Rise up and clip together in solidarity. Annie shares information about using paperclips in a political way.
Accessorize!
Satyrdaz Wandering Political Thoughts
Labor Day is arriving in the U.S. soon. It’s a good day to stand up and resist against the Trump Regime.
Scientists’ role in defending democracy
Medford Oregon #WorkersOverBillionaires Labor Day
About this event
Labor and community are planning more than a barbecue on Labor Day this year because we have to stop the billionaire takeover. They are converting the government into their private slush fund and just passed the largest wealth giveaway in the history of the US. The money they take from working families, they put in billionaires’ pockets and set aside to fund a private army of ICE agents.
I find many of the resources here useful. Resist!
What companies are particularly Trump friendly? The New Republic has an article about the Trump regime rating companies. In a classic pay-to-play move that corrupt governments like to employ, Trump rates companies as strong when they’re willing to support Trump and do his bidding. Some of those companies: Uber, DoorDash, United, Delta, AT&T, Cisco, Airlines for America, and the Steel Manufacturers Association, according to Axios.
Read the whole thing at Trump Has a Bonkers New Way to Make Companies Bend to His Will
And then resist using those companies so eager to undermine democracy in the United States.
Wenzdaz Wandering Political Thoughts
It’s the age of betrayal, it’s the era of MAGA. Trump demands loyalty but will instantly betray anyone who sullies his self-image of magnificence.
That idea that he demands personal loyalty means nothings to his regime. They’re true to him, and that’s it. So, with little surprise, I read that FEMA probationary employees are being reshuffled to ICE.
I can imagine how that’s going down. FEMA interviewee: “Yes, I want to join FEMA and help my fellow citizens recover when disaster strikes. I want to comfort and reassure them, and help them rebuild.”
“Okay, we’re sending you to ICE.”
“ICE?”
“Yes. Here’s your mask and gun. Go round up brown people.”
“Brown people? That’s not legal.”
“Don’t worry about it. Just arrest them and let Trump sort them out.”
Apparently, *ahem* this personnel action is being taken because the Trump Regime is struggling to fill its ICE ranks. Rounding up citizens is labor intensive, especially on the scale that Trump envisions. Word around the coffee shops is that ICE is also paying hiring bonuses.
It occurs to me that this might be a good way to resist the Trump Regime. Join ICE, take the money, and then start sabotaging it from within. When intel about a raid comes available, broadcast it to apps to let people know that it’s coming so they can scatter and hide while protestors establish a cover force of protests and harassements.
While I write all this in a blend of seriousness and jest, I find it sad and disturbing that Trump and the GOP have formulated such an atmosphere that such thinking must exist.
Trump has proven to be the greatest at taking things and thoroughly enshittifying them. He is, in essence, the Enshittifier in Chief.
Thirstda’s Wandering Political Thoughts
Indivisible or someone was politically active in our region this AM. Protesters with banners against standing against ICE, protecting democracy, and defending the Constitution were on overpasses along I5 as we traveled from Ashland to Medford and back.
My wife is disinclined to protest and demonstrate this year. “Those are asking for permission,” she said. “We need active restistance, standing up and refusing to back down.” This is something she’s recently adopted from historian Tad Stoermer.
As Mr. Stoermer says, “There’s no normal to return to. There’s only what do we do next.”
Munda’s Wandering Political Thoughts
If you have a brain, and some thinking skills, the full Trumpasy is all revealed. Just check out the Trump Regime’s actions. Look at the ‘One Big Beautiful Bill’. Read again Project 2025.
- Redistribute wealth to the wealthy. They need it to ‘build the economy’. This is called trickle down economics. It has been decisively proven not to work.
- Start shredding the welfare net. Cut Medicaid. Force people to work more.
- Cut all assistance contributed by the Federal government to the states and local communities. Downtrodden existences lead to downtrodden morale. A sick people is a desperate people, and are more easily manipulated.
- De-construct the education system. An uneducatd population is more guillible. Indoctrinate young people into right wing values via vouchers and private schools.
- Manufacture and reinforce negative stereotypes of other citizens, people who ‘are different’, i.e., people who are not heterosexual and white. This is useful for blame games and distraction, and helps neuter political will.
