Chit-Chat: The Feels

[Anela]

I couldn't make it again, but I wanted to. A friend took her 90-year-old mother, and said it was her first protest. 

[Is Everyone Gone]

13 minutes ago, kittykat said:

And I bet Kavanaugh and Gorsuch haven't been receiving as much vitriol as ACB.  Hmm I wonder why 🤔

"DEI hire" is one of the more polite things I've seen her called recently. 

.

[Salacious Kitty]

6 minutes ago, Is Everyone Gone said:

"DEI hire" is one of the more polite things I've seen her called recently. 

.

Ironic, given who appointed her. 

[Milk-Eyed Mender]

51 minutes ago, EtheltoTillie said:

I don't think the sans serif type in that photo is supposed to be part of the tattoo.  It's something superimposed on the photo to "translate" the symbols below. 

Well, I'm embarrassed. 😊  I will delete that portion from my post.

[EtheltoTillie]

8 minutes ago, Milk-Eyed Mender said:

Well, I'm embarrassed. 😊  I will delete that portion from my post.

Hey, don't feel bad.  Nothing would surprise any of us.

[Dimity]

17 minutes ago, Salacious Kitty said:

Ironic, given who appointed her. 

I bet it's killing him that this is one of the few places where he and Musk won't be able to scream "you're fired".

[ProudMary]

2 hours ago, tres bien said:

I can never stay focused on one thing that the mother fucking Trump administration does because before I can absorb something I read about new evil plans they have.

I completely agree with you on this. Every single awful topic you listed is very important, yet hardly even gets mentioned because there are dozens of other actions taken each day that are even more deplorable. 

I hadn't heard about the elimination of Head Start. That is reprehensible. I wish I could say I was surprised. Like USAID, Head Start is a program that is proportionally next to nothing in the overall budget, in fact it's habitually underfunded, but the return on the investment is worth every penny. But, as they consistently show, elected Republicans and those who vote for them only care about embryos and fetuses. Once they're born, they're on their own. 

I share your concern about the cuts to environmental and scientific programs. I learned of another disturbing one earlier this week. Living near the Atlantic coast, I pay a lot of attention to information from NOAA. This report has me both furious and concerned.

There are hundreds of items on the list, which is linked in the article's first paragraph, which will all disappear in the next two to four weeks. A lot of this information gives evidence to climate change, which is clearly why they want it destroyed. 

I hope that climatologists across the US and worldwide are archiving the datasets.

NOAA Datasets Will Soon Disappear

https://eos.org/research-and-developments/noaa-datasets-will-soon-disappear

NOAA has quietly reported that they will soon decommission 14 datasets, products, and catalogs related to earthquakes and marine, coastal, and estuary science. According to the list, these data sources will be “decommissioned and will no longer be available” by early- to mid-May.

...

On social media, scientists are urging their colleagues to access and download these data before they are removed so that scientific analyses can continue and the value of the data is not lost.

...

“The public has a right to access these taxpayer-funded datasets,” Gretchen Goldman, president of the Union of Concerned Scientists, said in a statement about the lawsuit. “From vital information for communities about their exposure to harmful pollution, to data that help local governments build resilience to extreme weather events, the public deserves access to federal datasets. Removing government datasets is tantamount to theft.”

 

[Absolom]

Cutting useful programs but increasing ICE when undocumented crossing is at one of the lowest levels.  Functioning brain power is in very short supply in DC.

[Dimity]

I may be a lapsed Catholic but I'm still a better Catholic than J D Vance will ever be.  And this story makes me think the Pope would agree:

Quote

Pope Francis snubbed Vice President JD Vance when he visited the Vatican on Saturday, declining to meet with Vance and having his No. 2 give the vice president a lecture on compassion, according to a Vatican statement.

Pope Francis was absent from Vance’s conversation with Cardinal Pietro Parolin. However, the statement said there was “an exchange of opinions on the international situation, especially regarding countries affected by war, political tensions and difficult humanitarian situations, with particular attention to migrants, refugees, and prisoners.”

It called for “serene collaboration” between the White House and the Catholic Church in the United States—a seeming hint to the tensions that have brewed between the two since President Donald Trump took office.

Pope Francis has repeatedly rebuked the president’s mass deportation effort, calling it a “disgrace” and a “grave sin.”

The pontiff has also specifically confronted Vance, the highest-ranking Catholic in the U.S. government, having converted in 2019.

Without mentioning the VP by name, the Pope corrected a Catholic concept Vance had invoked to defend the administration’s deportations, ordo amoris (order of love). In a February letter, Francis pointedly explained, “Christian love is not a concentric expansion of interests that little by little extend to other persons and groups.”

