In these last days of August, with Congress on hiatus and the Epstein files looming, the Trump White House appears to be making a big move to consolidate power over the federal government, weaponize it against Trump’s opponents, and keep him in power indefinitely.
So much scary in this summary it's hard to focus, but this still leaps out as the scariest: “If you want to have a coup against the constitutional order, you want to control the capital city. And if he has control of the policing in the city of Washington,... how do you stop him? Who's gonna tell him to leave the White House?" - George Conway.
Trump is an old man. He will not be in power for long. We should be prepared to fight what comes after him. Vance and others are already laying the groundwork.
Indeed. The Maybelline Wormtongue has all the personal magnetism of an emetic without the musical skills of being able to pump an invisible concertina back and forth like the double-wattled Mango Pustule could.
A couple of days ago here in occupied Washington, an enraged bro sporting Crocs and a man purse unleashed a baguette at a uniformed officer in sheer frustration. Tomorrow I fear it may not be just a baguette. Be strong, one and all.
I fear it will be just a baguette. The government has made it clear they plan to bend over and take it from the dictator wannabe and will go along with his every illegal whim. Some people some where should start planning on how to remove or secede from this shitshow before its too late.
As a Californian, I’d absolutely love it if we could secede from these fascist slimeballs controlling this country. They hate us anyway and we PAY to play with these losers. It’s sheer mental and emotional torture being forced to contend with such lowlife scum: I want them all out of my life.
Mayor Wu in Boston is standing up to the turd too. I just wish our Gov Healy was more outspoken - I think she's keeping her head low to hope it all flies over. But this is one battle where you need to stand up and be counted, or you will be crushed.
Unfortunately secession doesn't work. Just figure out how many Auld Phartz like us who need their Social Security and Medicare reside in every state - including the Blue States - and ask yourself how the secessionist states make up for that? They don't. And because of that, secessionists are laughed out of the room (as they should be). We are stuck in this country and that means one or the other of us has to end in control. And that means all you old hippies are going to have to pay attention to all us old Vietnam vets to learn what you're going to need to survive the civil war.
There already is. Hopefully it can remain non-violent. If so, the good ole USA will have another opportunity to show the world how a world-class democracy can work.
It is time that war stops being the method of choice for human culture problem-solving.
The repugnants have done everything they can think of to destroy the nation since 1/20/2025. It doesn't make sense for the Oligarchs because they enjoy prospering from government contracts, if the economy implodes as it going to do if trump continues his stupid economic policies, we will have a depression and will probably drag the rest of the world down with us.
The Navy Times (Dunn is a former Air Force veteran who served assignments in Afghanistan and received a number of medals including the Korean Defense Service Medal, the Global War on Terrorism Service Medal and the Air Force Good Conduct Medal) called it "assault with a Deli weapon".
Thanks for detailing more of his background. An honorable veteran with more than a distinguished service record. I hope I didn’t take away from that. A metaphor for where we are right now.
Michele, what a wonderful picture I have in my head. Maybelline Wormtongue is Perfect! I have been saying for a while that a lot of T supporters/ dirty workers have split tongues!
Hello, It’s Come To This! Just got a heads up that Obama has been declared a traitor. Who will be his security detail? We should be in the streets for Nicole Collier (TX “rebel”).
Do you know when I was 12 or 13… I would call people names that’s what children do. Got a mirror? Instead of being strong, why don’t you realize he’s doing good things like stopping crime like closing the border like Setting stock market records. You guys should get that new dictionary by third wave.org maybe they’ll teach you a thing or two
I won't argue with you. That would be useless. But one thing I WOULD say is that he is a convicted criminal and is not legally able to be president. Period.
So I make the point below to gary when the president has sex with an intern IN the White House WHILE married.. has a 10 year affair with Gennifer Flowers PAYS Paula Jones, $800,000 for an illicit affair (The exact same thing that Donald Trump was accused of, but never proved)
that was OK back then…. and then lies about it all UNDER OATH which is a felony is he qualified to be president? And by the way, he was one of my three favorite presidents, despite his wandering PP and a couple of mistakes.. One which actually is the cause of the Russia, Ukraine war, and the other is the cause of Trump tariffs because of NAFTA. But
The problem with all you TDS filled and hate filled individuals is you bring up things that are NONSTARTERS. Which defy logic. DONALD TRUMP IS YOUR/OUR PRESIDENT….. 77 million people knew that every conviction was BS and voted for him anyway, but you don’t seem to get that and that’s a fact. And you obviously didn’t read the findings of the panel that just threw out the 500 million dollar award… If his case(s) werebrought elsewhere versus New York…they would’ve never made it to the court room!
So try to deal with reality before your eyes, which is Trump is doing a great job as president on almost every measure. And if Biden or Obama were doing exactly, and I mean exactly the same thing from switch doing you’d be putting him on your shoulders and carrying him around DC
Crime was falling in DC before Trump ordered the National Guard in and they haven't actually done anything to reduce crime so he can hardly take credit. In any event, real-time crime statistics like the ones he's been citing recently simply aren't collected in the manner that would allow this sort of claim so he's clearly just making up the figures.
He does this so often, it's hard to understand why even people like you can't see through him. Another example was his claim that the US had provided far greater levels of military aid to Ukraine than Europe. the figures he cited were $350bn against only $100bn. An analysis from the Kiel Institute for the World Economy shows that these figures were just complete fabrications.
Bolton illegally retained classified information!! Says the felon with boxes of classified documents in his bathroom. Dr. Richardson, do you shake your head and say WTF like the rest of us do when reading our fascist president’s rants??
Trump and his cadre of fools must have forgotten about that. There are still hundreds of top secret and classified documents missing, many of them likely in the hands of Putin and other authoritarian leaders.
America has become a totalitarian state. No doubt about it.
“Look at Hungary. Orbán won democratically in 2010. By 2011 he'd rewritten the constitution. By 2012 he controlled the media. By 2013 he'd gutted the judiciary. It's 2025 and he's still in power. The EU has been "very concerned" for fourteen years. They've written strongly worded letters. They've held meetings. Hungary is now a one-party state in the middle of Europe and everyone just... accepts it.”
Something to think about:
Once fascists win power democratically, they have never been removed democratically. Not once. Ever. I know that sounds impossible. I kept digging, thinking surely someone, somewhere, stopped them. The actual record is so much worse than you think. The historical playbook is useless here. We're in unprecedented territory. But that also means the old rules about what's possible might not apply.
Christopher Armitage is a seasoned United States Air Force veteran with a Master of Science Degree in Homeland Security.
California's economy is bigger than the UK's. New York controls global finance. The blue states collectively represent over 60% of America's GDP. They could, theoretically, make the federal government irrelevant.
Imagine if California, Oregon, Washington, New York, Massachusetts, and others started coordinating directly. Ignoring federal mandates. Creating their own interstate compacts for everything from climate policy to civil rights. They already started this with climate agreements when Trump pulled out of Paris. But I'm talking about going much further.
State-level cryptocurrency to avoid federal monetary control. State-funded healthcare systems that ignore federal restrictions. State-level immigration policies that simply refuse to cooperate with ICE. Make the federal government have to physically enforce every single policy, stretching their resources to breaking.
The precedent? The way Northern states nullified fugitive slave laws in the 1850s. The way states are currently ignoring federal marijuana prohibition. But coordinated and comprehensive.
Option 2: Selective Compliance and Irish Democracy
The Irish called it "Irish Democracy" when they were under British rule, the silent, dogged resistance of millions who simply ignored laws they found illegitimate. Don't protest. Don't riot. Just don't comply.
Red states need blue state money. Blue state taxes fund red state governments. What if millions of people in blue states simultaneously decided to claim exempt on their W-4s and simply... stopped paying federal taxes? Not as protest but as a coordinated "forgetting." Overwhelm the IRS. Make enforcement impossible.
Doctors in blue states could ignore abortion restrictions. Teachers could ignore curriculum mandates. State police could refuse to enforce federal laws. Not dramatically, just... incompetently. "Sorry, we couldn't find them." "The paperwork got lost." "Our systems are down."
Make every single act of authoritarian control require physical enforcement, then make that enforcement impossibly expensive and difficult.
Option 3: Secession
We already have two incompatible visions of what America should be. One side wants a multi-ethnic democracy with a social safety net. The other wants a white Christian ethnostate with unlimited corporate power. These cannot coexist indefinitely.
What if blue states started seriously discussing secession? Not threatened as political theater but actually planned. Constitutional conventions. Referendums. Negotiations for national debt division. Military base transfers. Currency agreements.
Yes, the last time states tried to leave it caused a civil war. But that was over slavery, with clearly defined geographic boundaries and two relatively equal economic systems. This would be the economic powerhouses leaving the welfare states. What would the red states do, invade California? With what money?
The mere serious threat might be enough to force structural changes. Quebec nearly left Canada twice and got massive concessions both times just from credible threats.
Option 4: International Intervention
This has never happened to a nuclear power, but there's a first time for everything. Blue states could request UN election monitoring. They could sign their own climate agreements with the EU. They could create alternate diplomatic channels.
California could request Canadian peacekeepers for "election security." New York could invite European observers for "financial transparency." Make it embarrassing. Make America's collapse visible to the world. Force the international community to pick sides.
No, the UN can't invade America. But they can isolate it. Sanctions work. Ask Russia. International humiliation works. Ask South Africa under apartheid.
And:
The phrase “soft secession” makes Democrats nervous. They prefer “resistance” or “federalism” or any other euphemism that doesn’t acknowledge what’s happening. But when democracy fails, when fair elections become impossible in certain states, when federal funds are withheld as political punishment, states don’t have many options left. The infrastructure is built. The legal precedents are established. The money is there. Blue states have spent two years sharpening these tools….As blue states prepare to deny federal agents access to their databases, their highways, maybe even their airspace, the soft secession isn’t coming. It’s here.
What I fear, Kristin, is the millions of migrating dumb white people.
You know the red states are infested with the worst schools, the worst health conditions, the most guns and gun violence and Fentanyl and other opioids. Right now they coast because the blue states subsidize them. They also float because of the arms industry and long traditions of local-economy-enlivening military bases.
Free the blue states from the MAGA debased and the MAGA debased will migrate to where they can get better welfare, better health care, better everything.
You can bet, though J.D. Vance, Kevin Roberts, Stephen Miller, Russell Vought, Hegseth, Bondi, Blanche, and Patel corral power, they're all totally incompetent and uninterested in providing the agencies and administrative intelligence necessary for actual public programs. All the more reason red state losers will flow massively to the blue.
But where will they get their armies from? 55% of the National Guard that were up for renewal that have been deployed within the US have chosen to quit. That's up from about 12% before Trump.
They ALL swore allegiance to the US Constitution and Trump et.al. are asking them daily to violate their oath. Remember Viet Nam, how people hated the soldiers that served there cursing at them even though they were forced into servitude. Reinstatement of the draft will soon follow. That's the message that needs to be spread on college campuses across the US.
Who, in their right mind will sign up for duty with the military or ICE or the border patrol? They have to be so desperate financially to sign up. The insane $50k signing bonuses and the 6 figure salary are not going to be enough to keep them once they are forced to sleep on concrete floors in cities hundreds of miles from their homes.
And their "other" employers are going to lose patience and fire their asses even though that may be illegal.
They will get the Proud Boys and other self-styled militias to do the president’s dirty work. There are enough of them eager to brutalize and kill their fellow Americans, especially people of color.
Don't forget about the sociopaths who love to gang up and beat the hell out of people. They will soon start abusing citizens and will enjoy themselves while deny us our Constitutional rights.
I’m in red Texas and would crawl to a blue state, not all painted as red are, but sadly you are right about some. BTW, Texas has had an influx of Californians moving in and they love the vipers here. Go figure…
That's why my son and his family left texas. Rotten schools, white supremisists, religious bigotry and all around a-Olery. They are fortunate as he can work anywhere.
Amen Phil. There's not a shred of decency in the bunch. Maybe states should have an 'immigration' questionaire for the movers? Proven income level? Education standard?
Well, phil, that would be a good welcome line in the news you dumb white people. My way of putting it would be Phil. How could you be such a dumb racist?
You’ve clearly never lived under a totalitarian state, have you?
Alarm is certainly justified and there’s much we need to be doing. But millions haven’t been disappeared into labor or concentration camps and every house doesn’t sport a swastika, and the streets aren’t filled with red banners proclaiming “The Party and the People Are One!” from every building.
A little self-education about basic definitions and distinctions among totalitarian, authoritarian, one-party, parliamentary, constitutional monarchies, presidential regimes, etc. might be helpful before you post.
You should try downtown Chicago with ICE sirens blaring much of 24 hours. Next DT promises the National Guard, It’s Come To This. I have a vivid imagination, know what KGB means and that DT is following instructions from the Kremlin. I read as much of “Moscow 1937” as I could bear and I have seen the photos of the Politburo with more bodies than heads. How much more do you think I need to know? As an ancient female, all I can do is write postcards to help get out the vote, which may not take place in 2026 if we do not fight back vigorously.
He may be a Kremlin patsy, but we are not. Not a matter of knowing more, but living under. My own memories include being a student in Moscow in 1974 when all those red banners flew from every public building. There are critical distinctions going on, which justified anger tends to blur. And keep writing those postcards!
And you can blame any behavior by ice on the top of the head of Joe Biden. We didn’t need this force of ice when Obama was president. That way we didn’t need this force of ice when Bush was president deadweight? Ooooooooooops
Kristin, it may be smart to have a general strike before we resort to the more radical options. If enough citizens participate in a strike, we can shut down all business, nationwide we might still avoid massive bloodshed.
bye bye. The problem with that Joanne is discriminatory is so great, but even the haters refused to leave. But it’s a free country and there are things such as cold one-way tickets they’re half price actually go for it.
No doubt about it? Seems like somebody might refer to you as a slow pony… if this were Annette totalitarian state, every single word you posted above would be for bidden, and they would come for you and throw you in jail or worse. But amazingly that’s not the case how is that possible?
The funniest thing for me, is if Joe Biden we’re making DC safer or had closed the border, your people would be putting him in on your shoulders… that’s why I continue to say that liberals tend to live at the intersection of hypocrisy and double standard.
But Christopher, you're comparing apples and oranges, culture-wise.I think you're underestimating the religious zeal MAGAts have for the orange Jesus and the ick just about everyone feels for Vance.
Trump has the fanatic following, but he had a lot of help putting that together and sabotaging the alarms. A lot that help are wealthy manipulators who mostly stay out of the news. They are not entirely invisible, but that's not what holds the attention of the news biz, which is increasingly a subsidiary,
I wonder if Bibi is still calling him regularly for advice? The UN has declared a state of famine in Gaza. Netanyahu says this is just a dirty trick designed to spread antisemitism.
What I see unfolding is a group that will eventually control the whole thing with a a figure head. A cabal commission like the commanders in the handmaid's tale. You know life imitating art.
All true, Alexandra, but the fascists may have already taken control by the time trump kicks the bucket, we need to move immediately to preserve our democracy. November 2026 may be far too late.
That is being revealed daily via social media. Men I once considered friends are now the enemy. Fewer women, mostly the wives of those men, but still; if your friends are former military or law enforcement, double vet them.
Well, here we go with delusionary imagination is running wild once again, like children seeing unicorns on the clouds. If my typewriter needed ink to respond to the most insane, ridiculous out of control, lunacy here , I would need new typewriter ribbon every single day.
Have you ever worked for a living? If you did, you would know that every organization has a goal, a business plan and a structure on how to get there. Somethings are short term. Somethings take a little bit longer.
But your ignorance is widely demonstrated here. If you are the owner of a business and you mandate things that doesn’t mean that they happen tomorrow but doesn’t mean it’s not your goal though does it?
Once again, Trump is not the ruler of Russia and he’s not the ruler of Ukraine and we wouldn’t even be there headed not been for Bill Clinton, which has been confirmed by every single liberal pundit on TV lately that refers back to the disarmament of Ukraine by Bill Clinton in 1994 I believe. And like I said earlier, GARY, you have a lot of bravado when you keep losing and 3 1/2 years from now you’ll still be losing.
They’re going to do it with a “return to sanity”. They will pin all the crazy stuff on Trump (while praising him to the skies) and start to undo the chaos and rebuild America. Of course it will be rebuilt to suit their own ambitions but it will be so much better than Trump that we’ll swallow it - or at least they think we will.
I’m still waiting for any Republican leaders to stand up and question the fascist tactics and firings coming from the WH. It’s absolutely unbelievable.
By the way, the third way A consulting group which the Democrats hired to give them suggestions as to what would be a good wade forward and removing some words from the vocabulary. Fascist was one of them.
Sending ones son or daughter off to fight a war in some foreign land is one thing. Getting a email informing you that their unit was just blown up is bad. But, getting word that ones husband just had his legs blown off during some riot on 4th and Vine, downtown.., and getting transported to a local hospital near you...?.., now that will be hard to take. Won't it MAGA?
I believed that. I still believe he has no charisma however with the lowering of requirements to be FBI there will be an influx of thugs all too happy to be part of the group in power. And they know that if they lose power they are cooked. So I think a blood spilling civil war is in our future. I cannot understand how Europe could sit idly by however, because if the US, which has now proven how unstable it will forever be given how easy it was for a crazy mean regime to dig in, continues to bully as it will, Europe will be in big trouble. The only benefit to FBI and I am guessing CIA to become watered down yahoos is that it will be easier for foreign spies to infiltrate
Trump apparently thinks he’s immortal, based on how he’s acting. When voters were foolish enough to elect him—and yes, people who choose authoritarians are fools—my first thought was that we’re now stuck with him for the rest of his natural life.
