FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN: WATERING THE TREE OF LIBERTY EDITION.

I guess you’ve heard that, on top of his destruction of the Reflecting Pool (which he says is in great shape) and the debacle of the Great American State Fair (which he says is a huge success) Tubby plans to blow up about ten times as many fireworks as usual in DC on the 4th and have hours of flyovers, so with the continuing National Guard occupation it’ll be even more like a war zone than usual. For the first time I’m not sorry I moved away.

The photo above is from the 4th of July on the Mall in 2021, when the country had not gone mad -- or rather had briefly gone mad but temporarily come to its senses. People came and went freely then and had a good time. This year the site will be heavily restricted and you’ll have to get there by 6 pm in 100 degree heat well before the gargantuan display of noise and smoke, after which I expect ICE to sweep in among the chaos and bust heads. I don’t think Trump voters realized that fascism’s not so much fun when its brutal stupidity is aimed at you as well as at the people you hate. 

Well, honor the Declaration as best you can, far from the madness. And enjoy a couple of free ROY EDROSO BREAKS IT DOWN editions! First, there’s our favorite mainstream media politics show, Received Opinion with Bolt Upright, tackling the narrow escape of SCOTUS’ birthright citizenship ruling. When we get back in there, we oughta pack the Court so they have to hear cases in a mid-sized concert venue at least. And second, here’s one about the New Red Scare that not only conservatives but also watered-down liberals are ginning up now that voters are nominating and electing socialists instead of Better Things Are Not Possible Democratic gerontocrats, feebs, and shills. Keep panicking, guys, I want to get as much enjoyment out of this as possible. It's what Tom Paine would have wanted! 

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN: EYE ON THE SPARROW Y'ALL EDITION.

DANCE PARTY!!

 It seems the closer we get to the big two-five-oh -- that is, the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence -- the stupider the current U.S. government acts. Now Tubby and his mob are bombing Iran -- I guess they figured that tired old act needed goosing if they were going to hold the audience -- and the Supreme Court’s six ringers just cheerfully unleashed a bunch of insane rulings, including the ICE-Raid All Haitians and Syrians Decision (look out, white people of Springfield, Ohio, grandma’s gonna need a new home health aide soon and I guess it’s gonna be you!)

Plus which Vice-President Fuckface solidified his status as America’s Least Likable Politician by comparing himself to Richard Nixon. (In defense of Tricky Dick, I must say he lost the presidency once by refusing to wear makeup, whereas one cannot encounter the chipmunk visage of JD Vance without unconsciously thinking “oh, honey, too much eyeliner!”)

On the plus side, don’t mess with the Zohran: on Tuesday the Mayor of New York lugged several real lefties over the finish line in the Democratic Primary, whereupon all America’s useless centrist trimmers cried foul. (“Vote Blue No Matter Who” only goes one way, it seems;  we have to vote for Dems who promise More of the Same [Only With Slightly Less Overt Racism], but just ask them to vote for what the Party stood for in the days of FDR -- that is, the last time it was massively popular! -- and the middle-of-the-roaders go into rebellion. Fuck them and especially James Carville who, one wag observed, was probably thrown into shock by the rare sight of Democrats winning an election.)

So even with the pigs and scumsuckers running their usual games, there’s a glimmer of hope; after years of bullshit and two Trump terms of bullshit cubed-to-infinity, the Democratic Socialists look like the next big thing, and the feebs and dweebs trying the usual message of “Expect Nothing and Settle for Even Less” look like losers. Prosit! 

Here’s a Roy Edroso Breaks It Down freebie about a key part of the de-Nazification process: The increasingly inescapable fact that Trump is mentally disabled.  

FRIDAY ‘ROUND-THE-HORN: RETURN TO FORM EDITION.

You know what, I never knew what this was called until this week.

Well, looky here -- for the first time in weeks I got one of these R-T-Hs published on the appropriate Friday. Of course, I had the assistance of a federal holiday. Thanks, Joe Biden!  Juneteenth has fast become one of my favorite days of observation. The first one, which I experienced in DC, was a treat, as was, in a perverse way, the bitching of white rightwingers over it. (Go here for Dan McLaughlin’s 2021 complaint at National Review that Juneteenth “is presently being pushed by progressives... who wish to use it as yet another club with which to denounce America over slavery” and that we already had too many federal holidays. No, I’m not kidding.) Now it’s a great reminder that, as fucked up as America can be, we still have the capacity to right the ship, as I hope we’re going to see in the coming months.

In that spirit, we have two (2) ROY EDROSO BREAKS IT DOWN freebies this week, brought out from beyond the paywall for you folks who have yet to realize what a bargain it is (SUBSCRIBE WHY DON’TCHA). 

The first is another rarity: A free Fun Friday edition. Fun Fridays are when I give a prompt, like what’s your favorite comic strip with a female lead character, and our brilliant readers (you can be one! It’s easy and cheap!) sing out. Today’s FF is about small acts of citizenship -- that is, little things you do out of civic-mindedness. The responses are well-said (natch) and heartwarming. Go on, dip in.

The second is (mostly but not entirely) about Tubby’s Iran debacle and what it says about him and us. There’s obviously a lot going on there, not the least of which is the total mismanagement of one of the few crucial duties of the executive; in this case the Commander-in-Chief, with no apparent casus belli, threw soldiers and ordnance like a tantrum, fucked up the region and world trade, and, after months of bluster and slaughter, called the whole thing off. 

The thing about it that I can’t get over is its incredible unseriousness -- most obvious in Tubby’s post-war (I guess we can say) yammering about how if no one likes it he’s gonna blame it on Vance. Imagine if LBJ went on TV and said “if Vietnam goes tits-up, remember Westmoreland did it.” This has opened the Republican floodgates for some of the craziest shit I’ve ever seen American politicians say, e.g.: 

Worse yet, I’m now seeing allegedly serious people asking why liberals like me aren’t praising Trump for ending the war. As if the old dotard weren't perfectly capable of telling his goons, “Look, there’s this classy broad I wanna bang, I said I’d give her a south sea island paradise, so go steal me one, we can tell people they had nukes.”

(BTW be fully prepared: When we haul these bastards before tribunals, they’ll start claiming they were actually in the resistance -- like Hegseth will say he kept Trump from bombing Minneapolis by dangling a suncatcher in front of him. I don’t care what Merrick Garland says, don’t go easy on him!)

A big part of our problem is that many citizens can’t tell the difference between reality and fantasy, and between actual people-get-killed war and a funny show on TV. Looks like there’ll be some forced tours of former concentration camps in our future.

SATURDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN: SILVER LININGS PAYBACK EDITION.

Nice cover, lovely sentiment.

Sorry for the day of delay -- still healing up from the knee thing, and carrying a full load work-wise. But I have been paying attention to the poor old world, and I can report that while it remains full of atrocities and outrages, there’s some argentum on the cloud cover and hope that the sun will break through. 

