ICE Murders "F*king Bitch" Mother

 

Walking downtown today, at the corner of Lafayette and Exeter roads I spotted a group of 20 mostly elderly men and women holding up posters. Cars were honking and flashing thumbs up, and there was the occasional bearded man leaning out of the window of his pickup truck flashing the middle finger at them. They responded, "We love you to."

They could have said, "I'm not mad at you," as Renee Good told her executioner in Minneapolis.

They held signs saying, "Enforcement Is Now Execution," and "ICE=GESTAPO."

I stood there for about 15 minutes watching and listening, and I had never seen so many thumbs up or heard so many supportive honks from folks in passing traffic. And I've seen dozens of such sign holdings at that intersection, which is where citizen go in Hampton to register their opinions for public consumption. It's the Hampton version of Speakers' Corner in Hyde Park. That corner has hosted the local mad woman with her bullhorn, who rails about the conspiracy of the left. There has been a guy waving a Palestinian flag, and during elections there are MAGA mob people and Democrats on alternating days.

But today it was just citizens reacting to the murder in Minneapolis. One man in a pickup truck started shouting about Bill Clinton and spouting the cut and paste QANON stuff about leftist, elitist, DEI, replacements. 

But, then again, even a tiny blog like this attracts the MAGAmob, like the AI/BOT troll, which cuts and pastes the Stormfront/WarRoom/Infowars cant, triggered presumably by keywords, to which the algorithm responds, but which sometimes the Mad Dog troll just spins off into totally unrelated things about Hamas butchers in Gaza, when the blog was about Marjorie Taylor Green or  separation of church and state. The Mad Dog troll spun out the "radical leftists have seized control of the streets of Minneapolis," and of course, the ICE agents are the heroes for shooting the "f*king bitch." 

Those are just the "Invasion of the Body Snatchers," zombies who inhabit the internet and our town.

What I saw on Chris Hayes this morning was different, however. The tape from the ICE agent who fired his gun into the face of Renee Good, as she turned away from him. She had just told him, smiling, "I'm not mad at you," and then the blurred jumble as he switches from camera work to shooting, and then a voice, presumably but not necessarily his:  "Fucking bitch!"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0gyLICnWQE&t=261s

It doesn't really matter who shouted that-- whether it's the murderous ICE agent who fired the shot, or one of his accomplices--it was certainly not from some innocent bystander. "Fucking bitch" is how these masked vigilantes, these agents of Donald Trump and Stephen Miller and Kristi Noem saw her. 

Later, that got cleaned up on FOXNEWS by the QANON machine spinning that she was a sad lost soul, with a life in tatters, who had been groomed and sent out as a suicide bomber, likely by Biden and all the leftist Democrats.

Then there was the youtube of the sheriff of the county which includes Philadelphia. She is decked out in her full chief's regalia, five stars  on her collar. But she is what Vance would call a "DEI hire:" she is Black and she can barely parse a grammatical sentence. She clearly never went to Yale Law School, and could never get into Yale Law. 

And yet, AND YET, she clearly knows more law, what one might call "street law," than Vance will ever know. She begins by saying real police do not wear masks. She says no real police would ever fire into a moving car. She does not quote Tennessee v Garner (the Supreme Court ruling forbidding police firing at fleeing suspects) but she does not have to cite that decision, because she knows what real police do and she knows what murder is. She IS real police. Natural born POlice, as they would say in Baltimore. The real article, not a fake policeman, which is how she describes ICE agents.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FR750pj6AoM

You may wish for the perfect victim and the perfect spokesman for the purpose of waving the bloody shirt, but that never seems to happen. 

F*king Bitch and Her Executioner

What we have though, is enough: A woman who clearly meant no harm, murdered before our eyes and then, in Philadelphia,  a police who knows the difference between community police and Gestapo. 

Murder in Minnesota

 

Governor J.B. Pritzker of Illinois exhorted citizens to video ICE agents, and that has born fruit, as just a mile and a half from where Derek Chauvin was shown murdering George Floyd, an unnamed ICE agent is captured drawing his gun and shooting a woman trying to drive away from ICE agents, and not driving in a way which could have endangered any of them. 

In fact, of online chatter is accurate, one of the ICE agents shouted to her, "Get out of here!" in which case she was actually trying to comply with ICE orders, not evade them. This will have to await more review.

But as it stands currently, the videos show what can only be seen as cold blooded murder.