Resisting with “peaceful protests” is not going to do it. Many leaders and experts said that the military would reject unlawful orders. I believe we are witnessing that they are not rejecting unlawful orders and are not staying in their barracks. The military, our next door neighbors, are not going to protect us. How does that make you feel?
That’s a good point, but the conventional wisdom a while back was that the military will not follow an illegal, unconstitutional order. That there was no reason to be concerned that he would use military force against us. My point is that like the supreme court, the military is being turned against us.
I couldn't agree with your concern more, Mike! From my perspective all our "estates" have failed us..., so far. The oligarchs, Christian nationalists and The Patriarchy are winning. But they haven't won. Even if it's in tie dyed shirts and bell bottoms, we have to show our extreme but peaceful disapproval for this right-wing coup on our country if we really want to keep our freedom. When Steven Miller and company overplay their hand and protests become killing fields, we'll see what "the military" (and courts, corporations, media and universities) really think. For now the military is just following orders AND the law. Of course, opinions about what is lawful are polarized like everything else and this all could lead to horrible outcomes most Americans would like to avoid. Thus the tempered response so far from the resistance, the ongoing extortion of companies and the accelerated creep into full-fledged dictatorship.
Susanus, it isn’t the orange taco we must deal with, it is the machine, the Republicans in congress and in statehouses (think Texas and Florida, etc) and especially the MONEY behind him we must fight tooth and nail!
And we should all—every one of us—be telling our representatives and senators that Trump lacks the mental capacity to be president, and that they should call for invoking the 25th Amendment, even if it means we are saddled with JV Dunce.
MSNBC says that Vance has taken eight vacations in the seven months he's been in office so if he has a plan then it seems to be to steer clear of Trump for as long as possible.
And , susanus those are the demented psychopaths pulling dump truck’s strings. Watch out for opportunist vacuous ( the so called vp). He will do and or say anything to make himself feel like a man. So sad ,these dickless psychos taking out on the Constitution their lack of human self.
Yes, susanus, Trump is old, but the 77 million people who voted for him still prefer him to any Democrat. The 77 million are not going away. It appears to me that things are more likely to get worse than better. We’ll find out in November of next year whether US democracy still has some hope in hell of surviving the onslaught of Hair Furor and his acolytes.
Drumpf is not in power now. He has not been for awhile. He is a distraction and has been all along. Look behind him, look ahead of him. Dead or alive, he’s the same very bad joke. Why do you imagine Putin has such a big smile each time he sees Lil’ Donny?
It must drive him further insane knowing that he is powerless to avert his own mortality. We need to leverage this. He is far more scared of all of us than we should be scared of him.
Here we are, America, at the tail end of August, and the Trump White House is treating the Constitution like a cocktail napkin at Mar-a-Lago. Forget subtlety. Forget the pretense of law. They are raiding John Bolton, of all people, as if the man is a cartel kingpin instead of a cranky neocon with bad mustaches and worse ideas. If even Bolton, a right-wing hawk who despises Putin, isn’t safe from Trump’s vengeance tour, then who is?
This isn’t about justice. It’s about showing everyone who’s boss. Trump is turning the FBI into his personal goon squad, the Justice Department into a circus, and the military into an occupying force for blue cities. You don’t have to be a scholar of authoritarianism to see what is happening. George Conway, who caught the Bolton raid on video, called it what it is: the beginning of a coup.
And what do we get from Trump in the middle of all this? A giddy show-and-tell of a signed photo from Vladimir Putin, like a lovesick teenager clutching a yearbook scribble. While groceries skyrocket and people beg for relief, the president plays autocrat cosplay with real guns, real raids, and real consequences.
Make no mistake: the coup is not creeping. It’s strutting down Pennsylvania Avenue in broad daylight.
The United States currently has approximately 4,640 to 4,657 main battle tanks, specifically the M1 Abrams series, in its arsenal as of 2025. Additionally, the U.S. possesses the largest number of ground combat vehicles of any NATO country, with about 399,127 units. This broader category includes not only main battle tanks but also armored personnel carriers, infantry fighting vehicles, mine-protected vehicles (like MRAPs), and various other support and combat vehicles.
After the Civil War, Bruce, many cited the North's overwhelming numbers and resources.
Not so, emphasized Grant in his best-selling and now Library of America classic memoirs. The North won for two reasons. The men in its armies could read and write, and they believed in what they were fighting for.
I still wonder, to this day, why we compromised with the Confederate traitors. We never should have. Never. We wouldn’t have their arrogant offspring ruling in Congress from the southern (Confederate traitor) states today. And we wouldn’t have the electoral college. Also: Ford should never have pardoned Nixon. I believe these crucial mistakes in history led us, not in small part, to where we are today.
Me too Juliana. But even if Trump can Federalize every type of Police officer and Military Tank, and soldier it will be extremely difficult for him to "occupy" the big cities in America unless the public works with him, and if it comes down to that, there will be open warfare in the streets. We'll know soon enough. In the meantime: Resist! Be disobedient!
Of the 4600, all in the USA. Some of them are taken for sales shows, etc. But thats the best number...that does not include Forward deployment, Reserve, Mothballed older M1 Abrams, as far as I can figure. Probably not something that is 100% static. Anyways a lot.
Yeah Bruce, it might be a good idea to learn how to manufacture weaponized drones. The Ukrainians have been quite successful in battling tanks and other heavy duty weapons using drones.
and the media, all he needs is the military fully on board - that may be a harder nut to crack - and then he is off, up up and away, they won't need macTACO-tits mussolini anymore, they don't want a dynasty, they want total control, and trump's offspring do not have the intelligence needed to dynasty the fuck out the US.
If the United States survives the onslaught of tRump, we need major amendments to the Constitution: 1. The POTUS must be made explicitly subject to the laws and Constitution of the US. 2. DOJ must be brought out from under the Executive Branch and a new mechanism for selecting the AG needs to be implemented 3. Same for the Inspectors General. 4. A mechanism for forcing a vote of no confidence and a forced by-election needs to be implemented. 5. The Presidential Pardon must be ended. I'm sure others can add to this list.
Who called in Conway ? Patel ? Or Bolton ? Maybe Conway. Bolton has his sources you know. If he is as smart as Yale LawS holl advertised him to be, then he will have prepared for this
“In a new order Bondi issued Friday evening, the Department of Justice directed Bowser to order the police department to assist in immigration enforcement operations and to comply with database inquiries and requests for information from any federal law enforcement entity.”
Doesn’t sound like the “win” I was expecting to read about.
That sounds like a rather dubious instruction given that immigration is a federal responsibility although I suppose it would fall to the police to protect ICE staff from attacks while undertaking their duties.
Absolutely what I was going to point out. conservative lawyer George Conway, who helpfully videoed the FBI raid on John Bolton’s house this morning, put it: “If you want to have a coup against the constitutional order, you want to control the capital city. And if he has control of the policing in the city of Washington,... how do you stop him? Who's gonna tell him to leave the White House?"
A well regulated militia? Now I understand the reason for the second amendment.
Alexandra, it is hard to “like” such a clearly gloomy prediction. Once one adds Timothy Snyder’s take on our likely, if not inevitable future (from HCR’s notes: https://snyder.substack.com/p/the-strongman-fantasy) the whole situation we find ourselves sliding into, no, being inexorably dragged into, is truly appalling! We must resist, resist, resist at every turn!
Yes they are telling us loudly and clearly. Why are we sitting on this as they gather more power goon squads with weapons... and are weaponizing the parts of the government that they hold. Thew more years and we will be a totally different country.
Alexandra, ALL this makes me want to cry for all those caught in his cross firing, people of color, religion, sexual orientation, the poor and needy and mostly all those who speak out against him.
I knew from the get go the man is evil but people poo pooed my thoughts/beliefs about him. Look where it has landed us.
I might have mentioned this last week or perhaps on TCinLA's "That's Another Fine Mess" but a friend saw it first and told me "he's building a moat around himself".
Kinda explains the converting the Rose Gardent into Mar-a-Largo North. His keepers may keep him in confinement there. World's most expensive Alzheimer's unit.
I do love how many men have felt the need to explain to me, a woman, what I should be scared of here. As if it somehow never occurred to me. I started working on foreign residency back in 2016.
Seems you have taken a significant step of late, Heather, toward describing what's happening as a full-blown coup. As have many others. I believe a revolt against this cruel perversion of a presidency is gathering steam very rapidly.
For old times sake, I recently took a spin through old ITN film clips of the heady days just prior to — and immediately following — the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989.
Right up til the very end, even as it was clear to everybody that there was no longer any there there, even when West Berliners had cut a big slab out of the Wall with chainsaws, hammers and chisels, yanking it down with ropes, young men scrambling on top and stomping up and down on it, East German border guards were still spraying the Wessies with fire hoses in absurd, pointless acts to stave off the inevitable, while Stasi officers photographed the “lawbreakers” for their dossiers.
The myth of control is so very important to despots. The weaker the regime, the more desperate the last-minute gasps for breath. The image of authority has to stay intact until the very last second, as it were. I think we have not yet reached that Moment of Complete Absurdity, though Trump seems to be moving toward it at lightning speed.
Yeah, I remember the time very well, and it happened lightning fast - the East Germans protested to weeks every Monday in huge, peaceful protests, but the final fall took most West-Germans by complete surprise (word of the year was "Wahnsinn!" (Insanity!) in Germany). The end was basically one TV Interview.
Oh, it would be wonderful if you could solve this bloodlessly in the US as well, but I can't see that happening at the moment.
I had the shock of seeing former East Germany traveling in from the Polish border in 2015. Shock: all green and a big wind farm within 5K of the border!
I was there but back in 1984. It was a sad atmosphere as I walked around by myself. I visited a woman who was desperate to get out. My guess is as I was told by a judge in the full German Judicary I was probably followed and on the Stasi radar. That was the time when Putin was there. Still kind of scary to me even now.
No, I think you guys might be locked in a time capsule so it’s really not your fault it is no longer 1989 it is 2025 and for the next 3 1/2 years Donald Trump will be the president of United States. Try supporting America for a change instead of criminal aliens and protecting criminals in general like you’re doing in Washington DC which Chris Matthew said was defending the indefensible
Trump pardoned 1,500 criminals involved in the 6 January 2021 siege of the Capitol builidng. You conveniently forget that he himself is a convicted fraudster. He's also pardoned a whole range of criminals, including fraudsters like himself.
Nice. You are proving that you cannot debate in the Arena of Ideas. You only call names and sensor. That is OK. What policy changes would you propose? Resist will give us President Vance.
"The myth of control," ICTT: what's opposite that?
I say, essay writing -- where one acquires skills to analogize, digress, remain open to serendipity, remain patient with contradictions, complications.
And what part of education most reinforces "the myth of control"? You know, ICTT, Diane Ravitch answers that most thoroughly in "The Language Police." Aptly titled.
Most of what she's been doing for the past 8 months has been reporting, with her mission being to give some future historian what a 19th century expert historian thinks of what is happening in this country right now.
We do get some historical context and comparisons these days, but her mission focus has changed.
You mean what am I seeing that feels like a rapidly building revolt? It's all around us seems to me, from persistent in-the-street protesting to more and more voices coming out more and more boldly. Yes, I'm eternally optimistic, and I recognize that can color my sense of what's happening. But even if I'm getting ahead of myself, I believe the revolt is inevitable. And I know I may be wrong. FWIW.
Plus newly emboldened actions by governors, like Newsom, Pritzker, Ferguson. Feels like a boiling pot to me. I don't know how it's going to turn out, but I can't see things continuing on like this before something momentous happens.
We will know we have turned the corner when the Republican Congress shows signs of revolt. The midterms are our last chance to do this bloodlessly. If we do not turn out the cowardly Republicans who will not stand up against this assault on democracy and replace them with sane and brave Congressional Representatives it is we who will have failed to stop this coup.
How do we, who dissent against this despot Trump, manage a revolt when he has the nuclear codes and the best trained military at his disposal? How? Have you read Timothy Snyder’s Bloodlands? There are always lots of people willing to do the job of destroying people on behalf of a strange leader. He has barricaded himself in D.C. and is staring to go after well known critics like Bolton. How is it possible to stop this takeover?
My late husband read Bloodlands and I think Anne Appleblaums book as well. I knew through the book and film Everything is Illuminated. The picture of a field where a village stood all I needed to know. I am not in despair mode but prepared for not mighty wind a mighty struggle.
Ronald , we’d better ….how incredible it feels to watch a maniac tear us apart at the seems. Every thinking person has huge amounts of depression weighing on them. Where are the sane adults and the departments who simply say “f__ __k NO you gibbering psychopath. You are not my president and all of your gang will be paying the price for this treason! Where!?!?!?!?!?!?!?
You need to come out of your bubble. Jeez. all of you. The perversion is in the mirror try using the vocabulary of the third way.org your own political consultant organization that is repeating what Ive said now for months.
Use/share this spreadsheet (bit.ly/Goodtrouble) as a resource to call/email/write members of Congress, the Cabinet and news organizations. Reach out to those in your own state, and those in a committee that fits your topic. Call. Write. Email. Protest. Unrelentingly. We deserve better ❤️🩹🤍💙
The FBI is totally illegitimate now: any agency in this fascist regime is just doing Trump’s disgusting, lowlife bidding. It’s pathetic. Nothing is legitimate now that the douchebag DOGE mission gutted every once legitimate agency and packed it with MAGAts (just as Project 2025 said it would) and then stole all of our data in the process.
Which the deliberate complicity of the Congressional majority, $COTUS majority and a crop of billionaires. Not to mention self-proclaimed "Christian" churches at war with the "better angels of our nature".
Who and what is the FBI now. Your comment presumes the answer to that question and the facts are not in evidence. There is no "FBI" any more. Not as it was since Hoover. Or before for that matter. There is now just a state police loyal to one man and lead by a political ally of his. A hatchet man. Those who have not left yet or been kicked out and who refuse to obey orders will be punished.
Hoover was a total creep as his history with Civil Rights advertises, but I think the FBI had been doing a better job of serving "We the People" until Trump.
I agree, from what I can see, but what are their options, the ones who know what they are doing is wrong??? What can they do but either follow orders or walk away…quit???
Exactly. They can quit! They are powerless unless they do the bidding of Supreme "Leader". It's something to see all these "men" willingly cede their personal power to one sorry excuse for a man, when what they actually want is for white men like themselves to hold ALL the power. There is none so blind as he who will not see...
At some point there is a duty to speak out. Alexander Vindman must have known he was walking into a hornet's nest, but that's exactly what liberty and justice for all often depends on. At some point, we decided, that "just following orders" becomes untenable. Is it acceptable to do anything to protect ones job, in comparison to dedication of one's life, fortune and sacred honor?
I'm not saying that's easy or that I am sure of my own supply of courage in a similar situation, but I think those who accept the responsibility of official protectors of our society need accept an explicitly higher standard of professional behavior than most, and to first of all strive to do no harm as a requirement of a civilized society, not just internal professional performance review. Patent misuse of entrusted power, which I see as the essence of human "corruption", is self-evident here.
However, the "new & improved" FBI will have or already do have dossiers on any number of citizens, maybe including some of us. I have a giant box of old photos, maybe when they storm my little mobile home they will get a hernia carrying it out so that they can find evidence of my duplicity when all they need do is read any number of comments I've made digitally!
Are you kidding me jail you mean the 51 liars that lied about the authenticity of Hunter Biden’s laptop when they had it in their possession and said it was Russian disinformation, and they knew it wasn’t that’s not a tool. But it’s coming home to roost. While You people call it revenge/ it’s nothing more than Justice
Megan, this is the crowbar we needed. Professor Richardson’s receipts are clear: Texas just ran a mid-decade power grab to flip five seats while people of color drive the growth, and D.C. is staging control with uniforms while crime sits near modern lows. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again If you have to lock the room to pass a map, you didn’t win you stole the room.
Use your sheet today and run one clean ask:
“I’m a constituent. Put in writing (by [DATE]) that you oppose (1) map-rigging that gives unequal weight to Black and Latino votes, and (2) using federal law enforcement for political payback. Also demand a public release schedule for the Epstein files.”
Teach two terms when you share this: habeas corpus (court key when the state grabs the body) and time, place, and manner (how we protect the vote).
Paper wins. Share this, make one call, drop your result so the next person has a path. www.xplisset.com
Still waiting pal!! Where is your Russian revolution resolution? ? Nothing but a empty suit… instead of trying to make America great all you do is tear it down Gerrymandering goes on on both sides of the aisle but if you take a look at states like Connecticut or Massachusetts and realize that Donald Trump got 40 to 45% of the vote and yet have ZZZZZZZERO Representatives in Congress from that state, who are Republicans? You should be ashamed of yourself with such hypocrisy
I light of publicly known events I am pessimistic about ever seeing a fully unredacted set of Epstein files with respect to Trump, but it still should remain an issue. It clear that Trump shared some of Epstein's creepy attitudes toward women, to which he gave a nod, and it's hard to interpret the circumstances of the intervention in Maxwell's sentence as anything but corrupt.
Have you ever gone into the history books to see how many politicians, major politicians, including presidents and Congress people have had questionable relationships with women while they served? Three notables would be John F. Kennedy, William Jefferson Clinton and Gary Hart. But there are many on both side sides of the aisle. You should Google that then you might tone down the rhetoric. The list is almost endless to be honest with you. And you historians should know.
Harassment is also a good distraction. Release the Epstein files. And they should release T's medical files while they're at it. He can't hold a thought, he seems to believe he ended 6 wars, and why is his hand so bruised (and badly covered with make-up?)
