NATIONAL ICED TEA DAY UPDATES

But Really, Every Day Is A Good Day to Sip and Spill Some Tea!

-Legacy Media, Inc. is kind of telling on themselves in their coverage of the Los Angeles ICE protests that have morphed into the Donald Trump/Stephen Miller Countdown to Strongman Rule for Beta Cucks True, if you tune in to CNN or CBS, still photos and video running in a loop want viewers to start to grind their teeth at the prospect of a great American city burning to the ground or those nice armored officers whose faces we can’t see looming over the occasional person flipping birds or waiving a flag are leading their stories on what’s going on there (we exempt Fox and the rest of Media MAGA because they of course want to see mayhem in the streets, so fk them) and try to call Trump with tears in their eyes begging to bring the Marines into their exosuburb to protect the mobs from purging them.

-So where’s the tell? Simple: if there was terror throughout the streets of Los Angeles, everyone reading this Substack and our immediate circles of friends know for an absolute fact that said violence would be on our TVs and screen devices 24/7, pre-empting everything except the NBA Finals – and even then ABC would probably run a section of their screen either for riots or for the game to give the riots the full screen area. But they aren’t. Because the ‘unrest’ is simply not that big.

-Multiple commentators have noted that the two areas where ICE has been confronted by locals furious at their presence make up little more than a 4-square block area of Greater Los Angeles, which measures over 4,000 – that’s four THOUSAND – square miles. And even that is a bit of a lowball – include all the areas near Los Angeles County and it goes to nearly 4,800 square miles. Simply put, there ain’t nothing big happening in that area.

-Certainly nothing that would warrant the call-up of 4,000 National Guard members or an 800-person Marine battalion as Trump deputized has-been Fox News Weekend host Nazi-snuggling serial marital cheater Defense Secretary Drunky McHoneyPotAnyone? Pete Hegseth insisted on doing over the weekend. The troops, which arrived Monday morning, have been watching as other nonviolent protests (burning cars and trash is bad and should not be done, but humans or animals are not being injured - AND NEEDS TO STAY THAT WAY) continue around them, have gone on the streets and found very little to do, as whatever unrest there has been is being handled by local officials.

-Protestors so far have heeded warnings from organizers, Governor Gavin Newsom, Mayor Karen Bass, and the uber-macho violence-loving rhetoric of Trump and Miller, who are trying to follow whatever How To Install an Autocracy checklist they got ChatGPT to generate (but not today, as the AI program is reportedly down, darn and drat the luck) to follow, to not give anyone an excuse to turn violent themselves. Indeed, by most of the reports, it is ICE itself that have been the antagonists, creating the reaction from the locals that was used by Trump and Miller to militarize the area in the hopes of cowing and terrorizing the rest of the country.

-So far, not only is the presence of the troops barely being noticed (see “4,000 square miles” above), but there is now a backlash building against not only Trump and Miller and their hunger to become the strongmen they imagine themselves to be, but counterprotests are now emerging across the country amid other ICE raids and pushbacks by locals. Since last weekend, counter-protests have emerged in dozens of cities including Chicago, Dallas, Denver, and San Diego, again staying non-violent for the most part, and highlighting the excesses of ICE itself after it was told by Miller to begin arresting and deporting over 3,000 “illegal” immigrants per day – numbers that simply do not exist, and numbers that immigrant rights activists and family members insist include American-born citizens, children, and anyone who ICE thinks could be illegal.

-On top of all of that, Newsom has been on the offensive on social media, daring Trump and immigration tsar Tom “Doesn’t This Camo Baseball Cap Make My Neck Folds Look Tough, Brown People?” Homan, to arrest him, (THIS JUST IN) suing the federal government to get the National Guard to leave, and asserting that the Guardsmen who have been deployed are being housed in conditions that would make you think they were arrested by ICE. Newsom is claiming the Guard has no cots, no shower facilities, no food and no water on top of nothing to do because, again, there is NO broad unrest in Los Angeles.