- Weaponize ICE into a paramilitary force. While laws limit what the US military is authorized to do to citizens, it’s a more wide-open field with ICE. Under the guise of rounding up ‘illegal immigrants’, the Trump Regime are also undermining due process and the concepts of ‘innocent until proven guilty’. People are being disappeared as the right-wing social media machine provides cover by declaring that the Constitution isn’t meant to be applied to ‘non-citizens’.
- Establish concentration camps. The first one has been built in Florida, of course. Don’t be surprised if Texas eagerly builds one in the race to be patriotic by refusing others equality, rights, and freedom. Disappearing people and creating concentration camps stoke fears and can be used to threaten political opposition.
- Build a right-wing Supreme Court bias that’s willing to overlook history and precedence, one which will used flawed interpretations of the U.S. Constitution to empower the Executive Branch and wipe out the checks and balance system provided by three equal branches.
- Weaponize trade. Try to force manufacturing back to the United States, even though the raw materials are obtained elsewhere, and even though the capital investments needed for new factories are astronomical. This provides a false hope of new jobs; there will be new jobs but they won’t pay wages needed to live in this ever expensive land, forcing people to work more, no matter their health or situation. This will also increase people’s desperation to work and make money to pay for basic goods and services such as food and housing, as prices see tariff-based inflation bound upward.
- But — also cut limitations on child labor laws. Encourage poor poeple to have more children to provide a larger and cheaper work force.
- Cut or waive environmental laws and regulations to reduce the cost of building new manufacturing facilities.
- Nurture confusion among facts and distrust of the news media. Confusion helps the Regime maintain control by undermining grass root organizations’ ability to effectively organize and protest. It also allows the Regime to turn citizen against citizen in a cold war that favors the Trump Regime’s heavy hand.
- Distract, distract, distract. In this endeavor, natural disasters are your friend; they pull focus from the political arena. Reduce the Federal government’s effectiveness in predicting disasters and helping states and communities. Again, chaos, confusion, and low morale are useful for controlling and manipulating the population. As a bonus, when a natural disaster levels a region, it opens up land and opportunity to rebuild. People with next to nothing can be more easily induced to take less pay for bad jobs.
- Attack other nations; encourage aggression among other nations. Make the world a scarier place.
Yes, this is cynical. It’s not my thinking, but my interpretation of what the Trump Regime and the Republican-filled Greedy Ol’ Trump Party, also known as the GOTP, is doing. Show me I’m wrong. Point to Trump’s actions and demonstrate otherwise. Parse that OBBB for clues that this is not what the Trump Regime pursues.
Time will tell. It’s already told us a great deal in the first six months of 2025.
Saturda’s Theme Music
Saturda, June 7, 2025, has fallen upon us splay-legged with sunshine and muggy with clouds. 84 is Ashlandia’s rough temperature, depending on where you stand. It’s cooler by the creek in the park in the old trees’ shade. Today’s high will be in the low 90s, beginning a string of days with highs in the 90s. Looks like summer is doing a temperature check preparatory to taking the stage.
My wife remarked today, “How long will it be until some U.S. citizen will challenge a masked ICE gunman and get shot?” She thinks we’re due for another Kent State moment, when Ohio National Guard killed four demonstrators in the early 1970s. I agree with her point. Any time we have armed people being pressured by resistance, the chance for violence goes up. Wonder what oddsmakers are saying about it? I hope my wife’s fortune telling is wrong.
Today’s song come about from broodling — that is, brooding and noodling — about another novel underway. Sipping the first dark brown hot fluid this morning, I thought, “You gotta find a way for what you want to say.” I answered myself, “Yes, but do you know what you want to say?”
Bored with the exchange, The Neurons unleashed Oasis and their 1994 song, “Supersonic”, into the morning mental music stream. I recognized that they did it because there is a line which goes something like my thoughts. I didn’t do much more thinking about it at that point because Papi was urgently wrapping himself around my legs while purring like an old VW Beetle. I fed him and then he and I hit the backyard sunshine to take the day’s measure for a few minutes.
