On Saturday, August 15, the New York Times editorial board published an op-ed noting that the Republicans are trying to hide the cuts they have made to health care in the U.S.
We’ve heard this argument before. The Gilded Age dressed cruelty up as individual responsibility: government owes people little, suffering is personal failure, and protections for the public somehow weaken the country.
But apparently paperwork is an unbearable government burden when it asks the wealthy to disclose who owns a shell company, while perfectly reasonable when it determines whether someone struggling to survive gets healthcare.
The burden isn’t the problem. Who is being burdened is.
Always impressed by the skill with which our resident historian weaves together what others so often miss, focusing on tangents that only appear not to be related to one another, while others miss or gloss over the underlying connections. For in truth, there is a link between cyclospora and a fruitcake masquerading as Secretary of Health and Human Services. A clear relationship exists between the bizarre, savage attacks against the Black Guy and the sudden escalation of healthcare costs for tens of millions.
Everything feels so precarious because it is, because they are trying to resurrect a manifesto as dead as the one Marx and Engels once wrote -- an earlier manifesto of realpolitik, one insisting that that the only good world to live in is one where -- paraphrasing Thucydides' description of the Athenians from centuries before -- the strong do what they will, the weak endure what they must. An appeal that remains now, as it was then, designed not to share the blessings of civilization, but simply to cement power for a few. Might makes right to the nth degree, and to hell with justice, shared values, common virtues. No room at the inn for mercy, much less common sense.
But we have power, too. Perhaps it's been lying in dormancy for too long, since tens of millions of us were raised at a time when government was not that, but something far better, nobler, something that sought to solidify support for a world of nations united behind a commitment to universal freedoms and rights, to a legacy that sought to build on Thomas Jefferson's self-evident truths, rather than tear them all down, like today's discarded East Wing and cemented-over rose garden.
And we are exercising that power, ever more rapidly and forcefully. And they are losing. That is also clear. For the last point of tonight's letter -- that after all that in the 1880s, after all the excesses of the Gilded Age, the Robber Baron Age, the All for Me Age, the Beggar-Thy-Neighbor Through Stupid Tariffs Age, a Progressive Era finally dawned and had its say.
A new age is coming, but only if we can pull it off. A reminder that authoritarians do not need to have everybody behind them, they only need those opposing them not to join hands against them. So this election, and this movement, must be about joining hands, articulating common ground, sharing universal civic values, re-finding a community-based America to take its place within -- not set against -- a larger, interdependent world.
I’M FURIOUS: Trump Renaming Aircraft Carrier of WW2 Black Hero ... to USS Trump.
"According to CNN, the Navy is renaming the USS Doris Miller, the African American petty officer who served as a cook on the battleship USS West Virginia and was awarded the Navy Cross in 1942, the second-highest medal for bravery. The first black person to receive this award.
On December 7, 1941, Miller’s heroism and courage were on fierce display. He defended his ship and helped save his mortally wounded commanding officer from the onslaught of Japanese airplanes. Without any training, he manned and fired a 20mm anti-aircraftgun. His gallantry was an inspiration to all who served in the Navy, but especially to young black men.
... When I joined the Navy and later became a chief, the three pillars of my Navy forebears- Courage, Honor, and Commitment were ingrained into my every action. I stressed the importance of maintaining these characteristics throughout the Navy Chain of Command.
Yet today I am insulted. First, the honor of the entire history of the United States Navy is being smeared to flatter a man who had none of these three traits. Secondly, the courage, honor, and commitment Petty Officer Doris Miller displayed at Pearl Harbor and likely in his final minutes are being erased from America’s history … because he is black."
It's revolting. When we retake the administration the Democrats must pass a law prohibiting a living President from naming things after him or herself. I will celebrate the day his odious name comes off of everything except his jail cell.
every time the Dems get the majority, they spend all their efforts to correct the damage done by the previous republican admin., yet the country keeps electing these republicans after the mess has been fixed (somewhat).
Conclusion? Americans never learn.
Advice to those with means? Leave while you can.
It's starting to get to the point where there is no hope for good people when the greedy keep screwing things up. Unless the progressives can take the majority and stay there.
humans have been the same since crawling out of the sea, celeste...as ICTT pointed out, the Athenian of yore basically said, the strong will do what they will and others will endure what they must...America HAS had some good decades...but not for everyone. in 2000 there were over an estimated half a million homeless...and they were invisible to many other, 'non homeless' Americans. i like that people have ideals but from what i've seen of humanity there will always be corruption. entropy never sleeps.
we just have to try and do the best we can...i suggest that people read ICTT's comment above...it's well written and hopeful.
My husband and I, and our 5 children, forwent the 250th "celebrations" which is sad since we live in the cradle of democracy, Massachusetts, where the revolution started. A state so rich with history yet trump has tainted our country so greatly that, even with her faults, most people strived to become a better nation. How far we have fallen from the ideals of those people who fought so bravely to give birth to a new, better and free nation; America.
More disgusting is the fact that, as arguably, the wealthiest nation on earth with a population of 280+M people at the time couldn't provide housing for roughly .3 percent of the most vulnerable in society; the homeless. We now have a homeless population of under 800,000 people in a nation of close to 340M, so even a smaller percentage of .22% of our population, many of whom are single moms, veterans and even teenage children.
This so called "christian" nation has fallen so far from grace. The abject hypocrisy and rejection of their Christ's teachings is obscene.
Humans have been the same since the dawn of the Neolithic Period, but that was only about 400 generations (100 centuries) ago, and it ignores our prehistoric hunter-gatherer ancestors who, for thousands of generations, thrived in heathy band-sized social systems. That is how what started as a small village-sized population of humans, by the end of the Paleolithic Period, became the dominant vertebrate species on the planet.
Our (genetically inherited) nature is good. We just need to figure out how to change our (learned through experience) nurture so that nature and nurture work in harmony (instead of at cross purposes).
Several books report on how ordinary citizens are duped into voting against their own best social and economic interests: Thomas Frank, "What's the Matter with Kansas?" (2004); Nancy MacLean, "Democracy in Chains" (2017) and Barbara McQuade, "Attack from Within" (2024) and McQuade's "The Fix" (2026.) They should be required reading.
Some Americans never learn because they don't want to, or think that they don't need to. There, fixed it for you! Not to mention that wonderful example set by our dear leader who thinks he knows everything and doesn't need to read or here new things!!!!!
“Cell# 4547..here stayed and laid the biggest con in American history allowed by what was known as the former Republican Party” ….perhaps on a gold plaque?
The only way this can happen is to unite ( afore mentioned ,quite marvelously, in these comments). Whether ye be former or current ,stand and join back together this great nation , to lead as was designed -by equality-for-and-by-all.
Yea, well what about the fact that Valerie Harp didn't show up when Melania attended the Indy Car pre-race --- something -- gala, celebration.... When two women are fighting over trump's attention..... there's hope for every man!
When will the USS Abraham Lincoln's return to San Diego Harbor?
The Lincoln departed San Diego on November 21, 2025. The original planned Lincoln's return was May 2026 but, it was extended due to operations in the Middle East for over 260–266 continuous days at sea, partaking in combat operations.
The exact homecoming date or public pier-side arrival schedule is officially released by the U.S. Navy. But, I will be there in about 2 weeks to welcome the sailors home.
ALI VITALI just confirmed. 5:20 AM EST the aircraft carrier Lincoln & sailors are on the way home.
Why doesn't the MSM report on the George H.W. Bush aircraft carrier which is also deployed in the gulf?
How long have they been stuck in the ocean without food, water, toilets, etc?
Most of our 11 carrier groups are sitting in port somewhere? So why doesn't the moron Kegsbreth swap out the George H.W. Bush for another carrier group?
I'm sorry about that. Rampell only publishes once a week, but she usually does at least one other podcast on the Bulwark. I waited a few months after I knew she was going to be sticking with the Bulwark to subscribe.
Again, my apologies for being locked out of the article.
Lin, I am furious too because a bunch of whiny white boys with jobs they don't deserve are trying to blot out the heroes of our history in favor of a jerk who was never a hero and has no value to anyone but the rich white oligarchs whose only goal is to acquire everything and rule America. That to me is treason.
The Only THING THAT SHOULD BE NAMED AFTER TRUMP IS PILES OF EXCREMENT, HE IS WORTHLESS, USELESS AND NOT A DROP OF INTELLIGENCE IN HIS NOSTRILS! FORCE HIS BONE SPURS DOWN HIS THROAT! TATTOO COWARD ONTO HIS FOREHEAD!!
That comes after the systematic firing of high-ranking members of the military, only because they are black (or female). And the redistricting that takes away the power of black Americans to be represented in Congress.
The extreme racism of the GOP today is EXACTLY what the Obamas and Kamala Harris predicted. And yet, more black Americans than ever before voted for the GOP in 2024...
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that that means "it's their fault". They were victims of highly sophisticated neofascist propaganda. In a way, it's a testimony to black Americans that ONLY such a low percentage ended up falling for it, compared to all other demographics in the country (including white women...).
I'm sure I'm not the first person to read about this and break down in tears. It feels like the straw that should break the camel's back, yet I'm hoping it will be the motivator for any who have sat at the wayside watching others do all of the heavy lifting. And for those of us who are fighting with our hearts, our pens, our donations, and our integrity, it is yet one more reason to redouble our efforts. I can't wait for the day we get to undo all the harm this regime has caused; I may not be alive to see that day but I hold out hope for my children and grandchildren.
Chief ... It's interesting that trump 1.0 named CVN 81 after P.O. Miller to court the black vote. My wish is that this thought of changing its name is part of the "flood the zone with crap" strategy. I share your dismay on how the Navy we both served seems to be backing away from it's core values. As a nuke engineer that has held positions in the acquisition community, the desire to change CVN construction requirements in the middle of construction is crazy, will be extremely expensive and further delay the entire FORD Class construction schedule which in turn leads to more 250 day deployments for the in-service CVNs. Not to mention the increased maintenance cost when they return to port. ADM Rickover must be turning over in his grave.
What about Trump isn't despicable? He renamed a ship after himself to erase a Black hero's legacy. Il Duce would approve. This is authoritarianism: 'My name, my face, everywhere. Disagree? You're a traitor.
Chief, I can only imagine. That man wouldn't know Courage, Honor and Commitment if it came up and bit him in the @$$. In another time, I'd have been your sister in the Goat Locker.
I am truly sorry to say that the Israel you describe does not exist, if it ever did. Palestinian Israelis never had the rights of Jewish Israelis. Secular Jews were always subject to the government dictates of Orthodox Jews. It has been decades since a majority of Israelis considered a "liberal democracy" even an aspiration. As demonstrated by increasingly extremist Netanyahu regimes. The government of Israel is not only committing genocide, it is effectively committing suicide. It is in the business of state terror. And it facilitates the deadly abuses of right wing extremist Jewish terrorists. Israel is one of the top producers and exporters of military weaponry. It provides a range of government services which Americans can barely imagine. Our own Leahy Laws should force us to pause delivery of offensive weapons to IDF units acting in violation of humanitarian law. At a minimum. Friends don't let friends drive drunk.
This American Jew and Zionist is now contributing to campaigns of almost any Democratic nominee targeted by AIPAC.
The American Jewish Establishment Is Defending an Israel That No Longer Exists - Haaretz Today
"The endless rationalizations by American Jewish organizations for why an Israeli lawmaker's latest indefensible remarks should not change anyone's understanding of the country increasingly look like a refusal to confront what Israel has become."
I wish it were that simple. I wish there were safe havens. I hear your point of view while seeing a broader context. Hopefully, The Party is in Soul-Searching Mode and will emerge better off.
I read your essay (It's Come To This) carefully and compliment the quality of your thinking and your optimism. In today's government people are asked to accept their exploitation and suffering (while promising reward in a kingdom to come - Christian view.) The specter of what will continue under trump is haunting. I know we are striving toward any magical answers, but we could use a model of strength, of responsibility, caring for one another - we're capable of something better. Hopefully we can get rid of these sadistic lunatics.
William Graham Summer espoused the same views as Ayn Rand, who said, “Why should we take care of the stupid people.” It’s just plain greed and meanness, pure and simple.
The irony, JennSH, is that as Ayn Rand neared the end of her life, she took full advantage of those "socialist" government benefits she had decried all her adult life. Indeed, we took care of a stupid person, and her name was Ayn.
Good old Ayn Rand who wrote horrible novels, but some people got the idea they could do anything they wanted and be forever sophomoric. At the end however, she needed government help. I see Dale beat me to this.
That last point is exactly where my mind has been going too. Authoritarian power depends so much on convincing people that they are isolated, outnumbered and ultimately powerless. But connection changes that. Once we recognize each other, we stop being isolated individuals and become something much harder to control: a public.
I was writing about exactly this in my Weekly Reflection this morning — how we build power by finding each other and building something that lasts:
''A new age is coming, but only if we can pull it off. A reminder that authoritarians do not need to have everybody behind them, they only need those opposing them not to join hands against them.''
The torch has been thrown to us. Yes, it is us, those who want to keep a democratic republican political system intact, versus the KKK/MAGA white Christian nationalists who want a Christian theocracy, replacing the democratic system, while making females, minorities and gays 2nd and 3rd class citizens. Some even want to take the right to vote away from females. These people are a combination of evil, stupidity, ignorance and prejudice. Let's not be naive. The Trump forces have the upper hand right now. We need to increase our financial support for those fighting to preserve our democracy. This brings Thomas Paine to mind: "These are the times that try men's and women's souls."
I've had really difficult periods in my life and I got through, but truly "these are the times that try men's souls" (and women's, too). Your posts are always complement what the good professor writes, and while I'm avoiding consumption of too much news, I am grateful to spot your comment so close to the top.
I'm sitting here at my computer desk already utilizing my heating pad for my arthritic back, but in my mind, I'm standing in front of the Old State House in Boston and listening to you orate your comment above. I'm gazing a bit uneasily around me; yes, plenty of listeners nodding and agreeing with each other, but those redcoats (red hats?) over at the edge of the crowd are making me jittery.
