Soulless in D.C.

Attribution: Do They Still Have Souls? by Pat Byrnes, PoliticalCartoons.com

According to Copilot The term “soulless” refers to:

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Author: patd

“But I don’t want to go among mad people," Alice remarked. "Oh, you can’t help that," said the Cat: "we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad." "How do you know I’m mad?" said Alice. "You must be," said the Cat, "or you wouldn’t have come here.” ― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

56 thoughts on “Soulless in D.C.”


  1. At least 17 million Americans will lose healthcare coverage under Donald Trump’s budget bill. MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell says this is part of Donald Trump’s worldwide campaign of cruelty.

  2. we were warned:
    https://www.salon.com/2023/01/04/new-years-message-from-republicans-yes-the-cruelty-is-still-the-point/

    Once again, the cruelty is the whole damn point.
    Today’s Republican Party and “conservative” movement are committed to what has been described as “sado-politics,” meaning a political worldview and strategy in which causing pain, misery, death and other suffering is both a means to win power and control and also a goal in and of itself. Sado-politics is also an extension and reflection of fascism, authoritarianism and other forms of illiberal and corrupt power.
    In my 2018 interview with historian Timothy Snyder for Salon, he offered further context about the role of political sadism in America’s (and the world’s) democracy crisis:
    “Sadopopulism” is the notion that you’re doing half of populism. You promise people things, but then when you get power you have no intention of even trying to implement any policy on behalf of the people. Instead, you deliberately make the suffering worse for your critical constituency. The people who got Trump into office, for example, are traditional Republican voters plus people in counties who are doing badly in terms of health care and other measures, and who need help.
    Under Trump, of course, things will just get worse in terms of both the opioid addictions and in terms of wealth inequality. But that’s OK, because the logic of sadopopulism is that pain is a resource. Sadopopulist leaders like Trump use that pain to create a story about who’s actually at fault. The way politics works in that model is that government doesn’t solve your problems, it blames your problems on other people — and it creates the cycle that goes around over and over and over again. I started talking about sadopopulism because I got tired of people talking about populism.
    The Republican Party and the “conservative” movement are committed to sado-politics, and not as a passing fad, a phase, a “flirtation” or an outlier. Those values and that behavior are now fundamental and foundational for today’s American right. If we consider contemporary conservative politics as a religious movement, cruelty is both a sacrament and a tenet of the faith.
    Even more troubling for people of conscience is the undeniable fact that neofascist and right-wing leaders who engage in sado-politics genuinely believe they are good people doing the right thing. Most of them have even convinced themselves that they are victims of an unfair system and nurse grievances even as they inflict pain on innocent and vulnerable people.
    Perhaps the most vivid recent example of the Republican Party’s political sadism came on Christmas Eve, when Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas sent more than 100 migrants to Vice President Kamala Harris’ official residence, on what turned out to be the coldest night Washington has experienced in decades. In a statement, White House spokesperson Abdullah Hasan said that Abbott had “abandoned children on the side of the road in below freezing temperatures on Christmas Eve without coordinating with any Federal or local authorities,” calling it “a cruel, dangerous and shameful stunt.” Vanity Fair reported:
    Late Saturday night [Dec. 24], buses full of migrant families arrived outside the Naval Observatory, where the vice president’s home is located, from Texas. “Volunteers scrambled to meet the asylum seekers after the buses, which were scheduled to arrive in New York on Christmas Day, were rerouted due to the winter weather,” the Washington Post reported. Relief agencies SAMU First Response and the Migrant Solidarity Mutual Aid Network were on the ground Saturday evening to help with the arrivals, providing blankets to the migrants — some of whom were “wearing only T-shirts in the freezing weather,” according to CNN — and transporting them to a local church where they were given food and other resources.