I'd have to go back and find the post that one of my MAGAt retired cop friends made (and I don't want to do that) but they listed some conflicts in African countries and a few other places that I didn't bother to look up on a map; I think two were tribal conflicts. That is what they are being fed by their propaganda sources.
We don't need the files! We have the victims or their legal depositions and charges. We need to believe them. What could possibly be more daming than what we already know?
There are so many other wars he could add to his list. Our own Civil War has never truly ended (it has just taken different forms). I would personally campaign for him to win the Nobel Peace Prize if he would end the Civil War!
Oh, you're wrong, haven't you heard? He is now saying that he may have ended as many as 10 wars!!!!! I'm surprised his AI team haven't come up with a picture of him looking all saintly & humble with a halo & a dove above his head, you know, like the dove that indicates "the holy spirit"! His mania & narcissism knows no bounds!
I can't wait for Trump to have a major medical event where hopefully he is comatose and the incompetent fool Vance takes over. He was born with his foot in his mouth and is far from a Fascist leader.
I watched the Bulwark this morning on Substack. They were reporting live as the FBI Raid on Bolton’s home took place. George Conway was reporting live from across the street from the house. This was definitely for show and to send a loud and clear message. It is extremely alarming.
Time to get off our asses. This sick, twisted old double-wattled sack of shit in his “EVERYTHING TRUMP SAID WAS RIGHT” made-in-China hat isn’t fooling — neither can we.
My own take from inside our occupied capital about The Date That Will Live In Idiocy (the day the APCs arrived on the National Mall):
Yeah, it’s the only way George Conway has any meaning in life anymore but too bad there are no more stories about George Conway. He lost twice he lost his wife and he lost his self-respect and dignity?
Professor Richardson, you drew the line. The Bolton raid, the intel purge, arming the D.C. Guard, and the new probes of political opponents are not loose ends; they’re one policy: punish enemies and stage control of the capital while crime sits near modern lows. Add Russia’s public snub, the Oval Office Putin photo-op, and the slow-walk on the Epstein files and you get the story: power first, truth later.
Let’s just say it plain: if you need uniforms to prove you run the capital, you don’t. If you lock rooms to pass maps, you didn’t win…no…you stole the room.
One step today: call your House member and ask for a public, dated statement on two points—(1) opposing the misuse of federal law enforcement for political payback, and (2) demanding a release schedule for the Epstein files. Ask that it be put in writing so constituents can see it.
My congress critters have all come out with statements demanding the release of the files, and have been vocal critics of the presence of troops in D.C. They're all on board. What worries me is that some of those guard troops are from Ohio. And those of us who remember know what happens when you give guns and ammo to the Ohio National Guard and ask them to be police. People die.
Paper does not win EVER against Dictators! As Professor Snyder has taught us, it is only "LEIB" that wins. Massive amounts of people who disobey the Dictatorship from Strikes to standing in the streets. Put your "LIEB" into it people. (for explanation if you are wondering what the heck I mean read "On Freedom".)
Geez, why did you mention the Mar-a-Lago raid? Hmmmmm. Guess what we’re finding they had no reason to search Mar-a-Lago. Ooooops. The fun in that venue is just beginning
Yeah, you’re right but violent crime is down 50% and carjackings are down 88% and for the first week in a long time not one single murder when two weeks ago they were 10 murders in five days. Uh oh.
These people actually think they can take over blue cities inhabited by millions of people with a few hundred "cracker" National Guardsmen from South Carolina, West Virginia, and Ohio? I've got news for them, if they went into some neighborhoods in South Los Angeles, they would be outnumbered and outgunned. And even ICE knows enough to stay out of Boyle Heights.
My nephew is a cop in a major US city. He has been on raids where they have confiscated hundreds of illegal weapons. Imagine if all of the gangs joined together to fight the Fascist Trump regime.
You have no idea how well off my children are both in rearing, Basking in the family, love and monetary success. So much that you know
The fact that you hate so much that you have to refer to anything by a swastika shows how racist/anti-semetic you folks really are just under the surface
If you keep posting here, one of these days, you’ll actually make sense
The meantime, you should have some respect for sale, posters here
It’s Mr. asshole to you. Most of the people here have contempt and hatred for Trump and contempt and hatred for the Republican party NO MATTER WHAT THEY DO… that’s the problem asshole. And that’s the only problem
I understand that, but while ICE scares people in Los Angeles because they're totally denying due process and just grabbing people for looking Hispanic - in defiance of a TRO, no less - the National Guard and Marines didn't intimidate everyone. Trump's idiots are like the South just before the Civil War when they thought the North was spiritually weak and wouldn't fight. What's coming will be ugly, but will do the same way.
My point is first that the military can't "take over" a place like Los Angeles or Chicago. They are too big and too populous. We're talking about millions of people. Second, the troops that were deployed in Los Angeles suffered from horrible morale because they knew what they were doing is wrong. A majority of the Guardsmen from that unit whose enlistments will end this year have already said they won't reenlist. And third, the economy is about to tank and people will be furious because Trump promised to make groceries cheaper. The poop will hit the ventilating system for sure, but I think it will blow on Trump and MAGA.
The National Guard and the Marines in LA were also bored to shreds. They had nothing to do. Forbidden by law to enforce the law against a civilian population, all they could do was hang around federal buildings and protect those—which were never under any threat.
They were so bored, they resorted to malicious pooping.
Nobody’s taking over anything except for getting the illegals out and stopping crime Chris Matthews the other day one of your biggest supporters in morning Joe we’re talking about what the hell are the liberals thinking when they’re trying to fight against stopping crime? They are publicly defending the indefensible.
Stop talking about Democrats who aren't president.
What do you think of Trump shredding the Bill of Rights and other parts of the Constitution? Address that, Mr. Sender, or I won't favor any of your other posts with a reply. By the way, did you see I had to correct your math?
And here’s what’s happening in DC with a Biden judge who decided to release to 15 year-old accused of beating and carjacking
Two teenagers charged in connection with an attempted carjacking and brutal beating of a former Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) staffer earlier this month have been released from youth custody. A 15-year-old girl and a 15-year-old boy, who were charged with unarmed carjacking days after the attack, have been given lighter restrictions.
Since their arrest, the suspects had been held at D.C.’s Youth Services Center (YSC), where juveniles are placed in secure detention by court order. According to reports, Judge Kendra D. Briggs, who was nominated by then-President Joe Biden in 2021, ruled that one of the teens would be sent to a youth shelter while the other would be granted home arrest. And this is why crime continues in DC. Referred to commonly there . There is crime, and no punishment.
A photo of a bloodied Coristine went viral, sparking outrage over the city’s handling of crime and drawing President Donald Trump’s attention. The president slammed D.C., saying crime in the city was "totally out of control."
"Local ‘youths’ and gang members, some only 14, 15, and 16-years-old, are randomly attacking, mugging, maiming, and shooting innocent citizens, at the same time knowing that they will be almost immediately released. They are not afraid of Law Enforcement because they know nothing ever happens to them, but it’s going to happen now!" Trump wrote on Truth Social.
I think that’s great JOEL actually, I think that’s phenomenal. Just makes it much easier for the Republicans to win when you CHOOSE to live in ignorance
“Those who supported Trump from a belief that he would protect American business from state interference received yet another example of Snyder’s point today when Trump boasted that the government has taken a 10% stake in Intel, which builds semiconductors and chips. Trump says he intends to take similar stakes in other companies.”
They’re not protecting business; they’re protecting oligarchs. The administration’s motive is always for more control and the consolidation of power and $. Their motive is never about the well-being of ordinary Americans.
Government ownership or partial ownership can also be a facet of fascism, which advocates for the establishment of a totalitarian one-party state, and for a dirigiste economy (a market economy in which the state plays a strong directive role through market interventions), with the principal goal of achieving autarky (national economic self-sufficiency).
Words of the day-
Dirigiste: characterized by state control of economic and social policy.
Autarky: economic independence or self-sufficiency
The government bought 10% of Intel’s stock. The money goes to whoever sold the shares, and from then on the government is a shareholder—entitled to profits and votes on major decisions. Under this administration, a government stake in big companies looks less like support for business and more like a tool for political control.
Thanks. I still have questions, however. Where did the money come from to buy 10% of Intel stock? Who approved that? Then if the stock yields dividends, where does that money go? Who controls it? What can it be used for? Did the US do anything like this in the past?
This Trumpian regime is so blatantly and utterly corrupt. I don’t think any other administration could attain this level of depravity and malfeasance in such a short time, and they’re completely shameless and arrogant about all the shakedowns, settlements, grifting, grafting, scheming. So far, it’s just one unstoppable ripoff after another.
horhai, the speed at which this has happened is as a direct result of both Congress and SCROTUS being corrupt and handing this all to the Executive on a silver platter.
The GOP takes my breath away. It is morally bankrupt. And I’m tired of waiting for the old guard of my party to get up out of their recliners. We’re in the streets. Where are you?
I don’t believe it was “bought” or that is “paid for” in the usual sense of the word. There was some kind of a switcheroo involved. By the way, the government is us, supposedly! Which reminds me, I guess we are paying for all this occupation of cities that’s going on.
Nancy, just Google “how did the government get 10% of Intel Intel” and AI will give you describe what happened and how it happened. It doesn’t let me copy so I can copy it and paste it —anyway it’s long.
In another, given conditions of U.S. education, "a 10% stake in Intel" means no more than ten percent of any high school in America can possibly have any humane intelligence so long as testing so yet governs the formation of our living dead across all K-12.
Thanks for explaining this. I thought they just grabbed 10%, making the previous 100%, 90%. Not that paying for the shares makes this any less troubling. I am curious as to how corporate leaders are feeling now about their tax cuts.
It set up the far-right foundations that would first remove humanities from K-12 and higher ed, then steroid the corporate classes and money in politics.
Til now, when the U.S. government has reduced what it does for the American people – mainly smoothing the criminal in the White House’s being dictator, spreading his police state of sycophants, thugs, and terror.
Project 2025 set the blueprint. Donald reinforced that, ever praising Putin, Orban, Netanyahu, Bolsonaro, Bukele, Mohammed bin Salman, Kim, Xi, Erdogan, Modi, Sisi. Such authoritarians coordinated liars such as Donald, Todd Blanche, and Ghislaine Maxwell, opened further lies for money laundering, illegal arms deals, crushing of free universities and free press, and transfer of public assets to oligarch coffers.
77 million Americans voted for this. Did they think they were voting for positive agendas which Donald always lied about supporting? Did Dems stress his actual record to show it for the lying it always was?
Or did Dems attend the same schools most Americans attended, so over the decades most became unmoored from the novels, memoirs, and histories which could have kept many more grounded to actual American life?
Or has the Powell memo played out as intended? – today its anniversary, Aug. 23, 1971.
Shortly after the election results were in, a colleague who voted for Trump texted me, "The adults won't be in charge, but at least people will be able to afford bread." When Biden was president, this guy was always bitching about inflation, prices, and the like. Since Trump took over, not a peep. Last week he tried to tell me that "being Hispanic, speaking Spanish, hanging out in a Home Depot parking lot and approaching pickup trucks asking for work constituted "reasonable suspicion" that would justify ICE arresting them. I told him, "You believe dumbass shit that isn't true and are a low-information voter who doesn't think."
I didn't change his mind, but it felt good to say.
Joel, to my knowledge, I am the only progressive/Democrat in my entire extended family of christian nationalists. Both my parents voted for Trump in 2016. They both were disappointed in him, but would NEVER vote for a Democrat. Dad died in 2023 and Mom said she was going to "write in Mike Pence because he's a Christian." Her dementia progressed to the point that she had to enter assisted living and didn't vote in 2024.
The rest of my extended family, including my sister and her family, remain devoted Trumpers. We don't speak. I'm entirely comfortable with that arrangement.
It would be nice to benefit from the family relationships I observe my friends enjoying, but I long ago learned that we don't always get what we'd like. It's better to appreciate what we have than complain about what we don't have.
I’m in the same boat as far as extended family. All “Christian “ nationalists. I have an arm’s-length relationship with them: infrequent shallow contact. Fortunately my 3 grown children are Democrats and opposed to the trump regime. But not politically engaged as they are trying to make a living, take care of their families.
Deborah, that "trying to make a living" issue is one that many enthusiastic resistance warriors seem to overlook when they wonder why more young people aren't as engaged.
I'm sort of in the same boat. My family hails from the Reading, PA, area. My father joined the military in WW II and stayed in and made it a career. I was born in Naples, lived there and in Paris as a baby, grew up in the DC suburbs, lived in Hawaii for 3 years, went to college in NY state, lived for 7 years in NYC and now live near Los Angeles. My cousins' dad also served in WW II, but returned to the Reading area. My cousins never left and have lived there all their lives. I am a dyed-in-the-wool liberal, and my cousins are exactly what you would think they are. Cheers.
Interesting ... Dad was born in Nanticoke, PA and Mom was born in Pittsburgh. They lived in New York, Virginia and North Carolina, and retired in Carlisle, PA. Mom is still there. Extended family is scattered all across the U.S. from South Carolina to Oregon, New York to me in Arkansas.
Well if you look at a chart that a democrat national committee member drop by a state that they have to take back three minutes separate was posted because the guy was in idiot and didn’t realize what he did it showed Biden‘s prices going up from the day he took office took 20% on groceries, tripling mortgage rates and doubling the price of gas .. when inflation, Dwayne Biden was as high as 9%, but averaged about 7% pumps is 2.7%. All three indicators of the stock market of hip records. And the Dow is up 8000 points after the day you all cheered about an early April winter’s first tariff announcement came out and you were all cheering because it was gonna be the end for Trump.. and now it’s up to 8000 points since then
Mr. Sender, the market went up 12,600 points from the day Biden took office until the day he left.
Trump came into office promising to lower grocery prices, end the war in Ukraine and the situation in Gaza "on day one". Grocery prices are up and the two wars are still ongoing.
Why do you have no concerns over the Trump regime's shredding of the Bill of Rights and other segments of the Constitution?
I’m putting this link up top so you don’t completely ignore it as you love to do. Then you could read below and it describes exactly what happened.
Wow I’m gonna put up a nice little graph for you so you can’t think it’s coming from me came from a news network called CNN. But it was posted by a Democratic National Committee party member and as soon as he put it up, he took it down. So I have to make three points the route to mitigate some of your ignorance. Biden’s grocery prices were up 20% during his term. Mortgage rates tripled gasoline doubled, and the height of his presidency inflation was at 9%. Now it’s at 2.7.
The DNC’s big mistake right above check on the link you’ll get a kick out of it when you talk about prices.
3 1/2 more years of solid democracy, and if you guys aren’t careful, it’ll be the first time ever that a president actually hold both houses of Congress during the midterms
And I love when you people actually think you could negotiate your way off the toilet let alone negotiate a major deal as if you know what’s going on. Idiots. How many times have you been involved with a worldwide negotiation? And you’re sitting here in judgment, yikes
By the way, it’s gonna be hard to relearn or rewire your brain when you find out very shortly that Trump had nothing to do with Russia whatsoever that it was all concocted by TOP officials in the Obama Biden administration using the debunked steel dossier and now these people have now lawyered up Because their criminal charges pending
Ps. So were you happy about the market going up or not? Did you tell somebody that Trump’s doing a good job because the markets going up or did neither president have an impact on that?
And I’m gonna post for you, unfortunately for you a Democratic national Staffer that tried to post a link and a graph that showed that prices had gone up under Trump and unfortunately the graph showed four years of information and bingo. They pulled it down three minutes later when they realize what they had done they demonstrated that the prices went up the day Biden took office no surprise and continue to rise for four years and Rose an additional 2%..l after Trump took office versus the 20% it did during Biden.
It’s gone up 8000 points from the day you guys rejoiced when he first announced his tariffs IN EARLY APRIL AT 37000. and you were talking about the world. apocalypse, the exist existential threat to America, etc. etc. etc. 8 thousand points pal and Trump has had record all time highs in the stock market in the s&p and nasdaq DESPITE EVERY ECONOMIC PUNDIT PROJECTING. …IMMEDIATE RECESSION. Recession depression, inflation crisis after crisis of incorrect projections. Even Bill Maher and morning Joe said well we were wrong on that This far….. try math, Joel. And what was so disgusting and stupid were all you people celebrating the 1700 point decline in the market. Even the Minnesota moron Tim Walz was celebrating the decline while the inhabitants of both Minnesota and New York had hundreds of millions and dollars invested in the market in their 401(k) plans. Minnesota lost a quarter of 1 billion itself in one day and he is out there celebrating. You’re supposed to be the people that love America. Instead of wishing for the worst. By the way that hasn’t happened….
You guys should look this up. It’s actually pretty cool. There’s a lot of psychological journalism which you should really love that talks about as soon as somebody starts picking on the meaningless details of your ideas rather than the content of their ideas they’ve lost the argument. I voice text everything because I have so many of you lost soles I’m very busy.
When I made the comment to which you responded, I forgot something important. Mr. Sender uses a "voice to text" program that sometimes glitches or misinterprets what he said and puts down something that makes no sense. That might be what happened with "Dwayne". The difficulty for me is that he is a cult member who has apparently drunk massive quantities of the Trump kool aid, so to me much of what he posts makes no sense anyway. Cheers.
And I’m laughing my ass off at your comments about two wars. The war between Russia and Ukraine started under Obama, the war between Russia and Ukraine started under Biden. Russia confiscated Crimea during Obama’s term Russia invaded and took over a third of the eastern border of Ukraine under Biden’s term. And you’re talking about two wars what wars are we talking about now?
