Yesterday, #TheMangolardian announced his "plan" for a "Golden Dome" Missile Defense System (you KNOW the people who came up with this idiocy inserted the word "Golden" b/c King Midas 
everything "gold".)
This is the rebirth of #Reagan's "Star Wars" boondoggle that exploded the Nat'l Debt (b/c Trump wants to be the next Reagan.)
And as #LSSC's #Colbert pointed out last night, his graphic quoted a noted Military Strategist:
Today in Labor History May 15, 1969: Police fought students in the Battle for People's Park at the University of California Berkeley, California. The battle was over a small strip of land that the students had claimed as community commons. Governor Ronald Reagan sent in National Guards to reclaim the Park. Police gunfire killed a bystander, James Rector, and wounded 60 others, including Alan Blanchard, who was blinded for life. Street fighting continued for 17 days. Another 150 demonstrators would be shot and wounded. The battle for the park has continued ever since, with the university continuing to claim ownership and threatening to turn the park into everything from units of student housing to a parking lot. The defenders of the park have done numerous direct actions over the past 50 years to defend the park, provide mutual aid, provide free food and clothes to unhoused folks, and offer community classes. As recently as 2024, the cops have attacked, beaten, and/or arrested park defenders.
Today in Labor History May 12, 1940: Edgar Lion, a 20-year-old Austrian Jewish student at the University of Edinburgh, was arrested by British police and shipped off to the Isle of Man with thousands of other Jewish detainees. The British government locked them all up in hotels surrounded by barbed wire. He was later deported to Canada, where he was interned with 2,300 other Jewish refugees in camps alongside German Nazis and forced to perform brutal physical labor for virtually no pay. “There were real Nazis interned with us! They were Nazis who happened to be caught by the war in Great Britain. They were bragging, and they kept telling us, ‘wait till Hitler wins the war, we’ll cut all your throats!’”
As appalling as the Trump administration is, with its arrests, deportations, and use of brutal concentration camps for innocent immigrants, as well as many legal residents and citizens, it is a misrepresentation of history to suggest that this sort of behavior is similar only to that of the Nazis, and is somehow extraordinary for modern democracies like the U.S., Britain and Canada. Concentration Camps, with forced labor, brutal living conditions, and sometimes torture and violence against inmates were operated by numerous so-called democratic Western nations throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, and even today. Australia used them during both World Wars, and currently runs some for refugees on Nauru and Manus Islands. During both World Wars, Canada imprisoned 8,579 male "aliens of enemy nationality" in concentration camps with forced labor, including thousands of Jews. They also interned Japanese residents. Denmark, Sweden and Finland also had concentration camps. French concentration camps, along with the torture and starvation inflicted on their inmates, and the casualties from its war of conquest in Algeria, resulted in up to 1 million deaths. And then there were thousands of Jews who were imprisoned in concentration camps under the Vichy government, most ultimately deported to Germany, where they were executed. Even Germany’s legacy of concentration camps predates Hitler, with deadly camps utilized during the Herero and Namaqua genocide they committed in Africa (1904-1908). In addition to their internment of Jews during World War II, Britain also ran offshore and land-based gulags in Ireland in the 1920s, which housed over 500 men, under brutal conditions, without charge or trial. They also ran concentration camps on the Isle of Man during both world wars.
The U.S., in particular, has a long, sordid history of using concentration camps that precede the ones they used during World War II to imprison Japanese-Americans. The first document U.S. concentration camps used for a specific ethnic group occurred in 1838, when President Van Buren imprisoned Cherokee in camps at Ross's Landing (Chattanooga, Tennessee), Fort Payne, Alabama, and Fort Cass (Charleston, Tennessee). Many died in these camps from disease and hunger. In 1862, Minnesota executed 38 Dakota warriors in the largest single-day mass execution in U.S. history. President Lincoln pardoned another 361, but placed them in a concentration camp. And in the following winter, another 1600 Dakota men, women and children were forced into other concentration camps. Up to 300 died from disease in these camps. Thousands of other indigenous people were forced into U.S. concentration camps throughout the 1800s and early 1900s. The U.S. also operated brutal concentration camps for prisoners and civilians during its war on the Philippines in 1901. During the 1950s-1960s, the U.S. maintained concentration camps for political dissidents, primarily communists, but officially never used them. More recently, there are the examples of Abu Ghraib, in Iraq, and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Under Reagan, there were plans to imprison thousands of Central American Solidarity activists in concentration camps. And today, Trump continues to talk about sending “homegrowns” to offshore gulags in El Salvador, Guantanamo Bay, and Africa.