From what I've gleaned about who you are personally, to the casual observer you and I probably couldn't seem more different, and yet, by your views you post, I consider you my brother. I'd really go off the deep end if not for you and similar brothers and sisters here. I'm sure there are other uplifting posts here, but I can't get through them today.
Middle, you’re not alone. I’m getting more and more unable to take what I am reading, and I mostly read here. A young family member has just been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, after 7 months of unemployment and finally finding a job he liked. The family is in financial distress for that and many reasons. He has TN’s version of Medicaid as a result of his unemployment, but that may be cut back by the Rs (TN never expanded Medicaid). If all this doesn’t devastate his family (a wife and young sons—he was the breadwinner), nothing will. I don’t see how they will get out of this.
Well said! A new age is coming. We are witnessing it in Florida primaries, New York mayoral election, and other elections where a candidate's platform trumps $$$ in campaign funds. Together we will trump Trump! RESIST!
Very well written. We do have the power if we choose to to use it...and we must! Vote, demonstrate, donate, protest, make calls, write postcards...we can all do something!
The bipartisan campaigns against data centers all over the place shows what can be achieved. Trump complains incessantly about the unsightly nature of 'windmills' i.e. wind turbines, yet has no such reservations about data centers.
Exactly right. And simultaneously, one of the primary purposes of "We the People" drawing up the Constitution as an agreed upon compact by which self-government would function effectively and justly for all----the promotion of the general welfare---is left rotting by the wayside like the bear carcass the ghastly, guturral-voiced ghoul, RFK, Jr. dumped in Central Park.
Thank you Loren; Not everyone, in fact a great majority can not or do not afford the New York Times. ** In fact, and improvement to your notions should be made in that all the campaign lies, broken laws, etc. should be consolidated into a document made shareable on all media including social media, posted and reposted.
Absolutely agree -- and thank you. That's why I keep posting links like these (still doing my best to function as a journalist at age 86 despite being wheelchair-bound with rapidly dwindling vision and hearing and permanently denied trifocals, hearing aids or a motorized chair by deliberately genocidal, prohibitively expensive Medicare co-pays):
The (deliberate) bombing of the Iranian girls’ school is undoubtedly Trump’s reaffirmation of ChristoNazi misogyny – the same Abrahamic (Judaic/Christian/Islamic) hatred of females and contempt for femaleness that leads to both the victimization of terrorized children by the Trumpstein cult and to capitalism’s apocalyptic assault on our Mother Earth. That hatefulness – also manifest in USia as Ayran white male supremacist bigotry – fuels the crimes against humanity that define the entire Trumpstein Regime. Thus the vital, know-our-enemy relevance of the full text of the Jane Doe lawsuit against Trump and Epstein -- later withdrawn by the plaintiff in response to credible death threats: https://cdn.factcheck.org/UploadedFiles/Johnson_TrumpEpstein_Lawsuit.pdf
(Oops; sorry for the premature expostulation. Arthritic fingers accidentally hit the "Reply" ikon.)
According to Robert Reich, the Gilden Age was an age of fairness and equality compared to today, where wealth and power inequality is many times worse than at the turn of the century. And remember, the goal of the Oligarchy: "there must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind (themselves), alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect (the rest of us)." A quote by Frank Wilhoit with his definition of the fundamental principle of conservatism. Truer words have never been spoken as far as I can see.
Given that the openly hateful embrace of Nazism by our masters is truly global, I think we older adults should begin reflecting on the real reason all the younger generations are clinically depressed: that the universality of the Nazi symptoms tells us our species' adoption of patriarchy has doomed not just our own kind but our Mother Earth's ability to support life of [any] kind, and -- much as her prophet Jackson Browne predicted in "Before the Deluge" -- "the magnitude of her fury," already evidenced by ever-escalating death and disaster, will soon prove itself to be truly infinite.
E O Wilson biology flows downward concept though I would say down and all over wide . It’s like a pyramid or Ponzi scheme as government and the roots are from both patriarchy and then colonialism . We are experiencing what many others experienced through out time . Some of us were born into less need and better. Abba May Alcott Marmee in Little Women Louisa’s real mother came from the May family. A merchant family with income from sugar plantations. She and her radical but mostly a failed philosopher and educator tried not to use sugar at all because of this . The key word is merchant and like the song in 1776 about the triangular trade with human beings as product many involved many.
Great quote, but some have been hornswaggled to believe that they are the protected. But some have found out that the list of the protected is a short list indeed.
"The Gaia Hypothesis" is the scientific resurrection of the ancient ethos that successfully guided our species through at least 294,000 years of longevity before the patriarchal invasion put its death-stamp on us some 6,000 years ago. Now well beyond hypothesis and approaching theoretical certainty, "Gaia" asserts that our Mother Earth is "alive, conscious and self-regulating." Thus even those Adolf Eichmann emulators who imagine themselves fully protected -- whether by ChristoNazi infrastructure or by their infinitely sadistic, hateful-Santa manifestation of Jesus ("He sees them when they're sleeping; He knows when they're awake") -- will eventually discover there is no bunker so durable it will withstand Richter 10 or 11 or 12. (The scale is open-ended. Each whole-number increase represents a tenfold increase in measured amplitude and approximately 31 times more energy release.)
Thank you, Dr. Richardson; obviously "Sumnerism" and "Sumnerites" are the proper names for the methodically ecogenocidal economic Nazism disguised as "neoliberalism" and the Ted Bundy-minded ChristoNazis who support it, vector it and manage its Adolf Eichmann functions. (The Morrigan's curse on [all] Sumnerites, which includes [all] 2024 Trump voters, each and every one.)
If we extend Sumner’s (and the GOP’s) reasoning, inheritance should be prohibited. That is, the children of the wealthy should not inherit their parents’ riches; they must EARN their own. Thus, people like Don Jr and Eric Trump, and Paris Hilton, would likely be paupers. After all, only the hard-working, smart, motivated people will gain wealth. Right?
Interestingly enough I was watching the series The Maid, and then reading this article. While I don't know how accurate The Maid is, I can imagine that some of it is true, and may be even less harsh than what real life is. I know I have seen incredible poverty in my first job out of college, where in my training on what everyone in my department did, I had to go out to houses with bill collectors and one could see how people were living. It was terrifying. We went to a lot of homes of 15-year old girls with young children who were not yet in school. It was horrifying. I cried at the end of each day to my mom on the phone trying to make sense of the horrors that some people lived with.
I hate that our world is so uncaring and without a government that cares, it becomes overwhelming for the people. We need a government that cares so that we can support that and through that help people to get support. Otherwise the task is gargantuan.
Linda...I have repeatedly witnessed the same conditions, obviously during my working-press years, but during the rest of my life as well. That's because to dwell [anywhere] in today's USia is to dwell in an open-air concentration-camp of cast-off humans targeted for extermination by an anti-human [and possibly non-human] ruling class. (Why else the ever-escalating denial of health care and the prohibition of preventative medicine?) Thus with near perfection, you just explained why I am a Marxian...
As far too many of us refuse to acknowledge, we are as threatened with extermination -- and thus as much at war -- as any other peoples ever targeted for extermination.
Washington has unveiled a bold new healthcare innovation: making sure people prove they deserve the healthcare they already qualified for. 👈🏿
The rules are simple. If you are sick, working two jobs, raising a family, and struggling to keep up, you must complete the paperwork maze, meet every deadline, remember every password, and hope the government website is having a good day.
Congratulations. You have won the prize: keeping your healthcare.
Supporters call it responsibility. Critics call it a bureaucratic obstacle course designed to remove people from the system without actually saying so.
The irony is difficult to miss. A low-income person may need to provide endless documentation to prove they deserve assistance. A powerful corporation asked for basic transparency suddenly discovers that paperwork is an unbearable burden.
For ordinary Americans, bureaucracy is a test of character. For wealthy interests, it is apparently government oppression.
America has created a healthcare system where the greatest threat is not always the illness itself. Sometimes it is the form you forgot to submit.
Other wealthy nations decided healthcare should help people stay healthy. America decided people should first prove they deserve help.
The ultimate fitness test is no longer running a marathon.
Exceptionally well said, Mr. Corthell...Nevertheless, if I may supportively suggest a slight rephrasing of one part:
"USian 'health' care is a system in which the greatest threat is that we will be denied treatment and fatally abandoned merely because we cannot complete all the bureaucratic requirements by which our masters demand we prove we're eligible for help. Thus the (failed) United States has literally converted sheets of 8.5x11" paper -- bureaucratic forms -- into murder weapons.
The question is, and has been for a very, very long time: what is government's proper role, what should its focus be? Here are two theories:
"The people are what matter to government, and a government should aim to facilitate the means by which all the people under its jurisdiction can access the best possible life." – Frances Perkins, FDR’s Secretary of Labor, 1946
“The happiness and prosperity of our citizens is the only legitimate object of government.”
Kelli, when a person holding a public office doesn't care about the people he is supposed to be serving, and wants to court favors from those who have more power, he will put all the burdens on the most vulnerable, just to prove their inadequacy, of course! There are no words for what those cretins are doing to this nation and somehow there seems little we can do to stop them. Well, we need to find ways, in particular, voting those in office out, across the board, then working to impeach the incompetents and abusers of the American people from their appointments!
Bessent's new rule is just plain crazy. Who is going to benefit from the lack of interest in shell companies by our government? Probably not the good guys.
History is always about the oppressors and the oppressed. And the fascists in government totally embrace extreme nationalism; have a fetish about racial hierarchy, they're anti-intellectual, they rejoice in violence. Heather is always asking us to look back to history with eyes wide open so we won't end up in a permanent moral abyss.....
The "little people" hold the "big people up". Our leadership at the top is demonstrably amoral and immoral.. cruel aand righteous about it. Like we are stupid and blind. They don't realize that they are standing on the rest of us. Is feudalism the goal?
When it's everyman (woman) for him/her self that cancels feelings of community, nation, that "we are in this together". This destroys what this nation was built upon. This Trumpgovernment is actively destroying us. One year 8 months in they are still at it, some say desperate, failing flailing, but still at it... in a hurry.
With everyone for themselves we get more cheating lying and stealing ( crime) and the breakdown of civilized order. At the top the focus is domination, painting over the truth with lies and to hell with everyone else while the rest of us pay taxes to hold this scheme up. The moneyed class can go off "elsewhere" to enclaves to avoid. And in the case of the Trumporganization in bunkers built at our expense until we get them to leave while we still can. The progeny will go to Mars after we make this place unlivable.
If this is a "Christian country" so called as they claim, where are the clergy speaking out about values? Rather this is about feeding off of weakness, vulnerability, succumbing, losing faith, giving up, and despair.
That RFK.JR and by extension this government, does not take into consideration what makes people healthy, how food is grown and checked, what keeps our waters clean, what it cost to eat right, to live well (well enough), and to be educated is glaring incompetence and ignorance. And he keeps getting away with this, stubbornly not taking it in.
To see how those in the Gilded Age lived just travel to Newport RI where you can spend big bucks and tour their mansions! The Carnegie's et al lived like kings at the expense of the serfs they ruled over!
Fools. Knaves. Mountebanks. Incompetents. Liars. Criminal Donald sycophants.
They added $3,700,000,000,000 – trillion – to the U.S. national debt.
Heather's Letter today poses a short list of their predations. None of them did any good for the country. Their ICE and CBP thugs terrorized the country, in cold blood murdering U.S. citizens who’d done nothing wrong, letting dozens of brown-skinned people die in an extra-legal torture gulag of U.S. concentration camps. Testosterone Pete murdered 168 Iranian schoolgirls at Minab, murdered more helpless, poor Venezuelan fishermen. Elon Musk and his D.O.G.E. stooges wrecked government agencies only for the delights of drunken frat boys. Kash Patel got drunk and fist-pounded things. Turned Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool into fetid green algae swamp. Sold multi-million-dollar pardons to more genuine criminals for more criminal Donald profit.
Every time I think of Elon Musk throwing thousands of people we need out of work … and the day they tore down the USAID sign I get so mad I’m sickened. These people are the scum of the earth. Excuse me, but I’m feeling rather heartsick tonight for this beautiful country … which they’re trying to destroy too.
Well said, Ms. Bouche; given their felonious fanaticism, their [true] purpose -- indeed their [only] purpose -- is obviously the permanent destruction of the [former] United States. Moreover, the fact the former U.S. is now this planet's most notoriously failed nation, proves they've already triumphed. Thus the only remaining questions are whether we dare seek [effective] revenge for the ecogenocidal atrocities they are inflicting on us and how best we can go about it.
Non sequitur: I knew a Loretta Bouche -- a colleague -- when I was news and photo editor at Jersey's Morris County Daily Record c. 1967-69; might you be her kin?
Too many Americans bought into the myth of the meritocracy, believing that the poor are deservedly so due to lack of intelligence, motivation, and hard work. It only takes one big medical bill or the loss of your vehicle to put a MAGA or other person into bankruptcy and homelessness. And yet some of them cannot see that they’ve been duped.
What I find most demoralising at the point in this successful revolution of the economically illiterate and emotionally depraved is the vast numbers of individuals from the middle classes who continue to support these monsters. Motivated, I can only assume, by a combination of terror of falling down and hope of benefitting from economic top-down billionaire’s largesse. The slavishness of it, the loss of human dignity, terrifies me.
I can’t even imagine holding the belief that DJT has earned his millions and deserves his office. A web of distorted thinking has to be the foundation for that. Sad, and terrifying. Like pod people.
Very true, BUT yesterday the Dow dropped 700 points. And oil is trending up again. If you add the current cracking price oil is up over 75% since February. Nice job DonOLD.
Monnina, if you're trying to understand how the middle and lower classes may have been conditioned to accept such terrorism, consider the religion most widely practiced or accepted by the masses.
Regardless of the brand, the premise is: God loves all humankind. However, if humankind doesn't love God back and prove it by engaging in numerous practices of devotion, God will condemn the souls of these individuals to eternal torment.
Numerous denominations have spent centuries embellishing and defining the premise, but when you strip away all the decorations, the premise remains the same.
