Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Good Lord. According to the NY Times the Feds have arrested a nut who had what they call the largest cache of finished explosive devices ever found in FBI history:

The man, Brad Spafford, was taken into custody at a farm outside Norfolk on Dec. 17 on the basis of a single-count criminal complaint accusing him of illegally possessing an unregistered short-barrel rifle. When investigators searched his 20-acre property, in Isle of Wight County, they found in a detached garage more than 150 explosive devices — mostly pipe bombs, some of them labeled “lethal,” prosecutors said.

They found more pipe bombs in a bedroom inside Mr. Spafford’s house, loosely stuffed in a backpack that bore a patch shaped like a hand grenade and a logo reading “#NoLivesMatter,” prosecutors said.

No Lives Matter is a nihilistic, far-right ideology that largely exists on encrypted online messaging apps like Telegram. The movement’s adherents promote “targeted attacks, mass killings and criminal activity” and have “historically encouraged members to engage in self-harm and animal abuse,” according to a threat assessment released in August by the New Jersey Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness.

Apparently, the FBI were alerted by a neighbor who told them that the man was stockpiling weapons. He told them that Spafford said he and his friends were “preparing for something” that he couldn’t do alone. He also said that the man used pictures of president Biden for target practice and said that assassinations need to make a comeback and that he hoped a shooter “wouldn’t miss Kamala.”

Aaand:

Some scholars of far-right extremism believe it takes its name from a song entitled “No Lives Matter,” by the pro-Trump Canadian rapper Tom MacDonald.

I will not be surprised if Trump says this guy is a political prisoner and should be pardoned.

But what in the hell is this #NoLivesMatter ideology? Self-harm and animal abuse? This stuff just gets more and more cult-like. Here’s that dispatch on the group from the New Jersey Office of Homeland Security:

No Lives Matter (NLM) will use encrypted messaging platforms to recruit like-minded individuals, partner with white racially motivated extremists (WMRE), and publish tactical guides. To grow its network and provide updates to its extremist messaging, NLM primarily operates online via Telegram, an encrypted messaging platform with limited content moderation, where violent rhetoric and extremist content can reach target audiences. 

• In July 2024, a user in a NLM Telegram channel posted a list of updated group entry requirements, which included attacking the “mundane,” committing arson, and vandalism. Another user stated, “we are looking for more soldiers to join our ranks, true misanthropic individuals,” and “we only accept people that do irl [in real life] action.” In April 2024, NLM posted clarifications on acceptable submissions for membership which specified that self-harm acts like “simple cutsigns” would no longer suffice for admission into NLM, stating “we need deep bloody cuts that represent us.” Users in the channel shared photos of graffiti and a vandalized vehicle, highlighting acts that led to the acceptance of past members.
  
• In July 2024, NLM shared a post on its Telegram channel to announce a partnership with Mordwaffen Division (MWD)—a European neo-Nazi group—stating “NLM x MWD deadly alliance” and “Support your local nazi terrorists.” In 2023, NLM partnered with a Russia-based WRME group, Maniac Murder Cult (abbreviation MKU based on Russian translation) to co-author the NLM Kill Guide, which provided attack tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs). Several pages in the guide reference MKU, calling the group its “brothers in arms” and stating “NLM x MKU we can strike anywhere, at any time.”
  
• In June 2024, NLM released two extremist publications called the Terror Guide and the Manhunt Guide, both of which provide TTPs for members to “sharpen” their skills.” The Terror Guide includes instructions for making poison and constructing various improvised explosive devices. The guide also provides operational security (OPSEC) practices, weapons preferences, fighting techniques, and instructions for “manhunting” victims. The Manhunt Guide provides additional tactical guidance and OPSEC techniques while providing “manhunt requirements” such as recording “brutal” beatings.

No Lives Matter (NLM) follows an accelerationist extremist ideology and promotes targeted attacks, mass killings, and criminal activity, and has historically encouraged members to engage in self-harm and animal abuse. NLM states that “societal standards should not exist. They are to be crushed by any means possible. If they comply to the societal standards[,] they are mundane,” and encourages the “spread of terror to all who are mundane.”

