"Run, Jesse, Run!"

No one was saying what Jesse was saying that Democratic primary season.

So, when it was announced he’d be speaking at the Shrine Auditorium, myself, Gilbert D'ambrosio, and John Kiwan marked our calendars.

The Shrine sits at the northern edge of the African American community of Watts, where it overlaps with the University of Southern California. We had places on Estrella Ave. and Elendale Place, were frequenting Raider games at the Coliseum where Marcus Allen was romping, and had been to the venue for a Rick James concert.

Hipsters-about-town.

Thanks to the music of a politically saturated punk band called The Clash, we were hip to the rainforest revolutions in Central America. Jackson was the only Democrat calling for the United States to stay out of the region and we loved him for it.

Although the announcement for the event made it quite clear that it was a "Mother’s Day Church and Community Rally," it didn’t quite register because for us Jackson was a "radical" and we showed up in torn Sandinista shirts, black pants with lots of zippers, and a good buzz on. The crowd, to our surprise, was mostly black ladies - matriarchs - in Easter egg-colored dresses and big floppy hats.

Though not unwelcome, our presence raised a few eyebrows.

Seated down front, we were thrown off by the Baptist-styled mass unfolding around us. They were singing Gospel hymns that had nothing to do with The Clash and we didn't know what all was going on, just standing and sitting with everyone else on cue.

At one point, the preacher said, “please rise” and we three stood up, but only a handful of others followed suit. He looked down at us over his spectacles and said, “So, you boys are pastors at local churches?” And we, you know, weren't and sank back down into our seats. The Shrine is a cavernous affair; it has hosted the Oscars, Emmys, Grammys, Soul Train awards, you name it, and seats 6,400 people. The ensuing eruption of laughter was…never mind.

Jackson was fire that day. He DID condemn U.S. intervention in Central America. "We're wrong!" he declaimed. It was not something you were hearing at the height of the Reagan era and we shook our fists. He brought the crowd to its feet again and again, until they became delirious and started chanting “Run, Jesse, Run!” as he shuffled along the stage in a simulated trot to the delight of all.

You could see something happening in the black community. People went up on stage to shake his hand and make a donation, and they looked good and dropped a LOT of coin into the collection basket. They were ebullient, taking things into their own hands, and Jesse was the catalyst.

"Poor people work. They take the early bus," he told the 1988 Democratic Convention. Not a pure "politician," Jesse Jackson was a storyteller and the story he told was a counternarrative to the pap we’re fed about what goes on in this country, the teller of a different truth, and we will not see the likes of him again.

Happy Valentines Day. Book Report of "Studies on Love" by Jose Ortega y Gasset.

 

The Spanish philosopher Jose Ortega y Gasset (1883-1955) made a name for himself in the 1930s with Revolt of the Masses, a book which lamented the industrial era's effect on Western culture. It created, he said, a need for specialization which led to a stunted humanity characterized by mediocrity and the "median man' of which he observed: "This planet is condemned to the reign of the median man. As such, the important task is to elevate the median as much as possible."

Ortega abhorred the dehumanizing effects of science and its handmaiden, reason, upon the life of this world. Nonetheless, as editor and publisher of the El Sol newspaper, and as the leader of his own political party in the years leading up to the Spanish Civil War, Ortega was a logical voice in an era when violent passions would ultimately prevail. 

While not nearly as seminal a work as Revolt, a collection of Ortega's essays edited from El Sol, and packaged as "Estudios Sobre El Amor" (Studies On Love)(1939), is certainly his most charming. In this collection, Ortega, a professor of metaphysics at the University of Madrid, takes reason and trains it upon that greatest of human mysteries: Love.

Here are the results:

Ortega sets out, as a good philosopher, to define his concept and debunks the equating of love with happiness. "Who doubts that the lover can receive joy from the beloved? But is it no less certain that love is at times sad as death, a sovereign and mortal torture?"

He quotes the letters of a Portuguese nun, Mariana Alcoforado, to her untrue seducer: "I thank you from the bottom of my heart for all the desperation you have caused me and detest the tranquility in which I lived prior to knowing you."