In fact, one of those atrocities -- America’s latest war crime, the extrajudicial murder of an alleged drug lord in Venezuela under the cover of diplomacy -- was probably arranged by Tubby’s goons to cheer him up because things have been going so badly from him at home.

We’ve still got some federal judges who respect the law, and they swatted the old dotard around last week, making him put back the signs he removed from federal parks because they admitted the U.S. held and abused slaves (thus stalling the “if Parson Weems were mentally disabled” approach to history with which Tubby hopes to replace current standards) and refusing to accept Todd Blanche’s pinky-swear that he won’t steal the $1.776 billion "anti-weaponization" fund as soon as John Law’s back is turned. 

And they made Trump take his whore name off the Kennedy Center -- which his minions did in the most disgraceful way, delaying as much as possible and shielding the operation from the public. Not sure whether this was out mere peevishness, or whether his sycophants hoped he’d die before the operation was completed, thus sparing themselves whatever gruesome indignities they’re usually forced to suffer when he doesn’t get his way. 

I’m not used to looking on the sunny side, so when the Blackshirts of Great Britain -- with the assistance of the equally fascist First Trillionaire -- stirred up a racist pogrom against the Muslim residents of Belfast, I made such satiric lemonade of it as I could -- in the first of last week’s unpaywalled Roy Edroso Breaks It Down editions, I considered how fucked up the Mother Country had become and noted that at least America still mostly conducted its racist persecutions under the color of the law, happy 4th of July ha ha. But I’m a bit ashamed to have said so -- because apparently, in Blighty as here, there are many good people who’ll turn out to smack the bastards down, helping the victims and making their objections known -- not only at the crime site but elsewhere, as we see in Brighton under the leadership of local hero Fatboy Slim.

It’s true, as I often say, that fascism is an international movement -- but so is resistance. 

One more REBID freebie: A consideration of the Right and their conspiracy theories -- one of which, the UFO bullshit, Trump recently re-fueled -- and how their behavior shows that even they don’t believe them.

SATURDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN: A LITTLE SOMETHIN' EXTRA EDITION.

Cool new(ish) shit. Thanks, Gabbie. 

OK, so it’s not like last week when I was a month and a day late, but late is late so I apologize. In my defense, as God’s Angry Man and the uncremated conscience of my race I’m under a lot of pressure these days. Outrages spray out like Faygo at a Gathering of the Juggalos. (Deep cut, eh?) Like this:

Trump officials planned to mark 2.7 million living people as dead, whistleblower claims...

Social Security carried out a smaller version of such an effort last year, The Post previously reported, moving 6,100 immigrants into its “Death Master File” — a database used by banks, employers and government agencies to determine whether someone is alive. Some of those people later showed up at Social Security field offices to prove they were alive and were restored in agency records.

I note that in the catalogue of horrors unleashed in the reign of Tubby II, they got the DOGE creeps in there very early, rightly judging that the system would be underprepared to defend itself from their predations, and that shit like this is typical of how they view their role in government: Immiseration of the needful in the service of plunder.

The first of our Roy Edroso Breaks It Down freebies is a consideration of the Trump White House’s rasslin’ birthday party and its collapse. This one was published Monday, and since then more musical acts and celebrities have bowed out and Tubby has declared that he doesn’t need any “so called ‘Artists’” -- which perfectly fits my assessment of the situation and how it reflects his philosophy: In MAGAland, “not only are artists who reject the Leader useless; all artists are unnecessary when you have the Leader to entertain you.”

I’m sorry, though, that Trump has decided to get Ted Nugent and some other nostalgia acts to fill the void -- I was hoping he’d go the old-school punk DIY route and hire some DC talent, as urged in this zine I got at Red Emma’s:

Now that I could endorse! In fact if Trump and his mob were real heads, that’s the way they’d play it -- who needs the rotten corporate entertainment complex when one can make one’s own kind of music, let a hundred Telehealths bloom! 

But Tubby ain’t a real anything; he’s just a sad old clown. My second freebie is a tribute to his decrepitude -- no, there’s no happy ending (e.g. him dying screaming in a fire), just a realistic assessment of the inside of his wormy skull.

And because I’m so stinkin’ generous we have THREE (3) freebies! Here’s me on Platnervousness. I see a lot of comrades enraged that this weird guy has gotten so far; some worry he has jeopardized the fight for the Senate, and many don’t like what his rise says about institutional misogyny in U.S. politics. I take their points, but would only note that 1.) the Democrats of Maine can moot all of this on Tuesday if they so choose and 2.) I have been hearing Bizarro emulations of this theme from supporters of Donald Trump, Ken Paxton and every other twisted GOP freak, which I understand is a reflex (pretended moral outrage at Democrats is one of their major tactics) but I don’t know if they’ve thought through how this will land with their own voters, who are currently being told in Texas that James Talerico is unacceptable because he’s not a macho woman-hating asshole -- that is, the opposite of what Platner's alleged to be.  Anyway read it, get mad at me if you like -- it’s all part of the fun of civilizational collapse! 

SATURDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN: BEEN AWAY, WHAT'D I MISS? EDITION.

You should be satisfied, but it ain't quite right .

A month between alicubi editions? So sorry! Been a busy, busy time, with surgery etc.

Since I know you like it fresh, I won’t reach back too many days for Roy Edroso Breaks It Down freebies. Here’s a quickie on the White House UFC Cage Match, our latest frontier in national self-embarrassment -- I mean of course there’s a Tubby grift angle as well, but that goes without saying; what really lifts the gorge is its willful grotesquerie. I talk a little here about exactly why it’s specifically this kind of mortifying spectacle and not, say, Donald Trump’s Night of A Thousand Tits or The Most Dangerous Game: See It Live! I will add, and I may elaborate on this someday, that there’s a whole social history to be written on the “populist” impulse to dirty up our federal government, going back perhaps to Andrew Jackson and certainly including the tendency of audiences to cheer in 1996 when they saw the part of the trailer for Independence Day where the White House was blown up. Well, maybe someday we’ll have enough real self-government that this kind of fantasy is less attractive.

And I might as well throw in this one about the ever-receding imminence of the end of the Iran War; the essay is almost a week old yet we may say it’s an evergreen because this shtick where Trump and his goons say they have the war won and the papers rush to cry PEACE IS AT HAND has been going on practically since the beginning and is still happening, on repeat. (Looking right this very minute at USA Today: “Hegseth says US ‘postured and prepared’ for reengagement with Iran.” Postured is right!) For those of us who long ago internalized that Trump is devoted to lies and in fact will never willingly tell the truth and may not be capable of it even if it would help him, this is no surprise. But the Prestige Press must pretend because it fills pages and preserves access -- while also destroying the public’s trust in them, but clearly they don’t see that as part of their remit.  

