The Conversation -- March 16, 2025
⭐Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times: “As the world’s richest men slash American aid for the world’s poorest children, they insist that all is well. 'No one has died as a result of a brief pause to do a sanity check on foreign aid funding,' Elon Musk said. 'No one.' That is not true. In South Sudan..., the efforts by Musk and ... [Donald] Trump are already leading children to die.... I find it odious when the world’s richest man cackles about America shoving programs for needy children 'into the wood chipper.'... We worked with experts at the Center for Global Development who tried to calculate how many lives are at risk if American humanitarian assistance is frozen or slashed. While these estimates are inexact and depend on how much aid continues, they suggest that a cataclysm may be beginning around the developing world:
An estimated 1,650,000 people could die within a year without American foreign aid for H.I.V. prevention and treatment.... An estimated 500,000 people could die within a year without American funding for vaccines.... An estimated 550,000 people could die within a year without American funding for food aid.... An estimated 290,000 people could die within a year without American funding for malaria prevention.... An estimated 310,000 people could die within a year without U.S. funding for tuberculosis prevention.” Thanks to RAS for the lead. ~~~
~~~ Amanda Marcotte writes on BlueSky: "Killing children is by design, I'm afraid. 'Pro-natalists' like Musk claim they aren't racist, but their pressure to have children is solely focused on white women, while they back policies that literally kill of[f] non-white children. He's a eugenicist." Also thanks to RAS.
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Maria Sacchetti, et al., of the Washington Post: “A federal judge barred ... Donald Trump on Saturday from using a wartime powers act to deport alleged Venezuelan gang members without a hearing, ordering the administration to turn around any planes that had already taken off after the Alien Enemies Act quietly went into effect. Trump signed a proclamation Friday to deploy the Alien Enemies Act of 1789 for the first time since World War II to swiftly remove Venezuelans allegedly involved in the transnational gang known as Tren de Aragua.... The White House kept the proclamation under wraps until after advocates for immigrants sued Saturday, fearing he was already sweeping immigrants out of the country. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt claimed immigration officials had 'arrested nearly 300 Tren de Aragua terrorists' over the weekend and sent them to El Salvador. The country’s president, Nayib Bukele, said that 238 members of the transnational Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua and 23 members of the Salvadoran MS-13 gang had already arrived in El Salvador and were in his custody, with a social media post responding to the judge’s ruling that said 'Oopsie, too late,' followed by a laughing emoji. A White House official celebrated his post with a meme, saying, 'Boom!'” The AP's report is here. ~~~
~~~ Marie: Secretly signing executive orders? Secretly deporting nearly 300 people without even a fake show of due process? I don't know how all this will shake out, what with our Trump-compliant courts and courtiers, but at this point, Trump is not only defying the law, he also is laughing about it. This is a middle finger to the rule of law & to the Constitution he is sworn to uphold.
Joseph Fried of the New York Times: “Nita M. Lowey, who represented a congressional district based in Westchester County for 32 years, ardently supporting liberal causes and playing a key role in shaping legislation to advance them, died on Saturday at her home in Harrison, N.Y. She was 87.”
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Marie: Squarespace is up to its old tricks, so be sure to save your comments before you submit them. I'm having to post the same links three and four times each.
Eric Schmitt & Jonathan Swan of the New York Times: “The United States carried out large-scale military strikes on Saturday against dozens of targets in Yemen controlled by the Iranian-backed Houthi militia..., [Donald] Trump announced. It was the opening salvo in what senior American officials said was a new offensive against the militants and a strong message to Iran, as Mr. Trump seeks a nuclear deal with its government. Air and naval strikes ordered by Mr. Trump hit radars, air defenses, and missile and drone systems in an effort to open international shipping lanes in the Red Sea that the Houthis have disrupted for months with their own attacks. At least one senior Houthi commander was targeted. The Biden administration conducted several strikes against the Houthis but largely failed to restore stability to the region.... U.S. officials said that airstrikes against the Houthis’ arsenal, much of which is buried deep underground, could last for several weeks, intensifying in scope and scale depending on the militants’ reaction. U.S. intelligence agencies have struggled in the past to identify and locate the Houthi weapons systems, which the rebels produce in subterranean factories and smuggle in from Iran.” (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~
~~~ Akhilleus believes he has detected some serious wagging of the dog here. Sounds right to me. This looks like Grenada all over again, likely with more killing.