Love's hypothetical happiness disproved with an example, Ortega bores into his subject. Love, he maintains, is incitement. "Through a pore opened by the arrow launched from an object of affection springs love, actively directing itself toward them...It flows from the lover toward the beloved -- from me to the other, in a centrifugal direction."

As an emanation toward the object, love is not unlike hate, the difference being that love flows toward its target positively, whereas hate proffers negativity. Both, however, generate heat produced in varying degrees. "All love," he notes, "passes through phases of diverse temperature and, subtly, the language of love talks of those relations which 'cool,' and the lover complains of the beloved's tepid responses, of their coldness."

The third aspect to love's definition must naturally, perhaps hopefully, take into account the point at which lover and beloved are united.

Perfect Projection

Ortega insists that love not only errs upon occasion but is essentially an error. "We fall in love when our imagination projects nonexistent perfection upon another person. One day, the fantasy evaporates and with it, love dies."

The idea, like so many around us, is born with the Greeks: Plato to be specific. Ortega points out that for Plato, all love resides in the desire to unite the person who loves to another being blessed with perfection, in the volition of our soul toward something excellent, better and superior. "Let the reader try generating a state of enchantment -- sexual enchantment -- in an object which provides not a single aspect of excellence, and see how impossible it becomes."

Sexual instinct, he points out, may preserve the species, but does not perfect it. Throw love into the sexual mix, however, and enthusiasm for that other being, for their body and soul in union indissoluble, and what you get is a gargantuan effort to improve the breed.

"With the erotic process barely initiated, the lover experiences a strange sense of urgency to dissolve their individuality into the other, and vice versa, to become absorbed by the beloved...This recalls the doctrine of the Saint Simonians, according to which, the true human individual is the loving couple."

Our world, Ortega says, is cluttered with innumerable objects whilst the field of our conscience is very limited. The details of this world engage in a kind of fight for our attention, which supplants one object with another, according to its importance. "Mania," consequently, is a condition of focus extended beyond the limits of normality. Ortega suggests that all the great thinkers have been maniacs. "When they asked Newton how he was able to discover his mechanical understanding of the universe, he responded, 'By thinking about it day and night.'"

Love, our philosopher says, works the same way, represents an anomalous focusing of attention upon another person. "It does not constitute enrichment of our mental life," he points out, "just the opposite. It grows rigid and fixed, prisoner to a single being. Plato called it Theia mania (divine mania). Nonetheless, the person enamored has the sense of life being much richer. In the reduction of their world, it seemingly grows more concentrated."

For a lover, then, the world ceases too exist, having been supplanted completely by the beloved.

Loves Fatal Machinery

Curiously, the evolution of enchantment lacks spirituality, depending as it does upon the paralyzing of our attention -- that which regulates mental activity -- leaving the lover dependent upon a series of automatic, mechanical processes. Love, Ortega reasons, is an imposition which mocks free will. The great heartbreakers know this, that once they've managed to affix someone's attention to them, total preoccupation is possible with a simple tightening and loosening of the string attached to their romantic prey.

The lover falls under a "spell," an "enchantment." These, he notes, are words which point to love's extraordinary character. We resort to religious terminology when trying to describe it.

"The curious sharing of lexicons between love and mysticism leads one to suspect common roots." For Ortega, mysticism is also a phenomenon of attention. In the mystic, "God permeates the soul to the point of becoming confused with it, or the inverse, with the soul becoming diluted in God. Such is the union the mystic aspires to. The ecstatic perceives said union as something definitive and perennial, just as the lover swears eternal love.

"Once initiated, the process of enchantment develops with an exasperating monotony," Ortega points out. "What I mean to say is that all those who fall in love do it the same way - the smart one and the dope, the younger and the elder, the bourgeois and the artist. This fact confirms love's mechanical character."

The only exception to this mechanistic rule is found in the question of precisely what attracts the attention of one person to another. Ortega does not shrink from the challenge.

