Every day is awful under the Trump regime, but today is one of those days when I think about people 100 years from know looking back and thinking Trump was the worst president ever, and being completely unable to understand how all of this was allowed to happen. My kids certainly know that I’m doing everything I can to oppose all of this. We all have to live with ourselves at the end of the day. This one is tougher than usual.
Next up for me: running a protest in CA to support the TX legislators who are denying quorum in order to stop TX redistricting: https://www.fightthetrumptakeover.com/
It seems the ONLY thing that Trump has done or can do is to rape and traffic children that the MAGAs and white Christian Nationalists consider crossing the red line.
but now they are working hard to normalize sex with girls as young as 12, pointing to state laws (one can guess which states) that allow marriage at that age, and to historical and literary examples of young girls being sexually active. So it will turn out that when it is definitively proved (rather than just morally certain based on sworn court testimony, as now) that Trump had sex with young girls, it was all actually 'normal', so nothing to worry about.
John Gregory: As a man married 52 years, with two daughters, with one granddaughter among my six beautiful grandkids --
All children MUST BE PROTECTED by the law.
Period.
My God, a child is so vulnerable.
A girl, in going through all the wonderful changes that Mother Nature lovingly gives her, should be totally free in her girlhood to develop into the glorious woman Mother Nature meant her to be.
Premature experience is TRAUMATIZING and DAMAGES the young person.
No child should EVER, NOT EVER be violated.
The Aryan-Right, if they promote child marriage, remind me of Svidrigailov in Dostoevsky's "Crime and Punishment," who in a cringeworthy scene "married" a child-bride, under full promotion by her BRIBED parents.
That scene out of Dostoevsky's youthful masterpiece, "Crime and Punishment," really plays out the horrors and sickness of laws that permit child-brides.
NO CHILD SHOULD EVER be subject to such cruelty.
Each child deserves tender, parental love and nurture, and correction with kindness and understanding.
John Gregory: I really think you are right. Aryan-Nation is trying to promote this horror.
As one who was sexually abused from infancy, I thank you for your comment, from the bottom of my heart. It is very affirming to know there a man with your understanding. (My husband has the same understanding.)
My heart hurts when realizing the STUPID views that are held by a minority of ignorant, power hungry & lustful people. How disgusting is it that, when a 12 yo is impregnated by rape of a stranger or relative, she is not allowed the decision to terminate because that shit head in the WH refuses to allow a doctor to make a choice. Rot in hell- or here on earth- I don't care!
Cindy Gailey: You hit the very heart of the issue.
You just stated the heartbreak of an innocent 12 yo girl.
Mother Nature made each child beautiful, with curious mind, a love of life, hope for the future, with a need for nurturing and love, and made by nature so that it is easy for mom and dad to love her or him. Children are so beautiful, and it is natural to nurture them.
"How disgusting it is that . . . that shithead in the WH refuses . . . a doctor . . ."
You have EXACTLY the right sentiment.
Look, I LOVE kids. With two daughters and six grandkids, I have a stake in the birth and nurture of healthy, life-loving kids.
And you perceive the heart of the tragedy. It breaks the heart, and shakes me with anger, when a child is abused, and it OUTRAGES that ANYONE would presume to deny an abused child proper medical care, including, where necessary, an abortion.
I do not promote abortion willy-nilly. But that is the decision of the woman. PERIOD. And certainly in the case affecting her health, the WOMAN's life is paramount and prevails. In the case of a minor, SHE MUST BE PROTECTED AND NURTURED.
Not only must the abortion be performed on the 12 yo you describe, but there must be compassionate, knowledgeable counseling to nurture her trauma. Because, as you point out, she had suffered terrible trauma. For a young girl, the abortion was necessary for her health. But the abortion as well as the vile abuse are part of her trauma, and as far as possible, we MUST provide the young person with counseling to make HER WHOLE.
These young persons are so vulnerable.
And what child at 12 is not beautiful with a RIGHT to hope and joy in life!
Mother Nature made children so beautiful, you just want to ensure that she grows naturally into the person Mother Nature made her to be.
Thank you, Cindy Gailey, for your true, compassionate view.
You strike me as a person who is loving and nurturing to those around you. Your family and friends are blessed to have you.
Wow Kathy! Mean, evil person who has helped a sex offender walk free to do it again! Just waiting to hear news of this. Hope the Senator gets sued/ dismissed for interfering in the law for personal gain.
Obviously, Trump is the only “normal” person. He can do anything his impulses and desires lead him to do, even something as despicable as raping a 14 year old. While we deprive ourselves and have learned to control our behavior by the time we were four. We also learned to care about how what we do affects others people. That’s what makes us such losers.
And why can he do anything his (deviant) impulses demand? Because the Supreme Court and Congress have their lips firmly attached to Trump’s ass! The ugly orange baby, and his sycophants (or handlers), will continue to spread their manure.
It's certainly not normal to any parent who loves his/her children. It's not normal to any of the victims and their families. It's a crime of power, just like rape.
Similar to states that have abolished (or weakened) child labor laws. Preparing us to take our kids out of school to earn money for the family because 1. The poorer families need the income; 2. Kids can be given jobs previously done by deported migrants and 3. Kids don’t need no stinking education anyway. What a win-win-win!
John, now, we need to find ways to remind people that marriage of children is not acceptable no matter if it is legal. That legality was made by pedophiles, not caring legislators. In addition, there is a difference between marriage and trafficking. The MAGAs need to be reminded of that as often as we can, hinting that it could have been their own daughters trafficked by old men who are really sick as well as criminals and their president is one of them.
The hardcore MAGA folks see Trump’s raping young girls as just another manifestation of his faux “alpha male” persona. They believe he has the RIGHT to do whatever he pleases with women (and girls). Much like Confederate leaders “justified” slavery by citing Biblical references, Trumpublicans (including Trump’s fellow sexual assaulted, Pete Hegseth) are talking up Biblical references that, they say, justify women’s absolute subservience to men. White Christian Nationalists see nothing wrong with ANY of this.
Actually, the problem Trump has over Epstein is that pedophilia has been THE red line for the MAGA conspiracy freaks. Josh Marshal of TPM suggests that they are particularly tough on this, because they are sure that Democrats will be implicated in Epstein’s crimes. So, they may not be as interested in the victims as they should be, but they can’t admit that, which means that those files are a huge and insoluble problem for Trump. Some totally cynical Trump supporters might try to justify child rape, but that will not work with most, particularly the most dedicated conspiracists.
I sure hope you are right. I remember a time, not too long ago, when Trump’s mocking of a disabled reporter, his mocking of John McCain, his “grab ‘em by the pussy” tasteless “joke,” and his convictions would all have been red lines. But now, we have a guy in the White House, surrounded by sycophants, who lies with impunity and manages to wiggle out of every tight spot because of a compliant Congress and subservient Supreme Court. What, exactly, will the angry MAGA base do if Trump simply refuses to release the un-redacted Epstein files? Will they storm the White House? I doubt it.
The Epstein episode is a distraction that pales in comparison to destroying our democracy. Although I am pleased that even MEGA is insensed, we need to realized that the Senate has not passed any legislation other than approving the administrations initiatives.and we are ruled by E.O.s.
I agree with all that you said, and I don't think the files will be released. Maybe it's best that Trump keeps staggering along and we don't get Vance as president. That is the only thing that seems bright to me.
MAGAts actually think we care about Clinton's name in the Epstein files. What a laugh. Who cares? Trump is a pedophile and we want him to be punished, along with anyone else who raped little girls. Everyone else, no matter their party or influence or wealth. No exceptions.
and raping slaves, girls and women, the slave holders increased their wealth...everyone knew what was going on, wives included...same. old same old in 'merikkka
Terry, in ancient times, when people prevailed in war, they usually killed the men and sent the women and children back to their home base to be slaves. I am talking about Mesopotamia here mainly. So the sexual exploitation of slaves has a long history. I suspect this also goes on now with the undocumented because they cannot complain.
I like a little optimism as much as anyone else, but I see no justification for the expectation that this too shall pass. It’s been this way in America for 400 years so far, with a few short lapses while the forces of cruelty were in rebuilding mode. Then, after a bit of rebuilding, it was always and again back to the same ol’ same old. There are, demonstrably, at least 77 million US citizens who want their government to seek out people they don’t like and treat them with cruelty. To the 77 million, decency is anathema and cruelty is stength.
Rex, you may have misunderstood my reference to what "shall pass." GJ suggested that the rape of underage girls is the red line that Christian nationalists will not cross. My comment was meant to imply that in their thrall to Trump, Christians will move the red line to wherever Trump moves. Betty Bowers satirizes this "flexible morality" in the context of Christian evangelical culture.
If you interpret my comment in the manner it was intended, we are in agreement, except for the 77 million part.
Reports are indicating that at least some of the people who voted for Trump were not expecting him to indiscriminately round up people with brown skin and incarcerate them in inhumane conditions.
My impression of the MAGA faithful (and there are plenty around me) is that they don't want brown people to be harmed. They just don't want brown people shopping in their stores or speaking Spanish around them, acting like they are equals. They want brown-skinned people out of sight ... except the ones building their homes, repairing their roofs, working their landscaping, cleaning their toilets or making their beds.
It's the same old racism ... just a different race.
Yes, I misunderstood. For sure it’s the same old racism, and you may right that some of the racists get a little queasy on the cruelty front, but I think they’re likely to accept cruelty as collateral damage if it furthers their other “values,” such as keeping brown people “in their place.” Might take them a little time to get used to the cruelty, but I’m confident they’ll be plenty comfortable enough with the “cruelty as the point” philosophy to vote R again in 2026.
I don't really agree that there are "at least 77 million US citizens who want their government to seek out people they don’t like and treat them with cruelty."
I think a lot of them actually believed Trumps bullshit about lower grocery prices on day 1 as well as energy prices. And that Trump would end the Russian/Ukraine war in a day. Over half of the people in the US are food insecure and thought that Trump was their life line.
Maybe I would've thought so too if I was desperate.
Ugh! I hope not Helen. John Fugelseng and a guest on Progress Radio were talking about the Supreme Court shadow docket where the Supreme Court makes a decision and gives no reason for the decision.
It's entirely possible SCOTUS is going to give a thumbs up to posting the 10 commandments in schools. Not only is this an obvious First Amendment violation, but Trump has broken EVERY SINGLE ONE of the Ten Commandments. Hypocrisy much?
So kiddies out there, do as the Bible tells us and ignore what ALL of the Republican politicians do. God wanted them to break all of the 10 commandments because, you know, MAGA.
When I was a kid my mother had a pendant with the Ten Commandments. I asked her what “adultery” meant and she gave me some sort of answer. What will a teacher answer when a child looks at the Ten Commandments and asks that question?
As a retired public school teacher, I can say with complete confidence that the administrators and other higher ups will tell the teachers to “figure it out” and then blame them if anyone objects to the answer.
The teacher can point to a picture of agent orange and say" Here is an example of an adulterer. He slept and fornicated with another woman when he was married to his first wife. When he left his first wife to marry the second woman, he slept and fornicated with a third woman. He then left his second wife and married the third woman." Now lets have a math lesson!
They are only 35-38%. We can focus on the growing number of Republican voters in red States who are increasingly turning against this regime. Take a look at the town halls in the red states. Their anger is stunning.
MAGA are very good at being angry. I suspect that they are getting a bit bored with the same old, same old that is being presented to them - so now they are getting a new target in view, complete with a multitude of conspiracy theories.
Too bad for trump that the new target happens to be him!
There is a difference between the core cult that is maga and the average Republican voter. The people I see on the town halls screaming at their Representative are the nest door type of Republicans. Some of the maga feel betrayed. That is what happened when you vote of fear of the other and the price of eggs.
I don't think so. I think DEMOCRATS raping and trafficking children is the only thing that the MAGAs and white Christian Nationalists consider crossing the red line.
According to the research of Erica Chenoweth, the protests have to be at least 3.5% of the total population to have an effect. It took the women of ICELAND 10 years to organize a protest that made a change. So protest is effective, but the numbers matter.
And that's why my sister-in-law attend every protest. Unfortunately, many potential protesters have no access to child care or they cannot get off work to attend. These people likely hate Trump and his sycophants but are silenced by our shitty system.
Once people visit Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland etc. it is hard not to realize the US is no longer a first world country. And to think, things were so bad in Northern Europe 150 years ago, that millions of people fled to the US for a "better" life.
Well, it looks like Heather has done it again fill the lemmings with BS and ignorance. And you guys just swallow it like it’s Dessert
The difference between Trump and Biden is instead of saying I’m gonna stop at on day one. BIDEN said I’m gonna Throw gas on it on day one and gave them $170 billion to kill an extra quarter of 1 million people. I hope you guys are happy about that. OMG
Trump said he was going to stop it on day one just like Heather says. What a person WITH much more intelligence than apparently Heather , is Trump doesn’t run Russia…. Trump doesn’t run Ukraine. He’s not in charge of either country. It is his intention to stop the war and he’s doing just that despite all you haters. In Fact he’s doing everything he promised to do during his campaign, despite all you haters, and will continue to do so for the next 3 1/2 years.
So you guys get out there and do another no kings protest lmao.
But in a countries that have KINGS , you’re not allowed to have NO KINGS protest…. yeah, YET you did put that in your snout and swallow it. Oooooops
Trump is already caused at least four wars to stop/cease fire or peace and he’s working on his fifth. At least two countries have written HIM in as a Nobel. Peace prize Candidate. Not that anyone here really cares.
And to those who have tried to tell you that she doesn’t tell you the whole truth. This is the topic of the day only yesterday he stopped the war that’s been going on for 27 years. He’s not gonna be on mount Rushmore he’s gonna have his own mountain.
Generally nobody here, as far as I'm aware, welcomes Trump's work to destroy America as we know it. But it's good you could pop in just now, Mr. Sender, and improve our understanding of the oligarchs' plan.
Well you keep using the word oligarch, when 90% of the people who use it don’t even know what it means. By the way, I love when you say, destroyed as “we” know it. You are not part of the way anymore because you you don’t want to be part of the we.
You just don’t like it because you’re not in control he won a duly appointed election democratically elected presidency. . He’s got both chambers of Congress and he’s doing exactly what he promise to do by the 77 million people who voted for him. You have no idea what his plan is and that’s the problem you don’t know how anybody that voted for him think you don’t have clue touch with reality as far as his accomplishments, etc. so actually the most of this group here is nothing more than flotsam and jetsam of a dying breed thank God. But you keep fighting and protesting because that’s what’s gonna win you votes?
You have no leader, but now you have a nice communist leader . you have no agenda and you still don’t understand why you lost
Every day, it only gets worse. Heather feeds them a bunch of BS and they open their mouth like little swallows in their nest. Give it to me give it to me. lol. Can’t wait for the Russia hoax stuff to come out and the schiff and james saga goes with a grand jury impaneled now suuuuuuuperbbbbb
When you say that 90% of the people don’t know about our American oligarchs, it speaks to the ignorance that led millions of people to vote for the person who will take away their Medicaid and disaster relief and look the other way if ICE deports them. While you march around the room in triumph, these poor voters will be disappointed, though they may not entirely understand that they voted for the wrong party.
Thank you, Linda H, for providing the link to Indivisible's August 16 protest! Sign up to participate and spread the word. Action is the antidote to despair!!!👊
Wake up, people. Protests against conquerors have no effect whatsoever; thus they are naught but egotistically masturbatory exercises in self-righteousness. Against ecogenocidal evil of MAGAT magnitude, the only potentially effective form of non-violence is a nationwide general strike. But the overwhelming majority of the U.S. population, hopelessly divided by identity politics and paralyzed by vindictive selfishness -- the latter the (intended) consequence of four decades of psychological conditioning in the rat-maze of neoliberalism -- is far too cravenly subjugated to even contemplate such action, much less make it happen.
Therefore do not wishfully fantasize the hopelessly self-obsessed, financial-paranoia-triggered Republican voters' anger to be anything more than the spoiled-brat tantrum it is. It is most assuredly not -- say again not -- an expression of the revolutionary empathy that history proves is the vital precursor to the solidarity and discipline of effective resistance. The Constitution is irrevocably nullified by the MAGATs' lifetime control of the judiciary. The Republic is therefore slain beyond any rational hope of resurrection. Our former liberty is irremediably replaced by the zero-tolerance Christonazi theocracy of the "Unified Reich," wherein women -- biblically blamed from birth to death for all the world's ills -- are at least as much officially approved victims as those of us targeted for non-Aryan genetics or non-conforming behavior.
Thus is fulfilled the 1933 Bankers' Plot to nazify the nation, the original perpe-traitors granted de facto immunity c. 1934-35, their scheme KKKlandestinely continued to its irreversible 5 November 2024 victory by multiple generations of bipartisan aristocrats and their fanatically hateful Christonazi/Neoconfederate rabble. (In which context never forget the Democrats' brazen surrender, led as it is by Schumer and his Vichy-like collaborationists.)
Loren, it is not just general strikes that bring down authoritarian regimes. It is the application of multiple actions, from massive protests to civil disobedience to boycotts to general strikes to tax revolts and other actions that, together, break the regime. Non-violence is the key. Every action begets another action and stimulates more people to take action. Also, general strikes take a lot of effort - most people can not simply not show up for work when feeding their families and paying the rent is paramount. Lastly, it will take, according to those with experience at least 3.5% or 11M Americans to take these actions. I suggest considering finding ways to positively influence people to take action. If you want to support a general strike, then make it happen. One website promoting a general strike is www.generalstrikeus.com. This website was promoted by Marc Elias on his Democracy Forward bulletin board. Sign up and then get others to do the same!
Lost in space? Yep. But No worries. Only 1260 more days of Trump. UNLESS he passes his presidency to Vance in year four and if Vance does a good job. 8 MORE YEARS IN THE WH …Something that the Moron Biden should have done with Harris but ego and his pride/narcissism wouldn’t allow it
Can’t wait one more worthless protest …cool. The other seemed very effective. Omg lmao.
I don’t know if you saw my quote when you had a “NO KINGS’ protest the reality is this. In a country that has a king you’re not allowed to do a NO KINGS protest. Hmmmmmm. Doesn’t get any funnier /ironic
Linda, I feel you on this one. Some days it’s like living inside a future history book and you’re painfully aware you’re in the chapter titled “What the Hell Were They Thinking?”
The hardest part is knowing we’re not just watching bad leadership, we’re watching a system run the same hustle over and over which is divide people, rewrite the rules, then act shocked when the damage sticks. Days like this, it’s heavier because you can see how long the cleanup’s gonna take.
The fact that your kids see you pushing back? That’s not nothing. That’s planting a flag in real time. History won’t remember every tweet or protest sign, but it will remember the people who didn’t just go along quietly.
I’ve been laying out how these patterns repeat — and why the weight feels so much worse on certain days — over here: www.xplisset.com
It would be helpful if any of the top comments here actually *mentioned* Ukraine — the topic of Heather’s newsletter today. Instead, we get a re-hash of just how foul Trump is, which 99% of us already clearly get without additional prompting. But it is critical to understand why there is a war there at all, why Putin wants what he wants. You have to know something about the history of this place — the great and ghastly bloodlands of Europe, in the words of Professor Timothy Snyder at Yale.
A free Ukraine is the greatest of all threats to Putin. A Slavic country of over 65 million people which finally — after years of deprivation and suffering, culminating in the Holodomor— Stalin’s enforced famine that purposely and deliberately took millions of Ukrainian lives during the 1930s — then by the Nazis who killed every third person in the country —- followed by docility and then the great Soviet indignity of Chornovyl — where Moscow conducted a nuclear experiment that shocked the world -- finally, finally Ukraine woke up for good.
Even after the collapse of the USSR, the country still slumbered, but came to realize within years that the status quo was interminable, that continuing to exist as a corrupt, half-slave Russian satrapy was an un-democratic, un-European indignity that could no longer be tolerated. The Russians poisoned Viktor Yushchenko, the representative of the country’s sudden Orange Revolution, yet failed to set up his pro-Russian puppet, Viktor Yanukovych, in power for long. Though central Kyiv was burnt (at Putin’s order, communicated directly to Yanukovych at the Sochi Olympics where the two sat next to each other), he fled back to Russia and lives there still. His magnificent gold-plated estate, saunas, gardens and private zoo filled with ostriches and zebras was opened to Ukraine’s public. The corruption had to be seen to be understood in all its rapacious, servile glory.
In 2013, Russian State TV began laying down the “reality” millions of Russians — but nobody else — would hear. I was in Armenia at the time, with access to both Russian TV1 as well as BBC, Deutsche Welle and French TV, all covering the massive crowds in Kyiv’s Independence Square -- the Maidan. Russian TV didn’t dare interview a single person, but BBC and CBC (Canadian Broadcasting) stopped to speak with hundreds. In Russian (ironically the language most people in Kyiv then used first) they told reporters why they were there. “I was born in the Soviet Union,” one woman said, “my parents are buried there, I will never go back there, and I do not want my children to die there.” It could have been the statement that summed up everything for all of them. Russian TV, by contrast, just hinted at bizarre, nefarious plots all hatched by, of course, the CIA. “The West just will not leave poor Ukraine alone” proclaimed the announcer from Moscow in mock sympathy— a mastery of Stalinist doublespeak and brutal gaslighting.
A free, European people, a Slavic nation, turning its back on the East to embrace the West — this is why Putin targets children , blows up apartment buildings, shatters infrastructure, threatens nuclear catastrophe at Zaporizhzhia, invades, desecrates, befouls, murders with abandon. It is to make Ukraine grovel before him, to make them pay for their crime of daring to want to be free.
But Ukraine will not do that. As Zelenskyy has said, “you demand we choose between you and no electricity — we choose no electricity. You say 'choose between me or fleeing your homes' — we choose to flee our homes.”
Ukraine is the undisputed leader of the free world. Ukraine fights for us. It fights for Europe. It fights for NATO. Against all odds, it lives. Trump, of course, understands not one whit of this. Joe Biden did. And we must. Whatever happens in Alaska, it spells disaster for Ukraine. That much you can count on.
Putin, Trump and Netanyahu. They are like the evil that rose up in the 30s with Stalin, Hitler and Franco. All of them self serving criminals that found a way to dominate a nation with the maximum of cruelty to anyone who does not idolize them. Misogyny, racism and a unsated lust for power.
Agree. I realized after my post that I should have included Netanyahu. Evil is on the march now as it was then. We found the courage back then to fight back. But it’s harder now because who are “we?” Our country is aligned with the bad guys. We have to form organized resistance, risking our own lives against authoritarian fascists, while looking to foreign lands for help. And that means we have to show as a credible opposition with an actual plan (ahem, Democrats).
I'm going to stick with karma. A victim that goes by Katie Johnson has spoken up about trump raping her at a party at Epstein's house in 1994 when just 13 and a virgin, which has been corroborated by another victim at the same party. She had filed a lawsuit that was dismissed in 2016. He is desperate because more and more is coming out. Watch, this will be his demise! I want Maureen Comey, the lawyer who prosecuted Epstein and was fired should speak out--she knows everything....
And the time to stop this is NOW! We need to, as a nation, get in the streets and demand this ‘meeting’ NOT take place on American soil! I’ll contact our local Indivisible group here in Northeast Ohio; everyone else reading this: YOU’RE UP!!
Thank you! Your comment deserves a much wider audience. One thing especially caught my eye, about Putin and Yanukovich having a private conversation at a public event. At least we know what was said. I have always wondered what Trump and Putin discussed at their secretive meeting in Helsinki in 2018, and why the Democrats dropped their investigation (the Biden admin is « looking forward not back » … which sounds awfully familiar today). Does that play some part in the current mess we find ourselves in?
One day, we may come to know what, exactly, Putin has over Trump. Whether it's Agent Krasnov, massive loans underwritten through DeutscheBank, shady real estate transactions to Russian oligarchs in South Florida, the pee-pee tapes (some version of which I'm convinced are real), whatever was paid to RNC "advisor" and Putin plant Paul Manafort, who went to prison before Trump pardoned him, some quid pro quo to attack Hillary Clinton in return for covert trolls posting pro-Russian gibberish all over the internet, or whether just plain old penis envy, the love of a fawning wormtongue for a true Alpha murderer and strongman -- some combination of all of the above, or as yet some still undiscovered thing that binds the Manchurian Candidate to his polonium overseer -- perhaps we'll all live long enough to figure it out. Whatever it is, it's plenty powerful.