I imagine this bothers some of the morally-encumbered members of the Fourth Estate, which may be why there has been some coverage of the hilarious exodus of allegedly scheduled musical acts from that UFC thing. It’s a rare case in which you can see in real time how poisonous this regime is to anyone who would actually have to face the public about cooperating with it afterward. That’s part of why it drives conservatives berserk -- check out “Not A Single Modern Celeb Could Be Bothered To Perform For America 250” at wingnut ragesite The Federalist:

This sharp of a patriotic split between the American people, who by all accounts are excited to go all out on this extra special 4th of July, and the people who produce this country’s pop culture cannot stand. There has to be a reckoning between the American people who cry out for patriotic content and a media-entertainment complex that does everything in its power to demonize the United States. It can’t go on like this. Either patriots take back the culture, or the current pop culture regime will destroy the social fabric of the country. There are no other options.

They run all three branches of the whole damn federal government, yet they’re enraged that people who make art won’t slaver over them like Tubby’s Cabinet in one of those televised grovelfests. For the right, culture war is always a war ON culture. 

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN: NO, *YOU* SHUT UP EDITION.

My phlebotomist was singing along to this.

One of the key features of the second Trump administration (or, as I like to call it, Tubby II) is the elevation of hypocrisy to a strategy. Normal political hypocrisy involves saying one thing while doing another and (this is crucial) hoping nobody notices. Its purpose is simply the having and eating of one’s own cake -- winning voter approval with their words while winning donor approval with their actions.

But while traditional hypocrisy relies on obfuscation, the Trumpkin variety relies on obviousness. They clearly want you to see them saying one thing and doing another because it demonstrates the limitlessness of their impunity -- that they’re not only beyond the reach of laws and norms, but also beyond the reach of logic, cause and effect, and the voters, whose disgust with all this Trump simply brushes off as if it doesn’t matter, either because he’s confident the vote is rigged or because his nihilism extends even further than his hypocrisy.

We saw that for sure with the White House Correspondents Dinner almost-assassination -- after years of Trump calling for violence against his opponents, he and his propagandists insisted that it was Democrats who had made our politics a shooting gallery and demanded “lowering the temperature” by firing Jimmy Kimmel for a joke about Trump’s decrepitude, indicting James Comey for a restaurant reference, and everybody shutting up about our Beloved President unless they came with words of praise such as his cabinet lavishes on him in their Daily Affirmations in the Oval Office. 

Our first ROY EDROSO BREAKS IT DOWN freebie, released to non-subscribers today, is about why that’s a lot of hooey and how a much earlier and better (like that’s tough) but still thin-skinned President tried it on his subjects and got his ass kicked. (Note to Secret Service: Figurative language.) 

Our second freebie is an assessment of the Roberts’ Court’s latest outrage, Louisiana v. Callais, which effectively killed Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act -- and, since Shelby County v. Holder had already invalidated preclearance, pretty much killed the Voting Rights Act itself, though the conservatives’ cowardice kept them from admitting it. The Republicans are not fooled, and are racing the write black districts out of their voter maps.

It’s a shame, but we can hope (and cajole, and threaten) (Note to Secret Service: Figurative -- oh, who am I kidding, they don’t care about Democrats) our party leaders and politicians into fighting fire with fire and redistricting them right back. Though I usually counsel against counting on the GOP to make mistakes, I also think under the present conditions the GOP will probably dummymander themselves in several states. The rest we must trust to the righteous fury of the electorate, and there we have an advantage over our opponents, because that we need only the truth to stoke.

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN: BACK IN THE SADDLE EDITION.

Let's take the temperature down a bit.

Yeah, been a few weeks since I did this -- sorry about that, life’s a bitch and sometimes it's hard to get it on a leash. 

ROY EDROSO BREAKS IT DOWN has not faltered, though -- still five days a week of premium content. Also cheap! If you want a steady flow feel free to sign up. 

No sense in going back two weeks for outrages to review -- though, talking of ROY EDROSO BREAKS IT DOWN, here are a couple of editions concerning JD Vance’s recent dispute with the Holy Father that I’ve brought out from behind the paywall. 

Trump’s beef with Leo XIV is just stupid — he’s old, senile, and vicious, and thinks everything including the mandate of heaven should be his. Vance is another matter: As with everything else he does as Vice-President, his theological dispute with the actual Pope was an act of craven suck-uppery to his boss, of the sort that has made him a figure of fun and contempt across the political spectrum; but the fact that he became a Catholic a couple of minutes ago and decided to lecture the literally infallible leader of his Church on Just War Theory really lifts the degree of insufferability. If Vance keeps it up he’ll have us lapsed Catholics back in the pews by Christmas.

Speaking of moxie, it’s also rich that, when New York Mayor Mamdani recently proposed an exceedingly modest tax on unoccupied second homes in the city worth more than $5 million, and used hedge fun tycoon Ken Griffin’s pied-a-terre as a backdrop, Griffin threatened to retaliate by withdrawing his plan to build a new tower in Manhattan. Oh, no! How will New York live without yet another big, expensive building! This stuff probably plays well with rightwing rubes who think Atlas Shrugged was a documentary, but if Griffin’s really red-mad about it, let him go build his tower in Bumfuck. I bet the employees who would suddenly find their workplace relocated to a red state business park will be thrilled. 

Meanwhile I see Tubby proposed (or pretended to propose -- as he can never be trusted to tell the truth, one can only speculate of the level of lying he’s at) to kick Spain out of NATO because they criticized him on Iran. Again, this probably excites what remains of the MAGA base, who have no idea how anything works, but I bet the other NATO members feel very differently about it; they’re smart enough, too, to reckon that with Trump no capitulation will satisfy, that if they flatter him on this he’ll next require them to send troops and, who knows, maybe kiss his ass in Harrods’ window, so they’d better stand by a partner they can actually count on rather than indulge the feckless Putinite. 

Trump’s mismanagement is something only the badly damaged would consent to assist, and that helps explain why his lieutenants are such transparent frauds and losers and why many of them seem to be cracking under the strain of even the modest requirements of their sinecures. Take hard-drinking FBI Director Kash Patel, for example, who seems to spend more time getting liquored up and then denying he was liquored up than catching crooks (though he can be counted on to stumble over to the press conference when Tubby pushes through another transparently phony political prosecution). The only thing that works efficiently in this administration is its constant looting of the U.S. Treasury. Like all honest people I worry that Trump and his goons may steal the coming elections that are otherwise destined to curtail his power, but if we can avoid that we’re going to have to do more to clean up afterwards than walk through the White House with a smudge stick. 

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN: ANOTHER ONE JUST LIKE THE OTHER ONE EDITION.

The original orchestrations are grand, but this is just irresistible.

Pam Bondi’s departure is meaningless — Tubby has a huge crabbucket of equally loathsome suckups and crooks and Todd Blanche ain’t exactly a step up. So I’m not taking any special pleasure from it, not even after seeing all the stories like how she begged for her job and how her USAG portrait has been stuffed in a closet.

(And I'm certainly not arsed on feminist grounds. Trump deliberately humiliated several women before laying a hand on masc incompetents like Pete Hegseth? You don’t say! I mean we knew he was a white supremacist but who could have guessed the convicted sex criminal was also a misogynist? Please. Bondi knew, and thought, as all such people do, that she would be the exception.)  

