I'm posting one more take...

 

on Bad Bunny (Benito Antonio Martinez Ocasio), since his performance at Super Bowl LX is still in the news, and I think it is worthwhile to read Alisa Valdes Rodriguez's post from Facebook:

Alisa Valdes Rodriguez:

"I haven’t written about Bad Bunny because I’m tired. Tired of saying the same things for 30 years. Tired of screaming things like “Puerto Rico is part of the United States” for thirty [effing[ years. First, as a reporter at the Boston Globe, where my editor, Nick King, a Harvard graduate, did not realize Puerto Rico was part of the United States nor that Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens by birth. Then again at the LA Times, where I was the first mainstream US reporter to cover the Latin music industry, and the first to cover the Latin Grammys, back when Ricky Martin was “exploding” and I had to explain, yet again, to millions of readers, that Puerto Rico is part of the United States. 

Then again as a novelist, where I wrote the Nick King incident into fiction in my bestselling novel THE DIRTY GIRLS SOCIAL CLUB, a book that was optioned by Jennifer Lopez but for which I would have to explain over and over in Hollywood meetings that, yes, Puerto Rico is part of the United States. And again, and again, and again, in book after book after book, in meeting after meeting after meeting. To now live in a country where public insight and discourse has not only NOT progressed, but regressed to absolute idiocy, is exhausting. I’m exhausted. 

I’ve been screaming into the same well, but most of the nation remains stupid. Even those who shouldn’t be stupid about Puerto Rico are stupid about Puerto Rico. I love Josh Johnson. I do. But his bit, which went viral, about racists being mad about Bad Bunny while eating guacamole was stupid, because guacamole is not from Puerto Rico. Guacamole is Mexican. I am exhausted by the endless conflations of these distinct and different cultures by Americans who should not be this [effing] stupid. 

Arroz con gandules, cuchifritos, habichuela, tostones, cocquito, pernil — Puerto Rican food. New York is a Puerto Rican city. So is Boston. Hartford. New Haven. There is no excuse for the nation to be so clueless, except the gatekeeping done by Hollywood.

 Americans only know what they’ve seen in a movie or TV show. And for 25 years voices like mine have been systematically shut out. So, I’m tired of saying this. I’m tired of writing books about it that sell well to American Latinos, only to have my voice silenced beyond a certain group. Tired of the lies. Tired of the racism. The racism. 

The United States colonized Puerto Rico and forcibly sterilized its women, dropped nuclear bombs on the Puerto Rican island of Vieques for practice, took all the natural resources, hurt the Puerto Rican people in every way imaginable, only to have the conman felon racist piece of shit president posting insults about Bad Bunny, who is more American than Trump is. 

I’m effing exhausted. Tired of people forgetting Lolita Lebron. Tired of MAGA celebrating Colombus and never realizing the first place he effing landed was Puerto Rico, where he was met by the Taino people, who welcomed him and fed him and were kind, and Columbus, who landed there FOR SPAIN, enslaved and murdered most of the native people of that island. 

Tired of the ignorance. Tired of the ahistorical nonsense. Tired of Kid Rock’s ass crack and all their noses stuck in it for a whiff of “freedom.” Tired. Tired of being told every 20 or 30 years that Latinos have finally made it, only to have them trample us again. 

Before Bad Bunny, it was Ricky Martin. Before Ricky Martin, it was Jose Feliciano. Before that, it was Iris Chacon. Hector Lavoe. Ismael Rivera. Tito Puente. How quickly this United States forgets its own geniuses. How easily it squeezes the lifeblood out of Puerto Rico yet erases its people. Its culture. The Puerto Rican culture is incredible. It tells the entire story of the Americas, if you listen. 

Tired of you not listening. Tired of the way this country erases us all, all Latinos, over and over and over again, perpetually portrayed as outsiders in our own nation. Tired of having my song stolen from me the moment it leaves my mouth. Tired of singing."

THE CAPTAIN OF THE MOTHER SHIP HAS THOUGHTS ABOUT BAD BUNNY'S PERFORMANCE AT SUPER BOWL LX

 

The Captain of the Mother Ship is big mad because a Puerto Rican American sang songs in Spanish during the Super Bowl half time show. She says that it was an INSULT to America.

She doesn't explain how it is an insult; she just knows it is. Which means, IMO, she has no idea of how singing a song in Spanish by a Puerto Rican American at a football game's half time is insulting to America. These people's patriotism is so fragile that they're triggered by a fellow American's singing songs in another language at a ballgame. Quick, get her a sofá desmayado! Bad Bunny sang songs in SPANISH!!

(Before this land became the USA, the languages spoken were Native American languages, SPANISH, English, French, Dutch, German, Swedish, and various African languages. Bad Bunny was just respecting the ancient language history of the USA!)

I’VE decided America should be completely INSULTED by the ALL SPANISH SHOW…..you don’t get the HUGE honor of performing IN AMERICA and doing it in YOUR LANGUAGE, PAL. I just wish SO MUCH he’d worn the dress he’d warned about….maybe Americans would have awakened (most, anyway). I’m insulted….You do a couple songs in your language, FINE, but NEVER EVER insult our country….and you don’t honor YOURS when you got this big spotlight, pal.

