“I think it’s really important that this video be made public,” Representative Jim Himes (D-CT) said today on Face the Nation. Himes was referring to a video of the September 2 U.S. military strike on a small boat with 11 people on it. In that attack, the first strike broke the boat apart and set it on fire. The strike killed nine people but left two alive, clinging to the remains of the vessel.
I know I have said this before and most of us have said it to ourselves--What is it going to take for the main force of the GOP to do the right thing and repudiate MAGA? The old guard knows damn well this that the regime and those behind it are traitors to the constitution and to their country. When will they act on what they know to be true? Are they all so corrupt?
Yes. All Republicans who have betrayed their oath to the Constitution should be investigated, prosecuted, and tried for treason along with Trump, Hegseth, and other members of the regime along with the rightwing members of the Supreme Court.
I've long believed the old saying "knowledge is power," but anymore it's more like "money is power." In this case, I think the Republicans guilty of either outright assistance to this regime, or tacit approval, will never be prosecuted or even sanctioned for what they've done. Instead, they will retire on their hefty pensions and their mega-coverage medical plans.
Money has always been the power — going all the way back to the ancient Romans. Not even communist nations were immune to this. Stalin through to Gorbachev, they and their cronies relied on it. (Not sure about Lenin).
In the opening chapter of his “authoritarian manifesto,” A Conflict of Visions (1987), Thomas Sowell attempts to answer a valid question: Why do the same people tend to be political adversaries in issue after issue, when the issues vary enormously in subject matter and sometimes hardly seem connected to one another? Then his cynical assumption that the conflict is impossible to resolve leads to the inevitable conclusion that the neo-conservative “tragic vision” is better than the neo-progressive “utopian vision.”
What the (profoundly anti-conservative) neo-conservative philosophy fails to acknowledge is that its pessimism is a self-fulfilling and self-defeating prophecy. The optimistic and pragmatic response to a conflict of visions is to resolve the conflict. As Homer Simpson would say: Doh!
Reading “Injustice.” That Trump through a series of fortuitous events (to him) was never punished for his document stealing—or anything else—gives him a vision of his own grandiosity and invulnerability. With reason.
Correct. Reason, like a hammer, is a tool. You can use it wisely to create something of lasting value, or you can use it unwisely by hitting someone over the head. The moral of the story? We are wise to always use all our tools wisely.
The challenge, there are a lot of rich and emotionally-needy folks who need the conflicts so they can acquire more money and power and can prove their manhood or force others to participate in the conflict. In the meantime, they gloat while sitting behind an oval or rectangular desk moving the pieces around, pretending to worry or show sadness or something to look concerned for those involved when they are not.
The “powerful and the enabled” (aka the authoritarians) live on the other side of a conceptual wall built with conceptual bricks. So, what do we do about that?
First things first: stop making bricks. In other words, we should not tolerate expressions of the immoral “I think, therefore I am right” philosophy whether it’s from ourselves or from others.
Second: start dismantling the wall one brick at a time by applying and promoting the moral “I think, therefore I am testing my potentially erroneous assumptions” philosophy.
New York Times piece acknowledges that Biden was asleep at the wheel on immigration. Everything I have written on this topic is now proven by 12 combining journalists who wrote that Biden just didn’t want to follow in the footsteps of Trump and therefore became lost in the weeds. This one issue destroyed his chances beside that fateful moment on the debate stage when he fell into a purple haze. The administration simply did not know how to tackle this out of control madness. Then Texas and Florida began flooding northern cities with busloads of immigrants. I wrote Mayor Adams to simply confiscate the buses and let it become a court battle.
Biden never allowed Ukraine to be more aggressive in the war and how the hell to you win a war with one hand tied behind your back. You don’t. And lastly, the Build Back Better act? There was a lot of waste in this legislation. Yes it achieved much but as usual, states grabbed what they could and spent it on anything they could dream up. Billkatz@substack.com
Nope. Biden was ready to sign a bi-partisan bill that had been developed in the Senate. It included additional resources to beef up the Border Patrol, install more, better fentanyl detecting equipment and more immigration judges to process those seeking asylum.
You may remember the phone call to Mike the Puppet from Trump who didn't want to see Biden have a "win" on immigration.
The blame lies squarely on Trump's shoulders whose specialty is to create problems so he can appear to solve them.
BTW, IMHO? We still need MORE immigrants as our population ages out. We are not having enough kids. We need new people who want to work hard, pay taxes and help support social programs like Social Security and Medicare.
Bill, what did Biden say? “Don’t compare me to the Almighty. Compare me to the alternative.” What did Bill Katz do? Compare Biden to the Almighty. What did James Carey say? “Sigh!”
With all due respect, everything you’re saying is the truth and nothing but the truth, which is to say that you need to subject your implicit assumptions to some basic level of skepticism by asking yourself why you’ve “conveniently” ignored the middle “whole truth” part.
Say WHAT? CATman where were you when a bipartisan bill on Immigration was destroyed because candidate trump told the magas to sink it? Your comment seems to be a retread of a previous post! By the way, now the immigration policy is to kill them!
I’ve long wondered how to define my outlook in times like this (I’m 80). After re-“measuring my brain,” I’m adopting (and probably adapting) “skeptical optimism!” Thank you, James.
Maybe they’re lazy. A person who puts zero effort into resolving a conflict that would otherwise require not much effort certainly appears to be lazy. But to me, a person who puts that much time, energy, attention, and resources into getting their way at the expense of the greater good appears to be a lot less “lazy” and a lot more “immature.”
That's almost true, meaning not true. The love of money is the root of a lot of evil. I think Trump's main problem is wealth addiction.
And I am grateful for your father's service. My father served also, and his life is an inspiration for me in all this. He would laugh and say, "Money isn't everything, but you can buy everything with it." He served love and duty.
SJR, I affirm Anne B's comment. My evangelical parents, who could recite most of the King James Bible from memory, were always quick to correct anyone who omitted the "love of" part of that maxim about money.
While I think evangelicalism is wrong about virtually everything, it is important to remember that "love of money" or greed is the source of all evil.
Money, itself, has no inherent moral value. It can just as easily be used to create good in the world as it can be used to create harm.
Human lust for wealth has been the source of all our human problems since the beginning of time.
David, you are a new name on here (WELCOME to the LFAA forum!👋) so perhaps you have not seen my frequent rant I post, which is, what obscene amount of wealth is ENOUGH for these people? I simply cannot understand why when you have more money than you could possibly spend in 1000 years, you need more! It's really a sickness.
Miselle. Money can be accrured in different ways. What is important in what you do with it. Bezos of Amazon built a yacht that was so big it could not be sailed out of the harbor. Bill Gates and Bloomberg pay little taxes because they support so many cultural and health organizations.
Very true, George. In the early DOGE days, I used to tell my husband that Elon could leave a legacy that people would admire and respect. He could fund cancer research, water and air pollution, etc, etc. Instead, he chooses to act like an arrogant asshole.
David, it goes back further than the Romans where wealth, however it was measured, meant power. The wealthy and the powerful have always made sure that they held everything while the peasants and peons did the work. This is why I do not think that the Russian and the Chinese revolutions changed anything except who were the elite.
What neofascist ideology learned from fascism (Hitler, Mussolini, ...) is that, contrary to what fascists believed, it is NOT necessary for ONE fascist regime to militarily conquer and dominate the rest of the world. That will never work.
Instead, as neofascist Putin ideologue Alexander Dugin explains (and explained to America's and Europe's neofascists - for instance already in 2008, when Steve Bannon met him in Italy), it is smarter to opt for a world with a handful of big, fascist empires, that each cultivate their own form of nationalism, based on the imposition of a fundamentalist version of the local dominant religion.
It would be a real end to the Cold War, with democracy losing and fascism winning.
At the same time, neofascism also understands that the word "fascism" is no longer popular. So they'll keep fake elections going, and will continue to claim (as Vance already did) that neofascism is the highest form of... democracy (with the executive branch of government directly doing what "the people" want, rather than having three independent branches of government, as is the case in any constitutional democracy).
These differences are really important to keep in mind. If not, we won't understand what is happening today, and our strategy to fight back will be inefficient.
“With knowledge” Peggy, and with truth. It is so much easier to simply tell the truth and not have to keep revising with blatant falsehoods. I have given over patented political parties and joined the Kimmel Party. Good humor rides our human frailties.
John Mitchell went to jail after Watergate, as did about a dozen others. Pam Bondi should certainly be charged with prosecuting innocent people, abuse of power, and pedophile coverup.
And many of the Democrats and, of course, the majority sitting on the SCOTUS are also linked arm in arm with Republican debauchery, greed, depravity, and betrayal of their oaths of office. They all need to be purged and new Constitutional safeguards need to be put in place.
We also had a pooch in the family called Einstein. One had to pass a test before he would deign to let you rub his furry noggin. We called it the theory of relativity. If you were related you passed the test. He was a stickler about that. Such a test could discern for us the morons incapable of governance. Why not apply such a test to aspiring politicians so that we may know if they can relate to us? Truth be told.
It sure looks that way. I don't have the exact quote from jd vance but it goes something like this " there is no right and wrong, there is only power." I don't believe that this is a bastardization of what he said. Donald trump needs to be impeached. We who read Dr. Richardson's letters may be more aware of documents like the trump corollary than I would guess most Americans are. If you read other news reports European leaders are condemning the document while Putin applauds it. Any one remember when it was popular to call democrats communists?