Vance acknowledged the Pope’s criticism, calling himself a “baby Catholic” and admitting that there are “things about the faith that I don’t know.”

In January, Vance found himself in a tussle with the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops after he suggested they were helping “resettle illegal immigrants” to secure funding.

New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan fired back that Vance’s remarks were “scurrilous,” “nasty,” and “not true.”

THE DAILY BEAST

 

[Anela]

I can't remember if I mentioned this before, but my dad has had his work days ending early, all this week. Today was the lightest day I can recall him having in months (he was working way too hard in December and part of January).

He's afraid it's the tariffs, and that it will just get worse.

 

 

[Lantern7]

I imagine JD in front of the cameras, on his knees and praying. The Pope comes in, all, "You're thanking God for being here today, right?" Pause. "So where are the thanks for ME?" And then he'd mutter "motherfucker" in Latin as he leaves.

4 hours ago, Is Everyone Gone said:

"DEI hire" is one of the more polite things I've seen her called recently.

ACB didn't have to be tapped. Trump just wanted to find a conservative female judge to replace RBG in order to stick it to the liberals. I figure the fact that she had three names that lent easily to initialization was a happy coincidence, but I'm probably wrong.

[tearknee]

Imagine Schumer getting on his knees to pray and a lightning bolt coming out of the blue to zap MAGA, Trump and Musk.

I'd pay to see the look on his face if THAT ever happened 😁 

[tres bien]

In the not too distance future we are going to be the unsafest unhealthiest dumbest people we could never have imagined 

The man that has turned the Oval Office into a schlock shop has already taken over the Kennedy Center put demands on the Smithsonian cut funding and grants for science and research from universities and the CDC closed weather stations and reduced NOAA dismantled FEMA and the FDA now DOGE has set it’s sights on The National Gallery of  Art in DC

DOGE wants to install their own member as part of the board that oversees the National Gallery 

After cutting staff and grants from The National Endowment for the Humanities DOGE has redirected some of those funds for Trump’s much desired National Garden of American Heroes a monumental sculpture garden of 250 statues 

Keep in mind that the DOGE either shows up unannounced or breaks into whatever government or non governmental entities it wants to and makes decisions it deems without any oversight 

 

Edited April 20 by tres bien

[Yeah No]

2 hours ago, tres bien said:

In the not too distance future we are going to be the unsafest unhealthiest dumbest people we could never have imagined 

And I'd add most morally bereft and ethically compromised to that as well.

Based on some of the shocking stuff I'm seeing lately, both on TV, online and in real life I hate to say I think we're already there. 🙁 

[suomi]

The view from Canada. A long read. Wow.

- - - - -

The America I loved is gone

The first impression America gave me was gentle carelessness. We were driving down from Canada to visit family friends in Texas sometime in the mid- to late 1980s, and a young border patrol agent at a booth, crouched over a newspaper, leaning back in his chair, carelessly waved my family’s station wagon across without looking up. You didn’t even need a passport to enter the United States until I was 33.

You need clear eyes at the border today. Europe and Canada have issued travel advisories after a series of arbitrary detentions, deportations to foreign jails without due process and hundreds of valid visas pulled or voided amid a sense of general impunity. While I have crossed the border a hundred times at least, sometimes once a month when I lived there, I cannot say when I will see America again, and I am quite sure I will never return to the country I once visited.

The America I knew, the America I loved, has closed.

- - - - -

When I was researching my book The Next Civil War, the far-right people I met, the militia folks, in Oklahoma and in Ohio, at gun shows and Trump rallies and prepper conventions, were, without exception, polite in person – no doubt because I’m white, with blond hair and blue eyes, so I can pretend to be a good ol’ boy when required. They lived in dark bubbles, bubbles of serpentine paranoia and weird loathings and strange fantasies of breakdown.

They welcomed me into their bubbles as equably as concierges. Militia pie is delicious; the crusts are richer, flakier. I think they use lard. Anyway, they talked to me about their hopes for the destruction of their government cheerfully and frankly, because they were living the movies playing in their minds and they wanted me to witness the projection.

At one prepper convention I remember, a vendor was selling gluten-free rations for bunker survival. That was America in a bucket to me: even at the end of the world, don’t let a gluten allergy interfere with your active lifestyle.

- - - - - 

The American dream. For technocrats, a dying breed in the US, the term was shorthand for each generation doing better than the one before, for generally upward social mobility. There was more to it than that. There was an idea, an assumption really, that if you had enough talent and worked hard and did the smart thing, with a little luck you could live life just as you wanted. The country’s founding promise, after all, is “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”.

