Subscribe to My Blog
Receive an alert when a new post is added. I will never share your email address with anyone.
Write your text here...
Week of September 21, 2025
Yeah, that Presbyterian minister was about to charge! Also, how on earth can anyone justify this continuing horror? Photo credit: Ashlee Rezin of the Chicago Sun-Times
Ginger
9/28/20258 min read
Here goes..
1. The head of the FCC under Trump, Brendan Carr, who pressured ABC to cancel Jimmy Kimmel, wrote the chapter on the FCC for Project 2025. It’s weird because a lot of the section (which I admit I skimmed) is about free speech. And yet he is threatening to cancel major media companys' FCC licenses if they criticize Trump (or last week, Charlie Kirk),or manipulating them into pulling people off the air by refusing to approve mergers and such.
“The goal is to get the companies to capitulate in advance, to the point where the FCC or the administration doesn’t even need to speak,” FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez, the agency’s lone Democrat, told POLITICO in an interview.
2. Trump at Charlie Kirk’s service, in front of thousands of Evangelical Christians says he hates his opponents, he can’t stand his opponents, and he doesn’t want the best for them. They all laugh and cheer. They will tell themselves he is joking, but his actual words and actions clearly show otherwise – but they will still tell themselves he’s joking.
3. Stephen – Nazi Lab Experiment – Miller, gave a speech with such strong echoes of Joseph Goebbels it was like the place was a time machine. If you read The Storm is Coming by Joseph Goebbels (1932) the similarities are frightening (an interesting analysis here).
4. Also, as Kristen Francemone on Threads says, “Nothing says a funeral like merch and pyrotechnics.” True.
5. Trump is ordering his Attorney General to go after his enemies. (San Francisco Chronical, MSNBC, BBC, NBC News) And if the prosecutors don’t think the has a case, Trump fires them. Attorney/Author Elie Honig: “This is truly unprecedented. Never before have we had a president overtly and publicly instructing his Attorney General, 'I need you to indict my political enemies.' That is a red line that's being crossed.”
6. “The United States is less democratic, less self-governing, more dysfunctional, and more corrupt than it was 20 years ago, thanks in large part to the Supreme Court’s rulings.” An op-ed in The New Republic, Matt Ford.
7. PSA: DO NOT TAKE HEALTH ADVICE FROM DONALD TRUMP: "I think it has -- I think it's very bad. They're pumping, it looks like they're pumping into a horse. You have a little child, a little fragile child, and you get a vat of 80 different vaccines, I guess. 80 different blends. And they pump it in. So ideally, a woman won't take Tylenol."
8. Fox News senior medical analyst: “There's absolutely no proof whatsoever” that Tylenol causes autism. (yes, even Fox)
9. Trump’s speech at the United Nations in a picture.
And this is how Europe felt about it.
10. Steve Schmidt: “No rational person in these United States could conceivably watch Donald Trump standing before the United Nations, conceived by Franklin Roosevelt, and not feel the deepest shame and humiliation… dishonest, corrupt and incompetent…selfish and indifferent, the literal definition of the ugly American.”
11. During NFL football games, ICE is encouraging police officers to quit their jobs and join ICE. 50k signing bonuses. Said another way, here in Seattle the Federal government is buying advertising that encourages Seattle police officers to quit serving their own communities, and demonizing the cities where they live and work.
12. Miami Herald is reporting that 1,200 of the 1,800 men being housed at ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ in FL have been wiped from ICE’s online database. Their families have been unable to locate them. (Miami Herald)
13. The Federal Government has rehired hundreds of government workers fired by DOGE. What a mess. “Ultimately, the outcome was the agency was left broken and understaffed,” said Chad Becker, a former GSA real estate official. “They didn’t have the people they needed to carry out basic functions.” Not to mention the chaos brought on to the employees and their families – for nothing. It was all a con.
14. Trump just pardoned David Archer who defrauded Native American tribes out of $60 million. And guess what? He won’t be required to compensate the tribes.
15. Did you know that Trump’s Border Czar, Tom Homan is literally on audiotape accepting $50k from undercover FBI agents, posing as businessmen? Homan apparently promised to get them government contracts. (NYT, The New Republic) Trump’s Justice Dept shut the case down.
16. ICE agent says “adios” several times to a woman while she is pleading with him (yelling “take me, take me”) to let her husband go, and then shoves her to the ground. THEY ARE IN THE COURTHOUSE. Hundreds of immigrants (just in New York), going to their court hearings have been basically kidnapped by masked men. This is not hyperbole. It is happening, without warrants, without identifying themselves, while people are going to their hearings. It’s Trumps own Gestapo. You cannot minimize or excuse this behavior or these tactics. Especially when they have promised they are going after the “worst of the worst”. I’m thinking the “worst of the worst” are NOT ATTENDING THEIR COURT HEARINGS.