Tobi Raji, et al., of the Washington Post: “... Donald Trump has invoked a centuries-old wartime law to declare that a Venezuelan gang has 'invaded' the United States, clearing the way for the 'immediate apprehension, detention, and removal' of anyone the government says falls into that category. Trump issued the proclamation hours after a federal judge in D.C. preemptively blocked the president from deploying the Alien Enemies Act to quickly deport five Venezuelan men on Saturday. Civil rights lawyers say the migrants are at risk of being removed without a court hearing. U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg in Washington granted the temporary restraining order to bar the Trump administration from using the law to deport several men the administration alleges have ties to the Venezuela-based gang Tren de Aragua. The American Civil Liberties Union says the men do not have any ties to the criminal group. The ACLU and Democracy Forward sued the administration Saturday in anticipation of Trump’s plan to invoke the law, claiming that the five migrants face an 'imminent risk' of deportation.” (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~
~~~ Here's an update: “As he issued his ruling, the judge said he heard that 'flights are actively departing' and ordered the Trump administration to immediately halt the removals and return to the United States any flights that are in the air.” BTW, if you watched the Maddow video embedded yesterday, you know that the Alien Enemies Act is the same law under which Japanese-Americans were interned during WWII. The U.S. has since issued a formal apology and paid reparations to internees. The 1798 act has been used just three times, each during wars: "the War of 1812, World War I and World War II." We are not at war with Venezuela now. And, no, shooting at Yemeni pirates in the Red Sea does not constitute war.
~~~ The AP's report is here. Politico's story on Judge Boasberg's order is here. ~~~
~~~ Teo Armus, et al., of the Washington Post: ICE detained a Venezuelan couple who migrated to the U.S. and settled in Washington, D.C., with their three children, even though the family enjoyed protected status. “With two of their children looking on, screaming and crying, the Border Patrol arrested the couple in D.C., removing them from their home in handcuffs on a misdemeanor charge of illegally crossing the border more than two years ago.... The family was apart for three days. By Thursday evening, the couple was back in their home with an order to appear in an El Paso federal court in 30 days to answer for the illegal border crossing. The arrests, weeks before temporary protected status is set to expire for several hundred thousand Venezuelans, immediately raised alarms among immigrant advocates.... Advocacy groups say they are investigating whether the government is violating a 2023 court settlement that prohibits separating children from their parents based on illegal border crossings, the same minor crime the first Trump administration used in 2018 to justify separating families at the southern border.... It was unclear Friday why this couple was targeted....” (Also linked yesterday.)
Tom Mooney of the Providence (R.I.) Journal: “A federal court order that would have halted the immediate deportation of a Rhode Island doctor was issued Friday evening while the doctor’s departing plane sat on the tarmac at Boston Logan International Airport, said a family friend and colleague. But the plane ultimately took off, carrying Dr. Rasha Alawieh out of the country for reasons still unclear to her family, her lawyer and Brown Medicine colleagues.... 'They did not do anything to stop the plane,' said [her colleague Dr. Basma] Merhi, who was learning details of the event through information relayed by Alawieh family members. 'So, clearly, they wanted to deport her regardless of if there was a judge’s order or not. She didn’t do anything wrong.' Alawieh had been studying and working in the U.S. for the last six years and had been in Rhode Island, working for Brown Medicine in the Division of Kidney Disease & Hypertension, since last July.” Thanks to RAS for the link.
