It’s unnatural for Democrats to stop thinking about elections because that is their nature and reason for being.
Except for a couple of things.
The next congressional election is about 18 months away, and the next Congress will be seated in about 20 months. A lot is going to happen in that time.
Even in the unlikely event that Democrats win control of both the House and Senate in 2026, controlling committees and able to pass legislation, the legislation will be vetoed beyond override by the president and many executive actions will be endorsed by a sympathetic Supreme Court.
We can say that Democrats should be able to walk and chew gum, that is, focus on the elections and focus on effective immediate strategies. But confidence in the Democrats to pull that off is low.
Maybe the only way for Democrats to strategize effectively right now is to stop thinking and talking about elections for a bit. Once they have figured that challenge out and successfully executed some of those strategies, they can and should concentrate on the next series of elections—hopefully winning more of them with a new generation of winning candidates.
‘Later in the footage, the officers move on to general celebration – “Goddamn! Woo! Nice!” – and talk of the potential bonus they’ll be getting: “Just remember, you can smell that $30,000 bonus.”’
It is not easy these days to maintain equanimity, as one story after another reveals that decent, lawful and constitutional America has given way to making many people suffer.
I am posting this story in its entirety. You can find it at the Guardian link below, along with the video.
On the morning of 2 May, teenager Kenny Laynez-Ambrosio was driving to his landscaping job in North Palm Beach with his mother and two male friends when they were pulled over by the Florida highway patrol.
In one swift moment, a traffic stop turned into a violent arrest.
A highway patrol officer asked everyone in the van to identify themselves, then called for backup. Officers with US border patrol arrived on the scene.
Video footage of the incident captured by Laynez-Ambrosio, an 18-year-old US citizen, appears to show a group of officers in tactical gear working together to violently detain the three men, two of whom are undocumented. They appear to use a stun gun on one man, put another in a chokehold and can be heard telling Laynez-Ambrosio: “You’ve got no rights here. You’re a migo, brother.” Afterward, agents can be heard bragging and making light of the arrests, calling the stun gun use “funny” and quipping: “You can smell that … $30,000 bonus.”
The footage has put fresh scrutiny on the harsh tactics used by US law enforcement officials as the Trump administration sets ambitious enforcement targets to detain thousands of immigrants every day.
“The federal government has imposed quotas for the arrest of immigrants,” said Jack Scarola, an attorney who is advocating on behalf of Laynez-Ambrosio and working with the non-profit Guatemalan-Maya Center, which provided the footage to the Guardian. “Any time law enforcement is compelled to work towards a quota, it poses a significant risk to other rights.”
Chokeholds, stun guns and laughter
The incident unfolded at roughly 9am, when a highway patrol officer pulled over the company work van, driven by Laynez-Ambrosio’s mother, and discovered that she had a suspended license. Laynez-Ambrosio said he is unsure why the van was pulled over, as his mother was driving below the speed limit.
Laynez-Ambrosio hadn’t intended to film the interaction – he already had his phone out to show his mom “a silly TikTok”, he said – but immediately clicked record when it became clear what was happening.
The video begins after the van has been pulled over and the border patrol had arrived. A female officer can be heard asking, in Spanish, whether anyone is in the country illegally. One of Laynez-Ambrosio’s friends answers that he is undocumented. “That’s when they said, ‘OK, let’s go,’” Laynez-Ambrosio recalled.
Laynez-Ambrosio said things turned aggressive before the group even had a chance to exit the van. One of the officers “put his hand inside the window”, he said, “popped the door open, grabbed my friend by the neck and had him in a chokehold”.
Footage appears to show officers then reaching for Laynez-Ambrosio and his other friend as Laynez-Ambrosio can be heard protesting: “You can’t grab me like that.” Multiple officers can be seen pulling the other man from the van and telling him to “put your fucking head down”. The footage captures the sound of a stun gun as Laynez-Ambrosio’s friend cries out in pain and drops to the ground.
Laynez-Ambrosio said that his friend was not resisting, and that he didn’t speak English and didn’t understand the officer’s commands. “My friend didn’t do anything before they grabbed him,” he said.
In the video, Laynez-Ambrosio can be heard repeatedly telling his friend, in Spanish, to not resist. “I wasn’t really worried about myself because I knew I was going to get out of the situation,” he said. “But I was worried about him. I could speak up for him but not fight back, because I would’ve made the situation worse.”
Laynez-Ambrosio can also be heard telling officers: “I was born and raised right here.” Still, he was pushed to the ground and says that an officer aimed a stun gun at him. He was subsequently arrested and held in a cell at a Customs and Border Protection (CBP) station for six hours.