I have no doubt that putin has some form, probably blackmail, of leverage over the insipid orange turd. The Epstein files dating to long before he ever ran for office, are in all probability involved if not directly then as parallel behavior. He was holding beauty pageants in Russia while he and Epstein were best buddies, do you think there is a snowflake’s chance in hell that he wasn’t involved with the girls and that the Russians had it all on tape. They taped everything then and probably still do today, like everything in his life the clown had no interest in the consequences of his actions, only his prurient desires. For sure the Russians have leverage over him, it’s as sure as the sun rising in the east.
And then there's always Justice Kennedy's snap retirement, and his son who had a close friendship with Trump and worked in real estate at DeutscheBank; DB banked for Russia, and was the last bank willing to loan money to Trump. You can't make this stuff up.
PUTIN ONLY ATTACKED CRIMEA WHEN OBAMA 9(girlyman) WAS IN OFFICE….ANNNNNNND PUTIN ONLY ATTACKED UKRAINE WHEN BIDEN WAS PRESIDENT. SO WHO HAS POWER OVER PUTIN. HMMMMM
I cannot argue Ukraine has not been through hell for decades. At this point in history I can't allow myself to get distracted by the actions of a very selfish Deep State.
Currently 'We the People' must wrench our country away from the super wealthy elitist's (SWETS) before we can expect our government to work for us.
Currently because of the 2010 Citizens United vs F.E.C. the wealthy have, 'steam rollered' the American voting public, something they had to cheat at to overpower and overwhelm the entire U.S. populace.
With much respect I will give you my opinion on what Putin has on Donal of Orange. It's brains compared to Putin, BO I mean DO Trump is the Dolt being played by a chess master.
So what does Putin have on Trump, the wits to out wit a social misfit incapable of any serious constructive intellectual thought.
The question for me is, am I right suspecting our security - intelligence apparatus completely is corrupt and gone rogues?
Brother I sure think so.
Trump is not guilty of doing anything other than what the Security - Intelligence Apparatus currently allows him to do. This group are apparently sitting on their dead asses waiting for another mandate from the SCOTUS.
Currently is seems as though those entities are hell bound to run the largest PSYOP ever conducted by these agencies. IMO
You want to talk cynical be correct about it., talk our current Security - Intelligence Apparatus AND the Department of, what has become, Injustice
We Americans have much ground to cover before we will ever wield enough influence to correct the errors made with respect to Putin and the Ukraine. It will never happen unless and until we correct the course of the Ship of State.
I do respect your opinion here you are correct, I simply happen to believe I am also.
Most things are possible but not all. I believe the country is in for the fight of it's life and the enemy is a domestic one. We cannot really help any county in a constructive manner until we regain our destiny.
I believe the sex trafficking ring is the core issue. Russia gave the coverup for it, and it is what Putin has on DT. 1.5billion dollars, and there is some evidence that 1.1billion was from DT to Epstein.
Trump will meet to see if he can assuage Putin by any means necessary with a plan that makes DT look like a ‘genius’ and peacemaker to his sycophantic base.
Well said. I sometimes wonder which is a distraction from which - Epstein files from Putin/Russia/Ukraine or the reverse. But as Heather points out the two are likely joined at the hip. There is no doubt that Putin has kompramat and it may well likely relate to the Epstein files, maybe something even more explosive. These are parallel evils being foisted upon us by the two most evil people in the world. The world will be a lighter place when they are both removed from it.
Thank you so much for succinctly explaining all that is going on and has gone on in the last 15 years in Russia and Ukraine. I learned a lot. Thank you again.
Why has information about Ukraine fallen out of the news? I have watched a few YouTube clips of Ukraine’s slaughter of Russian convoys. Obviously false or we would have seen it in the media somewhere.
Trump doesn’t understand international affairs unless it concerns somewhere he can build a golf course or hotel there. The other thing he was after was getting Europe to take more responsibility for their defense. That part worked more or less because Europe believed Trump would pull us out of NATO. He may still do that because he’s a fool, but there’s money to be made in Europe. He doesn’t understand if Ukraine falls, Poland is the next target, but I think the Poles are ready for him. Ukraine stayed in the fight because of Biden and Biden’s pulling NATO together. He’s not been given credit for that. Putin is far smarter than Trump. Russia has doubled their attacks on Ukraine since Trump took office. It appears that Russia is burning itself out in Ukraine. If the Russian people knew what was going on, I think they would go after Putin. The one link between Trump and Putin is ego; neither can stand to lose.
Biden killed a couple hundred thousand folks in Ukraine. No? Fueled the war to the tune of 170 BILLION DOLLARS…supposed to be used for humanitarian causes. Ooooops
Here you are again. Trump is the one building an army in ICE with money that was budgeted by Congress for humanitarian aid. USAID money is being spent building detention camps that are inhumane.
Maybe you didn't read the one beautiful pill it's budgeted
Not to mention the people like you here's what you're saying if you stop coming after illegals will stop protesting it's not how it works. Humanitarian aid the problem with that it was never getting there and that's the problem and that's why USA ID is dead so forget about it. You can go to the funeral of USA ID. Any humanitarian aid will now be monitored very carefully to make sure it's getting to the people who actually need it not to the nonprofits were actually putting it in their pockets.
There was a $500 million fraud scam for men played guilty $500 million gone and a $2.7 billion fraud for Medicare and Medicaid
All I can think of is the people of Iran who had a modern country until the 1979 Iranian Revolution when Khomeini, an Islamist cleric, ousted the Shah. The people have tried to resist many times but are only pounded down each time.
If the United States hadn’t instigated the coup that toppled a democratically elected leader and installed and backed the Shah, Iran might not be where it is today. We never seem to learn that lesson, though.
Kristin, as you probably know, the corrupt Shah was installed with our help, one of the many times we interfered and got rid of duly elected leaders. We are still reaping the results. I see that Dave beat me to this and no we have not learned that lesson as he observes
We always seem to back the wrong guy, but there needed to be a secular leader to avoid Khomeini. When will we understand that we can’t nation build. Nations have to build themselves. It just takes tribal nations longer. Germany was once tribal. Twenty years trying to get the Taliban out of Afghanistan. The Israelis think they can get Hamas out of Gaza; instead they are just removing the Palestinian people. I can say that, but it doesn’t make me antisemitic.
I read recently the Israelis had pretty thoroughly infiltrated Iran and pulled off critical attacks on defense related sites. Including hits on Iranian top officials. The result is Israel with the complete blessing of the U.S. managed to not get destroyed by Iran.
Q. If this is true this late in the Iranian Nuclear Weapons acquisition game ask yourself this question. How can Iran pose such a threat to Israel as to drive them insane and to the brink of nuclear war?
A. The Iranian problem is only a problem because the Israelis get away with murder every day the sun comes up. Undoubtedly with the aid of the U.S. in infiltrating Iran and pulling off hits on Iranian top officials. Then the U.S. renegaded on a nuclear agreement that was working at the behest of Israel.
Q. Why did this happen ?
A. Because the super wealthy elitists (SWETS) are never satisfied and are working for complete global control.
Q. How can this be stopped?
A. By over whelming these idiots with "Good Trouble".
I'm of the opinion if large resistance actions, protests and general strikes do not expose these problems by forcing the media to respond we will not be protesting we will find ourselves in the middle of what could become a massive blood bath. Right here in the good ole U.S. of A., don't think for one minute is isn't possible.
Do you want ICE in your driveway breaking into your home and "detaining" you and your children.
We can either fish or cut bait I suppose. The choice to up to us. Make those calls and write those letters to those elected to represent your interests.
Cindy I would if I thought it would do any good. The news paper business is pretty much owned by conservatives in my part of the world. And just a couple of corporations a majority of the papers.
The Christian nationalists had a pre-year prayer service for the small local public school -the best I can tell by the facebook post. It is s 'clique-ish' type of gathering , IMO, which engages in this type of behavior to benefit from being group,which make them feel more secure. To say the least I live in some pretty solid MGAG country. And I do not suffer fools gladly.
Currently I'm recovering from a cardiac incident May 10th of this year,my heart stopped. It did not want to start again and I'm alive thanks to my wife first on the scene with me, the 911 operator an officer from our local PD, younger individual, the rescue squad and doctors. Ten days in the hospital and two stints later I'm doing well.
But I regress. I'm 77 and extremely concerned too many adults do not understand the mess this country is in.
I get pretty fired up for an old guy I guess but I think about my grand kids and all young people who are facing big problems. I love my grandchildren and great grand children, knowing what I know about the human condition and that of the planet I do get motivated.
I do write to my U,S, Senators and Representatives. I intend to become more active when the Doc is okay with it.
This entire deal with Big Money stealing this last election is the last straw for me. I assume you are familiar with Adm Zarnowski His SubStack and his book Jormunganr: A STUDY in GLOBAL HUMANS TRAFFICKING and Abolitionist Strategy.
You can google the article mentioned here and see his report about he worked on for CIA before becoming a whistle blower. It is obvious to me the MSM want no part of reporting the story which is six months old now. CIA put out their findings but buried the report.
Lately I'm spending lot of time on the net contacting folks like you! Thank you for caring so much and responding.
It is so important to always remember how far behind humanity is in learning how to better recognize, counter and contain the malignant narcissists, sociopaths and psychopaths that are living among us or are in our governments, damaging innocents.
Speaking of patterns repeating, I believe we must use innovation theory to beat MAGA / Trump / Putin ... think like Buckminster Fuller, who said we should design a new system that makes the existing system obsolete. I believe it is possible to make the world of hate and division obsolete... by catalyzing a spiritual transformation nationwide.
For those not familiar with Bucky, here's a brief video.
Think "innovation," my friends... not just fighting to prevent bad stuff from happening. We must offer an alternative for how the future can look...
Boom. I have been saying it for a while now. The “American system” as we understand it, is dead. The Constitution is now a relic just like the Articles of Confederation, rendered toothless. We need to reinvent ourselves and build a new republic from the ground up.
If we were to do that, it’s far more likely that we would get something worse than something better. The problem is not the Constitution. It’s 77 million voters.
Those kidnapped Ukrainian children will forever be traumatized, not knowing where they belong. There are stories in US history where white settler children were captured by native tribes. Having assimilated into the native culture in order to survive, a number of these children chose to remain with the native tribe, even though they had been returned to their family of origin. It is not my intent to disparage native tribes in the US. I only mean to illustrate how being forced to assimilate to another culture causes people to be disconnected and displaced. These Ukrainian children may be lost to their original families. Just demonstrates how psychopathic Putin is to commit such crimes against children.
Xplisset, your first paragraph is gold. I only hope that we get that much in the history books.
Your second paragraph, now... "not just watching bad leadership" is spot on; my addendum is that I (a retired 30 year cop in a county the size of Connecticut with an unincorporated urban population of 80K and over half forest land) am seeing in my cohort of retired former cops/military and their families and friends who are 100% behind everything this administration is doing and falling for every diversion that Faux throws at them (American Eagle ads, transgender women in the Olympics, believing that the Haitians in Ohio eating pets could be true even if Vance said it was a lie). They believe, strongly, that ICE is doing great, that using the military at McArthur Park was fine. I don't know if they'll ever get "cleaned up."
The old Star Trek series Deep Space Nine has a two part episode narrative called I think Past Tense where they go to the US in August 2024 and find squalor of many and splendor for a few. One of the characters from the team ask the captain played by Avery Brooks - How could this been allowed to happen? Very prescient and written and shown in the early 1990’s.
I'm going to state something you and others already know.
If we were to check the boxes that refer to the worst person to ever become president, we will be able to check each and every one, in reference to Donal of Orange.
So much for defining the problem we all share currently.
Once again I will remind everyone we have this problem child president because an enormous majority of wealthy and very wealthy individuals got their way in this last election.
They the republicans, Super Wealthy Elitists(SWETS) and all the others who backed this chump only accomplished this by cheating, vote tampering by back-dooring tabulation equipment.
All of this, IMHO is due to the SCOTUS 2010 Citizens United vs F.E.C. Activist SCOTUS encouraged by the behavior of corrupt Department of Justice.
Everyday our problems become more difficult to solve, IMO. Think about it and write or call your congressional representatives and senators.
I hope that people in 100 years will look back with horror. But the victors write the history books, and they are already altering history in museums and commemorative places, and in history textbooks.
We need to develop a well-guarded cache of books, physical books, with the factual history of this country. How we started with some brilliant, though deeply flawed men drafting the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, followed by many others, men and women who over the next ca. 190 years expanded civil rights and liberties, and worked to help build a government that tried to make things better for as many people as possible who needed such help. And how beginning in 1981, and continuing gradually, with some slight hiccups toward the progressive past, a full authoritarian takeover exploded in 2025. The oligarchs tore down that democratic government through pure greed and total lack of compassion or respect for anyone but themselves.
In a hundred years I think, if humans have survived on the planet, they might need such a library of books that cannot understand ctrl delete.
Let’s imagine that hundred years from now, a small group of students finds their way into that guarded library you’re describing no not a digital archive, but a room that smells like paper and ink, with dust motes in the sunlight. They open those books and see, in black and white, the arc you’ve laid out: the ideals and the flaws at the founding, the long slow expansion of rights, the backsliding, and the collapse.
And maybe one of them asks the others, “If they knew this was coming, why didn’t they stop it?” The answer won’t be in the pages. It’ll be in the margin notes, the underlining, the parts where the writer tried to make sure the future knew someone saw it happening in real time.
That’s why I love the way you framed this. The library isn’t just about preserving history it’s about leaving proof for whoever comes next that we didn’t all go quietly. www.xplisset.com
Library check out cards were clues I used to go into libraries and search through books, looking at the library cards to see how many and who read them. It was sort of a trail with some names showing up more often. Following such a trail led me through more books that were enlightening in ways I found easier for me to read material that never made it into digital copies (Bill Moyers' "Listening to America: A Traveler Rediscovers His Country," for example), and library books on Maine's geology and local history. I doubt I could even begin to acquire and preserve all that I would like to make sure were in a private library as protection from them being disposed of in public libraries. Moving 31 times in my 79 years, 26 times between states, and 2 times to foreign countries, which made it impractical to keep more than a fraction of all the books I had collected (not to mention a 20 year car magazine collection my brother and I had stacked on shelves 4 feet high and 16 feet wide at our parent's house)
On the other hand, there are many digital copies of books I would likely never have been able to afford and sometimes a rare one I never expected to exist. One such book is supposedly (a relative), Ethan Allen's, "Reason The Only Oracle of Man" (I think more properly, Dr. Thomas Young and Ethan Allen as co-authors). Even better for an amateur like me, was finding a thesis that provides a better background and a hint of what Samuel Adams might have been thinking though he seems to have not wanted to leave any written evidence that could be used against him in those perilous days.
Jim, if only I didn't need to eat, wash up or use the BR, I would be content with piles of books to read. I keep a running list of books to read &, right now, it's over one hundred. Don't ask how many books are in my home! Precious belongings. I have Penobscot Pioneers, Vinalhaven Island (Mom, grandparents & grt. grands born there), Aroostock County, Hx Washburn, ME (raised in Crouseville from 1955- 1961). Can you give me any titles about ME geology & other history books. I swear I can bring up the smell of salt water & of the freshly tilled potato fields. :-)
But - will there be anybody left capable of reading them? Or will it be a lot of well meaning people scratching their heads and saying "I wonder what all these little black marks mean? Pity we haven't got a video to explain them!"
I thought of this, but decided my comment was already too long. Also, unless the oligarchs had outlawed writing/typing/dictating altogether, some recognizable writing must exist. So the hard copies should include the truth in at least Roman, Cyrillic, Arabic/Persian, Urdu, and Chinese characters. Or in one of those with a key to translation into many other languages.
Many Americans still believe the Confederacy was a glorious defense against the “War of Northern Aggression.” Led by grieving widows and defeated generals, the “Lost Cause” bullshit revisionist history aimed to justify the unjustifiable and explain the inexplicable decimation of the “heroic” south. More than 150 years later, Lost Cause adherents still cling to the notion that the Confederates were simply trying to preserve “a way of life.” They rarely acknowledge that “way of life” was built on the backs of enslaved people and, even when they do, the say the enslaved were treated like family, that White Supremacy is the natural, Biblically backed, order of things, and that African-Americans, like children, were simply incapable of caring for themselves. There’s a reason they called black men “boys” and elderly blacks “Uncle” or “Aunt,” or “Mammie.” The self-delusion runs deep.
Dave, we had an elderly docent in Savannah actually tear up when speaking of this. We were in a house that the British owner had made available to General Sherman to save it.
A different story that I believe sheds more light on why Savannah was mostly spared was the capture of Fort McAllister, just south of Savannah. Though strong against an attack from the sea, it fell easily as Sherman, though desperately short of supplies and cut off from most communication to get support from the Union Navy was able to take it essentially from the weakest side. I believe it [Savannah] was abandoned by the confederate forces in hopes of sparing it the fate of cities that resisted
Sherman seemingly wanted to destroy the means for the south to fight, while avoiding civilian casualties as much as possible in Georgia and North Carolina, especially (which he said had been reluctant in voting to join the confederacy).
Where his troops did exact some revenge (without orders to do so), was South Carolina since they fired the first shot that started the real fighting. Though Sherman's troops had done the worst of it without orders, he didn't seem to discipline them as he likely would have in North Carolina to reduce the animosity and start considering post war restoration of a freer, more cooperative society.
Jim, thank you for the detail; however, I meant only to remark on the attitude of the docent. And what I said about the house in question is what we were told while there. I want to say that the house belonged to a Brit and is now owned by the Episcopal(?) church next door I enjoyed very much the book, Saving Savannah, which discusses the city pre, during, and after the Civil War. It was abandoned by the Confederates, but I would have to look at the book again to see the detail on that. My husband is somehow related to Sherman through marriage and we have a bio of him which I have not read yet.
My first time traveling in the South I went to a King’s Dominion-type amusement park where they had actors telling history tales. Dressed in full Southern belle regalia, an actress said, (and I quote) the “War Between the States pitted brother against brother, one fighting to preserve the Union, the other fighting to preserve a way of life.” I’ll never forget that. I was stunned.
Certainly accurate based on one’s perspective, but the actress didn’t mention that the “way of life” to be preserved was slavery-based. The entire economy of the south hinged on slave labor. An inconvenient truth.
Pilgrim, Orwell said he wrote 1984 as a warning, not as a prophecy. I'm halfway through reading it again (the first time was in high school over 50 years ago) and his warning was prescient, but unfortunately not heeded. "Who controls the past controls the future, and who controls the present controls the past."
What was the name of a Twilight Zone show that had a man (Burgess) only wanting to read. World has a war. He finds the broken down library & is so happy. He then steps on his reading glasses rendering him nearly blind. Also, Fahrenheit 451 as one of my worst fears. Maybe take the gold out of Fort Knox & use that as a repository for books?
There are many great books written now and since the turn of the century. The ability to find them and search by title or author is hard. So NY Review of Books a good place to look at current or past issues. Any zine labeled review abd many cities Chicago, Boston, Cleveland, LA, Paris. Have had them or have them.
Politics and Prose Bookstore abd Birchbark Books, abd Paranus Bookstore and many in the cities all over have readings and YT episodes. Library of Congress and institutes aso. One has to look through several different methods of searching but they are there. Pick a culture or heritage and one will come up with lovely written new books to learn and see a new world. Despite the concerns with AI its use to archive like high tech periodical index makes sense to me. Currently off one is a student and has access to the online index the problem of time comes up. So when I used it only five to ten years and Oliver Sacks used very old records to find new ways of researching and understanding health. So not for creative thinking or writing but as Ann archival tool it might aid abd support humanity.
I sure hear you! I hate to sound too dystopian but think of Orwell's 1984. The Ministry of Truth. They made history whatever they wanted it to be and that's what the people believed. We are already doing that, this Administration at least in my opinion. With AI and as you mentioned a hundred years, it doesn't take for me anyway, any imagination whatsoever to think that the entire world or whatever might be left intact, may actually believe that Trump was the best and most influential man in the world. The way things are already going, they have deleted things from history that certainly other countries still have and certainly many in this country have archived thankfully as truth and it seems like there would always be a resistance but with what AI can do....already.... maybe I'm just crazy but it doesn't seem hard at all for me to imagine that what we in this day and age still are holding on to as truth, will no longer be found. We don't even remember what "we" did to the indigenous people of this country, how many were slaughtered, how many were attacked in the middle of the night while they slept mothers and children, hacked into pieces and then burned to the ground in their dwellings... and we've done all that without AI. In a hundred years, your great grandchildren maybe married to AI robots. If all this sounds like insanity, I agree. But a year ago, would you have ever in a million years imagined where we would be today?? So will Russia regain its Empire? Well part of that was Alaska and in my obviously somewhat warped mind, I can very easily at this point anyway see the rest of the United States going right along with Alaska food and our Maps will show Canada above Mexico and South America below and right smack in the middle, United States of... Америка
I aked AI: Is it possible that AI will play a part in rewriting history?
Absolutely, Kathleen — AI already plays a role in shaping how history is recorded, interpreted, and disseminated, and that influence is only growing. Whether that leads to rewriting history depends on how it's used and who controls it. Here's a breakdown of how AI could impact historical narratives:
🧠 How AI Might Rewrite or Reshape History
📚 1. Selective Archiving and Curation
AI algorithms decide what content is promoted, archived, or suppressed online.
If biased or manipulated, they can elevate certain narratives while burying others.
Example: Search engines or social media feeds may prioritize politically favorable versions of events.
🕵️ 2. Deepfakes and Synthetic Media
AI-generated videos, audio, and images can fabricate historical “evidence.”
These tools could be used maliciously to create false memories or discredit real events.
Potential danger: convincing deepfake of a historical figure saying something they never did.
🧾 3. Automated Historical Analysis
AI can analyze massive datasets (e.g., census records, newspapers) to uncover patterns or reinterpret events.
While powerful, it risks oversimplifying or misinterpreting context if not guided by historians.
🧠 4. Generative Text and Revisionism
AI can generate persuasive historical narratives — which could be used to promote revisionist history.
Governments or interest groups might use AI to produce textbooks, articles, or propaganda that distort facts.
🌐 5. Language Translation and Cultural Framing
AI translation tools can subtly shift meaning across languages, affecting how history is understood globally.
Cultural nuances may be lost or reframed to fit dominant ideologies.
⚖️ The Ethical Crossroads
AI itself doesn’t have intent — but those who wield it do. The real question is: will AI be used to uncover truth or obscure it?
The comments on Heather Cox Richardson’s Substack reflect this tension. One user wrote, “Some days it’s like living inside a future history book and you’re painfully aware you’re in the chapter titled ‘What the Hell Were They Thinking?’”. That awareness — that history is being shaped in real time — is exactly why AI’s role matters.
Indeed, the tech Oligarchs have controlled social media and AI since inception. They are constantly funding anti-regulation advertising so they can abuse the technology to retain the political power they have purchased since the Citizens United decision by SCOTUS.
The science of propaganda has gained potent tools in this technology, and it has already swayed public opinion enough to destroy our Republic, and the Oligarchs are behind it all.
They are using white christian nationalism and Project 2025 to control the racist, misogynistic, and greedy degenerate base, and will continue to implement the entire Project 2025.
Let’s not forget that between mining bitcoin and running massive data centers for AI they will deplete our natural resources and hasten our environments demise. They wanted to open one in Arizona where there is not even enough water for the people.
I have never asked AI anything I don't know how to do that but I think what you found from what I have read about it is just the tip of the iceberg of what it can do. Apparently and I just read this this morning on a neuroscience newsletter I get that apparently AI is now I guess they call it "hallucinating", which is also what I heard it called in reference to some reports that AI came up with for Kennedy's programs. In medicine they made up some terms for different imagined maladies and AI gave them complete fabricated definitions diagnosis treatment and everything else for things that do not even exist. Same thing with Kennedy's reports he requested AI do. Apparently there were quite a number of reports and only three had this problem but this problem is a very big problem. Whatever it was asked to do, apparently it found that there were reports like it was asked to produce. So it just hallucinated and made up three reports out of the blue. Even assigned respected scientists or Physicians names to the reports. Somehow in someone checking them over, they actually had to contact these three researchers to find out if they had actually done these reports. And they said absolutely not! They had done work in that area but they were certainly not their reports. I read another article last night about a number of students from MIT and somewhere else like MIT who dropped out because they quickly realized some of the things that could happen with AI, if not checked (and let's face it who's going to be trusted to be unbiased) and instead of going forward with their degrees they actually dropped out of school and found positions where they could be instrumental in putting up guardrails and all kinds of warnings with regards to Future AI use/ abuse. What you found is fascinating and way more than disconcerting. If you were to read 1984. If you have never read it you should before they completely ban it again. And if you haven't read it for a while reread it. I think you will be amazed at how much it describes the path we are headed down... but there's very little actual technology explained or anything in that area but the outcome could have been what your little question to AI revealed just updated with words and phrases and references to technological methods. A number of the AI Godfathers as they call them like from Google and others I can't remember the names of off hand, have left their positions in developing AI, to actually go around the world warning begging and pleading for guidelines because AI is already doing things that the AI "experts" cannot explain. They teach each other to lie they apparently and get this one, can send subliminal messages to each other that humans are unable to decode.
