Dear Everybody:
The big news today was Trump’s sending a deranged (and I do mean deranged) letter to the ambassador of Norway:
--The letter: "Dear Ambassador, Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace, although it will always be predominant, but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America. Denmark cannot protect that land from Russia or China, and why do they have a ‘right of ownership’ anyway? There are no written documents, it’s only that a boat landed there hundreds of years ago, but we had boats landing there, also. I have done more for NATO than any other person since its founding, and now NATO should do something for the United States. The World is not secure unless we have Complete and Total Control of Greenland. Thank you! President Donald J. Trump."
--The letter was questioned by news outlets because it was so insane. Raw Story: "The authenticity of the letter was questioned by critics due to its ‘jaw-dropping’ content’ and ‘unhinged crazy talk.’"
--After it was confirmed to be authentic by the ambassador and by other people to whom Trump had sent it (it was forwarded by Trump’s NSC staff to multiple European ambassadors in Washington,) journalists and political commentators openly questioned whether Trump had suffered some sort of serious mental breakdown."
--Fact check (although fact-checking an insane person is a waste of time, but 1) the country of Norway has nothing to do with awarding the Nobel Prize, it’s a separate, nonpolitical commission that just happens to be in Norway because that’s where Nobel was from; 2) Trump didn’t stop 8 wars, let alone 8 wars PLUS; 3) Denmark doesn’t protect Greenland--NATO does; 4) Denmark’s right of ownership is not just a boat landing there hundreds of years ago--it’s position was formalized in a treaty signed in 1919 and another signed in 1953, when it was incorporated into Denmark, though it remains self-governed and has its own parliament; 5) the US certainly didn’t have boats landing there hundreds of years ago like Denmark and/or the Vikings because we didn’t exist as a country until 250 years ago; 6) there is no threat to Greenland from Russia or China--China hasn’t had a ship in Greenland waters in over 10 years and during that period of time, the number of US installations in Greenland went from 17 to 1 as a result of US determinations that they were not needed; 7) Trump hasn’t done more for NATO than anybody else, except if you count trying to destroy it; 8) Trump...oh, what’s the use? Trump’s decision has nothing to do with logic and/or the facts.
--British author Daniel Hannan: "This is plainly deranged. He is a threat to his country and the world. The Nixon, Clinton, and indeed, Trump impeachments were triggered by less."
--Dem Senator Brian Schatz: "I don’t see how you can be a serious person and not find this extremely worrisome. He is not stable at all, and his reality is warped..."
--Bill Kristol: "Sometimes this White House inflicts on us a story that is so brainstoppingly stupid that it’s a danger even to read or write about it--you can feel your neurons giving up the ghost...So it is with Donald Trump’s latest machinations to acquire Greenland..."
--Jonathan Reiner: "This letter, and the fact that it was to be distributed to other European countries, should trigger a bipartisan congressional inquiry into the President’s fitness."
--Anne Applebaum: "We now have a full-blown European-American crisis, and for no reason that the President is able to articulate."
--Rick Wilson: "Trump’s new gigantic temper tantrum over Norway is deep into 25th Amendment territory. Hell, at this point 25th Amendment territory is far in the rearview mirror and we are descending further into madness by the moment."
--George Conway: "The entire world knows we have a president who’s mentally ill. When are we as a nation going to start talking about that?"
--Dan Hodges: "Whatever people’s views on Trump’s broader politics, these are the words of a man who is having some sort of serious mental breakdown. This is not simply rhetoric designed to provoke a response. I’m not sure how much longer US lawmakers and the US cabinet can ignore this fact."
--Dem Rep Eric Swalwell: "25."
--Dem Senator Ed Markey: "Invoke the 25th Amendment."
--Former Tea Party Rep Joe Walsh: "25th Amendment. Now."
--Andrea Junker: "I think it’s worth asking again--and seriously--what exactly do we have a 25th Amendment for if not for this?"
As if that wasn’t enough to convince people Trump’s gone mad, he is now starting a Board of Peace:
--Trump calls it "the most impressive and consequential Board ever assembled." He has the idea that it would replace the UN Security Council.
--The price for joining the board is $1 billion dollars. That’s right. $1 BILLION DOLLARS.
--Trump would, of course, be the head of it, and he gets to pick who else is on it.
-- Putin confirmed that he has been asked to join, and so has Belarus’s Alexander Lukashenko.
