CSotD: Follow-Up Friday
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I’m not really introducing a new thing called “Follow-Up Friday,” but we seem to have a lot of topics hanging around, but getting new spin.
I’ve seen a meme that mocks people who said they couldn’t understand Bad Bunny’s Spanish, saying that the Epstein Files are in English and people can’t seem to understand them, either. I like Boris’s take, however, because he puts a little more salsa on the racist hatred at the core of objections to a Latino musical production, contrasting it with the lack of objections to sexual assault and illegal confinement.
Incidentally, New World Spanish is extremely diverse, and it wouldn’t be surprising if someone from South or Central America would have trouble understanding lyrics by a Puerto Rican, but the issue would center on dialect rather than bigotry.
Matson notes that some congressmen have been given access to the unredacted Epstein Files and have come away much more concerned and appalled. Despite whatever reasons the administration has for keeping them bottled up, light is a powerful disinfectant and there would be an obvious benefit to justice in being less coy about what we’re debating.
I suppose some editors would be leery of choosing an editorial cartoon with condoms, which is too bad because Sack nails the only plausible reason for Bondi to have kept the harsh facts of the Epstein Files from the public.
It can’t be to protect the victims, since not only did DOJ botch the redactions, outing the victims and hiding the perpetrators, but her cruel refusal to meet with victims or even to acknowledge them in the hearings is blatant proof of where her sympathies and loyalties lie.
I felt that her appalling behavior had been covered yesterday, but the outrage continues and Anderson did a nice, simple job of dramatizing her heartless use of the stock market’s rise to avoid addressing the needs of Epstein’s victims, not just in general but to their faces.
Even OJ Simpson’s defense team, much as they pulled non-existent rabbits out of self-invented hats, never offered the defense of “Who cares?”
Bondi’s cold, calculating lack of sympathy for the victims in this case seems a reliable weathervane to tell them, and us, which way the wind is blowing.
McKee mocks her refusal to answer the most basic questions, and while I like sardonic humor, it’s important that he show her with aggressive body language and a contorted face to indicate that her stonewalling was absolutely intentional, not just accidentally insensitive.
Speaking of Stonewalling, I don’t think there’s been as much notice of the removal of the Pride flag from the Stonewall Inn that there would have been in saner times. The inn is a national monument, but the administration insists that only the approved banners may be flown at National Monuments.
Which doesn’t explain why they also took away terms like “transgender” and “queer” on material relating to Stonewall, which is a bit like removing the term “assassination” from Ford’s Theater. But it’s not as outrageous as Dear Leader downgrading Martin Luther King’s Birthday and Juneteenth and substituting, instead, his own birthday for special recognition.
Trump makes life difficult for satirists, because when a ridiculous joke appears, we have to stop and make sure it’s not an actual presidential proclamation. And vice versa.
However, Bramwell notes, New Yorkers have a tradition of not taking guff. It’s back.
Jones tries to make Bondi seem comically asinine, but this is the second time she’s come to a Congressional hearing with a cheat-sheet of snotty insults for each member of the committee. Her inability to be spontaneously snotty makes you wonder how successful she was as a Mean Girl in middle school. And why she’s so intent on making up for it now at 60.
Of course, she’s working for a man who brags about winning at golf when everybody knows he cheats at the game. We all want to be winners, but some of us want it just a little too much.
Juxtaposition of the Day
However, there are people doing extremely important things in our government, and as an example, the Secretary of Greasy Kid Stuff saved the nation this week by shutting down air space over El Paso and using a powerful military laser to pop a kid’s balloon that had drifted over our territory.
I can’t possibly improve on the story as recounted by Olivia Troye, who got a double-dose of outrage over Petey’s incompetent farce because not only was she in government before it went crazy — working on national security and homeland security issues at the National Counterterrorism Center, the United States Department of Energy Office of Intelligence and Counterintelligence, and the DHS Office of Intelligence and Analysis — but she grew up in El Paso.
Her combination of knowledge and fury make for some compelling prose.
I sure hope Bennett isn’t celebrating too soon, but the administration has claimed they are ending the ICE assault on Minnesota, and Minnesota Public Radio, which has been on top of the story from the start, confirms that the claim has been made.
That’s a comforting source, but I’ll wait to pop the champagne cork until the last bully leaves the state.
I expect to keep that champers on ice a little longer. According to NBC News, what is ending is the surge, not the overall effort.
Homan, who is a former Obama staffer, said he is not removing all federal officers for safety reasons and that immigration enforcement will continue. “If you’re in this country illegally, you’re not off the table,” he said.
As for who’s on the table and who’s off the table, I’m also not gonna hold my breath waiting for them to release the people they’ve seized who were in this country legally, following the law and going through the required process.
When that happens, however, I’ll join with Bennett in saluting the brave people who stood for their rights and worked to help their neighbors throughout the crisis, and hope that their example is both a model and an inspiration for the next victims of this push to eliminate immigrants and their descendants from our, and their, home.
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