This is a deranged vision of America

Despite the annoyances with the soon-to-be-decommissioned BlogEngine.NET version of the Daily Parker, I actually had some things to say today.

Mainly: the OAFPOTUS and his droogs know they're losing everywhere that matters, and they know they only have slightly less than a year before the next Congress effectively shuts them down, so they're going for broke. And the last 36 hours are just the beginning.

Top of mind is yesterday's murder of Renee Good, a mother of three shot in the face by a poorly-trained, undisciplined, and unhinged Federal immigration officer, on a quiet residential street in Minneapolis. The OAFPOTUS and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem called it a terrorist incident, which is correct just not the way they intended.

Reactions in the reality-based community have run from "just fucking no" all the way to "really ICE can just fuck right off now." I'll start with the Republicans:

• Adam Kinzinger: "This administration wants force normalized. It wants fear. It wants examples made. That is the deeper sickness here. This wasn’t just about one encounter. Minneapolis didn’t wake up yesterday and randomly get flooded with ICE agents. That surge happened for one reason: provocation. A show of force. A political message."
• Jennifer Rubin: "Going forward, it is long past time for Congress to conduct actual oversight of the Department of Homeland Security. Any reasonable person knew that an out-of-control, cruel, and lawless regime openly spouting xenophobic attacks on non-Whites and rushing to flood American cities with armed thugs (who feel empowered to resort to violence) would invariably wind up hurting and killing innocent people."
• The Economist: "For months Mr Trump has seemed to want to provoke protesters to violence in order to justify cracking down even harder on Democrat-run cities. Recent court decisions limit his ability to deploy the National Guard the way he did in Los Angeles, but that is not the only option the president has if things get out of hand. He has long toyed with the idea of invoking the Insurrection Act, which would allow him to send troops to cities. Once again, Minneapolis is at the centre of a storm."
• Heather Cox Richardson: "That both DHS and Trump posted false accounts of the shooting even as there are four videos circulating that reveal those accounts to be lies shows they no longer are making any attempt to justify their actions. Instead, they are demanding Americans abandon reality in favor of whatever the administration says. If this works, it would be a demonstration of totalitarian power, the ability to control how people think. Accepting that lie is a loyalty test."
• Luke Hallam: "Trump’s response...was to vilify the victim. He accused her of willfully attempting to mow down an officer. He asserted, without a shred of evidence, that an onlooker was a paid agitator. And—worst of all—he said nothing that even came close to the sort of human response to tragedy that we would expect of minimally decent human beings. This is about Trump’s clear failings as a human being."
• Amanda Nelson: "The fight needs to be on two things: your state and local legislative offices, including Sheriffs and state houses, which decide on whether your police departments partner with ICE. And the midterms. If we take the House back in the midterms, we can 1/ reduce the budget and headcount of ICE, which is the easiest way to reduce their operations and 2/ begin investigations."

That isn't all the regime did this week. In fact, Renee Good's murder might serve as a welcome (to the OAFPOTUS) distraction from all the other damaging things they did:

• How about the "looting of US foreign policy?"
• Or effectively (but not legally) withdrawing from 60+ international organizations that we helped set up and that solve real problems in the world?
• Or destroying our immigration courts while pretending to care about immigration law?
• Or just the OAFPOTUS having trouble with the pronoun "we?"

It's past time for us to behave like grandma's Democratic Party. We need to stop this shit, and we have 10 months to make our case. We have to fight with every legal means possible and, once we've driven these assholes from the field, strengthen our system against future attacks from within like this one.