There is an increase of exports from China to Europe. trump believes that only he can negotiate deals. Turns out trump and his lackie's and his puppeteers are shooting themselves in the foot as markets shift away from the US. So much for job creation. It can only get harder and harder for the lackies to convince the public that every thing will be better in the next quarter. I hope people understand that Jerome Powell is not approving interest drops because the feds are trying to lower inflation but instead in the last 10 months or so the economy is slowing down and dropping interest rates is a way to shore up the damage the trump regime has done to the economy. On top of that the imported inventories prior to "liberation day" are running out and more and more tariffs will not just have to be added to the cost of goods but financing of goods will also be added to the cost of goods as well. I wonder who pays for that?
All that being said, to Kasey Coff and Annabel Ascher the problem isn't just money has power. It only has the power we give it. Mike Johnson is a known loser Christian Nationalist, yet he is third in line to the presidency. Think about that! Mike Johnson is third in line to the presidency of the United States of America. John Thune is the senate majority leader ( that's using the word leader very loosely) sits in the senate office being complicit to the man sitting in the oval office who has no respect or care that he has broken his vows to uphold the constitution. Thune's get out of jail free card is getting more and more his turning on trump and not just impeaching him, but convicting him this time. Johnson on the other hand is broken and needs to be replaced. Pressure by the press to replace him with an anti maga and anti trump representative would open the doors to the litigation necessary to put trump not just out of office but behind bars.
The only way I see this happening is if the major media networks start producing news to undermine Thune's position and influence republicans to put a real diplomat into the speakership. I really don't know if that's possible but I'm praying that it is. This regime MUST go!
Kasey, yes, and We the People will be paying for those treasonous folks' pensions and healthcare! Disgusting, but we've done it before: Nixon and Reagan for example.
A little off the subject, in regards to the money is power, Mother Jones suggested that these Honduran cyber cities like Prospera and run by the likes of Thiel and other rich tech executives, maybe was the reason trump pardoned Hernandez. He was very big on these foreign run "cyber cities." Cuba 's Supreme Court declared them illegal. trump, probably at the behest of some of these tech billionaires pardoned him. Perhaps to undermine her term. We all know how deep the trumps are in this crypto money.
I thought trump was a sleepy old fart. It is really others in the administration that have their eyes set on Kleptocracy. Jared kushner and trump kids along with Rubio, and others who are fleecing our system. Let’s talk about healthcare and affordability. Let’s talk about hypocrisy like child trafficking and stealing our info do they can sell it back. Let’s talk about people being arrested without due process. It is all disgusting but trump is not an old geezer who takes on whatever rant he is fed. Work to defeat with that realization.
The Epstein files allow us to show MAGA voters themselves how their emperor has no clothes. That's why it's fundamental that we keep talking about them too.
Most wouldn't care. How many times has some disgusting detail been released about trump, yet nothing sways their devotion the least. They are in a cult, believing "dear leader" even when solid evidence proves how reprehensible he is.
Nothing mattered, the mocking of a disabled man, the disparaging of our military and Sen John McCain, the "Hollywood" tapes, Stormy Daniels, his degradation of women, minorities, people of color, his sneering at the educated.
None of this matters to the cult. They revel in the hatefulness; the misogyny, the horrific deportations, the attacks against LGBTQ, trans, and every marginalized member of society, the homeless, the poor, the owning of the "libtards". They are anti society, anti civility, anti goodness and justice. We will never win them over. They need to be seen as a lost cause. The only power we have is to outvote them and end this festering cancer on our democracy called the republican party.
Here too, imho Kamala Harris is right. We constantly risk falling into the same trap of DEHUMANIZING THE OTHER (in this case, GOP voters) if we forget that, as she calls it, we and them do not start from the same facts.
They have been brainwashed by DECADES of GOP propaganda.
So no, they never stopped caring about moral behavior! These people are as "good" as you and me!
What happened is that the GOP made them believe that Democrats and even many GOP leaders are morally at least as bad as Trump, so that Trump actually looks BETTER, morally, than them, because at least he doesn't hypocritically try to claim to be such a moral man in the first place.
It's crucial to understand this.
The same goes for their racism, misogyny etc: the "alternative facts" bubble of which they became a VICTIM made them believe that these attitudes towards others are justified because they correspond to real facts.
And the ONLY way to save a democracy is for us citizens to stop the demonizing and start seeing, as Kamala Harris repeated again and again in the summer of 2024, ourselves in the face of the other. That means: our own goodness in them. Saving a democracy, history shows, starts by seeing the GOODNESS in your political opponents, especially when it comes to the ordinary citizens voting for them.
👏🏼And that is why this forum is so powerful! The subscribers to HCR's Letter are going up, up, up, and getting attention from those who are part of the festering cancer! There are people here who offer their years of professional experience, and actionable tactics we can use. It will become even more powerful as the midterms approach. Every one of us who subscribes can forward the daily Letter onto another person(s) and hopefully they will do so, too. Very organic and very formidable.
There are a number of "Sharon's" on the forum, so if I've already welcomed you, I apologize, but I'm glad you're here!
Probably a good portion of Americans couldn't care less about the Epstein files, sad to say. Many polled republicans say they would still support trump even if found to be a child rapist!
I think the Epstein files are the real distraction. Keep our eyes focused on all those salacious details while trump sells the US to russia, saudi arabia, israel, argentina and the "oiligarchs" and oligarchs who are really controlling the narrative. This is what we need to be shouting from the rooftops! Not the distractive Epstein files. While important, they don't compare to our democracy being sold to the highest "flatterer".
BLB, this fatalistic line of thinking is not helpful to anyone who hopes to remain in the U.S. and live a fulfilling life.
I worked in real estate development and planning at the corporate headquarters of a couple major department store companies Although we built new stores, the majority of our resources were devoted to remodeling existing stores that had become obsolete for any number of reasons. In many cases, the "old school" structures weren't that good, even when new.
Before we could build new walls and decor, we had to demolish the existing. It was always messy, and while we tried as best we could to mitigate the inconvenience, the remodeling project always interfered with the store staff's ability to conduct business. But what we built would enhance the store's business and make the temporary inconvenience worthwhile. We effected a transformation of the store, but the original store was still there. Just better.
I'm pretty sure that everyone (with a couple exceptions) who reads LFAA loves the U.S. and wants it to prosper. I'm equally certain that everyone agrees that America has never been truly "great." We've had great moments, but our history is riddled with regrettable periods. Theft of land from the original owners, witch-hunts, slavery, the "Gilded Age," the "Red Scare," to name only a few. Still, when you love someone, you love them, warts and all ... including your country.
Perhaps it's best to look at the Trump era as the "demolition period." His regime has certainly exposed weaknesses in the structure of our democracy that need to be replaced or reinforced.
This is not the end. It's the messy, inconvenient, unsafe hardhat zone that precedes a time of rebuilding a better society.
this is my belief as well. Those who have not only failed to support the Constitution, but act to overthrow it, are clearly traitors. Those committing these crimes against the Constitution have uncannily and deviously used that very document to justify those crimes. And the Supreme Court are the worst offenders of them all for supporting this treasonous behavior.
We must take the majority away from the republicans in Congress in 2026. There is no other recourse if we are to protect the Constitution, the very thing that dictates our freedom, and remove the nazis, better known as maga, from our government.
Taking away Republican power (MAGA) may, by November of 2026, mean fighting Trump’s Gestapo, which gets larger every day. He is pardoning criminals as he destroys our cultural heritage (look at the Kennedy Center takeover, the “cleansing” of the Smithsonian, the destruction of the East Wing, the “gilding” of the Oval Office), our standing in the civilized world, and our sense of safety in our homes, schools, and churches.
Trump and his henchmen (I prefer “mafia”) are aided by SCOTUS, which until his presidency, usually been a refuge of last resort. The majority of the court has become as racist and greedy as the majority of the Republican Party.
In this context we MUST prepare for the vote as we have never before prepared, imagining ICE in every precinct, stolen repositories of ballots wherever they are, and declarations of victory that may have no resemblance to truth.
We are being warned every day that our democratic values are under threat by the current administration. It is time to plan with all our energy, while we are under daily assault by the powers that be, to protect the 2026 vote and all the votes that come as Republican House members are replaced.
In Chicago we have ICE sirens at all hours to remind us of our duty to our democracy. So do an increasing number of patriotic Americans—military, diplomats, podcasters, and marchers. All who are paying attention are now aware that we are seeing a race cleansing situation, not “the worst of the worst,” and must act accordingly. I wonder what our 250th celebration will mean if we do not.
We WILL take the majority! As the midterms come closer, more and more tactics will be discussed here. When I first subscribed, there was a person here who offered plenty of suggestions. I haven't seen Ellie Kona post in a while, (I hope she's still around) but because of HER, I started doing letters/postcards to voters! I didn't even know you could volunteer that way! And Meghan daily posts her wonderful spreadsheet of Congress phone numbers. There will be more.
Most importantly, it's people like YOU, celeste, who have chosen to pull out your credit card and grow this forum! Even though I'm in Illinois in a mostly blue area, it's still good to know I'm not alone in my beliefs, and I know there are some here for which this Letter and group are life support for them in their ruby red area.