Oh, MAGAmob nerds will bleat about "context," and they will say the truth can only out in a court of law (which would be  rich, coming from them), and they will admonish us not to rush to judgment, but sometimes the video is irrefutable, as when January 6th thugs are captured on video bludgeoning Capitol Police. No, Donnie dear, those were not normal tourists simply looking for a bathroom.

Inevitably, the MAGAmob will whine about "she did not obey the command of the police officer!" which is, of course, irrelevant in a nation of laws as opposed to in a police state. The law says a policeman may not shoot at a fleeing suspect. That has not always been true, but it's been true since that question was decided in the Supreme Court in Tennessee v Garner. Never mind, every police department trains real police to never shoot at a moving car. 

And, of course the FOXNESS howlers blamed the victim in the most unctuous way possible--"Oh, she was a lost soul." A "Lost soul"--see we are all sympathy! "She was under thrall to the elite left who snatched up her mind and soul!" 

That was the product of the Trumpist negative research machine which quickly discovered she was a woman who had two children she did not live with, and another by another husband who she did live with and now lived in a lesbian relationship. So, oh, the FOXY folks will cry, she is just another leftist, gender changing nut job who predictably is a threat to all decent folk society and should be shot as she drives past you!

No, this time, you can believe your own eyes. They do not lie. Doesn't matter if she raised snakes and danced naked in the moonlight singing witch songs--all that matters is what she did or did not do at that incident and she drove away from police, turned her car to the right to steer away from the ICE agent on her left, who had drawn his gun as soon as she shifted from reverse to drive before she even moved forward even an inch. He was primed to shoot, programed to murder. 

From the video, it looks like cold blooded murder. In context, it looks like cold blooded murder.  

No protests about how she refused to obey a police officer's order changes any of what we can see. 

Let her drive away. You've got her license. You know who she is and where she lives. 

You cannot shoot a burglar in the back fleeing from your house, if you have chased them out. Not even in a stand your ground state. You cannot murder a person for not obeying an order. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mS3caI3di8c

If seeing is believing, then we can believe no ICE agent was being threatened, or in danger,  as Renee Nicole Good  tried to pull away from her captors. ICE agents may have been enraged that she did not follow their orders, but she had not just robbed a bank, and nobody was in hot pursuit. 

But for the MAGA nuts, seeing is not believing; believing is seeing. You do not see a murder; you see a righteous execution of a disobedient, brainwashed zombie lesbian mother. Your intolerance and hate marinates your brain and its visual pathways.

And the ICE agent firing at her was firing from the side of the car, into her window as she drove by him.

As the Minneapolis police chief remarked, "No matter what transpired, you do not fire into a moving vehicle."

But then ICE agents are not trained police. They are thugs with badges, recruited by a million dollar advertising campaign. They are not police--they just play police in their own minds.

There will be many replays, and technical analyses of this video, and Trump has already branded her a terrorist trying to run down ICE agents but we can see that's a lie.

The fact is, when Trump put into play twenty something males all gussied up in bullet proof vests and playing out their fantasies of being Seal Team Six hot shots, something like this was nearly inevitable.

They were sent into a Blue city to stir things up, to provoke mayhem and murder, and they did it.

The Second Amendment was a response to colonists not wanting the government to have a monopoly on violence. Now those same 2nd amendment freaks are justifying shooting this mother for the crime of panicking and fleeing. 

Of course, if she did have a gun, then the same people would be justifying her execution because she had a gun.

Is this making America Great Again?

Evelyn Mulray lies dead at the wheel, and all you can say, "This America, man."

The Things They Believe

 

One of Mad Dog's Favorite movies is "Men In Black," where Tommy Lee Jones buys up tabloids with pictures of space aliens on the front page because those are the only newspapers which have real news, as opposed to fake news, and the whole premise is that the government maintains a secret service to keep a lid on all the space aliens from Area 51 and beyond because "a person is smart, but people are stupid," and could not handle the truth. All the outlandish stuff we have always laughed off turns out to be true, and the reasonable sounding stuff is just fake news.

I laughed myself breathless during that film, but it turns out a lot of Americans are not laughing at this stuff--they take it both seriously and literally.

In 1945, at the end of World War Two, Dwight Eisenhower, Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, opened up the liberated concentration camps and directed photographers to document everything, "So nobody can ever say this did not happen."

It was a good thought, but it did not have the desired effect.

 But now we have a whole part of the electorate which believes in nothing and suspects everything. Standard methods of proof and validation have been abandoned and the only truth is that whatever the authorities say is wrong and likely malacious.