Naked in Love

By demonstrating an interest in someone, we expose much of ourselves that is hidden. "In the election of his mate, the male reveals his essence, in the election of her man, a female does the same," notes the philosopher. "The type of humanity we prefer in one another being sketches the profile of our own soul. Love is an impetus that emerges from the subterranean reaches of our person, and in traveling to the surface dredges the algae and shells of our interior with it."

Ortega posits that not unfamiliar situation which pairs a gregarious woman of beauty with a man considered low and vulgar. The judgment is usually an optical illusion because of the distance involved. Love, Ortega asserts, is the business of minute detail and the fact is that, viewed from far away, authentic love and false comport themselves in a similar manner: "But let's say the affection is genuine," he asks. "What are we to think?" One of two things: Either the man is not quite so vulgar as we thought, or the woman not so select."

The great error, vigilant since Descartes and Renaissance, is that which views human being as living by the dictates of conscience, "that small part of ourselves with which we see clearly and which operates according to our will." The greater volume of our being, he asserts, is neither free nor rational. "In vain does the woman who would be viewed as exquisite try to fool us. We have seen she loves Joe, and Joe is clumsy, indelicate; caring only for the perfection of his tie and the shine to his Rolls."

Ortega argues that a man likes most women that pass within his periphery, but this instinct rarely strikes at the depths of his person. When it does, when that aforementioned emanation springs forth and toward the other, that is love. "If it is an idiocy to say that love between man and woman contains no sexual element, it is a bigger stupidity to suggest that love is sexuality. The sexual instinct has an ample sampling of objects to satisfy it, but love is exclusivity, selection."

Beauty

Beauty is that which invites selection and Ortega tackles the concept with particular relish. "More than acts and words, it is best to focus on what appears to be less important: gesture and physiology. Because they are spontaneous, they permit the escape of profound personal secrets and do so with exactitude."

He says that society has its "official beauties," those whom people point to at parties and in the theater, as if public monuments, which in a sense they are. Ortega suggests that such women may pique a man's desire to possess, but rarely gain his love. Their esthetic beauty sets them apart as artistic objects and the distance prevents love.

"The indifferent find beauty in the grand lines of the face and in the figure -- in what we typically call beauty. For the enamored, they do not exist, the grand lines and the architecture of the person which beckon from afar, have been erased. For them, beauty is found in the scattered features, the color of the pupil, the curve at the corner of the beloved's lips, the tone of their voice."

Boys and Girls

Ortega believes that woman is more capable of this all-encompassing, almost mystic state of love. He argues that the feminine psyche is less concentric, more cohesive and more elastic, thus better lending itself to the singular pursuit, or attention, required for love. "The feminine soul tends to live by a single axis of attention and each phase of her life rests upon a single matter.

"The more masculine the spirituality, the more dislocated the soul, as if divided into separate compartments," says Ortega. "Accustomed to living upon a multiple base, and in a series of mental fields with only the most precarious connection, conquering the attention of one achieves nothing since the rest remain free and intact."

Ortega points out how the woman enamored is frequently exasperated by a sense that she never has the entirety of the man she loves before her. "She always finds him a little distracted, as if, in setting out for their rendezvous he has left, dispersed across the world, entire provinces of the soul."

For this reason, even the most sensitive of men is shamed by his inability to attain the perfection a woman is capable of lending to love.

To Be Frank

 

My widower’s walk for the day was a pilgrimage to the former home of writer Bruno Frank at 513 North Camden Drive, Beverly Hills.

Homes on the street boast the scale and dimensions of the Italian palazzo. The location is a block away from the city’s commercial center. Sweet.

Frank was born in Stuttgart, Germany and worked as a dramatist-novelist until the Reichstag fire, after which he thought it best to get he and his wife, Liesl, to the far edge of the Western world. As he was Jewish, that turned out to be the right call.

He worked productively in the L.A. film world during its Golden Age, most notably penning the script for RKO Radio Pictures', “The Hunchback of Notre Dame,” starring Charles Laughton.

I am reading Frank’s “A Man Named Cervantes” about the writer of “Don Quixote,” Miguel de... My edition is in Spanish as I am prepping for the court interpreter’s oral exam and because Cervantes was, you know, Spanish.

