This is who we are now

As mentioned last week, tourism is a $2.3 trillion industry in this country, roughly 3 percent of GDP, with international visitors spending $155 billion into the economy each year. So with ICE snatching people off the street like Stasi in East Germany and detaining foreigners at U.S. airports, one might think it an inopportune time for Kristi Noem to produce an anti-U.S. tourism commercial.

Y’all don’t come!

But disincentivize U.S. tourism is just what the Homeland Security secretary did on Wednesday, filming in (of all places) an El Salvador gulag before a backdrop of prisoners reminiscent of Nazi concentration camp victims. And wearing, as the New York Post noted, a $60K Rolex Cosmograph Daytona watch. If the point was for Frau Schmerz to get attention, she got attention. “Y’all don’t come!” was hardly the artistic choice the U.S. Travel Association might have made to entice foreign visitors to vacation here. But Schmerz-the-dog-shooter has other priorities.

Jeff Sharlet cautions that Noem’s Lara Croft, Tomb Raider look (sans twin automatics and ponytail) is intentional. It carries a certain kind of fascist sexy, “a kind of debased BDSM,” that’s a trap to spotlight because a certain rightwing man finds it seductive. (It’s not dissimilar to the retributive fantasies Donald Trump teased widely to regain the Oval Office.) My first impression was it’s a helluva way to sell a vacation at Disney World or in Las Vegas.

The greater irony is that many of the Venezuelan “terrorists” hastily shipped to the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) without due process are there because U.S. authorities believe any and all tattoos mark them as members of a violent criminal gang. SecDef Pete Hegseth had best watch his back. (What is on his back?)

The Ink concurs:

The fashion critics at ICE seem to have decided that any tattoos, so long as they’re on a Venezuelan migrant, are enough to condemn a person to a lifetime of hard labor in El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center. That may be in keeping with the Trumpian recipe for “common sense” (a dash of racism, a dollop of excessive force, a wave of the hand at the law, and a few dozen viewings of Dirty Harry), but it is exactly what the rule of law is meant to prevent. And considering that border czar Tom Homan has even admitted ICE is sweeping up plenty of innocent “collaterals” in their attempt to sow terror, it’s pretty clear his front-line troops have no idea what they’re seeing, let alone know it when they see it. Whatever it is.

As for Noem’s “extras” arrayed “to create a visual for Noem’s use,” Jonathan Last writes at The Bulwark, “We have seen this kind of thing before. Just not from America.” To be clear, “I want to be deadly serious about this: We are now the bad guys.”

The Geneva Conventions that White House Chief Counsel Alberto Gonzales described as quaint when defending the Bush “enhanced interrogation” (torture) program prohibit display of prisoners for propaganda purposes. Yet here we are. Our system failed to bring the torturers and their bosses to justice then, just as it failed to hold Wall Street banks accountable after the 2008 financial crash. We are no longer a nation of laws.

In case the message Noem is sending this week is unclear, with Stasi-like DHS kidnappings and her gulag photo-op, Last is blunt:

The message is this:

America is no longer a shining city on a hill. It is no longer the leader of the free world. It no longer stands on the side of liberty as a beacon for those who yearn to breathe free.

This is the land of wolves now.

Canada has written us off:

Carney: "The old relationship we had with the United States based on deepening integration of our economies and tight security and military cooperation is over." pic.twitter.com/LKYkpO8JD0

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 27, 2025

Resist before you find ash on your sills.

* * * * *

Have you fought the coup today?

National Day of Action, Saturday, April 5
Choose Democracy
Indivisible: A Guide to Democracy on the Brink
You Have Power
Chop Wood, Carry Water
Thirty lonely but beautiful actions

Why we still can’t have nice things

Ezra Klein in October 2021 interviewed data geek David Shor on the source of Democrats’ failure to deliver more on what Democrats claim they want. To win, Schor believed (in Klein’s words), “Democrats should do a lot of polling to figure out which of their views are popular and which are not popular, and then they should talk about the popular stuff and shut up about the unpopular stuff.” It was surprisingly controversial for reasons Klein describes in his essay.