Stay safe and have the most solid day you can develop. Me, I’m in for more writing, more yardwork, more reading. It’s a rough life but it’s where I landed. Cheers
Twosda’s Wandering Political Thoughts
First up, PINO TACO is poisoning Americans, followed by American Resistance.
It’s not enough that the TACO Regime is encouraging people to avoid vaccinations, which is helping measles stage a deadly return. Now the inept and ignorant TACO Regime is POISONING OUR FOOD SUPPLY!!! Yes, deadly tomatoes are out there! IT’S ATTACK OF THE KILLER TOMATOES!!!
FDA alerts 14 states about deadly tomato recall expansion
My confession: I don’t know if this salmonella outbreak can be attributed to the TACO Regime and the DOGE cuts. A look back through history shows that these outbreaks happen. But PINO TACO would not hesitate to hyperventilate with all caps and exclamations points were a Democrat POTUS. So I’m really just emulating TACO’s style.
Does a post like this help with civil discourse and problem solving? Hell, no. But when the GOTP and TACO Regime stops doing it and get serious, so will I.
Next, American Resistance! This was posted over on Mock Paper Scissors. WP still won’t permit me to properly reblog from them, so here’s my work-around. Summary: Masked gunman are trying to round people up. Without badges and insignia, they could be anybody.
This should give us a little lift to start our day. Make no mistake, if you get the mellow beach bums of San Diego to rise-up, anyone can rise-up.
The thing that worries me is that without badges or other identifying insignia, any crack-pot militia can start playing this game and rounding-up people in white vans and disappearing them, and vigilantes are not exactly known for rules. We need more of this to stop the Gestapo/ICE (and maybe the Proud Boys).
As much as I hate saying this, IF you are white use your white privilege if you see this happening: it’s your Superpower against these fascists/racists. Demand to see warrants signed by a judge, and don’t let them disappear people.
(Hat tip: Scissorhead Purplehead)
Remember to resist this and other un-American behavior on No Kings Day, June 14th.
Munda’s Wandering Political Thoughts
Today’s provocation comes from a friend named Herb. His opinions are published every Friday. Here’s his latest. I’m firmly with Herb; capitulating to Trump or trying to appease him inspires him to take more.
Where do you stand on this? Resist, appease, or capitulate?
Any effort to appease Trump only encourages him to seek more illegitimate power
By Herbert Rothschild
After World War II, when the U.S. went to war, apologists frequently would cite Munich to justify it. Their point was that British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and his French and Italian counterparts foolishly believed that they could appease Adolf Hitler’s territorial ambitions by signing an agreement in Munich on Sept. 30, 1938, that allowed him to annex a portion of Czechoslovakia. Such capitulation to an autocrat’s demand was a mistake that must never be repeated.
I was much too young to assess the justifications for the war in Korea, but not for the one in Vietnam. The Vietnamese lived in a small country that had been under the colonial control of the French, then the Japanese, and the French still again after the Allies defeated Japan. I could see little resemblance between their long, painful and heroic struggle to recover their independence and Nazi Germany’s aggression against its neighbors.
Historical analogies are tricky, but they aren’t useless. Indeed, I believe that the United States now has reached its Munich moment. To compromise at all with President Donald Trump’s demands only abets his quest for unlawful executive power. Each concession encourages him to demand more. When he meets firm resistance, though, he quickly pulls back.
The latest confirmation of that analysis is the difference between what happened to Columbia University and what happened to Harvard. In March, the Trump administration froze approximately $400 million in federal funding to Columbia, citing alleged violations of civil rights laws, including the university’s handling of antisemitism and campus protests. To restore the funding, Columbia agreed to place its Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies under “academic receivership,” transferring control from faculty to administrators for at least five years. The university also agreed to overhaul its admissions policies and disciplinary procedures, aligning them with federal directives.
Encouraged by that victory, Trump then went after Harvard. On Friday, April 11, the university received an emailed letter from Sean Keveney, the acting general counsel of the Department of Health and Human Services, making even more sweeping demands. The next Monday, Harvard firmly rejected the interference. Trump immediately announced that he was freezing $2.2 billion in research funding to the school and threatened to revoke Harvard’s tax-exempt status. Still, Harvard refused to back down.
