The country has turned on Chump and on his version of ICE. If you doubt the latter, George Retes. We noted him July 23rd in "Media: Why America's turned on Chump's war on immigrants." He's the Iraq War veteran ICE assaulted in California -- Retes described the assault, "It took two officers to nail my back and then one on my neck to arrest me even though my hands were already behind my back." In a Friday column for THE WASHINGTON POST, conservative George Will wrote about Retes:
One Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent’s knee was on his neck, another’s was grinding his back. Drenched with tear gas and pepper spray, George Retes might have wished that his 137 pounds were back in Kirkuk, Iraq, one of his Army deployments. Herewith a glimpse of your tax dollars at work.
Born 26 years ago in Ventura, California, where his mother was born, he enlisted after high school and calls the Army “the best job ever,” adding, “I love the infantry.” He married a woman he deployed with, thereby acquiring a stepson, soon a daughter, and a reason to leave the Army: to avoid long absences from his children.
[. . .]
The ICE men were presumably looking for undocumented immigrants. Retes’s driver’s license, which he says the ICE men never asked to see, identifies him as “Veteran Army.” His license plate includes “DV”: disabled veteran. While ICE’s warriors were trying and ultimately succeeding in smashing his driver’s-side window (the better to pepper spray him), they apparently did not notice his rear window’s “Iraq Combat Veteran” sticker.
Amid a torrent of shouted and contradictory ICE men commands, and after he asked for an agent’s badge number, he says, Retes was dragged from his car, his wrists were zip-tied behind his back, and he was seated on the roadside ground for four hours.
Those are the signs of an out of control federal agency and those are the actions of Chump's gestapo force. The actions are shocking, yes, and illegal.
The actions are also not all that surprising considering who gets hired by ICE and who provides purported oversight of ICE. Who gets hired? The lowest of the low. Charles P. Pierce (ESQUIRE) pull quoted from an NBC NEWS report and this might be the most disturbing part of that report:
Nearly half of new recruits who’ve arrived for training at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center over the past three months were later sent home because they couldn’t pass the written exam, according to the data. The academic requirement includes an exam in which officers are allowed to consult their textbooks and notes at the end of a legal course on the Immigration and Nationality Act and the Fourth Amendment, which outlines when officers can and can’t conduct searches and seizures.
"Oh my goodness! They almost hired those people!"
No, that's not it. It's that they hired the others -- those 'trained' people who required an open book final exam. They weren't expected or required to know the law. You see that reflected in their conduct repeatedly.
Not just with regards to their attack on the US citizen and Iraq War veteran George Retes, but on people all across the country. They are a lawless body that terrorizes in the streets of America.
They terrorize pregnant women. They terrorize the challenged and/or disabled. Who is safe on the streets of America when ICE is let loose? Children? They're tear gassing children. When they're not zip-tying them.
And there is no oversight.
They're a department of liars led by the lying Homeland Secuirty Secretary Kristi Noem.
Tricia, like Kristi, is a repeat offender when it comes to lying to the American people. Nicole Charky-Chami (RAW STORY) notes:
And here's where the media keeps failing us. Homeland Security officials have been caught in one lie after another. It's so bad that judges can't really take their claims seriously at this point. But the media too often repeats claims regarding ICE without noting the long pattern of lies from them this year.
We were all taught about the little boy who cried wolf. You don't lie because you'll be known as a liar and the time will come when you need to be believed but you're known as a liar.
A lesson we're taught as children is too much for ICE and the officials over ICE to grasp. That might be shocking if we hadn't already addressed the relaxed 'standards' when it comes to hiring ICE agents.
Relaxed standards. Ty explained to us that there were e-mails insisting that we don't call out Democrats anymore. Huh? The last piece we did was entitled "Media: Can Dems stop caving, can the media stop whoring" -- how do you miss that?
On our last piece, we'll come back to the Dem issue in just a moment, some are bothered that we've decided we don't care if we miss a week in posting here. It's now been twenty years and counting and we had to do a weekly media piece for 20 years. Chump is back in the White House. That requires a lot of energy on our part. It requires energy not to burn out and not to be captured by fear. It also requires energy for us to sound the alarms on Chump's crimes in zoom calls and in speaking appearances. In a perfect world, we'd have time for everything. Then again in a perfect world we could have spent this space right now explaining in great detail how awful CBS' 'reality' show/contest THE ROAD is.
