Except purges are a textbook step in dictatorship. Every Republican who leaves over ideological differences with the coup will be replaced by a loyalist. We are going full Russia at light speed.

YA THINK?

Oh wait. Now we got him. Maga will finally see the truth. Yup. This is it. We finally have proof of high crimes and misdemeanors. Good sleuthing boys. Job well done. No way he escapes this scandal. Huh… remember that word?.. Scandal? Hm. Not really a thing these days. Anyway… I digress… So happy. Today is truly a day that will be known forevermore as our new independence day. Yup. This was the straw. I can’t believe I was alive for this moment. Our collective trauma can finally begin to heal. Our Republic can once again hold its head high on the world stage. Yes sir. Today you see American exceptionalism on full display. We had a problem and we got to work and fixed it. Super proud to wave the red white and blue again. No more fascism. No more SS. Once again the sun shines on the Constitution. All rights that were once trampled have now been restored. The concentration camps have seen the err of their ways. We got him. Surely no politician could ever survive such a damning revelation. We wake at the dawn is a new day. What once was lost has now been found. Yessir. The American Justice system has proven its superiority. The rule of law has been restored. So happy. All American rejoice in the changing of the guard Inhales deeply huuuuuuuuuuuhhhhhhhhhhh… We are lucky to live in extraordinary times. On the 7th day we all rested. Love won. The victims will all see their retribution.

Sigh.

Same as my opinion on walking though the self checkout line. My body my choice.

Trump is the face. The oligarchs are the movement. What we are dealing with is a long festering tumor that has metastasized. Trump is the irregular shaped mole on the surface. The cancer has been there since the civil war.

Substitute “the Confederacy” for the GOP and it makes a lot more sense. The civil war never ended. It has recently flared up from a smouldering cold war into a coup of the US government.

Trump is just a symptom. The christofascists in his ear are the sickness. Trump is there just to bulldoze through the Constitution and establish a one party system.

This gives me the feeling of American pride I’ve missed for so long.

Maybe not, but what I see is more ideologically in line with the Confederates than with the Nazis. That was the secret sauce the whole time. They want the entire US government to be reset to the antebellum era and to pick up as though Lincoln never existed.

You win

They are clearly trying to ensure that they will never be subject to a legitimate election again. Minnesota is a test for how many constitutional amendments they can break. Presidential term limits are absolutely the target. When the oligarchs no longer need their cult they will repeal the entire Constitution. Welcome to the New Confederacy.

A federal agent did not kill a civilian. A Confederate soldier killed an American citizen.

Because they were Confederates

Prison labor camps.

So the fascists say they will stop murdering people if Minnesota just identifies the names and addresses of all people in the state who did not vote for fascism? Jesus. Fucking. Christ.

Ai data center.

Cheers brother. I was once a minor local celebrity in Wilkes Barre Pennsylvania because of my beer knowledge. I used to be a home brewer and was involved in brewing clubs and had a lot of brewing friends. Before covid I was a bar manager for a craft beer store/restaurant/bar called Kreugels Beer and Deli. We were regularly featured on a local TV show called “Wine Hops and Road Stops”- think of a low rent version of “Diners, Dives, and Drive-ins”. The host, Jeff Bonomo, still does it. The episodes are all on YouTube im in a lot of season 3 and 4. I would do segments where I would talk about craft beer and the history of brewing. With my Irish hat and my red beard i’m kind of recognizable. For a little while every time I went out I’d hear “hey you’re that beer guy!” Lol.

Literally the day before covid shutdown jeff told me the bosses at the TV station wanted to make me a paid co-host for the show. I was RIGHT there… Fame money women… Or actually none of that. Lol. But seriously, they did want to bring me in but then shutdown happened and everything changed. My bar closed it’s doors permanently not long after. I miss those days

3- lol no. I can barely make enough to meet our monthly delivery goals. But, we don’t put the electronics in them. A areospace company does that. I make the carbon fiber housing. You wouldn’t believe the tolerances; “difficult to make” isn’t even close. I work 7 days/65+hrs per week. I’m the only one who can make it.