Some of us have been around since Trump 1.0, others merely a few weeks. Each one is a brick in the wall of resistance. I value each one.
Yes, but they can be tried for perjury, at least anyone who raised their right hand and swore to defend the Constitution knowing full well they had no intention of doing so. Trump tried to dodge this by not putting his hand on the Bible, but I don’t think a holy book is necessary to binding an oath. The fact that he tried to protect himself by not putting his hand on the Bible seems to me pretty good proof that he had no intention to uphold the Constitution.
“Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.”
It seems as though "treason" and "traitor" have some common colloquial definitions that do not rise to the constitutional standard. I found this snippet fascinating:
You have to realize of course that if the letter of the law MATTERED, than Trump would have been prosecuted for sedition after Jan 7th, the Dept of Education wouldn't have been closed by fiat, and we wouldn't be kidnapping citizens off the streets with a masked gestapo. So many things would be VERY different if the letter or spirit of the law actually mattered and we didn't allow Republican fascists to do whatever they please, like kidnap people in defiance of court orders.
The letter of the law no longer matters, and it HASN'T mattered for years, long before Trump. Trying to pretend that it does is just playing the game the Republicans want and expect us to play, which is stupid. The sooner we realize that the letter of the law no longer applies the sooner we can begin to try and fix the problems that exist in our society that we created by not holding Republicans accountable to the letter and spirit of the laws we enacted and create a system by which six Klan members in robes can't override the constitution whenever they feel like it. Until we DO THAT we are just re-arranging the deck chairs on the titanic, and the most important thing we must do in this moment is to remind fascists that they are a minority, and all the things they are doing to minorities now can (and MUST, for the protection of everyone) be done to them as well.
So yes, Trump committed Treason, because liberals and progressives SAY he has committed treason, the same way Tren de Aragua is a terrorist organization, because Trump says it is. As long as that's all that matters, then those standards are universal.
But they are not our enemies in terms of the definition.
we're all frustrated, but even if it turned out Trump was feeding secrets to all of these states, it would only be a violation of other laws, not treason.
We can dream. I have suggest that before. In a functioning democracy that could happen. But we live in a bifurcated society 40% live in an altered universe where the truth and reality are turned upsidedown. How can 40% of voters buy so much BS? They hear from RW media nothing more then constant rationalizations for all the insanity, corruption, and treason. There is no limit to their ability to rationalize.
Trump is immune, Hegseth will get a pardo (unless the hamburger revenge that awsits Trump strikes suddenly), and the electorate will have no patience if we prosecute the drone class.
Very unlikely to happen. These people are the poster children for not taking responsibility for their actions! It’s always ‘blame someone else’ while I lie about what I m doing .
While the US is making war on Venezuela, following a playbook Prof. Ruth Ben-Ghiat has been discussing for a while in which Trump takes the US from being a global player into being a regional player. There is some agreement for him to run the Americas, that means take over and take resources (you see him eyeing Venezuelan oil), and Putin gets Europe and Xi gets Asia. I see that as this plays out Putin and Xi will then want to divide the Americas between them since Putin and Xi have no liking or respect for Trump, who has just allowed the Kremlin to make the US a Client State or as Olga Lautman puts it a Satellite State with this foreign policy. Next it will be between Xi and Putin who will take over. That is the plan that I see being in place. I do not think our military or the EU will go along with this plan, but it is someone's plan and Trump is playing right along.
Since Trump first took office I have felt like anything he does is like living in a dystopian nightmare. Not my preferred genre of reading, but now I get to live it.
Leaving behind the entire post-war international order and re-carving the world back into bizarre, 19th century, retro 'spheres of influence' has been part of the plan (if anything as coherent as a plan can be said to exist) for some time now.
Trump thinks William McKinley was a great president. Most serious observers understand that beggar-thy-neighbor tariff wars, gunboat diplomacy, protectionism and multi-country imperialism of the latter part of the 19th century and the first decade of the 20th were direct causes of the First World War.
And we all know that at least one of those 'world leaders' would love to be able to toss a couple of those nukes around. If he ever saw any video of any A-test or Hiroshima or Nagasaki, it didn't make any real impression on him - he thinks it's all a video game.
China is the chief customer for Venezuelan oil. Their foreign ministry spokesperson, Lin Jian, has condemned the closing of Venezuelan airspace and any US interference in Venezuelan affairs.
It has been an ally of Venezuela since the Chavez regime and has contributed more than $60bn to oil production there. It is also continuing to sell arms to the Maduro regime.
I don't know if anyone in the Trump administration knows or cares anything about this. If this intended to be an attack on Chinese interests in the region the US may be in for a heap more trouble than they're presently counting on.
Russell, All accounts even sans China have the US in a heap of trouble if Trump and his Secretary of War Crimes, Hegseth continue down the path they are going with Venezuela. I can see in Trump's mind he is going to rule the Americas including Greenland. Last night the latter was discussed on Ruth Ben-Ghiat's Zoom meeting, but it started at 2 am here, and I fell asleep. Her guest is Gil Duran, who is writing book on Silicon Valley Fascism. I think the first half is recorded. Here is a link. https://youtu.be/AI5aJhTVjVo?si=AsHqw26DEu11UM9t
It seems that more and more corporate media have finally figured out that Trump's interest in Venezuela is about oil and not about drugs. The same is true for Canada since their oil reserves exceed the US reserves.
Trump's obsession with fossil fuels is just as insane as his obsession with tariffs.
He is cancelling as many renewable energy projects as he can just to fuel his obsession.
Steve Bannon, soi-distant prophet of the far right, in his absurd War Room podcast, said:
“We’re a Pacific nation … the pivot, the strategic heartland of America, is actually the Pacific.”
There's nothing at all 'pacific' about this administration despite all Trump's claims that he's a peacegiver.
There's a withering article by Sydney Blumenthal on Hegseth in the Guardian. I especially loved the bit about how this ridiculous man has sunk from John McLane to Franklin the Turtle since becoming secretary for war.
Oh, the irony when DHS has been deporting people for having tattoos that they falsely claim indicate membership of a drugs cartel.
The US has threatened the EU that they need to give free rein to the US digital giants if they want to avoid damaging steel tariffs. It's about time the EU grew some balls and invoked the anti-coercion instrument against Trump because it's only going to get worse if they don't.
China has expanded it sphere of influence for some time now by providing loans for infrastructure etc to poorer nations who are then in debt to China. They are looking for sources of food, and minerals etc to continue to grow their economy. And they are getting ahead of us in technology. To them, this MAGA crowd is playing right into their hands.
I left him out because he will be left out in the end. He and his wants and needs are not being considered by Putin who runs Trump or Xi, who runs Putin who runs Trump. Israel does not have the numbers when it comes to asserting itself. And, if it aligns with anyone against the EU, those countries will stop giving any money to Israel. It will be dependent on the US, which is a Satellite State of Russia.
Yes. Because they still think they can profit off it. They are in it for their own gain and will support the Orange Goblin King no matter what. If they had had ANY sense of justice or decency, they would have impeached the Orange Dictator when they had the chance. Instead, they chose the dark side and went for the power.
655 "big" firms bankrupt under Trump, and thousands of small firms. Many of the largest companies can be bribed to pay off Trump to eliminate WH created obstacles. But Trump and his evil Cabal don't give a damn about any of the others.
America’s corporate meltdown: 655 big firms bankrupt as 2025 crisis surges to 15-year high
What it is going to take is getting rid of them. They are all corrupt and tainted and at some point the fact that your family is threatened does not justify taking the American taxpayers money to do nothing.
I am wondering how recruitment is going in the military under Trump and I found this.
"Additionally, the U.S. Army has established its “Future Soldier Prep Course,” which offers lower-performing recruits up to 90 days of academic or fitness instruction. The U.S. Navy has followed suit with its Future Sailor Preparatory Course.
There have been reports that the change at the very top, with a new “Commander-in- Chief” in Washington, D.C., can be credited with the surge this year. However, that fails to explain last year’s recruiting goals being met. Instead, some officials have pointed to increased compensation, expanded delayed entry programs, and even more targeted marketing campaigns, including on social media.
The COVID-19 pandemic also disrupted in-person recruiting efforts and access to. high school students. With the pandemic essentially a distant memory, recruiting is finally returning to normal."
There have been many recent stories about how a large portion of the pool of 17-24 year olds are fat, lazy and stupid. Fewer than half the recruits meet the physical and/or cognitive requirements which are already very low. And the fact that the Army (and likely other branches) requires a "Future Soldier Prep Course" says it all.
Oddly, I couldn't find a single story that reports the wash-out rate of recruits.
It occurred to me that there are evil alternatives to enticing recruits at the front end. I already see signs that reducing the number of young men entering 2 and 4 year colleges and universities may be part of the plan.
It sounds like so many ICE recruits. I am surprised the military can get any recruits with ICE paying so much in bonuses. I will assume those joining are not doing it for just the paycheck, but for some other reason.
Seems like there are still problems with recruiting too. There is not enough staff to process recruits in a timely manner. That is in part because of the Trump layoffs of civilians in the military according to Business Insider this past August.