Right-wing New York Times columnist David French more-or-less gets it: “Columbia University is now the epicenter of the American culture war. The Trump administration is targeting a former Columbia student — and the university itself — as a test case for its new authoritarian regime.... When federal immigration officials showed up at [the] apartment building [of former Columbia grad student Mahmoud Khalil] last weekend and whisked him away to a facility in Louisiana to begin deportation proceedings, they brought the malice and incompetence of the Trump administration into stark relief.... According to the Department of Homeland Security’s Notice to Appear that was provided to Khalil, 'The secretary of state has determined that your presence or activities in the United States would have serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.'... Khalil was detained because of his protest activity and not because he’d provided illegal support for terrorists.... The arrest and detention of Mahmoud Khalil are a direct attack on free speech.... Our Constitution has survived previous waves of government repression. There is no guarantee it will survive another.” French outlines some of the Trump administration attacks on Columbia. ~~~
~~~ Marie: French writes that “The sad irony of our unconstitutional moment is that the perspectives of foreign students can be particularly valuable when foreign affairs dominate American discourse.” But the more alarming irony, IMO, is that the person responsible for trying to deport Khalil for his speech is the same person who instigated a violent insurrection against the United States in an attempt to overturn a presidential election. Why, he is even a person who himself has had “serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.” Just look at what happened to the very Secretary of State who supposedly made the determination that Khalil presented a threat. Little Marco is today a pathetic shadow of the foreign policy hawk once known as Senator Marco Rubio. And that abrupt diminution of Marco, of course, is the “serious adverse foreign policy consequences” of working for Donald Trump.
Alan Feuer of the New York Times: “... when ... [Donald] Trump appeared in the gilded [Great Hall of the Justice Department] on Friday afternoon, he ... delivered a grievance-filled attack on the very people who have worked in the building and others like them. As he singled out some targets of his rage, he appeared to offer his own vision of justice in America, one defined by personal vengeance rather than by institutional principles. 'These are people that are bad people, really bad people,' Mr. Trump said. 'They tried to turn America into a corrupt communist and third-world country, but in the end, the thugs failed and the truth won.'... In offering his litany of complaints, Mr. Trump provided no proof that ... any of the people he named had committed crimes or even ethical violations. Their sole offense appeared to have been trying to hold him accountable for his behavior.” ~~~
~~~ Among those “enemies” Trump identified were elections lawyer Marc Elias, who led the legal battle against Trump's 2020 false claims of election fraud; Mark Pomerantz, an SDNY prosecutor who worked on but never brought charges in a criminal case against Trump; Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg, who prosecuted Trump; special counsel Jack Smith, who brought two major federal cases against Trump; former FBI Director James Comey, who refused to pledge his loyalty to Trump & opened an investigation into Trump's ties to Russian election interference; attorney Norm Eisen who oversaw the first impeachment of Trump. MB: All totally consistent, of course, on Trump's "L'État, c'est moi" tude. (Also linked yesterday.)
Maxine Joselow & Emily Davies of the Washington Post: “... Donald Trump plans to eliminate two massive national monuments in California established by former president Joe Biden, the White House confirmed Saturday. Less than a week before leaving office, Biden signed proclamations establishing the 624,000-acre Chuckwalla National Monument in Southern California and the 224,000-acre Sáttítla Highlands National Monument in northern California. Native American tribes that consider these landscapes sacred had urged Biden to put them off-limits to drilling, mining, clean-energy development and other industrial activity. The plan to repeal the proclamations ... underscores how Trump has sought to dismantle Biden’s sweeping environmental legacy.” MB: Oh, it isn't that. In this case, Trump seeks to dishonor Native Americans, Joe Biden and California's “liberal lunatics,” while opening up sites to his avaricious miner buddies. So this is at least a four-fer.