In April 2024, NLM publicly rejected further association with the online violent torture and sextortion network, 764. NLM stated that it “was originally formed as an ideology…for 764 to follow,” but the “alliance” with 764 was discontinued due to the network’s ties to Satanism and pedophilia. Since disassociating with 764, NLM provided clarifications on its ideology, highlighting that it is returning to its “misanthropic” ways and that it is “back to the mundane killing ideology.” 

I don’t think nihilism is adequate to describe that sociopathic freakshow. This article from West Point’s combating terrorism center goes into the connections between this group and the Russian group M.K.Y. (called MKU above.) The West Point analysis also connects it to something called 764, an online child sex cult, which is so creepy I can hardly believe people like this exist.

It certainly is curious that so much of this disgusting stuff is projected from the right onto the left. I guess we know where this sick stuff is coming from.

Happy New year????

Everyone knows who is running this show: President elect Musk.pic.twitter.com/frwJkaBHOk

— The Lincoln Project (@ProjectLincoln) December 20, 2024

The NY Times reports that Musk has pretty much moved in to Mar-a-lago which explains why Trump was so upset when he didn’t see him around that he mistakenly posted a private text to him on Truth Social telling him he misses him. It’s such a sweet relationship. Trump is elderly, you know, and it’s about time for him to turn over the family business to his son:

Elon Musk plays many roles with President-elect Donald J. Trump. He is Mr. Trump’s most important donor, most influential social media promoter and a key adviser on policy and personnel. For most of the time since Election Day, he has also been Mr. Trump’s tenant.

Mr. Musk has been using one of the cottages available for rent on Mr. Trump’s property at Mar-a-Lago, the former Marjorie Merriweather Post home in Florida that Mr. Trump converted into a members-only club and hotel in the 1990s, according to two people with knowledge of the arrangement. The cottage where he has been staying, named Banyan, is several hundred feet away from the main house, according to a person who knows the property.

Staying right on the grounds has helped provide Mr. Musk with easy access to Mr. Trump. He can drop in on Mr. Trump’s dinners, such as one he had recently with Mr. Musk’s rival, the Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.

Mr. Musk, who spent more than a quarter of a billion dollars in the final months of this year’s election cycle to help elect Mr. Trump, has attended personnel meetings in the Mar-a-Lago Teahouse, sat in on phone calls with foreign leaders and spent hours with Mr. Trump in his office. Mr. Musk’s employees from his various businesses have also been integrally involved in the transition, vetting prospective candidates for senior administration jobs, in interviews at the Trump transition headquarters in West Palm Beach.

[…]

Mr. Musk moved into the cottage around Election Day and watched the returns at Mar-a-Lago with Mr. Trump. He left the property around Christmas and has been expected to return in the coming days.

Mr. Musk is known around the club to make requests like meals outside the normal kitchen hours. While staying at Mar-a-Lago, he has been accompanied by at least two of his children — Mr. Musk has at least 11 — and their nannies. One of the mothers of his children, Shivon Zilis, who worked for Mr. Musk at his brain implant company Neuralink, has also been photographed at Mar-a-Lago, after the election.

He hasn’t just replaced Uday and Qusay, he’s also got himself a new Jared. Maybe even a new Ivanka.

Speaking of Musk’s kids with several different women, some of whom are his employees, I just learned that most of them have been conceived through IVF and not because of infertility. He says he doesn’t have time for sex and anyway, IVF makes it easier to “control” the pregnancy (by which I assume he means it makes it easier to choose the sex?) Basically, he finds smart women who work for his companies and asks/pays them to bear his offspring to better populate the world with his genius.

He really is a Bond villain.

Trouble in paradise for Trumpy and Kim:

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un hailed Vladimir Putin as his “dearest friend” in a New Year’s letter to the Russian leader praising close bilateral ties, state media said on Tuesday.

The two countries have deepened political, military and cultural ties since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, with Putin and Kim repeatedly professing their personal closeness.