Thanks for the article Linda. 8% of recruits have a "clean recruitment" according to the article. Do you think that in today's environment that we will ever have a need for a traditional Army with Infantry etc? For 250 years we have put our recruits through basic training meaning they have to be physically fit enough to shoot other people. Are these really the skills a modern Army needs?
Thank you for this insight. I saw an article in my local paper earlier this year stating various branches of the military had met their goals and thought ugh. At my local county fair in October, I passed by several times, an outside Marine recruiting booth complete with chin up bar, and I never saw anyone at the table.
I'll not bore anyone with my tale of how an aggressively stupid recruiter who, by slander and threats, attempted to ruin the career of a high school career prep specialist I knew. Will only say she called on some of her associates in the military who had cooperated with her on previous projects.
OK, the story is my friend the school counselor (career advisor) held that title for decades and loved her work. Among other things she managed an annual career fair for an entire high school district (in a big Bay Area subregion) and brought in dozens of recruiters from all sorts of colleges, industries, public service sectors, etc. She built a rep as eminently skilled, personable and accommodating. She was one of those people in a school setting who had regular contact with her student/clients thanking her years later.
One year a new military recruiter (I forgot which branch) got the task of presenting at career fairs. The counselor made her routine annual outreach to that office and only heard once from there, that a new recruiter would be following up. Eventually and after numerous attempts the counselor closed the invitation as there was no time left to get names, recruitment descriptions, contact info and the like into the brochures, media outreach etc. That's when the shit started.
This new "recruiter" suddenly realized he had fucked up. His response to his own incompetence was to blame her for cutting military recruiters off entirely, as if it was some lefty conspiracy. He threatened to file formal complaints over first amendment violations and worse. It was salacious bullshit whether he knew it or not. Her attempts to set him straight went nowhere as he escalated. Finally, in serious threat of losing her job, she called a few of her military recruiters, colleagues and others in the services. One of her partners over the years immediately said "leave it to me". He apparently outranked the "recruiter" by a lot, and had a personal meeting with the guy. He then called my friend to say she would never hear from that person again.
I typed a long reply which, probably lucky for you, I accidentally deleted while hunting down YouTube links. Some time within the last year, "Belle of the Ranch" who is ex-military nurse addressed this topic.
There is so much to read/listen to, it's difficult to keep up. Belle posts 3 short version clips (<4 min) daily and 2 long version (The Roads with Belle, about 15 minutes) weekly. Besides HCR, she's the only source I check daily.
20 years of progressive Republicans and Democrats, from Teddy Roosevelt, Robert LaFollete, to Woodrow Wilson. An entire generation. And then the vigilance of the next generations not to allow it to happen again. Except now that it has.
It seems that Teddy Roosevelt's ascension to the Presidency was dumb luck for us. He was a rarity in politics -- willing to stand up for "we the people."
His biggest mistake was announcing as soon as he won the 1904 election that he would not run again. He probably would have won again in 1908 and changed history from 1908 on.
Yeah- that’s one of the events I wish we could do over in government. But he really thought Taft was up to the job. Having Wilson in for two terms after the mess that was Taft was beneficial to the progressive cause
Alex, since you've only been here a week (WELCOME to the forum! Good to have you here!) you obviously didn't see my post from about a month ago, where I said that many members of Congress were in the military--and I was incredulous that they were more afraid of TRUMP than armed combat!!
I believe this was after MTG started getting death threats. I have no info on this, so anyone who does and reads this, please reply--but can't death threats be tracked somehow?
Some are genuinely terrified. You are overlooking this new, awful reality. Trump is a stochastic terrorist -- he uses others to do his dirty work for him so he can sort of waddle in front of the press going "I didn't know anything about it...I don't know who he is...somebody told me that...I have no problems with..." It isn't just about corruption, it may be about physical harm.
There are a lot of Proud Boy types out there who have really gone off the deep end. They do the doxing, the pizza-ordering, the threatening, the 'we know how your kids get to school' statements. He knows they're there and ready to do his bidding, even as his support crumbles into nothing. This is never far from his mind. It never has been. Elise Slotkin and Mark Kelly are on 24/7 protection right now -- and they're Democrats. Think what he might to do a Republican who dares tell a military officer 'you have a responsibility to disobey orders you know to be illegal.'
It's really quite a serious situation in this country. This part is new, not something we've really seen before. There are no guidebooks for we get out of this part.
It is important to get through Americans minds--we have not seen anything like this in our history. Even something like the Civil War in 1860. People like the Proud Boys don't know history generally. What Trump is relying on and also what follows him in the GOP is a reliance on people who simply do not think things through. The January 6 riot in D.C. said it all.
All of us here who read the Letter and forward it/discuss it with our friends/family/coworkers, etc are forming the resistance. I have been watching this group greatly expand in the last few months, which to me, is the oxygen masks dropping in the plane! Just as I forward the Letter to five people daily, I hope others do the same. Thank you, Walter, for pulling out your credit card and joining this group! It's good to have you here!
And that is so frustrating to me. I feel so powerless and cannot count on ANY institution—Congress, SCOTUS for two—to do the first thing. Why don’t they see the gravity of our situation? Is Trump that powerful?
Some of the Democrats in Congress do. Since they are not in power, all they can do is stick sand in the gears and point out, ad infinitum, how horrific, destructive, and dangerous this regime is.
Some Democratic politicians across the various states are also aware. They are doing what they can. However they, at most, have jurisdiction over their own state, city, or region.
The Republicans in Congress, who are currently in power, can stop all of the corruption and abuses of the regime tomorrow, if not on a dime. But they are too complicit, indifferent, or cowardly to make a move. They have abdicated their power to the executive branch. These are the same politicians who refused to convict Trump and throw him out of office AFTER HE INCITED AN INSURRECTION. Had they done their duty then, we would not have Trump 2.0.
Mitch McConnell has wheedled and cheated to stack the Supreme Court with far-right ideologues. If not for him, the Court would be, at worst, 5-4. The Supreme Court (the 6 in the majority anyway.) abdicated almost all its responsibility to check the president when it decided to give him immunity.
Do not look for a leader to save us. After all, Trump told a lot of people that he could save them, that he alone could fix it and Make America Great Again(tm), and look where that got us.
The only ones who can save us is us. Thankfully, there are a LOT of us — far more than there are of them.
I'm sure Slotkin and Kelly are just as "protected" as Pence was on Jan 6th. Not like the USSS tried to kidnap and have Pence taken "somewhere" right? On orders from Trumps personal bodyguard.
Yes, they are all so corrupt. I know we, as Americans, don’t like to think this could be happening in the United States. Heather’s friend and fellow podcaster, Joanne Freeman, said on a recent podcast that the trope of “America exceptionalism” has perhaps had the unfortunate effect of making us think it can’t happen here- that because we’re America we’re immune to broadbased corruption. I believe she’s right. Like the frog in water analogy, it has happened so incrimentally we didn’t notice or we blew it off as ‘all politicians are crooked’.
"The main force of the GOP"? The GOP was taken over by its neofascist neoliberal wing, and, as Kamala Harris repeats during her current book tour, this power grab has been decades in the making.
There is no way back.
The few Republicans who are still anti-fascism have been thrown out of the party (Adam Kinzinger, Liz Cheney, ...).
It's the GOP ITSELF that WANTED this. How long will it take for people to finally realize this fact?
Their propaganda machine is by now 25 years old (Fox Entertainment, Sinclair etc.), while the neoliberal narrative was launched already by Reagan. THAT is when the systematic lying began. And as historian Quinn Slobodian shows in his book "Crack-up Capitalism", the idea that capitalism and democracy are by nature incompatible was something the very founders of neoliberalism already believed (and neoliberalism was invented as reaction against the New Deal, so it was based on the idea that IF we allow "the people" to govern, the "freedom" of the wealthiest to do whatever they want will always be limited, and that's the thing that neoliberals reject the most).
It was all there. From the very beginning. It's just that today, thanks to distractor-in-chief Trump, they finally managed to impose it on all levels of government.
The only solution is a massive Democratic landslide in 2026, 2028 and beyond. And that has nothing to do with who's the Democratic nominee or how good their "message" is. It has to do with how much "we the people" care about democracy and want to fight back against fascism. It has to do with how much WE decide to organize and mobilize. Because that is always how a democracy is saved.
All the messages from the WH is that the elections in 2026, 2028 will not be free and fair. More like selected candidates winning, and 'we the people' objectors will be silenced by 'executive order' as un-American well in advance. That is the 25 year+ plan of also selecting preferred candidates to the Courts, buying the Press .... Goodbye USA and eventually overreach causes implosion, that's history. Sad but very possible.
That's what they hope we'll believe, so that we start practicing "anticipatory obedience."
In real life, history shows that it takes at least ten years before a democracy is entirely turned into a fascist regime, so... it's still extremely early, and this fight has merely begun!!
All they have is propaganda.
All we have is the power of the people to say no and vote them all OUT!
There's virtually no old guard left. It's the MAGA Party now. I listen to and read the old guard a lot, and they are saying almost all the things said in HCR's comments.
Sandra, those are the folks who are persuadable, methinks! We need to gently, gently, gently work on those we know who are "waking" up to what MAGA really means. It's painful for them, so please don't dump on with "I TOLD YOU SO" but with, "you were conned/lied to". We can grow the resistance to this attack on our democracy!