Biden's administration added $8.7 trillion dollars to the national debt. I think its only fair to point out that in this post pandemic world, the US has had a LOT of debt to take on, and both administrations have had to deal with it. I don't like some of the things Trump has done (most actually) either, but it is biased to call out Trump's debt increase without mentioning Biden's.
Mr. Rosen is assuredly [not] merely "biased." Anyone that has [anything] positive or apologetic to say about the Trumpenführer, his ChristoNazi masters or the fatally ChristoNazified MAGAT majority -- the "T" stands for "Terrorist" -- is ultimately nothing but a hate-mongering ChristoNazi themself. Again the Morrigan's Curse on all such enemies of humanity, because that is precisely what they are, foes of life itself -- and as such they have proven themselves to be as utterly unworthy of mercy or forgiveness as any Original Nazi or USian misogynist or racial discrimination advocate.
No it's not biased. There is a huge difference between intentionally taking on debt to stimulate the economy during a crisis while investing in infrastructure that has long term widely shared benefits and irresponsibly taking on debt in the application of discredited supply side economics, squandering money on unapproved wars and pissing away money on corrupt practices, simultaneously increasing the deficit while supposedly saving money by reducing services and decimating govt departments and disinvesting in infrastructure and the future (eg environmental deregulation, forcing children into poverty and malnutrition, and endangering the health of the population through quack pseudoscience). Also, assuming your numbers are correct, you are comparing 4 years of Biden to less than 2 years of Trump.
Trump (1) added $7.9 trillion to the national debt and Covid exacerbated the problem because interest rates went back up causing the interest payments on the national debt to skyrocket.
And Trump (2) has added $4.6 trillion to the national debt.
Thank you Joe for pulling us out of another Republican recession by stimulating the economy with debt instead of lining the pockets of the billionaires like Trump has done.
To add an obvious point: if Trump had handled the first signs of the Covid outbreak appropriately, instead of with his “fake news” dismissal, the problem would never have ballooned as it did. Thus the economy would not have taken such a significant hit and Biden would not have needed to authorize the huge expenditures to pull us back from the brink of economic collapse. Remember, Obama had an office of pandemic preparedness which Trump immediately terminated.
All of which sounds like what a president and administration would do if they wanted to wreck a nation. And who would like to see the U.S. wrecked or at least crippled?
The big question for me:
"If a president wanted to destroy his own country, hurt his own people and alienate our friends and allies - what would he do differently than what Trump is doing?"
The follow up question:
"Is it all happening because of incompetence or is it a deliberate act of sabotage?"
I mean, the facts are the facts. Everything this Con Man has touched is going to Hell. I would think even his most loyal followers would eventually say: "This train is off the tracks...is it time to jump?"
Curiously, Bill, we may ask why or how so many became immune to hurt.
Criminal Donald is inflicting the hurt you cite -- on the American people, on our democratic allies, on the environment, on the rule of law.
He has allies. The rich. The U.S.'s now-largely fascist high court. All the international dictators and demagogues.
But in having quit teaching our humanities, haven't our schools done equal or similar damage in removing from the calculus exactly who, how many, and how much has been, have been seriously, personally damaged?
Our billionaire class wants us to think only in the terms which the Powell memo elevated on August 23, 1971. All reducible to numbers only. All neutered, dehumanized, depersonalize.
Mr. Alstrom...The destruction of our [former] nation is [unquestionably] deliberate. The [only] relevant question is identifying whom these vile perpe-traitors of murder, sabotage and treason serve.
My estimate -- and it will be admittedly difficult to fathom unless one is at least somewhat familiar with the principles of Sun Tzu and/or has comparable military training (I credit both sources) -- is that we are all the victims of a fairly classic Chinese stealth operation, probably leveraged into being as joint Russo-Chinese-North-Korean blackmail for the obscene combination of Trumpstein torture-deaths, rapes, everyday murder, theft and robbery and of course the ongoing kidnapping and trafficking of sex slaves. This would put Trump's true owners -- Xi, Putin, Kim Jong Un -- in position to say to Trump, "we'll not only ignore your crimes; we'll also finance your expansion of [nation-destroying] criminal activity if you'll serve us by destroying the United States."
Remember [all] capitalists are motivated solely by greed; that [all] capitalists are therefore moral imbeciles; that [all] capitalists are thus for sale -- and that there's no question the Xi/Putin/Kim trio has sufficient monetary resources to bribe Trump and guarantee he stays bribed. Remember too the bipartisan responsibility for the [now probably irreversible] magnitude of our ruination -- that it was Carter the Christian whose Hyde Amendment treachery resurrected USian institutional misogyny and the Clintons who quite methodically re-fueled racism, destroyed welfare and began the nation-killing transfer of our industrial might to China. Trump and his regime are merely finishing the job, attempting to doom Ukraine for Putin by an embargo on vital antiaircraft missiles.
Why do I pick China as the chief villain? Easy; ask yourself who gains the most. With the United Stats slain, tyrannical China and its despotic vassals Russia, North Korea and now obviously Iran (and whomever else then climbs aboard the Sino/Russian juggernaut) will rule the world. Quoth Sun Tzu, "All warfare is deception."
Consider, however, the differing purposes the debt in each administration served. President Biden’s helped Americans recover themselves and the economy from the pandemic. Trump’s line his, his family’s and the uber wealthy’s pockets with the spoils of corruption. Your comparison of numbers alone ignores who is being served by the debt, and why.
"... it is biased to call out Trump's debt increase without mentioning Biden's."
The above comment is an example of whataboutery ... and of virtue signaling masquerading as ethics.
"We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Wherever men and women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must - at that moment - become the center of the universe."
- Elie Wiesel
"Whataboutism" or "whataboutery" (as in, "but what about X?") refers to the propaganda strategy of responding to an accusation with a counter-accusation instead of offering an explanation or defense against the original accusation. It is an informal fallacy that the accused party uses to avoid accountability—whether attempting to distract by shifting the conversation's focus away from their behaviour or attempting to justify themselves by pointing to the similar behaviour (which may be true or false, but irrelevant) of their opponent or another party who is not the current subject of discussion.[1]"
Graham was an interesting man. 1 thing to say in his defence is that his younger brother came to rack and ruin working for the Freedmen’s Agency. Both brothers were penniless immigrants. Hence the older one’s district of what Jim Scott, his successor in my time, called schemes to improve the human condition.
Doctors should not shy away from discussing these real, systemic, immoral harms as they affect communities, families, and the very people sitting in the examining room with them.
I don't bring up politics during visits, but I try not to be a passive bystander in general when anything - Covid, cancer, the system - is harming people. That's part of the oath. First do no harm is not first do nothing.
I am fortunate. My own cardiologist is the same one who treated Dick Cheney for many years, the same one who now goes on CNN and writes op-eds in the New York Times pointing out that 'something is clearly wrong with the President.' He gave me a new aortic valve after I found out a genetic defect was making mine gradually useless.
I thanked him for the heart valve, but I also thanked him for being a pain in the ass and a thorn in the side of those in power, standing up to the insanity of RFK, Jr. "I feel I'm just trying to tell the truth," he once told me. But so many aren't, I said back to him. So many are just laying low, hoping the storm will pass, leaving them untouched. We both know that's not possible, I said. So thank you for causing good trouble, and I expect you to continue doing more, I joked.
If you see someone behaving bravely who maybe doesn't have to, *thank them.* Whether it's your GP, your pastor, a nationally-recognized cardiologist, or simply a group holding up signs at school board and townhall meetings, those reminding some cowardly Republican that he can run, but he can't hide, those who won't take dereliction of duty as an excuse for doing nothing. We need all the allies and helpers we can get our hands on....
"The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference."
It must be difficult to walk that line. You want to stay out of politics to establish a rapport with all your patients (even the MAGA!) but you also have a duty to provide accurate medical advice regardless of whether they want to hear it or not.
Sorry for the banality of this comment but one of my specialists is saddled with poorly performing office staff - I know it and he knows it but the huge group he works for does the hiring. So this former military doctor tells me quietly, “Just message me.” Evidently he can’t even find a way to address hospital politics.
Hubert H. Humphrey shared these words during his final major public speech on November 1, 1977, at the dedication of the Hubert H. Humphrey Building in Washington, D.C. (which currently houses the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services).
“The moral test of government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; and those who are in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy, and the handicapped.”
Find some irony in this. Humphrey said this at the Department of Health and Human Services, 49 years ago and we are worse off in that amount of time, not better by any stretch of the imagination.
Think occasionally that people are really not aware of how bad things were before the social service programs like Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security even existed. For me, at 69, it was my grandparents generation and before. For vaccines for children like polio, measles and other diseases it was my parents.
For those a generation or two younger, they may be experiencing something that should never have occurred again. Find those who voted for this were so disconnected from our history that they didn’t realize how hard people had to fight for these rights. These scientific break throughs. We should live in a society that at one time the CDC, FDA were considered the “Gold Standard” when it came even to the inspection of food, or identifying the core food that caused the foodborne illnesss outbreak, quickly and efficiently. However, we no longer do. We all should have health care yet we all don’t. We all should have the needed vaccines to not allow children to suffer or even heaven forbid experience polio or measles any diseases that can be prevented.
What you tolerate today, you accept tomorrow - The question has become how much more will any of us continue to tolerate?
Hopefully we’ve learned that it is way past time to say “Enough” and make some changes that will be loud and clear in just 74 days, November 3rd. When the results are announced it will be the next fight to continue making the changes even further.
There is another aspect of the regime's destruction of healthcare in America, one that affects the future. That is the decimation of funding for medical research. On Wednesday, Moderna announced positive data from Phase 3 clinical trials of a personalized mRNA vaccine for melanoma. It is based on the same technology that brought us the COVID vaccines, but it takes cancer cells from each individual and develops a vaccine specific to that cancer's mutations, which primes the person's immune system to attack metastasizing new cancer cells, prolonging remission and life. The vaccine is given along with Merck's Keytruda, which stimulates the immune system.
According to Newsweek:
"Every dose of intismeran autogene is uniquely designed for an individual patient.
Unlike traditional medicines that are manufactured identically for millions of people, the therapy is built from the genetic fingerprint of a patient's own tumor. Moderna says the vaccine can encode up to 34 tumor-specific targets, effectively creating a highly customized treatment. The success of the melanoma program may accelerate a broader shift toward personalized medicine, in which therapies are increasingly generated from a person's genetic information rather than selected from a standard list of drugs."
This level of technical innovation is what is needed to fuel economic growth for the next generation. Unlike AI, with its environmental detriments and the potential for massive job losses, along with unknown risks from rogue bots, medical advances will require skilled technicians to produce tangible products and healthcare professionals to oversee treatment protocols. It creates jobs in manufacturing, with growth in the medical equipment industry for diagnosis and in the construction of antiseptic environments needed for drug production.
This is the kind of forward-looking research that the government has ceased to support by cutting funding for academic labs and for grants to startups. It is gutting the programs at universities that educate the researchers of tomorrow, many of whom are immigrants. They are now going to China, where the funding is plentiful. Essentially, the regime is driving research funding decisions out of government and into the arms of venture capitalists who will be out for short-term profit or ceding our waning technological leadership to other countries.
The regime's incompetence is not just destroying the healthcare system we have now, it is destroying the healthcare system of our future.
As a cancer survivor am sickened by this news. No one should be a member of this, as we called it in our support group “the club” in the future. In the future no one should have to go through the protocols needed from chemotherapy, radiation and surgery(s) and all that encompasses that horrific disease.. have no words..
I was so encouraged to read about the possibilities for this vaccine. One of my oldest friends has had melanoma 7 times -- and the idea that this may keep her healthy in future is wondrous.
It is amazing, and it all started with the attempt to do the impossible, to decode the human genome which came to fruition through NIH funding. Not a snowball’s chance in hell that the regime would fund something similar now.
Today's NYT has an article on how the Trump regime is getting around the court ruling requiring it to restore medical research funding that it had unconstitutionally withheld from Harvard. The regime had withheld the funding as punishment for Harvard's supposed insufficient action against anti-semitism on campus during pro-Palestinian demonstrations.
The AP has described one example of the impact of those cuts on one research program at Harvard.
In June, the regime codified another apparently constitutional route to the same end by issuing regulations that reclassified civil service management positions as at-will positions that could be filled with political appointees. In other words, instead of panels of experts at the National Institute of Health deciding on what research to fund, RFK, Jr. could choose panels of influencers to make the decisions.
Predators prey on those lest empowered to defend themselves, such as large segments of " those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly;"
In the animal kingdom, a predator eventually faces illness, starvation, old age, competition from other predators, or gets hunted and consumed when it becomes prey itself…
Susan Collins voted for the BBB and this has been devastating to Maine’s medical system including throwing Mainers off healthcare, clinics and rural hospital closures, etc. She voted to fund ICE an extra 40 billion dollars after which they murdered a citizen in Biddeford, Maine, a sleepy college town. The bill was beautiful for billionaires only while millions vote against their own interests.
Echoing Kelli's comment above, we would surely be wise to ask of any bill or policy, who gains and who is hurt, as a matter of fact? Surely patterns would emerge.
The GOP is killing both the planet and inhabitants with deliberate intention. It’s going to take deliberate intention to destroy the GOP. How can that destruction best be done? WE the people also hold the purse strings. National Intent to withhold federal taxes is not so far fetched.
Economist and Columbia University professor Jeffrey Sachs launched a blistering critique of U.S. President Donald Trump, questioning his fitness for office and warning about the concentration of war-making power in the American presidency.
Sachs described the current geopolitical situation as potentially the "most dangerous moment in the world since World War II" and argued that Trump's shifting rhetoric between military escalation and negotiations highlights deeper problems in the U.S. political system. He also criticised Congress for failing to exercise sufficient oversight over presidential war powers and accused major U.S. media outlets of normalising what he views as increasingly erratic political behaviour.
Sachs went on to argue that unchecked presidential power and decades of U.S. military interventions have created a dangerous system, warning that Trump's alleged lack of "self-control" could further increase global risks. The psychological and political assessments expressed are Sachs' own views.