Moscow and Pyongyang signed a landmark defense pact during Putin’s visit to the isolated North in June. The pact obligates them to provide immediate military assistance if the other is invaded and came into effect this month.

Kim’s latest message described Putin as his “dearest friend and comrade,” the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said.newsNorth Korean Soldiers Suffer 1,100 Casualties in Ukraine War, South Korean Military SaysRead more

The North’s leader sent “warm greetings of best wishes to the fraternal Russian people and all the service personnel of the brave Russian army on behalf of himself, the Korean people and all the service personnel of the armed forces of the DPRK,” it said, using an acronym of the North’s formal name.

Kim also expressed “his willingness to design and push ahead with new projects” after their “meaningful journey in 2024.”

In a possible reference to the war in Ukraine, Kim also hoped that 2025 would be the year “when the Russian army and people defeat neo-Nazism and achieve a great victory.”

Isn’t that sweet? The man does write a beautiful love letter.

I have no doubt that some of this is trolling Trump. They know what a fatuous imbecile he is and that he values his love affairs with Vlad and Kim more than anything. He thinks it’s going to get him the Nobel Peace Prize. They’re doing this to yank his chain.

By the way, this Russia-North Korea alliance isn’t new. Putin is the one who convinced Trump to cancel the military exercises with South Korea and whispered in his ear all the reasons that S. Korea should be on its own.

They both know exactly how to play him. Not that it takes any great genius to figure it out. He’s got all the guile of a five year old.

From H1B to H5N1

We move now from the MAGA civil war over H1B visas to the H5N1 bird flu. (It’s getting hard to keep the abbreviations straight without a bound reference.)

CDC:

December 18, 2024— A patient has been hospitalized with a severe case of avian influenza A(H5N1) virus (“H5N1 bird flu”) infection in Louisiana. This marks the first instance of severe illness linked to the virus in the United States. The case was confirmed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Friday, December 13. Since April 2024, there have been a total of 61 reported human cases of H5 bird flu reported in the United States.

[…]

A sporadic case of severe H5N1 bird flu illness in a person is not unexpected; avian influenza A(H5N1) virus infection has previously been associated with severe human illness in other countries during 2024 and prior years, including illness resulting in death. No person-to-person spread of H5 bird flu has been detected. This case does not change CDC’s overall assessment of the immediate risk to the public’s health from H5N1 bird flu, which remains low.

No need to panic. Donald Trump will be in the White House again on January 20. And a pale horse will be loose in the Department of Health and Human Services. He’s set to “go wild on health.” So, no worries.

Unless you own cattle in California (The Independent):

A dozen more dairy herds in California have been stricken with bird flu as the virus continues to infect animals and humans around the U.S.

Nearly 700 herds in the state — or 71 percent of all herds — have caught H5N1 since late August, forcing Governor Gavin Newsom to declare a state of emergency and the government to announce new testing.

While California, the nation’s top milk-producing state, has the most infections in dairy herds, more infections were reported in Michigan, and the number of confirmed human cases has inched closer to 70, according to health officials.

A virus sample from the infected person in Louisiana, the CDC announced after Christmas, showed signs of genetic mutations. One of them was found in a teenager in British Columbia in November who was in critical condition for weeks.

Intelligencer asked Dr. Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization at the University of Saskatchewan, for her assessment of the potential risk. She believes the mutations occured in the patient over the course of the infection and not in the wild. “So it was unlikely to be transmitted onto another person, and it’s not actually emerging in the birds that this person became infected by,” she advised:

I don’t know what it would take to turn H5N1 into a pandemic virus, and I don’t think anybody does. I can’t say when or if it will happen. I mean, it’s something that could happen tomorrow, and it’s something that could never happen. But the chances of it happening are continuing to increase, and that’s what gives me cause for a lot of concern.

Don’t handle dead or sick birds, for starters. Or drink raw milk. Avoid bird droppings, etc.