That promise is why success in America does not lead to gratitude but to an intense sensation of loss. The elite take any deviation from their fantasy existence as a broken contract. They’ve been ripped off. That is a big feeling among the most successful people in America: the sense of being ripped off.

The country clubs are rife with men and women, in incredible luxury, complaining bitterly about the state of the country. The richest and most powerful, the Americans who have won, who have everything, are still not happy, and why? Their answer is that the American dream must be broken. There is no one who feels more betrayed by the American dream than the world’s richest man. Why else do you think he’s out there with a chainsaw?

The American elites of the past 20 years have called their foremost principle freedom, but what they meant was impunity. That’s what the original slave masters built: a world where they could do whatever they wanted to whomever they wanted, without consequences. That’s what the techlords dream of today.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2025/apr/20/american-dream-trump-canada

Edited April 20 by suomi

[Is Everyone Gone]

11 hours ago, Lantern7 said:

ACB didn't have to be tapped. Trump just wanted to find a conservative female judge to replace RBG in order to stick it to the liberals. I figure the fact that she had three names that lent easily to initialization was a happy coincidence, but I'm probably wrong.

The thing is she IS a conservative Republican. She just doesn't seem to be very MAGA. The two are not the same thing.

[tearknee]

5 minutes ago, Is Everyone Gone said:

The thing is she IS a conservative Republican. She just doesn't seem to be very MAGA. The two are not the same thing.

The western left has this problem -- see the rote use of "fascist" for anything right-wing they don't agree with.

[peacheslatour]

16 minutes ago, Is Everyone Gone said:

The thing is she IS a conservative Republican. She just doesn't seem to be very MAGA. The two are not the same thing.

I don't think Trump had much to do with her selection at all. It was part of McConnell's Heritage Foundation plot to transform America into a white power, Christian fatherland. A haven for cis white male landowners. 

[DrSpaceman73]

[Browncoat]

48 minutes ago, Dimity said:

Well it wouldn't be Easter without a rant from the Mad King:

 

So, basically he's wishing himself a Happy Easter?   Especially the part where he talks about getting "this highly destructive Moron Elected."

[Anela]

59 minutes ago, tearknee said:

The western left has this problem -- see the rote use of "fascist" for anything right-wing they don't agree with.

Like the removal of rights, book-banning, the re-writing of history, “don’t say gay”, rounding up people who aren’t white, and deporting them , just because.  

The “right” called Covid protections “fascism”. Fauci, and other people telling us what we needed to do, to protect ourselves and each other, needed to hire security to protect themselves and their families. They projected every single thing they accused the left of.  

Edited April 20 by Anela

[peacheslatour]

18 minutes ago, Anela said:

Like the removal of rights, book-banning, the re-writing of history, “don’t say gay”, rounding up people who aren’t white, and deporting them , just because.  

The “right” called Covid protections “fascism”. Fauci, and other people telling us what we needed to do, to protect ourselves and each other, needed to hire security to protect themselves and their families. They projected every single thing they accused the left of.  

Karl Rove strategy #3: Accuse your opponent of your own weakness

[ProudMary]

Although of lesser consequence, but not unimportant, several forum members have mentioned DJT's transformation of the Oval Office from traditional and professional to gaudy and tasteless. British art historian Dr. Bendor Grosvenor has contributed a 15-part BlueSky thread, each skeet(?) containing a photo, analyzing the accelerating glitzification of the Oval Office and what it may stand for to DJT. I'm attaching a screenshot of the opener below.

I am particularly disturbed by the removal of the ivy plant given to JFK by the Irish Ambassador in 1961, which has been a staple in the Oval for SIXTY-FOUR YEARS. Where is it? Was it placed in another location or did DJT just tell someone to throw it away?

You have to click "Continue Thread" after the 10th skeet in order to get to the final five.

https://bsky.app/profile/bendorgrosvenor.bsky.social/post/3ln3ro2cd7c2e

[suomi]

Trump deadline on Insurrection Act looms

The law, which Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem could recommend Sunday, would allow the president to use active-duty forces to suppress a “rebellion” or for domestic law enforcement.

The Trump administration stands on the precipice of a monumental decision, with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem due to make a recommendation soon on whether President Donald Trump should invoke the Insurrection Act to further crack down on immigration.

