Well, he’s cotton, and you’re glue, and he’s still a racist, and…
…ok, I’ve entirely lost the thread of this analogy. Never mind.
hah, thread! Yeah, I meant that, totally!
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Journal of the Corona Year
7/27
The vigil was very lively last night. At one point we had five people there. In addition to me, there was “June” the organizer, her lover, a middle-aged guy from their building who frequently stops by, a young woman who lives in their building and a Guardian Angel rode-up on an electric scooter.
“Lively” is a relative term. There are no chants. We usually talk among ourselves and wave to people passing by who seem interested. The intention is to spread positive, progressive energy.
The younger woman who lives in June’s building was worried. Let me tell you about her.
I would assume she is somewhere in her late 20s. She was born in the United States, but grew up in Quito, Ecuador. If you want to picture her, imagine Liza Minnelli circa 1968 speaking with a soft Ecuadorian accent. I can’t remember what her job is, but I think it is something academic
About four years ago she moved back to the US with her Ecuadorian husband, who is an architect. Moving back seemed like a good idea at the time, but they arrived just in time to become part of Trump’s new America. Because she speaks with an accent, she has encountered people who tell her to go back where she came from.
As she put it, “China and Russia did to the US what the US has been doing to Latin America for decades.”
Tonight she was expressing her worries for the future: Should she wait to vote in the up-coming election, or would it be better to flee back to Ecuador now?
She is worried about the heavily-armed right-wing militias and the federal troops Trump is moving into various cities. Yes, the USA is worrying her so much that she is thinking of returning to the safety and stability of Ecuador.
As to whether she should stay or leave, there is no good answer. I said it would be a good time to leave when federal agents arrest Joe Biden. I was being serious. Ford would never have arrested Carter, but now that sort of action doesn’t seem unbelievable. That kind of thing is going on in Belarus right now.
Tonight the vigil as much calmer. Just June and I. The hottest night of the year.
Eventually the white suprematist, Sam, showed up. He comes by once or twice a week to regale us with stories of evil minorities and his arrest record. He is clearly detached from reality. But what can you do?
He’s been calmer lately, like he’s having fun playing with us. But tonight he was very worked-up. Among other things he said that we, standing in front if a rainbow peace flag, were Nazis. June rejoindered, “Sam, what do you know about fascism?” He answered, “I know Hitler was a socialist and a homo! Just like you two!”
After a heated 15 minutes he stormed away. Half way across the street he turned and said, “You’ve laughed at the wrong person!” And then he said specifically to me, “And I know what street you live on!”
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The boogers like to think they just have to wait a little longer until they can do what they like under the color of law. Until then they bluster and threaten. They are just so few though that you can avoid them, like muggers. Stay safe.
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We might have to give up the vigil. I don’t want to, but I knew this moment would eventually come as soon as we Sam fixated on us. I can foresee him doing other things as well. If he sees his white world slipping away from him, there’s no telling how desperate he will become.
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Portland has stupid too:
It was good stupid. But it had no soul.
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A county spokesperson later told the Reno Gazette Journal that despite the sheriff’s statement, deputies would continue responding to calls from the library. After a follow-up meeting with the library’s director on Tuesday, Coverley blamed the stress protests have put on police for his response.
“This has been a difficult time to be a law enforcement professional and can be disheartening when we perceive that our office may be under attack,” Coverley said in his follow-up statement on Tuesday. “My response was rooted in my belief that these issues need to be openly discussed in a way that values diversity and law enforcement.”
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I think the reason he did it now was because Putin finally got tired of waiting and called him up and reminded him that he was a month late for them to announce their plans to abolish term limits and become presidents for life.
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In the news this morning:
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many of the democrats were banned from running.
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The policy dates back to the 1990s, when politicians wanted to force migrants to cross in more remote areas. “There are policy documents where they’re trying to evaluate the efficacy of this program and the one that has always stuck with me is this … document that says ‘ways of measuring the effectiveness of prevention through deterrence,’” explains Jason De León, a UCLA anthropologist studying Latin American migration, in Immigration Nation. “And one of the metrics they have is a rise in migrant deaths.”
ICE agents in Immigration Nation have complained about the way they’re perceived, and one agent, “Mike,” defends the controversial policy, arguing “to say the government knew ahead of time that if they did X, Y, and Z, an outcome of that would be increased deaths, that’s not the same as actively killing those people.” He added that ICE doesn’t put people in a “death funnel” because “that’s a byproduct of the policy, but it’s not the stated agenda.”
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“Complain About Nazi Comparisons, Say They’re Only Enforcing the Laws”
Yep, so were most of the Nazis.
“We constantly look like we’re the bad guys, when all we’re doing is enforcing the laws and doing our job,” the agent says.
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The title sounds like it was a plan to redo New Jersey.
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Washington Post: DHS compiled ‘intelligence reports’ on journalists who published leaked documents
The Department of Homeland Security has compiled “intelligence reports” about the work of American journalists covering protests in Portland, Ore., in what current and former officials called an alarming use of a government system meant to share information about suspected terrorists and violent actors.
Over the past week, the department’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis has disseminated three Open Source Intelligence Reports to federal law enforcement agencies and others, summarizing tweets written by two journalists — a reporter for the New York Times and the editor in chief of the blog Lawfare — and noting they had published leaked, unclassified documents about DHS operations in Portland. The intelligence reports, obtained by The Washington Post, include written descriptions and images of the tweets and the number of times they had been liked or retweeted by others.
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