2- I guess Egypt was the Sahara? I didn’t really see the dunes beyond what was around the great pyramids in Giza. But there were lots of guys with camels offering pictures and rides. Actually kind of scammy though because they would stand behind you with their camel and their kid would snap a Polaroid without asking and demand money. We were told just to pay everyone. Something like that would be like $0.50.

I DID however spend 3 days with the bedouins in Southern Israel. I went to a fancy English speaking high school called The Anglican School International. You should look it up. It’s a beautiful campus. There were like 20 people in my graduating class in '97. They organized a few trips for us every year. Some of them were really amazing. I got to ride through a scrubby desert in military jeeps driven by teenage soldiers once.

The bedouin trip was amazing though. They are a nomadic Arab tribe that live in tents like they have for thousands of years. They are basically the middle Eastern version of the Amish. So I’ve of the days we went on a 12 hour camel ride through the Negev. My camel was such an asshole that a little boy had to lead him the whole way. Did you know that a camel’s neck is flexible enough to bite you while you are sitting on them? Yeah neither did I. Guess how I learned.

So on the way back my friend and I decided we were done with the camels and would rather walk. As the supreme confident 16 year olds we were, we lagged far behind the group lifting rocks to find creatures. All we found were little yellow scorpions, but we found TONS of them. We picked then up by their tails and the them at each other. Fun stuff.

Months later we were in study hall in the library just flipping through interesting books like the Guinness world records and stuff. 90’s version of doom scrolling. On one page we saw that scorpion we were playing with. The “yellow Palestine scorpion” also know as a “death stalker”. Yep. One of the most venomous creatures on earth. We were throwing them. Guaranteed death. Nervous system shutdown. The only thing that saved us was that truly dangerous creatures tend to be chill. Fun times.

1- I met zahi hawass in 1995 before he was anything other than an egyptologist and a university professor. The charisma you see on TV is 100% the real him. At the time my family was living in Jerusalem Israel. My dad was an engineer for Intel helping set up a new chip manufacturing facility on the outskirts of town.

In the 90’s there were a lot of improved relationships between Israel and its neighbors. In 1973 there was the 6 day war where Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and a could other countries I can’t remember, all attacked Israel simultaneously. At which time Israel kicked all of their asses back to their deserts of origin in less than a week.

Anywho… In 1995 Israel opened its southern border into Egypt for tourism. I think they called it the Tabla crossing. I was 15. We drove across the Saini desert in kind of a tour bus. We were the first Americans to make the trip. Long fucking drive too. I think it took something like 5 hours just to cross the endless wastes.

I think Egypt was trying to lay out the red carpet for us. We stayed as a hotel that was unbelievably lavish. Lol, we were told we must stay in our rooms or be off grounds between 5pm and 7pm because they sprayed for mosquitoes. These guys are wearing these gas powered foggers full of DDT that spread a haze you couldn’t see through.

We met Dr Hawass at our hotel and he rode with us to Giza. In pictures the pyramids look like they’re in the middle of the desert but in reality there’s a densely populated neighborhood right next to it. He walked through all of them with us. We walked through every interior room and walkway privately. He showed us his personal dig sites and I saw, with own eyes, heiroglyphs of a kangaroo. There’s debate about this but I know what I saw. He took us through the museum and we bought some little statue figurines from a street before that Dr Hawass authenticated. He said they were legit middle kingdom artifacts. It was unreal. I boldly drank tap water because I wanted to develop an immunity to the local pathogens, anticipating a return. I never did visit Egypt again but I did suffer through amoebic dissentary for 3 weeks.

It was years later when I started seeing Dr Hawass on TV. At first I was like… wait I recognize that voice… Then the holy shit moment when I realized what a true gift it had been to get a private tour. It was me, my parents and my 5 year old younger brothers; 5 days in Egypt, I’m pretty sure the whole things didn’t cost $4000 at the time.