The GOP no longer exists as a party. It has become a right wing movement, but most Americans do not understand this. Faux Fox News gives them bread and circuses they are content with King Herod’s rule. And he has lots of Henchmen like Pontus Pilate to carry out his terror. ( Miller Hegseth, JD, et all)
That is the question I ask myself every day. Yesterday on one of the news shows I saw Tom Tillis -- and he kept referring to "Trump's legacy" and saying that pardons of drug dealers and shooting small boats out of the water were not the kinds of things Trump would want his legacy to be. I agree with Tillis on almost nothing. But I thought he was speaking directly to Trump and saying, basically, 'don't do this stupid shit because it will become your legacy.' Time will tell.
With the carelessness and indifference to national security shown by the president and his incompetent SecDef and HHS killer, how long until something happens to us? Don’t Repub leaders realize that and their families are at risk too? Are they so nihilistic they just don’t care?
Not one R Congress member deserves to be reelected. They are NOT ‘representative(s).’
Annabel, good question. To understand MAGA, we first need to recognize that they are essentially Republicans—so what motivates most Republicans? Look at their policies: what they support and what they oppose. The old guard understands exactly what Trump is, and what he represents reflects much of what they are. They may dislike his style, his tweets, his crude comments, but as you suggest, they are clearly complicit in his corruption.
I'm reluctant to paint them all as racists and xenophobes, but when it walks like a duck and talks like a duck—I'm sorry, but the evidence is clear. They are corrupt and supportive of much of what Trump is doing.
The long game, yes, but I’m getting old and I want to see the end of MAGA, and I want my grandchildren to live in a free democratic country where people care about people, not just power and money.
Hang in there, Susan. I'm old, too. The "long game" might not take that long, if we're talking about blocking the MAGAt administration's depredations. Repairing, or better yet replacing the things that it has broken is the struggle that will take the longest. When my time comes, I want to be a citizen of a country that has cast aside this repugnant fascism and become the best version yet of itself.
It’s getting late for me to play the long game, I’m 82. I hope to live long enough to see Trump and his criminal administration sent to prison for crimes against humanity!
I’m questioning the accuracy of the claim that these small boats were on a direct route from Venezuela to the U.S.
The distance from Venezuelan waters to Florida is over 1,300 miles, far beyond the typical range of these vessels. Independent reports show they were intercepted near Venezuela, not approaching U.S. shores.
It’s reasonable to expect clarity about what the mission was and what threat it actually addressed.
Usually people like this are arrested, not just outright murdered in cold blood. Because sometimes the wrong people get targeted. And if ICE is any example that happens around 2/3 of the time, maybe more. Tells you everything you need to know about the Republican, wait, scratch that. Tells you everything you need to know about the MAGA party. And tells me everything I need to know about you, James A.
You do not KNOW that these people are cartel drug runners. In fact you are willfully IGNORANT of the most basic principles of LAW. Yet I bet you are a strong proponent of LAW and ORDER. You are either a POSTURING fool or a MAGA TROLL. My bet is on the latter. And what have you done with Rick Sender? At least he doesn’t type in HYSTERICAL UPPERCASE.
Every time I read these words or similar it gets me right in the gut: “The world order, or agree, or alliances or whatever IN THE LAST 80 YEARS” because I’m 80 and the child of a young man killed in WWII. I want this ended before my siblings and I die and especially before my only grandchild can be coerced or drafted by this fascist regime.
I'm nearly your age and I agree we need to support our allies, and at the same time support our own military's strategic capability. Trump's "spend-thrift" tax system, favoring the top 0.1% of earners and never preparing for that "rainy day" or viscous conflict near our NATO ally, Poland! I'm ashamed of our Republican Party who seems to forget about how fragile our "Free World" really is
I second your motion. I worry about what my grandchildren will have to go through to get that free, democratic country. Knowing how entrenched the T**** virus is, the quest is not going to be peaceful.
You live in a free democracy. Name one right you've lost.
I want to see the end of DRUG CARTELS shipping drugs into our country and using their profits to bribe governments, human and sex traffic woman and children and DESTROY their cultures.
ONLY a LEFTIST would side with REAL EVIL.
Yet again you are coming to the AID of people who want to destroy AMERICA.
For the little open boats we’re seeing in the videos, a direct trip from Venezuela to the U.S. is way too far.
The kind of small “go-fast” boats shown in the strike footage typically have an effective range of maybe 100–300 nautical miles unless they are absolutely loaded with fuel drums and/or refuel from another vessel.
For the 2025 strikes, the Pentagon says the vessels were “headed for the U.S.”, but all the reporting shows they were hit in Caribbean waters near Venezuela, not anywhere close to U.S. shores.
You are just speculating and making it UP, yet you and all your friends
are claiming its the end of DEMOCRACY.
As usual you have NO SOLUTION. BIDEN just sat by and watched as the drug cartels COLLECTED MILLIONS in fees to bring illegals to the US. They took children in the sex trade and SHIPPED BILLIONS of dollars of drugs into the US.
NOT A WORD ABOUT THAT........CRICKETS.
TRUMP does something about it and you HYPERVENTILATE.
I can’t shake the picture: two men on a scrap of wood, waving at the sky while the second strike turns back.
Show us the tape.
If you have to hide it, that’s not prudence, it’s shame.
Show us the tape.
A “war department” dodging Congress, leaking secrets on a private phone, and drafting a strategy to walk away from allies puts the target on the rule of law, not just a boat.
Show us the tape.
Put the chain of command under oath, release the full video, and let the people judge.
Because dignity belongs to those last two souls on the water as much as anyone in Washington….show us the tape, show us the tape, show us that damn tape. www.xplisset.com
It’s not only a stretch, it’s utter madness to think they had anything but survival on their minds with 9 of their fellow passengers now dead. No matter what he did in the past the man that said that has no business in any leadership role in our military, he’s obviously clueless.
Perhaps psychopaths, JL Graham: Zero conscience with malicious intent.
Cozy as the freezer
sweeping through many of our States now. However, reading these responses to professor Heather Cox Richardson brings me some hope that somehow someway we will manage to bring a new Democracy up from the almost pitch black fog into the light.
Sociopath and psychopath are not official diagnostic terms and there is controversy over whether there is a difference, but I use them because we have a shared general picture of what they are. It is not unreasonable to suppose that some are born that way, although we see in the history of nations that antisocial urges seem to ebb and flow over time. From what I can see there are self-serving urges in all of us, and while they are there for a reason, it is problematic or dangerous when selfishness fully takes over. As a society, there seems to be an agreement to cultivate civilizing skills in children that we somehow offten abandon when it comes to politics. The way our populace reacted to the excesses of Nixon vs Trump suggests a societal shift of values. As in Nazi Germany, I think the normalizing of lies has a lot to do with it, as has our dramatic relaxation of checks and balances on monopolization of financial as well as political power, and on the interchangeability of both. Power tend to corrupt,
The two most egregious crimes that Hegseth is being charged with just barely account for the destruction of our military order. He has/ is purging all the forces of any of the adults who might challenge his madness. And we end up with “leaders” like “ adm” Frank Bradley, and outright murder on the high seas.
I want all the tapes. I haven’t forgotten Epstein. He protected himself with video but I expect that DJT’s vanity was so great that he wanted video of his abuses. Perhaps these DJT and Hegseth videos would indelibly bookend his evils while we wait for our, America’s, existential realization that anyone who opposes “the administration” will be attacked and imprisoned until mass graves are required for “logistical” reasons.
It is like this is a video game to Hegseth, "Secretary of War Crimes" who seems to be like an immature child emotionally. He does not value human life of others. It is terrifying how depraved the Trump regime is.
“The war department will not be distracted by democracy building, interventionism, undefined wars, regime change, climate change, woke moralizing and feckless nation building.”
Look at what Hegseth is saying. We will NOT be distracted by democracy building BECAUSE WE ARE ALIGNING WITH AUTHORITARIANS, interventionism BECAUSE THAT IS WHAT WE ARE DOING RIGHT NOW IN THE COLUMBIAN ELECTIONS, undefined wars BECAUSE THAT IS WHAT WE ARE DOING RIGHT NOW IN VENZUELA, regime change BECAUSE THAT IS WHAT WE ARE DOING IN I CAN'T COUNT HOW MANY COUNTRIES AROUND THE WORLD, climate change BECAUSE ALL WE WANT IS DRILL, BABY, DRILL, woke moralizing BECAUSE MAXIMUM LETHALITY IS A SHOW OF MANLINESS, feckless nation buiding BECAUSE WE ALL KNOW DEMOCRACY IS DOOMED--CURTIS YARVIN TOLD US SO.
Exactly. I am in Germany and someone in Indivisible Abroad sent out the next meeting the AfD party in Germany has with the Trump administration.
From Der Spiegel is this heading translated into English.
"Far-right party visits Republicans
The AfD wants to overthrow the German government—and is seeking support in the US. Confidential talks in ministries, meetings with MAGA Republicans: the AfD is building a network in the US. This week, a delegation is traveling to Washington. The new American security strategy is giving the party a boost."