"NEVER EVER insult our country....and you don't honor YOURS when you got this big spotlight, pal."

The Captain doesn't know that the "our country" (America) reference is actually Bad Bunny's country as well? The "and you don't honor YOURS" reference is rather shocking and sad because she's saying that Puerto Rico is a "country" and not part of the United States. How could she not know this? I understand she taught school!

Oh well, would we expect better from xenophobes and bigots?

Super Bowl LX

 

This is a wonderful review of the Super Bowl half time show that bitter old Trump trashed last night.  

Am I disappointed that the Pats didn’t win? Sure. But I enjoyed watching the half time show and the exuberance and love Bad Bunny brought to it   

Michael Garrett, NC Senate

I watched Bad Bunny deliver the most American halftime show I have ever seen. Then I came home and watched it again. And I am not okay. In the best possible way.

He sang every single word in Spanish. Every. Single. Word. He danced through sugarcane fields built on a football field in California while the President of the United States sat somewhere calling it “disgusting.” Lady Gaga came out and did the salsa. Ricky Martin lit up the night. A couple got married on the field. He handed his Grammy, the one he won eight days ago for Album of the Year, to a little boy who looked up at him the way every child looks up when they dare to believe the world has a place for them.

And then this man, this son of a truck driver and a schoolteacher from Vega Baja, Puerto Rico, stood on the biggest stage on the planet and said “God bless America.”

And then he started naming them.

Chile. Argentina. Uruguay. Paraguay. Bolivia. Peru. Ecuador. Brazil. Colombia. Venezuela. Panama. Costa Rica. Nicaragua. Honduras. El Salvador. Guatemala. Mexico. Cuba. Dominican Republic. Jamaica. The United States. Canada. And then, his voice breaking with everything he carries, “Mi patria, Puerto Rico. Seguimos aquí.” My homeland, Puerto Rico. We are still here.

The flags came. Every single one of them. Carried across that field by dancers and musicians while the jumbotron lit up with the only words that mattered: “THE ONLY THING MORE POWERFUL THAN HATE IS LOVE.”

I teared up. I’m not ashamed to say it. I sat on my couch and I wept because THAT is the America I believe in. That is the American story, not the sanitized, gated, English-only version that small and frightened people try to sell us. The REAL one. The messy, beautiful, multilingual, multicolored, courageous one. The one that has always been built by hands that speak every language and pray in every tongue and come from every corner of this hemisphere.

That is the America I want Jack and Charlotte to know. That when the moment came, when the whole world was watching, a Puerto Rican kid who grew up to become the most-streamed artist on Earth stood in front of 100 million people, sang in his mother’s language, blessed every nation in the Americas, and spiked a football that read “Together, we are America” into the ground. Not with anger. With joy. With love so big it made hate look exactly as small as it is.

And what did the President do? He called it “absolutely terrible.” He said “nobody understands a word this guy is saying.” He called it “a slap in the face to our Country.” The leader of the free world watched a celebration of love, culture, and everything this hemisphere has given to the world, and all he could see was something foreign. Something threatening. Something disgusting.

Let that sink into your bones.

The man who is supposed to represent all of us looked at the flags of our neighbors, heard the language of 500 million Americans across this hemisphere, and felt attacked. That’s not strength. That’s not patriotism. That is poverty of the soul.

And then there was the Turning Point show. Kid Rock in a college arena in North Dakota. Three million viewers watching a man who once wrote a song about liking underage girls perform as the “family-friendly” alternative to a Puerto Rican artist celebrating love. They called it the “All-American Halftime Show”, as if America has a velvet rope. As if this country belongs to some of us and not all of us. As if you need to sing in English to count.

Here’s what I want to say to everyone who posted about that show tonight, who shared it proudly, who turned away from Bad Bunny’s celebration because it was in Spanish and the flags weren’t only red, white, and blue:

Your children will see those posts. Your grandchildren will find them. The internet doesn’t forget. And one day, when the history of this moment is written, when our kids and their kids look back at 2026 the way we look back at the people who stood on the wrong side of every bridge and every march and every moment that mattered, they will know exactly where you stood. They will see who chose Kid Rock over a hemisphere of flags. They will see who called love “disgusting.” And they will carry that knowledge the way all of us carry the knowledge of what our ancestors did when they were tested.

I don’t say that with anger. I say it with sadness. Because hate is an inheritance nobody asks for, and yet it gets passed down just the same.

Bad Bunny didn’t say “ICE out” tonight. He didn’t need to. He just showed the whole world what America looks like when we are not afraid of each other. When culture is shared, not policed. When language is music, not a threat. When a flag from every nation in this hemisphere can walk across a football field together and the only words you need are the ones he gave us:

The only thing more powerful than hate is love.

Over 100 million people saw that tonight. 

And no Truth Social post can take it away.

HERE'S SOME VIRTUE SIGNALING FOR BLACK HISTORY MONTH:

 

YOUR SUNDAY MOMENT OF ZEN

 

This is the half-time entertainment that TPUSA is billing as an "All American Show," and is offering to compete with Bad Bunny, whom they criticized for not being an American (he is) and who is the official half-time entertainment for the Super Bowl.