David Dayen, responding at The American Prospect, suggested:

This bumps up against Democratic activist goals around diversity and inclusion and edge-pushing ideas around policing and immigration, and that’s the source of nearly all the tension around popularism. But I would argue that popularism is not only self-evident but approximately what Democrats have been doing in virtually every race of national import for the past 30 years. And that’s precisely the problem. You cannot talk about the same popular items, fail to deliver on them, and expect the voting public to keep listening to you. There are diminishing returns to parties that never seem to get results. At this moment, the only thing that will give Democrats a fighting chance is what my friend Matt Stoller just coined as “deliverism.”

Being a big-tent party means a lot of people want their say in how things get done. They demand that their voices be heard and their interests be represented. The problem is that sometimes those interests are not complementary but in competition. “Please all, please none” comes to mind.

After Kamala Harris lost in November, Sam Stein tapped out a piece for The Bulwark suggesting why Joe Biden’s deliverism didn’t deliver. “Biden’s domestic achievements didn’t resonate with voters,” Stein wrote. “And it’s left the party questioning whether deliverism is smart politics at all.”

But there is a tension there, somewhat, between Democrats’ legislative ability to deliver and their political ability to market those achievements. It’s not that they don’t have decent messages. (They’ve gotten better.) It’s that the left doesn’t have the right’s multifaceted, billionaire-funded media vectors for delivering it to people’s ears. What I’ve called the left’s “tree falls in the forest” problem.

But Klein and co-author Derek Thompson think it’s more than that. In “Abundance,” the pair argue that in liberals trying to satisfy every sub-interest group in their big tent, they’ve burdened the government with Jacob Marley-like chains. With the best of inclusive and environmental intentions, trying to please all has kept government from being nimble enough to build things on time and on budget that make people’s lives better. And not just at the national level, but the municipal as well. This is not helping. It’s undermined people’s faith in government action and it’s dragging down the Democrats’ brand with working people.

We have met the enemy and he is us.

I’m in the middle of the book now, so I don’t have fully formed thoughts. But I figured I’d drop in this conversation between Jon Stewart and Klein (that I’ve only just started) for some weekend listening.

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Have you fought the coup today?

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Indivisible: A Guide to Democracy on the Brink
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Thirty lonely but beautiful actions

You have to see this to believe it:

D.C. police say they are investigating the ‘Nazi’ comment, an apparent reference to a gesture criticized as a Nazi-style salute that Musk made on Inauguration Day, and one other, as potential hate crimes. [my emphasis]

[…]

“I look forward to watching the sick terrorist thugs get 20-year jail sentences for what they are doing to Elon Musk and Tesla,” the president wrote on social media on Friday. “Perhaps they could serve them in the prisons of El Salvador, which have become so recently famous for such lovely conditions!”

The FBI announced this week that it has formed a task force to investigate “the increase in violent activity toward Tesla.” In a post on X, FBI Director Kash Patel called the attacks “domestic terrorism” and said that “those responsible will be pursued, caught, and brought to justice.”

After police released a statement on the D.C. incidents that included photos of the two people being sought, Musk took to his platform X and reposted it, without comment. In a separate response to a post on X about an arrest in a vandalism case targeting a Tesla in Massachusetts, Musk wrote: “Damaging the property of others, aka vandalism, is not free speech!”

Prosecutors must prove a person was motivated by prejudice to secure a conviction in a bias-related crime. While targeting someone based on their political affiliation opens the door for such a charge, prosecutors ultimately decide after an arrest has been made and a motive developed. Police statistics show that until now they have not investigated a politically motived hate crime in the past four years in D.C. Through the end of February, police have investigated 17 crimes as hate-related this year, based on ethnicity, national origin, race, gender identity and religion.

None of the defendants on January 6th were charged with hate crimes. But sure, vandalizing Trump’s BFFs cars is a horrific act of political violence that requires a long jail sentence, maybe even the death penalty.

The country is being run by your drunken uncle sitting in his recliner watching Fox and yelling “throw the book at ’em!”

They should be able to keep her seat. The internals must be pretty bad for them to stab Elise in the back like this. Nobody’s been a better soldier than Stefanik.

On the other hand, she’s just another woman … who cares, right?