After the Democratic Congressional avalanche occurs, whimpering fascist Republicans will say, “oh we were just joking around” or “let’s just forget about that we tried to tear down democratic norms and institutions”, or “hey, we’re going to mend our ways”, or “let’s forget about election interference”. Cheap words from people who previously supported a fascist autocoup in which the president himself tried to overthrow the government.
But America wants political accountability from their elected senators and congress people. WE the People want AIPAC and big money out of politics and elections. The fascist Republican think tank, author of Project 2025, Heritage Foundation has actively corrupted the judicial branch with the help of a hypocritical Congress getting a politically biased SCOTUS. Destroying the medical system is a necessity for the wealthy because it saves $$$ because the social safety net is handing out undeserved taxpayer money to people who should be working. By the way eugenics is just fine for the wealthy, says RFK Jr and rascist policy is just great for Cheeto.
Fascist Republican corporate oil industry donors want the public to be blinded to the global warming for its own self interests. Stopping the culture wars like book banning is up to WE the People. Instigating an illegal foreign war without Congressional approval is dictator stuff.
So no, America better not forget what these fascists have done to this country. Never forget. They should not be elected to dogcatcher for the next 10 years.
And certainly accountability for the misery and deaths caused by their deliberate cruelty and obvious incompetence? I think we need a Nuremberg 2.0 to establish just what is acceptable or not when someone is in public service. Letting people die needlessly is a form of homicide.
"Perhaps"???? Bill Alstrom? I am trying to live through chemo for the day when accountability will be restored by punishing those who brought down a system that had taken decades to build.
Thank you for writing Ally. I am hoping. I am 77, and it is taking a lot out of me at the moment. I used to walk for 10 miles at least 3 times a week; now I can barely walk up any stairs!
administration has done that improves the quality of life here. I can’t. Everything they touch is either planned to lower our quality of life, or was planned to stuff cash into theirs. Every Democratic president faces disaster when assuming office, but this upcoming one will need the help of all of us to restore us to mediocrity at best, with no allies in the entire world to offer aid or trust. It isn’t Trump that is the real problem. He’s just the symptom. The problem the world sees is a Congress which hasn’t lifted a finger to stop even one thing. They gave us Hegseth and Noam and the deplorable Kennedy. And Iran and the murders at sea. And every rotten, despicable act coming out of a sick old man who would have been removed from office anywhere else on earth.
They misunderstand evolution as the survival of the fittest, assuming it means the biggest, strongest, even baddest. In fact, it more accurately benefits those most adaptable to the current conditions, especially when those conditions are undergoing change. In other words, they may be doing themselves harm, along with the rest of us!
This Fall, do not forget to turn your clocks back to 1876 or thereabouts... what a waste of resources, a stupidly rich - but not for long - country that does not provide healthcare as a matter of course is a moral morass, elect real leaders not the scum you currently have... if you've got time.
Trump tore down the East Wing before anyone got much to say about it. The same with many government services that protect the public. He wants to build his Royal Ballroom. and Arc de Trumpe, on our dime. He wants to tear down voting and democracy and replace it his his autocratic edits, supported by a bevy of wealthy aristocrats. Pretty much the antithesis of what the Declaration of Independence was meant to establish.
There is a fundamental disagreement about what role government has in the United States. Should government work for the common good (yes) or should it cater to special interests? Unfortunately, the latter role predominates. Both political parties are guilty but it is Trump who practices providing favors for certain people in addition to self-enhancement at an almost unprecedented rate.
"The legitimate object of government, is to do for a community of people, whatever they need to have done, but can not do, at all, or can not, so well do, for themselves---in their separate, and individual capacities.
In all that the people can individually do as well for themselves, government ought not to interfere."
Clearly, the Republican party believes that only the children of the wealthy and well-connected deserve a longer lifespan so they can pursue their privileged lives behind the castle walls. Everyone else can just die off young. People who need government assistance for healthcare, who need vaccines to ward off illness common outside the castle walls, or who need safety inspection of affordable food to feed their families -- bah! They cost too damn much to keep alive for too long; our nation cannot afford it.
The USA is a representative democracy, aka, a democratic republic. These are not opposing terms. They are overlapping systems. We fundamentally are a democracy through the one-person, one-vote, with voting groups endowed with Constitutional rights to freely organize and campaign for the proper representatives. We elect representatives to enact legislation that we agree as citizens to abide by, both what the demos request and what the representative believes is good for the nation. It's a balance, designed imperfection. If a Republican tells you that we are "not a democracy," then they are either an enemy of our democratic republic and hope to intimidate voters into believing them so they can strip us of our rights OR they are ignorant. These days, the former case seems to be in play, with plenty of the latter among the electorate: We the people are not experiencing any real representation because Congress is operating like a private club for the benefit of its members and their enabler$, and I am sorry to say the Democrats are guilty of it, too. But they are the opposition we must dance with; we must ask them to change their ways should they win back some control.
When 40 million Californians have their voices heard by 2 senators and 588,000 residents of Wyoming also have their voices represented by 2 senators, we unfortunately don’t have one-person-one-vote….. we have some states holding way more power than others, and some voices counting way more than others.
The question is, how did we end up with a private club for Congress? The system failed us.
I hear you and partially agree. But we must throw ourselves as citizens into the mix -- we did a C-grade job of turning out the vote when there was a clear and present danger in the last two presidential elections. But the midterms, when we can change the course of Congress? For decades, the country has struggled to top 52% participation in the midterms, and we return U.S. Senators to Congress at a rate of 96%. We are failing ourselves. The big question is, do we want an active democracy or not. If yes, will we perform the generational struggle to evolve it around liberal Constitutional values? (Liberal meaning: the main focus would be to preserve the individual right to freedom.)
The reason for poor turnout is because of disillusionment—people see that they aren’t represented and therefore aren’t motivated to vote. The people know that the government currently only represents billionaires and corporations. Democrats need to make the case that they understand that the government isn’t currently representing the people, and they can fix it.
Respectfully, that is like saying unless I am sure that I will win, I refuse to play any game with other people of similar ability. Not showing up to vote is never, ever a rational decision if you hold citizenship in a democracy. Americans should be ashamed that our country is the most powerful, but has one of the poorest voter-participation rates. We do have the wealth gap to address. But it will only get worse as people stay home. No one promised Americans an easy ride; if someone did, they were lying. We all act like a privileged teenager with a drug problem and too many guns. In fact, one could say that Trump is the appropriate national mascot for the character of Americans at this moment in time.
M. A. Porter, while your definition may be technically correct, the democracy component of the "democratic republic," defined as "one-person-one-vote" has never been functional in the U.S. Never.
Initially, women and Blacks could not vote. After emancipation, Blacks could vote, but slavers quickly intervened with the Electoral College. Women still couldn't vote. Then gerrymandering became integral to the electoral process. All men could vote, but even a larger number of votes for the minority party could be disappeared by the majority party through gerrymandering.
Today, any qualified citizen who registers can vote. But only the votes of a few thousand people in so-called "swing states" actually count.
Until we abolish gerrymandering and the Electoral College, we have a republic with a tiny garnish of democracy.
"A republic, based on the Latin phrase res publica, is a state in which political power rests with the public, typically through their representatives—in contrast to a monarchy or a direct democracy."
Duck Duck Go Search Assist sez:
"A republic comes from the Latin phrase res publica, meaning "public thing" or "people's thing," and was first used by Roman writers to describe their state and government.", so pretty much a variation of democracy. The founders did not trust 'direct democracy" and frankly, I don't see how it could work in a complex, modern state. It's still potentially "of the people, by the people, for the people" with enough collective will to make is so.
I argue that we abandon food inspections entirely and instead pass a law that the introduction of unsafe food into the marketplace requires the top 10 executives of the firm or farm introducing such materials be jailed for 10 years. Stop with the cat and mouse game of “what can we get past the inspectors” and make the executives criminally liable for harming people with bad decisions about food safety.
Yes, they just jailed a real estate developer exec to life in prison for wrong doing. (One of the richest men in the country). Just like Iceland jailed the execs who caused the 2008 real estate crash while America bailed them out.
Interestingly, William Graham Sumner published What Social Classes Owe to Each Other only about 100 years after the French Revolution. Now, about 150 years later, based solely on the impending cuts to the ACA and Medicaid, it appears that America may revert to the guillotine. Hopefully, we can use the upcoming midterms as a proverbial guillotine rather than letting the situation devolve into a pitched battle between the rich and everyone else.
We’ve heard this argument before. The Gilded Age dressed cruelty up as individual responsibility: government owes people little, suffering is personal failure, and protections for the public somehow weaken the country.
But apparently paperwork is an unbearable government burden when it asks the wealthy to disclose who owns a shell company, while perfectly reasonable when it determines whether someone struggling to survive gets healthcare.
The burden isn’t the problem. Who is being burdened is.
Always impressed by the skill with which our resident historian weaves together what others so often miss, focusing on tangents that only appear not to be related to one another, while others miss or gloss over the underlying connections. For in truth, there is a link between cyclospora and a fruitcake masquerading as Secretary of Health and Human Services. A clear relationship exists between the bizarre, savage attacks against the Black Guy and the sudden escalation of healthcare costs for tens of millions.
Everything feels so precarious because it is, because they are trying to resurrect a manifesto as dead as the one Marx and Engels once wrote -- an earlier manifesto of realpolitik, one insisting that that the only good world to live in is one where -- paraphrasing Thucydides' description of the Athenians from centuries before -- the strong do what they will, the weak endure what they must. An appeal that remains now, as it was then, designed not to share the blessings of civilization, but simply to cement power for a few. Might makes right to the nth degree, and to hell with justice, shared values, common virtues. No room at the inn for mercy, much less common sense.
But we have power, too. Perhaps it's been lying in dormancy for too long, since tens of millions of us were raised at a time when government was not that, but something far better, nobler, something that sought to solidify support for a world of nations united behind a commitment to universal freedoms and rights, to a legacy that sought to build on Thomas Jefferson's self-evident truths, rather than tear them all down, like today's discarded East Wing and cemented-over rose garden.
And we are exercising that power, ever more rapidly and forcefully. And they are losing. That is also clear. For the last point of tonight's letter -- that after all that in the 1880s, after all the excesses of the Gilded Age, the Robber Baron Age, the All for Me Age, the Beggar-Thy-Neighbor Through Stupid Tariffs Age, a Progressive Era finally dawned and had its say.
A new age is coming, but only if we can pull it off. A reminder that authoritarians do not need to have everybody behind them, they only need those opposing them not to join hands against them. So this election, and this movement, must be about joining hands, articulating common ground, sharing universal civic values, re-finding a community-based America to take its place within -- not set against -- a larger, interdependent world.
I’M FURIOUS: Trump Renaming Aircraft Carrier of WW2 Black Hero ... to USS Trump.
"According to CNN, the Navy is renaming the USS Doris Miller, the African American petty officer who served as a cook on the battleship USS West Virginia and was awarded the Navy Cross in 1942, the second-highest medal for bravery. The first black person to receive this award.
On December 7, 1941, Miller’s heroism and courage were on fierce display. He defended his ship and helped save his mortally wounded commanding officer from the onslaught of Japanese airplanes. Without any training, he manned and fired a 20mm anti-aircraftgun. His gallantry was an inspiration to all who served in the Navy, but especially to young black men.
... When I joined the Navy and later became a chief, the three pillars of my Navy forebears- Courage, Honor, and Commitment were ingrained into my every action. I stressed the importance of maintaining these characteristics throughout the Navy Chain of Command.
Yet today I am insulted. First, the honor of the entire history of the United States Navy is being smeared to flatter a man who had none of these three traits. Secondly, the courage, honor, and commitment Petty Officer Doris Miller displayed at Pearl Harbor and likely in his final minutes are being erased from America’s history … because he is black."
.https://malcolmnance.substack.com/p/im-furious-trump-renaming-aircraft.
It's revolting. When we retake the administration the Democrats must pass a law prohibiting a living President from naming things after him or herself. I will celebrate the day his odious name comes off of everything except his jail cell.
every time the Dems get the majority, they spend all their efforts to correct the damage done by the previous republican admin., yet the country keeps electing these republicans after the mess has been fixed (somewhat).
Conclusion? Americans never learn.
Advice to those with means? Leave while you can.
It's starting to get to the point where there is no hope for good people when the greedy keep screwing things up. Unless the progressives can take the majority and stay there.
humans have been the same since crawling out of the sea, celeste...as ICTT pointed out, the Athenian of yore basically said, the strong will do what they will and others will endure what they must...America HAS had some good decades...but not for everyone. in 2000 there were over an estimated half a million homeless...and they were invisible to many other, 'non homeless' Americans. i like that people have ideals but from what i've seen of humanity there will always be corruption. entropy never sleeps.
we just have to try and do the best we can...i suggest that people read ICTT's comment above...it's well written and hopeful.
My husband and I, and our 5 children, forwent the 250th "celebrations" which is sad since we live in the cradle of democracy, Massachusetts, where the revolution started. A state so rich with history yet trump has tainted our country so greatly that, even with her faults, most people strived to become a better nation. How far we have fallen from the ideals of those people who fought so bravely to give birth to a new, better and free nation; America.
More disgusting is the fact that, as arguably, the wealthiest nation on earth with a population of 280+M people at the time couldn't provide housing for roughly .3 percent of the most vulnerable in society; the homeless. We now have a homeless population of under 800,000 people in a nation of close to 340M, so even a smaller percentage of .22% of our population, many of whom are single moms, veterans and even teenage children.
This so called "christian" nation has fallen so far from grace. The abject hypocrisy and rejection of their Christ's teachings is obscene.
Humans have been the same since the dawn of the Neolithic Period, but that was only about 400 generations (100 centuries) ago, and it ignores our prehistoric hunter-gatherer ancestors who, for thousands of generations, thrived in heathy band-sized social systems. That is how what started as a small village-sized population of humans, by the end of the Paleolithic Period, became the dominant vertebrate species on the planet.