No, Tubby’s treatment of Bondi doesn’t put me in sympathy with her — none of these people deserve any better. It only points up the dispensability of all his factota. He might as well train feral children in Skinner boxes to do these jobs. Stephen Miller falling down a manhole might change the particular character of some administration outrages, but if Trump had to swap in, say, Mike Lee or some demented county clerk from Oshkosh, atrocities would still be the order of the day. 

Let’s not kid ourselves, as the New York Times did in February, that the Epstein mess was due to Bondi’s “incompetence.” (Hilariously, the rightwing Washington Examiner is taking that same tack now: “Trump’s chance to reestablish Justice Department credibility after Pam Bondi fired.”) She was put on the same mission that all Trump apparatchiks get — to turn every public scandal into a cudgel against Democrats and a shiny halo for Trump. But while Bessent, Lutnick, and those guys merely have to lie about the health of the economy — a fraud in which the market and the media have been helpful — and shield Trump from the actual results, Bondi had to pretend a pedo ring in which Tubby was balls deep was actually a Democratic scandal, a much harder job.

It must have felt great to wave those fake “Epstein Files: Phase 1” binders at the press last year, but Bondi knew she’d have to work fast to backfill (all while prosecuting Trump’s enemies and other crimes against justice) and the job just got too big for her; plus Congress got sick of being insulted by her and kept up the pressure. And the stink it raised, Trump couldn’t miss. 

So farewell, worst USAG ever, soon to be eclipsed by one or more even worse. Blanche is doing his best to blow off the Epstein Files; lotsa luck, fucker. Don’t ever make the mistake of thinking any possible replacement not ordered by an International Court of Justice consent decree could make a bit of difference.

Meantime Trump is clowning in our faces, saying out loud (and don't you believe the leak was inadvertent) that he'll pull money from Medicare and Medicaid to fund his idiot war. Would his stooges in Congress dare vote for such a thing? If not, maybe he'll use the government data snatched by his DOGE goons to just cybersteal the funds. Whether it's because he expects to drop dead shortly (fingers crossed) or to steal the election, he no longer even pretends to care what anyone thinks. Nothing will change that - not a new AG, Secretary of State, Speaker of the House, or anything else. 

Speaking of performative cruelty: Our ROY EDROSO BREAKS IT DOWN free link this week is about Trump's visit to the Supreme Court. It's possible that he hoped to fluster some of the weaker wingnut justices like Boof Kavanaugh into asking what he imagines are the right kind of questions (probably along the lines of "what if a Messican raped your daughter"); it's also possible that he sought material for his inevitable post-decision tantrum (maybe SG Sauer will be his first penis-bearing dismissal). My guess is that he's just buried so deep in his fantasy world and thinks merely showing up at the scene of a decision affects it, like a governmental version of the King's Touch. Before this farce is over he'll have his major sycophants like Tim Cook and Musk carrying him around in a chair -- not worth all the democracy-destruction, certainly, but at least good for a laugh. 

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN: PHONEY WAR EDITION.

He looks like a high school science teacher but sometimes
Michael Franks gets into Wesley Willis territory.

One good thing about everything getting stupider is, I no longer have the unsettling feeling that what I’m reading in the news doesn’t make sense -- now I’m sure it doesn’t. This week I read in the Prestige Press coverage of the Iran War that according to Tubby (and many of them don’t even put “Trump claims” or even “Trump says,” they just take his word for it) we have either won the war or will win it as soon as he decides we won, that the big question is really what country gets to host the peace talks, and by the way Iran sent him a prize. (“What did Iran give Trump?” gushes USA Today. “He called the gift a ‘very nice thing.’” At no point does USA Today hint that maybe the famously truth-averse president was making it up.)

Look at this at Axios: “Iran's Parliament speaker takes center role in peace talks.” Politico says Trump is “eyeing” the speaker, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, “as a potential partner — and even a future leader.” They keep giving us the inside dope on the alleged peace talks that Iran keeps telling us do not exist. 

That’s what this week’s free link for non-subscribers to ROY EDROSO BREAKS IT DOWN is about: The weird fantasy that Trump has created, and the media dopes support, to make this look like a real war instead of a series of mass murders calculated to distract from the Epstein files. 

Well, it’s not like there’s anything back home to worry about, besides skyrocketing prices, chaos at the airports (which House Republicans have just voted to extend until they get enough money for ICE that they can be a real Gestapo), and the usual lawbreaking by Tubby’s minions. The courts are so far doing a fair job of holding them back but they can't be expected to keep it up forever -- all good reasons to get in the streets Saturday. Because if they can't even hold the Mar-a-Lago district, we can beat these assholes everywhere else, too. 

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN: WAR ARE THEY NOW? EDITION.

Riddim.

Remember “The Surge” in Iraq? Now, with Iran, we have multiple Surges -- of bullshit! From “Regime Change” to “Imminent Threat,” the excuses for the war keep coming and are all transparent fakes: Everyone knows Tubby pulled this caper a.) to distract from the Epstein Files and b.) because he’s nuts, and not just playing nuts as a strategic thing but plain nuts and surrounded by suck-ups who dare not challenge his insane and homicidal whims.

The Prestige Press is talking about the conflagration of the Middle East like it’s D-Day and the “D” doesn’t stand for Duh (Axios: “Trump mulls risky Kharg Island takeover to force Iran to open strait.” Fat Boy probably thinks it’s like Skull Island or some other comic book movie thing. I wonder if they let him push around toy soldiers on a map with a long stick.) The more bought-in wingnut publications are trying to fast-forward the rubes to dreams of Glorious Victory (Washington Times: “Rival opposition groups jockey for primacy in a post-regime Iran” -- this conjures images of guys in Ayatollah outfits standing on soapboxes going "If elected I pledge --" before they're blown to smithereens).

My favorite may be ham-faced pundit Erick Erickson, in this bit before his paywall mercifully intervenes:

I would prefer it if we thoroughly destabilized the regime, and the people could take it back. That is the ideal goal. I have had conversations with some intimately familiar with both the President and Prime Minister Netanyahu’s thinking, who have also spoken to those tied to the Saudi Crown Prince...

I like to think these "intimately familiar" sources are just some good ol' boys who got faked out by FBI agents dressed like sheiks, as in ABSCAM.

Trump’s factota have no interest in running the country, let alone the war, in a competent manner but they do work hard at propaganda: Here’s the latest load shovel-passed to the Wall Street Journal: 

Trump Told Inner Circle Some Mass Deportation Policies Went Too Far

President directs a new approach as some advisers believe immigration is no longer as strong a political issue for Trump

 “If The Czar Only Knew” turns into “Pssst, I Hear Someone Told The Czar and He’s Deeply Concerned!” 

WASHINGTON—President Trump is seeking to lower the profile of his mass deportation effort, and has directed his top advisers to adopt a new approach on one of his central campaign promises, according to people familiar with the matter.