Instead of trying to make peace, Aidem sent them $170 billion to kill a quarter of 1 million more people are you happy with that? And now Trump is at least trying to stop it. Not to mention, he ended the nuclear threat coming from a rogue nation called Iran.
And he’s also been involved in creating 10 countries that have now resolved their conflicts through cease-fire or permanent piece because of Donald Trump
70,000 Cambodian monks got together two days ago to nominate Donald Trump for the Nobel peace prize as did both countries between Azerbaijan and Armenia that was going on for 27 years and was just resolved by Trump in public, but of course they didn’t show you that and Heather God forbid would ever mention that
President Trump is the President of Peace. As President, he has brokered peace between Azerbaijan and Armenia, Cambodia and Thailand, Israel and Iran, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, India and Pakistan, Egypt and Ethiopia, Serbia and Kosovo, and with the Abraham Accords.
You folks are so lost in your hate. It’s just sad to see.
I challenged you to address Trump's shredding of the Bill of Rights and other parts of the Constitution and gave you several chances to do so. You have instead talked about everything but those things. Further, you don't ever really address the points made by the author of the newsletter on which we all comment. I will now ignore you and encourage all others here to do the same. Your posts are simply a different version of playing with yourself.
So long, farewell, auf wiedersehen, goodbye, sayonara, au revoir, ciao, adios.
Joel, you can’t talk about something that never happened and none of what you suggest ever happened… if for example, you’re talking about due process he did nothing different than Obama and Clinton. Nothing.
What other bill of rights you’re talking about? I have no clue. Maybe you could delineate them so I can destroy your fantasy again
Thank you for pointing out the Powell memo anniversary.
I’m very familiar with the through line preceding and following the memo. I agree it clarified a core premise that is also shared by many who currently support Trump and therefore Project 2025. The premise is that “my” economic freedom is more important than “your” political freedom.
The freedom to acquire and exploit is more precious than the freedom to learn and explore. According to this premise, laws are designed to privilege wealth consolidation and property rights.
The years from Reagan through Trump 1 were primarily consolidation of the economic goals of the Powell memo. These sought to ensure that corporations controlled business.
But 11 of the sections in the Powell Memo focused on education, the Great enemy of American Enterprise. The new emphasis is on crushing access to a free education in all senses.
I'm a fan of American enterprise, but not of a small number of people largely controlling it. Genuine "free enterprise" provides robust opportunities for all. Monopoly and oligarchy do not, yet history shows how consistently monopolies of money and power have snow-balled to subjugate societies around the world, where law has not prevented it. It took decades to reduce the political corruption that characterized "The Gilded Age", and to build an expanding middle class. Collectively we were hoodwinked into throwing much of that progress away.
I think AT&T was the last big monopoly break-up, and that was lead by the DOJ supported by the FCC. I guess Biden's DOJ/FCC was trying with Google...but although the case is still "active". Will our current DOJ make it happen? I doubt it.
I think AT&T was on the back foot ever since the FCC's Cartephone decision in which AT&T pushed their luck too far. It broke their monopoly on telephone equipment and by extension on the telephone industry. I think it paved the way for upstart MCI.
Exactly. A "free county" is free of monopolization of state power, left or right. A free market is one that is free of monopolization of markets (and the two are related). I love free enterprise, as well a robust public sector. A free market is decentralized, not dominated by a few supermassive "black hole" conglomerates. That used to be widely acknowledged after the excesses and widespread corruption of "The Gilded Age".
Juliana there IS a huge gap between education and business. Educators work in the theoretical environment of a classroom and business operates in reality.
One teaches, the other, actually does the work and so there is a huge gap in understanding…. Education is not the enemy of free enterprise. It is the theoretical side of free enterprise. What you might enjoy is a little soliloquy from the movie back to school with Rodney Dangerfield. Although it is a comedy in a movie, there was a great lesson to be learned about the difference between business and education. I don’t have the time right now, but you can find the clip. I’m sure about Rodney Dangerfield as a huge business success delineating the exact difference between education and business. Not to be redundant but theory versus practice.
Phil, I sincerely doubt that 77 M American voted for him, just like the other 2 times, I doubt he got that many votes. There is something fishy all down the line. Operation REDMAP details how a surgical manipulation of the voters to compact and dilute opposition can be done to help manipulate results. It is only a small step from that manipulating the results. As Stalin said "It's who counts the votes that really matters."
This current reporting out of Harvard is heartening to all whose families, like mine, have been devastated by Alzheimer’s induced dementia. My heart breaks and my mind implodes under the realization that federal research budget allocations — like those which funded the underlying Alzheimer research grants to Harvard — to the NIH are being slashed 41% by Trump. Certainly he is a wrecking ball in the worst sense of the words.
Does constantly contextualizing and absorbing news of the advances of Late Capitalist Fascism constitute resistance? I feel like I'm reading catalogs of exponentially destructive evildoings, even as I step through constant small acts of opposition. I feel very dizzy.
I think it does. As others wake up, they’re going to need us to help them get up to speed on things. When they do wake up, it won’t help to judge them. I remind myself of the various times in my life when I was so consumed by my own personal affairs that I scarcely knew what day it was, even when it was my birthday! I’ve survived. 😏 (And I’m still catching up on the Clinton years.)
Our very own, homegrown Night of the Long Knives, complete with hordes of non-trained, unrestrained, poorly educated lumpenproletariat Brownshirts descending on cities, rounding up liberals, former loyalists and wrestling moped drivers to the ground with equal, gleeful abandon.
The world’s most insecure, fragile lunatic — the tenderest, most delicate snowflake of all — delivering an unequivocal message: ‘Hair Furor’s coming to get you, Barbara!’
As this bizarre scene from the old 1968 Night of the Living Dead keeps playing out, inquiring minds want to know — at what point-of-no-return, exactly, will “concerned” Senator Susan Collins realize we already reached Def Con 1 some time ago?
And what will it matter when she does realize it? She long ago became irrelevant. Another on a long list of Congress members who should never have been re-elected.
Yeah, well I was sort of speaking tongue-in-cheek! In truth, they’re all irrelevant now, all self-lobotomized, all to be remembered only as facilitatators and enablers.
The spiral continues as the regime goes lower and lower, grasping for the power of complete control of the capital, the justice system, the Congress, and the citizenry. There is no law they will not break or court ruling they will obey, no elected Congress that will stop them. The soon-to-be-armed troops in the capital are not trained for police work; one comes from a state that long ago proved it did not have control of its guard and murdered four students, state-sanctioned murder to teach a lesson to protestors.
It is going to be up to us We continue to protest, peacefully, in ever greater numbers, as long as we can. Until we realize that the protests do not work. Our patience will run out. And the war that has been on the horizon for months will be here.
Fortunately we have been through an intense and bloody affair, eh James. We know we don’t want that here. On the other hand they may be the ones holding the tail of the tiger. 300 million captives. 300 million Americans. 300 million pissed on people. 1917. We have plenty of basements. If a dog attacks you he will face up to the level of violence one presents. The teeth are reserved. If you can posture your way out do so. The minute you strike that dog it’s game on full on violence. He is going to strike the dog or back off. If he strikes it’s Katie bar the door. Just me, but I call them the Jack-off patriots they’re not the real thing.
It’s a war on intelligence, one. Two, and sadly related, will the testimony of a child sex trafficker that a person in power was always nice to her really exonerate one of the alleged clients?
Seems to me that the only way to exonerate, by perception, Trump at this point is to release something that reveals a plausible reason for their backpedaling and Trump’s bigly anxiety over this. If he comes out spit-shined and polished, would the QAnon crowd believe it? The rest of MAGA would welcome the relief of a positive spin, but I don’t think anyone else will. So, I figure they’re going to eventually release something, but not the details that have him going mad.
The people who spit and shined the boots of Hitler, Mussolini, Franco never spoke ill of their masters, either. It is common sense and legal strategy to understand the underlying motivations of any witness or coconspirator. Sometimes the suborning of a particular storyline can speak volumes about the converse reality.
Well…there are plenty of examples of litigated/ hushed adult women (and reality business laborers) being abused and exploited by him. It is his selfed professed MO. As to these Epstein files…of course my point is that the silence of the lambs can be read differently if you understand that the MO is to payoff and or intimidate adverse witnesses. I of course cannot/would not remark on his actual guilt of a specific crime against a child. I am making only a point about weight of evidence when it comes to attempts to absolve him of guilt by character evidence through a source whose own character has been adjudicated to be despicable.
Sleep well. They always say, where there is smoke there is fire; in a world of money for power and power for money i wonder if that the opposite rule rules.
Ivana, first wife of Trump, said he raped her near the end of their relationship. But she's not around anymore to attest to how nice a guy he is. E. Jean Carroll won a lawsuit against him for sexual assault. There are surely many more women that don't want to relive or go up against Trump again.
It is time. Each of us must ask ourselves: Are we prepared to fight—not write, not protest or demonstrate—the monstrosity that is dismantling our nation?
So much scary in this summary it's hard to focus, but this still leaps out as the scariest: “If you want to have a coup against the constitutional order, you want to control the capital city. And if he has control of the policing in the city of Washington,... how do you stop him? Who's gonna tell him to leave the White House?" - George Conway.
Trump is an old man. He will not be in power for long. We should be prepared to fight what comes after him. Vance and others are already laying the groundwork.
Vance has zero power of lunatic charisma. He and the other troglodytes are going to have to do it with guns and tanks.
Indeed. The Maybelline Wormtongue has all the personal magnetism of an emetic without the musical skills of being able to pump an invisible concertina back and forth like the double-wattled Mango Pustule could.
A couple of days ago here in occupied Washington, an enraged bro sporting Crocs and a man purse unleashed a baguette at a uniformed officer in sheer frustration. Tomorrow I fear it may not be just a baguette. Be strong, one and all.
I fear it will be just a baguette. The government has made it clear they plan to bend over and take it from the dictator wannabe and will go along with his every illegal whim. Some people some where should start planning on how to remove or secede from this shitshow before its too late.
Gavin Newsom is not bending over and neither will California. Neither will Pritzker.
As a Californian, I’d absolutely love it if we could secede from these fascist slimeballs controlling this country. They hate us anyway and we PAY to play with these losers. It’s sheer mental and emotional torture being forced to contend with such lowlife scum: I want them all out of my life.
Mayor Wu in Boston is standing up to the turd too. I just wish our Gov Healy was more outspoken - I think she's keeping her head low to hope it all flies over. But this is one battle where you need to stand up and be counted, or you will be crushed.
I love them!
Unfortunately secession doesn't work. Just figure out how many Auld Phartz like us who need their Social Security and Medicare reside in every state - including the Blue States - and ask yourself how the secessionist states make up for that? They don't. And because of that, secessionists are laughed out of the room (as they should be). We are stuck in this country and that means one or the other of us has to end in control. And that means all you old hippies are going to have to pay attention to all us old Vietnam vets to learn what you're going to need to survive the civil war.
If you end up with a Civil War, you're idiots. What you need is a Revolution; you need to fight the ones on top, not each other.
Indeed. What’s this weird 18th century fetish with “secession”anyway?
Every city in Texas is blue, not red. Even Dallas is periwinkle. We are everywhere….
I don't know squat about guns, but could be a decent medic(retired doc)...and I can cook.
If at first you don't secede, try, try again.
They’re coming for your (our) social security anyway. Do you think they’re going to protect you?? Wake up. They’re NOT.
What we all need to collectively do is STOP PAYING OUR FEDERAL TAXES and join forces with all other blue states.
P.S. We are already at war.
OPM is in charge of my retirement, Vought just can’t wait to take that away…
Yet hope springs eternal
I live with an old Vietnam vet, TC. We will all have PTSD, if we don’t have it already.
No! People are not going to take this--there will be an uprising!
There already is. Hopefully it can remain non-violent. If so, the good ole USA will have another opportunity to show the world how a world-class democracy can work.
It is time that war stops being the method of choice for human culture problem-solving.
It is almost too late
The repugnants have done everything they can think of to destroy the nation since 1/20/2025. It doesn't make sense for the Oligarchs because they enjoy prospering from government contracts, if the economy implodes as it going to do if trump continues his stupid economic policies, we will have a depression and will probably drag the rest of the world down with us.
The case of the sandwich guy shows the DoJ's ridiculous overreaction by charging him with a felony and firing him from his job at the DoJ.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/washington-dc-sandwich-posters-sean-dunn-b2811250.html
The Navy Times (Dunn is a former Air Force veteran who served assignments in Afghanistan and received a number of medals including the Korean Defense Service Medal, the Global War on Terrorism Service Medal and the Air Force Good Conduct Medal) called it "assault with a Deli weapon".
R J Netto, then perhaps he can lead the Baguette Brigade (or better yet, the Sub Squad. I'd sign up.
The enemy within.
Thanks for detailing more of his background. An honorable veteran with more than a distinguished service record. I hope I didn’t take away from that. A metaphor for where we are right now.
He's become a hero on social media. And compare what he did with this shit from ICE or whoever.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/K9B8L3vDLFI
Thank you Russell. I forwarded it to family & friends
It's, love it, my first smile of the am. Maybelline Wormtongue and the comment on his personal magnetism.
Bolton is a card carrying Republican. A leader of the Neoconservatives.
This bretheren should rise to his defense. Where, oh where, are GWB and his brother JEB Bush?
Michele, what a wonderful picture I have in my head. Maybelline Wormtongue is Perfect! I have been saying for a while that a lot of T supporters/ dirty workers have split tongues!
Hello, It’s Come To This! Just got a heads up that Obama has been declared a traitor. Who will be his security detail? We should be in the streets for Nicole Collier (TX “rebel”).
Since you live there, keep us updated with what’s really happening, in contrast to what 47 wants us to think.
Do you know when I was 12 or 13… I would call people names that’s what children do. Got a mirror? Instead of being strong, why don’t you realize he’s doing good things like stopping crime like closing the border like Setting stock market records. You guys should get that new dictionary by third wave.org maybe they’ll teach you a thing or two
I won't argue with you. That would be useless. But one thing I WOULD say is that he is a convicted criminal and is not legally able to be president. Period.
Rick is too easy.
He's like one of those annoying little yappy dogs that bark at everything and has no bite.
I own him, you can to.
I'm with Leslie
Yes he is President how is that possible? Lololol. I keep telling you guys try living in today’s reality, not in Yesterdays hate
So I make the point below to gary when the president has sex with an intern IN the White House WHILE married.. has a 10 year affair with Gennifer Flowers PAYS Paula Jones, $800,000 for an illicit affair (The exact same thing that Donald Trump was accused of, but never proved)
that was OK back then…. and then lies about it all UNDER OATH which is a felony is he qualified to be president? And by the way, he was one of my three favorite presidents, despite his wandering PP and a couple of mistakes.. One which actually is the cause of the Russia, Ukraine war, and the other is the cause of Trump tariffs because of NAFTA. But
The problem with all you TDS filled and hate filled individuals is you bring up things that are NONSTARTERS. Which defy logic. DONALD TRUMP IS YOUR/OUR PRESIDENT….. 77 million people knew that every conviction was BS and voted for him anyway, but you don’t seem to get that and that’s a fact. And you obviously didn’t read the findings of the panel that just threw out the 500 million dollar award… If his case(s) werebrought elsewhere versus New York…they would’ve never made it to the court room!
So try to deal with reality before your eyes, which is Trump is doing a great job as president on almost every measure. And if Biden or Obama were doing exactly, and I mean exactly the same thing from switch doing you’d be putting him on your shoulders and carrying him around DC
Crime was falling in DC before Trump ordered the National Guard in and they haven't actually done anything to reduce crime so he can hardly take credit. In any event, real-time crime statistics like the ones he's been citing recently simply aren't collected in the manner that would allow this sort of claim so he's clearly just making up the figures.
He does this so often, it's hard to understand why even people like you can't see through him. Another example was his claim that the US had provided far greater levels of military aid to Ukraine than Europe. the figures he cited were $350bn against only $100bn. An analysis from the Kiel Institute for the World Economy shows that these figures were just complete fabrications.
https://www.ifw-kiel.de/publications/news/ukraine-support-tracker-europe-now-leading-spender-on-weapons-production-for-ukraine/
Trump lies so often that the only reasonable conclusion that people can draw about you Rick is that you are also an arrant liar.
Oh boy Rick is back!!!
My little doggie.
Bark like a little doggie Rick, bark, bark, bark
You know you have a lot of bravado for a loser. Also you are pretty well deluded, into thinking you mean anything in this conversation.
But I do admire your persistence in continuing to dig yourself your own hole…. I think they call that self deprecating self Loathing. Take your pick
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Bolton illegally retained classified information!! Says the felon with boxes of classified documents in his bathroom. Dr. Richardson, do you shake your head and say WTF like the rest of us do when reading our fascist president’s rants??
Trump and his cadre of fools must have forgotten about that. There are still hundreds of top secret and classified documents missing, many of them likely in the hands of Putin and other authoritarian leaders.
When does MSNBC replay DT’s invitation to Russia in 2015 to capture HRC’s emails? I remember seeing it there.
America has become a totalitarian state. No doubt about it.
“Look at Hungary. Orbán won democratically in 2010. By 2011 he'd rewritten the constitution. By 2012 he controlled the media. By 2013 he'd gutted the judiciary. It's 2025 and he's still in power. The EU has been "very concerned" for fourteen years. They've written strongly worded letters. They've held meetings. Hungary is now a one-party state in the middle of Europe and everyone just... accepts it.”
Something to think about:
Once fascists win power democratically, they have never been removed democratically. Not once. Ever. I know that sounds impossible. I kept digging, thinking surely someone, somewhere, stopped them. The actual record is so much worse than you think. The historical playbook is useless here. We're in unprecedented territory. But that also means the old rules about what's possible might not apply.