As a virologist, do you think this feels like a slow-motion disaster unfurling?
It feels like a slow-motion disaster. The cattle outbreak has spread far and wide. We still don’t know how many cows and herds are affected. There are some states where there’s been almost no testing, so we may well see new states popping up on that positive map. There’s no way that you can contain an outbreak if you don’t know the full scale and scope of that outbreak.

Adding to the problem, there are multiple genotypes of the virus circulating. The case in Louisiana was associated with birds, which is different from the cattle virus. It’s not that big of a distinction to the general public, but what that means is that there are essentially multiple sources of this virus. So you could get it from cows, but you could also get it from birds. You could get it from domestic birds, or you could get it from wild birds. In fact, that’s how a lot of the domestic poultry operations are getting infected, because wild birds fly in there and the next thing you know, you’re having to cull a flock. So there’s a lot of the virus around just in nature. It’s also now getting into wild mammals, including ones that live in close proximity to people, like skunks and foxes and raccoons. It’s also getting into pets. It just feels like there are so many different pathways for this to go terribly wrong.

Mark Sumner at Uncharted Blue cautions:

This is not the time to panic and begin stocking up on toilet paper and canned goods. However, it may be an excellent time to make sure you following the news (no matter how unpleasant that is these days), have a supply of masks, and are prepared to deal with a return of “social distancing.”

The big problem may be that, if H5N1 does break through into the human population, almost everything that comes next is heavily dependent on the government response–a government response that’s set to be determined by Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and Robert Kennedy Jr.

And unless there’s an outbreak of responsibility and common sense in the MAGA GOP when and if an H5N1 outbreak occurs, we’ll have a pale horse loose in the DHS and Panama Orange holding daily briefings again in the White House Press Briefing Room.

Have a stiff one this New Year’s Eve.

MAGA GOP in disarray

So NOW reparations are on the table. When they’re presumed for Americans of a certain hue (Daily Beast):

Steve Bannon escalated the MAGA civil war Monday by calling for ‘reparations’ for Americans for losing out to immigrants on H-1B visas–who should themselves, he said, be deported.

Bannon repeatedly railed against the program—and billionaire Elon Musk, who backs the visas—on Monday’s War Room, asking guests including conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer and former-Democrat-turned-MAGA-backer Allison Huynh whether Musk understood the visas were a “scam.”

H-1B visas, which allow U.S. companies to hire highly skilled foreign workers for specialty jobs, were signed into law as part of the Immigration Act of 1990 by President George H.W. Bush, a Republican. President-elect Donald Trump said on Saturday he supported the program.

See, this situation absolutely requires a really futile and stupid gesture be done on somebody’s part! And Steve Bannon is just the guy to do it.

“The workers that are here on H-1B visas should be deported at the same time we’re deporting the 15 million illegal aliens Biden brought across the border to suppress wages to low-income workers,” Bannon said. “American workers should be hired immediately to fill those gaps, and then we should start the discussions on reparations, on what they knowingly did to American tech workers.”

Government requiring that people wear face masks during a deadly pandemic is tyranny. Government dictating that private employers hire less-skilled workers for specialty jobs and paying them reparations puts America first. Not that there’s anything central-planning about that.

Sociopathic overlords

Capitalists, Bannon railed, “always wanna go to the lowest-cost production.” Bannon the reactionary means to nip capitalism in the bud (Crooks & Liars):

“This is just about a compensation in indentured servants, basically quasi-slave labor in our own country by the enlightened oligarchs of Silicon Valley,” he continued. “This is like the Borgias or the Medici’s from Renaissance Italy, kind of these nation-states where Silicon Valley and these oligarchs are the feudal lords or the, as Ben Harnwell says, sociopathic overlords.”

[…]

“They bring indentured servants over here,” he said. “So you’re gonna be an indentured servant, just like many of our great, great grandparents did coming in the 19th century, before we broke indentured servitude. And we’re gonna break it here.”

“There need to be massive reparations from the sociopathic overlords,” he added.