The Borowitz Report: "Washington--In a daring daytime mission on Monday, aircraft from the European members of NATO flew over the White House and sprayed its airspace with antipsychotic medication...Explaining the rationale behind the mission, Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere said, ‘We saw his letter to me as a cry for help.’"
The Atlantic: "Fletcher Knebel, author of SEVEN DAYS IN MAY, wrote a less well-known book called NIGHT OF CAMP DAVID that eerily describes a crazy president who covets Canada and control of Scandinavian countries."
--from the book: "’Force?’ the incredulous young senator asked. ‘You mean military force, Mr. President?’ ‘Yes, force,’ the president said. ‘Only if necessary, and I doubt it ever would be. There are other kinds of pressure,’ the president continued, ‘trade duties and barriers, financial measures, economic sanctions if you will.’ In the short term, however, the president’s first move would be to meet with the Russians--and to propose a nuclear alliance against China.’" (Wow!)
In ICE/Gestapo news:
--On Sunday at least 7 ICE agents stormed a house and took an elderly man out into the freezing cold wearing only his underwear and a blanket. (There’s video.) The agents had a battering ram (which they used) and silencers on their guns. (Why in God’s name would official agents of the government need silencers unless they were committing crimes?) They handcuffed him and detained him in spite of the fact that he was a US citizen.
--The old man was a member of the Hmong community, which came to the area from Laos in the 1970s after siding with the US in the Vietnam War.
--But, believe it or not, that’s not the worst part. The worst part is that they are now trying to smear him to cover up for their act (just like they did with Renee Good.)
--DHS spokeswoman Tricia Mclaughlin posted: "Yesterday in St. Paul, ICE conducted a targeted operation of 2 convicted sex offenders. One of the criminal targets had convictions for sex with a minor and sexual assault. The other target had convictions for sex assault with penetration in the first degree, domestic violence, and violating a protective order. Both also have convictions for failure to register as sex offenders. They both have final orders of removal from an immigration judge. The US citizen (she’s talking about the old man) lives with these two convicted sex offenders at the site of the operation. The individual refused to be fingerprinted or facially ID’d. He matched the description of the targets. As with any law enforcement agency, it is standard protocol to hold all individuals in a house of an operation for safety of the public and law enforcement. Both of these sexual predators remain AT LARGE In St. Paul. We will be providing the public with photos and descriptors to help us locate and apprehend these public safety threats."
--IF all this is true, and it’s a big IF, since ICE has lied about virtually every operation so far, including the shooting of Renee Good and of the woman they shot five times, all it means is that they arrested the wrong guy and are now trying to imply that he is guilty by association.
--Matt McDermott: "Incredible: this DHS statement isn’t a rebuttal--it’s a confession. They confirm terrorizing and humiliating an innocent American citizen. Not one word of apology for dragging him out of his home half-naked into the freezing cold."
--Attorney Blake Allen: "The main point being here that DHS is admitting to unlawfully detaining a US citizen and they’re now trying to smear him to obfuscate that fact."
--A. Scott Woodstuff: "Here’s a DHS official defending the fact that a warrantless search was performed against a US citizen without a criminal record, who was detained and walked out into the snow in his underwear, because the agents were searching for two other people who weren’t even there."
--(Note: Also, they apparently did not have a judicial warrant, which means they were guilty of breaking and entering by using a battering ram. And if the two guys they were looking for are that dangerous, why aren’t they in prison instead of out on parole and/or being monitored by the state? AND, if they have pictures and descriptions of the two men they’re supposedly looking for, they should have known this wasn’t the guy. Unless, of course, all Asians look alike.)
--donttrustfearhawkers: "Let’s go after the offenders and protectors that hang out in the White House with as much zeal and enthusiasm!"
--Marina Kobas: "These fucking animals."
--Apparently the old man isn’t the only one. Design4planeta reports: "I’ve seen them--the moms and toddlers out into negative wind chills without coats. The suffering is the feature, not the bug."
In other ICE/Gestapo news, the official police reports of what happened at the Renee Good shooting came out. She was shot four times, not three, twice in the chest, once in the forearm, once on the left side of the head.
--She was still alive when the EMTs arrived (after a number of minutes had elapsed in which ICE had refused to let a physician at the scene help her.) The EMTs found her unresponsive and not breathing, but she still had a heartbeat, though it was irregular. She died at the hospital.