Christopher Armitage is a seasoned United States Air Force veteran with a Master of Science Degree in Homeland Security.
https://open.substack.com/pub/cmarmitage/p/i-researched-every-attempt-to-stop?r=1lmb6&utm_medium=ios
Option 1: The Blue State Coalition
California's economy is bigger than the UK's. New York controls global finance. The blue states collectively represent over 60% of America's GDP. They could, theoretically, make the federal government irrelevant.
Imagine if California, Oregon, Washington, New York, Massachusetts, and others started coordinating directly. Ignoring federal mandates. Creating their own interstate compacts for everything from climate policy to civil rights. They already started this with climate agreements when Trump pulled out of Paris. But I'm talking about going much further.
State-level cryptocurrency to avoid federal monetary control. State-funded healthcare systems that ignore federal restrictions. State-level immigration policies that simply refuse to cooperate with ICE. Make the federal government have to physically enforce every single policy, stretching their resources to breaking.
The precedent? The way Northern states nullified fugitive slave laws in the 1850s. The way states are currently ignoring federal marijuana prohibition. But coordinated and comprehensive.
Option 2: Selective Compliance and Irish Democracy
The Irish called it "Irish Democracy" when they were under British rule, the silent, dogged resistance of millions who simply ignored laws they found illegitimate. Don't protest. Don't riot. Just don't comply.
Red states need blue state money. Blue state taxes fund red state governments. What if millions of people in blue states simultaneously decided to claim exempt on their W-4s and simply... stopped paying federal taxes? Not as protest but as a coordinated "forgetting." Overwhelm the IRS. Make enforcement impossible.
Doctors in blue states could ignore abortion restrictions. Teachers could ignore curriculum mandates. State police could refuse to enforce federal laws. Not dramatically, just... incompetently. "Sorry, we couldn't find them." "The paperwork got lost." "Our systems are down."
Make every single act of authoritarian control require physical enforcement, then make that enforcement impossibly expensive and difficult.
Option 3: Secession
We already have two incompatible visions of what America should be. One side wants a multi-ethnic democracy with a social safety net. The other wants a white Christian ethnostate with unlimited corporate power. These cannot coexist indefinitely.
What if blue states started seriously discussing secession? Not threatened as political theater but actually planned. Constitutional conventions. Referendums. Negotiations for national debt division. Military base transfers. Currency agreements.
Yes, the last time states tried to leave it caused a civil war. But that was over slavery, with clearly defined geographic boundaries and two relatively equal economic systems. This would be the economic powerhouses leaving the welfare states. What would the red states do, invade California? With what money?
The mere serious threat might be enough to force structural changes. Quebec nearly left Canada twice and got massive concessions both times just from credible threats.
Option 4: International Intervention
This has never happened to a nuclear power, but there's a first time for everything. Blue states could request UN election monitoring. They could sign their own climate agreements with the EU. They could create alternate diplomatic channels.
California could request Canadian peacekeepers for "election security." New York could invite European observers for "financial transparency." Make it embarrassing. Make America's collapse visible to the world. Force the international community to pick sides.
No, the UN can't invade America. But they can isolate it. Sanctions work. Ask Russia. International humiliation works. Ask South Africa under apartheid.
And:
The phrase “soft secession” makes Democrats nervous. They prefer “resistance” or “federalism” or any other euphemism that doesn’t acknowledge what’s happening. But when democracy fails, when fair elections become impossible in certain states, when federal funds are withheld as political punishment, states don’t have many options left. The infrastructure is built. The legal precedents are established. The money is there. Blue states have spent two years sharpening these tools….As blue states prepare to deny federal agents access to their databases, their highways, maybe even their airspace, the soft secession isn’t coming. It’s here.
https://open.substack.com/pub/cmarmitage/p/its-time-for-americans-to-start-talking?r=1lmb6&utm_medium=ios
What I fear, Kristin, is the millions of migrating dumb white people.
You know the red states are infested with the worst schools, the worst health conditions, the most guns and gun violence and Fentanyl and other opioids. Right now they coast because the blue states subsidize them. They also float because of the arms industry and long traditions of local-economy-enlivening military bases.
Free the blue states from the MAGA debased and the MAGA debased will migrate to where they can get better welfare, better health care, better everything.
You can bet, though J.D. Vance, Kevin Roberts, Stephen Miller, Russell Vought, Hegseth, Bondi, Blanche, and Patel corral power, they're all totally incompetent and uninterested in providing the agencies and administrative intelligence necessary for actual public programs. All the more reason red state losers will flow massively to the blue.
But where will they get their armies from? 55% of the National Guard that were up for renewal that have been deployed within the US have chosen to quit. That's up from about 12% before Trump.
They ALL swore allegiance to the US Constitution and Trump et.al. are asking them daily to violate their oath. Remember Viet Nam, how people hated the soldiers that served there cursing at them even though they were forced into servitude. Reinstatement of the draft will soon follow. That's the message that needs to be spread on college campuses across the US.
Who, in their right mind will sign up for duty with the military or ICE or the border patrol? They have to be so desperate financially to sign up. The insane $50k signing bonuses and the 6 figure salary are not going to be enough to keep them once they are forced to sleep on concrete floors in cities hundreds of miles from their homes.
And their "other" employers are going to lose patience and fire their asses even though that may be illegal.
They will get the Proud Boys and other self-styled militias to do the president’s dirty work. There are enough of them eager to brutalize and kill their fellow Americans, especially people of color.
Don't forget about the sociopaths who love to gang up and beat the hell out of people. They will soon start abusing citizens and will enjoy themselves while deny us our Constitutional rights.
I’m in red Texas and would crawl to a blue state, not all painted as red are, but sadly you are right about some. BTW, Texas has had an influx of Californians moving in and they love the vipers here. Go figure…
That's why my son and his family left texas. Rotten schools, white supremisists, religious bigotry and all around a-Olery. They are fortunate as he can work anywhere.
California should be happy to be rid of them
Amen Phil. There's not a shred of decency in the bunch. Maybe states should have an 'immigration' questionaire for the movers? Proven income level? Education standard?
Well, phil, that would be a good welcome line in the news you dumb white people. My way of putting it would be Phil. How could you be such a dumb racist?
Budapest has not accepted it: https://www.hrw.org/news/2025/06/30/budapest-pride-2025-a-record-crowd-stands-up-for-democracy
Thank you for this. Encouraging.
Alexandra do you happen to live in America?
You’ve clearly never lived under a totalitarian state, have you?
Alarm is certainly justified and there’s much we need to be doing. But millions haven’t been disappeared into labor or concentration camps and every house doesn’t sport a swastika, and the streets aren’t filled with red banners proclaiming “The Party and the People Are One!” from every building.
A little self-education about basic definitions and distinctions among totalitarian, authoritarian, one-party, parliamentary, constitutional monarchies, presidential regimes, etc. might be helpful before you post.
You should try downtown Chicago with ICE sirens blaring much of 24 hours. Next DT promises the National Guard, It’s Come To This. I have a vivid imagination, know what KGB means and that DT is following instructions from the Kremlin. I read as much of “Moscow 1937” as I could bear and I have seen the photos of the Politburo with more bodies than heads. How much more do you think I need to know? As an ancient female, all I can do is write postcards to help get out the vote, which may not take place in 2026 if we do not fight back vigorously.
He may be a Kremlin patsy, but we are not. Not a matter of knowing more, but living under. My own memories include being a student in Moscow in 1974 when all those red banners flew from every public building. There are critical distinctions going on, which justified anger tends to blur. And keep writing those postcards!
The power of the pen is mighty, Virginia, keep wielding your peaceful “weapon” in support of democracy!!!!🖌️
And you can blame any behavior by ice on the top of the head of Joe Biden. We didn’t need this force of ice when Obama was president. That way we didn’t need this force of ice when Bush was president deadweight? Ooooooooooops
I’m not deaf and blind, or an ostrich
I have and it’s horrible.
You don't know what totalitarianism is.
Kristin, it may be smart to have a general strike before we resort to the more radical options. If enough citizens participate in a strike, we can shut down all business, nationwide we might still avoid massive bloodshed.
These strikes were very effective. Could we get the majority of Americans to participate?
1975 Icelandic women's strike - Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Icelandic_women%27s_strike
Women across Iceland, including the prime minister, go on strike for equal pay and no more violence | AP News
https://apnews.com/article/iceland-women-strike-equal-pay-970669466116a2b1a5673a8737089d46
Montgomery bus boycott - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montgomery_bus_boycott
Birmingham strikes campaign - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birmingham_campaign
If we accept this-----as a country? I am getting the fuck outta here
bye bye. The problem with that Joanne is discriminatory is so great, but even the haters refused to leave. But it’s a free country and there are things such as cold one-way tickets they’re half price actually go for it.
Worth a read
No doubt about it? Seems like somebody might refer to you as a slow pony… if this were Annette totalitarian state, every single word you posted above would be for bidden, and they would come for you and throw you in jail or worse. But amazingly that’s not the case how is that possible?
The funniest thing for me, is if Joe Biden we’re making DC safer or had closed the border, your people would be putting him in on your shoulders… that’s why I continue to say that liberals tend to live at the intersection of hypocrisy and double standard.
Reported as Exhibit 2, 8/23/25
Vance doesn't need charisma, Alexandra.
Look at Maduro.... Hugo Chaves had the charisma, oodles of it, Maduro just took over what he built.
Maduro has the charisma of a chomping sow.
And yes, nobody believed it would happen there either.
But Christopher, you're comparing apples and oranges, culture-wise.I think you're underestimating the religious zeal MAGAts have for the orange Jesus and the ick just about everyone feels for Vance.
Also, we're seeing how charisma and a sense of humor and irony can light even an exhausted people up: https://www.facebook.com/reel/24513297164932544
It's a powerful weapon against the Maybelline Wormtongue(my new favorite name for him, thanks It's Come to This!
Trump has the fanatic following, but he had a lot of help putting that together and sabotaging the alarms. A lot that help are wealthy manipulators who mostly stay out of the news. They are not entirely invisible, but that's not what holds the attention of the news biz, which is increasingly a subsidiary,
I wonder if Bibi is still calling him regularly for advice? The UN has declared a state of famine in Gaza. Netanyahu says this is just a dirty trick designed to spread antisemitism.
(Source: Le Monde).
Trump has his 30% - and his poll numbers are dismal.
Dark Money - Jane Mayer
Democracy in Chains - Nancy MacLean
Kochland - Christopher Leonard
What I see unfolding is a group that will eventually control the whole thing with a a figure head. A cabal commission like the commanders in the handmaid's tale. You know life imitating art.
All true, Alexandra, but the fascists may have already taken control by the time trump kicks the bucket, we need to move immediately to preserve our democracy. November 2026 may be far too late.
My opinion, honestly, as you should seek some medical help
I think we're entering the era of the good German. Know who your friends are.
That is being revealed daily via social media. Men I once considered friends are now the enemy. Fewer women, mostly the wives of those men, but still; if your friends are former military or law enforcement, double vet them.
And in my opinion, you become a total fanatical raving lunatic when you refer to anybody today as an inference to Germany of the 30s or 40s.
That's what they're planning on doing.
Yeah.
Well, here we go with delusionary imagination is running wild once again, like children seeing unicorns on the clouds. If my typewriter needed ink to respond to the most insane, ridiculous out of control, lunacy here , I would need new typewriter ribbon every single day.
Put away your crystal ball there TC. I am America back from the dead on the stench of a Joe , Biden disaster.
Hey Rick, how's that "I'll end the war on Day One" thing going?
Can you see the puppet strings? Or are your too busy yapping like a little doggie to notice?
LOL
Have you ever worked for a living? If you did, you would know that every organization has a goal, a business plan and a structure on how to get there. Somethings are short term. Somethings take a little bit longer.
But your ignorance is widely demonstrated here. If you are the owner of a business and you mandate things that doesn’t mean that they happen tomorrow but doesn’t mean it’s not your goal though does it?
Once again, Trump is not the ruler of Russia and he’s not the ruler of Ukraine and we wouldn’t even be there headed not been for Bill Clinton, which has been confirmed by every single liberal pundit on TV lately that refers back to the disarmament of Ukraine by Bill Clinton in 1994 I believe. And like I said earlier, GARY, you have a lot of bravado when you keep losing and 3 1/2 years from now you’ll still be losing.
They’re going to do it with a “return to sanity”. They will pin all the crazy stuff on Trump (while praising him to the skies) and start to undo the chaos and rebuild America. Of course it will be rebuilt to suit their own ambitions but it will be so much better than Trump that we’ll swallow it - or at least they think we will.
I’m still waiting for any Republican leaders to stand up and question the fascist tactics and firings coming from the WH. It’s absolutely unbelievable.
By the way, the third way A consulting group which the Democrats hired to give them suggestions as to what would be a good wade forward and removing some words from the vocabulary. Fascist was one of them.
Obviously, you didn’t get the memo lol
Which is exactly what they will do. They didn't release all those J-6 "patriots" for nothing did they?
With alas, facial recognition software.
Imagine that flaccid flip-flopper Vance telling Zelinsky to behave! Yuck!
You mean the Harvard graduate that came from nothing? that one. Who hasn’t flip-flop a day in his life
That is the plan. Control the capital city, control the government.
And they will. Hegseth is putting loyalists in key positions.
You mean they way they have always planned?
Sending ones son or daughter off to fight a war in some foreign land is one thing. Getting a email informing you that their unit was just blown up is bad. But, getting word that ones husband just had his legs blown off during some riot on 4th and Vine, downtown.., and getting transported to a local hospital near you...?.., now that will be hard to take. Won't it MAGA?
I believed that. I still believe he has no charisma however with the lowering of requirements to be FBI there will be an influx of thugs all too happy to be part of the group in power. And they know that if they lose power they are cooked. So I think a blood spilling civil war is in our future. I cannot understand how Europe could sit idly by however, because if the US, which has now proven how unstable it will forever be given how easy it was for a crazy mean regime to dig in, continues to bully as it will, Europe will be in big trouble. The only benefit to FBI and I am guessing CIA to become watered down yahoos is that it will be easier for foreign spies to infiltrate
Trump apparently thinks he’s immortal, based on how he’s acting. When voters were foolish enough to elect him—and yes, people who choose authoritarians are fools—my first thought was that we’re now stuck with him for the rest of his natural life.
May it be short
In today’s letter from Robert Hubbell, trump at some point said he was going to live to 200. There are members of the cult that probably believe that.
And if he doesn’t (he’s got numerous co-morbidities), I foresee a Weekend At Bernie’s situation developing.
Will his corpse smell any different?
It might smell better. I have had exposure to both.
As scary as this sounds- it made me chuckle
I think he actually believes he’s going to live forever.
Let's not wait. The time to resist is today!
Resisting with “peaceful protests” is not going to do it. Many leaders and experts said that the military would reject unlawful orders. I believe we are witnessing that they are not rejecting unlawful orders and are not staying in their barracks. The military, our next door neighbors, are not going to protect us. How does that make you feel?
Why should the military protect us when the supremes won't?
That’s a good point, but the conventional wisdom a while back was that the military will not follow an illegal, unconstitutional order. That there was no reason to be concerned that he would use military force against us. My point is that like the supreme court, the military is being turned against us.
I couldn't agree with your concern more, Mike! From my perspective all our "estates" have failed us..., so far. The oligarchs, Christian nationalists and The Patriarchy are winning. But they haven't won. Even if it's in tie dyed shirts and bell bottoms, we have to show our extreme but peaceful disapproval for this right-wing coup on our country if we really want to keep our freedom. When Steven Miller and company overplay their hand and protests become killing fields, we'll see what "the military" (and courts, corporations, media and universities) really think. For now the military is just following orders AND the law. Of course, opinions about what is lawful are polarized like everything else and this all could lead to horrible outcomes most Americans would like to avoid. Thus the tempered response so far from the resistance, the ongoing extortion of companies and the accelerated creep into full-fledged dictatorship.
Amen. If I could be of help, I would volunteer. No matter the cost. I would love to be a national hero! LOL
I hadn’t realized I had been waiting.
And they have brains and are quite nasty !
Susanus, it isn’t the orange taco we must deal with, it is the machine, the Republicans in congress and in statehouses (think Texas and Florida, etc) and especially the MONEY behind him we must fight tooth and nail!
he is the distraction to what is really going on. All the others in this admin from the Heritage Foundation are the puppeteers.
And we should all—every one of us—be telling our representatives and senators that Trump lacks the mental capacity to be president, and that they should call for invoking the 25th Amendment, even if it means we are saddled with JV Dunce.
MSNBC says that Vance has taken eight vacations in the seven months he's been in office so if he has a plan then it seems to be to steer clear of Trump for as long as possible.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUbUAp6TBsM&t=109s
susanus, my view exactly. It is clear that Vance, et.al. are getting ready.
Fascism Has Come to America: How Bad Will It Get, How Long Will It Last, and What We Can Do About It
We are no longer inching toward authoritarianism. We are living in it.
https://essayx.substack.com/p/fascism-has-come-to-america-how-bad
And , susanus those are the demented psychopaths pulling dump truck’s strings. Watch out for opportunist vacuous ( the so called vp). He will do and or say anything to make himself feel like a man. So sad ,these dickless psychos taking out on the Constitution their lack of human self.
Adults ( really really Adults) are there any?
I agree that Trump’s days are numbered but there is a long list of others to take his place who are smarter, more devious than he.
We can’t wait. We need action NOW.