I am deeply saddened that for the first time in 83 years, the storied Voice of America is being silenced.... [The Voice of America has played an important role] in the fight for freedom and democracy around the world. -- VOA Director Michael Abramowitz, in a post on LinkedIn ~~~
~~~ Nathan Layne & James Oliphant of Reuters: “More than 1,300 Voice of America employees were placed on leave on Saturday and funding for two U.S. news services that broadcast to authoritarian regimes was terminated, one day after ... Donald Trump ordered the gutting of the government-funded media outlet's parent and six other federal agencies. Michael Abramowitz, Voice of America's director, said nearly his entire staff of 1,300 journalists, producers and assistants had been put on administrative leave, crippling a media broadcaster that operates in almost 50 languages.... Founded in 1942 to counter Nazi propaganda, VOA now reaches 360 million people a week. As a group, USAGM [U.S. Agency for Global Media] employs roughly 3,500 workers with an $886-million budget in 2024, according to its latest report to Congress.... Kari Lake, the former news anchor and Trump loyalist nominated to be director of VOA, issued a statement describing USAGM as 'a giant rot and burden to the American taxpayer' and said it was 'not salvageable.'... [Elon Musk wrote on X,] 'While winding down this global government propaganda agency, it has temporarily been renamed the Department of Propaganda Everywhere (DOPE).'...” NPR's story, by David Folkenflik, is here.
Javier Hernández of the New York Times: “When ... [Donald] Trump was criticized by some of the artists who were recognized at the annual Kennedy Center Honors program during his first term, he responded by boycotting the show, breaking with decades of precedent. Now, as he leads a sweeping takeover of the Kennedy Center in his second term, Mr. Trump is seeking changes that will allow him greater sway in the selection of honorees.... Mr. Trump, who is now the chairman of the Kennedy Center, is scheduled to speak at a meeting of its board on Monday afternoon, when proposed changes to the honors advisory committee will be on the agenda.... He replaced all the Biden appointees on the center’s once-bipartisan board, was elected chairman and installed a loyalist, Richard Grenell, as its president.” (Also linked yesterday.)
Reversal of Discrimination??? Tim Balk of the New York Times: “Materials on the Arlington National Cemetery website highlighting the graves of Black and female service members have vanished as the Trump administration purges government websites of references to diversity and inclusion.... [BUT] The cemetery, which is operated by the Army, said in a statement on Friday that it remained committed to 'sharing the stories of military service and sacrifice to the nation with transparency and professionalism' and that it was working to restore links to the content.... The restoration of any removed material would be carried out in line with ... [Donald] Trump’s executive orders, the cemetery said.... Representative Adam Smith of Washington, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, cast the website changes as part of a broader effort by the Trump administration to erase the accomplishments of women and people of color.” ~~~
~~~ Marie: I don't see how it's possible to both (1) honor women and people of color, and (2) erase their accomplishments. Part of the Trump/Musk administration's deep-state attrition plan must be to make many federal employees crazy.
Shawn McCreesh of the New York Times: “The annual Gridiron Club dinner in Washington on Saturday featured jokes about ... [Donald] Trump, the breakdown of the global order, Russia, Democrats’ uncertain future and, of course, Elon Musk.... [Mr. Trump] and top members of his administration skipped the dinner, which is one of those old-fashioned Washington rituals.... Margaret Brennan of CBS shouted out members of the diplomatic corps from Britain, France, Australia and the European Union. 'You know,' she said, 'all of America’s enemies.' Then she introduced the Ukrainian ambassador — there was no joke told — and the many journalists in the room stood up to clap.” MB: The reason Trump doesn't usually attend is that at these sorts of events, speakers are supposed to tell self-depricating jokes. Definitely not Trump's shtick.
Teddy Rosenbluth of the New York Times: “Struggling to contain a raging measles epidemic in West Texas, public health officials increasingly worry that residents are relying on unproven remedies endorsed by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the health secretary, and postponing doctor visits until the illness has worsened. Hospitals and officials sounded an alarm this week, issuing a notice explaining which measles symptoms warranted immediate medical attention and stressing the importance of timely treatment.... Some seriously ill children had been given alternative remedies like cod liver oil, [Katherine Wells, the public health director for Lubbock, said.]. 'If they’re so, so sick and have low oxygen levels, they should have been in the hospital a day or two earlier,' she said.”