@Kierkegaanks
It seems every #Republican #Potus of the last 40 years has had a puppet-master behind the scenes telling them what to do.
#Reagan fit to bill perfectly as an actor trained to read lines given to him by others. #Bush-I had a mind of his own but tried to copy Reagan and failed.
Dubya's puppet-master was Dick Cheney, #PizzaTheHut tried to hand his first term over to Jared, and his second term Svengali was #TheElongatedMuskrat.
Today in Labor History May 3. 1933: James Brown was born on this day. He was the Godfather of Soul. Mr. Dynamite. The funkiest man alive. His career began in the R&B and doo wop era of the 1950s, with the Famous Flames. In the mid- to late-60s, he was influential in the creation of soul and funk. He continued to produce some of the funkiest songs ever in the 1970s. Some of his songs were social commentaries, like “I’m Black and I’m Proud.” And he performed in civil rights benefit concerts as early as the mid-60s. However, he was politically conservative. He supported Humphrey, in ’68. And later, he supported Republican causes, including the Nixon presidency. In 1972, his concert was picketed by people with signs saying, “James Brown: Nixon’s Clown.” He also supported Reagan.
@VeroniqueB99 One of the worst presidents ever #RonaldReagan #Reagan
Today in labor history April 29, 1895: The U.S. sent warships to Nicaragua to "protect" US interests. This was the first of many military interventions in that country. President Taft ordered the overthrow of President Zelaya in 1909. The U.S. later invaded in 1910 and occupied the country in 1912. However, the original Sandinistas defeated that occupation in 1933. But Sandino’s victory was short-lived because Anastasio Somoza assassinated him in 1934. Somoza brutally ruled Nicaragua for the next forty years, until the new Sandinistas overthrew him in 1979. And then, again, the U.S. intervened. This time, by funding the right-wing Contras. Later, when Congress blocked aid to the Contras, Reagan secretly funded them with illegal arms shipments to Iran.
#politics #reagan #citizenship #alt
Heather Cox Richardson Uniqueness of United States 4/26/25
George #Rawick’s warning in 1964 about the threat of rising #authoritarianism seems prescient in that is presaged our current fascist era that began with #Reagan and continues through #Trump.
“But one thing remains certain — that if the Negro struggle is defeated — it will be defeated in the midst of a general reactionary development in the #UnitedStates. To stop this the Negro struggle must become even more radical in its demands, its form of organization, and its actions. For unless the Negro working class, the one active progressive force at present in American society, goes forward, all of American Society will continue to slide towards barbarism, towards an increasingly authoritarian solution to the crisis of #capitalism. Those purported left-liberal friends of the Negro … who counsel the Negro movement to develop ‘a careful strategy’ … offer advice which if adopted will prove disastrous to both black and white working class people.”
Right wing politicians need to be eliminated every election if fascism is to be defeated. The Ramones wrote
"Bonzo Goes to Bitburg" to commodate Reagan saluting SS nazis.
https://www.deseret.com/1991/4/20/18916268/reagan-says-ss-heroism-led-to-his-cemetery-visit/
Day 20 
️
“spin-off of the US-based #CPAC – short for Conservative Political Action Conference – the #Sydney-based outfit described itself as a “values-based” organisation that “espouses the best of #Howard, #Reagan and #Thatcher while exploring new ideas and themes for the coming generations”.