In conversations with top advisers and his wife Melania, Trump has become convinced that some of his administration’s deportation policies have gone too far, and voters don’t like the term “mass deportation.” 

“Dunnald. Dees ICE is nawt good.”

“So have ‘em put your glass in the chiller instead. Now leave me alone, I’m busy pushing these soldiers around with a stick.” 

The president has told them he wants to see more attention on arresting “bad guys” and less chaos in American cities, according to people familiar with the matter.

So now when they kidnap normal people their social media staff will paste gang tats on them with Photoshop -- hang on, they already tried that. Well, then my guess is this is just an ass-covering fraud! Always a safe bet.

As usual, subscribers got five ROY EDROSO BREAKS IT DOWN editions this week -- here’s a free one for non-subscribers, inspired by the New York Times’ ridiculous attempt to cover for Trump’s Caligulan humiliation of his subordinates with improperly-sized shoes. I think mine's a little more ridiculous but frankly it's a close call.  

ROY’S 2026 OSCAR PREDICTIONS (FOR ENTERTAINMENT PURPOSES ONLY)

OK cats and kitties it’s OSCAR DAY! Feel the excitement! 

I've been making Oscar predictions for years, peppered with what I used to call “sucker bets” until I realized I was using that term incorrectly. What I meant was, I sometimes get so sure that one specific nominee is perfectly suited to winning that I convince myself this feeling for the justice of their claim is actually a premonition of victory. That is, I play hunches.

That has worked out for me a few times, most spectacularly with Green Book in 2019*. My strong hunch was that Roma was too much more like a museum installation than a movie (at the time, that is -- by 2021, the similarly offbeat Nomadland was able to win) and Green Book was the kind of slop the dopes like (see also CODA). 

But usually my long shots don’t work out. In Oscar as in baseball, the sabermetricians have won out -- when I look at the vast resources employed by GoldDerby or other such award handicapping sites, and how influenced they are by the Bill James method and, of course, the crunches of Kalshi and Polymarket, I feel like some old sweaty, suspenders-wearing gump out of Damon Runyon at the sports desk saying a team is “due” and “has heart” while the crisp sabermetricians run their algos and put bets in DraftKings. 

This year I’m leaning in the direction of conventional wisdom, mainly based on GoldDerby and such like. But you know what? I am more an antique Runyon than a James. If it’s not fun and a little fanciful, I don’t see the point. So I do have a few, let us say, outside choices, marked here with a 🍭 icon. Keep that in mind and remember: For entertainment purposes only! 

(My reviews of the ten Best Picture nominees:  Bugonia, F1, Frankenstein, Hamnet, Marty Supreme, One Battle After Another, The Secret Agent, Sentimental Value, Sinners, and Train Dreams.)

* year award was presented, not when movie debuted

🍭 BEST PICTURE: Sinners. I buy the theory that it’s between this and One Battle After Another. Best reason to lean Sinners’ way is the magic of the premise. That other recent black visionary film Get Out had it too, but eight years ago the voters weren’t ready (plus Peele’s application of the magic tends creepy-negative, something else voters usually avoid). This year they’re ready. I LOST!

BEST ACTOR: Michael B. Jordan, Sinners. God did I want to put Ethan Hawke here!  I still have a strong feeling that he may upset and I may put down a side bet on him. But the odds are too great. Aside from Hawke, the contenders here are subtle -- that is, the performances of Moura and DiCaprio are vivid but not showy, and while Chalamet is energetic let’s just say he doesn’t show a lot of range (except from his previous more languid characterizations). Jordan’s twins are distinct in the way Jeremy Irons’ were in Dead Ringers; no giving one of them a higher voice or anything like that, just different responses to the same trauma. And he makes the sale.

BEST ACTRESS: Jessie Buckley, Hamnet. I have no Ethan Hawke premonitions for Rose Byrne, though her performance in If I Had Legs I’d Kick You had not only sensitivity and full character immersion but also nerve -- showing that woman’s collapse without flashy thespic signposts, just letting us see what she would do, was bold and paid off. But Buckley was excellent and she got the tears. I missed Kate Hudson, to my shame; Reinsve and Stone were excellent. But this isn’t their year.

🍭 BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR: Delroy Lindo, Sinners. From the moment Stack, Smoke, and Sammie came upon Delta Slim with his harmonica I reveled in this old pro’s performance and I know I’m not the only one. As I mentioned in my Sinners review, the story he tells after he and the guys drive through a chain gang containing some old friends is, beat by beat, an acting lesson. All honor to the other nominees, including Sean Penn -- who is favored here, but whose expressionistic performance, while well-suited to the movie, seems to me like the kind of thing that would turns some voters off.  I LOST!

🍭 BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Teyana Taylor, One Battle After Another. Sort of a long shot; she was favored until Amy Madigan moved up, and was possibly pushed down by some controversy over the character’s allegedly stereotypical roots. Me? I think that’s like saying Aunt Gladys relies on stereotypes of Wiccans. Until this moment I was predicting Madigan -- yeah, I know what I just said about Sean Penn, but from what little I saw of Weapons (sorry I hate child-peril movies) Aunt Gladys doesn’t seem that out of key with the other characters -- just more interesting. All the other nominees are great but subtle, but Madigan and Taylor punched through the screen and I think Taylor’s presence in a top nominee film gets the win.  I LOST!

BEST DIRECTOR: Paul Thomas Anderson, One Battle After Another. 

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY: Ryan Coogler, Sinners.

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY: Paul Thomas Anderson, One Battle After Another.

No need to make this complicated. Ryan Coogler will be around a long time.

🍭 BEST CASTING: Jennifer Venditti, Marty Supreme. Fun new category! Sinners is favored but of all these nominees I was most captivated by the widely varied human beings who turned up in The Secret Agent -- it was like Jodorowsky meets Costa-Gavras. But the Academy voters probably know about and approve of the real-life non-actor machers Safdie seamlessly fit into his movie.  I LOST!

🍭BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY: Autumn Durald Arkapaw, Sinners. Cotton fields, rickety main street, deep dark woods, smoky club, all o’ercast with magic. The favored OBAA image-making is pretty cool, too, but with a brighter, flatter California palate, and I think Arkapaw has the edge in lushness. 

🍭 BEST EDITING: Ronald Bronstein and Josh Safdie, Marty Supreme. Car go fast means = good editing? Bullitt/F1! Tricky storytelling = good editing? The Social Network/OBBA! But as with winners like Whiplash and Dunkirk, voters dig cutting that really feels kinetic.  I LOST!

BEST SCORE: Ludwig Goransson, Sinners. Category is stacked, but the scene in which Annie and Smoke meet after years and renegotiate their union, with the blues sounds turning into something more like symphonic, did it for me. (Don’t be surprised if Max Richter’s Hamnet score leaps in, though; maybe people will attribute their tears to it.)

BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN: Tamara Deverell and Shane Vieau, Frankenstein.

BEST COSTUME DESIGN: Kate Hawley, Frankenstein.

BEST MAKEUP AND HAIRSTYLING: Mike Hill, Jordan Samuel, and Cliona Furey, Frankenstein

Outside chance for another win for Ruth E. Carter, the Edith Head of black cinema. But del Toro movies sure look designed.

BEST SONG: “Golden,” KPop Demon Hunters. Duh.

🍭 BEST SOUND: Amanda Villavieja, Laia Casanovas and Yasmina Praderas, Sirat. I have an explanation! Everyone says F1 and maybe in the theater the cars sounded great but at home I didn’t feel it; plus I couldn’t make out what Javier Bardem was saying half the time and I know that was not me. As with Sound of Metal in 2019, part of idea of Sirat (I am told) is the sound. Voters love when they can recognize that.  I LOST!

BEST INTERNATIONAL FILM: Sentimental Value. Nearly always, a Best Picture nomination plus a Best Director nomination makes this inevitable. 

BEST ANIMATED SHORT FILM: Florence Miailhe and Ron Dyens, Butterfly.  I LOST!

BEST LIVE ACTION SHORT FILM: Lee Knight and James Dean, A Friend of Dorothy.  I LOST!

BEST DOCUMENTARY SHORT FILM: Joshua Seftel and Conall Jones, All the Empty Rooms.

I’ve actually seen 13 of these 15 nominees, which is probably the most dangerous ground on which to predict. They're all good! I wavered on a few: Two People Exchanging Saliva is very much in the mode of the 2024 Live Short winner I Am Not a Robot (this category is very rich this year), and I loved The Girl Who Cried Pearls. But I agree with the oddsmakers on these. And maybe they'll bring cuddly old Miriam Margolyes out on stage for it. (BTW, see Perfectly a Strangeness if you can. Such an eerie little thing.)

BEST VISUAL EFFECTS: Joe Letteri, Richard Baneham, Eric Saindon and Daniel Barrett, Avatar: Fire and Ash. Love them 3-D living cartoon cat people! 

BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE: Geeta Gandbhir, Alisa Payne, Nikon Kwantu and Sam Bisbee, The Perfect Neighbor. Haven’t seen a one, but my wife loved it.   I LOST!

There you go, folks! Don’t lose all your money! 

UPDATE: I did 61% -- not my worst, not my best! All honor to the winners, who were very good. 

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN: I'D LIKE TO THANK THE LITTLE PEOPLE EDITION.

Look, they can't all be winners.

One of the neat things about human beings is, we can be suffering through horrific political and societal collapse and still find fun and excitement in stupid diversions. For a lot of you it's sports -- for me it's the Oscars, which gets me to watch a bunch of movies at the beginning of the year and, when the awards are imminent (they're on Sunday night), puzzle over possible winners. I'll have those predictions by Sunday afternoon -- meantime if you wish you can pursue my reviews of the ten Best Picture nominees:  Bugonia, F1, Frankenstein, Hamnet, Marty Supreme, One Battle After Another, The Secret Agent, Sentimental Value, Sinners, and Train Dreams. 

Also our first ROY EDROSO BREAKS IT DOWN freebie this week is related; it's one of our Fun Friday, audience-participation things -- what are some of your favorite awards show moments? (BTW there are a lot of All Best Picture Winners Ranked lists out there, but let us never forget that Gone With The Wind is the absolute worst.)

OK, coffee break over, everyone back on your heads! The week in America was the absolute worst too. In Operation Epstein Fury, we killed a bunch of Iranians of all ages and some of our own servicemembers while Tubby yammered whatever contradictory ideas about what's going on went sloshing through his brain, his mouthpiece Drunky Pete snarled at the press for not printing his preferred bullshit, and Israel threw in extra war crimes for shits and giggles. Oh, and Tubby threw Putin a piece of the action. Trumpwar: Like regular war only stupider.

American conservatives are doing their part for the war effort by intensifying their usual demands that all Muslims be thrown out of the U.S., with Somehow Senator Tommy Tuberville taking the lead. (Why NPR calls Tuberville's ravings bigotry-in-quotes rather than just plain bigotry is beyond me -- haha, kidding, we all know why.) Some, like Erick Erickson, try for a Daily Double by blaming some crimes by Muslim-Americans on Democrats because they refuse to fund the DHS/ICE death machine, though it's hard to see how their ham-fisted immigrant hunts would have stopped these citizens and legally-present residents anyway -- I know their goons attack those people too, but it's a hell of a roundabout way of get at them; I guess their hope is that Tubby will just authorize outright racial pogroms, so that white people will be the ones committing all the crimes in America instead of just most of them.   

Oh, and here's your fuckface of the week, Nathan Cavanaugh, the smug little DOGE shit who fucked up the National Endowment for the Humanities for "DEI" content that, his recently released testimony in a lawsuit reveals, he identified simply by the presence of buzzwords offensive to Tubby ("because it explicitly says LGBTQ"). He said under examination that he had been made qualified to judge such material, despite no relevant experience, by "reading books and being well-informed outside of traditional experience"; under further questioning about the books that so educated him, Cavanaugh admits "there were no books." So it's fair to assume he just listened to Joe Rogan and took part in typical Young Republican edgelord chats until Elon Musk recruited him for his wrecking crew. Nuremberg II is gonna be lit. 

Oh, yeah, there's another ROY EDROSO BREAKS IT DOWN freebie, about AI-generated actress Tilly Norwood; it starts with a rundown of some of my more measured commentary on the LLM scam, which is fortunate because by the time I got to addressing the insane video they sorta-created to promote this slop-hologram my rage was incandescent and not necessarily coherent. But see what you can make of it! 

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN: IRAQ BUT DUMBER EDITION.

Doo-wop is such a deep well.

It’s Drunky Pete Warfighter time! It’s a weird war for sure, done Trump style -- no warning, no reason, and especially no serious attempt to get the public onside. I mean they’re claiming this is not a new war (or not a war at all, depending on who’s phumphering), merely Trump ending Iran’s 47-year war on us, which is so dumb only hardcore neocons can even pretend to believe it, and putting out social media video with cut-ups from war and superhero movies that even the dumbest MAGA will find insulting to their intelligence. 

Meanwhile, as we saw with his war on fishing boats, Trump bombs combatants and non-combatants alike  and declares this a great success every day, amplified by the ballwashers of the Prestige Press (e.g., “As Iran war rages, Israel seizes chance to finish the job against Hezbollah”). 

God knows you’ve seen plenty about how nuts this is, but if you want more and better, have I got a two-parter for you at ROY EDROSO BREAKS IT DOWN! It’s about the similarities and differences between this stupid war and the 2003 stupid war in Iraq. Here’s Part One and Part Two. These are FREE to non-subscribers; subscribers get this kind of thing five days a week for low, low prices, just saying.