Jessica Piper of Politco: “The liberal organizing group Indivisible said Saturday it was calling for Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to step down from his leadership role, the latest fallout after he backed a GOP bill to keep the government open. The group’s call is the latest sign of just how much Schumer’s decision to vote for a Republican bill Friday has angered a Democratic grassroots itching for a fight with ... Donald Trump.”
Clay Risen of the New York Times (March 14): “Kevin Drum, who gave up his day job in software marketing to write online about politics, policy and his cats, quickly becoming a key figure in the vanguard of center-left bloggers during the genre’s heyday in the early 2000s, died on March 7. He was 66.... Mr. Drum, who lived in Irvine, Calif., had been diagnosed with multiple myeloma in 2014 and had recently developed pneumonia. He blogged about those personal challenges openly and with the same insight that he brought to issues like health care policy and urban planning.”
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Oklahoma Schools to Teach the "Big Lie" (As If It Were True). Frances Vinall of the Washington Post: “Teachers in Oklahoma would be instructed to have high school students 'identify discrepancies in 2020 elections results' under new academic standards for social studies approved by the state education board last month. The standards, which were obtained by the Oklahoma journalism not-for-profit NonDoc and published in full on Wednesday, must be approved by the Oklahoma legislature. They stipulate that students should review information relating to the election, including 'the sudden halting of ballot-counting in select cities in key battleground states, the security risks of mail-in balloting, sudden batch dumps, an unforeseen record number of voters, and the unprecedented contradiction of “bellwether county” trends.'... Oklahoma’s top education official, Superintendent Ryan Walters, is a Trump ally whose national profile has been raised by his push to distribute Trump-endorsed Bibles in classrooms [and other crazy winger stuff]....” MB: Of course I would instruct the kids to find and report evidence that the Big Lie was a failed attempted to overturn a free & fair election.
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Reader Comments (12)
In the Arlington National Cemetery:
How to say it? Maybe my right hand is doing what my left hand is not?
On French: I often find him reasonable, even liberal, as long as he avoids abortion and religion. I see him as a good person caught up in the conservative web back when the movement still had a shred of morality on its side. But unlike those recanting Communists depicted in "The God that Failed," French doesn't appear to be such a true believer type that he entirely lost his mind in making the transition.
Is anyone reporting on whether the Pretend government is complying with all these court orders or happily ignoring them...while we all listen to the loud silence of the Supremes?
I remember seeing a TV ad for Voice of America back in the 60’s. It showed black and white scenes of what looked like Eastern European countries with people huddled around a short wave radio listening to Voice of America. The soundtrack played the Drifters hit “On Broadway”. Even as a kid, I was struck by what a lifeline to a different world that service must have been to people living under oppressive conditions behind Soviet era walls, listening to the Drifters as armed guards and tanks rolled by outside their door.
I looked for that spot. Couldn’t find it, but I did find this clip about a contest giving away Voice of America shortwave radios to people around the world.
Years later, in 1986, I spent some time in the Soviet Union shooting a Sister Cities project documentary. At least a half dozen Soviet citizens would approach me on the street, always surreptitiously, to ask if I had any tapes of Western music, officially off limits. One guy in Moscow had a list of American bands he was interested in. I met him the next day and gave him what I had (I never went anywhere without books and music). I asked him how he knew about Van Halen, Bruce Springsteen, Talking Heads, etc. He said “Voice of America”.
Five years later, the Soviet Union ceased to exist.
It wasn’t just because of VOA, but I’m guessing that window into what life could be like without tanks, armed guards, and walls with barbed wire had something to do with feeding an urge for a way of life with more freedom than authoritarian propaganda.
But Fat Hitler doesn’t see it that way. Less freedom and more authoritarian propaganda is what he’s looking for.
This is a disaster on a global level.