Kris Goldsmith, the neo-Nazi hunter next door and founder of the Task Force Butler Institute, believes the Musk v. Bannon fight inside MAGA is a bigger phenomenon than many realize. Bannon built “a popular movement around right-wing extremist white nationalism.” Trump was a tool. Bannon, Goldsmith believes, could provoke the MAGA base to turn on Trump over the immigration issue Trump has run on from the moment he rode down his golden escalator.

@krisgoldsmith85 The MAGA Civil War isn’t about the base vs. billionaires. It’s Steve Bannon vs. Elon Musk. And Bannon will win. #CapCut #MAGA #DOGE #oligarchy #elon #elonmusk #trump #vicepresidenttrump #immigration #presidentelonmusk #h1b #h1bvisa #h1bvisas #vivek #vivekramasamy #stevebannon #warroom #bannon @Walter Masterson @David🤙🏽Boomer @CFH unfiltered @just-a-little-off-grid2 @MeidasTouch @The Ken Harbaugh Show ♬ original sound – Kristofer Goldsmith

The Republican Party already looks ungovernable, suggests a former GOP lawmaker. What does the MAGA civil war means for the reelection of Speaker Mike Johnson?

Another post from Daily Beast:

“When you look at people like the Chip Roys, the Tom Massies, the Andy Harrises; they drink their own bathwater. They don’t really drink Trump’s bathwater,” former GOP lawmaker Denver Riggleman explained on Bloomberg TV. “A lot of people call the Freedom Caucus a Trump protection caucus. But in reality, there are people there that are very idealistic, right? They’re ideologues, and they’re also going to do their own thing… I don’t think it guarantees Mike Johnson the speakership at all.”

Riggleman said the first day of Congress on Friday was going to be “miserable,” and he pointed out that this would be the easy part. Once they actually try to pass some laws in the deadlocked House, he said: “Legislation’s gonna be a sh–show.”

But you knew that.

I think we’ll all be talking about Jimmy Carter over the next few days and rightly so. The man led a fascinating and impactful life and there’s a lot to say about his accomplishments, his values and his contributions to America.

I thought today that I would just remind everyone of this episode which informs us of the corrupt nature of so much of the GOP’s history, even before Trump. People’s lives were at stake and they did this:

It has been more than four decades, but Ben Barnes said he remembers it vividly. His longtime political mentor invited him on a mission to the Middle East. What Mr. Barnes said he did not realize until later was the real purpose of the mission: to sabotage the re-election campaign of the president of the United States.

It was 1980 and Jimmy Carter was in the White House, bedeviled by a hostage crisis in Iran that had paralyzed his presidency and hampered his effort to win a second term. Mr. Carter’s best chance for victory was to free the 52 Americans held captive before Election Day. That was something that Mr. Barnes said his mentor was determined to prevent.

His mentor was John B. Connally Jr., a titan of American politics and former Texas governor who had served three presidents and just lost his own bid for the White House. A former Democrat, Mr. Connally had sought the Republican nomination in 1980 only to be swamped by former Gov. Ronald Reagan of California. Now Mr. Connally resolved to help Mr. Reagan beat Mr. Carter and in the process, Mr. Barnes said, make his own case for becoming secretary of state or defense in a new administration.

What happened next Mr. Barnes has largely kept secret for nearly 43 years. Mr. Connally, he said, took him to one Middle Eastern capital after another that summer, meeting with a host of regional leaders to deliver a blunt message to be passed to Iran: Don’t release the hostages before the election. Mr. Reagan will win and give you a better deal.

Then shortly after returning home, Mr. Barnes said, Mr. Connally reported to William J. Casey, the chairman of Mr. Reagan’s campaign and later director of the Central Intelligence Agency, briefing him about the trip in an airport lounge.

Mr. Carter’s camp has long suspected that Mr. Casey or someone else in Mr. Reagan’s orbit sought to secretly torpedo efforts to liberate the hostages before the election, and books have been written on what came to be called the October surprise. But congressional investigations debunked previous theories of what happened.

