There is a link within: Laugh Out Loud ~ Hurricane Season May Not Be Over Yet for Florida, (I’m not laughing because Scottie, Ron, and likely readers are in FL, but this is some info for preparation.) The linked page uses Accuweather, who I personally disdain because when they’re timely is when they borrow the info from the National Weather Service, in this case, here. This is no disparagement of Ten Bears, who gives superlative information, especially on the subject of climate, environment, and weather. Anyway, because it’s about FL, there are those links, and below is the blog entry, which is its usual excellence. Recall I mentioned a while back that many links are “Easter eggs”; there are some of those within.
November 13, 1933 The first recorded “sit-down” strike in the U.S. was staged by workers at the Hormel Packing Company in Austin, Minnesota. When the Independent Union of All Workers (IUAW) went on strike, the company tried to bring in scab (strike-breaking) workers.
“ Four hundred men, many of them armed with clubs, sticks and rocks, crashed through the plant entrance, shattering the glass doors and sweeping the guards before them. The strikers quickly ran throughout the plant to chase out non-union workers. One . . . group crashed through the doors of a conference room where Jay Hormel and five company executives were meeting and declared “We’re taking possession. So move out!” (Larry Engelmann, “We Were the Poor — The Hormel Strike of 1933,” Labor History, Fall, 1974.) The tactic worked: within four days Hormel agreed to submit wage demands to binding arbitration. The success of this strike reinvigorated the labor movement, which had been in decline throughout the 1920s.
November 13, 1956 The U.S. Supreme Court ruled segregation unconstitutional in public transportation. The case, Browder v. Gayle, was brought by four women, Aurelia Browder, Susie McDonald, Claudette Colvin and Mary Louise Smith, who had refused to surrender their bus seats to whites in Montgomery (months before Rosa Parks had done so), and had been arrested for violating Alabama law which required segregation on public buses.They challenged the law and the Court agreed, finding the law under which they were arrested in violation of the due process and equal protection clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Aurelia Browder A roadside monument was dedicated in 2004 to the four plantiffs in the Browder v. Gayle case. Colvin, a 15-year-old student at Booker T. Washington High School, boarded a bus in 1955 and refused to give up her seat to a white man. She was handcuffed, arrested and forcibly removed from the bus, as she screamed that her constitutional rights were being violated. More on Browder v. Gayle
November 13, 1960 Over 1000 Quakers (members of the Society of Friends) surrounded the Pentagon for a silent vigil to commemorate the 300th anniversary of the first Quaker Peace Testimony issued to King Charles II in 1660. From the original Peace Testimony: “We utterly deny all outward wars and strife and fightings with outward weapons, for any end or under any pretence whatsoever. And this is our testimony to the whole world….” The complete text of the 1660 Declaration
November 13, 1974 Karen Silkwood, a technician and union activist (Oil, Chemical, and Atomic Workers’ Union) at the Kerr-McGee Cimarron plutonium fuels production plant near Crescent, Oklahoma, was killed in a one-car crash. Read more about her story
November 13, 1982 Maya Ying Lin The Vietnam Veterans Memorial was dedicated in Washington, D.C. Carved into black granite are the 58,260 names of those Americans who died in Vietnam. The designer, Maya Ying Lin of Athens, Ohio, a 21-year-old architecture student at Yale University, was the winner of the competition that drew 1,421 design entries: “. . . this memorial is for those who have died, and for us to remember them.” Eventually, the Memorial included three elements, the Wall of names, the Three Servicemen Statue and Flagpole, and the Vietnam Women’s Memorial. The Wall of Names, the Three Servicemen Statue and Flagpole, and the Vietnam Women’s Memorial
I am so tired of this stupid lie. The right / republicans keep using it because the children they stole from parents at the border back during tRump’s term have never been found and returned to their parents. That is what this asshole false claim is about. Here are the facts. And also notice that the time frame includes tRump’s first term! Want to know why this pisses me off so much !!! Because as an abused kid I could have been saved if people had cared enough to do it. Instead the republicans do this shit that helps no child, helps no kid. Hugs
Kamala Harris is expected to visit the U.S.-Mexico border during a trip to Arizona this week as the Vice President attempts to win over voters on immigration policy ahead of the November election
Donald Trump has repeatedly targeted Harris over the number of border crossings during the Biden administration, highlighting the role handed to her by the president to investigate the root causes of migration in the Northern Triangle of Central America.
Trump went after Harris again earlier this week during a rally in Pennsylvania when he accused her of losing hundreds of thousands of unaccompanied migrant children who had entered the country.