I learned about the book while reading Georg Lukács’ “The Historical Novel,” which has maintained a long ascendance over my writing philosophy. Lukács was a Marxist literary theorist who asserted that, “what matters in the historical novel is not the retelling of great historical events, but the poetic awakening of the people who figured in those events.”

He urged the novelist to engage with “popular life,” with the thoughts and desires and sufferings of those whom the grand historical narrative necessarily overlooks.

In discussing my novel, “Vedette,” the literary review “Margin” observed, “most impressive was the way in which Siciliano drew for his readers the portrait of revolution through the lives and experiences of the villagers. There is something of a grassroots nature to his worldview…”

In “The Goodfather,” the events of Congressman Marcantonio’s career reported by the “New York Times” are refracted through the experiences of his humble neighbors on 112th Street, la famiglia Fortunato.

Lukács singled out Frank’s book as a work that achieves this granular approach to historical science.

Frank knew something about persecution from on-high and, in the book, depicted that of Roman courtesans by Pope Pius V during young Cervantes’ Vatican residency. In 1967, it became a feature film, “Cervantes,” directed by Vincent Sherman.

He was one among other German writers who made the trek to the Left Coast. Here, he joined his friends Heinrich Mann and Thomas Mann. Playwright Bertolt Brecht had a similar set-up in nearby Santa Monica.

In 1989, I attended the Writers Guild awards dinner at the Beverly Hilton Hotel with actress Monique Salcido. As part of the event, the Guild screened updated credit sequences to films scripted on the sly by blacklisted writers - with their actual names - remedying an injustice of McCarthy-era Hollywood.

Still living and present was Ring Lardner Jr., a member of the Hollywood Ten, who recalled Los Angeles of the ‘30s and ‘40s as a place not yet overrun by cars, where writing work was plentiful and well-remunerated, the air redolent with jasmine during a good portion of the year.

One draws a blank trying to imagine the German literary titans in sunny, palm-leafy surroundings but, however removed from the gritty urban/industrial environments in which they had formed, the Warm Orange must have represented a welcoming safe harbor from Nazi terror.

What would they make of this current Southern California in which masked and armed jackals cruise about in unmarked vans kidnapping people off the street? We can be pretty sure of what they would call them.

Frank died in June 1945, just after the official surrender of the Third Reich to Allied commanders and just before Hollywood scribes would suffer their own witch hunt. We can only speculate on how persecution, forced displacement, and homesickness contributed to his untimely passing at 58.

Bruno Frank is interred at Forest Lawn Cemetery in Glendale, California, far away from Stuttgart.

https://thegoodfatheranovel.blogspot.com/.../now...

Released

This is my attorney friend John Kiwan's legal assistant who was detained in May by ICE upon returning home from visiting his son, who serves with the U.S. Air Force in Japan.

Victor had all his papers in order and had lived in this country since 1967.

Well, it took this long, but he was freed tonight, nine months later. John wrote me to explain, "Victor was released in Fresno. ICE kept him until the last possible minute and released him 200 miles from the Bakersfield detention center, causing his wife and daughter to drive that additional distance to pick him up."

The point, as we have all learned, is the cruelty. Victor had his hearing a few weeks ago.

The judge determined there was no cause to detain him, but the immigration process does not permit judicial release. Victor had to spend some more time in a place he should have never been, while the prosecutors decided whether to appeal a case that would not hold water. Thankfully they did not.

Victor was well-situated, unlike others. He was the employee of a prominent San Diego attorney who was able to drum up media coverage and amass a decent GoFundMe account for the legal battle. The good attorney, John said, "was crucial."

He told me Victor looked terrible at the hearing, his hair turned gray, his body emaciated, his demeanor downcast. The judge who made the ruling runs the risk of reprisal. So do I, for that matter.

Ours is not a functioning democracy at the moment. The administration has fired hundreds of immigration judges nationwide. In San Francisco, there are four remaining to address a backlog of 120,000 cases.