Do you think he’s not demented? Ask yourself how any sane person could say this in light of that behavior:

In an interview with Newsmax Tuesday, host Greg Kelly asked Trump if there’s any talk of a “compensation fund” for prosecuted January 6 rioters, because they lost “opportunity” and “income.”

“Well there’s talk about that, we have a lot of people talking about it, a lot of the people that are in government now talk about it, because a lot of people in government really like that group of people,” Trump responded, referring to the rioters as “patriots” who went to the Capitol “peacefully and patriotically.”

Upon taking office, Trump issued a sweeping pardon for some 1,500 people who tried to overturn the result of the 2020 presidential election.

“These people are incredible people; they were treated so unfairly, so horribly,” Trump said of the insurrectionists. […]

The president claimed that no other group in history has been treated as badly as January 6 rioters. “The judges, the system, the hatred, the vitriol, the prosecutors, the way they wanted to destroy these people,” Trump said.

Nothing shows how far down the rabbit hole he and his cult have fallen than this. And when I say his “cult” I mean the entire Republican Party. Anyone who can claim that this was perfectly fine and that these rioters were victimized by the justice system is living in an alternate universe. That it’s a bunch of flag-waving authoritarians who constantly scream about “law and order” and allegedly love the police is simply mind-boggling.

Whenever I see any of the savvy cynical pundits shrug their shoulders and say we’re being hysterical about what’s happening, even with all the current atrocities (and they are legion) this is what immediately comes to mind. How can we survive with so many people having such a total break with reality, much less common decency and morality?

This is the sickest shit i have ever seen in my life oh my god. pic.twitter.com/CxriT9ou7t

— Tim Miller (@Timodc) March 27, 2025

That woman is a twisted sadist.

JV Last’s comment on this whole thing speaks for me. Speaking of those dystopian images he writes:

Look at these images. What do you see?

In the background are a few dozen men, crammed into a cell. Their bunks are stacked four-high. Their heads are freshly shaved. They wear identical white shorts. They are all shirtless.

Their poses are similar. Three rows of prisoners stand still in the front as Noem speaks, their hands either at their sides or clasped in front of them. The rest of them are arrayed on the bunks so as to create a visual for Noem’s use. None of these men is speaking. Or moving. Or making any facial expressions. They have clearly been posed by the jailers, forced to hold position so that they can be useful props for the American woman so that she can manufacture propaganda for her regime.

We have seen this kind of thing before. Just not from America.

I want to be deadly serious about this: We are now the bad guys.

As he says, the use of prisoners for propaganda is hardly unprecedented. From ISIS to North Vietnam, it’s a common tactic. Decent liberal societies have standards for the treatment of prisoners and don’t do this. Noem’s little tableau is something we could have expected from the former Phillippines leader Rodrigo Duterte (arrested two weeks ago by the ICC) or Cambodia’s Pol Pot.

Last is actually wrong about one thing. We only need to look back 20 years to the Bush administration’s treatment of suspected terrorists, the pictures of chained, hooded men in orange jumpsuits, to see the recent example of a similar propaganda operation by America, I’m sad to say.

However, having the DHS Secretary stand in front of a prison speaking to the camera and threatening people with the same treatment is way beyond that. We are not in any kind of military action with gang members. There is no war. This is a domestic issue for which they are using wartime propaganda tactics and committing what amounts to war crimes.

Last describes the whole photo-op in chilling detail:

A high-ranking American official visits a prison on foreign soil which we are using to warehouse enemies of her regime. She appears in a fitted long-sleeve tee and active-wear slacks. There is a ballcap on her head and a pound of makeup smeared across her plasticized face. A gold Rolex Daytona—worth more than some of these men will make in their entire lives—sits proudly on her dainty wrist. Every piece of this visual is carefully engineered.

She visits the prison armory and shakes her head approvingly while inspecting the rifles. Then she pauses in front of a cage where human beings have been posed to her liking so that she can speak to the cameras in front of a powerful visual. She is sending a message on behalf of her country.

That message is chilling. As he says, we are the bad guys.

RFK Jr, who has never led a large organization and is crazy is “reorganizing” American public health:

The Trump administration on Thursday announced a layoff of 10,000 employees at the Health and Human Services Department, as part of a broad reorganization designed to bring communications and other functions directly under the purview of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

With the DOGE layoffs that will make it about 20,000 total in just a couple of months.

