58 Comments
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Page's avatar

Those Republicans remaining silent so they can be re-elected is nothing short of cowardliness.

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Kathy H's avatar

It's also a dereliction of duty, they take an oath of office to uphold the Constitution, not fealty to a President. They are supposed to prevent power from being unbalanced in the executive branch...& WE elect them.::ugh::

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Simon Sez's avatar

No, it is treason.

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Christopher Derrick's avatar

The Rosenbergs committed treason and were put to death, will we see that for these traitors?

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Simon Sez's avatar

No, about these idiots will be silence.

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Susan McKinley's avatar

Perhaps re-election is a piece of it. They are likely gaining wealth by staying in office and remaining complicit. With announcements of private prisons, increased defense spending, & state voucher scams sprouting private schools, I’ll bet you that many or all of them are investing in these schemes. Follow the money.

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Page's avatar

These idiots in the White House leave me speechless. The idea of “men of wealth” making decisions like destroying social security is laughable if it wasn’t so serious. My husband and I paid into social security all our working careers; it’s MY MONEY. Now I’m ready to get it back. It’s not your money Mr. Trump, Elon and Vance. The idea I would live to see this country brought to it’s knees is horrible at best.

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Mo Khan's avatar

I agree- it is OUR money and we expect all of it for ourselves and other Americans needing it - social security, Medicare and Medicaid and more

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Ian MacDonald's avatar

Following the Smoot Hawley tariffs and the Great Depression Republicans paid a heavy price politically spending decades in the wilderness. President McKinley paid an even heavier one.

Are there lessons in this history for the current GOP?

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Lynne Parrott's avatar

do they read?

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Rebecca Bishop's avatar

Trump definitely doesn’t read. He doesn’t even listen!

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The BobCaster's avatar

In the March 27 issue of the New York Review of Books, Neal Ascherson reviews "Hitler’s People: The Faces of the Third Reich" by Richard J. Evans.

This excerpt from Ascherson's review struck me as apropos to the current situation in the Executive Branch:

"The 'paladins,' the leading Nazis who formed Hitler’s 'court,' were variously explained away by their Allied conquerors. Churchill, invoking old American movies, called them 'gangsters.' The Allied Control Commission observed unhelpfully that 'so grotesque and preposterous are the principal characters in this galaxy of clowns and crooks' that it was impossible to see how anyone 'could have taken them for rulers.' The psychiatrists appointed to observe the Nuremberg defendants asserted that they were variously psychopathic: Rudolf Hess was 'a self-perpetuated hysteric'; Julius Streicher was 'paranoid'; [Robert]Ley had 'frontal lobe damage' and 'organic brain disease'; and so on . . . ."

Substitute the names of some from the current gang of "paladins" and you're likely to get a clearer picture of the makeup of the Trump "court."

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D4N's avatar

**Calling all data miners** Please spread a plea far and wide to learn the 'ownership structure' of the Louisiana ICE detention facilities privately owned, for profit by the GEO Group, Inc. formerly 'Wackenhut Corrections.' I'm willing to bet donuts to dollars that former senator Jeffrey Beau're'gard Sessions is involved; perhaps more gop critters too !

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Kathy H's avatar

I'm listening to Rachel Maddow's "Prequel" & it was not at all just Hitler's court, but very much in the U.S. as well, very scary psychopathy.

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Noel Wright's avatar

This sounds like a book we should all be studying! Thanks for the reference!

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The BobCaster's avatar

Yes, I agree. Evans is a well-respected historian, particularly of that period of history.

Ascherson's review certainly piqued my interest in it, so I intend to get to it when I can. The study not only of those in Hitler's circle, but also of those in lesser positions who participated in the functioning of the Third Reich, is interesting, and very topical I believe.

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Janet Lynn Mays's avatar

I encourage everyone to go to the Social Security Administration website and download and print both your Social Security Statement (earnings record) and your Benefit Verification Letter and put them in a safe place. I trust no one in Trump's administration run by con men, felons, fox "news" talking heads, car salesmen, and the guy with the worm in his brain.

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Meliannos's avatar

An electronic or printed copy of your Social Security information will be entirely irrelevant. If it’s needed, it’s already too late. The data will have been adulterated to show whatever trump/musk want it to show. A single individual has absolutely no power to protect a government that’s being used as a weapon against us.

Musk wants the data. Trump wants the money in the Social Security trust funds. Once they’ve converted the COBOL database to whatever porous software structure musks kids have created, your money will already be gone.

You have no recourse. The legal system is entirely suborned. Roberts’ SCOTUS is completely partisan & corrupt.

It’s game over, people. We passed the tipping point a long time ago when FACTS were met with “Alternative Facts” that 77 million Americans liked better & bought in to.