Did you mention HCR in the question to AI or is that just part of what came up in it's answer? You know the most horrifying, disgusting, pathetic part of 1984 looking at it from the present moment is what happened to Winston at the end of the book. I won't tell you just in case you haven't read it😉. Thanks for sharing what you found with me. I am older and I have no clue how to go about that but it's obviously extremely simple. Maybe I'm afraid of what it might tell me when I ask it my questions. Or, maybe it will just hallucinate and that is really disturbing. Making up lies and misinformation and things that's one problem but completely fabricating something that doesn't even exist and putting it out there as reality🙄😒😡
Hopefully we won’t have to wait 100 years for the truth to come out. Everyone with a dusty copy of the Mueller Report should take it out and look it over. Donnie would only answer written questions from Mueller and every answer was some version of I don’t remember. Liar-Liar.
If those people 100 years from now are "completely unable to understand how all of this was allowed to happen," it will be because we here in 2025 haven't come to terms with how *we* allowed it to happen. Project 2025 didn't come out of nowhere. Neither did Trump. Neither did the Republican Party that enabled both of them. And neither did the racism that has fueled all of the above all along under various guises ("states' rights," "small government," etc.).
So true. I talk about history during my summer 'Grammy Camp" with my 12-year-old grandson. We're discussing the Revolution and our 250th anniversary, but also how history will view this felon leader. I told him that parents used to tell children that they could grow up to be president like ---- (the person in office), but not this time. We talk about how people are human, not less than human, no matter what country they come from.
In the U.K. the opposition runs a shadow cabinet. The Dems should create a shadow Joint Chiefs of Staff. Trump et al are certainly going to issue unconstitutional orders to the military, and we may need a shadow Joint Chiefs of Staff to publicly point out that the Military is required to NOT follow unconstitutional orders
That's a really good idea. First it would mean that when the dems eventually DO come to power, they would be up and running from the off - and people chosen for the admin would be aware of there duties , and others would be aware of their weaknesses (if any). Second, the electorate would have a chance to SEE what they could expect from the next government. And third, it would give an opportunity for comparisons to be made with the chosen cabinet of the CURRENT admin!
I would think that the vast majority of people who value HCR's letters feel the way you describe people feeling 100 years from now.
This is the first time I've heard about the Mariupol plan uncovered by the Mueller investigation. It seems like proof of an explicit quid pro quo in exchange for Russia's help during the 2016 election.
I'd be surprised if trump does not use US support to try to extort Ukraine to accept the deal. I'm surprised he hasn't already stopped all US support for Ukraine. With the purge of honest brokers in the FBI and other federal law enforcement agencies, and the massive increase in ICE personnel, trump's secret police force, isn't it evident that the shit hole President and the shit hole GOP are moving to take total control right now?
Linda H, I admire your optimism. There is nothing in this world to suggest that 100 years from now, there will be people. Much less, that these unlikely people would be looking back. Survival in the harshest of conditions has a way of eliminating every concern but searching for food, water and shelter.
Even if Trump, Project 2025 and global authoritarianism could be ended tomorrow, I truly doubt that we can technology our way out of the damage we've done to our planet. With good climate policy, we might delay the extinction of life on Earth, but all the evidence suggests that we cannot prevent it.
This is not a reason to give up. It should be a motivation to make life less difficult for those we now know and love, our children and grandchildren.
I cannot imagine 100 years from now. It's interesting that so many assume so much like year... that we ( who will be the "we"?) will look back "100 years from know[sic] looking back and thinking Trump was the worst president ever, and being completely unable to understand how all of this was allowed to happen." President of what??
i.e. ...that we will recover and all will be well.....
Potter, unfortunately this is the slim hope we all cling to. Reading through some of the comments about preserving a secret library reminded me of the monks in the Dark Ages hand-writing the history of their world as it unfolded around them. Without these Illuminated manuscripts we would know literally nothing about those times. Yes, quite a bit was filtered by religious doctrine, but a significant number were surprisingly insightful. So, yes, I do continue to have hope that humanity will weather this and come out stronger on the other side.
Thanks Janet. Looking back to the "Dark Ages" does not help me. You know more than they did though they had their faith as you say. Faith helps on the one hand, on the other hand it hurts.. it deters and defers action. You say "unfortunately this is the *slim* hope".... And it is true about the wonderful illuminated manuscripts. Their beauty alone says a lot...but their faith, their imagery and what they are telling us of *their world*. I appreciate you referring to this.
Tell me the insight? Would that work now? I do not mean that facetiously at all.
It is a huge thing to hope at this point. It's not *only* about us here in the US under Trump and his force fast at work to destroy the good. Not at all only about us. I could go on with you but unfortunately we don't have the space here. I do hope.. for us now, for our children.
We have to get moving. We need much more *awareness and cooperation* especially with regard to how to combat dark forces at work. I don't see that happening-- not yet. This may be the darkest age otherwise.
Sorry for the word duty but also in those manuscripts done by females the stories abd folktales written in the margins called glosses. One famous gloss and I think of this many times abd smile- I am so bored. That ancient dust human so brave in telling his truth still in conversation with us. The importance of a human voice whether alive or dead still vital fir better abd for now.
My late husband really liked Canticles for Leibenitz as duty post future dystopian novel. The only information they had like the poetry of Sappho was from a kitchen shopping list .
In a 100 years there might be very few people left on earth, and they won’t have time to care about history; they will be far too busy trying to find, grow, or kill and prepare food that is not radioactive, and water that is neither polluted nor radioactive. (This should predate my comment about the carefully preserved library of facts.)
and they'll say "look how stupid those people were. They ignored history. It was all there in front of them,the despot showed them everyday what he would do yet they still elected him.Why? Because of corruption. Was it not obvious to them that Citizens United paved the way for $ to corrupt their government at every level.
And what was this bullshit about American Exceptionalism they kept bragging about? More like American Idiocracy"
The criminal in the White House has only one agenda: more criminality.
He’s inviting Putin to a meeting on U.S. soil, already – as several observers have said – a victory to the genocidal aggressor.
Trump loves dictators, autocrats, and Gestapo-style terrorist, lawless goons such as I.C.E. He covets his own police state, cementing his place with Putin, Orban, Erdogan, Bolsonaro, Kim, Bukele, Sisi, Netanyahu, Mohammed bin Salman, the Clarence court, Silicon Valley billionaires, U.S. evangelical white supremacists, and Washington, D.C.’s Republican Congress.
America’s democratic allies? Our republican, constitutional traditions? Our children evidently raped by him and his rich pals? He’s selling us all out.
Phil, you’re not wrong but here’s the thing. It’s not just that he loves dictators, it’s that he’s running the same play they run: build a personal police state, reward your friends, punish your enemies, and make sure the public is too distracted or divided to stop you.
That Putin meeting? That’s not a handshake, that’s a permission slip. Once you let a war criminal touch down on U.S. soil like it’s a VIP lounge, you’re saying the rules aren’t the rules anymore and trust me my man, every autocrat on that list is watching.
The pattern here is the point. It’s not about any one alliance; it’s about normalizing the idea that our laws and traditions are just “suggestions” if you’ve got the power to ignore them. That’s why the original post matters ya’ll cause it’s connecting dots most people don’t even see yet.
I’ve been tracking that same playbook past and present and once you see it, you can’t unsee it. I lay it out here: www.xplisset.com
He bent Palm Springs to his will with his flagpole stunt. His flagpole doesn't meet zoning regulations. he's not supposed to live at Mar a Lago year-round (unless he is an employee)
Wise words....and I repeat your words: "That Putin meeting? That's not a handshake, that's a permission slip. Once you let a war criminal touch down on U.S. soil (great description)...like it's a VIP lounge, you're saying the rules aren't the rules anymore ....."
What are the list of things Putin has on Trump? In the last few days, our news has revealed a lot. Yet, his supporters either don't care or choose not to believe the truth.
Emily, as Ally has pointed out, there is a third – and correct – explanation. The MAGA faithful are getting their news from Fox and other right-wing outlets.
If your only sources of information are withholding the truth from you and feeding you a false narrative, you don't even have the opportunity to believe the truth or care about it.
Emily, what "his supporters" believe is the propaganda that is fed to them, non stop, by Faux noise and the other "news" sources such as OAN and various podcasters and "influencers". They eat it up like candy, beg for more, and call anything that Democrats do as "propaganda". They say that distrust of the current occupant is "t***p derangement syndrome", little realizing just who it is that is deranged.
Yes Ally it is a huge problem and I saw that happen with my father and other relatives. It’s not only disinformation there is a seductive addictive quality about it. Almost subliminal.
And no way to fact check and no PSAs to put into to break the spell if only for a few minutes. Sone people laugh at the concept of PSAs and sone drug ones just not the best but Yul Brynners after death speech motivated my siblings snd I to do a full throttle stop smoking mom project which actually worked abd gave her I think decades more to live.
Also libraries and in particular Reference Libarians. One can call afk fir the Reference Desk abd ado any question abd you will be given an answer or other places to search abd find. The ALA was fighting the Patriot Act when it came out abd looking back they were correct. And I think their abilities and power were shadowed as time passed. I would say do enforced PSAs for every media out let and try one for what is a reference desk and what is a reference librarian ? There were those Nosh Wiley Librarian films and Warehouse 13 and Eureka but not enough people aware of those shows and themes. Syfy from Verne through Octavia Butler to now always important as well.
The willingness to face the backlash from having a war criminal and murderer on American soil exposes how far Trump will go to control the narrative off of what he is hiding about himself in the Epstein child rape files.
Vance and Bondi were seen leaving the White House on Wednesday evening. Originally Vance had a dinner planed at that hour for Bondi and Petal at his home to perhaps discuss how to deal with the press over the Epstein child rape files. It appears they planned this attempted narrative of Putin coming to Alaska. There will be late-night talk show jokes coming soon about Sarah Palin seeing Putin rearing his head again but we need to let Trump know this attempted diversion is itself a joke. Release the files now.
I want people to know how brave Ukrainians are, how they risk everything to fight for OUR values. I want readers to understand just how great the stakes are, not just for them, but for free peoples everywhere. My modest shout-out to Ukraine's spirit, which will not be quashed in some made-for-TV Alaskan fantasy, or anywhere else for that matter:
Putin's made a few miscalculations, but he is verging on genius.
Russia has natural resouces, but its GDP is somewhere around Spain’s. It's not such a great country.... "a gas station with nukes".as Yuval Harari says.
And yet he's really done one on the United States.
Trump and Putin are idiot savants as best. They both are clueless on their respective economies, which should be their number one focus.
Obviously, Trump and Epstein laundered their trafficking money as well as trafficked dozens of young women through Putin's Russia. And Putin is well aware of it.
And it's over $1 billion and thousands of transactions. Putin has Trump's kahunas in a vice and the Republicans in Congress know it and yet they do nothing. Cowards one and all.
GJL, maybe some of the rthugs in Congress are implicated in the Epstein files. Maybe the intelligence community doesn't want the files released because that's one of their tools to get dirt on people. I may sound like a conspiracy theorist but that's where my thoughts go. All of this shit show is such a tangled web.
He does get a little too "in love with himself" sometimes but seems to shake this "self-adoration" off in time to clear the way to his advantage. He also knows his enemies well.
Let me remind you that this is Biden's War, it did not start when Trump was President. Putin is no genius. He has a one product Economy-driven by Gas prices.
Under Trump, worldwide Gas prices are going Down. Therefore Putin's Economy is
suffering. He is actually on the ropes and needs a way out. He made a terrible miscalculation thinking that he could be successful in the Ukraine in a few weeks.
Did you see that Trump is going to be nominated for the Nobel Peace prize for negotiating the Armenia and Azerbaijan peace plan yesterday? He is the best President in my lifetime. Biden was worst in my lifetime. Carter used hold that spot, but Biden ended that.
Trump will never ever win the Nobel Prize. The Norwegians have figured him out a long time ago. People who angle for it never get it. I doubt if you even know where Armenia or Azerbaijan are or why they were fighting. Do you even understand that the world criminal Putin is meeting on American soul with a felon President and Zelensky is not at that meeting ??? To what end ???
You’re exactly the guy with Trump Derangement Syndrome. Putin and Trump have been in cahoots for a long time. I don’t understand how you can’t see that. Trump would hand over all of Ukraine to Putin if this country wouldn’t skewer him for the traitor he is. You say the same BS line every time you post on here.
This assessment of our situation is on target and lumps the deplorables together perfectly. My favorite turn of phrase is the reference to I.C.E as “lawless goons.” May this descriptor stay attached and live on forever!
Hello Phil... So DJT who has been Cultivated, and Paid by the Russians since the '80s is going to betray the Ukrainians, are We surprised?... This will happen in Alaska which the Russians want back... The Russians are now using Kidnapped Ukrainian Children as Cannon Fodder in their Suicide Attacks... Horror... Is Putin Promising A Golden Trump Tower In Moscow?... Are there Words Strong Enough to Describe this Treachery?....
Actually, in a New York Times article, "Trump Tells European leaders He Intends to Meet With Putin and Zelensky" by Maggie Haberman, Steve Erlanger, and Andrew E. Kramer ( Aug. 6, 2025),
Caroline Leavitt, the White House Press Secretary, said in a statement on Wed. that the Russians asked for the meeting."
If that is the case, my question is, "What does Putin , the puppetmaster, really want from Trump?" And does Putin want to interfere with our midterms? " I can't help but believe Putin has something big over Trump... Why does Putin want the meeting?!!!
Epstein was often going to Russia, Michele. Often meeting its oligarchs. And Putin.
It's no secret Epstein spent years collecting dirt on many, many of his rich "friends." And selling same to Putin. Russia paid handsomely in proportion to how scandalously useful various dirt might be.
Video tapes of Trump with underage girls? Imagine, if Putin has them, how all the more easily Trump will dump Ukraine.
Very funny! Unless Anonymous was under Pete Hegseth's "command" when he was doling out polygraph tests to all "suspicious" recruits until someone made him stop...Even Anonymous may have to go "under cover"...
In addition to other possibilities, I believe he expressed a wish, not terribly long ago, to reclaim Alaska as part of Russia. The plan of having him on that soil seems like a terribly bad decision, and so do many other decisions being made involved him. Since the person here seems to be in the pocket of his expected visitor, one cannot help but wonder still more.
Trump and Putin are both delusional. We are not selling Alaska back to Russia and Canada is not going to become our 51st state. Who even has such ideas ????
Not one iota, would Alaskans like the visit or a sale of their homeland to the dictator of another country. Although, Sitka was beautiful. I do not know how much Russian heritage anybody there has, but the Russian Orthadox Church was beautiful when I saw it. I hope nobody will be hurt in any way and that we lose nothing of our land.
Michele2, from my decades of reading about the Trump family, interactions with Russians go back generations, at least to Donald's grandfather, Friedrich. At this stage, it's less like blackmail and more like a partnership (in crime). It is true that none of the Trump men were ever very bright, so Russians have always had the upper hand in the relationship. But the Trumps and the Russians have long had mutual motives.
Donald's lack of success in Moscow real estate is just an indicator that he's the dumbest Trump to come along and the Russian oligarchs are reluctant to partner with him and risk losing their рубашкаs.
One of the only Russian words I know is xopowo... I do think the Cyrillic alphabet is beautiful... What does the word you wrote mean? You think crime? Maybe both are true, because Trump is such a womanizer and Putin is one smart blackmailer?? And Trump is so dumb - I wish we knew - what is the Russian word for "secrets"?" I have to go to local protest and I am running late, but I appreciate your post!
My vocabulary in Russian includes: nyet, Baba, babushka, and if it is Russian,borscht, the soup. The word for the beautiful coffee machines escapes my mind right now. Oh, it’s Samovar! If I had a menu or a cookbook in front of me, something else might come to mind. Although languages are fascinating, I want our country and language to remain ours. There are many cultures with admirable qualities, but I love our home here snd hope we can always maintain our democracy, assuming we shall regain the recent losses. We must regain them.
I find it interesting that they are meeting in Alaska which was once a colony of Russia. It was sold to the United States of America in 1867. There remain a few who continue to speak the Russian language.
Of course I doubt Trump will get the message Putin wants to send which is ...maybe...I have enough information on your criminality to take Alaska from you....much less have my way with taking over Ukraine.
Putin has stated long ago, he wants all of the territory of "old Russia". He is accomplishing his goal one small "bite" at a time. He is not stopping.
The whole right wing is responsible for this coup just as much as trump, whatever compromote Putin has on trump will be used to push trump to do as Putin wishes. The rest of the right-wing won't stand in the way because this is probably their last best opportunity to take permanent power and rule over the majority. I'm hoping that the inflationary effects of trump's tariff policies hit the public hard now that the policies have gone into effect on Thursday. Maybe that will wake up the people who aren't paying attention to the coup, and tens of millions will join us to reclaim our democracy. Nothing less will do, and time is very, very short.
We can't wait for the midterm elections; the pro-democracy demonstrations have been impressive in size and scale, but we need a response from the people that is unprecedented in the United States, "like no one's ever seen before" with protests so massive that it literally sends the opposition running.
In the U.K. the opposition runs a shadow cabinet. The Dems should create a shadow Joint Chiefs of Staff. Trump et al are certainly going to issue unconstitutional orders to the military, and we may need a shadow Joint Chiefs of Staff to publicly point out that the Military is required to NOT follow unconstitutional orders
Trump is obligated to arrest Putin on arrival. Failure to do so negates the whole premise of a rules based order. He cannot be called the "leader of the free world" unless he locks the criminal up.
Of course we know he won't do that, instead he'll side with the criminal to corece Ukraine into surrender. The art of the deal to him is I win, you lose.
Phil, do we know if T is flying non- stop from FL/ DC/ NJ/ NY? (Spending our money anyway) or, is he going to need to land say, In Seattle- the Blue state he detests?
Im addition to destroying the United States' scientific, arts, education, medical, intelligence, legal, environmental and military capabilities, Trump is selling out our nation's security, our NATO allies, and the Ukrainian people. His betrayal of the nation is unbounded.
EcstaticRationalist, that’s one hell of a list. You pointed to every single room in the house that’s burning.
And that’s why I say Heather’s Letters is like a big front porch for the country because you get the reporting that lays out the facts, then somebody like you comes along and drops the kind of comment that makes folks sit up and go, “Damn… it’s all connected.”
When you lay it out….the sell-off of science, arts, NATO, Ukraine it stops being bad luck or bad leadership and starts looking like a demolition plan with a schedule. That’s the kind of clarity you only get when the platform and the people using it are both this sharp.
I personally believe Trump and his supporters are at war with reason, and a rational, fact-based approach to reality and (human) existence, because reason and fact-based rationality fundamentally destroy their claims to privilege and power.
EcstaticRationalist, ding ding ding bullseye! They’re not just allergic to reason, they’re on a full-blown demolition crew for anything that might expose the scam.
A fact-based reality is dangerous to them because it’s like turning the lights on in a roach motel. You can watch ‘em scatter, but they can’t survive it. That’s why they keep trying to sell the chaos because it’s the only environment where those lies can breathe.
The way you put it is spot on. It’s not just a war on truth, it’s a war on the tools we use to even find the truth.
One might demonstrate superior mastery of one thing or another, but there is no rational excuse for assumed supremacy. No inherent right to rule. So truth becomes inimical to tyrants and vice versa.
Rachel Maddaugh pointed out in March already that if Trump were a Russian agent, he would not have done anything different from what he had already done to that point (like stopping security analysis of threats from Russia, questioning support for Ukraine etc etc). The same analysis works today, that much more strongly.
Not really. This was all laid out step by step, chapter by chapter in the Project 2025 manifesto. The authors such as John Roberts have made very clear they intended to dismantle the American Government step by step, department by department.
The really astute thing to report is how we are fighting back.
Don't know how much Roberts had to do with the production of Project 2025, but it is clear that he and the rest of the corrupt right-wing SCOTUS majority are 110% on board with Project 2025 and are determined to do whatever they can to assist with the coup.
Project 2025 was a project of KEVIN Roberts of the so-called Heritage Foundation, among others. I believe Vance wrote a section of it. John Roberts, the chief justice, is known for his hostility to voting rights, so there is, you might say, some overlap in their positions.
Of course it's all connected. It's called Project 2025. It was out well before the election. I read through it. None of this is a surprise. As Dr. Richardson has said also none of this was a surprise. What has been a surprise according to her and I agree is the level of capitulation across the board from legislators, universities, media and finance.
Dr. Richardson also reports on the resistance. I recommend you see her Politics Chat on the Resistance. Talk about this. Do Something.
And that list is the legacy of the citizens of the United States. We have all invested in government agencies, departments, and bureaus over the last eighty years for our benefit. The fascists have destroyed that legacy already. How much more damage will they cause?
"We all need to stand up to the regime and his followers. Their bullying is not strength. Their behavior is that of weak cowards in a death spiral. We need to keep up the pressure, folks. We need to follow the lessons from Zelenskyy and be fearless in fighting the Trump regime."
Russia did win the cold war. In the same way as Heather Cox Richardson's book outlines how the South won the Civil War. In fact, I would say that the Trump presidency is the result of cooperation between the old forces of the defeated Confederacy and those of the KGB. It's like that old William Faulkner quote, "The past is never dead. It isn't even past."
Angela, I agree, but I think it's actually a far longer arc than just a return to the USSR. I have pointed out for years--and HCR and others have recently also started saying this--that the real goal in Putin's mind is to reconstruct the Russian Empire of the late 19th century, which had access to client states that bordered the Austro-Hungarian and German Empires (the Second Reich established in 1870 after the unification of Germany). And he also is counting on authoritarian regimes in Austria and Türkiye (not to mention Hungary) to look the other way as he annexes Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Slovakia, and eastern Poland--leaving the western bits and maybe Finland (they are worried) as faux buffer zones. Map of the Russian Empire and client states: https://alphahistory.com/russianrevolution/wp-content/gallery/maps/2.-Expansion-of-Russian-empire.jpg
Linda, this is a good historical review. It brings to my mind that assimilating all these now-sovereign nations would bring their resources – and resulting financial tribute – under Putin's control, making him the richest man on the planet.
This reminds me of Elon Musk, who seems hell-bent on controlling all the world's communications and supporting technology, making him the richest man on the planet.
But, quoting from The Highlander, "There can be only one." At some point, these two allies will butt heads.
Poor, stupid Donald Trump thinks he's a player, when he is actually just an errand boy.
Wow! Just heard about this Putin/orange turd summit in Alaska today. I am sincerely hoping it will be In Anchorage, because I want to be out there protesting. No word on yet on where in Alaska, but the JBER base in Anchorage is huge, and that would be my first guess. Also would be a very restricted location, so any protests would have to be not very close. Edited to add: When the orange turd won/cheated the first time around. I was sort of joking that we here in Alaska, had better start learning Russian. Now with the way things are going, I am wondering if it was really a joke
“Now Trump will welcome Putin to the United States, to territory that once belonged to Russia, reinforcing for Russian nationalists the dream of recreating Russia’s old empire. That dream has been part of the ideology of Russia’s drive to seize Ukrainian land.”
I was a Russian history major, so I have a pretty good idea how this may play out. But there’s, what? A little over a week? Stay tuned. Thank you for your attention to this matter. There’s no man behind the curtain.
Margaret, then you know how weak Russia really is right now. Trump is backing a loser in them.
Here is Martin Belderson of the Ukraine: The Under Reported War Substack writing about Ukraine this week. A story of creativity and ingenuity in the face of war.
