And I can’t even start to worry about the climate right now.

That’s a shame, because we are fucking in for it as the Colorado dries up in our winter heat wave. Nevermind what’s going to happen to Poland or Macedonia. I’d be worried what happens between Utah, Arizona, Nevada, and California during the next growing season.

If Russia were to attack Europe, or China were to take Taiwan, Trump wouldn’t do a thing about it.

Trump’s cabinet is stuffed to the brim with people who are crazy enough to fight a war with China. What they can’t handle is China not invading Taiwan and, instead, stacking up China-friendly political allies on the island until the Parliament tips their way.

Meanwhile, Russians are damned near out of gas. They barely have the manpower to control that eastern slice of Ukraine. If they launched attacks into the European mainland and provoked a real material response from a combined Western Europe, they would be in huge trouble. But, again, that was never really Putin’s intention. He’s been building up alliances with white nationalist parties all across the continent. By 2030, you’re going to have a swath of ultra-nationalists running every Parliament from the AfD in Germany to Reform UK.

And he’s going to be doing it in coordination with Israel, Saudi Arabia, Turkiye, and India. Countries America bribed into a temporary alliance aren’t going to be there when the US economy goes into another recessionary tailspin. That’s what will really fuck NATO up.

And all this happening on the eve of a climate catastrophe, too.

She got gunned down dropping her daughter off at daycare. She wasn’t doing a Leftist 9/11 on the police.

Entry level $38k average $52.

NYPD pay is $60k starting and $125 after five years. That doesn’t include overtime or benefits. At 33k officers and counting, they’re the biggest department in the country. Base salary in Houston is $80k with Senior Officers earning as much as $140k.

Go more local and you’ll find the starting officer pay regularly outruns the median salary and benefits. The NYC median salary is $73k. Houston is $56k. You can find officers in smaller towns earning less. But they’re inevitably in a township with residents that are even poorer.

And, again, this is just baseline salary. Police Unions regularly secure 1.5x - 2x overtime pay compensation, resulting in some curious compensation figures

Houston senior police officer Matthew Davis’ annual salary was about $90,000 this past fiscal year. He made nearly $170,000 more in overtime.

It was not an anomaly. Davis has collected more in overtime than his base salary every year since at least 2020, and was previously disciplined for participating in an overtime scheme involving fabricated witness claims on traffic tickets. He is part of a growing pattern among the city’s highest-paid traffic enforcement officers who routinely collect overtime earnings that match or exceed their base salaries, a Houston Chronicle analysis found

Hardly the only department that’s been scandalized by this kind of misconduct.

The coveted nature of the job is little dicks want power to abuse.

Definitely one of the “fringe” benefits.

The job does suck.

Most jobs suck. Few include the number of perks afforded to entry level staff.

We’ve been at that for decades.

Chauvin wasn’t assaulted

That’s not what he claimed at the time. A big part of every cop-killer story is the allegation that the person they murdered prompted the killing. Chauvin insisted through his entire defense that Floyd lashed out at him in his final moments, right before he spontaneously died of a drug induced heart attack.

We’ve got video clear as day of the ICE agent casually walking up to the car and plugging the woman in the face. This was a mother who’d just dropped her child off at daycare, not some marauding vehicular anti-ICE assassin. She was given seconds to respond to a command and butchered for failing to act fast enough.

Can’t prosecute someone of they can just walk out of the state unimpeded. Has he been detained in Minneapolis, even? He’s certainly not under arrest. We’d have heard about that.

Remember that Kyle Rittenhouse was allowed to leave Kenosha, Wisconsin and drive all the way back to Illinois without city or state officials lifting a finger. After turning himself in, he was let out on bail and - not long after - spotted

at a bar with his mother in Mt. Pleasant, Wisconsin, drinking beers and posing for pictures alongside five men who sang “Proud of Your Boy”, a song used by members of the far-right Proud Boys political organization. In one photo with two of them, Rittenhouse flashed an “OK” sign, a hand gesture that some have associated with white supremacists

And this was just some vigilante asshole, not a badged up capo in the Trump Army.