The woman who wears big cowboy hats in charge of the Department of Homeland Security thinks that "habeas corpus" is the "president's right to detain people," so the antipathy toward judges is understandable.

It is important to remember there is not much repatriation going on. These are indefinite detentions in privately owned jails to which the federal government is shelling out between $300 and $500 per detainee, per night.

Your money.

Anyway, this is a win. There are counterwinds blowing against the authoritarian drive of the government. It's you. Your voice, your contacting of elected representatives, your demonstrations.

WHAT'S GOIN' ON - BULLETIN #10 - Musk "Reshapes" Washington D.C.

President Trump and his sidekick from South Africa are undertaking an administrative and digital coup in Washington D.C., firing dozens of career government officials (not loyal to them,) pardoning convicted criminals, freezing funding programs crucial to human and economic health, illegally pawing for federal fund deposits. I will be running a series of bulletins, shared across multiple platforms, containing bite-sized accounts of what is happening. Call your congressperson and do not sit there as if it's not happening or that nothing can be done about it. Dare to share. It's your democracy.

Bulletin #10

Elon Musk's "reshaping" of the Federal Government is the topic of timid media coverage. Not much discussion of whether his being head of an ersatz Department of Government Efficiency gives him the authority to erase decades-lived federal agencies with ongoing, serious business throughout America and the world.

His people having entered USAID's offices and accessed classified materials without proper clearance is an established fact. That will usually disqualify an operation.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has declared himself "acting administrator" of USAID, throwing shade on Musk's claim that "we're getting rid of it."

USAID's not gone if someone is its acting administrator.

Musk is probably somewhat over his skis by stepping on a Rubio's prerogatives as the guy in charge the agency's $50 billion budget and Rubio won't be alone in feeling pushed around by the South African billionaire.

Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA) has suggested there is a question of Musk stepping on Congressional toes and Democratic Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii says he plans to put a "hold" on all of Trump's State Department nominees until the USAID is restored to its pre- "shock and awe" condition.

Senators can do that, because the Founding Whig-wearers knew guys like him roam the political world and needed an institutional brake to slow their designs.

The Trump/Musk executive order storm, while noisy, is as flimsy as their legislative majority, and most of these directives by fiat simply will not carry the force of establish, enacted law.

#et
 

WHAT'S GOIN' ON? Bulletin #9 - Musk Besieges USAID

 

President Trump and his sidekick from South Africa are undertaking an administrative and digital coup in Washington D.C., firing dozens of career government officials (not loyal to them,) pardoning convicted criminals, freezing funding programs crucial to human and economic health, illegally pawing for federal fund deposits. I will be running a series of bulletins, shared across multiple platforms, containing bite-sized accounts of what is happening. Call your congressperson and do not sit there as if it's not happening or that nothing can be done about it. Dare to share. It's your democracy.

Bulletin #9

As part of his weekend digital coup d'etat, Elon Musk used private computers to breach those belonging to USAID. Shortly thereafter, staff in the agency's legislative and public affairs bureau lost access to their emails, implying they’ve been put on administrative leave.

Queried, Musk responded on X: “USAID is a criminal organization. Time for it to die.”

Is that his white paper after hours of investigating an auditing the $50 billion dollar government concern? Me thinks not, as Musk added, "U.S. Aid was a viper's nest of radical left-Marxists who hate America."

The reasoning is Hitler's circa 1933; the language that of a middle schooler. I'm confused: Is Musk heading up the Department of Government Efficiency or the Department of Ideological Purity?

USAID was authorized by President John F. Kennedy with the idea of killing communism in the developing world with programs of American kindness...the latter expression not being part of Musk's vocabulary.

Maybe a Fascist saluting South African raised on the upside of the apartheid system, with known mental fragilities, isn't the best guy to decide what's best for the world's oldest, Republican democracy.

Arrest him. Expropriate his holdings. Then he'll know what Marxism really is.