The AfD has been meeting regularly with Trump and other MAGAs to get probably dark money and strategies for taking over in Germany. It is truly frightening. Right now Trump has turned the US into a Satellite State of Russia and the Kremlin's goals are the cleave the US from NATO and the EU. It has done this. They also want to cleave the EU countries from each other. All of the far right parties they are supporting are ones that want to exit the EU like England did, which destroyed their economy even more. This would happen to European countries too. More importantly for Putin, no unity against Russia which would take each country over or have them operate as satellite states, like in the Soviet Union. And, then Tech Bros would have no large entity trying to hold them accountable for their actions. They could run rough shod over us all.
Last night Prof. Ruth Ben-Ghiat spoke with Gil Duran, of the podcast The Nerd Reich. https://youtu.be/AI5aJhTVjVo
I am deeply ashamed of my country. We are in another period of the flood the zone with shit strategy.
The new defense appropriations bill cuts aid to Ukraine back to PRE-WAR levels. And there is no guarantee that Trump won't withhold the funds. Trump makes a speech at an awards dinner and says he's disappointed that Zelensky didn't read the latest version of the "peace deal," neglecting to mention that Trump has already dissed it. And mainstream media is basically spouting pro-Putin talking points, focusing on Putin gaining ground, and no mention of the "betrayal" leak or the Trump self-dealing and absolution of Putin's war crimes in the 28-point plan.
Georgia, I can understand your feelings. I feel more scared than ashamed. Trump should be the one who is ashamed. His presidency is destroying the US. This is the dystopian nightmare we cannot wake up from and must fight our way out of. Meanwhile the AfD is visiting Washington this week to talk with MAGA. I hope they give AfD the advice that has MAGA on the outs with the American people.
Trump is building an international organized crime syndicate beyond the reach of all law enforcement. He aims for it to be an extension of himself and as such a law unto itself.
This criminal organization will be powered by a monopoly over crypto currency. At its heart will a world wide money laundering operation. At the heart of that will be the international illegal trade in drugs and arms. He is no stranger to any of this. He will expand and defend this syndicate by means of extortion and a protection racket employing the power of his position and the forces at his disposal. His current war on "narco-terrorists" is one to eliminate competition and gain control of the black market. The Honduran drug kingpin he has just pardoned will help him set up a new hell town on an island off the coast off Honduras that will eclipse the Cayman Islands as a center for unregulated and secretive business transaction. As a center for crypto currency trading it will be a smugglers paradise. It's business will be run by a council consisting of Trump family members and friends, including Peter Thiel and Elon Musk. It's operations will have Trump's protection. It will be subject to no laws other than those thus council agrees upon.
Too bad so many Americans are apparently unable to understand Hegseth's words as well as you (and I) do. Of, course, his actions leave him naked to anyone with half a brain.
The Trump presidency: war crimes, murder, sexual assault of minors, massive corruption, environmental destruction, ruining every worthwhile thing he can.
This many seem off-topic, but circa 1995, I was sitting next to a former special forces sniper who had retired from the US Army. He shared several top-secret stories with me during our two hour flight.
One story he shared with me was that US snipers get their training and experience shooting at and killing drug lords in Columbia. The CIA provides the Intel and then the snipers do the deed.
I have also chatted with retired Navy Seals who have detailed covert operations like what is happening in Venezuela since at least the 1980's.
But none of the previous administrations have used these operations as photo-ops like Trump and his moronic group of thugs.
They learned from the best. From the book “Adventurers of a Bystander,” by Peter Drucker, quoting his newly-anointed Nazi friend, “But I’m beginning to be scared. You can’t imagine the things some of the higher ups say to us when no one from the outside is listening.” Well, the “higher-ups” here are saying those things, and not just to insiders. We ignore at our peril, the crosshairs are coming for any of us.
JD. I love that you quote Peter Drucker. As a new manager of just a few people, I realized I was clueless when it came to managing people. I turned to Peter Drucker and a few others to help me. Thanks for the Drucker reference. It made me smile and give me hope.
Thanks goodness for Heather and others who aggregate the news of the day.
Yes, he is a child. Over the years I represented several thousand children in court and there were more than a few who were not honest with me... The way Hegseth moves around in his seat, the arm and hand movements when he speaks, the facial expressions all are not adult like but appear the same to me as a child who was caught stealing something. See 1:40 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDJONvjeHBU&list=RDNSNDJONvjeHBU&start_radio=1
Having taught K, 3-5 and HS from 1989-2022 and some middle school grades , I have a good sense of developmentally appropriate behavior. Hegseth is like a 5th grader.
Bill, in fifth grade, for show and tell, a boy in my class, whose name I won't say, brought a fish tank and then electrocuted the fish in front of us. I can see him as working in the Trump administration now. Our class was not having any of it. We were so disgusted by what he did, that him getting in trouble with the teacher was not enough, we all treated him like a little sicko! So, his family pulled him out of the school and moved him to the suburbs. He may now be a Hegseth. He certainly was a rotten little shit back then.
In third grade my best friend Sean, brought in the Playboy centerfold for show and tell. He and I were both 7 in third grade so he was a precocious kid. He had tried to show it to the teacher first. I was watching and could see how uninterested she was. In fact, while children who were showing their items that day, she was dusting the bookcases with a feather duster. Then, Sean showed the centerfold, and the whole class screamed "It's a naked lady!" The teacher spun around, her face beet red, and snatched the magazine from him and whipped him across the face with it. A child who had been sent out in the hall, ran in upon hearing us and stood in front of the magazine just quivering with excitement until the teacher intervened. Back then teachers hit kids. My friend's dad was a photographer for Playboy, so not only did it cause problems between his parents, but it also meant that his son was exposed to what he did for a living already at the age of 5.
An immature relationship to substances. And to women. It sounds like he treats his wife like his mommy. Why was she privy to his top secret Signal calls?
Um...look who hired him, Mr. Pump-That-Invisible-Concertina-Back-and-Forth as fast as you can (meaning GO AWAY, I'M LYING, STOP ASKING QUESTIONS).
I've never figured out why reporters glom onto the words (which don't make the slightest sense) but not the body language, which broadcasts loud and clear.
They don't get what the words mean either. With the Trumpist word salads these guys put out, the real meaning is in how the words they use change over time.
They test out more extreme words and concepts, and then, when there is no pushback or acknowledgment by the media, they get integrated into the standard rant.
Slow acclimatization over time. It is what drew the MAGA faithful in, and it is why we democracy defenders are constantly on adrenaline overload, which makes us less effective.
I knew I did not need to search it but I did and there is no other U.S. president to unilaterally declare their own birthday something special for the public. On
June 14, 2025, Trump gave us that large military parade in Washington, D.C on his 79th birthday and now this. He gives free admission to the public and eliminates Martin Luther King Jr. Day and Juneteenth as a gift to himself. I think we need to get ready for the postage stamp and finally the $100 bill coming next.
For numerous reasons intercepting the boats would have been a better option. That means blowing up the boats is all about sending a message. A message that gets sent regardless of whether or not the boats were actually running drugs. There's a disturbing element of racism in how casually this administration murders Latin Americans.
I don't think it's the video game culture, I think it's the Fox News culture. Older people like to blame video games but Fox News has done considerable more damage on purpose and continues to do so.
The message is "Scare Maduro out of office so Trump can take over the oil." While it is racist, Trump is mean to White people when they don't do what he wants.
Trump's policy on these drug runners is flat out illegal...and Hegseth is a total disgrace compared to anyone who was Sec Def before him. These strikes should not be happening. If you REALLY want to put a dent in the drug trade then seize these boats and build a case, the way the US Coast Guard does every day, all around the world. The double tap against these 2 individuals who were clinging to a sinking boat is illegal. The American military just does not do that....and if they were hailing help, that's what you want. Bring in more bad guys to sink. The Republican talking point is absurd and they should all be ashamed of themselves for sinking to this level. As to Russia liking our new "World Position"...is anyone comfortable with that thought ? This administration MUST GO.
Our new world position is being ignored by our MSM as far as I can tell. Where are the headlines. I think I’ll start asking that of the MAGAts I know, How “Christian” is it to ally with Russia using Nazi tactics?
Very Christian. The National Socialist movement was characterized by its faith and specifically its Christianity, even to the persecution of those responsible for the death of Jesus Christ.
Fascism always stands upon the leg of religion, because religion teaches authoritarianism better than any other system. Even Mussolini and Hitler knew that.
There's nothing more Christian than fascism and racism.
The irony of course being that fascism began in America, and leaders from abroad studied the black codes and race laws like Jim crow to figure out how to implement it in Germany and Italy.
More than just that, Hitler studied how we dealt with our "Indian problem" by putting them on reservations and putting their children into boarding schools to make them Christian Americans. He just perfected it and put the "other", the Jew enemy into camps and killed them....and apparently Trump has looked at Mein Kampf (doubt that he read it all) and praised Hitler for doing some "good things" and Trump expressed wanting Generals, like Hitler's...well a bunch of them almost killed him...(have you seen the Tom Cruise movie) be careful what you wish for DJT.
Ignoring laws seems to run through every single aspect of this regime. The goal is for the president to be the law. Admiral Bradley said that his actions in the so-called double-tap were justified because because the president had authorized destroying “narco-terrorists” (I paraphrase). Never mind the international laws against war crimes.
