those who would harm or eliminate them in a quest for ever more power.

– Via kottke.org, which recently celebrated 25 years online.

Author of Missouri’s anti-LGBT school bill isn’t sure what her bill means | Boing Boing:

Missouri State Rep. Ann Kelley (R) has difficulty explaining to her gay colleague Phil Christofanelli (R) why her anti-LGBT school bill would allow teachers to say that George Washington was married to Martha.

Make people explain their “logic” - Push it, make them spell out what they mean, until it’s clear they’re hypocrites.

Facebook, Google Give Police Data to Prosecute Abortion Seekers:

As abortion bans across the nation are implemented and enforced, law enforcement is turning to social-media platforms to build cases to prosecute women seeking abortions or abortion-inducing medication — and online platforms like Google and Facebook are helping. 

Through data collected by online pharmacies, social media posts, and user data requests from law enforcement for message and search logs, cases for prosecution can be built against women for seeking abortion — and it has been happening since before Roe was overturned.

Daring Fireball: CPAC Speaker Michael Knowles Calls for Transgender People to Be ‘Eradicated From Public Life Entirely’:

Keith Olbermann, in a reply to Knowles’s tweet:

You should get the fuck off the stage and apologize, asshole. This statement is your life from here on in.

Shove your hatred and bias and Nazi dreams up your ass, Motherfucker.

Olbermann took the words right out of my mouth. It’s sophistry to argue that transgenerism can be “eradicated from public life entirely” without eradicating transgender people. Eradicate is a Nazi word — one step away from exterminate — and totally means completely, absolutely, entirely. Watch the video. This is Nazism, and the only proper response to Nazis is to punch them.

Daring Fireball: Josh Marshall: ‘The Deep Archeology of Fox News’:

In a broad sense it all comes back to Stephen Colbert’s iconic line from his Colbert Report alter ego: “It is a well known fact that reality has a liberal bias.” U.S. conservatives couldn’t/can’t see that, or refuse to see it, and instead operate on the assumption that all journalism — and science — that points toward liberal conclusions is ideological.

MAGAbert | Boing Boing:

Swalwell calls out Matt Gaetz for dangerous political stunts:

"Mr. McClintock (R-CA), I am not kidding you, Mr. McClintock said, ‘Well, it's not like we're going to invite somebody who committed murder.’ No, he literally said that. ‘It's not like we're going to invite somebody who committed murder.’

“Okay. Well, who did Mr. Gaetz bring? He brought Corey Beekman. Corey Beekman in 2019, was in a standoff with the Michigan police after he was arrested and charged with murder, assault with intent to commit murder and two counts of felony firearm possession.”

The Case For Shunning - by A.R. Moxon - The Reframe:

There has to come a point when we finally insist to take the evidence before us and to draw moral conclusions—because unless we do, we won’t ever be able to address the problems before us. If we don’t make moral judgments about speech, we’ll find ourselves on a treadmill of discourse, always running but never getting anywhere, endlessly compelled to apply an indestructible skepticism to the evidence, and an indestructible credulity to specious conjecture and lies.

It’s time for us to understand people for what they insist on being. To understand that participation with the popularized genocidal urges gripping our country is an unacceptable moral failing, as is support for the politicians and pundits who are pursing it, as is membership in the political party around which it is organized and energized. To understand that unforgivable moral failings deserve not our ears, but our backs.

Believe people when they tell us who they are - If we did that sooner, Scott Adams finally saying the quiet part out loud wouldn’t really be a surprise.

Michigan rep. to GOP mass shooting-enablers: “F*ck your thoughts and prayers.” | Boing Boing:

Summed up well.

jwz: What the Jan. 6 probe found out about social media, but didn’t report:

Congressional investigators found evidence that tech platforms -- especially Twitter -- failed to heed their own employees' warnings about violent rhetoric on their platforms and bent their rules to avoid penalizing conservatives, particularly then-president Trump, out of fear of reprisals. [...]

“The sum of this is that alt-tech, fringe, and mainstream platforms were exploited in tandem by right-wing activists to bring American democracy to the brink of ruin,” the staffers wrote in their memo. “These platforms enabled the mobilization of extremists on smaller sites and whipped up conservative grievance on larger, more mainstream ones.” […]

That focus on Trump meant the report missed an opportunity to hold social media companies accountable for their actions, or lack thereof, even though the platforms had been the subject of intense scrutiny since Trump’s first presidential campaign in 2016, the people familiar with the matter said.