The United States & everything she stood for (or pretended to stand for), is dead - with a bespoke golf club through her heart.

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Kathy H's avatar

If you haven't accessed them, as I hadn't, you might need to get a security code by snail mail like I did. And, with USPS...don't put it off.

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Kathy H's avatar

If you haven't accessed them, as I hadn't, you might need to get a security code by snail mail like I did. And, with USPS...don't put it off.

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Mary Jo's avatar

what we need to understand is that narcissists don't have the neurobiology toward empathy, they just don't even see other people other than as something to exploit. cozying up to them does not work. only boundaries, push back and continuing to hold onto our own humanity is what will save us.

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jeffrey bryan's avatar

It all seems so bizarre that the so called stable genius is dreaming this strategy all by himself. Income taxes certainly even the load on managing the financial resources. It assumes everyone will pay their fair share — and we know how that is working out .

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Norman Zamcheck's avatar

a big barrel of rotten fish. Pusillanimous supine repugs will do whatever their dear leader commands.

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Lisa K's avatar

He is constructing concentration/immigration camps to the tune of $45 billion right before our eyes. And isn’t our military spending already bloated?

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Kathy H's avatar

The last I knew, the military was our biggest expenditure & that was even before Felon47 turned on the world. Prison stock jumped right after the election & there's been things that seem to be in line with that, like making homelessness illegal.

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Noel Wright's avatar

He’s probably reserving space for any and all American critics and dissidents, which will all be called “leftist, socialist, communist and undesirables who illegally disparage the god-given golden age of Trump, and who as a result of any sign of disloyalty or treachery, shall be consigned to the $45 Billion private prison system, which may be located on either private estates, and on federal military bases, for holding of suspected “liberals” until their investigations are completed (which could take hours, or days, or weeks, or months; or, years; or, decades, if you should somehow manage to live that long). Of course, the charges against you would be “secret”, however you already have been judged by the Zuckerberg & Bannon on the content of your social media and “likes” ( see Cambridge Analytica). So why is Bannon pretending to be outside the Trump Disfigurement Syndrome? (Where ultra-right wingnuts twist themselves into human Twister pretzels to rationalize every new distraction that is the only thing he does beside lording it over everyone on tv or playing golf with murderous dictators. What’s not to like?

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Douglas B. Price's avatar

The term "decimation of government services" is appropriate to describe this administration (or regime). Trump has lied about his true intentions from the beginning but with one bad idea after the other, it is still shocking to see this in the United States. This regime will not last but the question is what will come in its wake.

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D4N's avatar

**Calling all data miners** Please spread a plea far and wide to learn the 'ownership structure' of the Louisiana ICE detention facilities privately owned, for profit by the GEO Group, Inc. formerly 'Wackenhut Corrections.' I'm willing to bet donuts to dollars that former senator Jeffrey Beau're'gard Sessions is involved; perhaps more gop critters too !

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Mary Jo's avatar

it says I am a free subscriber but I have paid a year long subscription. I so appreciate all you are doing to keep informing us in a broader context and with careful attention to the truth and with references. SUCH a gift into the world. I hope you are able to pace yourself, too..

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Debby's avatar

Trump apparently doesn’t care about the inhumanity of Traffis on People or even worse createing Camps for those he and his imagration Team dem unworthy to live amoung us 🥲

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WriterX1's avatar

So, currently Trump and his MAGA Republican Legislators want both: Tariffs and Income Taxes! Of course, the next step is to eliminate Income Taxes. Back to the Future: sounds like a Movie I heard about a few years ago.

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Kelly Bloomingdale's avatar

I’ve known he and his “men” have meant the new “Golden Age” as the Gilded Age. Most of our wealth in the hands of a few men. It will absolutely devastate our country and all non-white people living in it.

Private “Detention Facilities” are just new private prisons for the wealthy to take more of our tax dollars. Pathetic! And a Trillion dollars for a Defense Department that hasn’t passed an audit for over a decade is just costly corruption waiting to happen! I can’t believe it! So embarrassing!

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robert e williamson jr's avatar

Republicans staying silent is the direct result of them cutting their own throats. It's difficult to speak at all while one's mouth is full of bullshit and you are bleeding out.

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D4N's avatar

**Calling all data miners** Please spread a plea far and wide to learn the 'ownership structure' of the Louisiana ICE detention facilities privately owned, for profit by the GEO Group, Inc. formerly 'Wackenhut Corrections.' I'm willing to bet donuts to dollars that former senator Jeffrey Beau're'gard Sessions is involved; perhaps more gop critters too !

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Beverly Falls's avatar

ETTD

Everything Trump Touches Dies

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Timothy Taylor's avatar

Trump is doing for the United States what he did for Atlantic City. He managed to bankrupt a casino of all things!

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