Yes, susanus, Trump is old, but the 77 million people who voted for him still prefer him to any Democrat. The 77 million are not going away. It appears to me that things are more likely to get worse than better. We’ll find out in November of next year whether US democracy still has some hope in hell of surviving the onslaught of Hair Furor and his acolytes.
Drumpf is not in power now. He has not been for awhile. He is a distraction and has been all along. Look behind him, look ahead of him. Dead or alive, he’s the same very bad joke. Why do you imagine Putin has such a big smile each time he sees Lil’ Donny?
It must drive him further insane knowing that he is powerless to avert his own mortality. We need to leverage this. He is far more scared of all of us than we should be scared of him.
IN PLAIN SIGHT
Here we are, America, at the tail end of August, and the Trump White House is treating the Constitution like a cocktail napkin at Mar-a-Lago. Forget subtlety. Forget the pretense of law. They are raiding John Bolton, of all people, as if the man is a cartel kingpin instead of a cranky neocon with bad mustaches and worse ideas. If even Bolton, a right-wing hawk who despises Putin, isn’t safe from Trump’s vengeance tour, then who is?
This isn’t about justice. It’s about showing everyone who’s boss. Trump is turning the FBI into his personal goon squad, the Justice Department into a circus, and the military into an occupying force for blue cities. You don’t have to be a scholar of authoritarianism to see what is happening. George Conway, who caught the Bolton raid on video, called it what it is: the beginning of a coup.
And what do we get from Trump in the middle of all this? A giddy show-and-tell of a signed photo from Vladimir Putin, like a lovesick teenager clutching a yearbook scribble. While groceries skyrocket and people beg for relief, the president plays autocrat cosplay with real guns, real raids, and real consequences.
Make no mistake: the coup is not creeping. It’s strutting down Pennsylvania Avenue in broad daylight.
Even more important than counting votes. Counting tanks.
And emphasizing to our spheres of influence what this DC "crackdown" is really prelude to.
The United States currently has approximately 4,640 to 4,657 main battle tanks, specifically the M1 Abrams series, in its arsenal as of 2025. Additionally, the U.S. possesses the largest number of ground combat vehicles of any NATO country, with about 399,127 units. This broader category includes not only main battle tanks but also armored personnel carriers, infantry fighting vehicles, mine-protected vehicles (like MRAPs), and various other support and combat vehicles.
After the Civil War, Bruce, many cited the North's overwhelming numbers and resources.
Not so, emphasized Grant in his best-selling and now Library of America classic memoirs. The North won for two reasons. The men in its armies could read and write, and they believed in what they were fighting for.
I still wonder, to this day, why we compromised with the Confederate traitors. We never should have. Never. We wouldn’t have their arrogant offspring ruling in Congress from the southern (Confederate traitor) states today. And we wouldn’t have the electoral college. Also: Ford should never have pardoned Nixon. I believe these crucial mistakes in history led us, not in small part, to where we are today.
Don't do that - not against each other - against the top ones who make the current bad decisions is the much better way, imo.
But who will want to be in the military and be shot by Americans even if they are in tanks.
Of course, this is a wet dream for the Proud Boys and other militias.
GJ, you answered your own question.
Ooof. Obviously I think the counting is needed. But… that description. My blood runs cold.
Me too Juliana. But even if Trump can Federalize every type of Police officer and Military Tank, and soldier it will be extremely difficult for him to "occupy" the big cities in America unless the public works with him, and if it comes down to that, there will be open warfare in the streets. We'll know soon enough. In the meantime: Resist! Be disobedient!
Right on, Bruce!
I live in Northern California, there are plenty of trucks around with neo-nazi stickers. There are lots of civilians waiting to be deputized for maga
Yeah Frida I know the So-Cal part of Cali better, and it's the same. 77,000,000 of them all over.
How many of those war machines are in the US?
Of the 4600, all in the USA. Some of them are taken for sales shows, etc. But thats the best number...that does not include Forward deployment, Reserve, Mothballed older M1 Abrams, as far as I can figure. Probably not something that is 100% static. Anyways a lot.
Yeah Bruce, it might be a good idea to learn how to manufacture weaponized drones. The Ukrainians have been quite successful in battling tanks and other heavy duty weapons using drones.
We will have to have a lot of them it seems.
✊
Right. We have no supreme court. We only have supreme idiots (minus 3 women on the court)
We have six authoritarian coup enablers and three actual justices. The six “conservatives” don’t deserve the title “justice.”
As Ayn Rand said. “It’s not who is going to let me, it’s who is going to stop me.” Apparently no one, George.
and the media, all he needs is the military fully on board - that may be a harder nut to crack - and then he is off, up up and away, they won't need macTACO-tits mussolini anymore, they don't want a dynasty, they want total control, and trump's offspring do not have the intelligence needed to dynasty the fuck out the US.
I was surprised and a bit horrified to learn who Gavin Newsom's first wife was.
I don't think that is significant in these times. Do you?
This, thank you. No more distractions and the EPSTEIN files please.
Me, too. I had no idea!
Kimberly Guilfoyle - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kimberly_Guilfoyle
Wow!
If the United States survives the onslaught of tRump, we need major amendments to the Constitution: 1. The POTUS must be made explicitly subject to the laws and Constitution of the US. 2. DOJ must be brought out from under the Executive Branch and a new mechanism for selecting the AG needs to be implemented 3. Same for the Inspectors General. 4. A mechanism for forcing a vote of no confidence and a forced by-election needs to be implemented. 5. The Presidential Pardon must be ended. I'm sure others can add to this list.
Who called in Conway ? Patel ? Or Bolton ? Maybe Conway. Bolton has his sources you know. If he is as smart as Yale LawS holl advertised him to be, then he will have prepared for this
He's been forced to drop plans to takeover the DC police.
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/08/16/bondi-backs-off-dc-police-takeover-keeps-chief-in-place.html#:~:text=As%20part%20of%20an%20agreement%20struck%20Friday%20between,order%20that%20claimed%20federal%20control%20of%20the%20department.?msockid=13378ba6f3b860b635ee9e79f29f61ee
“In a new order Bondi issued Friday evening, the Department of Justice directed Bowser to order the police department to assist in immigration enforcement operations and to comply with database inquiries and requests for information from any federal law enforcement entity.”
Doesn’t sound like the “win” I was expecting to read about.
That sounds like a rather dubious instruction given that immigration is a federal responsibility although I suppose it would fall to the police to protect ICE staff from attacks while undertaking their duties.
Absolutely what I was going to point out. conservative lawyer George Conway, who helpfully videoed the FBI raid on John Bolton’s house this morning, put it: “If you want to have a coup against the constitutional order, you want to control the capital city. And if he has control of the policing in the city of Washington,... how do you stop him? Who's gonna tell him to leave the White House?"
A well regulated militia? Now I understand the reason for the second amendment.
Alexandra, it is hard to “like” such a clearly gloomy prediction. Once one adds Timothy Snyder’s take on our likely, if not inevitable future (from HCR’s notes: https://snyder.substack.com/p/the-strongman-fantasy) the whole situation we find ourselves sliding into, no, being inexorably dragged into, is truly appalling! We must resist, resist, resist at every turn!
Yes they are telling us loudly and clearly. Why are we sitting on this as they gather more power goon squads with weapons... and are weaponizing the parts of the government that they hold. Thew more years and we will be a totally different country.
Alexandra, ALL this makes me want to cry for all those caught in his cross firing, people of color, religion, sexual orientation, the poor and needy and mostly all those who speak out against him.
I knew from the get go the man is evil but people poo pooed my thoughts/beliefs about him. Look where it has landed us.
I might have mentioned this last week or perhaps on TCinLA's "That's Another Fine Mess" but a friend saw it first and told me "he's building a moat around himself".
Kinda explains the converting the Rose Gardent into Mar-a-Largo North. His keepers may keep him in confinement there. World's most expensive Alzheimer's unit.
I do love how many men have felt the need to explain to me, a woman, what I should be scared of here. As if it somehow never occurred to me. I started working on foreign residency back in 2016.
Meanwhile, support Newsom's redistricting!
Offence / Defence
Plan for Offence:
https://substack.com/@anchorlightpublications/note/c-147588197?r=73vlo&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action
Plan for Defence:
https://substack.com/@lisawinfeld/note/c-114133014?r=73vlo&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action
Seems you have taken a significant step of late, Heather, toward describing what's happening as a full-blown coup. As have many others. I believe a revolt against this cruel perversion of a presidency is gathering steam very rapidly.
For old times sake, I recently took a spin through old ITN film clips of the heady days just prior to — and immediately following — the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989.
Right up til the very end, even as it was clear to everybody that there was no longer any there there, even when West Berliners had cut a big slab out of the Wall with chainsaws, hammers and chisels, yanking it down with ropes, young men scrambling on top and stomping up and down on it, East German border guards were still spraying the Wessies with fire hoses in absurd, pointless acts to stave off the inevitable, while Stasi officers photographed the “lawbreakers” for their dossiers.
The myth of control is so very important to despots. The weaker the regime, the more desperate the last-minute gasps for breath. The image of authority has to stay intact until the very last second, as it were. I think we have not yet reached that Moment of Complete Absurdity, though Trump seems to be moving toward it at lightning speed.
Yeah, I remember the time very well, and it happened lightning fast - the East Germans protested to weeks every Monday in huge, peaceful protests, but the final fall took most West-Germans by complete surprise (word of the year was "Wahnsinn!" (Insanity!) in Germany). The end was basically one TV Interview.
Oh, it would be wonderful if you could solve this bloodlessly in the US as well, but I can't see that happening at the moment.
I had the shock of seeing former East Germany traveling in from the Polish border in 2015. Shock: all green and a big wind farm within 5K of the border!
How many here were in East Berlin before it fell?
I was in neighboring Czechoslovakia as the Wall fell.
What a time as the season's first snow was falling then, and all Czechs and Slovaks were out celebrating.
I was there but back in 1984. It was a sad atmosphere as I walked around by myself. I visited a woman who was desperate to get out. My guess is as I was told by a judge in the full German Judicary I was probably followed and on the Stasi radar. That was the time when Putin was there. Still kind of scary to me even now.
No, I think you guys might be locked in a time capsule so it’s really not your fault it is no longer 1989 it is 2025 and for the next 3 1/2 years Donald Trump will be the president of United States. Try supporting America for a change instead of criminal aliens and protecting criminals in general like you’re doing in Washington DC which Chris Matthew said was defending the indefensible
Trump pardoned 1,500 criminals involved in the 6 January 2021 siege of the Capitol builidng. You conveniently forget that he himself is a convicted fraudster. He's also pardoned a whole range of criminals, including fraudsters like himself.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trumps-pardons-fraudsters-white-collar-criminals/
Your head is stuck up your arse when it comes to Trump.
Fuck.. you’re such an idiot
Nice. You are proving that you cannot debate in the Arena of Ideas. You only call names and sensor. That is OK. What policy changes would you propose? Resist will give us President Vance.
Maybe you’re right.. I’m not a strong debater.. but I am a good shit kicker.. so do yourself a favour and fuck off who ever you are..
I guess that we will agree to disagree.
34 felonies - does that ring any bell?
yip, yip, yip...
Is that you Little Ricky at the window yipping at the passing traffic?
Bark little doggie , bark.
1989? 2025? or 3.5 years to 1984? Big Brother loves you.
"The myth of control," ICTT: what's opposite that?
I say, essay writing -- where one acquires skills to analogize, digress, remain open to serendipity, remain patient with contradictions, complications.
And what part of education most reinforces "the myth of control"? You know, ICTT, Diane Ravitch answers that most thoroughly in "The Language Police." Aptly titled.
Yes, Heather's reporting now, rather than theorising.
Most of what she's been doing for the past 8 months has been reporting, with her mission being to give some future historian what a 19th century expert historian thinks of what is happening in this country right now.
We do get some historical context and comparisons these days, but her mission focus has changed.
You do? What do you see that I don't?
You mean what am I seeing that feels like a rapidly building revolt? It's all around us seems to me, from persistent in-the-street protesting to more and more voices coming out more and more boldly. Yes, I'm eternally optimistic, and I recognize that can color my sense of what's happening. But even if I'm getting ahead of myself, I believe the revolt is inevitable. And I know I may be wrong. FWIW.
Plus newly emboldened actions by governors, like Newsom, Pritzker, Ferguson. Feels like a boiling pot to me. I don't know how it's going to turn out, but I can't see things continuing on like this before something momentous happens.
We will know we have turned the corner when the Republican Congress shows signs of revolt. The midterms are our last chance to do this bloodlessly. If we do not turn out the cowardly Republicans who will not stand up against this assault on democracy and replace them with sane and brave Congressional Representatives it is we who will have failed to stop this coup.
How do we, who dissent against this despot Trump, manage a revolt when he has the nuclear codes and the best trained military at his disposal? How? Have you read Timothy Snyder’s Bloodlands? There are always lots of people willing to do the job of destroying people on behalf of a strange leader. He has barricaded himself in D.C. and is staring to go after well known critics like Bolton. How is it possible to stop this takeover?
My late husband read Bloodlands and I think Anne Appleblaums book as well. I knew through the book and film Everything is Illuminated. The picture of a field where a village stood all I needed to know. I am not in despair mode but prepared for not mighty wind a mighty struggle.
Ditto. ??????? please elaborate Ronald. Excited to hear what you have.
Ditto x me
Ronald , we’d better ….how incredible it feels to watch a maniac tear us apart at the seems. Every thinking person has huge amounts of depression weighing on them. Where are the sane adults and the departments who simply say “f__ __k NO you gibbering psychopath. You are not my president and all of your gang will be paying the price for this treason! Where!?!?!?!?!?!?!?
Yes, overthrow dictator Donald and his authoritarian regime! Old hippies unite!
I truly hope so.
You need to come out of your bubble. Jeez. all of you. The perversion is in the mirror try using the vocabulary of the third way.org your own political consultant organization that is repeating what Ive said now for months.
silly puppy. Did you pee on the floor again?
No one, not even Third Way is yipping like you.
Bark little doggie, bark
Nobody repeats what you say.
Use/share this spreadsheet (bit.ly/Goodtrouble) as a resource to call/email/write members of Congress, the Cabinet and news organizations. Reach out to those in your own state, and those in a committee that fits your topic. Call. Write. Email. Protest. Unrelentingly. We deserve better ❤️🩹🤍💙
The FBI must know very well who and what Trump is, and yet they have become his tools.
The FBI is totally illegitimate now: any agency in this fascist regime is just doing Trump’s disgusting, lowlife bidding. It’s pathetic. Nothing is legitimate now that the douchebag DOGE mission gutted every once legitimate agency and packed it with MAGAts (just as Project 2025 said it would) and then stole all of our data in the process.
Which the deliberate complicity of the Congressional majority, $COTUS majority and a crop of billionaires. Not to mention self-proclaimed "Christian" churches at war with the "better angels of our nature".
https://apnews.com/article/conservative-christians-sin-of-toxic-empathy-c9ab96faf99605e010f487df61d92d8f
Who and what is the FBI now. Your comment presumes the answer to that question and the facts are not in evidence. There is no "FBI" any more. Not as it was since Hoover. Or before for that matter. There is now just a state police loyal to one man and lead by a political ally of his. A hatchet man. Those who have not left yet or been kicked out and who refuse to obey orders will be punished.
Hoover was a total creep as his history with Civil Rights advertises, but I think the FBI had been doing a better job of serving "We the People" until Trump.
I agree, from what I can see, but what are their options, the ones who know what they are doing is wrong??? What can they do but either follow orders or walk away…quit???
Exactly. They can quit! They are powerless unless they do the bidding of Supreme "Leader". It's something to see all these "men" willingly cede their personal power to one sorry excuse for a man, when what they actually want is for white men like themselves to hold ALL the power. There is none so blind as he who will not see...
There are also other options - general strike, Go-Slow etc. Unionising would probably we a good idea, as long as its still legal.
At some point there is a duty to speak out. Alexander Vindman must have known he was walking into a hornet's nest, but that's exactly what liberty and justice for all often depends on. At some point, we decided, that "just following orders" becomes untenable. Is it acceptable to do anything to protect ones job, in comparison to dedication of one's life, fortune and sacred honor?
I'm not saying that's easy or that I am sure of my own supply of courage in a similar situation, but I think those who accept the responsibility of official protectors of our society need accept an explicitly higher standard of professional behavior than most, and to first of all strive to do no harm as a requirement of a civilized society, not just internal professional performance review. Patent misuse of entrusted power, which I see as the essence of human "corruption", is self-evident here.
Disgusting!
However, the "new & improved" FBI will have or already do have dossiers on any number of citizens, maybe including some of us. I have a giant box of old photos, maybe when they storm my little mobile home they will get a hernia carrying it out so that they can find evidence of my duplicity when all they need do is read any number of comments I've made digitally!
Are you kidding me jail you mean the 51 liars that lied about the authenticity of Hunter Biden’s laptop when they had it in their possession and said it was Russian disinformation, and they knew it wasn’t that’s not a tool. But it’s coming home to roost. While You people call it revenge/ it’s nothing more than Justice
Megan, this is the crowbar we needed. Professor Richardson’s receipts are clear: Texas just ran a mid-decade power grab to flip five seats while people of color drive the growth, and D.C. is staging control with uniforms while crime sits near modern lows. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again If you have to lock the room to pass a map, you didn’t win you stole the room.
Use your sheet today and run one clean ask:
“I’m a constituent. Put in writing (by [DATE]) that you oppose (1) map-rigging that gives unequal weight to Black and Latino votes, and (2) using federal law enforcement for political payback. Also demand a public release schedule for the Epstein files.”