Lastly, I want to point out that Trump already showed he wants to fuck with accurate economic measures by firing people who make sure they’re accurate, so as bad as the new jobs report is? You know it’s worse. And it’s not gonna get better until we get these guys out, so check your registration, volunteer as a poll-watcher, and tell your electeds not to pass the SAVE Act or any other Trump election overturn scheme.   

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN: TOO GRIM TO BE FUNNY & VICE VERSA EDITION.

Ry Cooder doesn't get enough love.

If the actions of this administration weren’t so harmful to actual human beings, I could enjoy them as living satires of human folly. Kansas demanding trans people turn over their drivers’ licenses? (Now driving while trans is even more dangerous than driving while black -- and if you’re tempted to say, “well, they’re not going to kill trans drivers,” maybe check the eliminationist rhetoric conservatives have mainstreamed.) And forbidding U.S. military officers to attend Ivy League schools because they might be taught “social justice activism”? (Because once exposed to woke education -- which to a ruff tuff creampuff like Hegseth is synonymous with indoctrination, because in his conception of society no one would ever become a teacher except to bend the young to their will -- even the most tough-minded serviceman helplessly succumbs and turns hippie.)

At least we can enjoy the Ellisons’ acquisition, via the Paramount Skydance takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery,  of CNN. True, the rightwing scheme of taking over and vandalizing media entities like CBS News as vengeance for years of perceived “liberal media” persecution is disgusting, but look on the bright side: Those entities were shit anyway. Every time I come across CNN in a waiting room or rest home, it’s bawling some LCD bullshit as if trying to get the attention of hyperactive monkeys. True, whatever capacity these institutions had for investigative journalism will be wrecked, but let’s face it, their will to make good use of those resources was already fading with their ratings anyway; the real talent is all in independent media now, and the opportunity to put some muscle behind it and make a real difference is there waiting for some smart, civic-minded rich guy to pick it up -- now, if only there were more (or any) smart, civic-minded rich guys out there.

This week’s ROY EDROSO BREAKS IT DOWN freebie (yes, just one, this particular indie journo enterprise needs paid subscribers, and can’t be giving it away like a soft-hearted country gal in the big city) is a post-mortem not so much on Tuesday’s State of the Union as on the very idea of paying attention to Tubby’s cheeseball spectacles in the first place. I mean, the guy who’s planning to celebrate America’s 250th anniversary with a wrestling match is not going to show us anything except how low the country has sunk, and we know, brother, we know. 

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN: A TARIFF-IC REVERSAL EDITION.

A little spring for your step.

Tubby got defied by the usually compliant U.S. Supreme Court on tariffs, which just goes to show that in this country a Republican president can do all kinds of evil shit but he better not fuck with the shareholders’ money, because that’s more serious than death.

Being who and what he is, Trump says he’s gonna find a loophole, probably based on some stray comments by Justice Gorsuch in his concurrence with Roberts’ opinion. (It makes sense that Gorsuch, trying very hard to play the reasonable non-joiner in his filing, winds up giving Trump something he can at least pretend supports his actions.) 

It’s worth remembering that Trump’s not in there to help anyone but himself. Just because he lets billionaires continue to get off tax- and consequence-free doesn’t mean he’s actively trying to help them. He has a nostalgic feeling for Reagan-era oligarchy, and considers the rich endlessly fucking the poor to be the natural order of things, but that just means keeping the status quo -- he still needles the oligarchs for tributes and donations, and as he gets more senile and belligerent I expect we’ll see him make them carry him around in a chair like Idi Amin. 

But the tariffs only matter to him as an idée fixe -- something he’s convinced will be a big success because he’s a genius and everything he does is brilliant. He doesn’t care if the SCOTUS ruling makes his pursuit of alternate justifications even more painful for his subjects, who already chafe at the high prices the now-outlawed tariffs caused. If they squawk, that just means more people to tell “fuck you” as he steers the ship of state into an iceberg. 

The ROY EDROSO BREAKS IT DOWN free issues for this week predate the tariff ruling but touch upon the logic I discuss: There’s this one about the vandal mentality of Trump and his crew -- how positive results for his supporters are not anywhere near as important as punishment of his, and the conservative movement’s, longtime enemies -- and here’s another, a little more optimistic, on how that nihilism is affecting a lot of voters who were heretofore happy to go along with the gag.

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN: BIG FASH AND SMALL VICTORIES EDITION.

Eatin' up suckers as if I was Pac-Man.

 Even though they lie like they breathe and are still fucking shit up in Minneapolis, the administration’s announcement that DHS is doing a “drawdown” there is meaningful because it shows that even these id monsters realize they’ve run into heavy weather. Their whole  M.O. has been smash-and-grab from the DOGE rampage to now; letting the peons see that they don’t give a shit what they think is part of the terrorization process. So when they get stopped, as opposed to just running out of things to destroy, it’s noteworthy -- it means they actually have been made to give a shit, which means their terrorism has not yet reached escape velocity, and can be effectively challenged.

Again, don’t get it twisted -- they’re still building concentration camps (which the Prestige Press still has trouble calling by their proper name, despite the obvious intended purpose of spending billions of dollars on giant prisons for brown and black people). But those camps are getting pushback even in towns not associated with “resistance” -- and by pushback I mean some towns are actually getting  those camps stopped. Yeah, they can always go somewhere else, but it's meaningful whenever someone says "no" and they can't just walk over them; their carte blanche is tarnished.

And voters are picking up on it -- which is clearly why Gallup said, hey, guess we ought to stop doing Presidential approval polling because huggermugger rutabaga synergy etc. This cowardice is discussed in this week’s first ROY EDROSO BREAKS IT DOWN freebie, as is the misbehavior of  Tubby’s moll Bondi at a Congressional hearing -- which shows, among other things, that at least a few of his gang are still out there making a show of impunity; I think it’s meant to rally and reassure such adherents as they still have, because normies have all but given up on them.

Our remaining REBID freebie is a little dramatic scene, such as some of you enjoy, about how Tubby intends to fight back against growing disapproval of his anti-immigrant policies. Worth a try, anyway.

I’ll just add that The Atlantic, like the New Yorker and other classy mags before them, has shipped a Rod Dreher puff piece, taking his pseud sanctimony and Just The Tip Trumperism at face value (“’I had never been enthusiastic about Trump,’ Dreher told me, ‘but I was enthusiastic about him this time because it seemed like only somebody like him could put a stop’ to ‘wokeness and the madness of transgenderism’”). The author even tells us “the story of Dreher’s personal Calvary begins with his father,” and his divorce “took a terrible toll and left him almost entirely alone.” An asshole dad and a divorce! Can you blame the guy for being a fascist? Anyway, here and here are a couple of my old funsies at the wispy God-botherer’s expense.  Enjoy! 

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN: LEMON, IT'S WEDNESDAY EDITION.

Sabor.

Here’s where I'd repeat the 30 Rock What A Week joke except I assume even people who never saw the show know that one by now because every week is What A Week. 