… to Venezuela.

And Greenland!

And Congress will do the same if he attacks Greenland, Cuba, Colombia, Mexico, Panama, Canada or any other country.

Sure. Those other countries (Canada excepted, I guess?) are Global South countries we need to kick into line from time to time. Don’t forget how we’re currently bombing Nigeria, a story that’s flown almost entirely under the radar because… fuck Africans, I guess?

Sen. Susan Collins, a Maine Republican, voted for the measure.

“While I support the operation to seize Nicolas Maduro, which was extraordinary in its precision and complexity, I do not support committing additional U.S. forces or entering into any long-term military involvement in Venezuela or Greenland without specific congressional authorization,” Collins said in a statement.

Well, thank goodness. I guess what Trump did was good but also we’ve informed him in no uncertain terms that he shouldn’t do it again.

But in a hypothetical “might makes right”, cops aren’t ever safe either and don’t act with impunity of the courts and the consent of the governed.

Cops operate as armed gangs with staked out turf. They’re safe, broadly speaking, because they have a collectivist attitude towards their own defense. If you fuck with one cop, you are inevitably fucking with the entire department. And police departments - particularly in big cities - have enormous amounts of money, capital, and manpower to deploy against individuals and small groups in opposition.

If they thought the job sucked before with high rates of PTSD and suicide, just wait.

Not remotely high enough.

And the job doesn’t suck. It is highly coveted, both for the amazing pay/benefits - some of the best in the public sector and regularly well above the local median - and for the slew of “fringe” benefits that come from gang membership - prosecutorial immunity when engaged in drug/human trafficking, assault/battery/spousal abuse, vehicle crimes, intoxication, etc.

Two high-profile Democrats are calling for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer involved in a fatal Wednesday shooting in Minneapolis to be prosecuted.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) called the shooting a “murder”

…

Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), a Silicon Valley representative, called for the officer to be arrested.

…

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), who represents Minneapolis, condemned ICE’s actions as “unconscionable and reprehensible,” and called for “legal action.”

Cool, I guess? But, critically, we’re not hearing anything from the Minneapolis DA’s office or the Minnesota AG.

I’m confident that Democrats will campaign on pursuing this investigation during their run for office, right? They won’t just hide behind “Thoughts and Prayers” and “I haven’t looked into it” mea culpas?

No revolution

Nobody wants to be the first one to stick their neck out.

Be incredibly angry at Americans

Invade Quebec

Become very cold

Leave after about 80 years

Which makes me wonder if I as a Dane am morally justified in gathering a few friends, breaking into these influencers homes, kicking them out, and just take up residence.

The thing about Might Makes Right is that hypotheticals aren’t a signal of strength.

What would happen if you tried? You’d probably get in an altercation. People would be injured. The local police would be called to break it up. And nobody would care that you were trying to prove a rhetorical point.

I suppose there is no moral obligation for me to obey American laws, if there is no moral obligation for America to obey international laws.

To borrow a quip from Brandon Lee Mulligan

Laws are threats made by the dominant socioeconomic-ethnic group in a given nation. It’s just the promise of violence that’s enacted and the police are basically an occupying army. You know what I mean?

The US has a military base in Greenland already. Pituffik Space Base doesn’t appear to be going anywhere, despite all the bluster.

And as the US is the military backbone of NATO, I’m not seeing how NATO as an institution would respond with the leadership structure and base management riddled with American personal.

Some people get twisted into knots when you refer to NPR as Nice Polite Republicans

finger twitching over the little foam hand that says “Death to America”

Don’t make me do it, I’m warning you.

Wish the American system really would break. Seems like its working all too well.

That’s when America went fully fascist for the first time.

blinks

opens up a history book

flips to the section marked “19th century”

No. No no no. Not the first time.

flips to the section marked US History in the 1920s

Not even the first time in the last century

flips to the section marked The Reagan Administration

Holy shit. I’m beginning to see a pattern.