The restructuring will include creating a new division called the Administration for a Healthy America. “We’re going to do more with less,” Mr. Kennedy said, even as he acknowledged it would be “a painful period for H.H.S.”

It’s all Biden’s fault, of course:

Mr. Kennedy said rates of chronic disease rose under the Biden administration even as the government grew. He pitched the changes as a way to refocus the agency on Americans’ health, but did not outline any specifics on how he would mediate rates of diabetes, heart disease or any other condition.

He’s cutting 3500 jobs from the FDA, 2400 from the CDC, 1200 from the NIH and the rest from Medicare and Medicaid.

Here’s how the wrecking ball is going so far:

Dr. Robert Califf, the F.D.A. administrator during the Biden administration, said his team worked with staff to drum up support for an 8,000 person reorganization to change how its divisions for food and facility inspections operate. Given how morale-crushing the second Trump administration has been for the department, with many staff members laid off on the false premise that their performance was subpar, the effort could be all the more challenging.

“If you are coming to work sick to your stomach, as Russell Vought said he wanted them to,” he said, referring to the head of the Office of Management and Budget, “then people are not going to be able to collaborate as well. They’ll be suspicious of each other, right?”

Mr. Califf said such a sudden and massive reduction in staff and reorganization could also disrupt services and safety oversight that the public relies on.

Speaking of trust:

Mr. Kennedy also suggested in the video that the changes would help his team get more access to data, a prospect that has been fraught, given Mr. Kennedy’s long history of manipulating figures to advance arguments about the harm of vaccines that have widely been deemed safe.

Wow. You go New York Times, telling it like it is.

Apparently, Bobby’s mad about that. Some of the staff there actually tried to keep him away from ” closely guarded databases that might reveal the dangers of certain drugs and medical interventions.”

This is just one more tragedy befalling us because a demented old man seeks vengeance on his own people. It’s beyond Shakespearean. It’s Biblical.

Will Pete Hegseth outlast the lettuce?

Time once again to trot out this gem from Tom Clancy’s “Debt of Honor” (1994). Jack Ryan is the president’s national security advisor. That the post is currently held in the Trump 2.0 administration by Michael Waltz, the man who famously added The Atlantic‘s the editor-in-chief to a Signal discussion of details of an imminent U.S. attack on Yemen:

“You mean,” Robberton said, opening the basement door to the West Wing.

“You mean to tell me that it’s that  screwed up?”

  “Paul, you think you’re smart?” Jack asked. The question took the Secret Service man aback a little.

  “Yeah, I do. So?”

 “So why do you suppose that anybody else is smarter than you are? They are not, Paul,” Ryan went on. “They have a different job, but it isn’t about brains. It’s about education and experience. Those people don’t know crap about running a criminal investigation. Neither do I. Every job requires brains, Paul. But you can’t know them all. Anyway, bottom line, okay? No, they are not any smarter than you, and maybe not as  smart as  you. It’s just that it’s their  job to run the financial markets, and your job to do something else.”

  “Jesus,” Robberton breathed, dropping off Ryan at his office door.

Jesus, indeed.

The people at the top of this page don’t know crap about Operational Security (OPSEC). Neither do I. But I know more than they do, and so do you. Yet they’ve been apppointed to some of the highest offices in the world with responsibilities most of us could not fathom and whose decisions can get people killed or sent off for life to infamous prisons.

Pete Hegseth, Trump’s defense secretary, was once a soldier a should have known better. He should be smarter, but he isn’t.

Brian Klass today ponders “Why do so many fools end up in positions of authority?” Bertrand Russell offered an answer in 1946: “The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.”

Klaas writes:

Nowhere were the world’s powerful but cocksure fools more exposed than in the metastasizing Signal scandal, in which America’s ever-swaggering and perfectly-coiffed texters spent more time checking their hair than checking whether their little fingers were sending classified intelligence to the wrong person before they blew up a bunch of civilians.

Once exposed, they then racked their big brains for how to limit the damage from their boneheaded mistake and came up with another ingenious idea: what if we lied about it by falsely claiming that none of the information being shared was classified? Surely nothing bad could happen next!