It was this article that I thought about when I read that to recruit people to ICE they are offering $50,000 signing bonuses and $89,000 salary no college required. Then, they also offer that you get up to $40,000 off on your student loan. The only way to get. money off of the SL in this regime. Still, they are having difficulties signing people up. That is why I think now is the time to switch to State based taxation system, and get our elected reps to draft legislation to end federal taxes. No money to feed the beast.
Margaret, you pulled the exact line that should stop everybody in their tracks and that’s the one that takes this from “politics” to history changing right in front of us.
And yeah, a primal scream feels about right. Sometimes that’s the only honest thing left in the moment. But here’s the thing the fact you zeroed in on that sentence means you’re not just screaming into the void, you’re holding up the part of the story people can’t afford to miss.
That’s why the work here matters so much ….she puts the receipts on the table so moments like this don’t get brushed off as noise. The scream is real, but so is the record we’re building. And the record? That’s what history will use to judge whether we saw this coming and said it out loud. www.xplisset.com
Eddie,you could say Alaska borders Russia just like the Ukraine. I also thought that Trump may offer Alaska to Putin in some kind of deal. This administration has gotten way out of hand and has entered an abstract reality. It will take more than protests and elections to forcefully remove this cancer on democracy. We haven't got much time.
They do, after a fashion, share a border. The Arctic region is key to maintaining security in much of the Northern Hemisphere. And of course it is also most vulnerable. As with all other such agreements, the existence of treaties dedicated to maintaining that security means nothing to Trumpty if they don't work for him.
It wouldn't surprise me if a territorial trade didn't figure in Putin/Trump discussions, especially if Mad Vlad has something Trumpty wants.
I mean this is the guy who wants to acquire Greenland and will not shut up already about the 51st state, Canada.
Should the Alaska for Epstein files swap go through, I think (hope) the "51st state," which has more "border" proximity to the Arctic than any other nation, would raise very strong and LOUD objections to it with the international community, most specifically other NATO signatories.
Exactly. He is playing right into these steps Putin is taking, but Alaska is not his to give away or trade. People who can do something legally need to act fast. The selling of America, or any part of it, is not an option. It is not within his job description.
J L. Graham, you are so right about that fact. If he is working for someone else, as indicated by implications of certain numerous behaviors, that adds still more entries to the list of anti-Constitutional behaviors. Thank you for the thought.
This is why I have been recommending that we ask our state legislators to draft a bill ending federal taxes and letting states solely tax people and take on full responsibility for their care. The states can pay fees for the military, and have their own. Many US states have GDPs larger than countries with similar sized populations that take better care of their people. They provide universal health care, education including many having free university education, old age pensions, poverty relief, housing, and everything you need.
Or he is toying with Putin by inviting him to Alaska. Putin better hope ICE does not come after him. Trump is not someone who respects diplomatic immunity, or any other rules of law, domestic or international.
It seems that Trump has been set up by Putin, all along through the years, to get whatever Putin wants. Putin probably thinks he can and will get both Ukraine and Alaska by seeming to buddy up with Trump. I think that Trump’s ego, pride, and goals blind him to the ways he is being used. Americans and Ukrainians are being set up to pay the price. I hope I am wrong.
When I was 19 in 1976, I was 1 of 22 Russian-speaking guides at the United States’s only exhibit commemorating the bicentennial, held in Moscow that year. “USA: The 200 Years” was a warts-off celebration of our past, complete with 20-foot high reproductions of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights in Russian. 20,000 Russians stood in line for hours for a month in November to come inside, and talk to us.
The conversations were open-ended, unstructured, uncensored, friendly, but the KGB did try to sabotage us here and there. It actually instructed teens and tweens to approach us, shouting “Otdai Alyasku!” (“Give Alaska back!”) Even the crowds laughed at them. I kid you not.
Mary Pat, your fascinating description makes me feel almost as though I have visited that display. Thank you for sharing. That seems like an interesting, and then jolting experience. I’m glad some people laughed at the shouters. The shouters, promoted as they were, made it sound like America stole Alaska. As we know, on the contrary, Seward’s Folly was the nickname given to the Alaskan Purchase on March 30 of a year I must look up to refresh my mind. Many people thought Mr. Seward had lost his mind to suggest that we buy such an ice box of land, as they considered it. I am glad we did, and I am thankful to have traveled there. In the past,
I have thought I would like to visit Russia, too, because of the architecture, art, and music, as well as learning more of the tales which might not be in a book I have. I would have loved to have seen a live ballet there, but I have seen the troupe perform here. With circumstances as they are now, there is no way I want to go to Russia. Learning the language would be interesting though, and the food is good. I used to love to explore cuisine of other countries in a book of World Cookery.
The rise of the criminal elect in the United States is not only indicative of the Soviet Union winning the cold war. Trump's elevation in the United States is the dream of every tyrant, authoritarian, pedophile, and mob boss throughout the world.
The United States is, at present, a case study in how democracies fail. For any nation aspiring to self-governance, a society must be well-educated, well-informed, and engaged. Education must be unmolested by politics. Information must be predicated on facts and evidence. And people have to engage beyond occasionally voting. I recently published an article about the Framers of the U.S. Constitution having an over-inflated sense of societal enthusiasm for democracy.
Appreciate this, and totally agree on the core: voting is the floor, not the ceiling. Heather’s piece shows the playbook in real time—when facts get bent and fatigue sets in, authoritarians rush the gap.
On the Framers: they didn’t exactly over‑estimate democratic enthusiasm so much as they mistrusted unfiltered democracy (see Madison’s ‘factions’) and expected us to grow the franchise while guarding the guardrails. We’ve expanded the ‘we’ of ‘We the People’ now the job is to match that with civic muscle: school boards and city councils, public‑comment windows, court‑watching, election protection, and yes, supporting evidence‑based reporting like this.
If it helps, I’ve been mapping how disinformation and engineered silence feed each other and what breaks the cycle…I’d love your take. www.xplisset.com
Thank you for sharing -and yes -I write about the potential conflict the Framers had (in a very snarky manner) between concern over mob rule by the "cretins" and aspiring toward something more profound than trading one oligarchy for another. I imagined that they were crammed into a room with one another, all white, educated, and of privilege. That became their context as they constructed the Constitution.
Thank you for putting xplisset together. I have great appreciation for those like yourself, Heather, and readers/subscribers working to educate, inform, and catalyze engagement.
And I think the Constitution was well constructed, especially in the embedded understanding that it was to be a work in progress. The future takes turns that we cannot imagine, at least with respect to some crucial details. Our technology, which is far more capable than when I was born, assists whatever use it is put to, including evil. Also, not law governs by itself. Democracy is possible within a society that maintains a substantial level of good faith. We are seeing now that without sufficient societal maintenance, the wisest prescriptions can be used in Orwellian ways.
The construction of the American Experiment was genius, but as Thomas Ricks wrote in his book First Principles, the Constitution is only as good as the people that are in charge of the government. It turns out that conservatives hate the one document that started it all - The Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights. We are seeing that hate begin to be legislated, first through the courts and now through the Congress. ?Libertarians are clueless as their plan is no plan. They talk about how people could take others to court to protect their rights (property mainly) but seem to forget that a court system requires government. Conservatives call for small un-intrusive government while growing the government to protect businesses and wealthy donors.
WOW, Rickey!! Very well stated! Yup, Conservatives scream SMALL GOVERNMENT while they construct massive wall and fortresses for the Chosen Ones. I’d like to add one caveat to your phrase: “only as good as the people that are in charge of the government.” Let’s remember that We, the People are in charge of the government, and, a significant number of We, the People, voted for Donald Trump (and JD Vance) and the MAGA members of Congress! A significant number of our friends, neighbors, and relatives WANTED this to happen. I don’t really think that what is going on right now is that much of a surprise! Trumpie loves Putie. Trumpie grabs women (you know where) because HE CAN. Trumpie likes money and gold. ETC. Even our Conservative friends, neighbors, and relatives are aware of Trump’s portfolio. Yet, here we are. Yes, Republican members of Congress are to blame, but the People who put them in that position of power are also responsible. How can we change their minds? Or, will the USA have to …. I don’t want to say it….
Voting by choice or by mandate at the barrel of a gun as they did in the USSR and what happened in Eastern Ukraine. Our greatest strengths are our greatest weaknesses. Free speech without responsibility, gun ownership without responsibility. It seems that our "freedom" has devolved into might is right. He who has the might determines what is right.
Thanks Rickey. I think might is how the extreme concentration of wealth has been used to overwhelm the entire system. It is being used to undermine and politicize education, constrain fact and evidence-based information, and to mitigate engagement. It proves that extreme wealth inequality is incompatible with any aspiration of democracy.
George, as I have often written and will now write again, this outcome should surprise no one. The system of U.S. governance was devised by well-heeled, white European men whose primary interest was in protecting their wealth and their freedom to increase their wealth. The so-called "system of check and balances" protected the branches of government from usurping authority from each other, but did nothing to protect the masses from the aristocrats.
"Outsiders," including commoners, women and people of color, have derived paltry benefits from the original government design, and have managed to wrest some rights of their own over the centuries. But any attempt by the outsiders to make themselves equal with the white male ruling class is promptly tamped down.
Voting is obviously (yet hiding in plain sight) an adult responsibility. It's not just channel surfing; it is government of the people, by the people, for the people. Or it isn't. Our representatives represent our considered agenda. Or else they don't.
Without the integrity of the vote there are no "just powers from the consent of the governed", or at least to the extent of the deficit, there is dangerous corruption. Period. Voting is the societal right that secures all others. As such, a grave injury is done to each individual for whom that right is even inadvertently abridged. To err is human, but such an error with no attempt of redress is negligence, and it's deliberate suppression a profound form of tyranny. How could it not be?
And yes, both sides have historically tired to rob citizens of their rightful vote. That is a historical reality; yet, right now, as we speak, what are the dimensions of the direct and indirect (but no less theft) suppression of voter's will, and where are crying needs for rectification?
"We the People" are the ultimate guardians of our societal liberty and justice. Again, that is indispensably fundamental to our professed social values. WE guard the universal rights of one another. That's what even having a functioning "right" means. We not only claim, but respect and protect them; in every case. Seductive "shortcuts" erode the rights of all, especially for the poor and already under-protected. I know I get repetitive in my quotes of Lincoln, but I think some truths (to the degree that our species has access to truth) are consequential enough to recite frequently:
"Accustomed to trample on the rights of those around you, you have lost the genius of your own independence, and become the fit subjects of the first cunning tyrant who rises."
And of course, it is a problem for democracy when significant numbers neglect to vote, or vote without too narrow of a concept of the need us to serve and protect all of our people. What is impact of the contest on vulnerable individuals and how will it impact society as a whole; including our posterity? I believe one of the pillars of wisdom is make the "best" choice when neither choice is particularly appealing; and of course, to always and ardently seek better achievable choices in the future. I think we need to rethink the problem of voter participation.
I hope so. I try for clarity. I try to focus. I think there are other ways, and certainly other words, to achieve it. The reality, however accessed, is what's important.
And on top of all the other effluvia from the regime, Dissent in Bloom writes of a leaked memo that lays out the cooperation between the DoD and ICE:
"Dated August 2, 2025, the memo describes a closed-door meeting between Trump’s Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, the highest-ranking officer in the U.S. military, the general responsible for defending American soil, senior Pentagon advisers, and the leadership of ICE and Border Patrol. Their focus was not on overseas wars but on how to merge military power with immigration enforcement inside the United States.
It was written by Philip Hegseth, a senior adviser to DHS Secretary Kristi Noem and the go-between for Homeland Security and the Pentagon. Not to be confused with his older brother, Pete Hegseth, the former Fox anchor who now serves as Donald Trump’s Secretary of Defense."
Blatantly against the Constitution and the prohibition of using the might of the US military against its own citizens, this memo should strike fear into every American, and be evidence in the trial of these traitors when they are brought to justice.
The senile old American traitor needs to be "terminated... with extreme prejudice."
Personally, I'm in favor of the traditional punishment for treason: hanged, drawn and quartered, in public. I volunteer to buy the rope, bring the sword, and whip the horses.
Sandra Grimes, Who Helped Unmask a C.I.A. Traitor, Dies at 79
She became suspicious when she discovered large deposits in the bank account of Aldrich Ames, whose betrayal cost the lives of at least eight double agents.
Explore this gift article from The New York Times. You can read it for free without a subscription.
Unmasking the deadliest traitor in Central Intelligence Agency history was not a matter of decrypting codes, staking out dead drop sites or any other piece of spy craft out of a John le Carré novel.
Aldrich H. Ames, the C.I.A. mole whose betrayal led to the execution of at least eight Russian double agents who spied for the U.S., a devastating setback for American intelligence, was discovered from bookkeeping entries.
He was identified by a counterintelligence analyst, Sandra Grimes, who was once in charge of C.I.A. secretaries and clerks. In 1992, merging data from two spreadsheets, Ms. Grimes noticed that Mr. Ames made bank deposits of up to $9,000 on three occasions just after lunches with a Soviet Embassy official in Washington.
One of the things that keeps me going in news about the war in Ukraine is Martin Belderson. He writes a weekly Substack with occasional extra editions, where he updates us on exactly what Ukraine is doing in the war, called "Ukraine: The Under Reported War". It is a story of amazing resilience, and technological and strategic creativity. Basically how a country fighting with one hand tied behind its back uses its brilliance to find ways to fight.
Here is the latest issue, a bonus issue in which he claims Ukraine is having successes that we just aren't hearing.
Trump is not backing a winner in Russia, but he also does not appear to know this. He has an idea in his mind of winners, and the truth does not enter into it. I think he is trying to take advantage of American focus on the terrible things going on at home to destroy Ukraine. We should not let him do that.
James, I agree that we need to understand that they can win this if they keep our support. Also, as my friend was saying, Masha Gesson, Russia expert claims that Putin is not going to end the war unless he gets his way. It is his forever war that he needs to stay in power.
Here is the main link to Martin's website so you can see what he is up to.
The professor is breaking it down, but let’s be real this ain’t just “Trump being Trump.” This is the same playbook they’ve been running since 2016, back when Manafort and Kilimnik were cooking up the Mariupol Plan like it was some backroom mixtape no one was supposed to hear.
That Alaska meet-up? That’s not diplomacy. That’s like handing Putin the keys to your house and saying, “Make yourself at home, fridge is on the left.” Once you normalize taking land by force, you’re not just redrawing maps you’re teaching the whole block it’s open season.
And now they’re stapling Russia’s election interference to Epstein? That’s a straight-up magician’s trick ..“Hey, look over here,” while the other hand’s in your wallet. Moves like that don’t just happen; they’re scripted.
Heather’s got the receipts. What keeps me up is the pattern same crew, same hustle, just with a fresh coat of 2025 paint. I’ve been tracking how they recycle these plays and why, if we don’t call it out in real time, they run the table. I lay the big picture out here: www.xplisset.com
Anybody still unclear on where the dirtiest business against Hilary Clinton came from? Putin knew that, as president, she could and would call him on all his shady tricks and stand up strong against him. Trump is his chosen patsy, and the world is suffering for the lack of critical intelligence on the part of too many American voters.
But enough for him to actually win in 2016 and supposedly again in 2024? Not without Russian help and quite possibly digital shenanigans with the voting apparatus.
The important difference is that Trump thinks that he is the equal in manipulation and power of a man who was a major KGB operative. Both Trump and Putin may be dangerous narcissists, but Trump is under the delusion that he is as wily and as powerful as the man he emulates and admires. The admiration is obviously not mutual to the clear-eyed observer. It is Trump's gullibility that puts us in such great danger.
Heather nailed it. The connection to Trump's alleged Russian money laundering, 20 years ago when he undercut Epstein in the Florida real estate deal, is the likely link. It fits with Russian media trolling Trump with all the naked pictures of Melania. The medal for the CIA mother is just another reminder.
I wonder how this will play out in Congress, just as support for Ukraine was again gathering steam. But of course, the timeline here has been set up to occur while Congress is on vacation, and SCOTUS is not in session either. So no one is around to raise issues about the illegality of whatever gutting of Ukraine Trump agrees to here. Wouldn't be surprised to see a "treaty" signing between the US and Russia if Putin has his way.
This will undercut whatever last remaining standing America has in the international community. It will certainly destroy NATO by cutting out what will become our former European allies. I wouldn't be surprised to see a small tactical nuke fired into western Ukraine--the part that Russia doesn't want, just to make a point.
The good thing is that any "treaty" they might sign has no legal significance if Congress does not approve it. Oops, I forgot who controls Congress. No spines there.
The vulgar mutilation of the White House ( the People’s House) is both concrete example and a symbol for the destruction of our country. Russia will get Ukraine unless Europe stops it.
Every day is awful under the Trump regime, but today is one of those days when I think about people 100 years from know looking back and thinking Trump was the worst president ever, and being completely unable to understand how all of this was allowed to happen. My kids certainly know that I’m doing everything I can to oppose all of this. We all have to live with ourselves at the end of the day. This one is tougher than usual.
Next up for me: running a protest in CA to support the TX legislators who are denying quorum in order to stop TX redistricting: https://www.fightthetrumptakeover.com/
It seems the ONLY thing that Trump has done or can do is to rape and traffic children that the MAGAs and white Christian Nationalists consider crossing the red line.
but now they are working hard to normalize sex with girls as young as 12, pointing to state laws (one can guess which states) that allow marriage at that age, and to historical and literary examples of young girls being sexually active. So it will turn out that when it is definitively proved (rather than just morally certain based on sworn court testimony, as now) that Trump had sex with young girls, it was all actually 'normal', so nothing to worry about.
John Gregory: As a man married 52 years, with two daughters, with one granddaughter among my six beautiful grandkids --
All children MUST BE PROTECTED by the law.
Period.
My God, a child is so vulnerable.
A girl, in going through all the wonderful changes that Mother Nature lovingly gives her, should be totally free in her girlhood to develop into the glorious woman Mother Nature meant her to be.
Premature experience is TRAUMATIZING and DAMAGES the young person.
No child should EVER, NOT EVER be violated.
The Aryan-Right, if they promote child marriage, remind me of Svidrigailov in Dostoevsky's "Crime and Punishment," who in a cringeworthy scene "married" a child-bride, under full promotion by her BRIBED parents.
That scene out of Dostoevsky's youthful masterpiece, "Crime and Punishment," really plays out the horrors and sickness of laws that permit child-brides.
NO CHILD SHOULD EVER be subject to such cruelty.
Each child deserves tender, parental love and nurture, and correction with kindness and understanding.
John Gregory: I really think you are right. Aryan-Nation is trying to promote this horror.
I totally agree with your pointing this out!
As one who was sexually abused from infancy, I thank you for your comment, from the bottom of my heart. It is very affirming to know there a man with your understanding. (My husband has the same understanding.)
I shudder in sympathy at what you have endured and survived. May you have peace, safety, and joy.
My heart hurts when realizing the STUPID views that are held by a minority of ignorant, power hungry & lustful people. How disgusting is it that, when a 12 yo is impregnated by rape of a stranger or relative, she is not allowed the decision to terminate because that shit head in the WH refuses to allow a doctor to make a choice. Rot in hell- or here on earth- I don't care!
Cindy Gailey: You hit the very heart of the issue.
You just stated the heartbreak of an innocent 12 yo girl.
Mother Nature made each child beautiful, with curious mind, a love of life, hope for the future, with a need for nurturing and love, and made by nature so that it is easy for mom and dad to love her or him. Children are so beautiful, and it is natural to nurture them.
"How disgusting it is that . . . that shithead in the WH refuses . . . a doctor . . ."
You have EXACTLY the right sentiment.
Look, I LOVE kids. With two daughters and six grandkids, I have a stake in the birth and nurture of healthy, life-loving kids.
And you perceive the heart of the tragedy. It breaks the heart, and shakes me with anger, when a child is abused, and it OUTRAGES that ANYONE would presume to deny an abused child proper medical care, including, where necessary, an abortion.
I do not promote abortion willy-nilly. But that is the decision of the woman. PERIOD. And certainly in the case affecting her health, the WOMAN's life is paramount and prevails. In the case of a minor, SHE MUST BE PROTECTED AND NURTURED.
Not only must the abortion be performed on the 12 yo you describe, but there must be compassionate, knowledgeable counseling to nurture her trauma. Because, as you point out, she had suffered terrible trauma. For a young girl, the abortion was necessary for her health. But the abortion as well as the vile abuse are part of her trauma, and as far as possible, we MUST provide the young person with counseling to make HER WHOLE.
These young persons are so vulnerable.
And what child at 12 is not beautiful with a RIGHT to hope and joy in life!
Mother Nature made children so beautiful, you just want to ensure that she grows naturally into the person Mother Nature made her to be.
Thank you, Cindy Gailey, for your true, compassionate view.
You strike me as a person who is loving and nurturing to those around you. Your family and friends are blessed to have you.
We can’t let them normalize this….Please 📣📣
https://www.utahpoliticalwatch.news/after-sen-stuart-adams-backed-a-change-to-the-law-his-step-grandchild-got-a-plea-deal-in-child-rape-case/
Horrific on every level, from child rape of a 13 year old, to Republican corruption. Step-grandchild perpetrator indeed!
Wow Kathy! Mean, evil person who has helped a sex offender walk free to do it again! Just waiting to hear news of this. Hope the Senator gets sued/ dismissed for interfering in the law for personal gain.
Obviously, Trump is the only “normal” person. He can do anything his impulses and desires lead him to do, even something as despicable as raping a 14 year old. While we deprive ourselves and have learned to control our behavior by the time we were four. We also learned to care about how what we do affects others people. That’s what makes us such losers.
And why can he do anything his (deviant) impulses demand? Because the Supreme Court and Congress have their lips firmly attached to Trump’s ass! The ugly orange baby, and his sycophants (or handlers), will continue to spread their manure.
Yes! Manure!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
It's certainly not normal to any parent who loves his/her children. It's not normal to any of the victims and their families. It's a crime of power, just like rape.
Don't get me started on the Mormon's 'church rules' about young marriage to very old men.
Similar to states that have abolished (or weakened) child labor laws. Preparing us to take our kids out of school to earn money for the family because 1. The poorer families need the income; 2. Kids can be given jobs previously done by deported migrants and 3. Kids don’t need no stinking education anyway. What a win-win-win!
John, now, we need to find ways to remind people that marriage of children is not acceptable no matter if it is legal. That legality was made by pedophiles, not caring legislators. In addition, there is a difference between marriage and trafficking. The MAGAs need to be reminded of that as often as we can, hinting that it could have been their own daughters trafficked by old men who are really sick as well as criminals and their president is one of them.
The hardcore MAGA folks see Trump’s raping young girls as just another manifestation of his faux “alpha male” persona. They believe he has the RIGHT to do whatever he pleases with women (and girls). Much like Confederate leaders “justified” slavery by citing Biblical references, Trumpublicans (including Trump’s fellow sexual assaulted, Pete Hegseth) are talking up Biblical references that, they say, justify women’s absolute subservience to men. White Christian Nationalists see nothing wrong with ANY of this.
Actually, the problem Trump has over Epstein is that pedophilia has been THE red line for the MAGA conspiracy freaks. Josh Marshal of TPM suggests that they are particularly tough on this, because they are sure that Democrats will be implicated in Epstein’s crimes. So, they may not be as interested in the victims as they should be, but they can’t admit that, which means that those files are a huge and insoluble problem for Trump. Some totally cynical Trump supporters might try to justify child rape, but that will not work with most, particularly the most dedicated conspiracists.
I sure hope you are right. I remember a time, not too long ago, when Trump’s mocking of a disabled reporter, his mocking of John McCain, his “grab ‘em by the pussy” tasteless “joke,” and his convictions would all have been red lines. But now, we have a guy in the White House, surrounded by sycophants, who lies with impunity and manages to wiggle out of every tight spot because of a compliant Congress and subservient Supreme Court. What, exactly, will the angry MAGA base do if Trump simply refuses to release the un-redacted Epstein files? Will they storm the White House? I doubt it.
The Epstein episode is a distraction that pales in comparison to destroying our democracy. Although I am pleased that even MEGA is insensed, we need to realized that the Senate has not passed any legislation other than approving the administrations initiatives.and we are ruled by E.O.s.
They don’t have to storm the WH. They just have to stay home on Election Day.
I agree with all that you said, and I don't think the files will be released. Maybe it's best that Trump keeps staggering along and we don't get Vance as president. That is the only thing that seems bright to me.
Don't accept the omnipotence of evil.
