ICE is Human Trafficking

To be brief, prostitution and pimping are distinguished from human sex trafficking on the basis of consent.  Where coercion or non-consent are involved, the "pimp" is a trafficker and the "prostitute" is a victim of it. 

There are two kinds of human trafficking, sex trafficking and labor trafficking.  The latter is similar to slavery.  

What ICE is doing resembles human labor trafficking, not sex trafficking.  

No, ICE is not using their detainees for cheap labor.  

But they are using them to turn a profit, namely a profit for the owners of private prisons.  These companies warehouse warm bodies, and count them every night, and bill the government per head for the accommodations they provide. Their incentives are to keep the beds full, so they do not want to have a single empty bed, and even one detainee who is finally deported will be a drop in profits if they do not find another detainee to fill the bed.  Thus, you can expect these profiteers to deny detainees any way of contacting the outside world, or of making it to a humane deportation process hearing.  Anything that might take a body out of a bed they will resist. They are also incentivized to spend as little as possible per detainee, so as to maximize profit.  Thus we can expect the rations and health care to be sparse.  

So, what ICE and DHS are doing is like slavery without labor.  All you have to do is be a warm body, and the boss gets paid while you rot in your cell.  No work, just detention.  

Detained without warrants, held without charges, indefinite detention periods.  That is ICE and DHS.

This is human trafficking: the government provides the warm bodies to the oligarchs who enrich themselves by billing the government for holding the warm bodies.  And members of congress own stock in these companies.  

ICE snatches victims for a human trafficking scam.  

Christopher Hitchens Resurrected and Revived

There are two YouTube channels filled with AI generated content that I actually like.  One is called Christopher Hitchens Resurrected, the other is called Christopher Hitchens Revival, and I happily recommend both.  The oldest film at Resurrected is three weeks old and the channel has 35 films on it.  The oldest film at Revival is three days old, but this channel already has four films on it.  So they are both on pace to do one film a day plus.  

Both channels use an animated portrait of a cartoon Hitch, along with voice cloning and style mimicry to give us the long, rolling sentences, wit, historical allusion, and barbed put-downs that marked his delivery.  Some of these films are quite fun, and most of them deal with current events -- stuff Hitch never saw, so we never heard him opine about any of it -- like Trump, MAGA, Covid, Jordan Peterson, Joe Rogan and the J6 attack.  

Below is a film from Revival about Putin.  

Below is a film from Resurrected about ICE Abductions in the US. 

You can play these without commercials on this blog.  Enjoy!

Demand Justice to Win, Dem leadership!

I don't see or hear the words illegal and unconstitutional in our political discourse enough right now. Not from pundits, not from politicians, not from social media stuff.  We should be putting the screws to the republican congress for not stopping illegal, unconstitutional stuff.  They should be challenged to do that every day, by several members of the opposition party.  But you cannot challenge them to join you in putting a stop to inhumanity if you are not yourself calling out the inhumanity, and narrating the illegality, and describing the constitutional violations.  Open your damned mouths, Dem leadership!  Create a narrative!  Talk like you are teaching 7th graders what is going on.  Don't use big words!

I want every bit of info on Epstein as soon as possible.  Often I fear Epstein distracts our hearts from the erosion of rights and the uses of violence that are occurring daily. The admin is using the military against American citizens daily, and promising more.  But this is not and cannot be just about Trump.  It is and has to be about the republican party. 

None of this would happen if the GOP congress did it's job.  

You have to make that connection, Dem leadership!  Only you can do it!  

Put the flame to the feet of the GOP congress! 

Furthermore, the Epstein stuff can only put so much pressure on the R congress.  The inhumanity, the illegality and corruption can put much more on them.  And it creates lasting narratives, because Trump will keep this up until next year, and you have to keep narrating that the R congress is complicit in inhumanity and barbarism until then and beyond, because they are going to be complicit in inhumanity for that long.  

Use simple language, like inhumane, illegal, unconstitutional, cruel, barbaric, needlessly violent, heartless, filthy, contaminated, treating people like animals, warehousing humans and concentration camp.  