The assignment came in the form of a Jan. 20 executive order in which Trump declared a national emergency at the border and ordered the deployment of additional U.S. troops, surveillance capabilities and border barriers. Following that Day 1 edict, the president gave Hegseth and Noem 90 days to submit a “joint report to the President about the conditions at the southern border of the United States and any recommendations regarding additional actions that may be necessary to obtain complete operational control of the southern border, including whether to invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807.”

The law allows the president to use active-duty forces trained for combat overseas or federalized National Guard troops to suppress a “rebellion,” temporarily suspending the Posse Comitatus Act, which typically restricts the use of military involvement in domestic law enforcement. Its potential invocation now, with border security robust and encounters of migrants at historically low numbers, has already alarmed both constitutional law experts and those who study how the military and civilians interact with one another.

Thousands of active-duty troops have been dispatched to the southern U.S. border in the last few months, some with 20-ton Stryker combat vehicles. More recently, the administration also has approved a plan to have the Defense Department take control of a 60-foot strip of land that spans much of the southern border, effectively turning it into a satellite military installation and allowing troops to take a more active role in searching for illegal border crossers.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/04/19/trump-insurrection-act-military-hegseth-noem/

Edited April 20 by suomi

[tres bien]

Per news outlets including CNN and Newsweek Noem and Hegseth will not recommend invoking the Insurrection Act in a memo being prepared by the Pentagon and DHS that will be sent to the WH this week 

[annzeepark914]

1 hour ago, tres bien said:

Per news outlets including CNN and Newsweek Noem and Hegseth will not recommend invoking the Insurrection Act in a memo being prepared by the Pentagon and DHS that will be sent to the WH this week 

I wonder if certain GOP members of Congress had some *serious* conversations with Noem & Hegseth.

Edited April 20 by annzeepark914

[annzeepark914]

1 minute ago, peacheslatour said:

Happy Easter and don't forget, empathy is a sin now.

We have way too many warped people in America now. God help us 🙏

[tres bien]

8 minutes ago, annzeepark914 said:

I wonder if certain GOP members of Congress had some *serious* conversations with Noem & Hegseth.

According to CNN boarder crossings are currently low less than 300 per day and there’s no need for extra authorities at this time to control the flow of immigrants 

[annzeepark914]

1 minute ago, tres bien said:

According to CNN boarder crossings are currently low less than 300 per day and there’s no need for extra authorities at this time to control the flow of immigrants 

That makes more sense as a reason. Lily- livered GOP members of Congress would be too *skeered* to talk sense into a Trump acolyte.

[peacheslatour]

A second group chat has hit Pete Hegseth. NYT 4/20/25

BREAKING NYT: Pete Hegseth shared detailed information about forthcoming strikes in Yemen on March 15 in a private Signal group chat that included his wife, brother and personal lawyer. The info included the flight schedules for the F/A-18 Hornets targeting Houthis. www.nytimes.com/2025/04/20/u.

..

Edited April 20 by peacheslatour

[Milk-Eyed Mender]

Who wants to tell him what access to the Sanhedrin and 30 pieces of silver will buy?

[Bliss]

I'm not techie enough to post 50501 photos here... but have to say kudos to the sign creators! Especially loved the human circle on the beach with the human letters:

IMPEACH

+

REMOVE

(flag below)

~Ocean Beach San Fran

[bluegirl147]

There was a local protest yesterday and predictably on the local news FB it was littered with comments saying why weren't these people at work.  Never mind it was Saturday of a holiday weekend. And once again the untrue allegation that George Soros is paying them was being spun.  These idiots are stuck so far up Trump's ass they can't comprehend other people don't feel the same way. They also think the local NBC station is liberal because they covered the protest.   That station is Sinclair owned.  As I said stuck so far up Trump's ass the lack of oxygen to their brains has made them even dumber.

11 minutes ago, Milk-Eyed Mender said:

Who wants to tell him what access to the Sanhedrin and 30 pieces of silver will buy?

Please.  We all know everything around him is gold plated.

[Lantern7]

10 minutes ago, Milk-Eyed Mender said:

Who wants to tell him what access to the Sanhedrin and 30 pieces of silver will buy?

Regarding this and his Easter post . . . I don’t think he writes that stuff. He’s probably been outsourcing that to some guy, paying him, like, $10 per post. And the guy doesn’t mind because pissing people off falls under “for the love of the game.”

[peacheslatour]

[jessiebell]

As usual trump's Easter message is so reflective of the meaning of this day (NOT).  He doesn't have one shred of decency.

If all these people Trump wants to deport to El Salvador are such criminals then submitting evidence of such in a hearing should be a piece of cake.  One wouldn't have to make up "evidence" or photoshop pictures.

