Free the People | Week in Review

The good...

Lying Leavitt will leave the Trump regime [Link]

The Trump regime's Minister of Propaganda, Karo-lyin' Leavitt, is stepping down from her duties of berating the press for questioning the regime and blatantly lying to the American public. She will not be missed.

The clip below comes from the 1984 television mini-series V: The Final Battle,. In this scene, the press secretary for the fascist alien regime that has taken over the Earth is called out for propagating lies to hide the true nature of the regime from the public. These words are as fitting for Leavitt today as they were for the fictional Kristine Walsh in the mini-series. Watch the full clip to learn the fate of those who dare to challenge the power of the regime.

I'll tell you what is untrue: It is untrue that you are working for a benevolent regime. It is untrue that you are an impartial journalist. What's true is that fascists have taken over our planet and you're their minister of propaganda.

You're a discredit to your profession. You've allowed personal ambition to corrupt your integrity and you no longer have credibility.

Doctor Corley Walker (played by Don Starr) confronts the Visitors' press secretary, Kristine Walsh (played by Jenny Sullivan)

The bad...

Trump wants to spend money to decrease military capacity [Link]

EMALS catapult on the USS Gerald R. Ford.

Donny 2-Dolls is ordering the Navy to replace modern aircraft launching systems with outdated equipment. Modern aircraft carriers use an Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System (EMALS), which replaces the older steam-powered pistons, to launch aircraft. Compared to the steam launchers, EMALS launches aircraft with less stress on the airframe, greater precision, faster recharge times, and require fewer people to operate. The system is also cheaper and requires less maintenance than the steam-powered system.

Trump wants to remove the EMALS system from the ships that use it within the next two months, and wants to stop production on new ships so they can be modified to use the older system instead. The mandate will cost billions of dollars and require more manpower on the carriers that are being modified, at a time when the United States has already spent tens of billions of dollars fighting a war our citizens don't want us in and our military struggles to find enough recruits to meet its current manpower needs.

Trump signs executive order to contradict expert medical advice [Link]

Image by Gedesby1989 from Pixabay.

Donny 2-Dolls signed an executive order to rewrite childhood vaccine recommendations. Rather than letting medical experts work together to establish guidance on the best practices in medicine, Trump continues to push his repeatedly-discredited lies that the combined measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine could kill children or cause autism. Decades of scientific research has shown there is no link between the vaccine and autism and there are no documented cases of death from the vaccine.

Trump declared that the order represents a "major victory for parents rights, religious and constitutional rights, and for the gold standard science." I'm not sure where he gets that idea, since the new order only presents a recommended vaccine schedule, so does not alter any rights parents have to make decisions about vaccinating their children (for religious or any other reasons), and it certainly does nothing to change anyone's constitutional rights. As for the gold standard science claim...that's just another lie since the recommendation directly contradicts the established science.

The ugly...

ICE agents to be equipped with electric shock gloves [Link]

Electro-shock therapy from the very first episode of The Simpsons.

The Trump regime's Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency is planning to equip agents with gloves capable of delivering painful shocks on demand. Given the agency's history of abuse of power, inhumane treatment of detainees, abuse of innocent people mistaken for those the agency meant to detain, and cold-blooded murder, it's hard to imagine a scenario in which these devices will be used in a safe and humane way.

Unlike Tasers, which are designed to incapacitate a person who might otherwise pose a threat to agents or bystanders, these electric-shock gloves are designed to cause pain and localized muscle spasms where they contact skin. When dealing with a combative target, a Taser completely disables the target's central nervous system for a time, is safe to use from a distance, and will penetrate through clothing to deliver the shock. The shock gloves being given to ICE agents, on the other hand, only work with direct contact to bare skin (they don't penetrate clothing), and deliver localized pain that does nothing to keep agents or bystanders safe from combative targets.

These electric gloves are usually used in prison settings, not during arrest procedures. They seem designed only to cause pain on demand as a form of punishment, which makes them modern-day torture devices. The maximum penalty for illegal entry into the United States is six months in prison and/or a fine. Torture is illegal in the United States of America under the Eight Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits the use of cruel and unusual punishment.