    Language is critical in making sense of such acts of cruelty. Taking human beings in desperate need, lying to them about offering aid and assistance, and then abandoning them hundreds or thousands of miles away like human garbage is not a “prank,” a “stunt” or an act of “trolling.” Such language minimizes the evil and the human suffering.
    In reality what Abbott, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and other Republican-fascists have done with their cruelty and violence against immigrants, migrants, and refugees and other targeted groups is to create a spectacle of cruelty, a 21st-century human zoo. Their goal is to construct boundaries that define which types of human bodies can be subjected to violence without consequence by those who hold power and those who serve them.
    To express outrage, disgust and condemnation in response to Abbott’s Christmas Eve cruelty is understandable but insufficient. Such words are easy to use in superficial op-eds, 90-second TV interviews, talking-head hot takes from the commentariat, and obligatory statements from respectable political leaders. But the more difficult and more important kinds of thinking and truth-telling should focus on the logic and ultimate goal of the American right’s sadism, and its implications and deep historical origins.
    Unfortunately, that’s precisely the kind of dangerous thinking that the mainstream media and its gatekeepers, along with the larger political class, are eager to avoid. It risks exposing the country’s deep moral and political crises, which far predate the political ascendancy of Donald Trump.
    To paraphrase philosopher Cornel West, Abbott’s acts of cruelty against refugees and immigrants illustrate a larger project by the Republican fascists and the white right, whose goal is to make Black and brown people (and members of other targeted groups) feel unsafe, insecure, subject to arbitrary violence, and hated simply for who they are. The ultimate goal is to turn human beings into objects so that their systematic abuse and mistreatment becomes seen as “legitimate” and “natural.”
    Violence and destruction are both the main organizing principles of fascism and other forms of authoritarianism and illiberal politics, and also the logical if not inevitable outcome of such ideologies.
    Too many “average” people in “middle America” (thinly veiled code for “white people”) have convinced themselves that the Republican Party’s cruelty and sadism will not hurt them. That is shortsighted and historically ignorant. Forces such as those ultimately spare almost no one, including bystanders who may wish to claim that they are “uninvolved” in politics and hold no particular fixed opinions. Consider the impact of the COVID pandemic that has killed more than a million Americans, or the fact that right-wing extremists on the Supreme Court have taken away women’s reproductive rights.
    In a 2017 essay, Chris Hedges reflected on James Baldwin’s insights into how “whiteness” hurts white people:
    As the white race turns on itself in an age of diminishing resources it is in the vital interest of the white underclass to understand what its elites and its empire are actually about. These lies, Baldwin warned, will ultimately have fatal consequences for America.
    “There are days, this is one of them, when you wonder what your role is in this country and what your future is in it,” Baldwin said. “How precisely you’re going to reconcile yourself to your situation here and how you are going to communicate to the vast, heedless, unthinking, cruel white majority that you are here. I’m terrified at the moral apathy — the death of the heart — which is happening in my country. These people have deluded themselves for so long that they really don’t think I’m human.”
    When the Republican fascists and their allies engage in acts of political sadism against those deemed not to be “real Americans,” they are actually normalizing the use of such violence and cruelty and death as a weapon against all people. The migrants and refugees who became part of a white supremacist Christmas Eve spectacle are not alien or unknowable. If America’s fascists get their way, all of us could become subject to that kind of treatment, for any reason or none at all. We have been warned. At this point, inaction or passivity in the face of such evil is a choice. Turning away from the politics of cruelty is effectively to endorse it.