The jokes just keep writing themselves!

Kid Rock: The choice for Super Bowl half time by TPUSA. Apparently, Erika Kirk approves:

NOTE:  The Captain of the Mother Ship wrote that she couldn't wait for the TPUSA Super Bowl half time entertainment. And on her Sunday Faith blog! She really did! See above for what she eagerly looks forward to hearing from Kid Rock!

THE CAPTAIN OF THE MOTHER SHIP: "(And I’m sorry most of you’ve said you’re not interested in professional sports because I can’t wait till SUPER BOWL!  And the TPUSA Halftime!)"

SATURDAY NIGHT SINGING

 

Dedicated to all those who participate in covering up pedophiles in Epstein files:

Dr. Stacey L. Spencer

 

I don't know this man's work, but his words ring true today:

I’m struggling to find words today—but silence isn’t an option.

When racist imagery comparing Black people to apes is circulated and amplified by those with the President of the United States it’s not just offensive—it’s dangerous. This isn’t coming from the shadows of the internet; it’s being normalized at the highest levels of public life. And that should alarm every person of conscience.

Barack Obama and Michelle Obama represent what is best in this country: intelligence, discipline, integrity, public service, love for humanity, and commitment to the common good. They are patriots. They are leaders. They are builders.

Racist dehumanization—no matter who shares it—has a long, violent history in America. When it’s excused, minimized, or defended because of political loyalty, we’re no longer talking about policy disagreements. We’re talking about moral failure.

BREAKING

 

Because he is a cowardly little worm, Trump blamed a staffer for the depraved racist meme about former President Obama and former First Lady, Michelle Obama he posted on his Truth Social platform.

Cowardly little worm is too good a label for what Trump is. 

REPORTS ON ICE BRUTALITIES

I'm going to virtual-signal the eff out of these stories because it illustrates the depraved and barbarous behavior of ICE and the convicted criminal currently living in the White House. Their vicious and murderous attacks belie their claim that they're deporting only "the bad ones."

Marc Prokosch, a lawyer representing Liam Ramos's family, said the father and son "did everything right" when they came into the country from Ecuador in 2024.

Liam's father is not an illegal alien and was in the process of seeking asylum at the time of his detention. Prokosch said that the family entered the United States in 2024 through a port of entry and has been following the law.

Can we imagine what other legal immigrants and American citizens have suffered at the hands of the convicted criminal in the White House and his ICE goons?

********************************

Dear MAGA Americans,

Is this really what you voted for? Beating and killing American citizens in their streets so the convicted criminal in the White House gets his deportation quotas every month? 

Are you asking God to bless America as you watch this brutality take place in our country?

U.S. citizen injured by federal agents in Salem who demanded to see “papers,” union says

• 
  

"A woman who’s a U.S. citizen needed medical help Thursday, Jan. 29, after federal agents pulled her from her car after demanding to see her 'papers,' one of the state’s largest unions said Saturday. 

Service Employees International Union Local 503 said the woman, a union member, was driving to run errands when four agents stopped her on a Salem street. agents identified themselves as federal law enforcement, according to the union’s statement."

"Trump’s goons tear-gas a seven-year-old girl at a memorial bike ride for Alex Pretti! 

The people of Portland, Oregon, held a memorial bike ride for the ICU nurse murdered by ICE agent Jesus Ochoa and Border Patrol agent Raymundo Gutierrez. 

Pretti loved riding and racing bikes, and so people came together to honor his memory and join in solidarity against the Trump administration’s reign of terror. 

Organizer Jarrod Alder said the aim was to “show the world that righteousness and good and moral value holds against the evil that's happening.” 

The Trump regime responded by deploying federal agents to throw chemical munitions at children. Video footage shows a child crying in pain and being assisted by a medic to get the irritating gas out of her eyes. 

Just completely indefensible, sadistic violence meted out against peaceful protestors over and over again. They all need to be held accountable. 

***********************

Based on investigations, over 170 U.S. citizens were detained or held against their will by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) during the first nine months of the second Trump administration in 2025. 

ProPublica identified more than 170 instances where U.S. citizens were detained, including cases involving roughly 20 children. 

Nature of Incidents: Citizens have reported being handcuffed, having guns pointed at them, being pepper-sprayed, and being held for days without being allowed to contact the outside world. Injuries and 

Fatalities: There is no comprehensive official count of injuries caused by ICE agents, but recent reports highlight a surge in violent encounters: 

Fatalities in the Field: At least 8 people were reported killed or caused to die by agents in the field between July 2025 and late January 2026. 

Deaths in Custody: During that same six-month window, 35 people died while in immigration detention. 

Assaults on Officers: The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) reported a 1,300% increase in assaults against its own officers, which they attribute to the chaotic nature of recent enforcement operations. 

Record Population: As of mid-January 2026, ICE was holding a record 73,000 people in detention, a 75% increase in one year. 

Non-Criminal Majority: Data leaked to the Cato Institute indicates that roughly 73% of current detainees have no criminal convictions.

SOURCE:  AI Mode