This might explain the election of Barack Obama with the votes of people who voted for Trump the next time: All that mattered to this mob is disruption.

So here are a few highlights from true believer MAGA mob acolytes, in no particular order, other than wow factor:

1. The Holocaust never happened

2. Neil Armstrong never landed on the moon: the moon landing was staged

3. The 9/11 attack was an inside job by the American government

4. The Sandy Hook massacre of children was faked; if you weren't at the morgue, you cannot know any child actually ever died

5. Childhood vaccines cause autism

6. Vaccines have been used to inject chips into unsuspecting Americans

7. Trump won his re-election bid in 2020 but Biden stole the election

8. Climate change is a Chinese hoax

9. A world wide cabal of pedophiles controls the Democratic Party and is directed by a guy named Soros, who also has a side gig starting wildfires in California with space lasers.

10. The Clintons murdered Vince Foster and Jeffrey Epstein

11. Justin Trudeau is the secret son of Fidel Castro

12. COVID 19 was a lab leak designed by Tony Fauci and executed by China

13. Haitian immigrants ate the pet dogs and cats of Ohio townsfolk and Democrats have imported immigrants to replace white voters and these voters are under the command of Democrats 

14. The FBI planted 274 agents to provoke the January 6th attacks

15. School shootings are planned and organized by ISIS to prompt gun control and disarm America.

16. Russia invaded Ukraine because the U.S. and Ukraine were secretly developing biological weapons

17. The murder rate in Washington, D.C. was cut massively by Trump's National Guard troops.

18. Polio vaccine caused more polio than polio epidemics

19. The January 6th attack was just a normal bunch of tourists trying to see the building: It was a day of love.

20. The President of Honduras, who had been sent to jail for drug trafficking, was just another innocent victim of Joe Biden.

This is the base belief package of American swing voters.

As usual, the ghost of Christopher Hitchens has the best summary. The irony is not lost on Mag Dog that the most illuminated truth comes from someone who actually no longer exists.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wSHGvi7bEc

Ah! Caracas!

 

In the words of Forrest Gump: And that's all I have to say about that:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QpUpQ6ExxM

It is not brief, but it is complete. 

Could not have said it better, nothing to add.

Cultural Relativism

 

The proper study of man is man. 

This is something I was told in college, at least in the Department of Anthropology, which was part of my major (which spanned three departments.) The Anthropology department was, by far, the most flamboyant, fun and exhilarating faculty on campus, as far as I was concerned, but, it must be admitted, the other departments I traveled through (chemistry, biology, sociology, psychology) were not populated by the most scintillating specimens of humanity.

The anthropologists had lived exotic places, like Alaska, Greenland, Africa and New Zealand and they sported beards and nothing could shock them.

On Wednesday evenings they did "Anthro flicks" which included "Dead Birds" about warring tribes in New Guinea. They were the antidote to the chemistry and biology faculty who seemed intent on shrinking our brains; the anthropologists naturally expanded our brains.

Among the books they submitted for our consideration was Colin Turnbull's "The Mountain People."

Now, this was a cunning choice. "Cultural Relativity" was all the rage in academic circles in the mid 1960's, an argument that we should not judge other cultures as being lovely or vile, because we all see others through the lenses formed in our own cultures. To be scientific, we should simply describe, as accurately and dispassionately as we can, what we see as the values by which other cultures live. But we should not judge, lest we be judged.

Turnbull had written "The Forest People" about the Bantu, and he tried to remain objective--nevertheless the virtues of their kindness, cooperation and altruism shined through. But when it came to the Ik, a hunter gatherer people who were shunted into the highlands between Sudan, Kenya and Uganda, with resultant starvation, deprivation and impoverishment, the usual manifestations of "human kindness" withered, and they would laugh at babies who crawled into cooking fires--one less mouth to feed. 

It was hard to describe objectively people who had no sympathy, and even antipathy, toward their own children. 

Nevertheless, the exercise of trying to see people whose culture fostered and embraced what looked like horrific practices is mind expanding.

If you look at the Third Reich, you have the value of extolling the Volk, the "German race," Aryans, of blonde hair, blue eyes, lean, hard  and athletic bodies and the obverse of that coin, the animosity toward other races, Roma (gypsies), Jews, Black people. It was the logical progression to treat these swarthy people as not being human beings. And, if you had an agrarian substrate, herding cattle for slaughter, pigs, cows, chickens was not seen as repugnant, so why should herding Jewish children into buildings to burn them or into gas chambers be seen as being repugnant?