The president thinks he is the law, and thought so in his first term too. And why not? There has never been one consequence to his egregious lawbreaking. The stolen docs case alone would have put his fat a$$ in prison till he died, except for the complete failure to see reality and the corruption of Aileen Cannon and her accomplice, SCOTUS.
Admiral Bradley should know that defense didn't work too well at Nuremberg. "Hitler said we should kill all the Jews" so we were "just following orders." This is a REALLY sad week for the US Military and for anyone attempting to justify and enable this murder on the high seas.
For those who missed it, Miles Taylor compiled a "Top 25" list (with more probably to follow) of ongoing lies and idiocies told thus far about whatever is actually transpiring in the southern Caribbean. They are (in chronological order...sort of):
1. A very dangerous boat is headed to America, they said.
2. Okay, it isn’t headed to America. But the boat poses an imminent threat to the United States.
3. What ‘imminent threat,’ you ask? Not your business.
4. But trust us, the people on board the vessels were “terrorists.”
5. Alright, they were low-level drug dealers. But we’re also at war with them. So they’re battlefield “combatants,” too.
6. We watched it all unfold in real-time.
7. The president himself ordered the strike.
8. A second strike against survivors? Fake news! The reporting is a total fabrication.
9. It never happened.
10. Okay, it might have happened, but we didn’t know it happened.
11. Fine. Maybe it shouldn’t have happened.
12. When we said we watched it ‘live,’ we meant that we left the meeting early and didn’t see illegal stuff.
13. Forget the part about the president ordering it. Someone else ordered it, not the president or Hegseth.
14. Look, if mistakes happened, it’s because of the ‘fog of war.’
15. Actually, there were no mistakes. The second strike was perfect.
16. The survivors were ‘continuing their mission,’ so we had to kill them.
17. They were still in the fight and trying to radio for backup.
18. Actually, it was ‘self defense.’
19. Nevermind. We weren’t targeting the men at all. We were just trying to sink the boat.
20. Just kidding. We were targeting the men.
21. By ‘continuing the mission’ and ‘trying to radio for backup,’ what we really meant is the men were clinging to the boat for dear life.
22. Look, we’re in a war, okay? Drug couriers are ‘terrorists’ at war with the U.S.
23. All of these boaters are lawful military targets because we say they are.
24. But — sorry — again to be clear, we’re not targeting the boaters… just the boats… but if we kill the boaters, that’s okay too.
"Russian officials are happy with U.S. foreign policy. They welcomed the National Security Strategy the Trump administration released on Thursday, saying that '[t]he adjustments we’re seeing...are largely consistent with our vision.'"
Of course. Russia was the intended beneficiary, after all.
The defense authorization bill is up for a vote in both the House and the Senate after reconciliation, according to the NY Times.
Aid for Ukraine is included in the bill, with a reauthorization of $400 million in annual security assistance through the 2027 fiscal year, as the country faces military setbacks in its war with Russia.
To provide some perspective, see the graph below, from a Perplexity query. It shows US military aid to Ukraine over the past 10 years. The scale is in billions of dollars.
The new aid appropriation is back to pre-war levels.
Of course, Trump could always refuse to comply with the law and withhold the funds.
Trump and Republican lawmakers are throwing Ukraine a bone, more like a wishbone, when Ukraine needs the whole damn skeleton. Purple-state candidates can tell independents and Democrats that they support Ukraine, but omit how much.
And the New York Times pops out an article on corruption in the Ukraine political establishment - rotten, though not as bad as here. And it's old news, so the timing has to be propaganda linked to the upcoming votes on defense authorization.
The coverage of Trump's saying Zelensky didn't even read the latest version of the "peace deal" at his Kennedy Center event is missing quite a bit of context--no description of the points in the 28-point "peace deal" that was leaked about Trump's self-dealing with the economic proposals with Russia, no discussion of not prosecuting war crimes,...
Then no cover of the leaked phone call where Macron said Trump would betray Zelensky, or if there was, that Macron had walked back the remarks when he side-stepped the remarks. He did not deny.
And then there was Putin completely trashing the plan before the Ukrainian negotiators even got back to Kyiv.
And then there was last night's Russian attack on the dam that supplies the 1,300,000 people in Kharkiv with water causing severe damage.
I feel like I’m holding my breath under water. I can see the top of the water; I know it’s there. But can I hold my breath long enough to make it to the top?
Thank you. There are days when I feel cautiously optimistic. But then I realize all the damage that is being done not only to the US but to the entire world. When Trump is called the most powerful man in the world it is no exaggeration. It’s sort of like in the comic books where a super person has the power to be incredibly good or incredibly evil. Trump has chosen the evil route. He has chosen to do whatever he wants, damn everything else. I doubt he will manage to live to the end of his term but in the mean time he’s being a petulant child knocking down a large Lego city just because he likes the noise it makes. That’s it - it’s all about the noise.
In a video conversation today, Heather and Wajahat Ali both focused on equality.
They agreed as to three ways Americans face our main challenges 1) sheer greed from some, 2) racism from some, and 3) misogyny from some.
Most Americans actually disagree with the some – most are open to equality. But the problem from some keeps seeming intractable due to any of the ways elites push any hierarchies.
Heather and Wajahat both recalled Lyndon Johnson on this back in the days of the 1964 civil rights act and the following year’s voting rights act. Lyndon saw racism’s pull if any politicians could make the poorest white man feel that due to race at least he was better than any of the best black men.
There’s another way, however, equality-destroying hierarchy intrudes, and that’s the one schools foster by the conceits built into testing. Those conceits join so one form of intelligence trounces all others: the one where grouping skills and neutered rationality link up with linear causality and chronology only. Such testing predicts success in college courses, but in ruling out any and all other imaginative skill sets it enthrones one hierarchy permanent over all.
The conceits enthroned in testing thus invite the three other forms of hierarchy Heather and Wajahat discussed today: greed, racism, and misogyny.
In 1968, when I was in high school, part of our Social Studies class that year revolved around equality and Johnson's impact. I remember discussion about the inherent bias in standardized tests and how in turn they affected a student's future, including college admission.
To highlight this, our teacher gave us a short ten-question sample of a test biased in favor of Black culture. I remember it included items about Black history, music, idioms, etc.
I attended a rural school mostly consisting of White farm kids with relatively few Black kids. There were two Black kids in our Social Studies class. And this is why that quiz has stayed with me all these years: the White kids made a poor showing on the test, most scoring only a couple of correct answers with many having 0%. But the Black kids were more than passing - they had 80% or more.
This was a "country" school in central Maryland, not an urban school, where you might expect to find higher exposure to Black culture and history, yet even there the Black students had more knowledge of what had happened in their racial past and present.
I have no way of knowing how these students (or any other Black people in our school) scored on the traditional standardized test, but it was a real awakening for me of the power that such tests could have in determining one's path in life.
What gets me is, not much seems to have changed in nearly sixty years, but what's worse is the deliberation of the inculcated prejudice from the grassroots of American education. I'm under no illusions the so-called overhaul of the educaitonal system and closing of the Department of Education are going to improve things. Quite the contrary.
Your teacher was ahead of her time. Shamefully, we still refuse to “get it”. And that white supremacy is exactly what Project 2025 is implementing now and the useful idiot is the tool to enforce it.
I’d have said so too, Sandra, but in truth, it was part of the curriculum. The course was set up by the county for Social Studies across the high schools (of which there were only four in the whole county; today there are twice that many, including a tech center). I’m sure some teachers were better than others, of course, and I will gladly say I was lucky to have a good one. I had many good teachers throughout my twelve years, in fact. I believe I got a sterling educaiton for that time and place.
Great background story to support your conclusion. IMO Trump closing of the Department of Education is going to be one of the major screw-ups he will be remembered for. Republicans want to divide and conquer the 50 States. That requires to dumb down society with vouchers handed out to thousands of private schools around the "Not Untied States." Their goal is to weaken the Federal government to a degree that the corporate take over of each State can be more easily achieved. A vast amount of cheap labor. That is what Brixit was about; divide and conquer. Democrats know that our survival in a complicated, high tech, advanced knowledge world requires that We the People be ONE. Education is a primary requirement for any society to survive. Tribes always have a story teller who teaches the past, present and future goals of the tribe. There will be no survival with 50 tribes. Not even California with it's being a 4t or 5th strongest economy can compete alone against the biggest of all which also his more bombs. The greed among Republican leaders with their degree as a business major blinds them from seeing their is no profits when the State dies.
Diane Ravitch is very good, Kasey, on how much human experience stays outside testing.
Her 2003 book, "The Language Police," makes it clear how regional, racial, and other personally differing experiences are totally shut out of all standardized testing and all corporate-packaged textbooks. This shut-out of the human is part of testing's agenda for a race of elites all deracinated, all void of any of the arts conscious of the human.
And so we have today the predator wealthy, from Putin's Russia to Donald's U.S. Each follows its given scripts for the greed, racism, and misogyny whose doors testing in its humanly blind and stupid ways bid worsen.
I worked (not taught) at a liberal arts college throughout the "70s. I could almost draw a line - circa 1975 - when professors began griping about "teaching to the test."
Around that same time HR introduced faculty evaluations: feedback forms filled in by students at the end of a semester, gauging the effectiveness of the instructor.