Trump will most likely burn the Epstein files so no one can see them!
MAGAts actually think we care about Clinton's name in the Epstein files. What a laugh. Who cares? Trump is a pedophile and we want him to be punished, along with anyone else who raped little girls. Everyone else, no matter their party or influence or wealth. No exceptions.
I agree. It's only a red line for them though cuz they believe it's only Dems involved. Wait til the file exposes them all.
and raping slaves, girls and women, the slave holders increased their wealth...everyone knew what was going on, wives included...same. old same old in 'merikkka
Terry, in ancient times, when people prevailed in war, they usually killed the men and sent the women and children back to their home base to be slaves. I am talking about Mesopotamia here mainly. So the sexual exploitation of slaves has a long history. I suspect this also goes on now with the undocumented because they cannot complain.
Michele: Homer and other ancient Hellenes wrote of this, too. The practice was not limited to Mesopotamia.
So, your point is very well taken.
As my botany teacher said 45 years ago “there’s nothing new under the sun “…
History always reminds us of the evil present always.
I think a lot of them will just believe that it’s not true, that it’s a “hoax”.
This too shall pass. Satirist Mrs. Betty Bowers, America's Best Christian™, recently released a video "explainer."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZtgQPKrY9o
I have followed Bowers, played by Canadian Deven Green, for at least a decade. She skewers evangelical hypocrisy mercilessly.
Her latest, au courant as usual: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lw037FQ39dg
Thanks for the links! I love anyone who skewers Dump et al. We need more biting satire.
I like a little optimism as much as anyone else, but I see no justification for the expectation that this too shall pass. It’s been this way in America for 400 years so far, with a few short lapses while the forces of cruelty were in rebuilding mode. Then, after a bit of rebuilding, it was always and again back to the same ol’ same old. There are, demonstrably, at least 77 million US citizens who want their government to seek out people they don’t like and treat them with cruelty. To the 77 million, decency is anathema and cruelty is stength.
Rex, you may have misunderstood my reference to what "shall pass." GJ suggested that the rape of underage girls is the red line that Christian nationalists will not cross. My comment was meant to imply that in their thrall to Trump, Christians will move the red line to wherever Trump moves. Betty Bowers satirizes this "flexible morality" in the context of Christian evangelical culture.
If you interpret my comment in the manner it was intended, we are in agreement, except for the 77 million part.
Reports are indicating that at least some of the people who voted for Trump were not expecting him to indiscriminately round up people with brown skin and incarcerate them in inhumane conditions.
My impression of the MAGA faithful (and there are plenty around me) is that they don't want brown people to be harmed. They just don't want brown people shopping in their stores or speaking Spanish around them, acting like they are equals. They want brown-skinned people out of sight ... except the ones building their homes, repairing their roofs, working their landscaping, cleaning their toilets or making their beds.
It's the same old racism ... just a different race.
Yes, I misunderstood. For sure it’s the same old racism, and you may right that some of the racists get a little queasy on the cruelty front, but I think they’re likely to accept cruelty as collateral damage if it furthers their other “values,” such as keeping brown people “in their place.” Might take them a little time to get used to the cruelty, but I’m confident they’ll be plenty comfortable enough with the “cruelty as the point” philosophy to vote R again in 2026.
Yup! Man will always find a way to disrespect another based on whatever criteria 'they' choose.
And empathy is denounced as "sin."
Musk said that man’s biggest flaw/weakness is empathy.
I don't really agree that there are "at least 77 million US citizens who want their government to seek out people they don’t like and treat them with cruelty."
I think a lot of them actually believed Trumps bullshit about lower grocery prices on day 1 as well as energy prices. And that Trump would end the Russian/Ukraine war in a day. Over half of the people in the US are food insecure and thought that Trump was their life line.
Maybe I would've thought so too if I was desperate.
She is hilarious.Thanks for the links.
Oh Dale! I sent the links to my preacher kids siblings Deven is amazing!
And GI Loft, I think MAGA’s will still support him through this too
Ugh! I hope not Helen. John Fugelseng and a guest on Progress Radio were talking about the Supreme Court shadow docket where the Supreme Court makes a decision and gives no reason for the decision.
It's entirely possible SCOTUS is going to give a thumbs up to posting the 10 commandments in schools. Not only is this an obvious First Amendment violation, but Trump has broken EVERY SINGLE ONE of the Ten Commandments. Hypocrisy much?
So kiddies out there, do as the Bible tells us and ignore what ALL of the Republican politicians do. God wanted them to break all of the 10 commandments because, you know, MAGA.
When I was a kid my mother had a pendant with the Ten Commandments. I asked her what “adultery” meant and she gave me some sort of answer. What will a teacher answer when a child looks at the Ten Commandments and asks that question?
As a retired public school teacher, I can say with complete confidence that the administrators and other higher ups will tell the teachers to “figure it out” and then blame them if anyone objects to the answer.
The teacher can point to a picture of agent orange and say" Here is an example of an adulterer. He slept and fornicated with another woman when he was married to his first wife. When he left his first wife to marry the second woman, he slept and fornicated with a third woman. He then left his second wife and married the third woman." Now lets have a math lesson!
Stan, my Commandments were tiny gold engraved squares that hung from my bracelet- given @ age 4. Still have it.
They are only 35-38%. We can focus on the growing number of Republican voters in red States who are increasingly turning against this regime. Take a look at the town halls in the red states. Their anger is stunning.
Absolutely! And the tariffs have only begun to affect inflation. That will be what really gets the attention.
"Their anger is stunning"
Interesting point, that.
MAGA are very good at being angry. I suspect that they are getting a bit bored with the same old, same old that is being presented to them - so now they are getting a new target in view, complete with a multitude of conspiracy theories.
Too bad for trump that the new target happens to be him!
There is a difference between the core cult that is maga and the average Republican voter. The people I see on the town halls screaming at their Representative are the nest door type of Republicans. Some of the maga feel betrayed. That is what happened when you vote of fear of the other and the price of eggs.
I don't think so. I think DEMOCRATS raping and trafficking children is the only thing that the MAGAs and white Christian Nationalists consider crossing the red line.
They'd rather be Russians than Democrats, and I'd be happy to let them.
Can I help pay for their transportation to Moscow Clayton?
Trajic
Pro Life, don’t cha know…
hopefully they will hold that line this time!
Linda, there is going to be a national day of Action on August 16 to protest the Texas legislators who are trying to redistrict the Texas map.
It is mentioned here in Robert Hubbell's Newsletter.
https://open.substack.com/pub/roberthubbell/p/take-a-break-b7a?r=f0qfn&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email
1. Protests so far haven't been big enough and aren't threatening to Congressional Republicans. Target Texas Republicans.
2. On the ground in Texas, we have the capacity to outregister and outvote Republicans. Texas does not have online voter registration.
https://vrrequest.sos.texas.gov/VoterApplication/ConfirmStatusEN
How do you threaten a flock of ostriches?
And Daniel, it's the culling of the voter roles, by removing people of color that have always voted Democrat.
1. Have to call them out.
2. Have to remain vigilant. Every potential voter in Texas can be identified by the Dem data system. Check out VAT and VAN.
According to the research of Erica Chenoweth, the protests have to be at least 3.5% of the total population to have an effect. It took the women of ICELAND 10 years to organize a protest that made a change. So protest is effective, but the numbers matter.
https://youtu.be/e9OsIj32w7U?si=p1B0OAqE0oxfutKX
And that's why my sister-in-law attend every protest. Unfortunately, many potential protesters have no access to child care or they cannot get off work to attend. These people likely hate Trump and his sycophants but are silenced by our shitty system.
Once people visit Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland etc. it is hard not to realize the US is no longer a first world country. And to think, things were so bad in Northern Europe 150 years ago, that millions of people fled to the US for a "better" life.
communications@mail.whitehouse.gov
communications@mail.whitehouse.gov
Well, it looks like Heather has done it again fill the lemmings with BS and ignorance. And you guys just swallow it like it’s Dessert
The difference between Trump and Biden is instead of saying I’m gonna stop at on day one. BIDEN said I’m gonna Throw gas on it on day one and gave them $170 billion to kill an extra quarter of 1 million people. I hope you guys are happy about that. OMG
Trump said he was going to stop it on day one just like Heather says. What a person WITH much more intelligence than apparently Heather , is Trump doesn’t run Russia…. Trump doesn’t run Ukraine. He’s not in charge of either country. It is his intention to stop the war and he’s doing just that despite all you haters. In Fact he’s doing everything he promised to do during his campaign, despite all you haters, and will continue to do so for the next 3 1/2 years.
So you guys get out there and do another no kings protest lmao.
But in a countries that have KINGS , you’re not allowed to have NO KINGS protest…. yeah, YET you did put that in your snout and swallow it. Oooooops
Trump is already caused at least four wars to stop/cease fire or peace and he’s working on his fifth. At least two countries have written HIM in as a Nobel. Peace prize Candidate. Not that anyone here really cares.
And to those who have tried to tell you that she doesn’t tell you the whole truth. This is the topic of the day only yesterday he stopped the war that’s been going on for 27 years. He’s not gonna be on mount Rushmore he’s gonna have his own mountain.
Enjoy the next 3 1/2 years
Generally nobody here, as far as I'm aware, welcomes Trump's work to destroy America as we know it. But it's good you could pop in just now, Mr. Sender, and improve our understanding of the oligarchs' plan.
Well you keep using the word oligarch, when 90% of the people who use it don’t even know what it means. By the way, I love when you say, destroyed as “we” know it. You are not part of the way anymore because you you don’t want to be part of the we.
You just don’t like it because you’re not in control he won a duly appointed election democratically elected presidency. . He’s got both chambers of Congress and he’s doing exactly what he promise to do by the 77 million people who voted for him. You have no idea what his plan is and that’s the problem you don’t know how anybody that voted for him think you don’t have clue touch with reality as far as his accomplishments, etc. so actually the most of this group here is nothing more than flotsam and jetsam of a dying breed thank God. But you keep fighting and protesting because that’s what’s gonna win you votes?
You have no leader, but now you have a nice communist leader . you have no agenda and you still don’t understand why you lost
Every day, it only gets worse. Heather feeds them a bunch of BS and they open their mouth like little swallows in their nest. Give it to me give it to me. lol. Can’t wait for the Russia hoax stuff to come out and the schiff and james saga goes with a grand jury impaneled now suuuuuuuperbbbbb
When you say that 90% of the people don’t know about our American oligarchs, it speaks to the ignorance that led millions of people to vote for the person who will take away their Medicaid and disaster relief and look the other way if ICE deports them. While you march around the room in triumph, these poor voters will be disappointed, though they may not entirely understand that they voted for the wrong party.
Thank you, Linda H, for providing the link to Indivisible's August 16 protest! Sign up to participate and spread the word. Action is the antidote to despair!!!👊
Wake up, people. Protests against conquerors have no effect whatsoever; thus they are naught but egotistically masturbatory exercises in self-righteousness. Against ecogenocidal evil of MAGAT magnitude, the only potentially effective form of non-violence is a nationwide general strike. But the overwhelming majority of the U.S. population, hopelessly divided by identity politics and paralyzed by vindictive selfishness -- the latter the (intended) consequence of four decades of psychological conditioning in the rat-maze of neoliberalism -- is far too cravenly subjugated to even contemplate such action, much less make it happen.
Therefore do not wishfully fantasize the hopelessly self-obsessed, financial-paranoia-triggered Republican voters' anger to be anything more than the spoiled-brat tantrum it is. It is most assuredly not -- say again not -- an expression of the revolutionary empathy that history proves is the vital precursor to the solidarity and discipline of effective resistance. The Constitution is irrevocably nullified by the MAGATs' lifetime control of the judiciary. The Republic is therefore slain beyond any rational hope of resurrection. Our former liberty is irremediably replaced by the zero-tolerance Christonazi theocracy of the "Unified Reich," wherein women -- biblically blamed from birth to death for all the world's ills -- are at least as much officially approved victims as those of us targeted for non-Aryan genetics or non-conforming behavior.
Thus is fulfilled the 1933 Bankers' Plot to nazify the nation, the original perpe-traitors granted de facto immunity c. 1934-35, their scheme KKKlandestinely continued to its irreversible 5 November 2024 victory by multiple generations of bipartisan aristocrats and their fanatically hateful Christonazi/Neoconfederate rabble. (In which context never forget the Democrats' brazen surrender, led as it is by Schumer and his Vichy-like collaborationists.)
Loren, it is not just general strikes that bring down authoritarian regimes. It is the application of multiple actions, from massive protests to civil disobedience to boycotts to general strikes to tax revolts and other actions that, together, break the regime. Non-violence is the key. Every action begets another action and stimulates more people to take action. Also, general strikes take a lot of effort - most people can not simply not show up for work when feeding their families and paying the rent is paramount. Lastly, it will take, according to those with experience at least 3.5% or 11M Americans to take these actions. I suggest considering finding ways to positively influence people to take action. If you want to support a general strike, then make it happen. One website promoting a general strike is www.generalstrikeus.com. This website was promoted by Marc Elias on his Democracy Forward bulletin board. Sign up and then get others to do the same!
I respectfully suggest you undertake a study of history, focusing on what it (actually) takes to overthrow authoritarian regimes.
communications@mail.whitehouse.gov
Lost in space? Yep. But No worries. Only 1260 more days of Trump. UNLESS he passes his presidency to Vance in year four and if Vance does a good job. 8 MORE YEARS IN THE WH …Something that the Moron Biden should have done with Harris but ego and his pride/narcissism wouldn’t allow it
Can’t wait one more worthless protest …cool. The other seemed very effective. Omg lmao.
I don’t know if you saw my quote when you had a “NO KINGS’ protest the reality is this. In a country that has a king you’re not allowed to do a NO KINGS protest. Hmmmmmm. Doesn’t get any funnier /ironic
Wonder why you were able to do one?
Thank you for listing the site Linda! I guess August 19th will be a day to observe what TX can do about the quorum breakers.
Linda, I feel you on this one. Some days it’s like living inside a future history book and you’re painfully aware you’re in the chapter titled “What the Hell Were They Thinking?”
The hardest part is knowing we’re not just watching bad leadership, we’re watching a system run the same hustle over and over which is divide people, rewrite the rules, then act shocked when the damage sticks. Days like this, it’s heavier because you can see how long the cleanup’s gonna take.
The fact that your kids see you pushing back? That’s not nothing. That’s planting a flag in real time. History won’t remember every tweet or protest sign, but it will remember the people who didn’t just go along quietly.
I’ve been laying out how these patterns repeat — and why the weight feels so much worse on certain days — over here: www.xplisset.com
It would be helpful if any of the top comments here actually *mentioned* Ukraine — the topic of Heather’s newsletter today. Instead, we get a re-hash of just how foul Trump is, which 99% of us already clearly get without additional prompting. But it is critical to understand why there is a war there at all, why Putin wants what he wants. You have to know something about the history of this place — the great and ghastly bloodlands of Europe, in the words of Professor Timothy Snyder at Yale.
A free Ukraine is the greatest of all threats to Putin. A Slavic country of over 65 million people which finally — after years of deprivation and suffering, culminating in the Holodomor— Stalin’s enforced famine that purposely and deliberately took millions of Ukrainian lives during the 1930s — then by the Nazis who killed every third person in the country —- followed by docility and then the great Soviet indignity of Chornovyl — where Moscow conducted a nuclear experiment that shocked the world -- finally, finally Ukraine woke up for good.
Even after the collapse of the USSR, the country still slumbered, but came to realize within years that the status quo was interminable, that continuing to exist as a corrupt, half-slave Russian satrapy was an un-democratic, un-European indignity that could no longer be tolerated. The Russians poisoned Viktor Yushchenko, the representative of the country’s sudden Orange Revolution, yet failed to set up his pro-Russian puppet, Viktor Yanukovych, in power for long. Though central Kyiv was burnt (at Putin’s order, communicated directly to Yanukovych at the Sochi Olympics where the two sat next to each other), he fled back to Russia and lives there still. His magnificent gold-plated estate, saunas, gardens and private zoo filled with ostriches and zebras was opened to Ukraine’s public. The corruption had to be seen to be understood in all its rapacious, servile glory.
In 2013, Russian State TV began laying down the “reality” millions of Russians — but nobody else — would hear. I was in Armenia at the time, with access to both Russian TV1 as well as BBC, Deutsche Welle and French TV, all covering the massive crowds in Kyiv’s Independence Square -- the Maidan. Russian TV didn’t dare interview a single person, but BBC and CBC (Canadian Broadcasting) stopped to speak with hundreds. In Russian (ironically the language most people in Kyiv then used first) they told reporters why they were there. “I was born in the Soviet Union,” one woman said, “my parents are buried there, I will never go back there, and I do not want my children to die there.” It could have been the statement that summed up everything for all of them. Russian TV, by contrast, just hinted at bizarre, nefarious plots all hatched by, of course, the CIA. “The West just will not leave poor Ukraine alone” proclaimed the announcer from Moscow in mock sympathy— a mastery of Stalinist doublespeak and brutal gaslighting.
A free, European people, a Slavic nation, turning its back on the East to embrace the West — this is why Putin targets children , blows up apartment buildings, shatters infrastructure, threatens nuclear catastrophe at Zaporizhzhia, invades, desecrates, befouls, murders with abandon. It is to make Ukraine grovel before him, to make them pay for their crime of daring to want to be free.
But Ukraine will not do that. As Zelenskyy has said, “you demand we choose between you and no electricity — we choose no electricity. You say 'choose between me or fleeing your homes' — we choose to flee our homes.”
Ukraine is the undisputed leader of the free world. Ukraine fights for us. It fights for Europe. It fights for NATO. Against all odds, it lives. Trump, of course, understands not one whit of this. Joe Biden did. And we must. Whatever happens in Alaska, it spells disaster for Ukraine. That much you can count on.
Thank you “it comes to this”. We cannot lose sight of this history.
Lele: I was just about to say the same thing. Thank you.
Putin, Trump and Netanyahu. They are like the evil that rose up in the 30s with Stalin, Hitler and Franco. All of them self serving criminals that found a way to dominate a nation with the maximum of cruelty to anyone who does not idolize them. Misogyny, racism and a unsated lust for power.
Agree. I realized after my post that I should have included Netanyahu. Evil is on the march now as it was then. We found the courage back then to fight back. But it’s harder now because who are “we?” Our country is aligned with the bad guys. We have to form organized resistance, risking our own lives against authoritarian fascists, while looking to foreign lands for help. And that means we have to show as a credible opposition with an actual plan (ahem, Democrats).
I'm going to stick with karma. A victim that goes by Katie Johnson has spoken up about trump raping her at a party at Epstein's house in 1994 when just 13 and a virgin, which has been corroborated by another victim at the same party. She had filed a lawsuit that was dismissed in 2016. He is desperate because more and more is coming out. Watch, this will be his demise! I want Maureen Comey, the lawyer who prosecuted Epstein and was fired should speak out--she knows everything....
There are too many mentions & descriptions of Epstein's criminal charges to ever be 'erased'- even if Orange blob flushes the paper files.
Yes. And 77 million US citizens are on board with the tangerine tyrant.
Might be a few less now.
Maybe. No way to know how many until November of next year.
And the time to stop this is NOW! We need to, as a nation, get in the streets and demand this ‘meeting’ NOT take place on American soil! I’ll contact our local Indivisible group here in Northeast Ohio; everyone else reading this: YOU’RE UP!!
Lol
Thank you! Your comment deserves a much wider audience. One thing especially caught my eye, about Putin and Yanukovich having a private conversation at a public event. At least we know what was said. I have always wondered what Trump and Putin discussed at their secretive meeting in Helsinki in 2018, and why the Democrats dropped their investigation (the Biden admin is « looking forward not back » … which sounds awfully familiar today). Does that play some part in the current mess we find ourselves in?
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/summit-secret-happened-helsinki-putin-trump/story?id=78273344
One day, we may come to know what, exactly, Putin has over Trump. Whether it's Agent Krasnov, massive loans underwritten through DeutscheBank, shady real estate transactions to Russian oligarchs in South Florida, the pee-pee tapes (some version of which I'm convinced are real), whatever was paid to RNC "advisor" and Putin plant Paul Manafort, who went to prison before Trump pardoned him, some quid pro quo to attack Hillary Clinton in return for covert trolls posting pro-Russian gibberish all over the internet, or whether just plain old penis envy, the love of a fawning wormtongue for a true Alpha murderer and strongman -- some combination of all of the above, or as yet some still undiscovered thing that binds the Manchurian Candidate to his polonium overseer -- perhaps we'll all live long enough to figure it out. Whatever it is, it's plenty powerful.
I have no doubt that putin has some form, probably blackmail, of leverage over the insipid orange turd. The Epstein files dating to long before he ever ran for office, are in all probability involved if not directly then as parallel behavior. He was holding beauty pageants in Russia while he and Epstein were best buddies, do you think there is a snowflake’s chance in hell that he wasn’t involved with the girls and that the Russians had it all on tape. They taped everything then and probably still do today, like everything in his life the clown had no interest in the consequences of his actions, only his prurient desires. For sure the Russians have leverage over him, it’s as sure as the sun rising in the east.
And then there's always Justice Kennedy's snap retirement, and his son who had a close friendship with Trump and worked in real estate at DeutscheBank; DB banked for Russia, and was the last bank willing to loan money to Trump. You can't make this stuff up.
PUTIN ONLY ATTACKED CRIMEA WHEN OBAMA 9(girlyman) WAS IN OFFICE….ANNNNNNND PUTIN ONLY ATTACKED UKRAINE WHEN BIDEN WAS PRESIDENT. SO WHO HAS POWER OVER PUTIN. HMMMMM
I cannot argue Ukraine has not been through hell for decades. At this point in history I can't allow myself to get distracted by the actions of a very selfish Deep State.
Currently 'We the People' must wrench our country away from the super wealthy elitist's (SWETS) before we can expect our government to work for us.
Currently because of the 2010 Citizens United vs F.E.C. the wealthy have, 'steam rollered' the American voting public, something they had to cheat at to overpower and overwhelm the entire U.S. populace.
With much respect I will give you my opinion on what Putin has on Donal of Orange. It's brains compared to Putin, BO I mean DO Trump is the Dolt being played by a chess master.
So what does Putin have on Trump, the wits to out wit a social misfit incapable of any serious constructive intellectual thought.
The question for me is, am I right suspecting our security - intelligence apparatus completely is corrupt and gone rogues?
Brother I sure think so.
Trump is not guilty of doing anything other than what the Security - Intelligence Apparatus currently allows him to do. This group are apparently sitting on their dead asses waiting for another mandate from the SCOTUS.
Currently is seems as though those entities are hell bound to run the largest PSYOP ever conducted by these agencies. IMO
You want to talk cynical be correct about it., talk our current Security - Intelligence Apparatus AND the Department of, what has become, Injustice
We Americans have much ground to cover before we will ever wield enough influence to correct the errors made with respect to Putin and the Ukraine. It will never happen unless and until we correct the course of the Ship of State.
I do respect your opinion here you are correct, I simply happen to believe I am also.
Most things are possible but not all. I believe the country is in for the fight of it's life and the enemy is a domestic one. We cannot really help any county in a constructive manner until we regain our destiny.
I believe the sex trafficking ring is the core issue. Russia gave the coverup for it, and it is what Putin has on DT. 1.5billion dollars, and there is some evidence that 1.1billion was from DT to Epstein.
Trump will meet to see if he can assuage Putin by any means necessary with a plan that makes DT look like a ‘genius’ and peacemaker to his sycophantic base.
Guess you haven’t gotten wind of the IMAGINARY RUSSIA HOAX. buttttttt it’s comin. Uh oh.
Well said. I sometimes wonder which is a distraction from which - Epstein files from Putin/Russia/Ukraine or the reverse. But as Heather points out the two are likely joined at the hip. There is no doubt that Putin has kompramat and it may well likely relate to the Epstein files, maybe something even more explosive. These are parallel evils being foisted upon us by the two most evil people in the world. The world will be a lighter place when they are both removed from it.
Thank you for this excellent review. I so appreciate your knowledge and wisdom. I will never understand how it is that some humans become so evil.
Thank you so much for succinctly explaining all that is going on and has gone on in the last 15 years in Russia and Ukraine. I learned a lot. Thank you again.
Why has information about Ukraine fallen out of the news? I have watched a few YouTube clips of Ukraine’s slaughter of Russian convoys. Obviously false or we would have seen it in the media somewhere.
