Hands up if you're finding it hard to believe that all those GOP congresspeople never noticed the swastika "optical illusions" in their American flags. Maybe it's just me . . .

re: Kristi Noem:
Wearing sunglasses while standing on a rooftop looking down at a few reporters and someone in a chicken suit isn't "staring down" anyone. Then again, since "Antifa" doesn't actually exist except in her own mind, looking off into space might actually be "staring down Antifa."

Charlie Kirk has died from his gunshot injury. I will neither celebrate his death nor mourn it. It is what it is. Guns violence does not just affect children and people the far right doesn't like. Kirk's death is both tragic and ironic.

A thought for the 4th of July:
Our history tells us who we are; our myths tell us who we aspire to be. That is why we need to learn and acknowledge history, and why we celebrate myths.
When we confuse the two, the myths become history and we forget who we really are.

I was born just after the defeat of fascism in Europe. Now we need to defeat it here at home. Let's hope we can defeat it once and for all.

I see a lot of commentary about how DJT's various actions are "a step toward authoritarianism," or "leading us into" fascism. Let's be clear. The things his administration are doing ARE authoritarianism, they ARE fascist! We aren't headed anywhere. We are already there!

The Marigold Menace is threatening any legislator who doesn't back his BBB, his ex-BFF Musk is threatening anyone who votes(d) for it, and MAGAts are telling their voters that they didn't know what they were voting for.
I'd get out the popcorn if the whole thing wasn't making me sick to my stomach.

Tiananmen Square his birthday tanks!

It needs to be a much bigger deal that the Secretary of Homeland Security not only does not know what Habeus Corpus is, but that she believes it gives the president, not just the ability, but the right to deport people without due process.

Apparently, to hear the MAGA crowd tell it, the 133 Cardinals of the Catholic Church elected Pope Leo XIV specifically to insult the Marigold Muppet. For the last seventeen-and-a-half centuries Roman Catholic theology has been trying to undermine him! Et tu, Cardinal Prevost?

Power does not inevitably corrupt, but corruption inevitably seeks power. People like Trump and Musk and those who do their bidding don't seek to corrupt their power, but to empower their corruption.

FYI: except for the right to vote, all the rights enumerated in the Constitution are extended to all people within our borders, not just citizens or documented immigrants. And apply to all persons everywhere we have jurisdiction or power.

Commentary on the argument over whether what we're seeing is "really" fascism.

www.facebook.com/share/p/1LDq...

In honor of Donald Trump, we are changing the name of "Freedom Fries" to "Dick-taters."

Respect and fear are not the same. The first is given freely and serves everyone. The second is given under duress and serves only the one who is feared; and that only until something more frightening comes along. The bully knows this; but chooses fear because it requires less of him.

We can begin what the museums in Europe did before the Nazis came, take care of our treasures and keep them safe, so that when the forces of fascism and authoritarianism are once again defeated (and they will be), we can restore to their proper places all that they have tried to take.(4 of 4)

Get a list of banned books and buy one or several and put them away somewhere safe. Buy them online and save them electronically and put them somewhere safe. Read them yourself. If you already have copies of things that are being disappeared, make more copies and put them somewhere safe.(3 of 4)

If you know any of the stories being deleted from federal websites, if you know or have the science or the history or the literature that is being systematically scrubbed from schools and libraries and bookstores, you can act now to make sure that these things are not lost forever. (2 of 4)

In Ray Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451,” a whole community of people from all walks of life and all backgrounds gathers to preserve history and literature by memorizing complete texts, literally becoming the book they wish to preserve. Today we, too, preserve what is being erased. (1 of 4)

Winter is the season of gestation, as the Earth awaits the birth of Spring. Summer is the season of childhood and coming of age, and Autumn is the time of growing old and facing the mortality of all things.

I wish we really could save daylight, so we could spend it elsewhere, shine the light of day on injustice, oppression, prejudice and hate, light the way for those who are trying to escape the darkness. Perhaps we could keep some for ourselves, for when the darkness of the world seems overwhelming.

It is looking more and more as though DJT has turned over domestic policy to Elon Musk, and foreign policy to Put in, leaving him a lot more time to go golfing.

This is why it can be deceiving to live by raw statistics. Only our drive to the airport you were in control and surrounded by things to help you survive a crash. Flying, someone else controls the flight, and if you crash, you probably die.

You mean far-fetched as in the fascists lose the election and democracy survives?

Two very dumb assumptions about renaming the Gulf of Mexico: 1, he can't actually change the name without the cooperation of, basically, the world; 2, "America" isn't the same thing as the "United States." Even renamed, it wouldn't mean what he thinks it would mean.

Title for an unauthorized biography of DJT: The Recrudescence of a Cockwomble

I don't understand why Musk and the MAGAs say his gesture wasn't a NAZI salute. Everything they are advocating is demonstrably fascistic. If you openly admit that you admire neo-NAZIs, the salute is just a minor detail. It's not the salute that makes you a fascist, it's all the other stuff.

When I see people predicting that DJT will clash with Musk and have to get rid of him, I'm not so sure. It may just be that Musk will get rid of DJT.

A lot of people think we're all going to Hell in a handbasket. I think that's corporate handbasket propaganda. If I go to Hell, it has to be in a handcrafted, artisan handbasket, made by indigenous people, using organic reeds, harvested sustainably on independent reed farms. Boycott Big Handbasket!

SCOTUS making decisions based on a "history and tradition" standard may be the worst reason, short of religious beliefs, for deciding law. So, I wonder where, exactly, these self-described originalists find history and tradition as a standard for law and governance in the text of the Constitution?