I swear the only things this administration wants to pay for is the Dept of Defense, Immigrant deportations and Trump's golfing (which he did today).

Of course all the protesters are being paid - just like the 1/6 attack on the Capitol was Antifa.

If Senators are too scared to do their jobs then they should resign.  As they watch the administration trample over the Constitution, their constituents lose their jobs, their consituents lose their money, the standing of the US sink around the work and just the general incompetence and lying it's obvious the only thing they care about is keeping their job.

[EtheltoTillie]

6 hours ago, DrSpaceman73 said:

I’m sorry I don’t get this joke. Is it that Fox thinks basketball players are gang members?  

[Milk-Eyed Mender]

25 minutes ago, EtheltoTillie said:

I’m sorry I don’t get this joke. Is it that Fox thinks basketball players are gang members?  

The Chicago Bulls ball cap (which Abrego Garcia was wearing in a photo) apparently signifies membership in MS-13 according to FOX News pundits. 

[kittykat]

2 hours ago, peacheslatour said:

A second group chat has hit Pete Hegseth. NYT 4/20/25

BREAKING NYT: Pete Hegseth shared detailed information about forthcoming strikes in Yemen on March 15 in a private Signal group chat that included his wife, brother and personal lawyer. The info included the flight schedules for the F/A-18 Hornets targeting Houthis. www.nytimes.com/2025/04/20/u.

..

Oh fucking hell! He did it AGAIN!!!

Good thing meritocracy is alive and well and we got rid of all those female and non white no gooders.

[DrSpaceman73]

1 hour ago, EtheltoTillie said:

I’m sorry I don’t get this joke. Is it that Fox thinks basketball players are gang members?  

The right says that the gang members wear bulls jerseys/hats.  It's one of the reasons they say abrego garcia was a gang member because he had a bulls jersey on when arrested for the awful crime of loitering. 

They've mentioned it several times as 'evidence' of his involvement with the gang

Edited April 21 by DrSpaceman73

[Lantern7]

A face made for birth control, I tell you. I cannot say otherwise. *shudder*

13 hours ago, DrSpaceman73 said:

I know MJ and Scottie are clean. Rodman? I dunno, man. BTW, how come he hasn't been tapped to be ambassador to North Korea?

Edited April 21 by Lantern7

[Blergh]

Since this is something that will have effects we may not yet anticipate, I thought this news should be put here:

As  per MSNBC and other sources, at 7:35 AM local time, on Monday, April 21, 2025 Pope Francis I has  died in Vatican City at age 88.  He was the first pontiff to have been born in the Americas as he had been born in Buenos Aires, Argentina as Jorge Mario  Bergoglio on December 17, 1936.

[EtheltoTillie]

He lived long enough to celebrate Easter. And to dis JD Vance. 

[Spartan Girl]

3 minutes ago, EtheltoTillie said:

He lived long enough to celebrate Easter. And to dis JD Vance. 

Dammit, we keep losing the wrong people.

And now we’re gonna have a conclave.

[tearknee]

Paul VI threw a fit when feminists told him his antediluvian proclamation on BC was horrible.

And what would a 'reformist' Pope mean when it comes to the Church?

[EtheltoTillie]

47 minutes ago, tearknee said:

Paul VI threw a fit when feminists told him his antediluvian proclamation on BC was horrible.

And what would a 'reformist' Pope mean when it comes to the Church?

Yes no one ever changes the main tenets 

[Ohiopirate02]

53 minutes ago, Spartan Girl said:

Dammit, we keep losing the wrong people.

And now we’re gonna have a conclave.

I'm choosing to be hopeful here. Francis used his 12 years to promote like-minded men to the college of Cardinals and the Vatican instituted a rule change that created an age limit for who's eligible to become pope. Most of the eligible cardinals are Francis's appointees. 

[tres bien]

The Republican lead senate voted to confirm veteran lawyer Hameet Dhillion to lead the DOJ civil rights division 

Dhillion has a history of attacking voting rights 

Lisa Murkowski was the lone republican to vote with the democrats. Good for her 

[Yeah No]

50 minutes ago, Ohiopirate02 said:

I'm choosing to be hopeful here. Francis used his 12 years to promote like-minded men to the college of Cardinals and the Vatican instituted a rule change that created an age limit for who's eligible to become pope. Most of the eligible cardinals are Francis's appointees. 

True, but the age limit to be considered for Pope is still pretty old at 80.

[JustHereForFood]

23 minutes ago, Yeah No said:

True, but the age limit to be considered for Pope is still pretty old at 80.

Um, still better than the presidents with no limit, no?