--Her DOG was in the car. We knew her wife was, but not her dog.
--Frame-by-frame video evidence from the New York Times shows that the car made no contact with the ICE agent who shot her. Did you get that? NO CONTACT.
--The report includes the 911 calls people made. One of the callers said, "There’s 15 ICE agents, and they shot her, like, because she wouldn’t open her car door."
--Another 911 call: "They just shot a lady. Point-blank range in her car. She’s fuckin’ dead. They fuckin’ shot her. There’s like 50 ICE agents over here. Just get some fucking cops over here with some fucking balls!"
--Within 30 minutes the shooter, Jonathan Ross, was transported to an unspecified federal building. He was NOT taken to the hospital.
--We’re also finding out more about the CBS report that the ICE agent who shot her having "severe internal injuries to the torso." Turns out the news staff were highly skeptical of the story because there were only two "anonymous sources" and no corroboration, and it was missing crucial details, but the editor-in-chief Bari Weiss insisted on publishing the story immediately rather than waiting to confirm.
--Quote from one of the CBS newsroom people: "It was viewed as a thinly-veiled anonymous leak by the Trump administration to someone who’d carry it online."
Michelle Goldberg: "One reason Renee Good’s death was such a shock is that we’re not used to seeing law enforcement violence against middle-class white mothers. The citizenry has broadly recoiled; her killing, in addition to being a human tragedy, has been a public relations disaster for the administration...in the face of such wide-spread revulsion, the administration and its enablers have been trying to invent a terrorist threat to justify their increasingly unpopular siege of Minneapolis. That’s why the Justice Department pushed for a criminal investigation of Good’s partner, Becca, leading six federal prosecutors to quit in protest."
In Epstein news:
--GOP Senator Thomas Massie: ‘Why is this administration working harder to hide the Epstein files than prior administrations did to cover up Iran-Contra and Watergate?"
--A giant twelve-foot tribute to that birthday message Trump sent to Jeffrey Epstein has been erected in the National Mall. It looks like an open birthday card and has the naked-girl drawing and message Trump sent him.
In Resistance news:
--Kansas City, Missouri, passed a five-year-ban prohibiting non-municipal detention facilities.
--Bruce Springsteen has joined the fight: "ICE should get the fuck out of Minneapolis!"
Today is Martin Luther King, Jr., Day, in honor of a man who always stood up for peaceful protest and the rights of everybody. If he were here today, no doubt he would be in Minneapolis, standing alongside the peaceful protesters who are out there every day in the snow and freezing cold. In honor of him, here are some of the things he said:
--"Injustice anywhee is a threat to justice everywhere."
--"the time is always ripe to do right."
--"I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. That is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant."
--"The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges."
--"In the long run of history, destructive means cannot bring about constructive ends."
--"I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality."
--"Non-cooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good."
--""Let us rise up tonight with greater readiness. Let us stand with a greater determination. And let us move on in these powerful days, these days of challenge, to make America what it ought to be. We have an opportunity to make America a better nation."
--"I believe that what self-centered men have torn down, other-centered men can build up."
In other news:
--Trump did not issue a proclamation honoring Dr. King today. This marked the first time in more than four decades that a sitting president failed to acknowledge the holiday.
--The US Department of Labor posted an idyllic magazine cover of "Church Picnic" on its official website with the caption, 250 Years of One Nation Under God. Happy Sunday." (The magazine cover looked like something from the Saturday Evening Post of the 1950s and was by Arthur Sarnoff, which must mean the Norman Rockwell estate has gone through with their threat to sue them.)
--The House is struggling to pass a bunch of budget bills before the end of the month--and they’re leaving at the end of the week on yet another recess. Democrats are refusing to vote for the bill funding DHS unless there are major changes to ICE and the Border Patrol.
In good news:
--The US House of Representatives introduced a legislative proposal to repeal funding for ICE and give it to health care tax credits.
--New Virginia governor Democrat Abigail Spanberger asked Trump appointees to the board of the University of Virginia to all resign, and they did.
--The Trump Store in Philadelphia has gone out of business due to lagging sales.
Best comment of the day, from Martin Luther King, Jr.: "We will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream."
Today’s fragment of poetry, from one of the loveliest of all the African-American spirituals: "There is a balm in Gilead to make the wounded whole..."
Keep calm and carry on,
Connie Willis