Having said that, Mark Mazower mentions that the mental reaction of even SS officers to firing squads killing children was prevalent enough, and strong enough to drive the development of gas chambers to replace firing squads. It was as if, even in that culture of the Third Reich, something deeper than Aryan supremacist doctrine caused at least some soldiers disquietude. 

At the Nuremberg trials,  Nazis were convicted of "crimes against humanity," the basic assertion being there are some values shared by all people who are members of the human species: a will to keep children from harm, a refusal to kill harmless people, defenseless people. Even the less active behavior of simply herding prisoners into areas and not feeding them, of enforcing starvation, was ultimately found to be inhuman. 

Working or marching people to death was added to the list.

But, from the standpoint of the culture where resided Reinhard Heydrich, Henrich Himmler, Adolf Eichmann, Wilhelm Frick, Alfred Rosenberg, Joseph Goebbels,  and the rest of the officials who met for the Wannsee Conference, where they planned the "final solution," mass killings of children, harmless women, defenseless men made good sense.

These sub-humans simply did not belong in the Reich or any of the territories the Reich claimed and overran to provide "lebensraum" (living space) for good Aryan Volk.

Their model, as Hitler reminded them, was the treatment of American Indians by the American government, and its generals, like the redoubtable Philip Sheridan, who said, famously, "The only good Indian is a dead Indian," and whose boss at the time, William Tecumseh Sherman nodded in tacit agreement. Expelling Indians from lands white Americans wanted for living space was not even questioned. While Indian reservations may not have been as hideous as concentration camps, famine was not uncommon. Sheridan observed that to defeat the Indians the most efficient method was to slaughter all the buffalo on which the Indians depended. Russian POWs, herded into camps where food was controlled by  their guards may have recognized this tactic.

The Nazis had initially planned to round up and deport all the Jews within reach of the Reich to the island of Madagascar, but once the battle of Britain was lost, it was apparent the war would not be short and the British Navy could intervene, so it was decided to simply kill the not Aryans in place. More efficient. Just as effective, maybe more.

So when you look at the plan, the final solution, using the values of the Nazi, Third Reich culture, it made sense.

And now, we have masked, armed, swarming ICE agents rounding up people who, as Justice Kavanaugh observed, look like illegal aliens, and abduct them, just as Jews were abducted, but instead of loading them onto trains, they load them onto planes and whisk them off to, not Madagascar, but Honduras, El Salvador or Sudan.

It all makes sense, if you see it through MAGA eyes. "They" don't belong here. They are undesirables.

  

And law, as the Supreme Court has so clearly told us, is what the justices say it is, and they agree that law is what Mr. Trump says it is.

Donald Joffrey Trump

 

Winter in New Hampshire sends Mad Dog to his basement gym cave, as the streets are too icy and snow covered for bicycle embarkations.

An hour on the stationary bicycle, in front of the TV means shifting among choices on youtube.

This is one of the 21st century's major blessings.

Youtube, Amazon, streaming TV series, Wikipedia, public TV and radio. 

What a marvelous world we live in.

Another thing: ear buds which carry podcasts into your head as you walk around town, popping in and out of coffee shop, library, hardware store, pharmacy, dry cleaners.

Dave Remnick interviews Adam Schiff on a podcast. Schiff is a United States Senator and Remnick the editor of The New Yorker, so it's not clear exactly where they are sitting, but Remnick begins by playing clip of Donald J. Trump saying that Schiff is a "Horrible person. Real scum. He should be in jail."

This triggered something in Mad Dog's brain, synapsing flashing--a scene he had seen on youtube while peddling in his basement, a clip from "Game of Thrones."

It was a "Eureka" moment. Mad Dog suddenly realized what the "J" in Donald J. Trump really means: Joffrey.

The series ran for eight amazing years 2011-2019, and Mad Dog watched it all, but over the ensuing six years the memory moldered, revived only in snatches on youtube.

Of course, Trump IS Joffrey, the boy made king at age 15, and who is tolerated because his mother is Queen Cersei and he is thought to hold the Baratheon blood line.

He develops into the very image of vile over the seasons, sadistic, cowardly, impulsive, vain, completely devoid of any capacity for sympathy or admiration. He is the fictive avatar of Donald Joffrey Trump.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TqsMx8rTSPg

And it was all so clear, simply hearing Trump's voice, his invective against Adam Schiff, having just heard Joffrey. 

What a wondrous age we live in.