Audio in the video catches the unidentified officers debriefing and appearing to make light of the stun gun use. “You’re funny, bro,” one officer can be overheard saying to another, followed by laughter.
Another officer says, “They’re starting to resist more now,” to which an officer replies: “We’re going to end up shooting some of them.”
Later in the footage, the officers move on to general celebration – “Goddamn! Woo! Nice!” – and talk of the potential bonus they’ll be getting: “Just remember, you can smell that [inaudible] $30,000 bonus.” It is unclear what bonus they are referring to. Donald Trump’s recent spending bill includes billions of additional dollars for Ice that could be spent on recruitment and retention tactics such as bonuses.
Laynez-Ambrosio said his two friends were eventually transferred to the Krome detention center in Miami. He believes they were released on bail and are awaiting a court hearing, but said it has been difficult to stay in touch with them.
Laynez-Ambrosio’s notice to appear in court confirms that the border patrol arrived on the scene, having been called in by the highway patrol. His other legal representative, Victoria Mesa-Estrada, also confirmed that border patrol officers transported the three men to the border patrol facility.
The Florida highway patrol, CBP, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not respond to requests for comment before publication.
Laynez-Ambrosio was charged with obstruction without violence and sentenced to 10 hours of community service and a four-hour anger management course. While in detention, he said, police threatened him with charges if he did not delete the video footage from his phone, but he refused.
Scarola, his lawyer, said the charges were retaliation for filming the incident. “Kenny was charged with filming [and was] alleged to have interfered with the activities of law enforcement,” he explained. “But there was no intended interference – merely the exercise of a right to record what was happening.”
In February, Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, signed an agreement between the state and the Department of Homeland Security allowing Florida highway patrol troopers to be trained and approved by Ice to arrest and detain immigrants. While such agreements have been inked across the US, Florida has the largest concentration of these deals. Four officers apprehend two men. One officer holds a man on his knees in a chokehold, while he and two of the other officers push downward on a man crouching on the ground.
Father Frank O’Loughlin, founder and executive director of the Guatemalan-Maya Center, the advocates for Laynez-Ambrosio, says the incident has further eroded trust between Florida’s immigrant community and the police. “This is a story about the corruption of law enforcement by Maga and the brutality of state and federal troopers – formerly public servants – towards nonviolent people,” he said.
Meanwhile, Laynez-Ambrosio is trying to recover from the ordeal, and hopes the footage raises awareness of how immigrants are being treated in the US. “It didn’t need to go down like that. If they knew that my people were undocumented, they could’ve just kindly taken them out of the car and arrested them,” he said. “It hurt me bad to see my friends like that. Because they’re just good people, trying to earn an honest living.”
On the plate I saw my usual desert of four Oreos, two chocolate, two golden.
Binary, I thought. Dark and light. The digital universe is binary: zero and one. Morse code is binary: dot and dash.
The I Ching is binary: broken line (yin, dark) and solid line (yang, light). Six lines stacked, sixty-four combinations (hexagrams).
Instead of broken and solid lines, what if we stack six chocolate and golden Oreos? Oreo I Ching.
Which I did. The above picture represents Hexagram 27, Nourishing.
27 Yi • Nourishing
DECISION
Nourishing. Being steadfast and upright: good fortune. Watch your nourishment; Pay attention to what is in your mouth.
SIGNIFICANCE
This gua outlines the principle of nourishing. In ancient times, the Chinese concept of nourishing included nurturing, especially nurturing one’s virtue. To the ancient Chinese, nourishing without nurturing was the way of animals. The revered sage Mencius says,
Filling with food, Warming with clothes, Living leisurely without learning, It is little short of animals.
If you consult the I Ching, occasionally or regularly, consider using Oreos, or the cookies of your choice, to represent your hexagram. When you are done, you can enjoy a sweet treat along with the valuable advice.
As we have all heard, Paramount, parent of CBS and the Late Show with Stephen Colbert, just cancelled the show as of next May.
Paramount settled a lawsuit by Trump, claiming that a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris had been fraudulently edited. Paramount, without a fight, paid Trump $16 million and made other concessions as settlement.
Trump hates Colbert and has long called for CBS to fire him.
Paramount says the cancellation of Colbert was based completely on financial considerations. The fact that he had referred on air to the settlement as “a big fat bribe” or that Trump hates Colbert had nothing to do with it.
Many are skeptical.
This is a cultural loss. Colbert is part of the team of world-class satirists that Jon Stewart helped assemble for the Daily Show. Among them, Jon Stewart (Comedy Central, also a part of Paramount) and John Oliver (HBO Max) are still making us laugh at absurd, misguided and dangerous power.
There is great news: In the culture of 2025, YOU are Colbert, or can be.