Teach two terms when you share this: habeas corpus (court key when the state grabs the body) and time, place, and manner (how we protect the vote).
Paper wins. Share this, make one call, drop your result so the next person has a path. www.xplisset.com
Still waiting pal!! Where is your Russian revolution resolution? ? Nothing but a empty suit… instead of trying to make America great all you do is tear it down Gerrymandering goes on on both sides of the aisle but if you take a look at states like Connecticut or Massachusetts and realize that Donald Trump got 40 to 45% of the vote and yet have ZZZZZZZERO Representatives in Congress from that state, who are Republicans? You should be ashamed of yourself with such hypocrisy
Hahaha
The little doggie likes his own comment.
LOL
Truth of the matter is I open this email first because I thought it was Saben who is in my opinion, literally off the rails on a track to nowhere
I was hoping to be able to answer to her, but instead I got somebody even worse so she is now moved up a notch and you got what you needed
I did get what I needed, I own a little doggie.
You are all mine.
I may have to share you, but I'm willing to make that sacrifice to hear you squirm and yip.
No, what I love is the lack of yours. Which, of course, is no surprise to anyone here.
You're right again! No one is surprised by Rick the Little Trump Doggie eating his own poop.
Yuck Rick, yip, yip, yip, stopping just long enough to eat his own poop.
Bad dog, bad dog' LOL
Not very original they gary that’s exactly what I said a little dog eating his own vomit. A lost soul in the Everglades.
I light of publicly known events I am pessimistic about ever seeing a fully unredacted set of Epstein files with respect to Trump, but it still should remain an issue. It clear that Trump shared some of Epstein's creepy attitudes toward women, to which he gave a nod, and it's hard to interpret the circumstances of the intervention in Maxwell's sentence as anything but corrupt.
Have you ever gone into the history books to see how many politicians, major politicians, including presidents and Congress people have had questionable relationships with women while they served? Three notables would be John F. Kennedy, William Jefferson Clinton and Gary Hart. But there are many on both side sides of the aisle. You should Google that then you might tone down the rhetoric. The list is almost endless to be honest with you. And you historians should know.
Little doggie yips about Clinton them eats his own poop...you have another new owner.
Oh Little Doggie, eating your own poop, yuck.
I just received 200 postcards from turnoutpac.org.
Still making an effort to turn this shitstorm around.
Protest, my husband and I have our homemade signs by the front door.
Goodtrouble is great.
Also great is to see footage of the protests in Israel.
Always great - Heather Cox Richardson.
Thanks for the updated list.
You’re welcome! I think I’m done adding to it 🤣
Harassment is also a good distraction. Release the Epstein files. And they should release T's medical files while they're at it. He can't hold a thought, he seems to believe he ended 6 wars, and why is his hand so bruised (and badly covered with make-up?)
It's up to 10 wars now…
Thanks! I hadn't heard that. What a hero, huh?
Now it's 10 wars. Even a few that Trump has dreamed up.
And he either cannot pronounce the names of the countries properly or gets them totally wrong…
And don't forget, he won the war on drugs with his tariffs on Canada and Mexico. /S
Well, there was the battle of Bowling Green in his first occupation. Maybe that was in the imaginary war that he thinks he ended?
I'd have to go back and find the post that one of my MAGAt retired cop friends made (and I don't want to do that) but they listed some conflicts in African countries and a few other places that I didn't bother to look up on a map; I think two were tribal conflicts. That is what they are being fed by their propaganda sources.
Hell, Trump put an end to WW lll (for now) by not declaring it (over cold pouch of french fries.
🤣🤣🤣
I am certain we will never see anything derogatory about Trump in any files that are released…
We don't need the files! We have the victims or their legal depositions and charges. We need to believe them. What could possibly be more daming than what we already know?
Sept 3 press conference
Exactly. Believe the women.
completely agree -- they will be cleansed of that and others will remain hidden. I hope some victims will come forward to testify.
Trump stopped 10 children from being abused.
There are so many other wars he could add to his list. Our own Civil War has never truly ended (it has just taken different forms). I would personally campaign for him to win the Nobel Peace Prize if he would end the Civil War!
Oh, you're wrong, haven't you heard? He is now saying that he may have ended as many as 10 wars!!!!! I'm surprised his AI team haven't come up with a picture of him looking all saintly & humble with a halo & a dove above his head, you know, like the dove that indicates "the holy spirit"! His mania & narcissism knows no bounds!
He has so many religious memes with halos and angel wings.
from shopping mall displays.
I can't wait for Trump to have a major medical event where hopefully he is comatose and the incompetent fool Vance takes over. He was born with his foot in his mouth and is far from a Fascist leader.
Is it? Again? Still? Cannula.
Write to the Nobel Nomination Committee.
War is Peace.
I watched the Bulwark this morning on Substack. They were reporting live as the FBI Raid on Bolton’s home took place. George Conway was reporting live from across the street from the house. This was definitely for show and to send a loud and clear message. It is extremely alarming.
Time to get off our asses. This sick, twisted old double-wattled sack of shit in his “EVERYTHING TRUMP SAID WAS RIGHT” made-in-China hat isn’t fooling — neither can we.
My own take from inside our occupied capital about The Date That Will Live In Idiocy (the day the APCs arrived on the National Mall):
https://substack.com/home/post/p-170917645
Yeah, it’s the only way George Conway has any meaning in life anymore but too bad there are no more stories about George Conway. He lost twice he lost his wife and he lost his self-respect and dignity?
Retribution on letterhead.
Professor Richardson, you drew the line. The Bolton raid, the intel purge, arming the D.C. Guard, and the new probes of political opponents are not loose ends; they’re one policy: punish enemies and stage control of the capital while crime sits near modern lows. Add Russia’s public snub, the Oval Office Putin photo-op, and the slow-walk on the Epstein files and you get the story: power first, truth later.
Let’s just say it plain: if you need uniforms to prove you run the capital, you don’t. If you lock rooms to pass maps, you didn’t win…no…you stole the room.
One step today: call your House member and ask for a public, dated statement on two points—(1) opposing the misuse of federal law enforcement for political payback, and (2) demanding a release schedule for the Epstein files. Ask that it be put in writing so constituents can see it.
Paper wins. Always. www.xplisset.com
My congress critters have all come out with statements demanding the release of the files, and have been vocal critics of the presence of troops in D.C. They're all on board. What worries me is that some of those guard troops are from Ohio. And those of us who remember know what happens when you give guns and ammo to the Ohio National Guard and ask them to be police. People die.
Four dead in Ohio?
Every fucking Republican governor that is sending troops to DC has multiple cities with higher violent crime rates than DC.
Oh how I remember that -- I was a student at the University of Michigan when that awful shooting happened.
Truth never if Trump gets his way. "Republicans" are burying history and science.
Paper does not win EVER against Dictators! As Professor Snyder has taught us, it is only "LEIB" that wins. Massive amounts of people who disobey the Dictatorship from Strikes to standing in the streets. Put your "LIEB" into it people. (for explanation if you are wondering what the heck I mean read "On Freedom".)
So to speak you think we’ve crossed the rubicon?
already wrote mine. Every damn day do the same.
Geez, why did you mention the Mar-a-Lago raid? Hmmmmm. Guess what we’re finding they had no reason to search Mar-a-Lago. Ooooops. The fun in that venue is just beginning
Yeah, you’re right but violent crime is down 50% and carjackings are down 88% and for the first week in a long time not one single murder when two weeks ago they were 10 murders in five days. Uh oh.
These people actually think they can take over blue cities inhabited by millions of people with a few hundred "cracker" National Guardsmen from South Carolina, West Virginia, and Ohio? I've got news for them, if they went into some neighborhoods in South Los Angeles, they would be outnumbered and outgunned. And even ICE knows enough to stay out of Boyle Heights.
Like the great clip from “Casablanca”…
Major Strasser: “Are you one of those people who cannot imagine us in your beloved Paris?”
Rick Blaine: “It’s not particularly my beloved Paris.”
Strasser: “How would you feel about us in London?”
Rick: “Ask me when you get there.”
Strasser: “And New York?”
Rick: “Well, there are certain sections in New York, Major, I wouldn’t advise even you trying to invade…”
My nephew is a cop in a major US city. He has been on raids where they have confiscated hundreds of illegal weapons. Imagine if all of the gangs joined together to fight the Fascist Trump regime.
How about if all the churches united in nonviolent resistance instead.
As well... blend power and common sense.
I immediately thought of these lines, ICTT, as I read Joel Parkes'.
Thank you for posting them in full.
Wonderful film, wonderful lines. Thanks for recalling them.
What year was Casablanca? Leave it there. Try living in reality of today.
Go sit on a swastika, Rick.
I truly feel sorry for your children.
You have no idea how well off my children are both in rearing, Basking in the family, love and monetary success. So much that you know
The fact that you hate so much that you have to refer to anything by a swastika shows how racist/anti-semetic you folks really are just under the surface
Assholes can’t tell the difference between hatred and contempt. They never could. It’s what makes them assholes.
If you keep posting here, one of these days, you’ll actually make sense
The meantime, you should have some respect for sale, posters here
It’s Mr. asshole to you. Most of the people here have contempt and hatred for Trump and contempt and hatred for the Republican party NO MATTER WHAT THEY DO… that’s the problem asshole. And that’s the only problem
It’s the intimidation that is important.
Hi, Annie -
I understand that, but while ICE scares people in Los Angeles because they're totally denying due process and just grabbing people for looking Hispanic - in defiance of a TRO, no less - the National Guard and Marines didn't intimidate everyone. Trump's idiots are like the South just before the Civil War when they thought the North was spiritually weak and wouldn't fight. What's coming will be ugly, but will do the same way.
Joel, taking over cities with the military (which will likely occur) scares the hell out me, and I don’t even live in the US!
Hi, Annie -
My point is first that the military can't "take over" a place like Los Angeles or Chicago. They are too big and too populous. We're talking about millions of people. Second, the troops that were deployed in Los Angeles suffered from horrible morale because they knew what they were doing is wrong. A majority of the Guardsmen from that unit whose enlistments will end this year have already said they won't reenlist. And third, the economy is about to tank and people will be furious because Trump promised to make groceries cheaper. The poop will hit the ventilating system for sure, but I think it will blow on Trump and MAGA.
The National Guard and the Marines in LA were also bored to shreds. They had nothing to do. Forbidden by law to enforce the law against a civilian population, all they could do was hang around federal buildings and protect those—which were never under any threat.
They were so bored, they resorted to malicious pooping.
I am going to add "malicious pooping" to my list of witty retorts! That is splendid and I thank you!
Nobody’s taking over anything except for getting the illegals out and stopping crime Chris Matthews the other day one of your biggest supporters in morning Joe we’re talking about what the hell are the liberals thinking when they’re trying to fight against stopping crime? They are publicly defending the indefensible.
Those are your former liberal leaders.
Stop talking about Democrats who aren't president.
What do you think of Trump shredding the Bill of Rights and other parts of the Constitution? Address that, Mr. Sender, or I won't favor any of your other posts with a reply. By the way, did you see I had to correct your math?
Yeah, I’m out of the 3 million people that Obama deported only 25% got to process go look it up pal go look it up.
Got due process. Not my words go look up the links. This is what ignorance causes
Just like Obama and Clinton did no difference
Whatever you need to tell yourself.
OK point out to me what the difference is go ahead give it a shot
IIRIRA A bill by Clinton, allowing for mass deportation and faster deportations
And the links for Obama or right there for you to see but you dare not go. Whatever you refuse to tell yourself, how’s that better?
And here’s what’s happening in DC with a Biden judge who decided to release to 15 year-old accused of beating and carjacking
Two teenagers charged in connection with an attempted carjacking and brutal beating of a former Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) staffer earlier this month have been released from youth custody. A 15-year-old girl and a 15-year-old boy, who were charged with unarmed carjacking days after the attack, have been given lighter restrictions.
Since their arrest, the suspects had been held at D.C.’s Youth Services Center (YSC), where juveniles are placed in secure detention by court order. According to reports, Judge Kendra D. Briggs, who was nominated by then-President Joe Biden in 2021, ruled that one of the teens would be sent to a youth shelter while the other would be granted home arrest. And this is why crime continues in DC. Referred to commonly there . There is crime, and no punishment.
A photo of a bloodied Coristine went viral, sparking outrage over the city’s handling of crime and drawing President Donald Trump’s attention. The president slammed D.C., saying crime in the city was "totally out of control."
"Local ‘youths’ and gang members, some only 14, 15, and 16-years-old, are randomly attacking, mugging, maiming, and shooting innocent citizens, at the same time knowing that they will be almost immediately released. They are not afraid of Law Enforcement because they know nothing ever happens to them, but it’s going to happen now!" Trump wrote on Truth Social.
Do you know JOEL when I was 12 or 13? I call people names. Time for you to get out of the sandbox
Thanks for the advice. I'll ignore it, just as I ignore almost all your posts.
I think that’s great JOEL actually, I think that’s phenomenal. Just makes it much easier for the Republicans to win when you CHOOSE to live in ignorance
“Those who supported Trump from a belief that he would protect American business from state interference received yet another example of Snyder’s point today when Trump boasted that the government has taken a 10% stake in Intel, which builds semiconductors and chips. Trump says he intends to take similar stakes in other companies.”
They’re not protecting business; they’re protecting oligarchs. The administration’s motive is always for more control and the consolidation of power and $. Their motive is never about the well-being of ordinary Americans.
Isn’t government ownership or part ownership of business normally defined as “socialism”?
(The bogeyman word).
Logic is unpatriotic.
Government ownership or partial ownership can also be a facet of fascism, which advocates for the establishment of a totalitarian one-party state, and for a dirigiste economy (a market economy in which the state plays a strong directive role through market interventions), with the principal goal of achieving autarky (national economic self-sufficiency).
Words of the day-
Dirigiste: characterized by state control of economic and social policy.
Autarky: economic independence or self-sufficiency
I so don't understand what a 10% stake in Intel means. Please help me if you can. Where does that money go? Who gets to use it?
The government bought 10% of Intel’s stock. The money goes to whoever sold the shares, and from then on the government is a shareholder—entitled to profits and votes on major decisions. Under this administration, a government stake in big companies looks less like support for business and more like a tool for political control.
Thanks. I still have questions, however. Where did the money come from to buy 10% of Intel stock? Who approved that? Then if the stock yields dividends, where does that money go? Who controls it? What can it be used for? Did the US do anything like this in the past?
This Trumpian regime is so blatantly and utterly corrupt. I don’t think any other administration could attain this level of depravity and malfeasance in such a short time, and they’re completely shameless and arrogant about all the shakedowns, settlements, grifting, grafting, scheming. So far, it’s just one unstoppable ripoff after another.
horhai, the speed at which this has happened is as a direct result of both Congress and SCROTUS being corrupt and handing this all to the Executive on a silver platter.
The GOP takes my breath away. It is morally bankrupt. And I’m tired of waiting for the old guard of my party to get up out of their recliners. We’re in the streets. Where are you?
I don’t believe it was “bought” or that is “paid for” in the usual sense of the word. There was some kind of a switcheroo involved. By the way, the government is us, supposedly! Which reminds me, I guess we are paying for all this occupation of cities that’s going on.
I’m sure we are. I don’t remember giving anyone permission to use my money this way. Do you?
Nancy, just Google “how did the government get 10% of Intel Intel” and AI will give you describe what happened and how it happened. It doesn’t let me copy so I can copy it and paste it —anyway it’s long.
Maybe in one scenario, Greg.
In another, given conditions of U.S. education, "a 10% stake in Intel" means no more than ten percent of any high school in America can possibly have any humane intelligence so long as testing so yet governs the formation of our living dead across all K-12.
Thanks for explaining this. I thought they just grabbed 10%, making the previous 100%, 90%. Not that paying for the shares makes this any less troubling. I am curious as to how corporate leaders are feeling now about their tax cuts.
Who do you think?
Aug. 23, 1971, Lewis Powell wrote his memo.
It set up the far-right foundations that would first remove humanities from K-12 and higher ed, then steroid the corporate classes and money in politics.
Til now, when the U.S. government has reduced what it does for the American people – mainly smoothing the criminal in the White House’s being dictator, spreading his police state of sycophants, thugs, and terror.
Project 2025 set the blueprint. Donald reinforced that, ever praising Putin, Orban, Netanyahu, Bolsonaro, Bukele, Mohammed bin Salman, Kim, Xi, Erdogan, Modi, Sisi. Such authoritarians coordinated liars such as Donald, Todd Blanche, and Ghislaine Maxwell, opened further lies for money laundering, illegal arms deals, crushing of free universities and free press, and transfer of public assets to oligarch coffers.
77 million Americans voted for this. Did they think they were voting for positive agendas which Donald always lied about supporting? Did Dems stress his actual record to show it for the lying it always was?
Or did Dems attend the same schools most Americans attended, so over the decades most became unmoored from the novels, memoirs, and histories which could have kept many more grounded to actual American life?
Or has the Powell memo played out as intended? – today its anniversary, Aug. 23, 1971.
Shortly after the election results were in, a colleague who voted for Trump texted me, "The adults won't be in charge, but at least people will be able to afford bread." When Biden was president, this guy was always bitching about inflation, prices, and the like. Since Trump took over, not a peep. Last week he tried to tell me that "being Hispanic, speaking Spanish, hanging out in a Home Depot parking lot and approaching pickup trucks asking for work constituted "reasonable suspicion" that would justify ICE arresting them. I told him, "You believe dumbass shit that isn't true and are a low-information voter who doesn't think."
I didn't change his mind, but it felt good to say.