Our (genetically inherited) nature is good. We just need to figure out how to change our (learned through experience) nurture so that nature and nurture work in harmony (instead of at cross purposes).
Several books report on how ordinary citizens are duped into voting against their own best social and economic interests: Thomas Frank, "What's the Matter with Kansas?" (2004); Nancy MacLean, "Democracy in Chains" (2017) and Barbara McQuade, "Attack from Within" (2024) and McQuade's "The Fix" (2026.) They should be required reading.
At risk of sounding elitist, the folks who most need to read them are least likely to do so, I fear.
"Advice to those with means? Leave while you can."
Advice to all with breath still in their bodies. And who are not in immediate deadly peril. Resist. Including defeatism.
Never learn? Hate and resentment. Why vote for policies to help themselves when they can vote for hating, you name it.
Some Americans never learn because they don't want to, or think that they don't need to. There, fixed it for you! Not to mention that wonderful example set by our dear leader who thinks he knows everything and doesn't need to read or here new things!!!!!
“Cell# 4547..here stayed and laid the biggest con in American history allowed by what was known as the former Republican Party” ….perhaps on a gold plaque?
The only way this can happen is to unite ( afore mentioned ,quite marvelously, in these comments). Whether ye be former or current ,stand and join back together this great nation , to lead as was designed -by equality-for-and-by-all.
VOTE💙
We have that law for some things; Trump simply ignores that law, as he does all others.
Yea, well what about the fact that Valerie Harp didn't show up when Melania attended the Indy Car pre-race --- something -- gala, celebration.... When two women are fighting over trump's attention..... there's hope for every man!
When will the USS Abraham Lincoln's return to San Diego Harbor?
The Lincoln departed San Diego on November 21, 2025. The original planned Lincoln's return was May 2026 but, it was extended due to operations in the Middle East for over 260–266 continuous days at sea, partaking in combat operations.
The exact homecoming date or public pier-side arrival schedule is officially released by the U.S. Navy. But, I will be there in about 2 weeks to welcome the sailors home.
ALI VITALI just confirmed. 5:20 AM EST the aircraft carrier Lincoln & sailors are on the way home.
Why doesn't the MSM report on the George H.W. Bush aircraft carrier which is also deployed in the gulf?
How long have they been stuck in the ocean without food, water, toilets, etc?
Most of our 11 carrier groups are sitting in port somewhere? So why doesn't the moron Kegsbreth swap out the George H.W. Bush for another carrier group?
All important Q's.
You give him too much credit I am afraid GJ Loft; it is hard to choose which of the few brain cells God bestowed upon him to use when!
The Ken Harbaugh and/or Dean Blundel substacks have the best info on what’s going on in the military
The Ken Harbaugh Show has 13K Subscribers. See, Ken's LINK to "Media Defense Election Security Update."
lin- I am furious too, especially after reading Catherine Rampell's substack piece in the Bulwark today.
https://thebulwark.substack.com/p/donald-trump-maga-war-on-reality-comes-for-the-census-bureau-voting-citizens-fraud-bogus-report?r=2bqjpz&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email
The Trump administration has infiltrated the census bureau and released a bogus report on their analysis of the 2020 election.
Millions of businesses rely on the accuracy of the data to determine where to locate new stores, factories, etc.
Just another example of TOFU (Trump Only F*cks Us)
Please change that into GOFU: the GOP only F*cks us.
Because if not, people will NEVER learn!!!!!
I don't disagree.
Thanks for the article, however, you have to subscribe to read the entire article. I hate TOFU
I'm sorry about that. Rampell only publishes once a week, but she usually does at least one other podcast on the Bulwark. I waited a few months after I knew she was going to be sticking with the Bulwark to subscribe.
Again, my apologies for being locked out of the article.
i don't think that's true, Nancy...if you have FB, Heather's account has each newsletter...
Lin, I am furious too because a bunch of whiny white boys with jobs they don't deserve are trying to blot out the heroes of our history in favor of a jerk who was never a hero and has no value to anyone but the rich white oligarchs whose only goal is to acquire everything and rule America. That to me is treason.
Trump's bigoted, vile pathology is infinite.
The Only THING THAT SHOULD BE NAMED AFTER TRUMP IS PILES OF EXCREMENT, HE IS WORTHLESS, USELESS AND NOT A DROP OF INTELLIGENCE IN HIS NOSTRILS! FORCE HIS BONE SPURS DOWN HIS THROAT! TATTOO COWARD ONTO HIS FOREHEAD!!
That comes after the systematic firing of high-ranking members of the military, only because they are black (or female). And the redistricting that takes away the power of black Americans to be represented in Congress.
The extreme racism of the GOP today is EXACTLY what the Obamas and Kamala Harris predicted. And yet, more black Americans than ever before voted for the GOP in 2024...
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that that means "it's their fault". They were victims of highly sophisticated neofascist propaganda. In a way, it's a testimony to black Americans that ONLY such a low percentage ended up falling for it, compared to all other demographics in the country (including white women...).
This cannot be allowed to occur. It is desecration of the memory and bravery of Petty Officer Doris Miller. Where is our collective outrage???
I'm sure I'm not the first person to read about this and break down in tears. It feels like the straw that should break the camel's back, yet I'm hoping it will be the motivator for any who have sat at the wayside watching others do all of the heavy lifting. And for those of us who are fighting with our hearts, our pens, our donations, and our integrity, it is yet one more reason to redouble our efforts. I can't wait for the day we get to undo all the harm this regime has caused; I may not be alive to see that day but I hold out hope for my children and grandchildren.
Chief ... It's interesting that trump 1.0 named CVN 81 after P.O. Miller to court the black vote. My wish is that this thought of changing its name is part of the "flood the zone with crap" strategy. I share your dismay on how the Navy we both served seems to be backing away from it's core values. As a nuke engineer that has held positions in the acquisition community, the desire to change CVN construction requirements in the middle of construction is crazy, will be extremely expensive and further delay the entire FORD Class construction schedule which in turn leads to more 250 day deployments for the in-service CVNs. Not to mention the increased maintenance cost when they return to port. ADM Rickover must be turning over in his grave.
What about Trump isn't despicable? He renamed a ship after himself to erase a Black hero's legacy. Il Duce would approve. This is authoritarianism: 'My name, my face, everywhere. Disagree? You're a traitor.
Trump isn't fit to hold Doris Miller's jockstrap.
Chief, I can only imagine. That man wouldn't know Courage, Honor and Commitment if it came up and bit him in the @$$. In another time, I'd have been your sister in the Goat Locker.
Ah, I see. Patriotism now means wanting Trump's name and face on everything. Disagree? Traitor. That's the MAGA loyalty oath.
lin, I agree. it is disgusting. Nothing about death star deserves recognition.
Whether you agree with stated values or not, this conversation is clear straight talk. Congressman Ro Khanna keeps impressing me; within the first five minutes, he answers how to define a progressive: https://thelefthook.substack.com/p/can-progressives-survive-the-democratic.
I just can’t help but wonder what more it will take for the citizens of this country to wake up.
I have a brother, a cousin & a mother in law who voted 3 times for this anarchy.
To this day, they defend their choice.
You cannot change their minds, you have to out vote them and hope they all die out.
Soon.
No funding for Israel? None?
The only liberal democracy in Levant? The only safe haven for an oppressed population surrounded by religious zealots intent on the Final Solution?
Really?
That's where they lose centrists in the party and independents.
I am truly sorry to say that the Israel you describe does not exist, if it ever did. Palestinian Israelis never had the rights of Jewish Israelis. Secular Jews were always subject to the government dictates of Orthodox Jews. It has been decades since a majority of Israelis considered a "liberal democracy" even an aspiration. As demonstrated by increasingly extremist Netanyahu regimes. The government of Israel is not only committing genocide, it is effectively committing suicide. It is in the business of state terror. And it facilitates the deadly abuses of right wing extremist Jewish terrorists. Israel is one of the top producers and exporters of military weaponry. It provides a range of government services which Americans can barely imagine. Our own Leahy Laws should force us to pause delivery of offensive weapons to IDF units acting in violation of humanitarian law. At a minimum. Friends don't let friends drive drunk.
This American Jew and Zionist is now contributing to campaigns of almost any Democratic nominee targeted by AIPAC.
The American Jewish Establishment Is Defending an Israel That No Longer Exists - Haaretz Today
"The endless rationalizations by American Jewish organizations for why an Israeli lawmaker's latest indefensible remarks should not change anyone's understanding of the country increasingly look like a refusal to confront what Israel has become."
.https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/haaretz-today/2026-08-18/ty-article/.highlight/the-american-jewish-establishment-is-defending-an-israel-that-no-longer-exists/000001a0-14d7-df40-afe2-9df741e90000.
Israel: What Went Wrong? by Omer Bartov | Society of Fellows
.https://socfell.fas.harvard.edu/israel-what-went-wrong-omer-bartov.
I Try Not to Compare Historical Periods. Then Israel Marks Palestinians With Numbers - Opinion
.https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2026-08-19/ty-article-opinion/i-resist-historical-comparisons-then-israel-marks-palestinians-with-numbers/000001a0-18e6-d117-afb8-3fe7c9f60000.
Do informative thank you Lin.
I believe Israel is a theocracy
I wish it were that simple. I wish there were safe havens. I hear your point of view while seeing a broader context. Hopefully, The Party is in Soul-Searching Mode and will emerge better off.
Khanna is great indeed!!
I read your essay (It's Come To This) carefully and compliment the quality of your thinking and your optimism. In today's government people are asked to accept their exploitation and suffering (while promising reward in a kingdom to come - Christian view.) The specter of what will continue under trump is haunting. I know we are striving toward any magical answers, but we could use a model of strength, of responsibility, caring for one another - we're capable of something better. Hopefully we can get rid of these sadistic lunatics.
ICTT, very well expressed!
William Graham Summer espoused the same views as Ayn Rand, who said, “Why should we take care of the stupid people.” It’s just plain greed and meanness, pure and simple.
The irony, JennSH, is that as Ayn Rand neared the end of her life, she took full advantage of those "socialist" government benefits she had decried all her adult life. Indeed, we took care of a stupid person, and her name was Ayn.
Good old Ayn Rand who wrote horrible novels, but some people got the idea they could do anything they wanted and be forever sophomoric. At the end however, she needed government help. I see Dale beat me to this.
That last point is exactly where my mind has been going too. Authoritarian power depends so much on convincing people that they are isolated, outnumbered and ultimately powerless. But connection changes that. Once we recognize each other, we stop being isolated individuals and become something much harder to control: a public.
I was writing about exactly this in my Weekly Reflection this morning — how we build power by finding each other and building something that lasts:
https://wehavefriendseverywhere.substack.com/p/weekly-reflection-we-know-each-other
Keep writing...!
Spot on, thank you...
''A new age is coming, but only if we can pull it off. A reminder that authoritarians do not need to have everybody behind them, they only need those opposing them not to join hands against them.''
The torch has been thrown to us. Yes, it is us, those who want to keep a democratic republican political system intact, versus the KKK/MAGA white Christian nationalists who want a Christian theocracy, replacing the democratic system, while making females, minorities and gays 2nd and 3rd class citizens. Some even want to take the right to vote away from females. These people are a combination of evil, stupidity, ignorance and prejudice. Let's not be naive. The Trump forces have the upper hand right now. We need to increase our financial support for those fighting to preserve our democracy. This brings Thomas Paine to mind: "These are the times that try men's and women's souls."
ICCT,
I've had really difficult periods in my life and I got through, but truly "these are the times that try men's souls" (and women's, too). Your posts are always complement what the good professor writes, and while I'm avoiding consumption of too much news, I am grateful to spot your comment so close to the top.
I'm sitting here at my computer desk already utilizing my heating pad for my arthritic back, but in my mind, I'm standing in front of the Old State House in Boston and listening to you orate your comment above. I'm gazing a bit uneasily around me; yes, plenty of listeners nodding and agreeing with each other, but those redcoats (red hats?) over at the edge of the crowd are making me jittery.
From what I've gleaned about who you are personally, to the casual observer you and I probably couldn't seem more different, and yet, by your views you post, I consider you my brother. I'd really go off the deep end if not for you and similar brothers and sisters here. I'm sure there are other uplifting posts here, but I can't get through them today.
👋🏼and ❤️ to my digital friends.
Miselle, I echo what you write here, and count you as my sister.
If not for the comments section here at LFAA, I'd feel isolated and adrift. This community is something special.
Thanks, Ally. I'm having a rough summer.
Miselle, I am sorry and send you good energy.
Middle, you’re not alone. I’m getting more and more unable to take what I am reading, and I mostly read here. A young family member has just been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, after 7 months of unemployment and finally finding a job he liked. The family is in financial distress for that and many reasons. He has TN’s version of Medicaid as a result of his unemployment, but that may be cut back by the Rs (TN never expanded Medicaid). If all this doesn’t devastate his family (a wife and young sons—he was the breadwinner), nothing will. I don’t see how they will get out of this.
I can imagine!
Ally, if not for the letter, I would have never met you in person. I am happy to be a friend and read your insights.
Likewise. I gotta get on the stick here about a meet-up!
Sending you strength and purpose for the journey. Try to remember just how much stronger you are than the redcoats watching you...
Miselle, I agree with you and count many here as digital friends and learn so much from many of you. With gratitude, Miselle, and others.
Well said! A new age is coming. We are witnessing it in Florida primaries, New York mayoral election, and other elections where a candidate's platform trumps $$$ in campaign funds. Together we will trump Trump! RESIST!
It's Come to This, yes, "Hands Across America!" Let's do it!
Very well written. We do have the power if we choose to to use it...and we must! Vote, demonstrate, donate, protest, make calls, write postcards...we can all do something!
The bipartisan campaigns against data centers all over the place shows what can be achieved. Trump complains incessantly about the unsightly nature of 'windmills' i.e. wind turbines, yet has no such reservations about data centers.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/1-zV-ZSQKSY
In this democracy,the power of people is greater than the people in power. (I won't take credit of it.)