At a speech in Indiana, Pennsylvania, on September 23, 2024, Donald Trump claimed that Kamala Harris had lost more than 325,000 migrant children.
“She [Kamala Harris] lost more than 325,000 migrant children,” Trump said.
“They’re gone, nobody knows where they are. Many of them are dead, many of them are in sex trade, many of them, but many of them are dead, they’ve been trafficked, they’ve been raped. Three hundred and twenty-five thousand children are missing.”
August 2024 audit by the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) that uncovered U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) statistics on unaccompanied migrant children (UCs).
Between fiscal years 2019 and 2023, ICE transferred over 448,000 unaccompanied children to the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR). After apprehension by the Department of Homeland Security, children are transferred by ICE to ORR.
ORR handles the care and custody of these children awaiting immigration hearings. Care and custody include placing children in shelters or with a sponsor. ICE is responsible for managing immigration cases, and the audit showed the agency struggled to monitor the whereabouts of many of these children after their release from ORR custody.
ICE reported that more than 32,000 children had failed to appear for scheduled immigration court hearings between 2019 and 2023. ICE also failed to serve Notices to Appear (NTAs) on 291,000 children, leaving them without scheduled court dates and outside the formal immigration process.
The “more than 325,000” figure appears to be a combination of the 291,000 children who had not been issued a court date and the 32,000 who did not appear for scheduled dates, off by a couple of thousand.
Crucially, the main figure to focus on is the 32,000 children who missed their court date, the audit noting that ICE “was not able to account for the location of all UCs who were released by HHS and did not appear as scheduled in immigration court.”
The audit also said that failure to send an NTA could limit the chances of maintaining contact when children are released from ORR custody, adding ICE did not always inform ORR about the failure to appear in court.
“Similarly, when ICE does not share information with HHS regarding UCs who did not appear for hearings, HHS personnel are unable to determine if UCs need wellness checks or post-release services for individuals at an increased risk of being trafficked,” the report stated.
“Without an ability to monitor the location and status of UCs, ICE has no assurance UCs are safe from trafficking, exploitation, or forced labor.”
However, Trump combined the figures even though the audit did not say that the 291,000 who had not been issued an NTA were lost.
The report also does not say that ICE could not find all 32,000 children who had not appeared in court. ICE is not a child welfare authority either; as explained here and in previous Newsweek fact checks, unaccompanied minors are placed into the care of sponsors if available which ORR is meant to monitor. Although there have been concerns regarding the risk of exploitation in this system, the context of who carries responsibility here is important.
Furthermore, the OIG audit covered cases between fiscal years 2019 and 2023. Although more children were transferred into ORR custody between fiscal years 2021 and 2023, Trump’s administration oversaw transfers during the 2019 and 2020 periods and part of 2021.
Newsweek has contacted media representatives for ICE, Kamala Harris, Donald Trump, and the White House via email for comment.
Trump also claimed during his speech that “many” of the children were “dead”, “in sex trade”, and “raped.” The report does not make that conclusion. While the OIG report mentions exploitation vulnerability, it does not support Trump’s claim.
The Ruling
False.
Trump’s claim is based on an audit that showed between fiscal years 2019-2023 U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) had reported that more than 32,000 unaccompanied migrant children had not appeared in court for immigration proceedings. The audit found that ICE “was not able to account for the location” of all these children.
The audit also said ICE had not issued orders for 291,000 children to appear in court.
Trump appears to have combined these two figures to try to make 325,000. The audit did not state that the 291,000 without court orders were missing, nor did it say that all 32,000 children could not be located. ICE is not a child welfare authority and unaccompanied migrant children are placed in shelters or with a sponsor by the Department of Health and Human Services, which is meant to monitor placements.
The audit monitored reporting under the Trump and Biden administrations.