Back to Dems.
There are something's we're not calling out. We're focused on the mid-terms and how Dems getting both house of Congress can save the country.
So there are things that, in better times, we'd be exploring but we don't have time for right now. The ship is sinking and we're bailing water as fast as we can. We don't have time for everything.
So we focus on what we think is most important.
For a week now, we've said nothing as the Dems -- certain Dems -- got behind the latest John Fetterman.
Remember that piece of garbage? Dems pimped him like crazy, Bernie endorsed him yet anyone with a brain knew he shouldn't get the nomination. He got it. He won the election. He was sworn into Congress and then immediately went into a hospital to receive mental treatment. He was there for months. No, that's not normal nor is it acceptable. A lot of whiners among the Dems now insist that he changed due to a stroke -- that would be a stroke he had as a candidate when he could have still been replaced but certain Dems attacked anyone -- politician, the media, internet personality -- that suggested that.
America, meet your new John Fetterman: Graham Platner.
He's one of many vying for the spot of Democratic Party nominee for a senate seat out of Maine.
One of many.
And he needs to drop out. He was whining Monday night that the Democratic Party was attacking him -- his own party.
Believe his party is the Communist Party -- isn't that what he declared online. Let's go to WIKIPEDIA:
In October 2025, various news outlets reported on Reddit posts by Platner from between 2013 and 2021 in which he called himself a "communist", declared that all cops are bastards, and agreed with a post calling rural white Americans "racist and stupid". In an interview with CNN, Platner said of those comments, "That was very much me f**king around the internet ... I don't think any of that is indicative of who I am today".[39] In a 2013 Reddit discussion about anti-rape underwear, Platner commented that people worried about assault should "take some responsibility for themselves and not get so fucked up they wind up having sex with someone they don't mean to".[40] He also referenced political violence in multiple posts; in 2018, he wrote: "Fight until you get tired of fighting with words and then fight with signs, and fists, and guns if need be." Platner also wrote that "an armed working class is a requirement for economic justice" and urged readers to "Get Armed, Get Organized. The Other Side Sure As Hell Is."[39][41] He has said that many of the comments do not represent his current political beliefs, and that they were the product of disillusionment after his military discharge and struggles with PTSD.[42][43] Collins called Platner's internet history "terrible" and "offensive".[44] Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin said that while he did not approve of Platner's comments, he did not consider them "disqualifying".[45] After the reporting on these comments, Platner's political director, former Democratic state representative Genevieve McDonald, resigned from his campaign.[46]
Platner said in an interview with Pod Save America that he has a skull-and-bones tattoo resembling the Totenkopf, a symbol worn by the Nazi Schutzstaffel paramilitary organization. Platner said that he and some other Marines got the tattoo while on leave in Croatia in 2007, not knowing its symbolism,[47] and that he learned that his tattoo resembled the Totenkopf only when reporters and political operatives from DC contacted him during his campaign. He said he had recently gotten it covered up.[48][49] Maine Governor Janet Mills, one of Platner's opponents in the Democratic primary, described the tattoo as "abhorrent". She stated, "I obviously vehemently disagree with the things he's been quoted as saying and doing" but that it was "up to the people" to decide whether he should continue in the Senate race.[50] However, Platner also called himself an anti-fascist "supersoldier" in an old Reddit comment.[51]
Is there some homo-erotic desire on the part of DSA -- among others -- when it comes to male candidates who are pure trash? Like Fetterman, Platner doesn't look like he's managed more than two showers a month and DSA tends to mistake that for fortitude.
Tonight, Jen Pskai was all but licking him on air on the soon to be MS NOW.
Weirdo Branco Marcetic took to JACOBIN (the DSA bible) at the start of the week to insist there was a smear job being done on Platner.
Not a smear job, an expose.