Confronting that evidence would have forced the committee to examine how conservative commentators helped amplify the Trump messaging that ultimately contributed to the Capitol attack, the people said – a course that some committee members considered both politically risky and inviting opposition from some of the world’s most powerful tech companies, two of the people said. […]

The Washington Post has previously reported that Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), the committee’s co-chair, drove efforts to keep the report focused on Trump. But interviews since the report’s release indicate that Rep. Zoe Lofgren, a Democrat whose Northern California district includes Silicon Valley, also resisted efforts to bring more focus in the report onto social media companies.

The real problem with our national debt is nothing like what Republican debt scolds say it is:

In the 1950s, wealthy families had an effective tax rate (what they actually paid, after deductions, etc.) of around 50%. The rich paid about half of what they made. Since Ronald Reagan, and then George W. Bush, and then Trump enacted one Rich Man’s Tax Cut after another, what the wealthiest pay has shrunk drastically, to an average effective tax rate of 8.2% over recent years, less than many middle-class Americans. What does this have to do with the debt ceiling, or the federal debt in general? I’m glad you asked.

Secret Service releases study on mass shootings: It’s economics, misogyny, and conspiracy theories:

The last two weeks have brought back the reminder that mass shootings in the United States continue unabated. In their wake, the Secret Service published a 60-page report on Wednesday that details the data they have about mass attacks. The study, conducted by the U.S. Secret Service's National Threat Assessment Center, examines 173 mass shooting incidents that occurred between 2016 and 2020. Each attack included in the report resulted in at least “three or more individuals injured or killed across public or semi-public spaces, including businesses, schools, and houses of worship.”

First off - The fact that there were 173 incidents over 4 years should be a sign we have a problem.

Notable statistics/predictors:

• 96% of the attackers studied were male, 3% were female, and 2% were transgender. (IE This is a dude thing)
• 72% of attackers experienced some kind of financial stressor sometime prior to the attack.
• Just under 20% of attackers had an “unstable housing” situation at the time of the attack.
• While there was a large age range, the average age of an attacker was 34 years old.
• 41% of attackers had a history of “engaging in at least one incident of domestic violence.”
• Less than a quarter of those firearm attacks involved guns acquired illegally.

Demographics wise, the breakdown pretty much represents the racial diversity of the nation: (IE Dude problem not a race problem)

• 57% of attackers were white.
• 34% of attackers were Black.
• 11% of attackers were Hispanic.
• 4% of attackers were Asian.
• 1% of attackers were American Indian.

Behind the scenes of Durham investigation reveals special counsel engaged in serious abuse of power:

As the end of 2022 approached, it became clear that all Durham had really done was vindicate everything about the original Russia investigation. That shouldn’t be surprising, since the parallel report put together by a Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee determined that there had been more than 100 contacts between Trump’s team and Russian agents, that Trump’s team had actively sought more assistance from Russia, and that the close association of members of Trump’s campaign with Russian agents represented a threat to the United States. The reason the Russia investigation found connections between Trump and Russia was simple enough — there were connections between Trump and Russia.

Ending Suspension of Trump’s Accounts With New Guardrails to Deter Repeat Offenses | Meta:

The suspension was an extraordinary decision taken in extraordinary circumstances. The normal state of affairs is that the public should be able to hear from a former President of the United States, and a declared candidate for that office again, on our platforms. Now that the time period of the suspension has elapsed, the question is not whether we choose to reinstate Mr. Trump’s accounts, but whether there remain such extraordinary circumstances that extending the suspension beyond the original two-year period is justified.

The normal state of affairs is that presidents don’t attempt coups, traitors who violate their oath of office get arrested and are barred from being re-elected. There’s nothing normal about lord dampnut, and giving him a voice or any kind of attention other than illuminating his crimes is a problem.

From the via

So no matter what Trump does, the longest they’ll suspend him is another two years? This is whistling past the graveyard. Trump wasn’t suspended because he posted something, say, racist or untruthful or hateful. It’s not about Trump and his supporters being on the political right. The man tried to overthrow the democratically elected government of the United States while serving as President of the United States. He still insists he was correct to do so, and quite obviously intends to try again. If there were only one person in the world suspended from Facebook’s platforms, it should be Donald Trump. No one is more dangerous. No one is more deserving of being outcast as a pariah.

• Via Daring Fireball

Mass shootings and America’s unique gun violence problem, explained - Vox:

No other high-income country has suffered such a high death toll from gun violence. Every day, more than 110 Americans die at the end of a gun, including suicides and homicides, an average of 40,620 per year. Since 2009, there has been an annual average of 19 shootings in which at least four people are killed. The US gun homicide rate is as much as 26 times that of other high-income countries; its gun suicide rate is nearly 12 times higher.

Technically this is only the second worst thing the GOP has done to us as far as deaths in recent years, with 500 people a day still dying from COVID.