Guests at the August event included #OneNation senator Pauline Hanson, Michelle Pearse, the CEO of the #AustralianChristianLobby, and broadcaster and soon-to-be alleged sex offender, #AlanJones.
Overseas talent included Jay Aeba, chairman of the Japanese Conservative Union and Heather Wilson, mother of six and co-founder of #GiveSendGo, a #Christian #crowdfunding network which has helped raise money for #NeoNazis and #AntiVaxxers”
“Then, in 2018, investment banker and long-time #ClimateConspiracist Maurice Newman, billionaire storage king Sam Kennard, and David Adler, of the #FarRight Australian Jewish Association (AJA), got together to form #AdvanceAustralia. Money was no problem: #HedgeFund manager and #Liberal Party donor Simon Fenwick tipped in $190,000; a further $400,000 came from Sydney #Establishment couple Rodney and Judith O’Neil, and the Taylor #winemaking family.
Advance pitched itself as a champion of the #SilentMajority – #HowardsBattlers 2.0. But its real concerns were better expressed by another early backer, #hotelier James Power, who was then engaged in a battle to prevent women from becoming members of #Brisbane’s #Tattersall’s Club.”
If you noticed a darker turn to the election this week, here’s a good explanation of the WHY and HOW. Also I see Tony 
got a new job.
#AusPol / #LNP / #Nationals / #Australia <https://archive.md/wY3Cn> / <https://theage.com.au/national/copied-the-maga-model-the-grassroots-lobby-group-funded-by-some-of-australia-s-richest-20250408-p5lq6k.html> (paywall)
@knittingknots2 A key element of #Reagan 's political success was that he let everyone know that taxes have a sweet spot. When you increase the tax rate higher, #tax #revenue declines.
Of course Reagan did not use that knowledge to optimise for tax revenue, but that is a different story.
Today, we see someone avers to knowledge inflicting randomly extreme taxes on his own people. Fodder for so many PHDs, reason for so many bankruptcies. #tariffs
He speaks from the heart!
IMO, #neoliberalism and #libertarianism were justified for a maximum of about 5-10 years in the era of #Kohl, #Thatcher and #Reagan, when e.g. the so called “Deutschland AG” had to be broken up.
Instead of dying afterwards, the ideology mutated into a delusion, enslaved people, created monopolies, plundered natural resources, murdered, putsched and invaded other countries “when needed”.
#Trump and his #fascism are just the visible fruiting body of this deadly fungus.
Joan Quigley, born OTD in 1927, provided #astrology advice to the #Reagan White House from 1981 through 1988, her guidance was used to schedule summits and foreign trips https://cromwell-intl.com/travel/usa/ghostbusters/?s=mb #paranormal
For the first time since the start of his second term, #Trump hit 50% #disapproval in #VoteHub's #polling #aggregation today. https://votehub.com/polls/
Presidents have come back from this. #Reagan bottomed out at something like 30% early in his first term, and then of course won re-election in a landslide. But Trump doesn't have that kind of political acumen.
If we have anything resembling a fair #election, 2026 will be a bloodbath, and I'm willing to bet 2028 as well. If we don't, well, it will be a bloodbath of a different kind.
the clip of glasgow hero, cathy rutherford, reacting to thatcher's death made me wonder if she had a US counterpart when reagan died. if she did, that person was not at the 2004 MTV movie awards. pack of bootlickers (apart from, maybe, kate beckinsale).
#reagan #thatcher #death #reaction
https://inv.nadeko.net/watch?v=jqQh8UZYKRQ
#frankzappa #politics #theocracy #reagan #fascism
Musician Frank Zappa as a Prophet in the 1980’s
https://substack.com/@politicsusa46/note/c-99128190?r=ymxmu&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action
♬ 
@peterrenshaw I would think he would avoid the risk and just keep on rockin' in the free world. But maybe #Reagan was right that if US fails as a beacon of freedom, freedom everywhere is in jeopardy.