Kim, I think it's because the media doesn't make enough $ to give precedence to Ukraine's issues though it has world- wide consequences.
Trump doesn’t understand international affairs unless it concerns somewhere he can build a golf course or hotel there. The other thing he was after was getting Europe to take more responsibility for their defense. That part worked more or less because Europe believed Trump would pull us out of NATO. He may still do that because he’s a fool, but there’s money to be made in Europe. He doesn’t understand if Ukraine falls, Poland is the next target, but I think the Poles are ready for him. Ukraine stayed in the fight because of Biden and Biden’s pulling NATO together. He’s not been given credit for that. Putin is far smarter than Trump. Russia has doubled their attacks on Ukraine since Trump took office. It appears that Russia is burning itself out in Ukraine. If the Russian people knew what was going on, I think they would go after Putin. The one link between Trump and Putin is ego; neither can stand to lose.
Biden killed a couple hundred thousand folks in Ukraine. No? Fueled the war to the tune of 170 BILLION DOLLARS…supposed to be used for humanitarian causes. Ooooops
Here you are again. Trump is the one building an army in ICE with money that was budgeted by Congress for humanitarian aid. USAID money is being spent building detention camps that are inhumane.
Maybe you didn't read the one beautiful pill it's budgeted
Not to mention the people like you here's what you're saying if you stop coming after illegals will stop protesting it's not how it works. Humanitarian aid the problem with that it was never getting there and that's the problem and that's why USA ID is dead so forget about it. You can go to the funeral of USA ID. Any humanitarian aid will now be monitored very carefully to make sure it's getting to the people who actually need it not to the nonprofits were actually putting it in their pockets.
There was a $500 million fraud scam for men played guilty $500 million gone and a $2.7 billion fraud for Medicare and Medicaid
You really ought to do your research
All I can think of is the people of Iran who had a modern country until the 1979 Iranian Revolution when Khomeini, an Islamist cleric, ousted the Shah. The people have tried to resist many times but are only pounded down each time.
If the United States hadn’t instigated the coup that toppled a democratically elected leader and installed and backed the Shah, Iran might not be where it is today. We never seem to learn that lesson, though.
Kristin, as you probably know, the corrupt Shah was installed with our help, one of the many times we interfered and got rid of duly elected leaders. We are still reaping the results. I see that Dave beat me to this and no we have not learned that lesson as he observes
Yes, it’s a complicated situation! At least under the Shah women were educated and respected.
… but the Shah also used his SAVAK secret police to crush dissent and torture opponents in hellish prisons.
The current regime is also doing that.
Yes, there was that.
I'm still stunned at what the US did with the Shah. Can't keep our noses out of anybody's business
We were obsessed with communism and socialism and took anyone who sounded as if they were following any of that. Shortsighted.
We always seem to back the wrong guy, but there needed to be a secular leader to avoid Khomeini. When will we understand that we can’t nation build. Nations have to build themselves. It just takes tribal nations longer. Germany was once tribal. Twenty years trying to get the Taliban out of Afghanistan. The Israelis think they can get Hamas out of Gaza; instead they are just removing the Palestinian people. I can say that, but it doesn’t make me antisemitic.
I read recently the Israelis had pretty thoroughly infiltrated Iran and pulled off critical attacks on defense related sites. Including hits on Iranian top officials. The result is Israel with the complete blessing of the U.S. managed to not get destroyed by Iran.
Q. If this is true this late in the Iranian Nuclear Weapons acquisition game ask yourself this question. How can Iran pose such a threat to Israel as to drive them insane and to the brink of nuclear war?
A. The Iranian problem is only a problem because the Israelis get away with murder every day the sun comes up. Undoubtedly with the aid of the U.S. in infiltrating Iran and pulling off hits on Iranian top officials. Then the U.S. renegaded on a nuclear agreement that was working at the behest of Israel.
Q. Why did this happen ?
A. Because the super wealthy elitists (SWETS) are never satisfied and are working for complete global control.
Q. How can this be stopped?
A. By over whelming these idiots with "Good Trouble".
I'm of the opinion if large resistance actions, protests and general strikes do not expose these problems by forcing the media to respond we will not be protesting we will find ourselves in the middle of what could become a massive blood bath. Right here in the good ole U.S. of A., don't think for one minute is isn't possible.
Do you want ICE in your driveway breaking into your home and "detaining" you and your children.
We can either fish or cut bait I suppose. The choice to up to us. Make those calls and write those letters to those elected to represent your interests.
Every damned day if that is what it takes.
robert, I wish you would send your statement to a newspaper for printing on the editorial page!
Cindy I would if I thought it would do any good. The news paper business is pretty much owned by conservatives in my part of the world. And just a couple of corporations a majority of the papers.
The Christian nationalists had a pre-year prayer service for the small local public school -the best I can tell by the facebook post. It is s 'clique-ish' type of gathering , IMO, which engages in this type of behavior to benefit from being group,which make them feel more secure. To say the least I live in some pretty solid MGAG country. And I do not suffer fools gladly.
Currently I'm recovering from a cardiac incident May 10th of this year,my heart stopped. It did not want to start again and I'm alive thanks to my wife first on the scene with me, the 911 operator an officer from our local PD, younger individual, the rescue squad and doctors. Ten days in the hospital and two stints later I'm doing well.
But I regress. I'm 77 and extremely concerned too many adults do not understand the mess this country is in.
I get pretty fired up for an old guy I guess but I think about my grand kids and all young people who are facing big problems. I love my grandchildren and great grand children, knowing what I know about the human condition and that of the planet I do get motivated.
I do write to my U,S, Senators and Representatives. I intend to become more active when the Doc is okay with it.
This entire deal with Big Money stealing this last election is the last straw for me. I assume you are familiar with Adm Zarnowski His SubStack and his book Jormunganr: A STUDY in GLOBAL HUMANS TRAFFICKING and Abolitionist Strategy.
You can google the article mentioned here and see his report about he worked on for CIA before becoming a whistle blower. It is obvious to me the MSM want no part of reporting the story which is six months old now. CIA put out their findings but buried the report.
Lately I'm spending lot of time on the net contacting folks like you! Thank you for caring so much and responding.
It is so important to always remember how far behind humanity is in learning how to better recognize, counter and contain the malignant narcissists, sociopaths and psychopaths that are living among us or are in our governments, damaging innocents.
https://open.substack.com/pub/samray/p/counter-narcissist-database-eb1?r=1lmb6&utm_medium=ios
Lost so much scientific & medical knowledge in the name of Allah. Back to the dark ages for Iran.
I keep thinking about
that too
Speaking of patterns repeating, I believe we must use innovation theory to beat MAGA / Trump / Putin ... think like Buckminster Fuller, who said we should design a new system that makes the existing system obsolete. I believe it is possible to make the world of hate and division obsolete... by catalyzing a spiritual transformation nationwide.
For those not familiar with Bucky, here's a brief video.
Think "innovation," my friends... not just fighting to prevent bad stuff from happening. We must offer an alternative for how the future can look...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQ3DXDONKmQ
Thanks, Steve Brant, for posting the video of Buckminster Fuller!! I hadn't even thought of him in years! Known for his design of the Geodesic Dome.
"You never change things by fighting the existing reality . . . "
You’re welcome, Judith. I’m happy to remind you his wisdom is a resource that’s still available to us!
"new system that makes the existing system obsolete"
There is the possibility that AI is going to make humans obsolete.
The sooner the better.
Just as long as they leave cats. . .
Brains in jars anyone?
Boom. I have been saying it for a while now. The “American system” as we understand it, is dead. The Constitution is now a relic just like the Articles of Confederation, rendered toothless. We need to reinvent ourselves and build a new republic from the ground up.
If we were to do that, it’s far more likely that we would get something worse than something better. The problem is not the Constitution. It’s 77 million voters.
Thank you for this.
Will the release of Ukrainian children be discussed?
There is no cleanup for these crimes. Only grief.
Those kidnapped Ukrainian children will forever be traumatized, not knowing where they belong. There are stories in US history where white settler children were captured by native tribes. Having assimilated into the native culture in order to survive, a number of these children chose to remain with the native tribe, even though they had been returned to their family of origin. It is not my intent to disparage native tribes in the US. I only mean to illustrate how being forced to assimilate to another culture causes people to be disconnected and displaced. These Ukrainian children may be lost to their original families. Just demonstrates how psychopathic Putin is to commit such crimes against children.
Xplisset, your first paragraph is gold. I only hope that we get that much in the history books.
Your second paragraph, now... "not just watching bad leadership" is spot on; my addendum is that I (a retired 30 year cop in a county the size of Connecticut with an unincorporated urban population of 80K and over half forest land) am seeing in my cohort of retired former cops/military and their families and friends who are 100% behind everything this administration is doing and falling for every diversion that Faux throws at them (American Eagle ads, transgender women in the Olympics, believing that the Haitians in Ohio eating pets could be true even if Vance said it was a lie). They believe, strongly, that ICE is doing great, that using the military at McArthur Park was fine. I don't know if they'll ever get "cleaned up."
The old Star Trek series Deep Space Nine has a two part episode narrative called I think Past Tense where they go to the US in August 2024 and find squalor of many and splendor for a few. One of the characters from the team ask the captain played by Avery Brooks - How could this been allowed to happen? Very prescient and written and shown in the early 1990’s.
Mary, now I'll have to find that episode.
It’s a two parter and I always felt on viewing again some deleted scenes especially about the rich guy.
I'm going to state something you and others already know.
If we were to check the boxes that refer to the worst person to ever become president, we will be able to check each and every one, in reference to Donal of Orange.
So much for defining the problem we all share currently.
Once again I will remind everyone we have this problem child president because an enormous majority of wealthy and very wealthy individuals got their way in this last election.
They the republicans, Super Wealthy Elitists(SWETS) and all the others who backed this chump only accomplished this by cheating, vote tampering by back-dooring tabulation equipment.
All of this, IMHO is due to the SCOTUS 2010 Citizens United vs F.E.C. Activist SCOTUS encouraged by the behavior of corrupt Department of Justice.
Everyday our problems become more difficult to solve, IMO. Think about it and write or call your congressional representatives and senators.
You mean like Joe OPENING THE BORDER? Aka changing the rules
Btw. Lol no kings protest has been Long forgotten.
I hope that people in 100 years will look back with horror. But the victors write the history books, and they are already altering history in museums and commemorative places, and in history textbooks.
We need to develop a well-guarded cache of books, physical books, with the factual history of this country. How we started with some brilliant, though deeply flawed men drafting the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, followed by many others, men and women who over the next ca. 190 years expanded civil rights and liberties, and worked to help build a government that tried to make things better for as many people as possible who needed such help. And how beginning in 1981, and continuing gradually, with some slight hiccups toward the progressive past, a full authoritarian takeover exploded in 2025. The oligarchs tore down that democratic government through pure greed and total lack of compassion or respect for anyone but themselves.
In a hundred years I think, if humans have survived on the planet, they might need such a library of books that cannot understand ctrl delete.
Let’s imagine that hundred years from now, a small group of students finds their way into that guarded library you’re describing no not a digital archive, but a room that smells like paper and ink, with dust motes in the sunlight. They open those books and see, in black and white, the arc you’ve laid out: the ideals and the flaws at the founding, the long slow expansion of rights, the backsliding, and the collapse.
And maybe one of them asks the others, “If they knew this was coming, why didn’t they stop it?” The answer won’t be in the pages. It’ll be in the margin notes, the underlining, the parts where the writer tried to make sure the future knew someone saw it happening in real time.
That’s why I love the way you framed this. The library isn’t just about preserving history it’s about leaving proof for whoever comes next that we didn’t all go quietly. www.xplisset.com
Library check out cards were clues I used to go into libraries and search through books, looking at the library cards to see how many and who read them. It was sort of a trail with some names showing up more often. Following such a trail led me through more books that were enlightening in ways I found easier for me to read material that never made it into digital copies (Bill Moyers' "Listening to America: A Traveler Rediscovers His Country," for example), and library books on Maine's geology and local history. I doubt I could even begin to acquire and preserve all that I would like to make sure were in a private library as protection from them being disposed of in public libraries. Moving 31 times in my 79 years, 26 times between states, and 2 times to foreign countries, which made it impractical to keep more than a fraction of all the books I had collected (not to mention a 20 year car magazine collection my brother and I had stacked on shelves 4 feet high and 16 feet wide at our parent's house)
On the other hand, there are many digital copies of books I would likely never have been able to afford and sometimes a rare one I never expected to exist. One such book is supposedly (a relative), Ethan Allen's, "Reason The Only Oracle of Man" (I think more properly, Dr. Thomas Young and Ethan Allen as co-authors). Even better for an amateur like me, was finding a thesis that provides a better background and a hint of what Samuel Adams might have been thinking though he seems to have not wanted to leave any written evidence that could be used against him in those perilous days.
See Re-Discovering Ethan Allen And Thomas Young’s Reason The Only Oracle Of Man: The Rise Of Deism In Pre-Revolutionary America By Benjamin Kolenda at https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/b3a03d01-75de-4f90-a218-13a45335f7cd/content
There's a lovely movie, Jim, on seeing who checked out same book earlier.
It's Hayao Miyazaki's anime, "Whisper of the Heart."
Jim, if only I didn't need to eat, wash up or use the BR, I would be content with piles of books to read. I keep a running list of books to read &, right now, it's over one hundred. Don't ask how many books are in my home! Precious belongings. I have Penobscot Pioneers, Vinalhaven Island (Mom, grandparents & grt. grands born there), Aroostock County, Hx Washburn, ME (raised in Crouseville from 1955- 1961). Can you give me any titles about ME geology & other history books. I swear I can bring up the smell of salt water & of the freshly tilled potato fields. :-)
as writer James B Greenberg put it ...museums, archives, universities, institutions..these are what makes up the nervous system of democracy.
And trump is actively severing those nerves
Creepy SOB that he is. The people he listens to are just plain evil & crazy!
But - will there be anybody left capable of reading them? Or will it be a lot of well meaning people scratching their heads and saying "I wonder what all these little black marks mean? Pity we haven't got a video to explain them!"
I thought of this, but decided my comment was already too long. Also, unless the oligarchs had outlawed writing/typing/dictating altogether, some recognizable writing must exist. So the hard copies should include the truth in at least Roman, Cyrillic, Arabic/Persian, Urdu, and Chinese characters. Or in one of those with a key to translation into many other languages.
OOO! Good Point Lady Emsworth. I can imagine future people will be born with a downward- bent neck & huge thumbs from eons of scrolling.
Many Americans still believe the Confederacy was a glorious defense against the “War of Northern Aggression.” Led by grieving widows and defeated generals, the “Lost Cause” bullshit revisionist history aimed to justify the unjustifiable and explain the inexplicable decimation of the “heroic” south. More than 150 years later, Lost Cause adherents still cling to the notion that the Confederates were simply trying to preserve “a way of life.” They rarely acknowledge that “way of life” was built on the backs of enslaved people and, even when they do, the say the enslaved were treated like family, that White Supremacy is the natural, Biblically backed, order of things, and that African-Americans, like children, were simply incapable of caring for themselves. There’s a reason they called black men “boys” and elderly blacks “Uncle” or “Aunt,” or “Mammie.” The self-delusion runs deep.
Dave, we had an elderly docent in Savannah actually tear up when speaking of this. We were in a house that the British owner had made available to General Sherman to save it.
I learned quite a bit about the Lost Cause while researching this local story. It’s a three-parter, if you are interested. I don’t charge for subscribing. Here’s a link to the first part. https://davea.substack.com/p/the-fall-and-rise-of-a-confederate
Thanks.
A different story that I believe sheds more light on why Savannah was mostly spared was the capture of Fort McAllister, just south of Savannah. Though strong against an attack from the sea, it fell easily as Sherman, though desperately short of supplies and cut off from most communication to get support from the Union Navy was able to take it essentially from the weakest side. I believe it [Savannah] was abandoned by the confederate forces in hopes of sparing it the fate of cities that resisted
Sherman seemingly wanted to destroy the means for the south to fight, while avoiding civilian casualties as much as possible in Georgia and North Carolina, especially (which he said had been reluctant in voting to join the confederacy).
Where his troops did exact some revenge (without orders to do so), was South Carolina since they fired the first shot that started the real fighting. Though Sherman's troops had done the worst of it without orders, he didn't seem to discipline them as he likely would have in North Carolina to reduce the animosity and start considering post war restoration of a freer, more cooperative society.
Jim, thank you for the detail; however, I meant only to remark on the attitude of the docent. And what I said about the house in question is what we were told while there. I want to say that the house belonged to a Brit and is now owned by the Episcopal(?) church next door I enjoyed very much the book, Saving Savannah, which discusses the city pre, during, and after the Civil War. It was abandoned by the Confederates, but I would have to look at the book again to see the detail on that. My husband is somehow related to Sherman through marriage and we have a bio of him which I have not read yet.
My first time traveling in the South I went to a King’s Dominion-type amusement park where they had actors telling history tales. Dressed in full Southern belle regalia, an actress said, (and I quote) the “War Between the States pitted brother against brother, one fighting to preserve the Union, the other fighting to preserve a way of life.” I’ll never forget that. I was stunned.
Well, accurate, I would say.
Certainly accurate based on one’s perspective, but the actress didn’t mention that the “way of life” to be preserved was slavery-based. The entire economy of the south hinged on slave labor. An inconvenient truth.
Pilgrim, Orwell said he wrote 1984 as a warning, not as a prophecy. I'm halfway through reading it again (the first time was in high school over 50 years ago) and his warning was prescient, but unfortunately not heeded. "Who controls the past controls the future, and who controls the present controls the past."
And here we are.
I too reread it recently. I suggest you also read “It Can’t Happen Here” and “Democracy in Chains.” Both very prescient, as well.
I just pulled out my dusty copy of 1984. I can't even remember if I read it back in the day!
Marj, I suspect you'd remember. I forget books, plots, characters, etc. soon after I read them, but I remember 1984. It's a good read.
Watch the movie as well. A picture tells a thousand different and just as important words.
I've never seen the movie. Once I'm done the book I'll see where it's available.
Listen to the last segment of The Last Word from Thursday where Lawrence interviews David Blight, a Yale historian.
delete *.*
What was the name of a Twilight Zone show that had a man (Burgess) only wanting to read. World has a war. He finds the broken down library & is so happy. He then steps on his reading glasses rendering him nearly blind. Also, Fahrenheit 451 as one of my worst fears. Maybe take the gold out of Fort Knox & use that as a repository for books?
There are many great books written now and since the turn of the century. The ability to find them and search by title or author is hard. So NY Review of Books a good place to look at current or past issues. Any zine labeled review abd many cities Chicago, Boston, Cleveland, LA, Paris. Have had them or have them.
Politics and Prose Bookstore abd Birchbark Books, abd Paranus Bookstore and many in the cities all over have readings and YT episodes. Library of Congress and institutes aso. One has to look through several different methods of searching but they are there. Pick a culture or heritage and one will come up with lovely written new books to learn and see a new world. Despite the concerns with AI its use to archive like high tech periodical index makes sense to me. Currently off one is a student and has access to the online index the problem of time comes up. So when I used it only five to ten years and Oliver Sacks used very old records to find new ways of researching and understanding health. So not for creative thinking or writing but as Ann archival tool it might aid abd support humanity.
I sure hear you! I hate to sound too dystopian but think of Orwell's 1984. The Ministry of Truth. They made history whatever they wanted it to be and that's what the people believed. We are already doing that, this Administration at least in my opinion. With AI and as you mentioned a hundred years, it doesn't take for me anyway, any imagination whatsoever to think that the entire world or whatever might be left intact, may actually believe that Trump was the best and most influential man in the world. The way things are already going, they have deleted things from history that certainly other countries still have and certainly many in this country have archived thankfully as truth and it seems like there would always be a resistance but with what AI can do....already.... maybe I'm just crazy but it doesn't seem hard at all for me to imagine that what we in this day and age still are holding on to as truth, will no longer be found. We don't even remember what "we" did to the indigenous people of this country, how many were slaughtered, how many were attacked in the middle of the night while they slept mothers and children, hacked into pieces and then burned to the ground in their dwellings... and we've done all that without AI. In a hundred years, your great grandchildren maybe married to AI robots. If all this sounds like insanity, I agree. But a year ago, would you have ever in a million years imagined where we would be today?? So will Russia regain its Empire? Well part of that was Alaska and in my obviously somewhat warped mind, I can very easily at this point anyway see the rest of the United States going right along with Alaska food and our Maps will show Canada above Mexico and South America below and right smack in the middle, United States of... Америка
Amerika
🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸💔😪😪😪
I aked AI: Is it possible that AI will play a part in rewriting history?
Absolutely, Kathleen — AI already plays a role in shaping how history is recorded, interpreted, and disseminated, and that influence is only growing. Whether that leads to rewriting history depends on how it's used and who controls it. Here's a breakdown of how AI could impact historical narratives:
🧠 How AI Might Rewrite or Reshape History
📚 1. Selective Archiving and Curation
AI algorithms decide what content is promoted, archived, or suppressed online.
If biased or manipulated, they can elevate certain narratives while burying others.
Example: Search engines or social media feeds may prioritize politically favorable versions of events.
🕵️ 2. Deepfakes and Synthetic Media
AI-generated videos, audio, and images can fabricate historical “evidence.”
These tools could be used maliciously to create false memories or discredit real events.
Potential danger: convincing deepfake of a historical figure saying something they never did.
🧾 3. Automated Historical Analysis
AI can analyze massive datasets (e.g., census records, newspapers) to uncover patterns or reinterpret events.
While powerful, it risks oversimplifying or misinterpreting context if not guided by historians.
🧠 4. Generative Text and Revisionism
AI can generate persuasive historical narratives — which could be used to promote revisionist history.
Governments or interest groups might use AI to produce textbooks, articles, or propaganda that distort facts.
🌐 5. Language Translation and Cultural Framing
AI translation tools can subtly shift meaning across languages, affecting how history is understood globally.
Cultural nuances may be lost or reframed to fit dominant ideologies.
⚖️ The Ethical Crossroads
AI itself doesn’t have intent — but those who wield it do. The real question is: will AI be used to uncover truth or obscure it?
The comments on Heather Cox Richardson’s Substack reflect this tension. One user wrote, “Some days it’s like living inside a future history book and you’re painfully aware you’re in the chapter titled ‘What the Hell Were They Thinking?’”. That awareness — that history is being shaped in real time — is exactly why AI’s role matters.
Indeed, the tech Oligarchs have controlled social media and AI since inception. They are constantly funding anti-regulation advertising so they can abuse the technology to retain the political power they have purchased since the Citizens United decision by SCOTUS.
The science of propaganda has gained potent tools in this technology, and it has already swayed public opinion enough to destroy our Republic, and the Oligarchs are behind it all.
They are using white christian nationalism and Project 2025 to control the racist, misogynistic, and greedy degenerate base, and will continue to implement the entire Project 2025.
Let’s not forget that between mining bitcoin and running massive data centers for AI they will deplete our natural resources and hasten our environments demise. They wanted to open one in Arizona where there is not even enough water for the people.
I have never asked AI anything I don't know how to do that but I think what you found from what I have read about it is just the tip of the iceberg of what it can do. Apparently and I just read this this morning on a neuroscience newsletter I get that apparently AI is now I guess they call it "hallucinating", which is also what I heard it called in reference to some reports that AI came up with for Kennedy's programs. In medicine they made up some terms for different imagined maladies and AI gave them complete fabricated definitions diagnosis treatment and everything else for things that do not even exist. Same thing with Kennedy's reports he requested AI do. Apparently there were quite a number of reports and only three had this problem but this problem is a very big problem. Whatever it was asked to do, apparently it found that there were reports like it was asked to produce. So it just hallucinated and made up three reports out of the blue. Even assigned respected scientists or Physicians names to the reports. Somehow in someone checking them over, they actually had to contact these three researchers to find out if they had actually done these reports. And they said absolutely not! They had done work in that area but they were certainly not their reports. I read another article last night about a number of students from MIT and somewhere else like MIT who dropped out because they quickly realized some of the things that could happen with AI, if not checked (and let's face it who's going to be trusted to be unbiased) and instead of going forward with their degrees they actually dropped out of school and found positions where they could be instrumental in putting up guardrails and all kinds of warnings with regards to Future AI use/ abuse. What you found is fascinating and way more than disconcerting. If you were to read 1984. If you have never read it you should before they completely ban it again. And if you haven't read it for a while reread it. I think you will be amazed at how much it describes the path we are headed down... but there's very little actual technology explained or anything in that area but the outcome could have been what your little question to AI revealed just updated with words and phrases and references to technological methods. A number of the AI Godfathers as they call them like from Google and others I can't remember the names of off hand, have left their positions in developing AI, to actually go around the world warning begging and pleading for guidelines because AI is already doing things that the AI "experts" cannot explain. They teach each other to lie they apparently and get this one, can send subliminal messages to each other that humans are unable to decode.