  3. repeating conclusion from above for emphasis :

    When the Republican fascists and their allies engage in acts of political sadism against those deemed not to be “real Americans,” they are actually normalizing the use of such violence and cruelty and death as a weapon against all people. The migrants and refugees who became part of a white supremacist Christmas Eve spectacle are not alien or unknowable. If America’s fascists get their way, all of us could become subject to that kind of treatment, for any reason or none at all. We have been warned. At this point, inaction or passivity in the face of such evil is a choice. Turning away from the politics of cruelty is effectively to endorse it.

  4. https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-struggling-make-deals-tariffs-2092547

    Members of his cabinet initially aimed to secure “90 deals in 90 days,” but are now poised to fall short of this goal, having only secured one bona fide deal, a single set of preliminary agreements, while hinting that a handful more are on their way.

    United Kingdom is the only country to cement a deal with the U.S.—heralded as “historic” by both leaders—under which its goods will be subject to a 10 percent tariff when entering the U.S., with 100,000 British cars per year tariffed at this rate rather than the 25 percent duty on cars announced by Trump in April.

    The U.S. and China have also agreed on preliminary trade terms and a framework for further negotiations. While details are scarce, Bessent said that this will likely mean easier access to Chinese magnets and rare earth minerals.

    India Deal Close, Japan Deal Fading Away

    …in late April, Trump told Time magazine he had made “200 deals,” without clarifying who they were with.

    *As with how many Governors in the US could possibly be calling him, Taco Don is overstating the number of countries in the would.

  5. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-administration/live-blog/trump-big-beautiful-bill-house-taxes-immigration-live-updates-rcna215840

    The House is preparing to hold a procedural vote this morning on President Donald Trump’s so-called “big beautiful bill” — a day after Senate Republicans made changes that irked many of their House GOP colleagues.

    Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said he hoped a final vote on the bill will take place today or tomorrow at the latest. One wild card, he said, is the weather: Storms in many parts of the country led to canceled flights that have made it harder for some lawmakers to get to Washington.

  6. https://www.commondreams.org/news/house-republicans-oppose-reconciliation

    “Protecting Medicaid is essential for the vulnerable constituents we were elected to represent. Therefore, we cannot support a final bill that threatens access to coverage or jeopardizes the stability of our hospitals and providers,” wrote 16 House Republicans led by Rep. David Valadao (R-Calif.)—whose largely rural Central Valley district has one of the highest concentration of Medicaid recipients in the nation—in a letter to Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.).

    However, one critic noted that the lawmakers “already voted for the largest cut to Medicaid in American history—and when the time comes, they’ll cave… once again to give their billionaire donors a massive tax break.”

  11. America’s Dark Ages. Even during the Depression, they were trying to lift the country up. “Trumpism” is about tearing the country down.

    Trump = Tragedy

  12. ‪Ron Filipkowski‬ – Trump says an economic boom is suddenly going to happen which will cause massive deficits in his bill to magically evaporate. Meanwhile, the economy heads in the opposite direction from even the current realistic projections. The debt may well be EVEN WORSE than CBO projects now.

  13. This just surfaced — and the headlines barely mention it.
    The U.S. is quietly halting weapons shipments to Ukraine.
    Not delayed. Not debated. Paused.

    While saying Putin must end the war. Words are loud. Deeds are louder.

  16. I guess Volodymyr didn’t say thank you enough the last time he and Dumbass met. I’m not sure hanging the invaded country out to dry is a criterion for the Nobel Peace Prize.

  17. Craig – US news media is very filtered. The wire services, foreign news, and videos that can be corroborated are the only way to know what’s going on. It is why I have been “overreacting” since early November.

  19. I don’t want the bill to pass, and I especially don’t want Orange Adolf to get a ~win~ and sign it on July 4th.

  20. https://www.cnn.com/2025/07/02/economy/us-jobs-market-june-preview

    US employers lost an estimated 33,000 jobs, according to ADP’s monthly national employment report.

    Economists were expecting ADP’s report to show a net gain of 115,000 jobs, according to FactSet.

    When the latest employment snapshot from the Department of Labor is released Thursday at 8:30 a.m. ET (one day early due to the July 4th holiday), economists expect it to show that 115,000 jobs were added in June. That’s a pullback from the 139,000 initially estimated for May, according to FactSet.

  21. you’re not overreacting, BiD

    I appreciate you keeping on top of things here and all that you do like calling your senators and even other peoples’ senators 🫡

  22. trust me, when you or i call a middle class Republican “stupid” you’re just telling them something they already know which is why they are willing to cede power to people they think are smarter

    their feeble minds equate wealth with intelligence, instead of just associating it with greed

  24. If anything, we’re under-reacting. The Everglades Encampment is just the first step to the crematoriums.

  26. Now, I’m no expert on alligators, but I do know that they sometimes wander around on dry land, and I’d bet those heavy duty tents would not deter a determined gator who was wandering around looking for a snack.

    So the Trump economy is beginning to show. GDP growth in 1st quarter down 0.5%, down from 2.8% for 2024 (2.4% in 4th quarter), and 33,000 loss of private sector jobs (148,000 below expectations). Not sure how they think they could spin that as a good thing.

