Midterms Maybe 😱🤡 ✡️🌻😱🤡

Political Jiu Jitsu:  In health care there is a phenomenon called Roemers Law; it refers to the correlation between the supply of surgeons in a city and the volume of unnecessary or questionable surgical procedures performed.  It turns out that a similar corollary applies to the deployment of troops into a city:  more troops lead to an increase in the number and volatility of demonstrations because instead of deterring protests, a militarized response “often escalates tensions and can lead to larger demonstrations and increased civil unrest.” Moreover, when those troops use force against non-resistant protesters, it can generate greater public support for the protest movement, a process referred to as "political jiu-jitsu" in nonviolence research. In a bigly nutshell, that is what is happening in Minneapolis. A normal leader would seek to deescalate the violence, the reason that yesterday Minnesota Governor Tim Walz issued an appeal to Trump to “turn the temperature down” while also appealing to residents tamp down their actions. Unfortunately for Minnesota and for the rest of us, Trump doesn’t want to turn the temperature down. Instead, he’s looking for a rationale to invoke the Insurrection Act, the law that allows presidents to deploy active-duty military for domestic law enforcement.  He considered calling out the military during Trump 1.0 but was advised against it by his “minders.”  Yesterday, he again threatened to invoke the Act but now he has no “minders,” only Stephen Miller who is all in on getting the military on to the streets of the country and a compliant Supreme Court so we should be very worried. During an interview with Reuters, Trump also said that the US should not have midterm elections this year because he’s accomplished so much in office that “when you think of it, we shouldn’t even have an election in 2026.” When asked about those remarks, Press Secretary Karoline “Lying” Leavitt told reporters that he was “joking” and “speaking facetiously.” Leavitt can and does say whatever she wants; yesterday she called a reporter who spoke the truth about the shooting of Renee Good a “left wing hack” and “activist,” but that doesn’t mean we should believe her.  Trump, who also bemoaned that president’s party almost always loses House seats during midterm election, is dead serious, if there’s any way to cancel or disrupt the midterms he will and invoking the Insurrection Act and flooding the streets with combat troops would certainly go far to helping him do that. It’s fair to believe that the only thing Trump regrets about Minneapolis is that what’s happening there is happening now, rather than closer to November.  There will be more Minneapolis’s.

Fog:  Iran’s a mess, lots of people have been shot, many in the back and/or head, and many more have been arrested.  There are even reports of scheduled hangings of demonstrators which may or may not have been put on hold possibly because Trump, who ironically is okay with the shooting of Renee Good, said that those hangings would be his red line. Iran may be at a tipping point but then again, it’s been there before. Predicting what comes next is difficult.  On the one hand officials from Egypt, Oman, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar have warned Trump that attacking Iran would shake the global economy and destabilize an already volatile region. Trump has also been advised that attacking Iran wouldn’t guarantee a collapse of its regime. On the other hand, on Wednesday night the air space over Iran was mysteriously closed for hours before reopening; Lufthansa and its group airlines have temporarily cancelled overnight flights to and from Tel Aviv and Amman blaming increased regional tensions; the US State Department has raised its travel advisory for Israel to Level 4, the highest level warning US citizens not to travel to the country due to "armed conflict, terrorism and civil unrest;” and the US is in the process of moving the Navy's USS Abraham Lincoln to the Middle East.  While he continues to ponder what to do about Iran, assuming that he hasn’t already decided and is waiting for the military to be in position, Trump appears to be all in on Greenland.  Several tense looking Greenland and Danish officials visited Washington this week, looking worse after their meeting than they did before.  A number of NATO members, including Germany, Sweden, France, Norway, the Netherlands, and Finland are sending military personnel to Greenland this week to participate in joint exercises with Denmark which has warned that any attack by the US would end NATO. Nevertheless, Trump and his crowd continue to threaten forced “annexation” when all they need to do is negotiate for access. Lastly, there’s Venezuela where some of the oil revenues that we are now taking (extorting) are for some reason being ”sequestered in an account in Qatar.”  Yesterday, opposition leader Maria Corina Machado gave Trump her Nobel Peace Prize medal.  In appreciation for her pathetic gesture, she received no promises from Trump but did get a White House swag bag containing a Make America Great Again mug, a gift bag with Trump's signature in gold print, and other promotional items. The Nobel Prize people issued a statement saying that while a physical medal can be given away or sold, the Nobel Prize itself cannot be revoked, shared, or transferred; the decision is final, and the winner's name stands forever in the record books. In more relatable words, even in Disneyland receiving a marathon medal from a friend, does not mean that you actually ran the 26.2 miles; your name won’t suddenly appear among the finishers.

More 💩:  Taking a page from the Department of Homeland Security which has been advertising for new INS employees using Nazi era and white supremacist imagery, the Department of Labor sent out a social media post this week that echoed a well-known Nazi slogan: “One Homeland. One People, One Heritage.” Those words frighteningly similar to "Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer”  which means "One People, One Nation, One Leader." First wife Ivana Trump wrote in her book that Trump kept a copy of Hitler’s speeches near his bed. Coincidence? Hardly.