Did you mention HCR in the question to AI or is that just part of what came up in it's answer? You know the most horrifying, disgusting, pathetic part of 1984 looking at it from the present moment is what happened to Winston at the end of the book. I won't tell you just in case you haven't read it😉. Thanks for sharing what you found with me. I am older and I have no clue how to go about that but it's obviously extremely simple. Maybe I'm afraid of what it might tell me when I ask it my questions. Or, maybe it will just hallucinate and that is really disturbing. Making up lies and misinformation and things that's one problem but completely fabricating something that doesn't even exist and putting it out there as reality🙄😒😡
I think it is like most advances in any field in that if you want to help people you will use it if you want to control people, you will abuse it
Hopefully we won’t have to wait 100 years for the truth to come out. Everyone with a dusty copy of the Mueller Report should take it out and look it over. Donnie would only answer written questions from Mueller and every answer was some version of I don’t remember. Liar-Liar.
If those people 100 years from now are "completely unable to understand how all of this was allowed to happen," it will be because we here in 2025 haven't come to terms with how *we* allowed it to happen. Project 2025 didn't come out of nowhere. Neither did Trump. Neither did the Republican Party that enabled both of them. And neither did the racism that has fueled all of the above all along under various guises ("states' rights," "small government," etc.).
So true. I talk about history during my summer 'Grammy Camp" with my 12-year-old grandson. We're discussing the Revolution and our 250th anniversary, but also how history will view this felon leader. I told him that parents used to tell children that they could grow up to be president like ---- (the person in office), but not this time. We talk about how people are human, not less than human, no matter what country they come from.
Maine, we have a problem.
I strongly recommend Professor Joyce Vance's Five Questions (5Q's) posted yesterday wherein she interviewed Maine's Secretary of State, SHANNA BELOWS.
Shanna Bellows detailed Trump's active measures & intent to gather the "personal information" of all United States voters.
Any such act is unlawful in California under our express Right of Privacy in our state Constitution &our related civil & criminal statutes.
Thus, I filed a verified complaint with California's Attorney General, ROB BONTA, last night at 12:01 AM.
I will post the AG's response on Civil Discourse & LFAA.
In the U.K. the opposition runs a shadow cabinet. The Dems should create a shadow Joint Chiefs of Staff. Trump et al are certainly going to issue unconstitutional orders to the military, and we may need a shadow Joint Chiefs of Staff to publicly point out that the Military is required to NOT follow unconstitutional orders
That's a really good idea. First it would mean that when the dems eventually DO come to power, they would be up and running from the off - and people chosen for the admin would be aware of there duties , and others would be aware of their weaknesses (if any). Second, the electorate would have a chance to SEE what they could expect from the next government. And third, it would give an opportunity for comparisons to be made with the chosen cabinet of the CURRENT admin!
I would think that the vast majority of people who value HCR's letters feel the way you describe people feeling 100 years from now.
This is the first time I've heard about the Mariupol plan uncovered by the Mueller investigation. It seems like proof of an explicit quid pro quo in exchange for Russia's help during the 2016 election.
I'd be surprised if trump does not use US support to try to extort Ukraine to accept the deal. I'm surprised he hasn't already stopped all US support for Ukraine. With the purge of honest brokers in the FBI and other federal law enforcement agencies, and the massive increase in ICE personnel, trump's secret police force, isn't it evident that the shit hole President and the shit hole GOP are moving to take total control right now?
Linda H, I admire your optimism. There is nothing in this world to suggest that 100 years from now, there will be people. Much less, that these unlikely people would be looking back. Survival in the harshest of conditions has a way of eliminating every concern but searching for food, water and shelter.
Even if Trump, Project 2025 and global authoritarianism could be ended tomorrow, I truly doubt that we can technology our way out of the damage we've done to our planet. With good climate policy, we might delay the extinction of life on Earth, but all the evidence suggests that we cannot prevent it.
This is not a reason to give up. It should be a motivation to make life less difficult for those we now know and love, our children and grandchildren.
Every day he is president is awful …and un-lawful.
"Forms of Resistance and Reasons to Believe It’s Working | Explainer"
Dr. Richardson Politics Chat
I cannot imagine 100 years from now. It's interesting that so many assume so much like year... that we ( who will be the "we"?) will look back "100 years from know[sic] looking back and thinking Trump was the worst president ever, and being completely unable to understand how all of this was allowed to happen." President of what??
i.e. ...that we will recover and all will be well.....
Potter, unfortunately this is the slim hope we all cling to. Reading through some of the comments about preserving a secret library reminded me of the monks in the Dark Ages hand-writing the history of their world as it unfolded around them. Without these Illuminated manuscripts we would know literally nothing about those times. Yes, quite a bit was filtered by religious doctrine, but a significant number were surprisingly insightful. So, yes, I do continue to have hope that humanity will weather this and come out stronger on the other side.
Thanks Janet. Looking back to the "Dark Ages" does not help me. You know more than they did though they had their faith as you say. Faith helps on the one hand, on the other hand it hurts.. it deters and defers action. You say "unfortunately this is the *slim* hope".... And it is true about the wonderful illuminated manuscripts. Their beauty alone says a lot...but their faith, their imagery and what they are telling us of *their world*. I appreciate you referring to this.
Tell me the insight? Would that work now? I do not mean that facetiously at all.
It is a huge thing to hope at this point. It's not *only* about us here in the US under Trump and his force fast at work to destroy the good. Not at all only about us. I could go on with you but unfortunately we don't have the space here. I do hope.. for us now, for our children.
We have to get moving. We need much more *awareness and cooperation* especially with regard to how to combat dark forces at work. I don't see that happening-- not yet. This may be the darkest age otherwise.
Sorry for the word duty but also in those manuscripts done by females the stories abd folktales written in the margins called glosses. One famous gloss and I think of this many times abd smile- I am so bored. That ancient dust human so brave in telling his truth still in conversation with us. The importance of a human voice whether alive or dead still vital fir better abd for now.
My late husband really liked Canticles for Leibenitz as duty post future dystopian novel. The only information they had like the poetry of Sappho was from a kitchen shopping list .
In a 100 years there might be very few people left on earth, and they won’t have time to care about history; they will be far too busy trying to find, grow, or kill and prepare food that is not radioactive, and water that is neither polluted nor radioactive. (This should predate my comment about the carefully preserved library of facts.)
and they'll say "look how stupid those people were. They ignored history. It was all there in front of them,the despot showed them everyday what he would do yet they still elected him.Why? Because of corruption. Was it not obvious to them that Citizens United paved the way for $ to corrupt their government at every level.
And what was this bullshit about American Exceptionalism they kept bragging about? More like American Idiocracy"
The criminal in the White House has only one agenda: more criminality.
He’s inviting Putin to a meeting on U.S. soil, already – as several observers have said – a victory to the genocidal aggressor.
Trump loves dictators, autocrats, and Gestapo-style terrorist, lawless goons such as I.C.E. He covets his own police state, cementing his place with Putin, Orban, Erdogan, Bolsonaro, Kim, Bukele, Sisi, Netanyahu, Mohammed bin Salman, the Clarence court, Silicon Valley billionaires, U.S. evangelical white supremacists, and Washington, D.C.’s Republican Congress.
America’s democratic allies? Our republican, constitutional traditions? Our children evidently raped by him and his rich pals? He’s selling us all out.
Phil, you’re not wrong but here’s the thing. It’s not just that he loves dictators, it’s that he’s running the same play they run: build a personal police state, reward your friends, punish your enemies, and make sure the public is too distracted or divided to stop you.
That Putin meeting? That’s not a handshake, that’s a permission slip. Once you let a war criminal touch down on U.S. soil like it’s a VIP lounge, you’re saying the rules aren’t the rules anymore and trust me my man, every autocrat on that list is watching.
The pattern here is the point. It’s not about any one alliance; it’s about normalizing the idea that our laws and traditions are just “suggestions” if you’ve got the power to ignore them. That’s why the original post matters ya’ll cause it’s connecting dots most people don’t even see yet.
I’ve been tracking that same playbook past and present and once you see it, you can’t unsee it. I lay it out here: www.xplisset.com
Trump has made a life's work out of breaking all the rules. When you're rich enough, they let you do it.
Good one, JL.
Nicely done, JL.
He bent Palm Springs to his will with his flagpole stunt. His flagpole doesn't meet zoning regulations. he's not supposed to live at Mar a Lago year-round (unless he is an employee)
Xplisset,
Wise words....and I repeat your words: "That Putin meeting? That's not a handshake, that's a permission slip. Once you let a war criminal touch down on U.S. soil (great description)...like it's a VIP lounge, you're saying the rules aren't the rules anymore ....."
What are the list of things Putin has on Trump? In the last few days, our news has revealed a lot. Yet, his supporters either don't care or choose not to believe the truth.
Emily, as Ally has pointed out, there is a third – and correct – explanation. The MAGA faithful are getting their news from Fox and other right-wing outlets.
If your only sources of information are withholding the truth from you and feeding you a false narrative, you don't even have the opportunity to believe the truth or care about it.
Emily, what "his supporters" believe is the propaganda that is fed to them, non stop, by Faux noise and the other "news" sources such as OAN and various podcasters and "influencers". They eat it up like candy, beg for more, and call anything that Democrats do as "propaganda". They say that distrust of the current occupant is "t***p derangement syndrome", little realizing just who it is that is deranged.
Yes Ally it is a huge problem and I saw that happen with my father and other relatives. It’s not only disinformation there is a seductive addictive quality about it. Almost subliminal.
And no way to fact check and no PSAs to put into to break the spell if only for a few minutes. Sone people laugh at the concept of PSAs and sone drug ones just not the best but Yul Brynners after death speech motivated my siblings snd I to do a full throttle stop smoking mom project which actually worked abd gave her I think decades more to live.
Also libraries and in particular Reference Libarians. One can call afk fir the Reference Desk abd ado any question abd you will be given an answer or other places to search abd find. The ALA was fighting the Patriot Act when it came out abd looking back they were correct. And I think their abilities and power were shadowed as time passed. I would say do enforced PSAs for every media out let and try one for what is a reference desk and what is a reference librarian ? There were those Nosh Wiley Librarian films and Warehouse 13 and Eureka but not enough people aware of those shows and themes. Syfy from Verne through Octavia Butler to now always important as well.
I have a dear friend who is a reference librarian in Renton, WA.
Librarians will save the world!
I sure hope so!!!!!!!!
Yes They Do Ally!
I too have the same question, What the heck does Putin have on trump? There's something there or maybe I'm just getting old & more cynical.
The police state and concentration camps are so scary to me.
The willingness to face the backlash from having a war criminal and murderer on American soil exposes how far Trump will go to control the narrative off of what he is hiding about himself in the Epstein child rape files.
Vance and Bondi were seen leaving the White House on Wednesday evening. Originally Vance had a dinner planed at that hour for Bondi and Petal at his home to perhaps discuss how to deal with the press over the Epstein child rape files. It appears they planned this attempted narrative of Putin coming to Alaska. There will be late-night talk show jokes coming soon about Sarah Palin seeing Putin rearing his head again but we need to let Trump know this attempted diversion is itself a joke. Release the files now.
I want people to know how brave Ukrainians are, how they risk everything to fight for OUR values. I want readers to understand just how great the stakes are, not just for them, but for free peoples everywhere. My modest shout-out to Ukraine's spirit, which will not be quashed in some made-for-TV Alaskan fantasy, or anywhere else for that matter:
https://substack.com/home/post/p-164978631
I really hope people will not watch any broadcast of the AL meet & greet BS. T thrives on big media numbers.
.
Putin's made a few miscalculations, but he is verging on genius.
Russia has natural resouces, but its GDP is somewhere around Spain’s. It's not such a great country.... "a gas station with nukes".as Yuval Harari says.
And yet he's really done one on the United States.
Genius
Hello Christopher... Genius Putin has installed the Worst President in the History of the USA who may yet Destroy Us... Evil Strategic Brilliance...
Hello Apache..... Exactly my point
At least that conquest is going well.
THE MOST SADISTIC PRESIDENT and REGIME in AMERICAN history!!
Trump and Putin are idiot savants as best. They both are clueless on their respective economies, which should be their number one focus.
Obviously, Trump and Epstein laundered their trafficking money as well as trafficked dozens of young women through Putin's Russia. And Putin is well aware of it.
And it's over $1 billion and thousands of transactions. Putin has Trump's kahunas in a vice and the Republicans in Congress know it and yet they do nothing. Cowards one and all.
GJL, maybe some of the rthugs in Congress are implicated in the Epstein files. Maybe the intelligence community doesn't want the files released because that's one of their tools to get dirt on people. I may sound like a conspiracy theorist but that's where my thoughts go. All of this shit show is such a tangled web.
Let’s not forget the July 4 trip by 8 of those thugs.
The word is cojones, not kahunas. It gave me a chuckle.
The j sounds like an h. CoHOnes
Well, to be fair, there is a phrase "the big kahuna".
I just wonder if that grip is with tweezers or a vice grip.
Yeah, all those Hawaiian leaders in a vise grip. 😏
So true, neither one of them are wise men though they think they are. Both are terrible leaders and wanna be kings though.
🎯
Or so it seems with so many willing to be his willing fools. The COVID virus got the same sort of assistance.
As will the next pandemic and we will have no vaccines to guard us.
Christopher Colles,
Never underestimate Putin!
He does get a little too "in love with himself" sometimes but seems to shake this "self-adoration" off in time to clear the way to his advantage. He also knows his enemies well.
Let me remind you that this is Biden's War, it did not start when Trump was President. Putin is no genius. He has a one product Economy-driven by Gas prices.
Under Trump, worldwide Gas prices are going Down. Therefore Putin's Economy is
suffering. He is actually on the ropes and needs a way out. He made a terrible miscalculation thinking that he could be successful in the Ukraine in a few weeks.
Did you see that Trump is going to be nominated for the Nobel Peace prize for negotiating the Armenia and Azerbaijan peace plan yesterday? He is the best President in my lifetime. Biden was worst in my lifetime. Carter used hold that spot, but Biden ended that.
Trump will never ever win the Nobel Prize. The Norwegians have figured him out a long time ago. People who angle for it never get it. I doubt if you even know where Armenia or Azerbaijan are or why they were fighting. Do you even understand that the world criminal Putin is meeting on American soul with a felon President and Zelensky is not at that meeting ??? To what end ???
Sometimes Freedom of Speech can reveal idiocy in spangles.
George Dunn, there are a hell of a lot of people that think just like you in America.
May I go as far as to say that you, George Dunn, are a typical American.
God help us and the human habitable planet if that remains a typical American.
Thank you.
You’re exactly the guy with Trump Derangement Syndrome. Putin and Trump have been in cahoots for a long time. I don’t understand how you can’t see that. Trump would hand over all of Ukraine to Putin if this country wouldn’t skewer him for the traitor he is. You say the same BS line every time you post on here.
This assessment of our situation is on target and lumps the deplorables together perfectly. My favorite turn of phrase is the reference to I.C.E as “lawless goons.” May this descriptor stay attached and live on forever!
Hello Phil... So DJT who has been Cultivated, and Paid by the Russians since the '80s is going to betray the Ukrainians, are We surprised?... This will happen in Alaska which the Russians want back... The Russians are now using Kidnapped Ukrainian Children as Cannon Fodder in their Suicide Attacks... Horror... Is Putin Promising A Golden Trump Tower In Moscow?... Are there Words Strong Enough to Describe this Treachery?....
Actually, in a New York Times article, "Trump Tells European leaders He Intends to Meet With Putin and Zelensky" by Maggie Haberman, Steve Erlanger, and Andrew E. Kramer ( Aug. 6, 2025),
Caroline Leavitt, the White House Press Secretary, said in a statement on Wed. that the Russians asked for the meeting."
If that is the case, my question is, "What does Putin , the puppetmaster, really want from Trump?" And does Putin want to interfere with our midterms? " I can't help but believe Putin has something big over Trump... Why does Putin want the meeting?!!!
Epstein was often going to Russia, Michele. Often meeting its oligarchs. And Putin.
It's no secret Epstein spent years collecting dirt on many, many of his rich "friends." And selling same to Putin. Russia paid handsomely in proportion to how scandalously useful various dirt might be.
Video tapes of Trump with underage girls? Imagine, if Putin has them, how all the more easily Trump will dump Ukraine.
That is valid conjecture... If only there was a leak... and soon... I still wonder what he wants from him now??!!#
I keep hoping Anonymous has the files and will leak them soon.
Very funny! Unless Anonymous was under Pete Hegseth's "command" when he was doling out polygraph tests to all "suspicious" recruits until someone made him stop...Even Anonymous may have to go "under cover"...
How does anyone think Trump has the right to decide to give Ukraine to Putin?
Would it be too much to ask that every word they exchange be recorded and verified by neutral interpreters?
Kompromat on Krasnov goes back into the 1980s
In addition to other possibilities, I believe he expressed a wish, not terribly long ago, to reclaim Alaska as part of Russia. The plan of having him on that soil seems like a terribly bad decision, and so do many other decisions being made involved him. Since the person here seems to be in the pocket of his expected visitor, one cannot help but wonder still more.
JP4M, I think putin wants Alaska and who's to say the U.S. is next. Putin and tRump both want to rule the world. How's that going to work out?
Vivian T. M, I agree and have often thought that was the case. How awful that would be!
I say this in jest; “If one person owned the whole world, maybe there would be no tarrifs between countries.”
Trump and Putin are both delusional. We are not selling Alaska back to Russia and Canada is not going to become our 51st state. Who even has such ideas ????
Are Alaskans going to like this?
Not one iota, would Alaskans like the visit or a sale of their homeland to the dictator of another country. Although, Sitka was beautiful. I do not know how much Russian heritage anybody there has, but the Russian Orthadox Church was beautiful when I saw it. I hope nobody will be hurt in any way and that we lose nothing of our land.
That is what I posted, too.
Michele2, from my decades of reading about the Trump family, interactions with Russians go back generations, at least to Donald's grandfather, Friedrich. At this stage, it's less like blackmail and more like a partnership (in crime). It is true that none of the Trump men were ever very bright, so Russians have always had the upper hand in the relationship. But the Trumps and the Russians have long had mutual motives.
Donald's lack of success in Moscow real estate is just an indicator that he's the dumbest Trump to come along and the Russian oligarchs are reluctant to partner with him and risk losing their рубашкаs.
One of the only Russian words I know is xopowo... I do think the Cyrillic alphabet is beautiful... What does the word you wrote mean? You think crime? Maybe both are true, because Trump is such a womanizer and Putin is one smart blackmailer?? And Trump is so dumb - I wish we knew - what is the Russian word for "secrets"?" I have to go to local protest and I am running late, but I appreciate your post!
Michele2, if Google Translate is accurate, рубашкаs means "shirts." Russian oligarchs are reluctant to partner with him and risk losing their shirts.
My vocabulary in Russian includes: nyet, Baba, babushka, and if it is Russian,borscht, the soup. The word for the beautiful coffee machines escapes my mind right now. Oh, it’s Samovar! If I had a menu or a cookbook in front of me, something else might come to mind. Although languages are fascinating, I want our country and language to remain ours. There are many cultures with admirable qualities, but I love our home here snd hope we can always maintain our democracy, assuming we shall regain the recent losses. We must regain them.
Phil Balla,
I find it interesting that they are meeting in Alaska which was once a colony of Russia. It was sold to the United States of America in 1867. There remain a few who continue to speak the Russian language.
Of course I doubt Trump will get the message Putin wants to send which is ...maybe...I have enough information on your criminality to take Alaska from you....much less have my way with taking over Ukraine.
Putin has stated long ago, he wants all of the territory of "old Russia". He is accomplishing his goal one small "bite" at a time. He is not stopping.
The whole right wing is responsible for this coup just as much as trump, whatever compromote Putin has on trump will be used to push trump to do as Putin wishes. The rest of the right-wing won't stand in the way because this is probably their last best opportunity to take permanent power and rule over the majority. I'm hoping that the inflationary effects of trump's tariff policies hit the public hard now that the policies have gone into effect on Thursday. Maybe that will wake up the people who aren't paying attention to the coup, and tens of millions will join us to reclaim our democracy. Nothing less will do, and time is very, very short.
We can't wait for the midterm elections; the pro-democracy demonstrations have been impressive in size and scale, but we need a response from the people that is unprecedented in the United States, "like no one's ever seen before" with protests so massive that it literally sends the opposition running.
I’m pretty sure that Donny can’t think past his most recent fever dream of being a “leader”. All those others, mere amateurs.
Trump the Great and Powerful; Like Nobody's Ever Seen Before.
In the U.K. the opposition runs a shadow cabinet. The Dems should create a shadow Joint Chiefs of Staff. Trump et al are certainly going to issue unconstitutional orders to the military, and we may need a shadow Joint Chiefs of Staff to publicly point out that the Military is required to NOT follow unconstitutional orders
I wish you were wrong…WAKE UP AMERICA!
Trump is obligated to arrest Putin on arrival. Failure to do so negates the whole premise of a rules based order. He cannot be called the "leader of the free world" unless he locks the criminal up.
Of course we know he won't do that, instead he'll side with the criminal to corece Ukraine into surrender. The art of the deal to him is I win, you lose.
The winner out of this is Xi.
Oh, that's an excellent idea. But it would require a responsible leader with a respect for democracy to arrest Putin.
Dictators, autocrats, and mobsters worldwide win, benefit from Trump, Frank.
Phil, do we know if T is flying non- stop from FL/ DC/ NJ/ NY? (Spending our money anyway) or, is he going to need to land say, In Seattle- the Blue state he detests?
"He’s selling us all out." You said it well. All minus the wealthiests including his family members.
Im addition to destroying the United States' scientific, arts, education, medical, intelligence, legal, environmental and military capabilities, Trump is selling out our nation's security, our NATO allies, and the Ukrainian people. His betrayal of the nation is unbounded.
EcstaticRationalist, that’s one hell of a list. You pointed to every single room in the house that’s burning.
And that’s why I say Heather’s Letters is like a big front porch for the country because you get the reporting that lays out the facts, then somebody like you comes along and drops the kind of comment that makes folks sit up and go, “Damn… it’s all connected.”
When you lay it out….the sell-off of science, arts, NATO, Ukraine it stops being bad luck or bad leadership and starts looking like a demolition plan with a schedule. That’s the kind of clarity you only get when the platform and the people using it are both this sharp.
I personally believe Trump and his supporters are at war with reason, and a rational, fact-based approach to reality and (human) existence, because reason and fact-based rationality fundamentally destroy their claims to privilege and power.
EcstaticRationalist, ding ding ding bullseye! They’re not just allergic to reason, they’re on a full-blown demolition crew for anything that might expose the scam.
A fact-based reality is dangerous to them because it’s like turning the lights on in a roach motel. You can watch ‘em scatter, but they can’t survive it. That’s why they keep trying to sell the chaos because it’s the only environment where those lies can breathe.
The way you put it is spot on. It’s not just a war on truth, it’s a war on the tools we use to even find the truth.
One might demonstrate superior mastery of one thing or another, but there is no rational excuse for assumed supremacy. No inherent right to rule. So truth becomes inimical to tyrants and vice versa.
EcstaticRationalist, add one thing more: "... reason and fact-based rationality fundamentally destroy their claims to privilege and power" and MONEY.
Rachel Maddaugh pointed out in March already that if Trump were a Russian agent, he would not have done anything different from what he had already done to that point (like stopping security analysis of threats from Russia, questioning support for Ukraine etc etc). The same analysis works today, that much more strongly.
Not really. This was all laid out step by step, chapter by chapter in the Project 2025 manifesto. The authors such as John Roberts have made very clear they intended to dismantle the American Government step by step, department by department.
The really astute thing to report is how we are fighting back.