ICE and Border Patrol continue their reign of terror in Minneapolis (and elsewhere; let’s not forget they haven’t completely vacated their previous terrorization targets like Chicago and Los Angeles). I reckon this week’s historical shorthand -- i.e., what Rick Perlstein or whoever will use to portray Feb. 1-7 years hence, if we haven’t all been locked up in concentration camps -- would be feds snatching a child and being forced to give him back, only to try and snatch him back and snatch another child (yes, I know they snatch children all the time), and a federal agent kicking a puppy, which matches perfectly the purpose and character of these occupations. Some fucking drawdown. 

Also proceeding apace: The enshittification of the news. As Bari Weiss continues to sabotage CBS News, Jeff Bezos obliged Mr. Big with some massive layoffs at the Washington Post. Our first ROY EDROSO BREAKS IT DOWN freebie for non-subscribers gets into that, and the long-term revenge mission behind it. 

Meanwhile Tubby’s mayhem continues. Facing dismal polls (and some truly catastrophic special election results) he’s trying to steal the midterms with the help of Tulsi Gabbard -- whose unusual presence at the FBI raid on the Georgia 2020 election files is further proof that they need a validated trusty on hand every time they do something shady to keep the agents from blowing the whistle. And, apparently hoping to shore up his hardcore constituency, he circulated a racist video of the Obamas. 

And Trump’s shutting down the Kennedy Center for two years, allegedly for renovations (supported by his longtime lies about the building’s condition) but obviously because artists are bailing left and right because of his thuggish management. His dreams of what the place could be are the subject of our second ROY EDROSO BREAKS IT DOWN freebie, which also alludes in the end to another Trump headline from the week -- one less damaging than the others but every bit as emblematic.

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN: IS IT FASH YET? EDITION.

You better run.

Tubby and his mob have been busy, seizing voting records in Georgia (presumably to manipulate in furtherance of his years-long Stolen Election scam) and arresting black journalists for the crime of covering a protest in a Minneapolis church. Looks like I was right on the money calling them Nazis well before they began their rampages.

Naturally, as they get more obvious about their fascism -- so much so that even centrists who doubted it are coming around --  their Prestige Press enablers increasingly rush to say nuh-uh. Did you guess Megan McArdle would be among them? My sympathies, you’ve been paying attention! 

McArdle is willing to admit to “Trump’s authoritarian instincts, bellicose contempt for norms and fundamental disrespect for America’s democratic traditions,” presumably because those abstractions sound much better than “Sending masked goons to abduct and murder citizens, using the Armed Forces to loot foreign countries and put the money in The Leader’s private offshore account, shaking down law firms and college for payoffs, etc.” 

But fascism? Come now, he’s no Hitler -- the courts still oppose him, sometimes, without actually punishing him or anyone else for his crimes (thanks, Supreme Court!). Though McArdle says “America looks less like a liberal democracy than it did a decade ago — much less than I would have believed possible before 2016,” she judges it impossible that in the next two or five or ten years he can surprise her yet again and make it all the way to full Hitler. Fool me twice, right? 

Anyway, McArdle says, it’s you stupid resistance liberals who are the real problem, using big fancy words like “fascist” that just confuse people:

Saying “He’s a fascist” (or an authoritarian, or a caudillo) will not do the trick. It’s more likely to be counterproductive, as people look up from our scribblings and observe that elections are still happening, courts are still demanding due process and the press is still free to complain about Dear Leader... it will be much easier to convince them that he’s just a bad president who should be replaced by someone who has different policies. 

So stop being dramatic when everything is so (relatively) normal, and count on fixing this with the free elections that will certainly be allowed once Tulsi Gabbard gets done making those seized Georgia ballots conform to the boss’ expectations! 

Here’s your ROY EDROSO BREAKS IT DOWN freebie for the week, on what I made of the alleged “drawdown” in Minneapolis -- briefly, that MPLS people power has made the goon squad sweat, but don’t trust them to actually start acting like legitimate law enforcement now. For one thing, they lie like they breathe; for another, being (I will say it again) fascists, they are committed to breaking their enemies, which is how they perceive those who oppose their vicious and undemocratic policies, and will not stop until someone stops them. Fortunately, there are a whole lot more of us than there are of them, and unlike McArdle we’re not even pretending to be deceived about what they’re doing. 

One last note: Most of you know what evil brain poison Scientology is. Sometimes the story of one victim can tell that tale better than anything else, and my old boss Tony Ortega has done a great job with the sad story of Romey Beliles. Read it here. 

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN: TAKE IT EASY BUT TAKE IT EDITION.

You got to spread a warnin' when the army they come in.

All honor and best of luck to the comrades in Minneapolis on general strike today. The ICE goons are feeling the added chill, and have sent their prevaricators and propagandists into overdrive:

Walz “is courting more ugly incidents,” the Wall Street Journal editorial page scolds. “The President has the legal authority to unleash ICE, and the agents are doing what they are told to do. The way to defeat the Trump policy is at the ballot box, not by obstructing agents in violation of the law.” National Review’s Noah Rothman argues, “What Walz is advising his citizens to do is likely to result in more violence and, potentially, more death.” Zachary Faria writes in the Washington Examiner, “What you have with ICE agents in Minneapolis is people exercising the lawful authority to detain illegal immigrants and, on the other end of that, anyone interfering with federal law enforcement actions.”

The premise underpinning this argument is that ICE is acting legally and in the service of legitimate immigration-enforcement goals. That assumption is difficult to square with on-the-ground reporting.

And that’s from Mr. On The Other Hand himself, Jon Chait! Even he smells what the Prestige Press is cooking. Meanwhile lower-end lie diffusers are trying to tell us the monstrous child abductors are actually just twyinh to hewp the widdle babies:

No one believes that -- they don’t, you don’t, even the few rage-goblins still sporting MAGA red believe that. What they do believe in is the power of the big lie. It got them this far, they reason (for want of a better word), and besides, what else have they got? So they push their flunkies in the press to uncritically repurpose their press releases and send their “influencers” to cities targeted by Trump to generate up new bullshit. They’ve even sent a few goons to Baltimore, probably inspired by Tubby’s tweeted footage of a few dirty alleys that he claimed as proof that the city was a “rodent-infested mess” in 2019. Maybe Nick Shirley will take video of the Old Town Mall and tell his rubes it’s City Hall and Brandon Scott is from Somalia. 

Like I said, it’s all they know: Hatred of cities and hatred of foreigners have worked for them in the past, and to truth and good governance they are strangers. But as both Tubby and the economy deteriorate before their eyes voters are less inclined to go for it again. 

It was another great week at ROY EDROSO BREAKS IT DOWN -- here’s a freebie for non-subscribers, about the considerable downsides to being a Trump toady, the generous pay packet notwithstanding. Speaking of money, subscriptions are cheap, treat yourself. 

Update. That the rightwing press keeps peddling claims that ICE is actually helping these children by kidnapping them -- even as they continue to kidnap children -- is merely the most outraging of all these outrages.