Why Marjorie Talyor Greene Quit: Obviously

A certain combination of incompetence and indifference can cause almost as much suffering as the most acute malevolence. 

There is a rowdy strain in American life living close to the surface but running very deep. Like an ape behind a mask, it can display itself suddenly and with terrifying effect.

--Bruce Catton, historian

Everyone knows why MGT quit.

I've heard Bill Clinton explain it. I've heard James Carville explain it. I've heard discussions from Brooks and Capehart-- from just about every pundit I tuned into and none of them has the faintest idea.

MGT herself has said she didn't want to be in the Congress which impeaches and removes Trump because that is what she says the 2026 election is all about: As soon as the Democrats seize control, they'll try to oust Trump through the impeachment and trial option and she doesn't want to be part of that.

That might make sense, if the Democrats had a snowball's chance in Hell of taking the Senate, even if they can retake the House. 

Most pundits simply say what they want to say about the world: Bill Clinton says people are tired of the sniping and frustrated with the division and all they want is to  make nice and build a country together, which is what he always says and has always said because he thinks it makes him look homespun, wise and someone we should all want to listen to.

James Carville is saying "I told you so." He is saying this is a signing of the impending doom of the MAGA party, because that's what he always says.

But Mad Dog thinks the answer is obvious: Ms. Greene has, after 4 years, discovered being one of 435 Representatives is just not much fun and does not make her a movie star, which is what she really wanted to be all along, not a Congresswoman.

She is leaving because she has discovered the job is no fun, not glamourous and is like real work.  

She's not alone: plenty of people choose the wrong jobs and then bail when they find out what it's really like. Happens to graduates of medical school all the time: they think they are going to be heroes, or living the life they've seen on TV in "Scrubs" or "ER," and they find out it's not like that.

And as for prestige, or being esteemed because you are a U.S. Congresswoman: Forget it. When you look around at the mediocrities who are in your class, you know there's nothing special about being a Congresswoman.

Being a Congresswoman means dialing for dollars from the moment you arrive at your new office in Washington, D.C., calls to rich people begging for money for your next campaign. Being one face in a class of 435 is not much fun if you want attention. There's not even a cheerleading squad to try out for. 

For people who came to Washington to change the world, or to stand up on a stage and preach to others about how we need to change the world, Congress is a disappointment.

For people like MTG who wanted nothing more than a fast and easy track to celebrity, Congress can work for a while, but keeping that spotlight focused on you is a non stop demand and not as much fun as it looked from the red dirt 14th district in Georgia, especially when there are other mean girls competing for the fickle eye of that FOXNEWS camera--like Lauren Boebert and Elsie Stephanek. 

The pay is not all that great, and the travel back and forth from DC to Georgia gets old real fast. Congress people used to move to DC and move their families into apartments or houses and go back to their districts for holidays, and when Congress was not in session. Now they fly home every Thursday night and return Sunday nights. It's a commuter job. 

And then there's the "constituent services" part of the job--all those members of the public who think you have the power to get them a job, or get the IRS off their backs or help their mothers in the nursing homes get a motorized wheelchair. 

And you've got staffers who keep asking for favors, who want you to help them with their careers.

It can get to feel like a real job, but you don't really have any real power and the best you can hope for is screen time and photo ops. 

When you're running, it can be a heady feeling, what with everyone listening to you and photographing you and even cheering sometimes. 

We have a woman right here in Hampton running for Congress and every other day I get an email from her telling me about how important children are, or schools are,  and how we ought to be building communities together, and more affordable housing. She thinks she has something important to say. She thinks becoming a Congresswoman will make her important.

But, truth be told, she will face the same disappointment MTG faced, if she ever does get elected. 

Democrats tend to want to use government to change the world. Mad Dog's favorite is Elizabeth Warren, who has a plan for everything. Mad Dog loves Senator Warren, but she is really like a Sunday preacher, telling you what you know is right and true and how the world should be, but we are all sinners, forever disappointing her, and she doesn't have a chance of actually succeeding in changing anything.

Republicans tend to want to tear everything down, because they are basically unreconstructed preadolescents who are pumped full of hormones and really don't know what they want, but they are angry about it. And they know that whoever is in charge is screwing them.

Outside the Willard Hotel, set into the concrete of the sidewalk is a quote from the wonderful historian, Bruce Catton. Mad Dog has never been able to Google the exact quote but it is some like this: "People come to Washington, D.C. in search of something which will change their fate and launch them into history, but they do not understand what they are looking for is inside themselves." 

Marjorie Taylor Greene took four years figuring that out.