WHAT'S GOIN' ON? Bulletin #8 Musk Besieges Office of Personnel Management

 WHAT'S GOIN' ON:

President Trump and his sidekick from South Africa are undertaking an administrative and digital coup in Washington D.C., firing dozens of career government officials (not loyal to them,) pardoning convicted criminals, freezing funding programs crucial to human and economic health, illegally pawing for federal fund deposits. I will be running a series of bulletins, shared across multiple platforms, containing bite-sized accounts of what is happening. Call your congressperson and do not sit there as if it's not happening or that nothing can be done about it. Dare to share. It's your democracy.

Bulletin #8

It must be pointed out, again, that Mr. Musk is neither an elected official nor anyone who has been confirmed after having his bona fides vetted congressionally. Trump, still clueless about how the government works, in effect "deputized" him to root out fraud and waste (as they understand it). The Department of Government Efficiency's (DOGE) legitimacy is currently being scrutinized in three separate lawsuits, in as much as it is Congress that establishes federal agencies, the boundaries of their mission, and the funding of said mandate.

Since Congress would appropriate any funding for DOGE, and hasn't, it's a fair guess that Musk, who doesn't need the money, is paying private hirelings to harass federal employees such as these at the Office of Personnel Management. All Americans should be mortified at the idea of private lackeys paid by a South African with a penchant for Fascist salutes bullying their way into government offices, locking the supervisors of said offices out of the computer systems under their aegis, and nosing around to find out whatever it is they are looking for.

Musk needs to be fired, but it would be like firing Kramer from "Seinfeld" who was dismissed from a place that didn't really employ him. Musk isn't working for anybody but himself here.

WHAT'S GOIN' ON? Bulletin #7 Goodby Free Press

 WHAT'S GOIN' ON:

President Trump and his sidekick from South Africa are undertaking an administrative and digital coup in Washington D.C., firing dozens of career government officials (not loyal to them,) pardoning convicted criminals, freezing funding programs crucial to human and economic health, illegally pawing for federal fund deposits. I will be running a series of bulletins, shared across multiple platforms, containing bite-sized accounts of what is happening. Call your congressperson and do not sit there as if it's not happening or that nothing can be done about it. Dare to share. It's your democracy.

Bulletin #7

The first item covers the fact long-standing entities "of record" in the printed press and broadcast media, "New York Times," "National Broadcast Corporation," "National Public Radio," have been ousted from their Pentagon posts in favor of outfits controlled and/or sympathetic to, call it what it is now, American Fascism.

The second item covers the fact that the National Transportation Safety Board - the Federal agency that looks into air disasters - has ceased its primary function of informing the public of its investigatory findings. Reporters have to go to Elon Musk's "X" swamp to get that information.

Imagine that.

So, the way this is supposed to work is, Stephen Siciliano puts this stuff up and you, through the magic of social media "SHARE" or comment on said work. That way there is a critical mass of voices that can affect change and protect one another. You don't do that, you're leaving me hanging. The owner of this platform contributed to, and enjoyed the Inaugural festivities front row, and it's just a matter of time before what happened to NBC and "The Times," happens to me and to the intrepid reporters I am echoing. I know you are scared and confused and hope you can just carry on by looking the other way.

No, being quiet will not save you. Act.

WHAT'S GOIN' ON - Bulletin #6. The Remedy was Fired.

 WHAT'S GOIN' ON:

President Trump and his sidekick from South Africa are undertaking an administrative and digital coup in Washington D.C., firing dozens of career government officials (not loyal to them,) pardoning convicted criminals, freezing funding programs crucial to human and economic health, illegally pawing for federal fund deposits. I will be running a series of bulletins, shared across multiple platforms, containing bite-sized accounts of what is happening. Call your congressperson and do not sit there as if it's not happening or that nothing can be done about it. Dare to share. It's your democracy.

Bulletin #6

Musk, an unelected official, not confirmed by Congress, heading up an illegitimate entity not funded or established by Congress, is acting illegally, but the entity that should/would/could arrest him, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, has been decapitated at the command level, and will soon be led by Trump loyalists, while those who might prosecute him have all been fired (See Bulletin #2). This practice has been affected at a number of federal agencies so that enforcement - if you thought the system would save you - is impossible. Trump already broke the court system. Had he not, there'd be someone else occupying the White House right now. Instead, he will appeal the appeals of his appeals, until he shops a judge he's appointed (remember Judge Cannon?), or it lands up at the Supreme Court where partisan hacks like Justice Alito will deem his actions "immune."