It never occurred to them, it seems, that the inevitable outcome of that lie was for the journalist, The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg, to call their bluff by sharing the entire thread.

But there is a bigger story than a clustefuck of Trump officials acting like lying-through-their-teeth idiots.

There is no Secret Genius lurking in the Trump administration. They’re not playing 3-D chess. There’s not some grand strategy. No, Occam’s Razor cuts deep here, and lots of blood may soon be spilled as a result of the evident implication:

The most powerful people in the world are both stupid and incompetent.

And the people who can’t themselves use secure communications are also surveilling our communications and disappearing people off the street.

One can only hope that as a first step the Lincoln Project has a sound bead on where this is headed soon.

* * * * *

Have you fought the coup today?

National Day of Action, Saturday, April 5
Choose Democracy
Indivisible: A Guide to Democracy on the Brink
You Have Power
Chop Wood, Carry Water
Thirty lonely but beautiful actions

♫Where at least I know I’m free?

Trump 2.0 detained a Syrian Columbia University student activist for speaking out against the Gaza bombing, and a South Korean as well. They detained a Lebanese doctor over alleged photos of a Hezbollah leader on her phone, and an Indian post-doctoral fellow over his American wife’s alleged “ties with Hamas.” Ice detained multiple Germans, plus a Canadian entrepreneur trying to renew her work visa. They blocked a Canadian professor from entering the U.S., and a French scientist over text messages criticizing Trump policies.

Now a Turkish student from Tufts University, detained Tuesday, allegedly over a joint student op-ed calling for the university to divest from companies directly tied to Israel (per NBC Boston).

In the case of Tufts student, Rumeysa Ozturk, once again the Trump administration may have defied a court order not to remove her from her state:

Ozturk’s attorney, Mahsa Khanbabai of Khanbabai Immigration Law, said she maintained a valid F-1 visa – that’s now been terminated.

On Tuesday, a federal court judge ordered that Ozturk not be removed from Massachusetts without notice. Yet, according to her attorney, they couldn’t locate her for hours. It wasn’t immediately clear when she was moved to Louisiana — if it was before or after the judge’s order blocking her removal. Khanbabi detailed her client’s version of events in a statement:

“Over twenty-four hours after her arrest, Rumeysa was processed at her final detention facility after being driven to multiple government offices in New England and flown to Louisiana on early Wednesday morning. Throughout that period of time, my client was not charged or given the opportunity to speak with a lawyer. I had the opportunity to speak with Rumeysa on Thursday late night and she was grateful to finally get an explanation of what was happening to her and to learn of all the community support she has.”

She goes on to say that Ozturk has not been charged with any crime and that it appears she was targeted based on her free speech.

Let’s put “free speech” in quotes.

Trump sent masked law enforcement officers to arrest Rumeysa Ozturk—a Tufts University grad student with legal status—without a criminal charge. Disappearances like these are part of Trump’s all-out assault on our basic freedoms. This is authoritarianism, and we will not let this stand.

— Senator Ed Markey (@markey.senate.gov) 2025-03-26T23:14:58.748Z

Add an Iranian doctoral student at University of Alabama, also detained on Tuesday:

The Crimson White, the university’s newspaper, reported that the man is Iranian national Alireza Doroudi, a PhD candidate studying mechanical engineering. He was arrested at home at 5 a.m. ET Tuesday, the newspaper reported.

According to records available on ICE’s website, Doroudi is currently being held in a “detention facility.”

It is not clear why he was detained, what charges he may face, or if he has retained a lawyer. ICE and the Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Celebrating these disappearances is Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem, who filmed a warning in front of hundreds of caged prisoners at a high-security El Salvador prison. Alleged Venezuelan gang members — and who knows who else — have been disappeared there without due process in apparent violation of a federal court order. The Trump 2.0 administration refused to supply more details of their removal, essentially telling the court to pound sand.

Is ICE kidnapping U.S. citizens over protected speech Trump 2.0 dislikes yet?

Will ICE disappear us in chains to Louisiana too?

Is Lee Greenwood still proud that at least he’s free?

* * * * *

Have you fought the coup today?

National Day of Action, Saturday, April 5
Choose Democracy
Indivisible: A Guide to Democracy on the Brink
You Have Power
Chop Wood, Carry Water
Thirty lonely but beautiful actions

If touching Social Security is “the third rail of politics” then why isn’t #ElonMusk being electrocuted?