  28. Beats me, but it’s the Miccosukees who probably care – its 15 miles from their village and 35 miles from their casino & resort. (I love Google Maps). All this hype about alligators and pythons is interesting, only I don’t hear any mention that it is beside the old Tamiami Trail (AKA Rte. 90).

  29. https://apnews.com/article/florida-alligator-alcatraz-immigration-detention-desantis-trump-8856c0e2b9ecb8c0fb960f6e3e72a5ae

    …opposition of Native American leaders who consider the area their sacred ancestral homelands.

    Indigenous leaders dispute that and are condemning the state’s plans to build what’s been dubbed “ Alligator Alcatraz ” on their homelands. Native Americans can trace their roots to the area back thousands of years.

    *MAGAt-n@zis didn’t care what indigenous people said about building a concentration camp on ancestral lands. I hope their ancestors haunt the guards.

  30. https://abcnews.go.com/US/florida-tribe-fights-new-alligator-alcatraz-migrant-facility/story?id=123393299

    Talbert Cypress, chairman of the Miccosukee Business Council, said some tribal villages are located within 900 feet of the facility’s entrance.

    “This proposed facility is surrounded on all sides by the Big Cypress National Preserve, and the tribe has been at home in the Big Cypress for centuries,” Cypress told ABC News.

    The facility’s closeness to traditional Native camps, where Miccosukee and Seminole members live and teach both American and Native education, has raised more concerns.

    “We’re concerned about safety… CBP, also just in general, all the traffic that’s going to be coming through there, and flights coming in and out,” Cypress said.

    The facility might become a model for similar centers planned in Louisiana and Alabama, Trump told ABC News.

    *But they’re still speaking out against it.

    Cypress ended with a message to Trump and DeSantis: “President Trump and DeSantis have been very good to the Everglades, and we feel like [this is a] step backwards in their effort.”

    *But “good,” how?

  31. plans to build what’s been dubbed “ Alligator Alcatraz”

    Pictures looked to me like it was about already done built.

    Faster job works than the Crazy Horse Monument.

  34. https://www.newsweek.com/immigration-ice-bill-trump-2093456

    Pending its passage in the House of Representatives, Trump’s bill could mean a massive increase in ICE funding as part of an immigration enforcement agenda worth $150 billion over four years.

    The estimated price tag of the legislation is around $150 billion between now and 2029—an annual average of $37.5 billion, which is higher than the military expenditure of all but 15 countries.

    Silky Shah, Executive Director of Detention Watch Network said in a statement: “This bill skyrockets ICE’s budget to never before seen funding levels and will make it the largest law enforcement agency in the country.”

    “ICE will now have 13 times its current fiscal budget for detention, which is already operating at a historic high, on top of the funding in ICE’s annual budget that Congress sets each year.”

    *Gestspo funding for the US police state.

  38. It looks like they didn’t consider the Native Americans in their deliberations.

    Beautiful.

  39. If Carl Hiassen is right the Alligator Alco-trazzers are in for a rough ride. Maybe even Osceola’s Revenge.
    Osceola died a federal prisoner in Charleston SC.

    Wiki
    On October 21, 1837, Osceola and 81 of his followers were captured by General Joseph Hernández on the orders of General Thomas Jesup, under a white flag of truce, when they went for peace talks to Fort Peyton near St. Augustine.[18][4]: 25  [19] He was initially imprisoned at Fort Marion in St. Augustine, before being transferred to Fort Moultrie on Sullivans Island, outside Charleston, South Carolina. Osceola’s capture by deceit caused a national uproar. General Jesup’s treacherous act and the administration were condemned by many congressional leaders and vilified by international press. Jesup suffered a loss of reputation that lasted for the rest of his life; his betrayal of the truce flag has been described as “one of the most disgraceful acts in American military history.

  40. https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/immigration/article309817040.html

    Alligator Alcatraz opened Tuesday ready for a hurricane – but not a summer shower

    The water seeped into the site – the one that earlier in day the state’s top emergency chief had boasted was ready to withstand the winds of a “high-end” Category 2 hurricane – and streamed all over electrical cables on the floor.

    “For those people that don’t think we’re taking that into consideration. This is Florida, by the way,” Kevin Guthrie, executive director of the Florida Division of Emergency Management, had told reporters earlier in the middle of Trump’s visit. “We have a hurricane plan.”