-That does not seem to matter to Hegseth, of course, who managed to get to a Congressional hearing today to assert that the Guard will stay in L.A. for 60 days at a taxpayer cost of $134 million. Keep that number in mind should Trump and Miller and anyone else in this administration insist that if anyone else gets as out of line as they hallucinate Los Angeles is, that price tag times however many cities would be affected times however many troops would be hanging out in cities this summer instead of defending the country from real enemies will bring those numbers WAY up. One would think numbers like that would alert Departments or watchdogs patrolling to make the Government more Efficient and demand answers. Just spitballing …

-And for those looking at this and thinking it is a waste and a dodge and a “distraction” from “real issues,” commentator Oliver Willis made a cogent point: in a time when there are multiple assaults on institutions left and right, there are no such things as distractions – there are multiple fronts. Constitutional crises, rampant corruption, rank incompetence, waste of money are all bound together in what is going on in Los Angeles, and thus should be covered.

-Besides, we are dealing with people that will often do our work for us. Because as the story continues to play out in Los Angeles, the Senate continues to try to figure out how to get the Big Bill O’Crap passed without making people even more angry about everything it will do, which will make all but the super-rich and the pro-autocrats happy (and that presumes no major economic crises, so … yeah) and Congress tries to pass the bill in the wee small hours of the morning, Miller has loudly been connecting the ICE raids to the Big Bill O’Crap and insisting one must be passed to help the other.

-The version of the bill passed by the MAGA House would add $151 BILLION to immigration enforcement (which includes ICE) and rumors are some in the Senate, while trying to minimize Medicaid and SNAP funding cuts, want to add more to the ICE coffers. To contrast, the defense budget for France and Great Britain are not as much as what is being proposed to give ICE even as questions about how much money they have already spent are not being answered by the people who should know (which would be Hegseth and Homeland Security’s Kristi Noem). So ICE, its power, its lack of accountability, and building anger towards it, are becoming a focal point of protests.

-And THAT brings us to planning for this Saturday, when the No Kings rallies are being planned and organized throughout the country. Rachel Maddow and Indivisible report that as of last night, over 1,800 separate rallies are already being planned for this Saturday – a number that already well eclipses the 1,400 Hands Off! Protests of April 5 when former President and current cuck-maker Elon Musk was the ostensible center of attention, and a number that is likely to elevate the 3-5 million that were on the streets then. The ICE actions are likely to give this weekend’s rallies a clear focal point, and the protests already taking place point to a crescendo that could hit quite a number …

-… particularly because, as we all well know because we are stuck with it, Trump has demandpouted a parade for the 250^th Anniversary of the establilshment of the U.S. Army Flag Day his 79^th birthday with as much military hardware as he can see to parade underneath a seating platform so that the missiles and tanks and men with guns all pass under his crotch in front of him.

-The taxpayer-paid-for-props have begun to arrive in DC, including 28 Abrams tanks and 50 helicopters and 175 magnetometers while blocking off 18 miles of roads for the spectacle, which is also expected to cause massive damage to the streets since they are not created for such heavy phallic symbols military equipment. All at the cost of another $45 million, minimum.

-Trump is “warning” that if there is “ANY” non-adoration at his Big Penis Parade that non-adorers should expect “very heavy force” to be used against them – but Indivisible is planning for that. First, they will make sure nobody is near Trump when he attempts to climb stairs, as the clearly overweight Trump falling on somebody could clearly be defined as a “very heavy force.”

-Second and more to the point, Washington DC does NOT have a No Kings rally scheduled for it – the big DC-adjacent rally will be in Philadelphia, and Trump’s event will start later than most No Kings rallies, with the lowlight of a blabberslur speech by Dear Leader scheduled to begin after the parade at 4 pm DC time, which likely means more like 5 or later.

-To find your local No Kings rally to attend, go to www.mobilize.us or indivisible.org. And heed the words of Rachel Maddow yesterday, who opened her “A Block” by pointing out that these moves by Miller and Trump do not reflect a leadership that is either confident or competent, and definitely not “strong.”

-Just the opposite, in fact – Maddow hammered home that Trump’s immigration policies are universally loathed (only when polling questions are phrased as vaguely “stop illegal immigration” as they can be does Trump’s numbers look relatively okay), and he and Miller have “no ideas” and “no other way” to turn around the fact that support for everything and anything they want to do is supported.