I think often these days about a great scene from the Frank Capra film “Meet John Doe”, in which a newspaper editor played by the great character actor James Gleason, talks about Lighthouses in a foggy world, meaning guys like Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln, and the fascist strongmen who would extinguish those lights.
Trump is making sure that the light of America, that torch that Lady Liberty that holds out as the promise of a better, freer world, is extinguished, but good. Lights go out, voices are silenced, protesters are disappeared.
MAGA.
Test…
One of those Social Security scammers we've been reading about:
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/heres-a-dead-person-on-social-security-in-seattle-with-plenty-to-say/
Seems like a nice guy for a scammer....
@Akhilleus: I think Putin MUST be telling Trump to get rid of relatively low-cost national security aids like USAID & VOA. In fact, the whole Trump/Musk cost-cutting hoohah very well may be a cover for cutting programs Putin told Trump to get rid of. Trump is just smart enough to know (or Putin explained it to him!) that he can't just disable all the nukes pointed toward Russia and fire all the Russian-speaking CIA operatives and yank every program that helps the U.S. "win hearts and minds," but if he hides these removals among thousands of others, no one will notice.
Shutting down VOA is not in itself an act of treason, but this among all the other stuff Trump is doing to weaken the U.S. makes him a traitor, IMO. Again, I don't know what his reason is, but I can see what he's doing, and as big a jerk as he is, I think he knows what he's doing to destroy this country -- and as much of the "free world" as possible with it.
By the way, when I was a little kid, we were taught in school that the Voice of America was a wonderful thing that was, you know, saving the world from communism. And that's what we thought. Trump went to school when I did, so I'll bet his teachers told him the same thing.
I enjoyed reading the discussion yesterday of Ayn Rand & the Tolkien stories. I did eventually slog through "Atlas Shrugged" when I was a young woman, and even though I was not much of a lit critic at the time, even I could tell it was fantastical trash.
But I came to hear about Rand and Tolkien before that. It was in my high school English class where the smart boys were talking about them. I mean, I was working my way through "Literature You Should Read Before Going to College," and the smart boys in my class were gabbing about "The Lord of Rings" & "Atlas Shrugged." When I asked them what the stories were about, they told me. I was gobsmacked. These were the kids who were going to MIT & Cal Tech, and they were reading fucking fairy tales!
The specific boy who told me about these fables was called Bobby Poole. Like Ken Winkes, he was named class valedictorian, and like Ken, many months after our discussion of Rand & Tolkein, Bobby based his class speech on Rand. I thought the speech was just awful. I was glad I had told my parents not to come to my graduation, because I didn't want them to think I had friends who were such goofballs.
I didn't see Bobby again for many years after that, but to a very slight extent, I kept up with him, partly because I kept running into a fomrer girlfriend of his in various parts of the country. It was kind of uncanny. And she had kept in touch with him. So at one point, I knew he had founded the libertarian "Reason" magazine, and at another point I was driving someplace and I heard on NPR that he was the Libertarian party candidate for president. Jeez! It may have been much later that I found out he had been in the Reagan administration in some capacity and that he had worked for years to privatize different types of transportation.
It may have been our 40th high school reunion that I happened to sit down with Bobby for some time. Somewhere in the conversation, we joked about how much I had hated his graduation speech. "Oh," he said, "You should have seen it before all the teachers got together and toned it down." He was very pleasant. I was struck by how two people with such different understandings of our surroundings could sort of bond over our ephemeral past; how two people who saw EVERYTHING differently could carry on a civil, agreeable conversation.
Bobby (now Robert) Poole is way smarter than I am. But he, and the 100,000 people like him who have promoted these right-wing Randian memes for decades are responsible for where we are today. I don't think Bobby knew that by advocating for privatizing CalTrans, he was part of a movement to crush the nation. Most of these bright (white) men didn't know they were busily destroying democracy here and elsewhere -- that they were ushering in Donald Trump and Elon Musk and all the terrible, thoughtless, careless, cruel things they do.