I have been doing the same with my MAGA christian Nationalist daughter for years now. Not a chance if I want to see my grandchildren.
Joel, to my knowledge, I am the only progressive/Democrat in my entire extended family of christian nationalists. Both my parents voted for Trump in 2016. They both were disappointed in him, but would NEVER vote for a Democrat. Dad died in 2023 and Mom said she was going to "write in Mike Pence because he's a Christian." Her dementia progressed to the point that she had to enter assisted living and didn't vote in 2024.
The rest of my extended family, including my sister and her family, remain devoted Trumpers. We don't speak. I'm entirely comfortable with that arrangement.
It would be nice to benefit from the family relationships I observe my friends enjoying, but I long ago learned that we don't always get what we'd like. It's better to appreciate what we have than complain about what we don't have.
I’m in the same boat as far as extended family. All “Christian “ nationalists. I have an arm’s-length relationship with them: infrequent shallow contact. Fortunately my 3 grown children are Democrats and opposed to the trump regime. But not politically engaged as they are trying to make a living, take care of their families.
Deborah, that "trying to make a living" issue is one that many enthusiastic resistance warriors seem to overlook when they wonder why more young people aren't as engaged.
Hi, Dale -
I'm sort of in the same boat. My family hails from the Reading, PA, area. My father joined the military in WW II and stayed in and made it a career. I was born in Naples, lived there and in Paris as a baby, grew up in the DC suburbs, lived in Hawaii for 3 years, went to college in NY state, lived for 7 years in NYC and now live near Los Angeles. My cousins' dad also served in WW II, but returned to the Reading area. My cousins never left and have lived there all their lives. I am a dyed-in-the-wool liberal, and my cousins are exactly what you would think they are. Cheers.
Interesting ... Dad was born in Nanticoke, PA and Mom was born in Pittsburgh. They lived in New York, Virginia and North Carolina, and retired in Carlisle, PA. Mom is still there. Extended family is scattered all across the U.S. from South Carolina to Oregon, New York to me in Arkansas.
Joe Pl, you hit a BIG nail on its head! My 2 siblings are such!
Well if you look at a chart that a democrat national committee member drop by a state that they have to take back three minutes separate was posted because the guy was in idiot and didn’t realize what he did it showed Biden‘s prices going up from the day he took office took 20% on groceries, tripling mortgage rates and doubling the price of gas .. when inflation, Dwayne Biden was as high as 9%, but averaged about 7% pumps is 2.7%. All three indicators of the stock market of hip records. And the Dow is up 8000 points after the day you all cheered about an early April winter’s first tariff announcement came out and you were all cheering because it was gonna be the end for Trump.. and now it’s up to 8000 points since then
Mr. Sender, the market went up 12,600 points from the day Biden took office until the day he left.
Trump came into office promising to lower grocery prices, end the war in Ukraine and the situation in Gaza "on day one". Grocery prices are up and the two wars are still ongoing.
Why do you have no concerns over the Trump regime's shredding of the Bill of Rights and other segments of the Constitution?
And the Dow has not gone up 8,000 points since Trump took office. Nowhere near it.
I’m putting this link up top so you don’t completely ignore it as you love to do. Then you could read below and it describes exactly what happened.
Wow I’m gonna put up a nice little graph for you so you can’t think it’s coming from me came from a news network called CNN. But it was posted by a Democratic National Committee party member and as soon as he put it up, he took it down. So I have to make three points the route to mitigate some of your ignorance. Biden’s grocery prices were up 20% during his term. Mortgage rates tripled gasoline doubled, and the height of his presidency inflation was at 9%. Now it’s at 2.7.
https://moneywise.com/news/economy/democrats-grocery-prices-social-media-blunder
The DNC’s big mistake right above check on the link you’ll get a kick out of it when you talk about prices.
3 1/2 more years of solid democracy, and if you guys aren’t careful, it’ll be the first time ever that a president actually hold both houses of Congress during the midterms
And I love when you people actually think you could negotiate your way off the toilet let alone negotiate a major deal as if you know what’s going on. Idiots. How many times have you been involved with a worldwide negotiation? And you’re sitting here in judgment, yikes
By the way, it’s gonna be hard to relearn or rewire your brain when you find out very shortly that Trump had nothing to do with Russia whatsoever that it was all concocted by TOP officials in the Obama Biden administration using the debunked steel dossier and now these people have now lawyered up Because their criminal charges pending
Ps. So were you happy about the market going up or not? Did you tell somebody that Trump’s doing a good job because the markets going up or did neither president have an impact on that?
And I’m gonna post for you, unfortunately for you a Democratic national Staffer that tried to post a link and a graph that showed that prices had gone up under Trump and unfortunately the graph showed four years of information and bingo. They pulled it down three minutes later when they realize what they had done they demonstrated that the prices went up the day Biden took office no surprise and continue to rise for four years and Rose an additional 2%..l after Trump took office versus the 20% it did during Biden.
It’s gone up 8000 points from the day you guys rejoiced when he first announced his tariffs IN EARLY APRIL AT 37000. and you were talking about the world. apocalypse, the exist existential threat to America, etc. etc. etc. 8 thousand points pal and Trump has had record all time highs in the stock market in the s&p and nasdaq DESPITE EVERY ECONOMIC PUNDIT PROJECTING. …IMMEDIATE RECESSION. Recession depression, inflation crisis after crisis of incorrect projections. Even Bill Maher and morning Joe said well we were wrong on that This far….. try math, Joel. And what was so disgusting and stupid were all you people celebrating the 1700 point decline in the market. Even the Minnesota moron Tim Walz was celebrating the decline while the inhabitants of both Minnesota and New York had hundreds of millions and dollars invested in the market in their 401(k) plans. Minnesota lost a quarter of 1 billion itself in one day and he is out there celebrating. You’re supposed to be the people that love America. Instead of wishing for the worst. By the way that hasn’t happened….
Bill of Rights. Constitution. Nothing else.
Who's Dwayne Biden?
Dwayne Biden is one of Mr. Sender's imaginary friends that lives only in his mind.
You guys should look this up. It’s actually pretty cool. There’s a lot of psychological journalism which you should really love that talks about as soon as somebody starts picking on the meaningless details of your ideas rather than the content of their ideas they’ve lost the argument. I voice text everything because I have so many of you lost soles I’m very busy.
If Rick's not more careful he could spawn a whole new conspiracy theory in the MAGA faithful around this previously unknown member of the Biden clan.
When I made the comment to which you responded, I forgot something important. Mr. Sender uses a "voice to text" program that sometimes glitches or misinterprets what he said and puts down something that makes no sense. That might be what happened with "Dwayne". The difficulty for me is that he is a cult member who has apparently drunk massive quantities of the Trump kool aid, so to me much of what he posts makes no sense anyway. Cheers.
And I’m laughing my ass off at your comments about two wars. The war between Russia and Ukraine started under Obama, the war between Russia and Ukraine started under Biden. Russia confiscated Crimea during Obama’s term Russia invaded and took over a third of the eastern border of Ukraine under Biden’s term. And you’re talking about two wars what wars are we talking about now?
Instead of trying to make peace, Aidem sent them $170 billion to kill a quarter of 1 million more people are you happy with that? And now Trump is at least trying to stop it. Not to mention, he ended the nuclear threat coming from a rogue nation called Iran.
And he’s also been involved in creating 10 countries that have now resolved their conflicts through cease-fire or permanent piece because of Donald Trump
70,000 Cambodian monks got together two days ago to nominate Donald Trump for the Nobel peace prize as did both countries between Azerbaijan and Armenia that was going on for 27 years and was just resolved by Trump in public, but of course they didn’t show you that and Heather God forbid would ever mention that
President Trump is the President of Peace. As President, he has brokered peace between Azerbaijan and Armenia, Cambodia and Thailand, Israel and Iran, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, India and Pakistan, Egypt and Ethiopia, Serbia and Kosovo, and with the Abraham Accords.
You folks are so lost in your hate. It’s just sad to see.
I challenged you to address Trump's shredding of the Bill of Rights and other parts of the Constitution and gave you several chances to do so. You have instead talked about everything but those things. Further, you don't ever really address the points made by the author of the newsletter on which we all comment. I will now ignore you and encourage all others here to do the same. Your posts are simply a different version of playing with yourself.
So long, farewell, auf wiedersehen, goodbye, sayonara, au revoir, ciao, adios.
Joel, you can’t talk about something that never happened and none of what you suggest ever happened… if for example, you’re talking about due process he did nothing different than Obama and Clinton. Nothing.
What other bill of rights you’re talking about? I have no clue. Maybe you could delineate them so I can destroy your fantasy again
Thank you for pointing out the Powell memo anniversary.
I’m very familiar with the through line preceding and following the memo. I agree it clarified a core premise that is also shared by many who currently support Trump and therefore Project 2025. The premise is that “my” economic freedom is more important than “your” political freedom.
The freedom to acquire and exploit is more precious than the freedom to learn and explore. According to this premise, laws are designed to privilege wealth consolidation and property rights.
The years from Reagan through Trump 1 were primarily consolidation of the economic goals of the Powell memo. These sought to ensure that corporations controlled business.
But 11 of the sections in the Powell Memo focused on education, the Great enemy of American Enterprise. The new emphasis is on crushing access to a free education in all senses.
I'm a fan of American enterprise, but not of a small number of people largely controlling it. Genuine "free enterprise" provides robust opportunities for all. Monopoly and oligarchy do not, yet history shows how consistently monopolies of money and power have snow-balled to subjugate societies around the world, where law has not prevented it. It took decades to reduce the political corruption that characterized "The Gilded Age", and to build an expanding middle class. Collectively we were hoodwinked into throwing much of that progress away.
I think AT&T was the last big monopoly break-up, and that was lead by the DOJ supported by the FCC. I guess Biden's DOJ/FCC was trying with Google...but although the case is still "active". Will our current DOJ make it happen? I doubt it.
I think AT&T was on the back foot ever since the FCC's Cartephone decision in which AT&T pushed their luck too far. It broke their monopoly on telephone equipment and by extension on the telephone industry. I think it paved the way for upstart MCI.
Yeah, but isn’t it great that none of that has happened here unless your LSD trip is still haunting you
One thing the Memo missed - free markets without regulation are not really free.
Exactly. A "free county" is free of monopolization of state power, left or right. A free market is one that is free of monopolization of markets (and the two are related). I love free enterprise, as well a robust public sector. A free market is decentralized, not dominated by a few supermassive "black hole" conglomerates. That used to be widely acknowledged after the excesses and widespread corruption of "The Gilded Age".
Juliana there IS a huge gap between education and business. Educators work in the theoretical environment of a classroom and business operates in reality.
One teaches, the other, actually does the work and so there is a huge gap in understanding…. Education is not the enemy of free enterprise. It is the theoretical side of free enterprise. What you might enjoy is a little soliloquy from the movie back to school with Rodney Dangerfield. Although it is a comedy in a movie, there was a great lesson to be learned about the difference between business and education. I don’t have the time right now, but you can find the clip. I’m sure about Rodney Dangerfield as a huge business success delineating the exact difference between education and business. Not to be redundant but theory versus practice.
Phil, I sincerely doubt that 77 M American voted for him, just like the other 2 times, I doubt he got that many votes. There is something fishy all down the line. Operation REDMAP details how a surgical manipulation of the voters to compact and dilute opposition can be done to help manipulate results. It is only a small step from that manipulating the results. As Stalin said "It's who counts the votes that really matters."
". . . fishy," Rickey, or ALEC and the Heritage Foundation?
Joel most people would call you stuck in the mud. It is no longer 1971 or haven’t you noticed
It is now 2025 and the Trump administration is winning every single day
And here’s another archaeological find called Phil. Who is lost in the 70s sorry phil.
This current reporting out of Harvard is heartening to all whose families, like mine, have been devastated by Alzheimer’s induced dementia. My heart breaks and my mind implodes under the realization that federal research budget allocations — like those which funded the underlying Alzheimer research grants to Harvard — to the NIH are being slashed 41% by Trump. Certainly he is a wrecking ball in the worst sense of the words.
https://hms.harvard.edu/news/could-lithium-explain-treat-alzheimers-disease
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09335-x
Wow.
Does constantly contextualizing and absorbing news of the advances of Late Capitalist Fascism constitute resistance? I feel like I'm reading catalogs of exponentially destructive evildoings, even as I step through constant small acts of opposition. I feel very dizzy.
I think it does. As others wake up, they’re going to need us to help them get up to speed on things. When they do wake up, it won’t help to judge them. I remind myself of the various times in my life when I was so consumed by my own personal affairs that I scarcely knew what day it was, even when it was my birthday! I’ve survived. 😏 (And I’m still catching up on the Clinton years.)
The problem Judith it's not feeling dizzy, the problem is being a sleep walker as most of the scumbag president supporters are.
I'm not fan of John Bolton, but if evidence of "retribution" was needed, I'd say we're there.
If Trump and his stooges steamroll Chicago, what's next? Civil war?
I cannot believe how quickly Project 2025 has unfolded. And I nicked this.
Our very own, homegrown Night of the Long Knives, complete with hordes of non-trained, unrestrained, poorly educated lumpenproletariat Brownshirts descending on cities, rounding up liberals, former loyalists and wrestling moped drivers to the ground with equal, gleeful abandon.
The world’s most insecure, fragile lunatic — the tenderest, most delicate snowflake of all — delivering an unequivocal message: ‘Hair Furor’s coming to get you, Barbara!’
As this bizarre scene from the old 1968 Night of the Living Dead keeps playing out, inquiring minds want to know — at what point-of-no-return, exactly, will “concerned” Senator Susan Collins realize we already reached Def Con 1 some time ago?
And what will it matter when she does realize it? She long ago became irrelevant. Another on a long list of Congress members who should never have been re-elected.
Yeah, well I was sort of speaking tongue-in-cheek! In truth, they’re all irrelevant now, all self-lobotomized, all to be remembered only as facilitatators and enablers.
just remember - he is the distraction while Vought and the others do their Commander thing.
This is the truth
The spiral continues as the regime goes lower and lower, grasping for the power of complete control of the capital, the justice system, the Congress, and the citizenry. There is no law they will not break or court ruling they will obey, no elected Congress that will stop them. The soon-to-be-armed troops in the capital are not trained for police work; one comes from a state that long ago proved it did not have control of its guard and murdered four students, state-sanctioned murder to teach a lesson to protestors.
It is going to be up to us We continue to protest, peacefully, in ever greater numbers, as long as we can. Until we realize that the protests do not work. Our patience will run out. And the war that has been on the horizon for months will be here.
Fortunately we have been through an intense and bloody affair, eh James. We know we don’t want that here. On the other hand they may be the ones holding the tail of the tiger. 300 million captives. 300 million Americans. 300 million pissed on people. 1917. We have plenty of basements. If a dog attacks you he will face up to the level of violence one presents. The teeth are reserved. If you can posture your way out do so. The minute you strike that dog it’s game on full on violence. He is going to strike the dog or back off. If he strikes it’s Katie bar the door. Just me, but I call them the Jack-off patriots they’re not the real thing.
It’s a war on intelligence, one. Two, and sadly related, will the testimony of a child sex trafficker that a person in power was always nice to her really exonerate one of the alleged clients?
Seems to me that the only way to exonerate, by perception, Trump at this point is to release something that reveals a plausible reason for their backpedaling and Trump’s bigly anxiety over this. If he comes out spit-shined and polished, would the QAnon crowd believe it? The rest of MAGA would welcome the relief of a positive spin, but I don’t think anyone else will. So, I figure they’re going to eventually release something, but not the details that have him going mad.
Name one person who has alleged Trump was a bad boy.
The people who spit and shined the boots of Hitler, Mussolini, Franco never spoke ill of their masters, either. It is common sense and legal strategy to understand the underlying motivations of any witness or coconspirator. Sometimes the suborning of a particular storyline can speak volumes about the converse reality.
Have you read and/or seen the movie version of "The Remains of the Day," KSC?
Both text and film are stunningly, awesomely beautiful -- and apt to yours above.
Agreed, one would hardly expect Maxwell to drop a dime on Trump. You still have not come up with one victim who was abused by Trump.
Well…there are plenty of examples of litigated/ hushed adult women (and reality business laborers) being abused and exploited by him. It is his selfed professed MO. As to these Epstein files…of course my point is that the silence of the lambs can be read differently if you understand that the MO is to payoff and or intimidate adverse witnesses. I of course cannot/would not remark on his actual guilt of a specific crime against a child. I am making only a point about weight of evidence when it comes to attempts to absolve him of guilt by character evidence through a source whose own character has been adjudicated to be despicable.
Yeah, we all know what a letch Donald is. He seems to glory in the rep. Still, no whiff of impropriety in re Epstein. Time to move along.
G'nite, way past my bed time. 3:00 here in VA.
Sleep well. They always say, where there is smoke there is fire; in a world of money for power and power for money i wonder if that the opposite rule rules.
Ivana, first wife of Trump, said he raped her near the end of their relationship. But she's not around anymore to attest to how nice a guy he is. E. Jean Carroll won a lawsuit against him for sexual assault. There are surely many more women that don't want to relive or go up against Trump again.
We have women who will. Why aren't they believed?
Why didn't we believe those Trailor Park Ho's who credibly accused Bill Clinton?
Old news, in the open for years. How is this related to Epstein and child abuse?
It is time. Each of us must ask ourselves: Are we prepared to fight—not write, not protest or demonstrate—the monstrosity that is dismantling our nation?
As good as my arthritic 67 year old body will let me. I will bring guns to this fight.
At 74 Ally, I am long in the tooth. I have much to fight for and little to lose. Count me in.