It's Come To This - Brilliant comment!!
Simply put…we are less safe (on a number of levels) than we were 2 1/2 years ago!
Exactly right. And simultaneously, one of the primary purposes of "We the People" drawing up the Constitution as an agreed upon compact by which self-government would function effectively and justly for all----the promotion of the general welfare---is left rotting by the wayside like the bear carcass the ghastly, guturral-voiced ghoul, RFK, Jr. dumped in Central Park.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2026/08/18/opinion/trump-economy-campaign-promises.html?unlocked_article_code=1.7FA.naRr.ewZw9-Cjsukh&smid=url-share
Thank you Loren; Not everyone, in fact a great majority can not or do not afford the New York Times. ** In fact, and improvement to your notions should be made in that all the campaign lies, broken laws, etc. should be consolidated into a document made shareable on all media including social media, posted and reposted.
Absolutely agree -- and thank you. That's why I keep posting links like these (still doing my best to function as a journalist at age 86 despite being wheelchair-bound with rapidly dwindling vision and hearing and permanently denied trifocals, hearing aids or a motorized chair by deliberately genocidal, prohibitively expensive Medicare co-pays):
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2026/08/20/opinion/trump-election-interference-democracy.html?unlocked_article_code=1.61A.7Fb9.Ss6srhPMEVh5&smid=url-share
https://trumptyrannytracker.substack.com/p/trump-tyranny-tracker-day-570-aug?publication_id=2360486&post_id=210826060&isFreemail=false&r=cb67r&triedRedirect=true
https://trumptyrannytracker.substack.com/p/trump-tyranny-tracker-day-569-aug?publication_id=2360486&post_id=210826018&isFreemail=false&r=cb67r&triedRedirect=true
The (deliberate) bombing of the Iranian girls’ school is undoubtedly Trump’s reaffirmation of ChristoNazi misogyny – the same Abrahamic (Judaic/Christian/Islamic) hatred of females and contempt for femaleness that leads to both the victimization of terrorized children by the Trumpstein cult and to capitalism’s apocalyptic assault on our Mother Earth. That hatefulness – also manifest in USia as Ayran white male supremacist bigotry – fuels the crimes against humanity that define the entire Trumpstein Regime. Thus the vital, know-our-enemy relevance of the full text of the Jane Doe lawsuit against Trump and Epstein -- later withdrawn by the plaintiff in response to credible death threats: https://cdn.factcheck.org/UploadedFiles/Johnson_TrumpEpstein_Lawsuit.pdf
(Oops; sorry for the premature expostulation. Arthritic fingers accidentally hit the "Reply" ikon.)
Thank you for sharing.
According to Robert Reich, the Gilden Age was an age of fairness and equality compared to today, where wealth and power inequality is many times worse than at the turn of the century. And remember, the goal of the Oligarchy: "there must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind (themselves), alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect (the rest of us)." A quote by Frank Wilhoit with his definition of the fundamental principle of conservatism. Truer words have never been spoken as far as I can see.
Given that the openly hateful embrace of Nazism by our masters is truly global, I think we older adults should begin reflecting on the real reason all the younger generations are clinically depressed: that the universality of the Nazi symptoms tells us our species' adoption of patriarchy has doomed not just our own kind but our Mother Earth's ability to support life of [any] kind, and -- much as her prophet Jackson Browne predicted in "Before the Deluge" -- "the magnitude of her fury," already evidenced by ever-escalating death and disaster, will soon prove itself to be truly infinite.
Paul Simon’s “Wristband” has a similar warning about the economy, opportunity, and what happens when hope is crushed.
The riots started slowly
With the homeless and the lowly
Then they spread into the heartland
Towns that never get a wristband
Kids that can’t afford the cool brand
Whose anger is a shorthand
For you’ll never get a wristband
And if you don’t have a wristband
Then you can’t get through the door
No, you can’t get through the door
No, you can’t get through the door
I haven't heard this, but boy, would that resonate as a rap piece or a beat poem!
https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=vtGDJyDT18I
E O Wilson biology flows downward concept though I would say down and all over wide . It’s like a pyramid or Ponzi scheme as government and the roots are from both patriarchy and then colonialism . We are experiencing what many others experienced through out time . Some of us were born into less need and better. Abba May Alcott Marmee in Little Women Louisa’s real mother came from the May family. A merchant family with income from sugar plantations. She and her radical but mostly a failed philosopher and educator tried not to use sugar at all because of this . The key word is merchant and like the song in 1776 about the triangular trade with human beings as product many involved many.
I’m amazed that someone remembers Jackson Browne’ predictions. Before the Deluge. My favorite prophet and poet and musician.
Great quote, but some have been hornswaggled to believe that they are the protected. But some have found out that the list of the protected is a short list indeed.
"The Gaia Hypothesis" is the scientific resurrection of the ancient ethos that successfully guided our species through at least 294,000 years of longevity before the patriarchal invasion put its death-stamp on us some 6,000 years ago. Now well beyond hypothesis and approaching theoretical certainty, "Gaia" asserts that our Mother Earth is "alive, conscious and self-regulating." Thus even those Adolf Eichmann emulators who imagine themselves fully protected -- whether by ChristoNazi infrastructure or by their infinitely sadistic, hateful-Santa manifestation of Jesus ("He sees them when they're sleeping; He knows when they're awake") -- will eventually discover there is no bunker so durable it will withstand Richter 10 or 11 or 12. (The scale is open-ended. Each whole-number increase represents a tenfold increase in measured amplitude and approximately 31 times more energy release.)
Oh sweet….truth and the succinct of thought…
And a pillar of capitalism.
Thank you, Dr. Richardson; obviously "Sumnerism" and "Sumnerites" are the proper names for the methodically ecogenocidal economic Nazism disguised as "neoliberalism" and the Ted Bundy-minded ChristoNazis who support it, vector it and manage its Adolf Eichmann functions. (The Morrigan's curse on [all] Sumnerites, which includes [all] 2024 Trump voters, each and every one.)
If we extend Sumner’s (and the GOP’s) reasoning, inheritance should be prohibited. That is, the children of the wealthy should not inherit their parents’ riches; they must EARN their own. Thus, people like Don Jr and Eric Trump, and Paris Hilton, would likely be paupers. After all, only the hard-working, smart, motivated people will gain wealth. Right?
I had never heard of him!
Interestingly enough I was watching the series The Maid, and then reading this article. While I don't know how accurate The Maid is, I can imagine that some of it is true, and may be even less harsh than what real life is. I know I have seen incredible poverty in my first job out of college, where in my training on what everyone in my department did, I had to go out to houses with bill collectors and one could see how people were living. It was terrifying. We went to a lot of homes of 15-year old girls with young children who were not yet in school. It was horrifying. I cried at the end of each day to my mom on the phone trying to make sense of the horrors that some people lived with.
I hate that our world is so uncaring and without a government that cares, it becomes overwhelming for the people. We need a government that cares so that we can support that and through that help people to get support. Otherwise the task is gargantuan.
Linda...I have repeatedly witnessed the same conditions, obviously during my working-press years, but during the rest of my life as well. That's because to dwell [anywhere] in today's USia is to dwell in an open-air concentration-camp of cast-off humans targeted for extermination by an anti-human [and possibly non-human] ruling class. (Why else the ever-escalating denial of health care and the prohibition of preventative medicine?) Thus with near perfection, you just explained why I am a Marxian...
As far too many of us refuse to acknowledge, we are as threatened with extermination -- and thus as much at war -- as any other peoples ever targeted for extermination.
In fact our masters are already murdering us. https://english.elpais.com/usa/2026-07-14/how-many-people-have-been-killed-by-immigration-agents-gunfire-amid-trumps-crackdown.html Wake up, people; mobilize rage; rise up angry; honor our Mother Earth.
26 years of patrol experience showed me a lot about how inhumane humans can be.
''America’s New Healthcare Obstacle Course''
Washington has unveiled a bold new healthcare innovation: making sure people prove they deserve the healthcare they already qualified for. 👈🏿
The rules are simple. If you are sick, working two jobs, raising a family, and struggling to keep up, you must complete the paperwork maze, meet every deadline, remember every password, and hope the government website is having a good day.
Congratulations. You have won the prize: keeping your healthcare.
Supporters call it responsibility. Critics call it a bureaucratic obstacle course designed to remove people from the system without actually saying so.
The irony is difficult to miss. A low-income person may need to provide endless documentation to prove they deserve assistance. A powerful corporation asked for basic transparency suddenly discovers that paperwork is an unbearable burden.
For ordinary Americans, bureaucracy is a test of character. For wealthy interests, it is apparently government oppression.
America has created a healthcare system where the greatest threat is not always the illness itself. Sometimes it is the form you forgot to submit.
Other wealthy nations decided healthcare should help people stay healthy. America decided people should first prove they deserve help.
The ultimate fitness test is no longer running a marathon.
It is surviving the paperwork.
Death by a thousand paper cuts....
Exceptionally well said, Mr. Corthell...Nevertheless, if I may supportively suggest a slight rephrasing of one part:
"USian 'health' care is a system in which the greatest threat is that we will be denied treatment and fatally abandoned merely because we cannot complete all the bureaucratic requirements by which our masters demand we prove we're eligible for help. Thus the (failed) United States has literally converted sheets of 8.5x11" paper -- bureaucratic forms -- into murder weapons.
The question is, and has been for a very, very long time: what is government's proper role, what should its focus be? Here are two theories:
"The people are what matter to government, and a government should aim to facilitate the means by which all the people under its jurisdiction can access the best possible life." – Frances Perkins, FDR’s Secretary of Labor, 1946
“The happiness and prosperity of our citizens is the only legitimate object of government.”
— Thomas Jefferson, 1811
Kelli, when a person holding a public office doesn't care about the people he is supposed to be serving, and wants to court favors from those who have more power, he will put all the burdens on the most vulnerable, just to prove their inadequacy, of course! There are no words for what those cretins are doing to this nation and somehow there seems little we can do to stop them. Well, we need to find ways, in particular, voting those in office out, across the board, then working to impeach the incompetents and abusers of the American people from their appointments!
Bessent's new rule is just plain crazy. Who is going to benefit from the lack of interest in shell companies by our government? Probably not the good guys.
History is always about the oppressors and the oppressed. And the fascists in government totally embrace extreme nationalism; have a fetish about racial hierarchy, they're anti-intellectual, they rejoice in violence. Heather is always asking us to look back to history with eyes wide open so we won't end up in a permanent moral abyss.....
Those who burden others are the problem, especially when it is cruelty on steroids.
The "little people" hold the "big people up". Our leadership at the top is demonstrably amoral and immoral.. cruel aand righteous about it. Like we are stupid and blind. They don't realize that they are standing on the rest of us. Is feudalism the goal?
When it's everyman (woman) for him/her self that cancels feelings of community, nation, that "we are in this together". This destroys what this nation was built upon. This Trumpgovernment is actively destroying us. One year 8 months in they are still at it, some say desperate, failing flailing, but still at it... in a hurry.
With everyone for themselves we get more cheating lying and stealing ( crime) and the breakdown of civilized order. At the top the focus is domination, painting over the truth with lies and to hell with everyone else while the rest of us pay taxes to hold this scheme up. The moneyed class can go off "elsewhere" to enclaves to avoid. And in the case of the Trumporganization in bunkers built at our expense until we get them to leave while we still can. The progeny will go to Mars after we make this place unlivable.
If this is a "Christian country" so called as they claim, where are the clergy speaking out about values? Rather this is about feeding off of weakness, vulnerability, succumbing, losing faith, giving up, and despair.
That RFK.JR and by extension this government, does not take into consideration what makes people healthy, how food is grown and checked, what keeps our waters clean, what it cost to eat right, to live well (well enough), and to be educated is glaring incompetence and ignorance. And he keeps getting away with this, stubbornly not taking it in.
To see how those in the Gilded Age lived just travel to Newport RI where you can spend big bucks and tour their mansions! The Carnegie's et al lived like kings at the expense of the serfs they ruled over!
WOW👏
I was waiting for your comment, Kelli. It's like past few posts I've gotten used to..
Hear hear!
Fools. Knaves. Mountebanks. Incompetents. Liars. Criminal Donald sycophants.
They added $3,700,000,000,000 – trillion – to the U.S. national debt.
Heather's Letter today poses a short list of their predations. None of them did any good for the country. Their ICE and CBP thugs terrorized the country, in cold blood murdering U.S. citizens who’d done nothing wrong, letting dozens of brown-skinned people die in an extra-legal torture gulag of U.S. concentration camps. Testosterone Pete murdered 168 Iranian schoolgirls at Minab, murdered more helpless, poor Venezuelan fishermen. Elon Musk and his D.O.G.E. stooges wrecked government agencies only for the delights of drunken frat boys. Kash Patel got drunk and fist-pounded things. Turned Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool into fetid green algae swamp. Sold multi-million-dollar pardons to more genuine criminals for more criminal Donald profit.
$3,700,000,000,000 in new, extra national debt.
Every time I think of Elon Musk throwing thousands of people we need out of work … and the day they tore down the USAID sign I get so mad I’m sickened. These people are the scum of the earth. Excuse me, but I’m feeling rather heartsick tonight for this beautiful country … which they’re trying to destroy too.
Well said, Ms. Bouche; given their felonious fanaticism, their [true] purpose -- indeed their [only] purpose -- is obviously the permanent destruction of the [former] United States. Moreover, the fact the former U.S. is now this planet's most notoriously failed nation, proves they've already triumphed. Thus the only remaining questions are whether we dare seek [effective] revenge for the ecogenocidal atrocities they are inflicting on us and how best we can go about it.
Non sequitur: I knew a Loretta Bouche -- a colleague -- when I was news and photo editor at Jersey's Morris County Daily Record c. 1967-69; might you be her kin?
And these low-functioning individuals that are getting ill or dying either didn’t vote or voted for the wrong person. Go figure.