You should be attacking the dominant narrative with your own narrative, you are an opposition party, act like one.  You cannot be a credible fighter for justice if you are never seen fighting for justice. So be seen fighting for justice.  The whole party, all of you.  We need stronger and more frequent attacks on the dominant narrative.  The white house is out of control and the congress will not do a thing. Trump is violating the constitution, and the congress is dithering.  There are concentration camps in America and the GOP doesn't care.  People are being arrested without warrants.  People are being held without charges.  Posse Comitatus is being violated and the GOP will not hold a hearing on it.  They are all complicit in Trump's crimes.  They are aiding and abetting Trump's crimes.  Make this clear.

Once you ring these bells for 10 or 11 months, then you turn around and you call the conditions around us republican -- republican inflation, republican recession, republican death camps, republican inhumanity toward others, republican suppression of dissent, republican corruption of the press, republican lies, republican false promises, republican election scams, republican failure.  

The republican congress must be replaced because of the party's failures.  That is how you do it.  You develop a long narrative about them, then use it as your base of attack in the fall.  

Not just Trump.  The whole party of whackadoodles, crooks and bigots has to go down.  They all deserve blame, they are all responsible for what is going on.  The GOP stands for letting crooks off the hook, overpaying billionaires, wishing for more pollution, raising taxes, starving kids, eliminating health care, closing hospitals, dismantling rights, suppressing women, attacking gays and minorities, filling all the beds at for profit prisons, protecting pedophiles, ignoring famine, believing Putin and bowing to a madman.  And this is a short list of the horrors that should weigh heavily on voter's minds next fall. 

And because we are talking about justice, let me address the immigration crisis that the republican congress has created.  

The right way to drastically increase deportations is to quadruple (or more) the number of immigration courts and procedures.  There are huge backlogs, and the right way to remedy the situation is to increase the speed of the system by increasing the number of people making legal immigration decisions, i.e., immigration courts and immigration judges.  Never fail to say what is right.  

What is wrong is grabbing people off the streets and disappearing them without warrants or charges.

What is right is doing what works within the existing system, which would mean dramatically increasing the number of immigration judges.  If they had done that, there would be no American concentration camps, no armed men snatching people off the streets, and no illegal detention in foreign lands.  

Offer an alternative, narrate what is going on, and fight for what is right.  If you cannot do that, if you cannot live up to the fact that to lead is to teach, then you cannot lead in the fight for justice or in the fight against fascism.  

Teach the nation that reads at a 5th grade level what is going on, relentlessly teach them, tirelessly teach them. Then turn to the election when the time comes.    

The Banality of Joni Ernst

In reference to the policies that Joni and her colleagues champion, one of her constituents pointed out that people will die.  That is, of course, the worst possible outcome of a policy.  Joni responded, "We all are going to die."  

This was said in order to deflate the importance of what the constituent said. It is analogous to the remark that "all cars end up in the junkyard eventually" after someone says their car was totaled.  It points out a trivial fact as if that makes everything fine.  Well the issue with the car is not whether it will eventually be unsalvageable.  The issue is how far away that day is. A car that has been totaled has hit the junk heap earlier than expected.  The owner is surely not under the delusion that cars last forever.  Nor is the owner deluded for feeling that the loss came too soon.  

After taking a beating in social media for her heartless, confused and deceitful comment about death, Joni put out a video in which she stands in a graveyard, yes, a graveyard, and tries to act surprised at the fact that people object to her telling the truth, that all of us are going to die.  And if she has to explain that, she might just have to explain about the tooth fairy too.  Then she says that if you believe in everlasting life, perhaps you would like to talk to her friend Jesus.  

So, yeah, the Jesus Jerk in Joni came out at the end. She baited people into a place where she can look down on them in the name of Jesus.  Nice, Joni.  We know you like that, we can see you enjoying your superiority.  You are such a stuck up bitch these days.  What happened to Iowa Nice?  

She knows full well that NOBODY is contesting the simple truth of the proposition that we all are going to die.  

What we are Mad As Hell About, and hurt by, and disgusted by, is the fact that Joni would use that trivial truth in such a way as to deflect from and deflate the horrors of what she and her party of sycophantic weirdos and freaks want to do, which is take away health care insurance from millions and millions of Americans, resulting in unnecessary, early deaths.  

Those are deaths that should not happen on the day they do; deaths that come sooner than they would have but for the insurance republican goons plan to take away.  