    Video footage from Spectrum News television reporter Jason Delgado showed the flooding within Alligator Alcatraz. Another witness said the rain lasted about 45 minutes.

    *The Disney-fication of a concentration camp with branded merchandise is disgusting. Anyone who buys or wears a t-shirt should be shunned.

  43. Texas Forbids Law That Keeps Guns Away From Unhinged People

    In late June, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott signed into law the Anti-Red Flag Act, which preemptively bans the creation or enforcement of extreme risk protective orders. Such orders are legal tools used to temporarily prohibit a person from having access to guns after a judge evaluates evidence of alarming behavior and deems that person to be a danger to themselves or others.

    In his public remarks about gun violence and mass shootings, Abbott consistently has focused heavily on the role of mental illness, a tactic conservatives often use to deflect arguments for stricter regulation of firearms. And while mental illness is not fundamentally the cause of mass shootings, the governor obviously is well aware that there can be identifiable individuals who should not have access to guns.

    Opponents often make a blanket argument that red flag laws are unconstitutional and deprive citizens of due process. In reality, evidence of threatening behavior must be presented to a civil court judge, who rules on whether to remove access to guns on a temporary basis; to varying degrees, there is also a petitioning or review process for potential restoration of access. And while the US Supreme Court has not addressed red flag laws directly, in 2023, it ruled on a Texas case about gun rights and domestic violence restraining orders: “When an individual has been found by a court to pose a credible threat to the physical safety of another, that individual may be temporarily disarmed consistent with the Second Amendment.”

    The senior US senator in Texas, Republican John Cornyn, was the lead cosponsor of the landmark Bipartisan Safer Communities Act authorized by Congress in 2022. Signed into law by then-President Joe Biden but now jeopardized under President Donald Trump, that legislation included $750 million in grant funding for states to implement crisis intervention programs and policies, including red flag laws. Cornyn did not respond to a request for comment about his state’s Anti-Red Flag Act, which takes effect September 1.

    When the next major mass shooting occurs in Texas, it’s likely to be followed once again by a Texas-size round of “thoughts and prayers,” as Ted Cruz, the state’s other Republican US senator and a vocal opponent of red flag laws, can well attest.

    Likely even bigger, though, will be the missed opportunity to have prevented yet another round of carnage and devastation.

    *As isolated as I’ve been since moving, I’m glad I left Texas. The trail is my tribe. Texas was always so weird, and now the weird is just everywhere.

  44. https://www.newsweek.com/white-house-says-activists-have-right-display-ugly-anti-trump-statue-2087761

    The new piece of protest art on The Mall is an 8-foot-tall sculpture featuring a reconstruction of the Statue of Liberty’s head being crushed by a large gold-colored thumbs-up, along with the wording “DICTATOR APPROVED” and a series of quotes from leaders with various levels of authoritarian, if not autocratic, tendencies praising Trump.

    The quotes featured are from such leaders as Russian President Vladimir Putin, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro.

    According to the publication, the new sculpture is “very similar in style and materials” to a number of other pieces of protest art that were displayed in locations including the National Mall during the fall of 2024.

    One of these featured a bronze reconstruction of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s desk with a large swiveled turd on top of it along with references to the January 6, 2021, storming of Congress by Trump supporters in a bid to prevent the certification of Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory.

    A plaque placed on the artwork read: “This memorial honors the brave men and women who broke into the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021 to loot, urinate and defecate throughout those hallowed halls in order to overturn an election.”

  46. it would be such a nice summer if we didn’t put a strong man criminal asshole in power

  47. …and a cadre of scary-ass Chinese spies and Russian stooges and big-tech bitches, vampiric ghouls, and tortuous plastic witches, good golly 🤮

  51. I’m not feeling it. (Trouble posting signage today, so inserting as copy.)

    “4th of July has been canceled due to a
    shortage of. Independence.”

  53. Massie is a NO on the rules vote to advance the bill for a vote. Fitzpatrick is MIA & Johnson can’t find him to get him to flip.

    Current count: 5 Republican NO votes

  54. They have one more day to fuck around until they cave like Murky in exchange for some bribe.

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