Too many Americans bought into the myth of the meritocracy, believing that the poor are deservedly so due to lack of intelligence, motivation, and hard work. It only takes one big medical bill or the loss of your vehicle to put a MAGA or other person into bankruptcy and homelessness. And yet some of them cannot see that they’ve been duped.
What I find most demoralising at the point in this successful revolution of the economically illiterate and emotionally depraved is the vast numbers of individuals from the middle classes who continue to support these monsters. Motivated, I can only assume, by a combination of terror of falling down and hope of benefitting from economic top-down billionaire’s largesse. The slavishness of it, the loss of human dignity, terrifies me.
Loss of human dignity, the tyranny of unearned privilege. A scourge on our country
I can’t even imagine holding the belief that DJT has earned his millions and deserves his office. A web of distorted thinking has to be the foundation for that. Sad, and terrifying. Like pod people.
So
Many men have said, stock market is up, I’m voting trump!
Very true, BUT yesterday the Dow dropped 700 points. And oil is trending up again. If you add the current cracking price oil is up over 75% since February. Nice job DonOLD.
Yep. While behind closed doors the billionaire cartel laughs and say to each other ‘There’s one born every minute’. A society or Soylent Green ?
Monnina, that film is like a nightmare to me! But some days I feel it might be inevitable.
Ligia, the film has just been remade with updated references.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUcsIB21J5g
Dale, that's pretty BAD!
Monnina, if you're trying to understand how the middle and lower classes may have been conditioned to accept such terrorism, consider the religion most widely practiced or accepted by the masses.
Regardless of the brand, the premise is: God loves all humankind. However, if humankind doesn't love God back and prove it by engaging in numerous practices of devotion, God will condemn the souls of these individuals to eternal torment.
Numerous denominations have spent centuries embellishing and defining the premise, but when you strip away all the decorations, the premise remains the same.
Not just what you have articulated here, MonnIna; the third rail is the Christian Nationalism and hated for all LGBTQ+ and BIPOC.
A very short list indeed. Unmentioned here and elsewhere are the many state and local law departures.
Biden's administration added $8.7 trillion dollars to the national debt. I think its only fair to point out that in this post pandemic world, the US has had a LOT of debt to take on, and both administrations have had to deal with it. I don't like some of the things Trump has done (most actually) either, but it is biased to call out Trump's debt increase without mentioning Biden's.
Not biased so much, Jon, as cognizant Biden had to pay for COVID.
Criminal Donald and crew have contrarily paid to keep floating billionaires and corporate tax scofflaws.
Chump’s corruption is unprecedented. Biden was not corrupt. Thanks for pointing out what everyone should know.
Mr. Rosen is assuredly [not] merely "biased." Anyone that has [anything] positive or apologetic to say about the Trumpenführer, his ChristoNazi masters or the fatally ChristoNazified MAGAT majority -- the "T" stands for "Terrorist" -- is ultimately nothing but a hate-mongering ChristoNazi themself. Again the Morrigan's Curse on all such enemies of humanity, because that is precisely what they are, foes of life itself -- and as such they have proven themselves to be as utterly unworthy of mercy or forgiveness as any Original Nazi or USian misogynist or racial discrimination advocate.
No it's not biased. There is a huge difference between intentionally taking on debt to stimulate the economy during a crisis while investing in infrastructure that has long term widely shared benefits and irresponsibly taking on debt in the application of discredited supply side economics, squandering money on unapproved wars and pissing away money on corrupt practices, simultaneously increasing the deficit while supposedly saving money by reducing services and decimating govt departments and disinvesting in infrastructure and the future (eg environmental deregulation, forcing children into poverty and malnutrition, and endangering the health of the population through quack pseudoscience). Also, assuming your numbers are correct, you are comparing 4 years of Biden to less than 2 years of Trump.
Trump (1) added $7.9 trillion to the national debt and Covid exacerbated the problem because interest rates went back up causing the interest payments on the national debt to skyrocket.
And Trump (2) has added $4.6 trillion to the national debt.
Thank you Joe for pulling us out of another Republican recession by stimulating the economy with debt instead of lining the pockets of the billionaires like Trump has done.
To add an obvious point: if Trump had handled the first signs of the Covid outbreak appropriately, instead of with his “fake news” dismissal, the problem would never have ballooned as it did. Thus the economy would not have taken such a significant hit and Biden would not have needed to authorize the huge expenditures to pull us back from the brink of economic collapse. Remember, Obama had an office of pandemic preparedness which Trump immediately terminated.
In Republican administrations the economy get worse and the national debt goes up. It went way up under Reagan.
All of which sounds like what a president and administration would do if they wanted to wreck a nation. And who would like to see the U.S. wrecked or at least crippled?
The big question for me:
"If a president wanted to destroy his own country, hurt his own people and alienate our friends and allies - what would he do differently than what Trump is doing?"
The follow up question:
"Is it all happening because of incompetence or is it a deliberate act of sabotage?"
I mean, the facts are the facts. Everything this Con Man has touched is going to Hell. I would think even his most loyal followers would eventually say: "This train is off the tracks...is it time to jump?"
Curiously, Bill, we may ask why or how so many became immune to hurt.
Criminal Donald is inflicting the hurt you cite -- on the American people, on our democratic allies, on the environment, on the rule of law.
He has allies. The rich. The U.S.'s now-largely fascist high court. All the international dictators and demagogues.
But in having quit teaching our humanities, haven't our schools done equal or similar damage in removing from the calculus exactly who, how many, and how much has been, have been seriously, personally damaged?
Our billionaire class wants us to think only in the terms which the Powell memo elevated on August 23, 1971. All reducible to numbers only. All neutered, dehumanized, depersonalize.
A mass anesthetization at work here?
Not only that, but anesthetization as precursor to ecogenocide.
Mr. Alstrom...The destruction of our [former] nation is [unquestionably] deliberate. The [only] relevant question is identifying whom these vile perpe-traitors of murder, sabotage and treason serve.
My estimate -- and it will be admittedly difficult to fathom unless one is at least somewhat familiar with the principles of Sun Tzu and/or has comparable military training (I credit both sources) -- is that we are all the victims of a fairly classic Chinese stealth operation, probably leveraged into being as joint Russo-Chinese-North-Korean blackmail for the obscene combination of Trumpstein torture-deaths, rapes, everyday murder, theft and robbery and of course the ongoing kidnapping and trafficking of sex slaves. This would put Trump's true owners -- Xi, Putin, Kim Jong Un -- in position to say to Trump, "we'll not only ignore your crimes; we'll also finance your expansion of [nation-destroying] criminal activity if you'll serve us by destroying the United States."
Remember [all] capitalists are motivated solely by greed; that [all] capitalists are therefore moral imbeciles; that [all] capitalists are thus for sale -- and that there's no question the Xi/Putin/Kim trio has sufficient monetary resources to bribe Trump and guarantee he stays bribed. Remember too the bipartisan responsibility for the [now probably irreversible] magnitude of our ruination -- that it was Carter the Christian whose Hyde Amendment treachery resurrected USian institutional misogyny and the Clintons who quite methodically re-fueled racism, destroyed welfare and began the nation-killing transfer of our industrial might to China. Trump and his regime are merely finishing the job, attempting to doom Ukraine for Putin by an embargo on vital antiaircraft missiles.
Why do I pick China as the chief villain? Easy; ask yourself who gains the most. With the United Stats slain, tyrannical China and its despotic vassals Russia, North Korea and now obviously Iran (and whomever else then climbs aboard the Sino/Russian juggernaut) will rule the world. Quoth Sun Tzu, "All warfare is deception."
Consider, however, the differing purposes the debt in each administration served. President Biden’s helped Americans recover themselves and the economy from the pandemic. Trump’s line his, his family’s and the uber wealthy’s pockets with the spoils of corruption. Your comparison of numbers alone ignores who is being served by the debt, and why.
Jon, did you know that Trump added 8 trillion in his first go round? Mostly tax cuts for the rich.
Hummm…you don’t say.
I do believe we’re seeing what’s known as a P-A-T-T-E-R-N here.
"... it is biased to call out Trump's debt increase without mentioning Biden's."
The above comment is an example of whataboutery ... and of virtue signaling masquerading as ethics.
"We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Wherever men and women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must - at that moment - become the center of the universe."
- Elie Wiesel
"Whataboutism" or "whataboutery" (as in, "but what about X?") refers to the propaganda strategy of responding to an accusation with a counter-accusation instead of offering an explanation or defense against the original accusation. It is an informal fallacy that the accused party uses to avoid accountability—whether attempting to distract by shifting the conversation's focus away from their behaviour or attempting to justify themselves by pointing to the similar behaviour (which may be true or false, but irrelevant) of their opponent or another party who is not the current subject of discussion.[1]"
.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism.
Well said, •lin!
Identify the "propaganda strategy" for what it is!
You're comparing apples to alligators and there's nothing fair about it.
Graham was an interesting man. 1 thing to say in his defence is that his younger brother came to rack and ruin working for the Freedmen’s Agency. Both brothers were penniless immigrants. Hence the older one’s district of what Jim Scott, his successor in my time, called schemes to improve the human condition.
Doctors should not shy away from discussing these real, systemic, immoral harms as they affect communities, families, and the very people sitting in the examining room with them.
I don't bring up politics during visits, but I try not to be a passive bystander in general when anything - Covid, cancer, the system - is harming people. That's part of the oath. First do no harm is not first do nothing.
I am fortunate. My own cardiologist is the same one who treated Dick Cheney for many years, the same one who now goes on CNN and writes op-eds in the New York Times pointing out that 'something is clearly wrong with the President.' He gave me a new aortic valve after I found out a genetic defect was making mine gradually useless.
I thanked him for the heart valve, but I also thanked him for being a pain in the ass and a thorn in the side of those in power, standing up to the insanity of RFK, Jr. "I feel I'm just trying to tell the truth," he once told me. But so many aren't, I said back to him. So many are just laying low, hoping the storm will pass, leaving them untouched. We both know that's not possible, I said. So thank you for causing good trouble, and I expect you to continue doing more, I joked.
If you see someone behaving bravely who maybe doesn't have to, *thank them.* Whether it's your GP, your pastor, a nationally-recognized cardiologist, or simply a group holding up signs at school board and townhall meetings, those reminding some cowardly Republican that he can run, but he can't hide, those who won't take dereliction of duty as an excuse for doing nothing. We need all the allies and helpers we can get our hands on....
Kindly thank him for all of us too ITCTT. I have tremendous respect for those who do stand up and speak their mind.
"The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference."
- Elie Wiesel
Powerful quote, lin, thank you for posting that.
It must be difficult to walk that line. You want to stay out of politics to establish a rapport with all your patients (even the MAGA!) but you also have a duty to provide accurate medical advice regardless of whether they want to hear it or not.
Thank you for your work. It’s really doubly important now. That is, to not only heal people but inform them in a way that they can hear.
Trouble is, the murderous combination of Christian and Nazi hatreds have eternally deafened our foes to anything but ChristoNazi propaganda.
Sorry for the banality of this comment but one of my specialists is saddled with poorly performing office staff - I know it and he knows it but the huge group he works for does the hiring. So this former military doctor tells me quietly, “Just message me.” Evidently he can’t even find a way to address hospital politics.
Thank you, Doc.
Hubert H. Humphrey shared these words during his final major public speech on November 1, 1977, at the dedication of the Hubert H. Humphrey Building in Washington, D.C. (which currently houses the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services).
“The moral test of government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; and those who are in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy, and the handicapped.”
Find some irony in this. Humphrey said this at the Department of Health and Human Services, 49 years ago and we are worse off in that amount of time, not better by any stretch of the imagination.
Think occasionally that people are really not aware of how bad things were before the social service programs like Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security even existed. For me, at 69, it was my grandparents generation and before. For vaccines for children like polio, measles and other diseases it was my parents.
For those a generation or two younger, they may be experiencing something that should never have occurred again. Find those who voted for this were so disconnected from our history that they didn’t realize how hard people had to fight for these rights. These scientific break throughs. We should live in a society that at one time the CDC, FDA were considered the “Gold Standard” when it came even to the inspection of food, or identifying the core food that caused the foodborne illnesss outbreak, quickly and efficiently. However, we no longer do. We all should have health care yet we all don’t. We all should have the needed vaccines to not allow children to suffer or even heaven forbid experience polio or measles any diseases that can be prevented.
What you tolerate today, you accept tomorrow - The question has become how much more will any of us continue to tolerate?
Hopefully we’ve learned that it is way past time to say “Enough” and make some changes that will be loud and clear in just 74 days, November 3rd. When the results are announced it will be the next fight to continue making the changes even further.
There is another aspect of the regime's destruction of healthcare in America, one that affects the future. That is the decimation of funding for medical research. On Wednesday, Moderna announced positive data from Phase 3 clinical trials of a personalized mRNA vaccine for melanoma. It is based on the same technology that brought us the COVID vaccines, but it takes cancer cells from each individual and develops a vaccine specific to that cancer's mutations, which primes the person's immune system to attack metastasizing new cancer cells, prolonging remission and life. The vaccine is given along with Merck's Keytruda, which stimulates the immune system.
According to Newsweek:
"Every dose of intismeran autogene is uniquely designed for an individual patient.
Unlike traditional medicines that are manufactured identically for millions of people, the therapy is built from the genetic fingerprint of a patient's own tumor. Moderna says the vaccine can encode up to 34 tumor-specific targets, effectively creating a highly customized treatment. The success of the melanoma program may accelerate a broader shift toward personalized medicine, in which therapies are increasingly generated from a person's genetic information rather than selected from a standard list of drugs."
This level of technical innovation is what is needed to fuel economic growth for the next generation. Unlike AI, with its environmental detriments and the potential for massive job losses, along with unknown risks from rogue bots, medical advances will require skilled technicians to produce tangible products and healthcare professionals to oversee treatment protocols. It creates jobs in manufacturing, with growth in the medical equipment industry for diagnosis and in the construction of antiseptic environments needed for drug production.
