So, Trump handed the data of everyone on Medicaid to ICE. They have millions of people's private medical charts, including mine. Another day closer to my murder.

Israeli official’s arrest, flight from US prompts fury among Trump supporters

The arrest and flight from the US of an Israeli cybersecurity official who was caught in a child sex setup has sharpened Republican divisions over Washington’s relationship with Israel amid the Gaza war.

Earlier this month, Tom Artiom Alexandrovich, who headed a division at the Israel National Cyber Directorate, was arrested after trying to meet a 15-year-old girl for “sexual contact”, police said.

He posted bail and fled for Israel before his court date. The US State Department denied the US government intervened in any way.

But Republican lawmakers such as Marjorie Taylor Greene and Thomas Massie, along with major right-wing commentators like Tucker Carlson, cast the case as part of a wider pattern of US deference to Israel and demanded Alexandrovich be extradited.

“The most concerning question is when and how did America become so subservient to Israel that we immediately release a CHILD SEX PREDATOR after arrest,” wrote Greene, one of Trump’s most vocal supporters, in a post on X, in which she also criticised a State Department decision to halt visitor visas for Palestinians from Gaza, including for children who need medical care.

Two recent decisions made by the State Department both involve children.

We need to be the America that allows war torn children to come here for life saving surgeries and the America that never releases a foreign child sex predator that our great LEO’s caught.

But in this… https://t.co/DAoKlC2sNd

— Former Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene🇺🇸 (@FmrRepMTG) August 19, 2025

All this xenophobia in the US, with justifications for dehumanization that range from motte and bailey arguments to utter bullshit like "gotta protect the borders", "they're illegals", to "they broke the law by coming here"  reminds me of Babylon 5. A show I'm rewatching now, just kind of in the background while I work since I've seen it several times.

For those unfamiliar, a bit of background information: the story was written years before it first aired, during the mid-1980s (the show aired in the 1990s). The setting: a city-sized space station where the different civilizations of the galaxy set up a sort of galactic UN with the main characters being the government of the station and the ambassadors... but, much like a terrestrial city, there is commerce, trade, entertainment, amenities, and other activity occurring among its residents. It was the originator of the sci-fi formula where they began as an episodic show to introduce the universe before moving into a full scale novel arc drama (Stargate and Farscape also did this) - with B5, the episodic phase was all of season 1 except the final episodes - the main arc went until the end of season 4, and season 5 was the epilogue/appendices. The themes of the show are embedded among the "younger races" (which include humans) stuck between an ancient war millions of years old between vastly more powerful ancient species, the Vorlon on one side and the Shadows on the other → the story is largely based on JRR Tolkien's works, especially The Silmarillion, and several events are replayed from that book in the show, and as you can guess Shadows = the shadow/Morgoth, and Vorlons = Valar. However, historical themes also come into play, as the Shadows and Vorlons are also reminiscent of the first and second worlds during the Cold War, while the younger races are the third world that the first and second world fought over. Also, among the younger races was the rise of their own unique forms of fascism.

One season 1 episodic episode featured some archaeologists smuggling aboard mysterious alien technology from a tomb-world whose species died out a long time ago. As the episode progresses, it becomes clear that the technology was an artificial bio-AI powered weapon which was programmed to kill the non-pure people on the planet. But, the whole scientific racism was ideological based rather than scientific, and because of genetic drift there were no "pure" ones among the species, and never were. The weapon wiped out the entire species.

Anyway, after the main conflict of the episode was resolved, the following exchange occurred between two of the main characters after reflection on the situation, which very much resembles the Nazi ideology from 200 years prior:

Commander Susan Ivanova: "Santayana: 'Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.' "

...

Security Chief Garibaldi: "Back home there's a growing pro-Earth movement. Rumors of hate groups targeting aliens. And on all sides, the fanatics. They think society has to be protected against anyone who's different. I'm starting to wonder if what we just saw is a preview of things to come? I can't believe we'd be that foolish."

Commander Ivanova: "It seems no one reads Santayana anymore. If you'll excuse me. If you need me, I'll be over there, getting drunk with the rest of the aliens."

I don't know, I love that last line.

Now Trump is threatening to investigate Republican former governor Chris Christie over "Bridgegate" from 2013. The real reason Trump wants to investigate Christie is because in 2005, when Christie was a US Attorney, he successfully prosecuted Charles Kushner, Ivanka's father-in-law and current Ambassador to France (who has apparently been sumnmoned by Macron), for illegal campaign contributions, tax evasion, and witness tampering. The last charge was because Kushner hired a prostitute to seduce William Schulder, who was cooperating with federal investigators. Trump pardoned him in 2020. Kushner spent close to two years in federal prison on those charges.

So MAGA World is having an absolute meltdown about the signage for a dying restaurant chain. Are we going to have a 213-comment thread about that one?

My wife got hit now with tarifs. 35% on all mail to and from the US (Canada reciprocated). She trades with US dealers in online auctions and vice versa. Many have already cancelled shipping to Canada, my wife is cancelling shipping to the US as well. Lot of people 'panicking', community getting pulled apart...

Thanks Trump. Will ship to the rest of the world instead.

Trump moves forward with plans to change Department of Defense to ‘Department of War’

"“Why are we ‘Defense’? So it used to be called the Department of War, and it had a stronger sound,” he said, pining for days in which “we used to win wars all the time.” The president added, “I don’t want to be defense only. We want defense, but we want offense, too.”"

So good to have a de-escalation president.  

Uh, I'm so tired of this.  

And I feel like the worst part is that people are not going to admit they were ever wrong. They're going to act like it was inevitable, or that every administration was acting like this.  

I think he doesn’t even understand that 'defense' doesn’t just mean defending your ground, but also that you can defend your values on foreign soil which pretty much is still an offensive action.

He's so fucking stupid.

So many dystopian settings start with an idiot U.S. president deciding to go to war with the entire planet and finding out that the problems they had in Afghanistan and Iraq are amplified many times over when they try to take on countries like China or nation-equivalents like the EU. I started playing Cyberpunk 2077 for the first time right before the 2024 election, and I could easily see the genesis of a world like that.