-Add to that all the other issues Trump is at historic lows for after only five months into his second term (and second terms are historically bad for American Presidents to begin with) – well, as Wonkette’s Evan Hurst put it, “… everything Donald Trump is doing right now is because he is weak, he is a loser, he is panicking, (and) he is made of expired beef and shower drain pube clumps …”

-(STANDS ON SOAPBOX)

-Leaders who want to be strong men that turn to strongmen tactics as quickly and as brazenly and as ineptly as Trump has generally do so as last-ditch efforts to cling to power – so long as the people who are the objects of the rule resist NONVIOLENTLY with massive numbers and those numbers continue to build. The only time violence helps is if it happens at the start of such regimes, and those regimes are usually headed by military leaders with armies that are generating the violence. Arguably, ICE is that for Trump – but their focus on immigrants is what is fueling the eroding support for Trump, and no matter how much they and Legacy Media Inc. are trying, there is no violence that is shifting public opinion.

-Keeping the protests clean, joyful, everywhere (the American military cannot cover 1,800+ protests), and focused, combined with keeping Los Angeles safe and resistant, could prove decisive in breaking any kind of hold Trump and Miller have with their Project 2025 and all-white America goals and nightmares. Or, as Maddow put it at the end of her report, “Once you’ve done this, though, there’s not much else to do. Sorry, big guy, last card!”

-And if the protests build and stay nonviolent, he’ll be playing the way we all suspect he has been all along: with no deck at all.

-(STEPS FROM SOAPBOX)

-Before getting to the day’s trivia, it must be mentioned that one of the people that took advantage of the Los Angeles situation is Secretary Worm Brain, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Using “conflict of interest” as the fig leaf, the Health and Human Services Secretary – who, of COURSE, has been credibly implicated by Sen. Elizabeth Warren and others of having his own flagrant conflicts of interest while in that position – fired all 17 members of the Centers for Disease Control’s Vaccine Advisory Panel, insisting he will bring fellow loonballs and dipwads grifters willing to grease his roided-up pecs advisors in to give him all the lunatic conspiracy theories his cavernous ego can handle the ability to, in his words, “restore public trust.”

-We may have the target for the next wave of protests, which are being talked about around Labor Day. More soon, and get your vaccines as soon as you can, as long as you can. Not a petty atrocity, but more signs to be made for Saturday for sure …

-NEWS ON THIS DATE: In 1692, the first hanging as a result of the Salem Witch Trials took place. In 1940, Italy entered World War II (it did not end well for them and really did not end well for leader Benito Mussolini). In 1997, Martin Luther King assassin James Earl Ray escaped from a prison in Tennessee (he was caught three days later). In 2007, the finale of THE SOPRANOS aired, igniting a debate over whether Tony Soprano was whacked in the final moments of the show that continues to this day.

-DEBUTS ON THIS DATE: TRISTAN UND ISOLDE (1865), Alcoholics Anonymous (1935), Big Brother & The Holding Company (1966), ONE OF THESE NIGHTS (1975), the Apple II Computer (1977), FABLES OF THE RECONSTRUCTION (1984), LITTLE CREATURES (1985), 3 FEET HIGH AND RISING (1989), THE MARSHALL MATHERS LP (2000), LAZZARETTO (2014).

-HAPPY BIRTHDAY: Hattie McDaniel, Frederick Loewe, Howlin’ Wolf, Terrence Rattigan, Saul Bellow, Barry Morse, Judy Garland, Nat Hentoff, Maurice Sendak, Chuck Fairbanks, F. Lee Bailey, Jurgen Prochnow, Jeff Greenfield, Dan Fouts, Rich Hall, Carlo Ancelotti, Timothy Van Patten, Kelly Deal, Kim Deal, Maxi Priest, Brent Sutter, Jeanne Tripplehorn, Jimmy Chamberlin, Elizabeth Hurley, Bill Burr, Sundar Pichal, Faith Evans, Tara Lipinski, Leelee Sobieski, Kate Upton, and Sasha Obama.

-REST IN PEACE/POWER: Marcus Garvey, Jack Johnson, Spencer Tracy, Michael Rennie, William Inge, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Louis L’Amour, Jo Van Fleet, John McKay, Ray Charles, Gordie Howe, Claudelle Washington, and Homer Rice.

-FEED THE WORMS: Too-chirpy former LA Governor Bobby Jindal entered Earth on this date. Hafez al-Assad, John Gotti, Donald Regan and Ted Kaczynski bought it on this date.

-Alexander the Great died on this date. You decide if he Rests in Peace/Power or if he Feeds the Worms.

-YOUR MUSIC INTERLUDE: In 1752, Benjamin Franklin flew a kite during a thunderstorm as part of an experiment involving electricity and how it conducted. In his honor, here is a song that was cut from HAMILTON about him (NSFW!) …