Mr. Connally did not figure in those investigations. His involvement, as described by Mr. Barnes, adds a new understanding to what may have happened in that hard-fought, pivotal election year. With Mr. Carter now 98 and in hospice care, Mr. Barnes said he felt compelled to come forward to correct the record.

“History needs to know that this happened,” Mr. Barnes, who turns 85 next month, said in one of several interviews, his first with a news organization about the episode. “I think it’s so significant and I guess knowing that the end is near for President Carter put it on my mind more and more and more. I just feel like we’ve got to get it down some way.”

Mr. Barnes is no shady foreign arms dealer with questionable credibility, like some of the characters who fueled previous iterations of the October surprise theory. He was once one of the most prominent figures in Texas, the youngest speaker of the Texas House of Representatives and later lieutenant governor. He was such an influential figure that he helped a young George W. Bush get into the Texas Air National Guard rather than be exposed to the draft and sent to Vietnam. Lyndon B. Johnson predicted that Mr. Barnes would become president someday.

That story was just revealed last year, 43 years later.

They sabotaged Carter’s re-election. I recall thinking that it was obvious when they released the hostages on the day of Reagan’s inauguration but the Republicans and the media all said it was because America’s enemies feared Ronald Reagan’s manly strength and thought Carter was weak. But the truth is that Reagan secretly cut a deal. Then they later did Iran-Contra. Surprise!

Trump didn’t invent this stuff. It’s a deep vein in the Republican party. (His crude gambit with Zelensky was just another version of this kind of dirty trick.) He just recognized it and brought it all to the surface — unlike his predecessors, he seemed to instinctively understand that at least half the country would admire him for it.

Josh Marshall has been closely following the recent South Korean coup and subsequent fallout and has uncovered something (via this article) that I’ve not heard anyone else report. He notes that while S. Korea may be a more recent democracy by American standards it’s actually very well entrenched. But it also has a social media ecosystem that resembles our own with right wing extremists dominating the scene.

The country’s reaction to the attempt can best be described as a widespread “What the fuck?” Like not even, “this won’t stand!” or “we’ll defend our democracy!”, though those were there too. The immediate reaction to Yoon’s move was as much bafflement as fear or anger. The whole thing was so crazy and out of left field that people struggled to understand what Yoon had even been thinking. That’s why the attempted coup played out as it did and why Yoon is currently out of power and looking at likely treason charges.

So back to our far-right YouTubers. The gist is that Yoon was basically living in a hothouse of right-wing Korean YouTube fake news — the opposition is plotting with North Korea!, the elections are overrun by voter fraud! — that he both appears to have bought into these conspiracy theories and also imagined that a big slice of the country did too. Whether this is precisely true or is a total explanation is a secondary matter to me. As we’ve learned from recent stateside experience, the world of early 21st century media and politics is one in which belief is highly motivated and volitional. You believe what is helpful to believe. You often “believe” as a form of aggression. I don’t know nearly enough about Korean politics to answer this question of the role of alternative media in this story. I’ll be curious what conclusions more knowledgable people come to over time. But my impression is that this is at least part of the story.

It’s an imperfect analogy. But it reminded me of a revelation some of us had in the latter part of the first Trump administration watching the actions of Bill Barr, who of course many DC commentators viewed as an “institutionalist” who would keep Trump on the rails. Barr of course did part ways with Trump toward the very end and would not go along with what culminated on January 6th. Low bar, but I guess give everyone their due. But he went along with and enabled quite a lot. And the answer was simple: what made you think Bill Barr wouldn’t be awash in the Fox News Cinematic Universe just as much as every other right-wing white Catholic guy over seventy years old? It makes perfect sense. Of course he would.

It seemed clear to me, and to people like Josh Marshall and others who follow this scene, that Bill Barr suffered from a serious case of Fox News brain rot, a malady that has a number of other associated diseases like X brain rot and Joe Rogan brain rot and Steve Bannon brain rot. It’s a communicable disease among Republicans and afflicts all strata of society from the likes of Bill Barr to Samuel Alito to Elon Musk and Donald Trump’s ecstatic rally goers.