Doing what Colbert and Stewart and Oliver did and do is hard. Just complaining and shouting earnest well-deserved, even crude, criticism of the current regime is easy, may be cathartic, but isn’t effective. Or funny.
The genius of Colbert and company is to be supremely informed, supremely intelligent, and supremely funny in ways that convey that information and intelligence AND make people laugh. With genuine heart. No, that isn’t easy.
But you and others can do it. And unlike the old days, the platforms are available to broadcast that as far as the quality and interest will carry it. The Late Show with Stephen Colbert averages 2.42 million viewers, 219,000 viewers in the key 18-49 demographic. So many videos and posts reach more than that.
It’s hard not to sound like victims, crybabies and scolds. It’s hard to be Colbert, Stewart or Oliver. But if you can be, or can learn to be someone anywhere near that neighborhood, saying and showing something anywhere near that range, do it. Often. Flood the plain.
It will not totally make up for Colbert’s absence, since he is one of a kind, but that absence shouldn’t last long. It will put you on the team as a funny and heartfelt champion of truth.
There is a lot of attention paid now to preferred pronouns, such as he his she her they their.
Not as much attention to first person pronouns.
If you pay close attention, you will notice how often people, yourself included, say I me mine. Whatever your, his, her, their preference, that one doesn’t change.
Is there too much I me mine in speech and thought? You decide.
George Harrison wrote what turned out to be the last track the Beatles ever recorded, I Me Mine (1970).
I Me Mine
All through the day I me mine, I me mine, I me mine All through the night I me mine, I me mine, I me mine Now they’re frightened of leaving it Everyone’s weaving it Going on strong all the time All through the day I me mine
I me me mine I me me mine I me me mine I me me mine
All I can hear I me mine, I me mine, I me mine Even those tears I me mine, I me mine, I me mine No-one’s frightened of playing it Everyone’s saying it Flowing more freely than wine All through the day I me mine
I me me mine I me me mine I me me mine I me me mine
All I can hear I me mine, I me mine, I me mine Even those tears I me mine, I me mine, I me mine No-one’s frightened of playing it Everyone’s saying it Flowing more freely than wine All through your life I me mine
We are tired of Trump. More than tired. He is taking up all the oxygen in America and the world. We are suffocating.
I have a distraction, which Trump, the master distracter, would appreciate.
Sometime during Trump 1, I collected Trump-related trademarks that had been registered and had gone dead. The range of branding opportunities is staggering and absurd.
From time to time, I will feature one of these Trump trademarks. Today, GoTrump Travel (registered 2005, dead 2014).
“Smart people are dangerous,” some president said. “They have ideas, they ask questions, they research answers. They get together and have ideas, ask questions and research answers, like a conspiracy. This leads to big trouble. It is a threat to our national security. People in this country are smart enough for me, which is why I am also limiting education. If our people want answers, they can just ask me. I have answers, all the answers. Our people shouldn’t even ask questions. I have the answers without any questions.”
Birds in one ear bossa nova in the other. Hill in the desert peak of Corcovado. Waves of Sonoran cactus waves on the beach at Ipanema. Spanish and Portuguese and English. Old world new world.
It has been six months since my last post about Gaza.
I think I am weary of watching the situation daily devolve and yet seeing little change in the attitudes of many in the Jewish communities or of many Americans, including those in power. Among other things, we still hear those labeling this a humanitarian tragedy being called antisemitic, even if Jewish.
The following article in the Guardian moves me to post again.
Ehud Olmert says forcing people into camp would be ethnic cleansing, and anger at Israel over Gaza war is not all down to antisemitism
“When they build a camp where they [plan to] ‘clean’ more than half of Gaza, then the inevitable understanding of the strategy of this [is that] it is not to save [Palestinians]. It is to deport them, to push them and to throw them away. There is no other understanding that I have, at least.”…
“It is a concentration camp. I am sorry,” he said, when asked about the plans laid out by Israel Katz last week. Once inside, Palestinians would not be allowed to leave, except to go to other countries, Katz said.
Katz has ordered the military to start drawing up operational plans for construction of the “humanitarian city” on the ruins of southern Gaza, to house initially 600,000 people and eventually the entire Palestinian population.
“If they [Palestinians] will be deported into the new ‘humanitarian city’, then you can say that this is part of an ethnic cleansing. It hasn’t yet happened,” Olmert said. That would be “the inevitable interpretation” of any attempt to create a camp for hundreds of thousands of people, he said.
Whoever you are and whatever communities you are in, please consider what is going on and what is planned in Gaza, please consider Olmert’s thoughts, and please consider a donation to the International Rescue Committee.
Bob Schwartz 