November 12, 1969 Seymour Hersh, an independent investigative journalist, in a cable filed through Dispatch News Service and picked up by more than 30 newspapers, revealed the extent of the U.S. Army’s charges against 1st Lieutenant William L. Calley at My Lai, a Vietnamese village.Hersh wrote: “The Army says he [Calley] deliberately murdered at least 109 Vietnamese civilians during a search-and-destroy mission in March 1968, in an alleged Viet Cong stronghold known as ‘Pinkville.'” The same Seymour Hersh first wrote about abuses of Iraqis held in Abu Ghraib prison by Americans in 2004. Seymour Hersh
November 12, 1982 The Polish government freed the leader of the outlawed Solidarity union movement, Lech Walesa, after 11 months of internment. His release came only two days after riot police used tear gas, water cannon and phosphorous rockets to disperse large pro-Solidarity demonstrations in Warsaw and other cities. Read more
November 12, 1989 Tens of thousands of Americans joined “Mobilize for Women’s Lives” in more than 150 cities and towns nationwide. They sought protection of women’s rights to reproductive choice, including abortion. Their focus was on state legislatures in their own states where laws were being introduced to put limits of a woman’s right to choose when she should bear children. More than 2500 defenders of legalized abortion gathered at the First Parish Unitarian Church in Kennebunkport, Maine, just a few miles from President George H. W. Bush’s summer home, to hold a candlelight vigil. Watch Helen Reddy lead “I am Woman” at the D.C. rally National Abortion Rights Action League / Pro Choice America
The great thing about this post is some maga who watch the channel wrote in to tell Belle she was wrong on tariffs. The tone and the fact they are a tRump supporter made it clear they thought women shouldn’t be talking about money and foreign policy issues. She explains why it is important to read more than the headlines. Hugs
Be careful with what you ask for. You just might get it. Read on Substack
Stephen Colbert made a joke about people telling comedians after the Trump victory (gag), “At least you’ll have so much material to work with.” Cartoonists were sick of that comment back in 2016. One of my colleagues and friend, Ward Sutton, drew a cartoon about it. It’s something we hear all the time and I don’t think people truly understand it’s the last thing we want to hear. In fact, it was repeated to me last night at a party for writers.
We don’t want to hear it. It’s empty solace and goddammit, we hear it too often. I’m going to hear it again before the day’s over. I would rather my nation survive and not turn into a fascist state controlled by racist goose-stepping troglodytes than have great material from it. And by the way, the material’s not that great. Another fact is that Trump cartoons are bad for business. Editors are scared shitless of them.
What I’m getting to with this in regards to today’s cartoon is that after posting on social media about the comment, a few people told me they will need to laugh to avoid crying and that’s what my cartoons will give them. Yeah, except I think each of my cartoons since last Tuesday has been sad. Proofreader Laura told me that at least twice, and I didn’t argue with her (she’s really smart and perceptive). Others have told me the same thing. Someone told me they couldn’t even click like on one of my cartoons because it was so sad, and I’m not even drawing dead puppies.
My last few cartoons have been kinda sad, like this one, or this one, or this one. And now many will find today’s cartoon sad. The Latino vote certainly depresses me.
Why would any Latino other than George Zimmerman vote for a racist who’s been shit-talking you for the past decade? Hmm? I will never understand the appeal of Donald Trump.
While Harris won the Latino vote with 53 percent, about 45 percent of Latinos voted for Donald Trump. Why? Tommy Vallejos wrote a column for The Tennessean in Nashville to explain it to all of us liberal dummies.
Vallejo’s first argument is that voting for Trump doesn’t make him or other Latinos racist. I’m not going to call Latinos racists for voting for Trump. I’m going to state the fact that voting for Trump means Latinos voted for a racist. They voted for racism. Donald Trump is a racist and nobody can make a strong case that he isn’t.
Voting for Donald Trump, at the very least, means racism is not a dealbreaker for you, no matter what race you are. And while you may wonder why a Latino would want to shit on other Latinos, I would like to have about 60 percent of America’s white population deported. Let’s send them all to Liberia.
Vallejo’s major reason for being a Trumper is the economy, so he claims. But if Vallejo is an intelligent person, he knows that’s a lie.
He writes that most Latinos who voted for Trump were concerned about jobs and the economy, forgetting that the unemployment rate was 6.4 percent when Trump left office. Trump inherited President Barack Obama’s economy and fucked it up. He left office with fewer American jobs than there were when he entered. He’s the first president to love more jobs than he created since Herbert Hoover.
There is no evidence that Donald Trump can rebuild an economy. There’s only evidence he can destroy it.
Trumpers will claim that’s not Trump’s fault. It was Covid’s fault. If you’re going to make that argument then you can’t blame President Joe Biden for inflation. In case you weren’t paying attention, inflation hit the entire planet. High gas prices hit every nation. Vallejo, who forgets Trump’s final numbers, blames Biden for inflation. He’s making an extremely dishonest argument in voting for Trump.
And if you voted for Trump because of the economy, here are a few other facts can chew on with your lying mouth: Under Trump, the trade deficit went up over 36 percent. Trump’s promising even more tariffs so enjoy your 20 percent tax increase on imported goods, fuckers. People lacking health insurance rose by three million, and that’s even with Trump failing to repeal Obamacare. What are they going to do now? How many Americans will lose healthcare coverage in Trump’s second term? Vallejo argues that under Biden, the government spent “freely and indiscriminately,” yet under Donald Trump, federal debt went from $14.4 trillion to $21.6 trillion. Under Trump, home prices increased nearly 30 percent while rising 20 percent under Biden. Wages rose higher under Biden than they did under Trump. The top 25 U.S. companies invested more than $900 billion in the economy, which is 40 percent higher than during the Trump regime.