Don't know how much Roberts had to do with the production of Project 2025, but it is clear that he and the rest of the corrupt right-wing SCOTUS majority are 110% on board with Project 2025 and are determined to do whatever they can to assist with the coup.
Project 2025 was a project of KEVIN Roberts of the so-called Heritage Foundation, among others. I believe Vance wrote a section of it. John Roberts, the chief justice, is known for his hostility to voting rights, so there is, you might say, some overlap in their positions.
Of course it's all connected. It's called Project 2025. It was out well before the election. I read through it. None of this is a surprise. As Dr. Richardson has said also none of this was a surprise. What has been a surprise according to her and I agree is the level of capitulation across the board from legislators, universities, media and finance.
Dr. Richardson also reports on the resistance. I recommend you see her Politics Chat on the Resistance. Talk about this. Do Something.
And that list is the legacy of the citizens of the United States. We have all invested in government agencies, departments, and bureaus over the last eighty years for our benefit. The fascists have destroyed that legacy already. How much more damage will they cause?
There are the genuses of P2025 who spend every waking moment making sure that nothing is left intact. Vlad is just the icing on the cake.
"We all need to stand up to the regime and his followers. Their bullying is not strength. Their behavior is that of weak cowards in a death spiral. We need to keep up the pressure, folks. We need to follow the lessons from Zelenskyy and be fearless in fighting the Trump regime."
Meidas Touch
NEVER EVER BACK DOWN TO A BULLY or they will continue to chase you forever!!!
NEVER EVER TRUST A BULLY because they are so insecure and paranoid that sooner than later EVERYONE becomes one of their TARGETS!!!
And our resistance is unbounded. It's fine to report what is happening. Just be sure to report the fight on the ground against this regime.
If all people see and hear is the gloom and doom they become dispirited.
Never surrender in advance.
Russia did win the cold war. In the same way as Heather Cox Richardson's book outlines how the South won the Civil War. In fact, I would say that the Trump presidency is the result of cooperation between the old forces of the defeated Confederacy and those of the KGB. It's like that old William Faulkner quote, "The past is never dead. It isn't even past."
Angela, I agree, but I think it's actually a far longer arc than just a return to the USSR. I have pointed out for years--and HCR and others have recently also started saying this--that the real goal in Putin's mind is to reconstruct the Russian Empire of the late 19th century, which had access to client states that bordered the Austro-Hungarian and German Empires (the Second Reich established in 1870 after the unification of Germany). And he also is counting on authoritarian regimes in Austria and Türkiye (not to mention Hungary) to look the other way as he annexes Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Slovakia, and eastern Poland--leaving the western bits and maybe Finland (they are worried) as faux buffer zones. Map of the Russian Empire and client states: https://alphahistory.com/russianrevolution/wp-content/gallery/maps/2.-Expansion-of-Russian-empire.jpg
The USSR was actually somewhat less expansive than the Russian Empire, probably because the other imperial states (especially the British Empire) looked the other way as Russia annexed more and more territory in the late 19th century. They were less enthusiastic about Stalin's expansion of the USSR. USSR map: https://www.mapsland.com/maps/europe/ussr/large-detailed-administrative-divisions-map-of-the-soviet-union-ussr-1984.jpg
I love it when you weigh in with this kind of historical data. Would that I had paid better attention in some of my history classes. Sigh.
Well you probably would have forgotten it all anyway right after the final! But thank you AH--I appreciate that you like my view from the sidelines.
Linda, this is a good historical review. It brings to my mind that assimilating all these now-sovereign nations would bring their resources – and resulting financial tribute – under Putin's control, making him the richest man on the planet.
This reminds me of Elon Musk, who seems hell-bent on controlling all the world's communications and supporting technology, making him the richest man on the planet.
But, quoting from The Highlander, "There can be only one." At some point, these two allies will butt heads.
Poor, stupid Donald Trump thinks he's a player, when he is actually just an errand boy.
Everything has a history. You, me, the words on this page, the cosmos. The present moment is the leading edge of some older process.
fabulous Falkner quote!!
Wow! Just heard about this Putin/orange turd summit in Alaska today. I am sincerely hoping it will be In Anchorage, because I want to be out there protesting. No word on yet on where in Alaska, but the JBER base in Anchorage is huge, and that would be my first guess. Also would be a very restricted location, so any protests would have to be not very close. Edited to add: When the orange turd won/cheated the first time around. I was sort of joking that we here in Alaska, had better start learning Russian. Now with the way things are going, I am wondering if it was really a joke
I don't think trump would give Alaska to Putin. He wants to expand the country, and annexing Canada and conquering Greenland is part of his plan.
“Now Trump will welcome Putin to the United States, to territory that once belonged to Russia, reinforcing for Russian nationalists the dream of recreating Russia’s old empire. That dream has been part of the ideology of Russia’s drive to seize Ukrainian land.”
I can’t do anything more than primal scream!
I was a Russian history major, so I have a pretty good idea how this may play out. But there’s, what? A little over a week? Stay tuned. Thank you for your attention to this matter. There’s no man behind the curtain.
Margaret, then you know how weak Russia really is right now. Trump is backing a loser in them.
Here is Martin Belderson of the Ukraine: The Under Reported War Substack writing about Ukraine this week. A story of creativity and ingenuity in the face of war.
https://underreported.substack.com/
Here is another. bonus edition about Russia a few weeks ago.
https://open.substack.com/pub/underreported/p/the-under-reported-war-bonus-issue?r=f0qfn&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false
It was this article that I thought about when I read that to recruit people to ICE they are offering $50,000 signing bonuses and $89,000 salary no college required. Then, they also offer that you get up to $40,000 off on your student loan. The only way to get. money off of the SL in this regime. Still, they are having difficulties signing people up. That is why I think now is the time to switch to State based taxation system, and get our elected reps to draft legislation to end federal taxes. No money to feed the beast.
Thanks for the Read on the substack about the Russian army and the horrors therin. EVERYONE must wake up
Agreed.
But there might be plutocrats.
Margaret, you pulled the exact line that should stop everybody in their tracks and that’s the one that takes this from “politics” to history changing right in front of us.
And yeah, a primal scream feels about right. Sometimes that’s the only honest thing left in the moment. But here’s the thing the fact you zeroed in on that sentence means you’re not just screaming into the void, you’re holding up the part of the story people can’t afford to miss.
That’s why the work here matters so much ….she puts the receipts on the table so moments like this don’t get brushed off as noise. The scream is real, but so is the record we’re building. And the record? That’s what history will use to judge whether we saw this coming and said it out loud. www.xplisset.com
Watch him offer Alaska to Putin in exchange for something....
Eddie,you could say Alaska borders Russia just like the Ukraine. I also thought that Trump may offer Alaska to Putin in some kind of deal. This administration has gotten way out of hand and has entered an abstract reality. It will take more than protests and elections to forcefully remove this cancer on democracy. We haven't got much time.
They do, after a fashion, share a border. The Arctic region is key to maintaining security in much of the Northern Hemisphere. And of course it is also most vulnerable. As with all other such agreements, the existence of treaties dedicated to maintaining that security means nothing to Trumpty if they don't work for him.
It wouldn't surprise me if a territorial trade didn't figure in Putin/Trump discussions, especially if Mad Vlad has something Trumpty wants.
I mean this is the guy who wants to acquire Greenland and will not shut up already about the 51st state, Canada.
Should the Alaska for Epstein files swap go through, I think (hope) the "51st state," which has more "border" proximity to the Arctic than any other nation, would raise very strong and LOUD objections to it with the international community, most specifically other NATO signatories.
Exactly. He is playing right into these steps Putin is taking, but Alaska is not his to give away or trade. People who can do something legally need to act fast. The selling of America, or any part of it, is not an option. It is not within his job description.
I suppose that depends on who he is working for.
J L. Graham, you are so right about that fact. If he is working for someone else, as indicated by implications of certain numerous behaviors, that adds still more entries to the list of anti-Constitutional behaviors. Thank you for the thought.
This is why I have been recommending that we ask our state legislators to draft a bill ending federal taxes and letting states solely tax people and take on full responsibility for their care. The states can pay fees for the military, and have their own. Many US states have GDPs larger than countries with similar sized populations that take better care of their people. They provide universal health care, education including many having free university education, old age pensions, poverty relief, housing, and everything you need.
My first thought - of course it will come out of his foolish ignorant mouth. Like buying Greenland.
A Big Beautiful ballroom at the Kremlin?
Or he is toying with Putin by inviting him to Alaska. Putin better hope ICE does not come after him. Trump is not someone who respects diplomatic immunity, or any other rules of law, domestic or international.
It seems that Trump has been set up by Putin, all along through the years, to get whatever Putin wants. Putin probably thinks he can and will get both Ukraine and Alaska by seeming to buddy up with Trump. I think that Trump’s ego, pride, and goals blind him to the ways he is being used. Americans and Ukrainians are being set up to pay the price. I hope I am wrong.
Putin's Puppet.
When I was 19 in 1976, I was 1 of 22 Russian-speaking guides at the United States’s only exhibit commemorating the bicentennial, held in Moscow that year. “USA: The 200 Years” was a warts-off celebration of our past, complete with 20-foot high reproductions of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights in Russian. 20,000 Russians stood in line for hours for a month in November to come inside, and talk to us.
The conversations were open-ended, unstructured, uncensored, friendly, but the KGB did try to sabotage us here and there. It actually instructed teens and tweens to approach us, shouting “Otdai Alyasku!” (“Give Alaska back!”) Even the crowds laughed at them. I kid you not.
Mary Pat, your fascinating description makes me feel almost as though I have visited that display. Thank you for sharing. That seems like an interesting, and then jolting experience. I’m glad some people laughed at the shouters. The shouters, promoted as they were, made it sound like America stole Alaska. As we know, on the contrary, Seward’s Folly was the nickname given to the Alaskan Purchase on March 30 of a year I must look up to refresh my mind. Many people thought Mr. Seward had lost his mind to suggest that we buy such an ice box of land, as they considered it. I am glad we did, and I am thankful to have traveled there. In the past,
I have thought I would like to visit Russia, too, because of the architecture, art, and music, as well as learning more of the tales which might not be in a book I have. I would have loved to have seen a live ballet there, but I have seen the troupe perform here. With circumstances as they are now, there is no way I want to go to Russia. Learning the language would be interesting though, and the food is good. I used to love to explore cuisine of other countries in a book of World Cookery.
Thank you Professor Richardson.
The rise of the criminal elect in the United States is not only indicative of the Soviet Union winning the cold war. Trump's elevation in the United States is the dream of every tyrant, authoritarian, pedophile, and mob boss throughout the world.
The United States is, at present, a case study in how democracies fail. For any nation aspiring to self-governance, a society must be well-educated, well-informed, and engaged. Education must be unmolested by politics. Information must be predicated on facts and evidence. And people have to engage beyond occasionally voting. I recently published an article about the Framers of the U.S. Constitution having an over-inflated sense of societal enthusiasm for democracy.
https://open.substack.com/pub/bomdia/p/premature-democratization.
Appreciate this, and totally agree on the core: voting is the floor, not the ceiling. Heather’s piece shows the playbook in real time—when facts get bent and fatigue sets in, authoritarians rush the gap.
On the Framers: they didn’t exactly over‑estimate democratic enthusiasm so much as they mistrusted unfiltered democracy (see Madison’s ‘factions’) and expected us to grow the franchise while guarding the guardrails. We’ve expanded the ‘we’ of ‘We the People’ now the job is to match that with civic muscle: school boards and city councils, public‑comment windows, court‑watching, election protection, and yes, supporting evidence‑based reporting like this.
If it helps, I’ve been mapping how disinformation and engineered silence feed each other and what breaks the cycle…I’d love your take. www.xplisset.com
Thank you for sharing -and yes -I write about the potential conflict the Framers had (in a very snarky manner) between concern over mob rule by the "cretins" and aspiring toward something more profound than trading one oligarchy for another. I imagined that they were crammed into a room with one another, all white, educated, and of privilege. That became their context as they constructed the Constitution.
Thank you for putting xplisset together. I have great appreciation for those like yourself, Heather, and readers/subscribers working to educate, inform, and catalyze engagement.
And I think the Constitution was well constructed, especially in the embedded understanding that it was to be a work in progress. The future takes turns that we cannot imagine, at least with respect to some crucial details. Our technology, which is far more capable than when I was born, assists whatever use it is put to, including evil. Also, not law governs by itself. Democracy is possible within a society that maintains a substantial level of good faith. We are seeing now that without sufficient societal maintenance, the wisest prescriptions can be used in Orwellian ways.
The construction of the American Experiment was genius, but as Thomas Ricks wrote in his book First Principles, the Constitution is only as good as the people that are in charge of the government. It turns out that conservatives hate the one document that started it all - The Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights. We are seeing that hate begin to be legislated, first through the courts and now through the Congress. ?Libertarians are clueless as their plan is no plan. They talk about how people could take others to court to protect their rights (property mainly) but seem to forget that a court system requires government. Conservatives call for small un-intrusive government while growing the government to protect businesses and wealthy donors.
WOW, Rickey!! Very well stated! Yup, Conservatives scream SMALL GOVERNMENT while they construct massive wall and fortresses for the Chosen Ones. I’d like to add one caveat to your phrase: “only as good as the people that are in charge of the government.” Let’s remember that We, the People are in charge of the government, and, a significant number of We, the People, voted for Donald Trump (and JD Vance) and the MAGA members of Congress! A significant number of our friends, neighbors, and relatives WANTED this to happen. I don’t really think that what is going on right now is that much of a surprise! Trumpie loves Putie. Trumpie grabs women (you know where) because HE CAN. Trumpie likes money and gold. ETC. Even our Conservative friends, neighbors, and relatives are aware of Trump’s portfolio. Yet, here we are. Yes, Republican members of Congress are to blame, but the People who put them in that position of power are also responsible. How can we change their minds? Or, will the USA have to …. I don’t want to say it….
Good point. So I need to change that to the people that occupy government positions.
Well-stated JL. Safeguards are not absolute.
Voting by choice or by mandate at the barrel of a gun as they did in the USSR and what happened in Eastern Ukraine. Our greatest strengths are our greatest weaknesses. Free speech without responsibility, gun ownership without responsibility. It seems that our "freedom" has devolved into might is right. He who has the might determines what is right.
Thanks Rickey. I think might is how the extreme concentration of wealth has been used to overwhelm the entire system. It is being used to undermine and politicize education, constrain fact and evidence-based information, and to mitigate engagement. It proves that extreme wealth inequality is incompatible with any aspiration of democracy.
George, as I have often written and will now write again, this outcome should surprise no one. The system of U.S. governance was devised by well-heeled, white European men whose primary interest was in protecting their wealth and their freedom to increase their wealth. The so-called "system of check and balances" protected the branches of government from usurping authority from each other, but did nothing to protect the masses from the aristocrats.
"Outsiders," including commoners, women and people of color, have derived paltry benefits from the original government design, and have managed to wrest some rights of their own over the centuries. But any attempt by the outsiders to make themselves equal with the white male ruling class is promptly tamped down.
Voting is obviously (yet hiding in plain sight) an adult responsibility. It's not just channel surfing; it is government of the people, by the people, for the people. Or it isn't. Our representatives represent our considered agenda. Or else they don't.
Very true. And registering, validating you have not been "inadvertently" removed from the voter rolls, and voting are the bare minimum.
Without the integrity of the vote there are no "just powers from the consent of the governed", or at least to the extent of the deficit, there is dangerous corruption. Period. Voting is the societal right that secures all others. As such, a grave injury is done to each individual for whom that right is even inadvertently abridged. To err is human, but such an error with no attempt of redress is negligence, and it's deliberate suppression a profound form of tyranny. How could it not be?
And yes, both sides have historically tired to rob citizens of their rightful vote. That is a historical reality; yet, right now, as we speak, what are the dimensions of the direct and indirect (but no less theft) suppression of voter's will, and where are crying needs for rectification?
"We the People" are the ultimate guardians of our societal liberty and justice. Again, that is indispensably fundamental to our professed social values. WE guard the universal rights of one another. That's what even having a functioning "right" means. We not only claim, but respect and protect them; in every case. Seductive "shortcuts" erode the rights of all, especially for the poor and already under-protected. I know I get repetitive in my quotes of Lincoln, but I think some truths (to the degree that our species has access to truth) are consequential enough to recite frequently:
"Accustomed to trample on the rights of those around you, you have lost the genius of your own independence, and become the fit subjects of the first cunning tyrant who rises."
And of course, it is a problem for democracy when significant numbers neglect to vote, or vote without too narrow of a concept of the need us to serve and protect all of our people. What is impact of the contest on vulnerable individuals and how will it impact society as a whole; including our posterity? I believe one of the pillars of wisdom is make the "best" choice when neither choice is particularly appealing; and of course, to always and ardently seek better achievable choices in the future. I think we need to rethink the problem of voter participation.
Powerfully eloquent JL.
I hope so. I try for clarity. I try to focus. I think there are other ways, and certainly other words, to achieve it. The reality, however accessed, is what's important.
And on top of all the other effluvia from the regime, Dissent in Bloom writes of a leaked memo that lays out the cooperation between the DoD and ICE:
"Dated August 2, 2025, the memo describes a closed-door meeting between Trump’s Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, the highest-ranking officer in the U.S. military, the general responsible for defending American soil, senior Pentagon advisers, and the leadership of ICE and Border Patrol. Their focus was not on overseas wars but on how to merge military power with immigration enforcement inside the United States.
It was written by Philip Hegseth, a senior adviser to DHS Secretary Kristi Noem and the go-between for Homeland Security and the Pentagon. Not to be confused with his older brother, Pete Hegseth, the former Fox anchor who now serves as Donald Trump’s Secretary of Defense."
Blatantly against the Constitution and the prohibition of using the might of the US military against its own citizens, this memo should strike fear into every American, and be evidence in the trial of these traitors when they are brought to justice.
TERRIFYING. This needs to be front page, back page. Every page news.
Good grief.
The senile old American traitor needs to be "terminated... with extreme prejudice."
Personally, I'm in favor of the traditional punishment for treason: hanged, drawn and quartered, in public. I volunteer to buy the rope, bring the sword, and whip the horses.
And then there's the rest of the traitors...
Sandra Grimes, Who Helped Unmask a C.I.A. Traitor, Dies at 79
She became suspicious when she discovered large deposits in the bank account of Aldrich Ames, whose betrayal cost the lives of at least eight double agents.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/03/us/politics/sandra-grimes-dead.html?unlocked_article_code=1.c08.EvVD.bZ-iJMYmj_MM&smid=em-share
Explore this gift article from The New York Times. You can read it for free without a subscription.
Unmasking the deadliest traitor in Central Intelligence Agency history was not a matter of decrypting codes, staking out dead drop sites or any other piece of spy craft out of a John le Carré novel.
Aldrich H. Ames, the C.I.A. mole whose betrayal led to the execution of at least eight Russian double agents who spied for the U.S., a devastating setback for American intelligence, was discovered from bookkeeping entries.
He was identified by a counterintelligence analyst, Sandra Grimes, who was once in charge of C.I.A. secretaries and clerks. In 1992, merging data from two spreadsheets, Ms. Grimes noticed that Mr. Ames made bank deposits of up to $9,000 on three occasions just after lunches with a Soviet Embassy official in Washington.
One of the things that keeps me going in news about the war in Ukraine is Martin Belderson. He writes a weekly Substack with occasional extra editions, where he updates us on exactly what Ukraine is doing in the war, called "Ukraine: The Under Reported War". It is a story of amazing resilience, and technological and strategic creativity. Basically how a country fighting with one hand tied behind its back uses its brilliance to find ways to fight.
Here is the latest issue, a bonus issue in which he claims Ukraine is having successes that we just aren't hearing.
https://underreported.substack.com/p/the-under-reported-war-bonus-issue-f5c
A recent special edition was about how poorly Russian troops are treated and are doing.
https://underreported.substack.com/p/the-under-reported-war-bonus-issue
Trump is not backing a winner in Russia, but he also does not appear to know this. He has an idea in his mind of winners, and the truth does not enter into it. I think he is trying to take advantage of American focus on the terrible things going on at home to destroy Ukraine. We should not let him do that.
Thank you for those links. Anything that is good news about the war in Ukraine is very welcome.
James, I agree that we need to understand that they can win this if they keep our support. Also, as my friend was saying, Masha Gesson, Russia expert claims that Putin is not going to end the war unless he gets his way. It is his forever war that he needs to stay in power.
Here is the main link to Martin's website so you can see what he is up to.
https://underreported.substack.com/
… if they keep our support…
Robert Hubbell lists Indivisible National Day of Action on August 16 to protest Texas legislators attempts to gerrymander the voting map.
https://roberthubbell.substack.com/p/take-a-break-b7a
Thank you, Linda, for bringing Martin Belderson’s Substack to my attention.
The professor is breaking it down, but let’s be real this ain’t just “Trump being Trump.” This is the same playbook they’ve been running since 2016, back when Manafort and Kilimnik were cooking up the Mariupol Plan like it was some backroom mixtape no one was supposed to hear.
That Alaska meet-up? That’s not diplomacy. That’s like handing Putin the keys to your house and saying, “Make yourself at home, fridge is on the left.” Once you normalize taking land by force, you’re not just redrawing maps you’re teaching the whole block it’s open season.
And now they’re stapling Russia’s election interference to Epstein? That’s a straight-up magician’s trick ..“Hey, look over here,” while the other hand’s in your wallet. Moves like that don’t just happen; they’re scripted.
Heather’s got the receipts. What keeps me up is the pattern same crew, same hustle, just with a fresh coat of 2025 paint. I’ve been tracking how they recycle these plays and why, if we don’t call it out in real time, they run the table. I lay the big picture out here: www.xplisset.com
"Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain! The great and powerful Oz has spoken!"
Wizard of Oz, 1939
Anybody still unclear on where the dirtiest business against Hilary Clinton came from? Putin knew that, as president, she could and would call him on all his shady tricks and stand up strong against him. Trump is his chosen patsy, and the world is suffering for the lack of critical intelligence on the part of too many American voters.
But enough for him to actually win in 2016 and supposedly again in 2024? Not without Russian help and quite possibly digital shenanigans with the voting apparatus.
What won for him in 2016 and in 2024 was the American people who couldn't bear to vote for a woman for President.
It is so hard to understand why those voters did not see all of these possibilities coming.
Your meticulous research keeps me reliably informed - I genuinely appreciate your work.
This is an atrocity, all by itself.
Trump is so willing to ‘sell out’ to the killer, Putin.
Both of them are accomplished liars.
In many ways Trumps treatment of refugees is Putin - like.
Banishing to places that will ultimately kill them.
Both of them are self serving narcissists, who have no problem ignoring anyone or anything, that gets in the way of their monstrous egos.
The important difference is that Trump thinks that he is the equal in manipulation and power of a man who was a major KGB operative. Both Trump and Putin may be dangerous narcissists, but Trump is under the delusion that he is as wily and as powerful as the man he emulates and admires. The admiration is obviously not mutual to the clear-eyed observer. It is Trump's gullibility that puts us in such great danger.
AGREE.
Add Netanyahu to the list of those being propped up and appeased by Trump/MAGA.
THE MOST SADISTIC PRESIDENT and REGIME in AMERICAN history!!!
Heather nailed it. The connection to Trump's alleged Russian money laundering, 20 years ago when he undercut Epstein in the Florida real estate deal, is the likely link. It fits with Russian media trolling Trump with all the naked pictures of Melania. The medal for the CIA mother is just another reminder.
I wonder how this will play out in Congress, just as support for Ukraine was again gathering steam. But of course, the timeline here has been set up to occur while Congress is on vacation, and SCOTUS is not in session either. So no one is around to raise issues about the illegality of whatever gutting of Ukraine Trump agrees to here. Wouldn't be surprised to see a "treaty" signing between the US and Russia if Putin has his way.
This will undercut whatever last remaining standing America has in the international community. It will certainly destroy NATO by cutting out what will become our former European allies. I wouldn't be surprised to see a small tactical nuke fired into western Ukraine--the part that Russia doesn't want, just to make a point.
The good thing is that any "treaty" they might sign has no legal significance if Congress does not approve it. Oops, I forgot who controls Congress. No spines there.
Hello Georgia… Very Good Observations….
The vulgar mutilation of the White House ( the People’s House) is both concrete example and a symbol for the destruction of our country. Russia will get Ukraine unless Europe stops it.