He got a Nazi tattoo. Instead of calling that out, the DSA is acting as ridiculous as the fright-wing does when they rush to defend Confederate monuments. And CNN's already exposed his lie that he didn't know he'd tattooed himself with a Nazi symbol until recently was a lie -- he knew as far back as 2006 when CNN was able to unearth the social media posts he'd deleted as part of his effort to run for the senate. Part of that effort, by the way, was getting married (for the first time) last year at the age of forty.
He knew it was a Nazi tattoo and he knew it nearly 20 years ago. He's lied repeatedly and publicly. He's also a mercenary who worked for Blackwater which is somehow being ignored.
Why? Because he cites Bernie as a hero (as did Fetterman) and he cites Socialists as heroes (without noting their political affiliation) (as did Fetterman) so it's time for the same booming voices to try to shout reality down. There are many candidates running of that Democratic Party nomination. Why are Jen Psaki, POD SAVE AMERICA, JACOBIN and others doing advance work for his campaign while ignoring other nominees? And on other comments, he did not minimize rape accusations as some idiots in the media keep typing, he minimized rape. There's a big difference. One is really bad (mining accusations), the other is outright evil (minimizing rape itself). Christopher Wiggins (THE ADVOCATE) explained:
The controversy has rattled Maine’s Democratic primary. Platner, a Marine and Army veteran and political newcomer, admitted to posting homophobic slurs and crude antigay jokes on Reddit as recently as 2021. He apologized for misogynistic and racist comments on Reddit before that. And, he covered up a tattoo he’s worn for 18 years that resembles the Nazi Totenkopf symbol, which he said he got in his 20s during his time in the Marines.
This is the hill Jen Psaki and others want to die on?
And instead of letting it play out, they're trying to rig it, they're trying to railroad the American people.
While they try to lie to us to pimp their favored candidate, they ignore the war on immigrants and so much more.
For example?
Hey, commentators at websites, on YOUTUBE, on MSNBC, every where -- where the hell have you been?
Donald Chump has savaged Joe Biden over the use of an auto pen to sign documents. He's insisted that Joe didn't even know what he was signing. Well last week, Donald served himself up for that kind of criticism but where the hell were you?
“The founder of Binance,” the reporter replied.
“The recent one, yes,” Trump said. “I believe we’re talking about the same person, ’cause I do pardon a lot of people.”
“I don’t know -- he was recommended by a lot of people,” Trump continued. “A lot of people say that -- are you talking about the crypto person?”
But there was always an important point to make that no one seemed to grasp.
Last month, AP reported:
President Donald Trump has added a Presidential Walk of Fame to the exterior of the White House, featuring portraits of each of the previous commanders-in-chief — except for one.
Instead of a headshot of Joe Biden, the Republican incumbent instead hung a photo of an autopen signing the Democrat’s name — a reference to Trump’s frequent allegation that the former president was addled by the end of his term in office and not really the one making decisions.
Chump doesn't know who he pardoned -- and not from earlier this year or even a month ago. He didn't know who he just pardoned. Seems he's guilty of everything he's accused Joe of. Also seems like his not knowing who he pardoned is even more important after Monday's assault by the Republican controlled House Oversight Committee which stated this week their 'finding' that Joe Biden's pardons are not legitimate because they were signed with an auto pen. That's their 'finding' and they can talk about it however they want; however, it is not a judicial finding and it has no weight at all on the pardons Joe issued which stand in spite of Chump and GOP spin.
Last week, William Priest (BARRON'S) observed, "Democracy, once thought to be self-sustaining, is on defense. Like every system before it, democracy has gone through cycles of strength and weakness—but its survival is no longer guaranteed. What is at stake is not simply a style of governance, but the wealth, freedom, and happiness of its citizens." We agree. In the 20th century, there was communism, democracy, socialism, totalitarianism, fascism, etc. When the USSR fell, some political observers declared it a victory for democracy. It wasn't. Democracy, like any political system, can fall. We have to fight for it -- right now, we're really having to fight for it -- and we can't take it for granted. But when we see the media refusing to cover something or refusing to cover it accurately or using their time (while wasting our time) to lie about the candidate they personally support, it becomes obvious that democracy does not mean as much to them as it does to us. If it did, they'd be better at their jobs.