WHAT'S GOIN' ON - Musk's takeover of the federal budget process

 WHAT'S GOIN' ON:

President Trump and his sidekick from South Africa are undertaking an administrative and digital coup in Washington D.C., firing dozens of career government officials (not loyal to them,) pardoning convicted criminals, freezing funding programs crucial to human and economic health, illegally pawing for federal fund deposits. I will be running a series of bulletins, shared across multiple platforms, containing bite-sized accounts of what is happening. Call your congressperson and do not sit there as if it's not happening or that nothing can be done about it. Dare to share. It's your democracy.

Bulletin #5

From Josh Marshall:
"...while the particulars are hard to pin down my impression is that the Musk takeover stuff is considerably worse than is being presented in the press...

...they already have [control] over key computer systems, payment systems, etc...

...They’re into the treasury payment system and claiming they’ve already found like $4B in “savings” a day. It’s important to know what this means. This is simple, his DOGE team is reviewing the US federal budget, law of the land and deciding which parts aren’t necessary. It sounds like they’re saying they will unilaterally cut these funds with control over the check writing at Treasury. "

More at: https://bsky.app/.../joshtpm.bsky.social/post/3lh6b55ps7k2u

 WHAT'S GOIN' ON:

President Trump and his sidekick from South Africa are undertaking an administrative and digital coup in Washington D.C., firing dozens of career government officials (not loyal to them,) pardoning convicted criminals, freezing funding programs crucial to human and economic health, illegally pawing for federal fund deposits. I will be running a series of bulletins, shared across multiple platforms, containing bite-sized accounts of what is happening. Call your congressperson and do not sit there as if it's not happening or that nothing can be done about it. Dare to share. It's your democracy.

Bulletin #2

"As of Friday evening, the Acting US Attorney for Washington, D.C., fired about 30 US Attorneys who prosecuted January 6 insurrectionists. See Politico, DOJ fires dozens of prosecutors who handled Jan. 6 cases. Think about that for a moment: The convicted felons who attacked the Capitol have been pardoned and the loyal servants of the Constitution who prosecuted them have been fired. That fact should outrage every American."

From RobertHubbell.substack.com

#et

What's Goin' On - The Coup Underway

 WHAT'S GOIN' ON:

President Trump and his sidekick from South Africa are undertaking an administrative and digital coup in Washington D.C., firing dozens of career government officials (not loyal to them,) pardoning convicted criminals, freezing funding programs crucial to human and economic health, illegally pawing for federal fund deposits. I will be running a series of bulletins, shared across multiple platforms, containing bite-sized accounts of what is happening. Call your congressperson and do not sit there as if it's not happening or that nothing can be done about it. Dare to share. It's your democracy.

This from RobbertHubbell.substack.com

Bulletin #1:

Elon Musk and a team of DOGE infiltrators have taken over the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) by connecting non-government computer servers to the US personnel mainframe computers. They have reportedly seized private information about millions of federal employees. They have locked the senior managers of the OPM out of their agency’s computers. They have moved “sofa beds” into the OPM offices and put the offices into a “lockdown mode.” See Reuters, Exclusive: Musk aides lock government workers out of computer systems at US agency, sources say.

The hostile takeover of OMP allowed Musk to send an unauthorized memo inviting millions of federal employees to resign in exchange for eight months of “non working paid employment.” [Two unions representing federal workers have filed a lawsuit challenging Trump's plan to reclassify and terminate hundreds of thousands of federal workers.]

Elon Musk and a team of DOGE infiltrators have attempted to seize control of the US Treasury payments system—the gateway through which ALL funds from the federal government flow. When a senior manager at the Treasury asked why Musk needed access to the highly sensitive system, the manager was immediately placed on leave. He chose to quit, instead. See The New Republic, Top Official to Quit as Musk Tries to Get Hands on Key Payment System.