Digby just shared some statistics about how many of our fellow citizens will be affected by Elon’s crusade to cut Social Security by whatever means necessary. She asked, “I honestly don’t know if anyone or anything is going to be able to stop it.”

Now’s the time to help make the media and Republicans see that these cuts are deadly to their constituents, and make touching them metaphorically deadly to Musk and Trump.

Alex Lawson of Social Security Works talked to Nicole Sandler about how to set up a rally at your local Social Security Administration office. It think that is a GREAT idea!

Go to HandsOffSocialSecurity.org for how to set up a rally.

What to do until then? Take some action! I’ve already left messages for my Dem Senators and Congressperson about Elon Musk & DOGE. Yesterday I used a modified 5 Calls script on Protect Social Security Benefits Here’s the audio from my call to Pelosi’s office.

But what about your friends who are Blue Dots in Red States? I’ve got friends and relatives in Texas, Nebraska, Arizona and Florida who are all in MAGA Republican districts. They call and are told “We will never touch your Social Security Benefits” and the MAGA politicians won’t admit that DOGE is shutting down offices, firing staff and stopping phone service. They don’t think they are listened to, so I’ve got a new action THEY can take to be heard. It can also be used by their Republican friends and neighbors.

Press 3 for Constituent Services

Alex Lawson explained on the Nicole Sandler show talk about a brilliant new strategy that people can use RIGHT NOW to show politicians how concerned you are about the possibility that your Social Security might be disrupted.

Yesterday I contacted both my senators & rep in the House, on the constituent services side to prepare for a disruption to my #SocialSecurity.This prepared ME AND let my congressperson know I'll be demanding they help me, since this is their job. @alaw202.bsky.social @gottalaff.bsky.social

— Spocko (@spocko.bsky.social) 2025-03-25T20:20:09.739Z

I contacted Senators Schiff, Padilla and my representative, Nancy Pelosi, on the constituent services side to prepare for a disruption to my Social Security. What was interesting was that the Padilla staff member said they are getting overwhelmed with requests for help because of all the OTHER DOGE cuts in so many areas. If my social security is disrupted I’m to call back and ask to fill out a privacy release form. (NOTE THE PHRASE THAT PAYS!!)

This call prepared ME AND let my representatives know I’ll be demanding they help me, since this is their job.

I’m calling the Representative on behalf of my mom

Like a lot of people, we are responsible for elderly parents who depend on Social Security. They live in another district, and since we are legally and financially responsible for them, I’m calling their Representative to get the same info on their behalf from their Rep’s constituent services.

Now, our parents are Democrats and have a Democrat representative, but I have friends with elderly parents who are MAGA Republicans. They only watch Fox. They believe their MAGA Rep who said at a Town Hall that “Your Social Security benefits will never be touched.”

Their parents won’t call until something happens to their Social Security check. Then they’d call the social security office and expect it to be fixed. If necessary, they’d go to their local social security office to get their benefits restored.

But do they know Elon Musk and DOGE is stopping phone service to social security? No.
Have they seen on Fox News that their local social security office might be closed? No.

Will they act now BEFORE something terrible happens? Again, NO.

So, if THEY won’t call, you can call their MAGA Rep on behalf of your MAGA parents to make sure their earned benefits keep coming.

These steps, preparing for a disruption of social security benefits, is a NON-PARTISIAN act. EVERYONE should do it. But, like preparing your will, or setting up your earthquake kit, most people don’t do it until it happens to them or they have a close call. A near death experience.

Why alert the constituent services people now about how Musk is making the department malfunction? Because it sets them up for the first BIG F-UP. And it puts the blame on the person who is doing it, not the victims who voted for Trump.

WE can act with empathy to help our parents, even those who have been brainwashed by decades of right wing propaganda.

“Look, I don’t care who you voted for, but I’m not a billionaire like Howard Lutnick, and I can’t support you if the money you EARNED is disrupted for a couple of months. You looked after me when I was a kid and I didn’t understand what was happening. So now I’m looking after you. ”

Hands Off Social Security!

Cross Posted to Spocko’s Brain