There is something we need to recognize about all this which, while it may not fix the problem, at least lets us know what the problem is not:

These stories and analogues also grant a degree of perspective, humility and perhaps bits of encouragement as we try to make sense of our own situation just in advance of the beginning of the second Trump administration. When we think about the alternative media landscape or Kamala Harris’ rush decisions from late July until Election Day, it’s easy to get the idea that the world as we have it came down to the decisions of this or that high-profile political or journalistic elite. When we see very similar events playing out in very different political cultures we’re reminded that we always greatly overplay the role of individual decision-making. We are in fact awash in big global social, cultural and political trends that we only partly understand. We play important roles navigating these winds and tides. But the winds and tides themselves aren’t of our making.

We need to try to understand these winds and tides and figure out ways to survive them and stop the people who are exploiting them to loot and destroy . But they’re happening whether we like it or not.

And, by the way, it’s important to start realizing that this right wing brain rot virus, whether Q-Anon or Sean Hannity, affect a huge number of Trump voters. This idea that the online trolls are different from the salt-o-the-earth Trumpers isn’t correct. They’re all online, watching Fox and Newsmax and/or listening to talk radio. That ecosystem is pervasive.

When I was young and travelling around the world I’d tell people I was from Alaska and they’d occasionally tell me that we should become part of Canada because America was such a terrible place. I’d feel a little uncomfortable about that, being an American and having some affection for my own country. But now I don’t know that I’d react the same way. Trump and his cult are making it very easy to look to Canada.

Robert Reich discusses Trump’s new obsession with territorial expansion and has a modest proposal:

But as long as we’re considering changing national borders, why not do it in a more sensible way?

How about the West Coast states of Washington, Oregon, and California becoming the 11th province of Canada? After all, the politics of these blue states would fit much better with Canada’s than with Trump’s America.

Meanwhile, the New England states (Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut) and New York could become the 12th Canadian province, for much the same reason.

While Trump is toying with the idea of annexing Canada, these blue American states should bid him goodbye and be annexed by Canada.

Hell, Trump might just go along. He doesn’t like these blue states anyway. They all voted against him in 2016, 2020, and again in 2024. He’s been looking for ways of getting even. Why not simply disown them?

Letting Canada annex these blue states would also simplify Trump’s war on undocumented immigrants, since many of them reside in these states.

America First Legal, a nonprofit run by Trump’s incoming deputy chief of staff for policy, Stephen Miller, has already written to local elected officials in California and New York warning them not to try to become sanctuaries — threatening that the officials could be personally “criminally liable” if they refuse to support federal government efforts to detain and deport illegal immigrants.

But if California, New York, and other blue states were annexed by Canada, the problem disappears.

Of course, this leaves the pesky question of whether Canada would accept America’s West Coast as its 11th province and New York and New England as its 12th? I’ll leave that question to Canadians.

I can’t say I’d blame them if they said fuggedaboudit. We may be blue states but we have plenty of MAGA weirdos too. On the other hand, it would be an economic powerhouse so …

Obviously, this is just a joke. But with Trump shooting off his mouth about annexing Canada and Greenland it makes you wonder if some of the things we believe are unthinkable are as unthinkable as we think they are.

Axios reports on a new PRRI survey:

President-elect Trump has suggested that he’ll use the military in immigration raids and turn to a 1798 law to put immigrants in camps. His base appears to support those plans despite the likely fierce opposition from most Americans. 46% of Republicans endorse using the military in mass deportation raids and placing immigrants in camps, according to a nonpartisan Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) post-election survey.That’s more than double that of independent voters (19%) who agree with the idea.And that’s more than five times as Democratic voters (8%) who supported this policy.

 “There have been questions in the Trump era where I’ve thought…I can’t believe that we need to know the answer to this question,” Robert P. Jones, president and founder of PRRI, tells Axios.”I guess the good news is that three-quarters of the country rejects this idea that we should be putting immigrants in the country illegally into internment camps guarded by the military.”Jones said the bad news is that nearly half of people who consider themselves members of a mainstream political party do.