17. Deaths rose in emergency rooms after hospitals were acquired by private equity firms. (Harvard Medical School). Unfettered Capitalism is a killer.
18. In this week’s edition of Why is J.D. Vance Such an Asshole?, Vance claims that “Democrats are about to shut down the government because they demand the government fund healthcare for illegal aliens.” There are a plenty of good reasons to try to stop this out of control Administration by using the budget negotiations, but this ain't it.
Not only is this just dumb (so dumb, and he clearly thinks his followers are dumb), it’s just a flat out lie and he knows it.
And let’s please remember that Vance admitted to creating stories, you know, lie, to get the media’s attention. And then (embarrassingly) he tried to paint those lies as virtuous. He says he “creates stories so that the … media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people”. Nice try, asshole. He also famously said during the Vice Presidential debate “the rules were you guys weren’t supposed to fact check”.
19. Tim Miller is a conservative, political commentator and author. He is right here. 100%. Please listen.
20. There is a 50+ boat flotilla with mostly small crafts from dozens of countries heading to Gaza with desperately needed food and supplies. All I can say is wow this is cool, and risky. Veterans for Peace is also joining. Mass starvation is happening in Gaza due to Israel’s continuing assault. Israel, for its part, has named the flotilla a “terrorist organization” and says it will seize the boats.
These boats are joining from Spain. (Godspeed, good people. And viva España!)
21. Biden upped the minimum wage for private sector jobs on federal contracts to $17.75 an hour. Trump revoked Biden’s executive order and reduced the hourly wage to $13.30 per hour without working yourself to death. A reminder that if the minimum wage would have kept up with inflation, and more specifically, productivity, minimum wage would be $26 today. Instead, all of that money went straight to the top. It’s all about making the rich richer and thus more powerful. You can’t live in this country making $13.30 an hour FFS.
Christian Republicans, how can you support this!?!? Trickle down definitively NEVER HAPPENED it was a scam. Just look at income inequality since Reagan. Call me a Socialist, I don’t care, but Capitalism only controlled by the wealthy ONLY really benefits the wealth.
Meanwhile Trump is spending hundreds of millions on a damn ballroom, his golf trips, oh and 200 billion (with a ”B”) to bail out Argentina (wait – we just gutted USAID, ensuring millions of people will starve to death because “America first”) while they are also cutting Medicaid and Supplemental Social Security benefits for poor and elderly Americans. This is a good analysis.
22. Well now Trump is sending troops to Portland. It’s asinine. No one wants them there. No one needs them there. It’s a beautiful city. If you think Portland (or Seattle, or Chicago, etc.) need federal troops to come in and take over because the cities’ an apocalyptic hell-scape you have never spent time in those cities. Of course there is crime. Of course there is drug use. Of course there is homelessness. It’s a densely populated city. There is also incredible beauty, culture, diversity, art, music, science, architecture, and good and kind kind people. If you don’t know that, because you’ve never spent actual time there (not just a taxi to the airport and back), and still want to make accusations, bite me.
All you have to do is look at the data. Portland has had an increase in foot traffic, tourism, and a drastic decrease in crime (just like Chicago), and is always in the “best cities to live in” lists (here’s one). But Trump likes his stupid games because the base ignorantly eats it up.
All over social media you are seeing Portlanders sending picture of the “hellscape” of downtown. It’s quite hilarious.
I am reminded of something I read a while back (I think it was on Threads): People who live in small towns are afraid of cities, People who live in cities are afraid of small towns. People who have lived in both are afraid of small towns. I get this.
23. I’ll leave you with this from Brenda Corrine on Threads. (read like Ken Burns Civil War letter from the front):
Dearest Mother, I write to you from the front lines of the Great Portland Conflict of '25, where our battalion bravely holds the line between the artisanal kombucha stand and the vegan taxidermy co-op. The enemy, armed with reusable tote bags and passive-aggressive signage, launched a surprise assault during our morning mindfulness drills. Our oat milk rations are low, and Private Jasper refuses to fight until his chakras are realigned. Pray for us, Mother, and send more flannel.
To which Patti Artavia responded:
Dearest Child, your dispatch arrived by carrier pigeon, its ankle adorned with a tiny hemp bandana. I clutched my reusable mug in trembling hands as I read of your struggles. I have sent forth your great-uncle’s flannel cloak, two packets of organic kale chips, and a wind-up essential oil diffuser for Private Jasper’s chakras. Be brave—rumors abound that the meditative yoga artillery brigade is en route, armed with restorative poses and gluten-free scones. Mother
HAHAHAHAHAHAhahahah. I could do this all day.
In the words of Thomas Jefferson in Hamilton, "So what did I miss?"