Lo and behold, shortly thereafter one of Harvard’s lawyers received a call from Josh Gruenbaum, a top official at the General Services Administration. Gruenbaum, along with Thomas Wheeler, the acting general counsel for the Department of Education, and Keveney constituted Trump’s so-called antisemitism task force. Gruenbaum first said that he and Wheeler hadn’t signed the April 11 letter and that it shouldn’t have been sent. Then, he changed his story and said the letter was supposed to be sent at some point, just not on Friday while the task force was still talking with Harvard’s lawyers.
Harvard sued, claiming that the government’s freeze on its research funding is unconstitutional and the demands for control over its academic policies violate the First Amendment and other federal laws. The $2.2 billion is still frozen, but further threats have stopped.
The same dynamic has played out in Trump’s threats to impose tariffs on various countries. Take Mexico. Back in November, Trump posted on Truth Social that, immediately after assuming office, he would impose a 25% tariff on products from Mexico and maintain them until Mexico stops fentanyl trafficking and migration. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum pushed back in a letter I reprinted in a Relocations column published in early December.
After Trump assumed office, he veered back and forth over tariffs on Mexico, trying to intimidate Sheinbaum. On March 4, he imposed the 25% tariff, then two days later said he was postponing it until April. What finally happened was that Mexico was included in the 10% tariffs Trump has imposed as a minimum on all countries, but Mexican products that comply with regulations in the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement that Trump negotiated during his first term were exempted. That exemption covers about half of Mexico’s exports to the U.S.
Trump’s apologists say that these aggressive moves and subsequent pull-backs are part of his negotiating strategy, and in a way they are correct. But the real goal of Trump’s negotiations isn’t deals but the enhancement of his own power. His aggression is the way he tests how successfully he can bully his opponents.
That is what he did with Columbia University. That is what he did with the law firms Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison and Kirkland & Ellis and Latham & Watkins. And that is what he’s done with all the Republicans in the Congress. All of them caved, and their “prudence” simply incentivized him to push further. Like Harvard, like Mexico, like the law firms Perkins Coie and Susman Godfrey, like Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the only way to deal with Trump is to say no.
Resistance breeds resistance. Early this month more than 500 law firms and 300 retired judges asked for leave to file two amicus briefs condemning Trump’s order stripping security clearances from and severing government ties with Perkins Coie. And this past Tuesday the American Association of Colleges and Universities issued a statement signed by leaders of almost 190 other universities denouncing “unprecedented government overreach and political interference” in higher education. That’s how movements grow.
On April 17, New York Times columnist David Brooks called for “a comprehensive national civic uprising” to oppose Trump. In the much-cited piece, he said that Trump is only interested in the acquisition of power “for its own sake” and is engaged in “a multifront assault to make the earth a playground for ruthless men.” He argued that we cannot deal with him piecemeal — institution by institution, sector by sector. We must coalesce into “a movement that possesses rival power.”
Good for Brooks, who was shaken out of his complacent conservatism when Trump assumed control of the Republican Party in 2016. The specific forms of resistance he advocated are lawsuits, mass rallies, strikes, work slowdowns and boycotts. While ending his list with “other forms of noncooperation and resistance” used by past movements that challenged illegitimate power, he stopped short of mentioning civil disobedience.
I think civil disobedience is necessary. Only when the Trump administration begins to jail nonviolent protesters will the diversified mass movement Brooks envisages coalesce. If I don’t get arrested in the next 12 months, I’ll consider that I missed my Munich moment.
Herbert Rothschild’s columns appear Fridays. Opinions expressed in them represent the author’s views. Email Rothschild at herbertrothschild6839@gmail.com.
Good Visual
I picked this up from Bluesky.
Portuguese editorial cartoonist Zez Vaz reaches back to Tiananmen Square to call on American defiance.
Right wingers won’t get it. They’ll respond something along the lines of, “That’s stupid. Musk isn’t sending cybertrucks out. China sent tanks. It’s totally different.”
Yeah; it’s not different.
Defy. Resist. Persist.
Michael Seidel, writer 