 Trump said in his recent TIME “Person of the Year” interview that he would be open to using camps to hold detained immigrants in the U.S.

His “Border Czar” Tom Homan has been filling in the blanks on the mass deportation proposals:

Homan told the Washington Post in an article published Thursday that the administration plans to locate more than 300,000 children he described as “missing” in the U.S.

 Both Trump and Homan have previously expressed support for deporting families of mixed immigration status, and Homan expounded on the idea in the interview with the Post. “Here’s the issue,” Homan told the Post. “You knew you were in the country illegally and chose to have a child. So you put your family in that position. He noted that it will be up to families to decide if they would prefer to be deported together or split up.

Homan also said the U.S. would resume family detentions and “construct family facilities” to do so.

Decent people all over the world will hate this country… and they shouldwww.washingtonpost.com/immigration/…

— Eric Alterman (@ericalterman.bsky.social) 2024-12-26T11:41:19.945Z

Update —

Since 2019, about 450,000 unaccompanied minors have been transferred to ORR, according to a Department of Homeland Security oversight report published in August. During that time, 32,000 did not show up for scheduled court hearings, and an additional 291,000 were not issued a notice to appear by ICE.

Homan acknowledged that many of those young people are probably with their parents or other family members, but he said he wants to mobilize nonprofit groups and private contractors to carry out a more concerted effort to track them down. 

What could go wrong?

That’s not going to happen, I’m afraid. The new congress is sworn in on Friday. But then, he has so little experience in government that he wouldn’t know that. Well, other than being president for four years and staging a coup in January four years ago.

He’s just having a tantrum because he knows that he’s going to be faced with a terrible problem, right off the bat.

The fiscal hawks are gunning for the budget and he’s empowered them by giving Musk and Ramaswamy this silly commission charged with slashing spending which they’re using to rally the troops. It was a huge mistake. (He should have given him the mandate to go to Mars or something,)

Anyway, hold on to your hats:

GOP leaders are staring down two bad options to solve President-elect Donald Trump’s debt-limit problem, after failing to execute his demand to lift the federal borrowing cap in the last government funding bill.

One path requires full buy-in from Republican lawmakers to address the issue via budget reconciliation — a huge challenge thanks to the party’s fierce fiscal hawks. The other entails winning over Democrats, who for the most part rejected Trump’s initial debt-limit gambit last week.

“Whoever advised the president that it was even possible needs to better understand how this place works,” Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) said about Trump’s latest push to raise the debt limit.

It’s going to be an urgent issue for Trump as soon as he takes office. The federal government will resume the cap on its borrowing authority on Jan. 1, as the U.S. sits on a national debt of more than $36 trillion, though the Treasury Department can buy time for a number of months with so-called extraordinary measures. The fiscal time bomb illustrates the struggle Trump and Republican leaders face heading into 2025, as they consider whether to court Democrats who will want concessions or their own conservatives who are known for rigidly sticking to their demands to cut funding.

“I’ve told my caucus, if they try to do it under reconciliation, they’ll lose my vote,” Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said on Friday. “I told them: You want to kill reconciliation, put something on that we don’t like.”

They are intent upon extending their massive tax cuts and expanding them, adding more trillions to the debt. They also want much more money for drill, baby, drill, the border and the military. So they’ll have to cut over $2.5 trillion in cuts to social security, Medicaid and Medicare to cover that. Trump isn’t the sharpest tool in the shed but he does realize that he can’t control the hardliners on this and feels desperate already over what a shitshow that’s going to be.

Today he endorsed Mike Johnson (in the most hilariously self-serving way possible) but there’s good reason to believe that the hardliners really don’t care what he says about any of this.

Could he have buried it any deeper? Lol.

He knows they are looking at a disaster. If the Democrats hold fast, and they certainly will if the Republicans dig in on these massive cuts, it’s going to be quite a spring. And who knows if the MAGA Freedom Caucus will even vote for Johnson on January 3rd. Right now there is at least one who won’t and several more who say they haven’t decided. As Trump would say, “it will be wild!”