The next person who could have lived many years longer with an inhaler, but died young because he or she did not have an asthma treatment? Joni says, no big deal, death is inevitable. 

Yes, Joni, all people are going to die, as you will always be known for pointing out.  

The issue is never whether we will die someday or not. 

The issue is always WHEN.  

The constituents who die because of your party's policies will die too soon, Joni.  I guess you are just so dense that you need to have this explained to you.  

I hope I don't also have to explain about how Jesus says you can take away other people's health insurance only if you would also have them take away yours.  

Weird, eerie, scary Taylor Swift songs

As I've said before on this blog, Taylor Swift is a heck of a song writer.  

Any song that leaves you with something to think about has done you a solid. And Taylor always leaves you thinking.  It's good stuff.  She has a penchant for sad songs; also for sort of eerie, sort of nightmarish songs.  I offer a selection of songs of the latter sort.  They range from the slightly to highly eerie, nightmarish or weird.  

If Donald Dirtbag is gonna run Taylor down, I am gonna boost her.  

All of these are lyric videos, so you can read and learn the lyrics while you listen.  If you stream these right here on the blog you will not see ads.  

Right Where You Left Me

Mad Woman 

Carolina (from the movie, Where the Crawdads Sing)

The Lakes

Who's Afraid of Little Old Me? 

The Moment I Knew (this has to be about getting stood up on her 21st Birthday)

Beautiful Ghosts (from the movie, Cats, written with Andrew Lloyd Weber).

Haunted 

I Know Places 

imgonnagetyouback 

Hoax

Would've, Could've, Should've

The Albatross

The Bolter 

No Body, No Crime 

This is an incomplete list. 

Why there is no god in the Bible

The god debated and believed in by theologians and other professional god folks in the West and Middle East is quite well defined after all of these years. It is what is known as the maximum god concept, an omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent being; that than which nothing greater can be conceived in the realm of gods.  

But this is, of course, not what is found in the actual holy writings of monotheism.  There we have an abusive, lying, genocidal totalitarian called Yahweh, El or Allah.   This hideous character cannot be god because if there is a god, then it knows right from wrong, but Yahweh/El/Allah does not know right from wrong.

The same argument can be used against the insufferable Jesus. If there was a god, he or she would not tolerate slavery, because he or she would know it was wrong. Jesus tolerates slavery, therefore, Jesus is not god. 

The other deities in the bible suffer the same fate.  Moloch for example. If there is a god, he or she would not demand child sacrifices because they are wrong. But Moloch demands child sacrifices, therefore, Moloch is not god. 

What is found in the bible is the fever dreams of elites, mostly the power dreams of priests.  There are no gods there.  The bible contains alleged gods, but no actual ones and this result is inevitable if you simply apply the criteria provided by theology: omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent is like nothing ever written down by ancient people. 

Never Forget: They can't read

American adults between the ages of 18 and 65: 70% of them do not read well above a 9th grade level.  Public health notices in the USA have to be written at a 5th grade level.  

Can American adults read newspapers?  Only around 30% of them are up to the task.  

Can they read their bibles?

Mostly no.

Can they read the constitution?

Mostly no. 

These are just fundamental facts about our opponents in the culture wars. They are people who appeal to texts they have not read and cannot read. 

Have I read the bible? No, not really.  If you mean all of it, then, no.  If you mean all of one book, then, no. If you mean not at all, then yes.  I attended a Catholic elementary school.  We read bible passages.  I lost interest in religion in junior high school.  I studied philosophy, and took one medieval philosophy class that featured a good deal of churchly philosophizing.  Beyond that, I have frequently searched topics in the bible.  

Have you ever searched the bible for a topic?  Try searching the word "philosophy" Apparently there is only one use of the term, Colossians 2:8, and it is an ugly piece of bigotry and religious presumption of the most sickeningly arrogant hue. 

A world in which only the few can read well ought to be a world in which the bible dies out.  

The trouble is, we read the bible in little snippets. Hardly anyone sits down with the intention to consume so much as a whole page of this gibberish.  

So, the person who consults their bible about whether or not to sign up for a philosophy class, or about what to think of their fellow students who study philosophy, etc., this is what they find.  A short, digestible, dismissive and bigoted remark.  The kind of thing semi-literates can internalize and use.  

And this shows why this book will never die; because those who can barely read it are masters of it.