Everyone who voted for Trump because the economy was their top concern should have voted for Harris.
Vallejos also argues that we need Trump to curb illegal immigration, but guess what, Buddy. In Trump’s last year, apprehensions at the southern border had a nearly 15 percent increase than President Obama’s last year in office. Even if you honestly wanted to reduce illegal immigration, do you really support deporting millions of people and tearing apart families by using the military? Seriously, Mr. Vallejo, how much do you hate Latinos?
Vellejos also cries that under Biden and with inflation rising, stagnant wages “failed to keep pace” and blames Biden for not reducing the tax and regulatory burden on “job creators.” But Trump’s huge tax cuts for asshole billionaires were still in place, so why didn’t corporate America come running to the rescue? Oh, yeah…trickle-down economics doesn’t work. Instead of cutting their own profits, Corporations jacked up prices and as inflation has been going down, their prices have not. In fact, Corporate profits continued to rise throughout the Biden administration. Exxon’s second-quarter profits this year were over $9 billion. Did they lower the price of gas at the fuel pumps? HAHAHAHAHA. You’re funny.
Despite Donald Trump tweeting in 2020, “If you want your 401k’s and stocks…to disintegrate and disappear, vote for the Radical Left Do Nothing Democrats and Corrupt Joe Biden,” the stock market did better under Biden than Trump. Fact fact fuckity fact fact.
The S&P 500 has posted a compound annual growth rate of 14.1 percent from Biden’s November 2020 election to the beginning of this month. The market returns under Biden are the second best in modern history, only trailing behind Bill Clinton’s, gasp, another Democratic president.
Vallejo accused Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris of “fumbling” the economy which makes me think he doesn’t watch football and doesn’t know what a fumble is. Is it when the cheerleaders kick the ball?
Vallejo also wrote that Latinos voted for Trump because they are “supportive of the rule of law and desire an orderly process.” Now you gotta get the fuck out of here. Vallejo, like most MAGAts, is a liar who suffers from memory loss. Hello? January 6, fake electors, electoral fraud, 11,780 votes, stolen documents, assaulting women, corruption, violating the emoluments clause, etc. If you truly desire the “rule of law,” Mr. Vallejo, call the Trump team now and demand that he doesn’t fire Jack Smith.
Shockingly, Vallejo didn’t include that he voted for Trump so boat batteries would be lighter, the boats wouldn’t sink from their weight, and sharks wouldn’t eat you while you’re flapping around in the water.
At the end of his bullshit designed as a column for a newspaper’s opinion page, Vallejo writes, “Most importantly, we love the USA and cherish freedom and opportunity.” So you voted for the treasonous fuck who’s a subordinate of Vladimir Putin? You voted for the asshole who gave Putin classified information. You voted for our nation’s greatest national security threat who has been secretly talking to Putin since we fired him in 2020. You voted for the guy who says he wants to be a dictator, quoted Hitler, and said he wants to delete the Constitution.
Every reason Vallejo gives for voting for Trump is bullshit. That means I don’t know why in the hell Trump won 45 percent of the Latino vote. I just hope that when it burns them, they fucking get it.
And Mr. Vallejo, I changed my mind. You are a racist. It’s like anytime when someone says, “I’m not a racist, but…”
And hey, at least I have so much material to work with now.
Creative note: I drew most of this yesterday and all I had to do this morning was color it. I was all like, “Yay, I’m done by 1 p.m. and now I can go watch football…right after I write this blog. It’s now 3 p.m. Are my Saints winning?
Music note: I listened to Buddy Holly. I will never get over the hiccup thing he does at the start of Rave On.
if we all click our heels together three times, everything will be okay Read on Substack (Language NSFW, as always with Jeff Tiedrich’s writing)
the worthless scribblers of the corporate-controlled media utterly failed us during the 2024 campaign season.
New York Times executive editor Joe Kahn came right out and said it: defending democracy is a ‘partisan act,’ and we won’t do it — and, fuck us all, the press kept their word, and didn’t do it. they enthusiastically put their fingers on the scale for Donny Convict.
arguably, the media’s worst transgression was the sanewashing — the cleaning-up of Donny’s incomprehensible blitherings, to hide his obvious cognitive disintegration and make him sound coherent.
a minutes-long disjointed word-salad about how tariffs on Chinese goods were going to lower the cost of childcare became “a major economic speech.”