This is the kind of forward-looking research that the government has ceased to support by cutting funding for academic labs and for grants to startups. It is gutting the programs at universities that educate the researchers of tomorrow, many of whom are immigrants. They are now going to China, where the funding is plentiful. Essentially, the regime is driving research funding decisions out of government and into the arms of venture capitalists who will be out for short-term profit or ceding our waning technological leadership to other countries.
The regime's incompetence is not just destroying the healthcare system we have now, it is destroying the healthcare system of our future.
https://www.newsweek.com/moderna-merck-cancer-vaccine-could-change-america-in-7-surprising-ways-12349687
As a cancer survivor am sickened by this news. No one should be a member of this, as we called it in our support group “the club” in the future. In the future no one should have to go through the protocols needed from chemotherapy, radiation and surgery(s) and all that encompasses that horrific disease.. have no words..
I was so encouraged to read about the possibilities for this vaccine. One of my oldest friends has had melanoma 7 times -- and the idea that this may keep her healthy in future is wondrous.
It is amazing, and it all started with the attempt to do the impossible, to decode the human genome which came to fruition through NIH funding. Not a snowball’s chance in hell that the regime would fund something similar now.
Today's NYT has an article on how the Trump regime is getting around the court ruling requiring it to restore medical research funding that it had unconstitutionally withheld from Harvard. The regime had withheld the funding as punishment for Harvard's supposed insufficient action against anti-semitism on campus during pro-Palestinian demonstrations.
The AP has described one example of the impact of those cuts on one research program at Harvard.
In June, the regime codified another apparently constitutional route to the same end by issuing regulations that reclassified civil service management positions as at-will positions that could be filled with political appointees. In other words, instead of panels of experts at the National Institute of Health deciding on what research to fund, RFK, Jr. could choose panels of influencers to make the decisions.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/21/us/harvard-trump-costs.html
https://apnews.com/article/harvard-trump-nih-funding-cuts-32c1ae9dc542897496974a85aaa07b85
https://www.opm.gov/news/news-releases/opm-finalizes-schedule-policycareer-rule-to-strengthen-accountability/
Thank you for this information. It’s so exhausting as to what is happening throughout what this regime is allowed to do…
Thank you as always Georgia
Predators prey on those lest empowered to defend themselves, such as large segments of " those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly;"
In the animal kingdom, a predator eventually faces illness, starvation, old age, competition from other predators, or gets hunted and consumed when it becomes prey itself…
Susan Collins voted for the BBB and this has been devastating to Maine’s medical system including throwing Mainers off healthcare, clinics and rural hospital closures, etc. She voted to fund ICE an extra 40 billion dollars after which they murdered a citizen in Biddeford, Maine, a sleepy college town. The bill was beautiful for billionaires only while millions vote against their own interests.
Echoing Kelli's comment above, we would surely be wise to ask of any bill or policy, who gains and who is hurt, as a matter of fact? Surely patterns would emerge.
And I see she is currently tied in the polls.
The rich in Maine are untouched by the policies she has passed. They will support and vote for her.
Will the rest of Maine come out to vote her out?
It hasn’t happened yet.
Republicans are killing people, plain and simple.
Anything to gain money and power.
Need to finish that statement ER…
“because everything they touch turns to SHIT.”
The GOP is killing both the planet and inhabitants with deliberate intention. It’s going to take deliberate intention to destroy the GOP. How can that destruction best be done? WE the people also hold the purse strings. National Intent to withhold federal taxes is not so far fetched.
Jeffrey Sachs will say out loud what our media & Republican Congress are hiding
‼️ ‘A Man Like This Should Not Be President' ‼️
Jeffrey Sachs Launches Scathing Attack on Trump | APT (8/20/26)
https://youtu.be/AJUr7YiHfsM?is=aqj2yeEYDezYQzjo
APT - ACCURATE 💥 POWERFUL 💥 TIMELY
Economist and Columbia University professor Jeffrey Sachs launched a blistering critique of U.S. President Donald Trump, questioning his fitness for office and warning about the concentration of war-making power in the American presidency.
Sachs described the current geopolitical situation as potentially the "most dangerous moment in the world since World War II" and argued that Trump's shifting rhetoric between military escalation and negotiations highlights deeper problems in the U.S. political system. He also criticised Congress for failing to exercise sufficient oversight over presidential war powers and accused major U.S. media outlets of normalising what he views as increasingly erratic political behaviour.
Sachs went on to argue that unchecked presidential power and decades of U.S. military interventions have created a dangerous system, warning that Trump's alleged lack of "self-control" could further increase global risks. The psychological and political assessments expressed are Sachs' own views.
Now wait for Trump to try to cut off federal funding (again) to Columbia University because of the outspokenness of this professor.
I am not always in agreement with Prof. Sachs, but here, he speaks the truth. Thank you for the link JaKsaa.
NEVER FORGET AMERICA ABOUT FASCIST REPUBLICANS
After the Democratic Congressional avalanche occurs, whimpering fascist Republicans will say, “oh we were just joking around” or “let’s just forget about that we tried to tear down democratic norms and institutions”, or “hey, we’re going to mend our ways”, or “let’s forget about election interference”. Cheap words from people who previously supported a fascist autocoup in which the president himself tried to overthrow the government.
But America wants political accountability from their elected senators and congress people. WE the People want AIPAC and big money out of politics and elections. The fascist Republican think tank, author of Project 2025, Heritage Foundation has actively corrupted the judicial branch with the help of a hypocritical Congress getting a politically biased SCOTUS. Destroying the medical system is a necessity for the wealthy because it saves $$$ because the social safety net is handing out undeserved taxpayer money to people who should be working. By the way eugenics is just fine for the wealthy, says RFK Jr and rascist policy is just great for Cheeto.
Fascist Republican corporate oil industry donors want the public to be blinded to the global warming for its own self interests. Stopping the culture wars like book banning is up to WE the People. Instigating an illegal foreign war without Congressional approval is dictator stuff.
So no, America better not forget what these fascists have done to this country. Never forget. They should not be elected to dogcatcher for the next 10 years.
And certainly accountability for the misery and deaths caused by their deliberate cruelty and obvious incompetence? I think we need a Nuremberg 2.0 to establish just what is acceptable or not when someone is in public service. Letting people die needlessly is a form of homicide.
"Perhaps"???? Bill Alstrom? I am trying to live through chemo for the day when accountability will be restored by punishing those who brought down a system that had taken decades to build.
You have my well wishes. Our family knows chemo all too well. Thanks for the opportunity to edit. "Certainly" has replaced "Perhaps".
Thank you Bill.
Well said Chemo ain't fun; I hope you have a successful outcome. Mine was 20 years ago...
Thank you for writing Ally. I am hoping. I am 77, and it is taking a lot out of me at the moment. I used to walk for 10 miles at least 3 times a week; now I can barely walk up any stairs!
Try to come up with even one thing that this
administration has done that improves the quality of life here. I can’t. Everything they touch is either planned to lower our quality of life, or was planned to stuff cash into theirs. Every Democratic president faces disaster when assuming office, but this upcoming one will need the help of all of us to restore us to mediocrity at best, with no allies in the entire world to offer aid or trust. It isn’t Trump that is the real problem. He’s just the symptom. The problem the world sees is a Congress which hasn’t lifted a finger to stop even one thing. They gave us Hegseth and Noam and the deplorable Kennedy. And Iran and the murders at sea. And every rotten, despicable act coming out of a sick old man who would have been removed from office anywhere else on earth.
Incompetent, lazy, malevolent, dishonest, untruthful, sick old man. President of WHAT???
So, the Republicans are implementing a eugenics program while concealing it in plain sight? Explains a lot.
It's been the plan all along Allen.
They misunderstand evolution as the survival of the fittest, assuming it means the biggest, strongest, even baddest. In fact, it more accurately benefits those most adaptable to the current conditions, especially when those conditions are undergoing change. In other words, they may be doing themselves harm, along with the rest of us!
I am not a historian, but I suspect you’re right!
This Fall, do not forget to turn your clocks back to 1876 or thereabouts... what a waste of resources, a stupidly rich - but not for long - country that does not provide healthcare as a matter of course is a moral morass, elect real leaders not the scum you currently have... if you've got time.
It is so easy to destroy, but incredibly hard to build. Government is a servant to the people, but our present administration has this backward.
Trump tore down the East Wing before anyone got much to say about it. The same with many government services that protect the public. He wants to build his Royal Ballroom. and Arc de Trumpe, on our dime. He wants to tear down voting and democracy and replace it his his autocratic edits, supported by a bevy of wealthy aristocrats. Pretty much the antithesis of what the Declaration of Independence was meant to establish.
There is a fundamental disagreement about what role government has in the United States. Should government work for the common good (yes) or should it cater to special interests? Unfortunately, the latter role predominates. Both political parties are guilty but it is Trump who practices providing favors for certain people in addition to self-enhancement at an almost unprecedented rate.
People are saying:
"The legitimate object of government, is to do for a community of people, whatever they need to have done, but can not do, at all, or can not, so well do, for themselves---in their separate, and individual capacities.
In all that the people can individually do as well for themselves, government ought not to interfere."
Anyway, Lincoln did.
Clearly, the Republican party believes that only the children of the wealthy and well-connected deserve a longer lifespan so they can pursue their privileged lives behind the castle walls. Everyone else can just die off young. People who need government assistance for healthcare, who need vaccines to ward off illness common outside the castle walls, or who need safety inspection of affordable food to feed their families -- bah! They cost too damn much to keep alive for too long; our nation cannot afford it.
They do not care about the demos ( people) or democracy. That’s why they always remind us the USA is a republic.
The USA is a representative democracy, aka, a democratic republic. These are not opposing terms. They are overlapping systems. We fundamentally are a democracy through the one-person, one-vote, with voting groups endowed with Constitutional rights to freely organize and campaign for the proper representatives. We elect representatives to enact legislation that we agree as citizens to abide by, both what the demos request and what the representative believes is good for the nation. It's a balance, designed imperfection. If a Republican tells you that we are "not a democracy," then they are either an enemy of our democratic republic and hope to intimidate voters into believing them so they can strip us of our rights OR they are ignorant. These days, the former case seems to be in play, with plenty of the latter among the electorate: We the people are not experiencing any real representation because Congress is operating like a private club for the benefit of its members and their enabler$, and I am sorry to say the Democrats are guilty of it, too. But they are the opposition we must dance with; we must ask them to change their ways should they win back some control.
When 40 million Californians have their voices heard by 2 senators and 588,000 residents of Wyoming also have their voices represented by 2 senators, we unfortunately don’t have one-person-one-vote….. we have some states holding way more power than others, and some voices counting way more than others.
The question is, how did we end up with a private club for Congress? The system failed us.
I hear you and partially agree. But we must throw ourselves as citizens into the mix -- we did a C-grade job of turning out the vote when there was a clear and present danger in the last two presidential elections. But the midterms, when we can change the course of Congress? For decades, the country has struggled to top 52% participation in the midterms, and we return U.S. Senators to Congress at a rate of 96%. We are failing ourselves. The big question is, do we want an active democracy or not. If yes, will we perform the generational struggle to evolve it around liberal Constitutional values? (Liberal meaning: the main focus would be to preserve the individual right to freedom.)
The reason for poor turnout is because of disillusionment—people see that they aren’t represented and therefore aren’t motivated to vote. The people know that the government currently only represents billionaires and corporations. Democrats need to make the case that they understand that the government isn’t currently representing the people, and they can fix it.
Respectfully, that is like saying unless I am sure that I will win, I refuse to play any game with other people of similar ability. Not showing up to vote is never, ever a rational decision if you hold citizenship in a democracy. Americans should be ashamed that our country is the most powerful, but has one of the poorest voter-participation rates. We do have the wealth gap to address. But it will only get worse as people stay home. No one promised Americans an easy ride; if someone did, they were lying. We all act like a privileged teenager with a drug problem and too many guns. In fact, one could say that Trump is the appropriate national mascot for the character of Americans at this moment in time.
M. A. Porter, while your definition may be technically correct, the democracy component of the "democratic republic," defined as "one-person-one-vote" has never been functional in the U.S. Never.
Initially, women and Blacks could not vote. After emancipation, Blacks could vote, but slavers quickly intervened with the Electoral College. Women still couldn't vote. Then gerrymandering became integral to the electoral process. All men could vote, but even a larger number of votes for the minority party could be disappeared by the majority party through gerrymandering.
Today, any qualified citizen who registers can vote. But only the votes of a few thousand people in so-called "swing states" actually count.
Until we abolish gerrymandering and the Electoral College, we have a republic with a tiny garnish of democracy.
The senate is also very much not one person one vote.. see my comment above
I read it and "liked" it. You probably didn't get the notice yet.
It is a democracy and a republic. Wikipedia sez:
"A republic, based on the Latin phrase res publica, is a state in which political power rests with the public, typically through their representatives—in contrast to a monarchy or a direct democracy."
Duck Duck Go Search Assist sez:
"A republic comes from the Latin phrase res publica, meaning "public thing" or "people's thing," and was first used by Roman writers to describe their state and government.", so pretty much a variation of democracy. The founders did not trust 'direct democracy" and frankly, I don't see how it could work in a complex, modern state. It's still potentially "of the people, by the people, for the people" with enough collective will to make is so.
I argue that we abandon food inspections entirely and instead pass a law that the introduction of unsafe food into the marketplace requires the top 10 executives of the firm or farm introducing such materials be jailed for 10 years. Stop with the cat and mouse game of “what can we get past the inspectors” and make the executives criminally liable for harming people with bad decisions about food safety.
I think in China the executive for a company that put melamine into baby formula was executed. That was a few years ago.
Yes, they just jailed a real estate developer exec to life in prison for wrong doing. (One of the richest men in the country). Just like Iceland jailed the execs who caused the 2008 real estate crash while America bailed them out.
Interestingly, William Graham Sumner published What Social Classes Owe to Each Other only about 100 years after the French Revolution. Now, about 150 years later, based solely on the impending cuts to the ACA and Medicaid, it appears that America may revert to the guillotine. Hopefully, we can use the upcoming midterms as a proverbial guillotine rather than letting the situation devolve into a pitched battle between the rich and everyone else.