But it's their fault.
Not quite an answer to my earlier question:
https://www.npr.org/2025/03/16/g-s1-54154/alien-enemies-el-salvador-trump
But some in the press are asking it.
Cruelty is the Point
"The New York Times is the first to put out comprehensive estimates on the cost of a year without U.S.A.I.D. and they’re higher than I thought:
- 1.65 million deaths from AIDS
- 500,000 from lack of vaccines
- 550,000 from lack of food aid
- 290,000 from malaria
- 310,000 from TB"
"Erik Prince Pushes $25B Deal To Privatize Deportations
Prince is the most famous mercenary of the contemporary era and the founder of the now defunct private military company Blackwater. For a time, it was a prolific privateer in the “war on terror,” racking up millions in US government contracts by providing soldiers of fortune to the CIA, Pentagon and beyond.
Now he is a central figure among a web of other contractors trying to sell Trump advisers on a $25 billion deal to privatize the mass deportations of 12 million migrants. Prince also has the ear of Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, and was a character witness for her Senate confirmation."
Ken & Akhilleus -
I, too, enjoyed yesterday's comments on Ayn Rand. I remember the love of The Hobbit among the few boys in high school who admitted to reading. Perhaps I tuned out anything to do with Ayn Rand or her novels.
Marie's story reminded me of a work colleague from the 90's - a tech bro- who moved to New Hampshire and ran, last year, for governor.
He writes, on his web page:
"Let's invite libertarians from all over the country to move to New Hampshire.
Imagine that over the coming years, libertarians relocate to our state by the hundreds of thousands. Once libertarians make up about 40% of New Hampshire voters, enough to form a plurality, everything will be different."
If I were to talk with him again, I would love to try to understand what makes a libertarian New Hampshire a paradise. What exactly does he envision? I can only see a state of grievance-filled gun-owning adults, unvaccinated children, hunger... not a place I would like to live.
Absolutely disgusting .
“The US defense department webpage celebrating an army general who served in the Vietnam war and was awarded the country’s highest military decoration has been removed and the letters ‘DEI’ added to the site’s address.
On Saturday, US army Maj Gen Charles Calvin Rogers’s Medal of Honor webpage led to a ‘404’ error message. The URL was also changed, with the word ‘medal’ changed to ‘deimedal’.
Rogers, who was awarded the Medal of Honor by then president Richard Nixon in 1970, served in the Vietnam war, where he was wounded three times while leading the defense of a base.
According to the West Virginia military hall of fame, Rogers was the highest-ranking African American to receive the medal. After his death in 1990, Rogers’s remains were buried at the Arlington national cemetery in Washington DC, and in 1999 a bridge in Fayette county, where Rogers was born, was renamed the Charles C Rogers Bridge.”
I guess from now on only those who get medals for making the bed will be honored.
Oh, as long as they’re white. Cuz white bone spur traitors don’t get “deimedals”.
Will DrinkBoy Hegseth and Cadet Bone Spurs demand that black Medal of Honor winners be dug up and moved from Arlington National? I guess they’ll need room for the white J6 traitors when they kick.
Laura informs us, per some tech bro moron that “Once libertarians make up about 40% of New Hampshire voters, enough to form a plurality, everything will be different.”
It’ll be different alright. New Hampshire is already a bit weird (sorry, Granite Staters—and Marie—but you know what I mean). Hundreds of thousands of anti everything Libertarians will make it a completely whack job place, even to visit.
I always said you could tell when you crossed the line from Massachusetts into New Hampshire, in the dead of winter, without even seeing the “Bienvenue au New Hampshire” signs. In Massachusetts, the roads are halfway plowed with slush all over the highway. You get to New Hampshire and the roads are perfectly plowed and completely dry. You could eat off the roadway. If Libertarians took over, they’d make plowing of each section of roadway the responsibility of the people who lived along that stretch. State plows would all be sold and plow drivers told to get a real job and not be such moochers.