Donny’s inability to keep his increasingly-demented mind on the topic at hand — his crazypants pinballing from they’re eating the dawgs to Hannibal Lecter wants to have you for dinner to would you rather be eaten by a shark or electrocuted — was explained away by Donny as his brilliant “weave.”
[Wishcasting is] the act of interpreting information or a situation in a way that casts it as favorable or desired, despite the fact that there is no evidence for such a conclusion; a wishful forecast.
sure enough, the media has now gone into overdrive, churning out piece after piece in which they promise us that if we all click our heels together three times, everything will be okay.
not twelve hours after the election had been called for Donny, the Times wasted no time in assuring us that the election of a vindictive fascist is an amazing opportunity for vindictive fascism not to happen.
what kind of magical, everybody-gets-a-pony thinking is this? just fucking stop it.
did Ezra Klein and Ross Douthat both experience some kind of recent head trauma that has caused them to forget the years 2017 through 2020? Donny’s first presidency was a dumpster fire of corruption, mismanagement and mass death — but somehow now, given a second chance to fuck shit up worse, Donny’s going to bring us an “American renewal”?
anything’s possible, right? overnight, Donny Convict could magically become a wise and fair statesman — also, technicolor pigs could fly out of my ass.
oh my god, the media never stops imagining that Donny is going to somehow become presidential. during his first term — over and over — every time Donny stopped short of taking out his dick and pissing on the floor, the press would fall all the fuck over itself in a mad dash to proclaim him presidential.
spoiler alert: Donny never became presidential. not from the the first time he threw a ketchup-hurling tantrum in the White House, to the moment he absconded back to his Florida golf motel, taking with him boxes of stolen classified documents.
the premise here is that if we’re respectful to Donny — if we fucking kowtow to him, and stop opposing him — he’ll be nice to us in return. he’ll become — dare I say it? — presidential.
Stop indulging the fantasy that outrage, social stigma, language policing, a special counsel, the Twenty-Fifth Amendment, or impeachment will disappear him. And stop talking as if normal political opposition is capitulation.
Everyone should normalize Trump. If he does something good, praise him. Trump is remarkably susceptible to flattery.
okay, I will grant that Newsweek may be half right. Lisa Murkowski seems to genuinely loathe Donny, and we can probably count on her to vote against the worst of his fuckery — but Susan Collins? the credulous naïf who assured us over and over again that Donny had learned his lesson, and would never transgress again?
now, let’s bask under some rays of hope from people who aren’t just blindly wishcasting, but are actually offering reasoned arguments.
in the middle of a fairly clear-eyed assessment of the Trumpian horrors to come, the Guardian gives us this:
Elaine Kamarck, a former official in the Bill Clinton administration, said: “For him to expand presidential power, Congress has to give up power and they’re not in the mood to do that. They’ve never done that. There are plenty of institutionalists in Congress.”
Kamarck also expressed faith in the federal courts, noting that judges appointed by Trump only constitute 11% of the total placed on the bench by former presidents. A Trump dictatorship is “not going to happen,” she added. “Now, there might be things that the president wants to do that people don’t like that the Republican Congress goes along with him on but that’s politics. That’s not a dictatorship.”
Paradoxically, however, Trump’s reckless venality is a reason for hope. Trump has the soul of a fascist but the mind of a disordered child. He will likely be surrounded by terrible but incompetent people. All of them can be beaten: in court, in Congress, in statehouses around the nation, and in the public arena. America is a federal republic, and the states—at least those in the union that will still care about democracy—have ways to protect their citizens from a rogue president. Nothing is inevitable, and democracy will not fall overnight.
Americans cannot vote themselves into a dictatorship any more than you as an individual can sell yourself into slavery. The restraints of the Constitution protect the American people from the unscrupulous designs of whatever lawless people might take the reins of their government, and that does not change simply because Trump believes that those restraints need not be respected by him. The Constitution does not allow a president to be a “dictator on day one,” or on any other day. The presidency will give Trump and his cronies the power to do many awful things. But that power does not make them moral or correct.
I sure hope to fuck they’re right.
This is going to be my closing message for the foreseeable future:
practice self-care. do what you need to do to keep sane. if that means disengaging with my daily posts for a while, I get it. this community of ours will still be here when you return.
to all the people who have signed on in the days since the election, welcome aboard. settle in as we all try to deal with the shitfuckery that’s ahead of us.
we are all in this together, and we are all here for each other.
Aurelia Browder
Maya Ying Lin
Kamala Harris speaks during a press conference at El Paso International Airport, on June 25, 2021 in El Paso, Texas. Donald Trump has claimed the Vice President is responsible for the disappearance of 325,000 migrant children. PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP via Getty Images© PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP via Getty Images