What the results did was accelerate grade inflation and reinforce teaching-to-the-test. The original idea of universities was to assign texts and exercises for students to cover outside of class, with class time devoted to discussion and analysis of the material assigned.
The feedback system was a bureaucratic response to student complaints: "She didn't ask test questions based on the book" and "He asked questions that weren't in the book."
Poor evaluations affected merit-based raises and promotions, which often brought untenured professors into line. The business departments of many colleges were more interested in the almighty-dollar of tuition rather than awarding any diplomas based on academic excellence.
Not to paint all institutions of higher learning with the same brush, but as more and more colleges are now businesses rather than bastions of academics, the dumbing down of America is full speed ahead.
I despair at this loss of value for thinking: sure, art for art's sake, but what about learning for learning's sake?
I love that quote. Johnson saw what Berry Goldwater started in the Republican party; the "southern strategy" to win votes. “If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you.” ― Lyndon B. Johnson. Trump's campaign flipped it to "convince the lowest man he's better than the best woman... "
The counter to that, sir, is that the idiom you mention is culturally (via religion) taken as a given. Look no further than the Christian Bible to find that.
Nixon was the first to win using it. However, Goldwater used it and won some States in the south doing so. He argued against the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as not being within the federal powers but stepping on powers of the states. Some Republicans today like to claim it is not used. After Obama won twice all but one Republican candidate in 2016 did not use it. The one that did won the nomination and the White House; Trump. He won twice expressing hate and fear (build a wall) which is what the Southern Strategy is all about.
I think that was always the assumption. If race is emphasized, women of that race think they are included. Woman's place in white supremacy? See the 14 words. Came in the second verse, an afterthought. At the bottom of the hierarchy.
LBJ knew of what he spoke. Just a lack of melanin makes one the cat’s meow. How pathetically ignorant. Seems a lack of melanin makes at least one prone to spray himself orange.
I’d say it is the ‘old serpent’ of ‘modern’ scientific reductionist-materialistic thinking. This stimulates “part-thinking”, thinking in terms of separation and in ‘usefulness’, and very effectively counters holistic “we”-thinking, connected-thinking and spirituality, a basic need of human beings.
As someone who managed to get into a good liberal arts college back in the early 70s thanks to high SAT scores and despite very erratic grades in high school, I can only say, "you're right!"
Scholarly virtue and serious learning have nothing to do with multiple-choice test-taking skills. I figure a precocious interest in poker and backgammon was more useful to me than serious study.
I had a conversation with a representative of my university Friday. When I went to college, the state was invested in the education of its children. Not any more. She explained the legislature has cut and cut and cut appropriations to the university and is now pushing vocational education.
When will congress on the whole grow a pair? They have the power to stop tariffs, develop reasonable and equitable budgets and enforce national policy with their power of approval. It’s not only Trump and his staff but a party of enablers not live up to their oath of office.
The Roberts six are the primary problem. I believe Alito is writing the script which Trump follows and creates the cases that the other five will join with him to alter our Constitution in ways which we must Amend. After Obama won it scared the hell out of these Nazis. Their southern strategy of validating hate and fear to rally enough votes to win the White House failed. Then one year after Obama swore the Oath the Roberts five handed down Citizens United (2011). That money is a part of the reason why Trump has won twice. Winning with a felon candidate is why these Nazis now feel secure in all these bad deeds they are doing. Killing innocent people? Then after releasing every other kill video they pick one they refuse to show? Murder, clear as day, more clear in this video. This all hangs on the door to the Supreme Court. We need to inform people that when they vote for President they are voting for Justices who will stay for life. Thomas may retire before Trump's coach turns back into a pumpkin to allow a younger corporate replacement part to fill his seat. If one of the Democrat appointees leaves a vacant seat then the Roberts Seven will become that much bolder.
The fact We the Empathetic People have no possible way to remove the lifetime-appointed Christonazis from the Supreme Court is one of the primary reasons I say, as I do below, "our ship has already sunk." That said, Mr. Killackey's analysis -- Citizens United (to nullify the Constitution and murder the Republic) as the racio-misogynist reaction of our Hitler-worshiping masters to a Black president in the White(men's) House -- is so irrefutably accurate, it will be denied only by those who remain too deluded to recognize the absolute bottomlessness of the Evil those same financially omnipotent tyrants have unleashed literally to perish us forever from the earth. (Let us hope more of us are now at last moved to acknowledge the equally irrefutable circumstantial evidence of multi-generation ruling-class treason that leads from the (traitorous) end of Reconstruction in 1878 through the Banker's Plot of 1933, the eager post-Stalingrad adoption of legions of Nazi war criminals as comrades-at-arms and the coup of 22 November 1963 to culminate in the 77-million vote by the Malignantly Moronic Majority that reduced us to eternal odium as our species' first deliberately Failed State.) Meanwhile, Mr. Killackey, I salute you in gratitude for your exceptional valor, just as I again salute Dr. Richardson for the courage and determination it takes to maintain a realm committed to genuine First Amendment freedom.
"...multi-generation ruling-class treason..." Well put. I once said here that Daniel Shays was an American war hero and boy was I pushed back for doing so. As you well know he was a Minute Man who served as a Captain in the Revolutionary War and who like so many farmers fought at the Siege of Boston, both Battles of Saratoga, and the Battle of Stony Point. He was wounded in action and received a sword from the Marquis de Lafayette. Then after the war he saw banks foreclosing on farms and people sent to debtors' prison. IOW, the rich and well connected acting just the same as King George did before the war. He then became known for leading Shays' Rebellion which closed banks. Under the Articles of Confederation there was no standing army among the other States to quash the Rebellion. Shays' Rebellion resulted in the Constitutional Convention three months later. That resulted in the standing army we have today to, as the Preamble puts so well, "...in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility,..." Today Trump claims, in so many words, he is using the armed forces to insure domestic Tranquility. The rich and well connected are with him as he cuts taxes for the rich. I salute you Loren Bliss.
Never. Thus we shall remain what we have become: not only a Failed State, but the first nation in our species' entire history in which a Malignantly Moronic Majority of the voters deliberately, gleefully, vindictively, hatefully chose to destroy their nation by reducing it to Failed State status. And given the new national security policy and the violence with which the Regime intends to perpetuate that Failed State status, I no longer see (any) possibility for liberation; not now, not ever. But humanitarian honor nevertheless demands we fight on as best we can....
Loren, don’t give up the ship! We have plenty to fight for and against. We cannot succumb to this regime’s every whim. They are a danger to us and those abroad but WE THE PEOPLE have more power than you think. Invite yourself to listen to the founders of the organization, Indivisble, Ezra and Leah. They are dynamic and thousands upon thousands of us follow their lead about protesting. Look, realize that things could get worse but that doesn’t mean we cave in. It means that we fight harder and harder. www.indivisible.org.
Marlene...Like the West Virginia at Pearl Harbor, our ship has already been sunk. What objectively defines our situation as hopeless is the hitherto-unacknowledged truth that we the empathetic citizenry – as never before in our national history – are forever denied (any and all) legal protections formerly provided us by the armed and therefore defense-capable elements of local, state and federal government. We are not only abandoned; we are now the Regime's designated prey.
Thus – particularly since the ruling class has further ensured our utter defenselessness by denying us the vital training provided by mandatory military service and methodically fostering a climate of anti-Second-Amendment hysteria – there can be no (effective) resistance to the Regime when – not if – it fulfills its pledge to expand its resumption of Hitler’s Holocaust to include all of us it deems “enemies within.” (See also my response to Ally House.)
Nor are these precursors of apocalypse limited to our deliberately Failed Nation; they are prevalent everywhere on the globe. We the (last remaining) Empathetic People are to be the ultimate targets of our species’ newest, ever-more-dominant subspecies, homo sapiens inhumanus. We are thus reduced to the powerlessness that defined First Nations folk and other targets of ecogenocide. Which means our only option to escape the humiliating doom intended by our masters is to continue resisting and, when our terminal moment arrives, refuse to surrender.
Loren, we have to recognize a failure in our system: in the 2024 Presidential Election, the largest block of the voting eligible population DID NOT CAST A BALLOT. I don't want to chase exact numbers (I've done it before, and since numbers and I do not get along this is simplified), but the breakdown to 32% Harris, 33% trump, 35% did not vote is fairly close. The explanation for that is multi faceted, from voter apathy (my vote doesn't count) to voter exclusion (removal from voting rolls without notification, inability to vote because of voting locations or the lack of the ability to leave work to vote in person to access of ballot drop boxes being reduced) to not being able to vote for either ffpotus or a woman of color whose laugh irritated them.
Ally...That my sunken-West-Virginia analogy above is the ultimate truth of our situation is proven by the evidence – too vast to summarize in this limited space – that our nation’s oath-breaking military and law-enforcement agencies have been irremediably subverted to the Christonazi cause. This is further underscored by two equally apocalyptic truths: that the nation’s longstanding “Better Dead than Red” pledge to destroy the world rather than surrender eternally kills any possibility of 1945-type liberation by external forces; and that – as proven by the demographics of this November’s vote – not even presence of humanitarian candidates will prompt the white majority to abandon its misogyno-racist hatefulness. (See: https://www.vitalcitynyc.org/articles/mamdanis-victory-and-memories-of-dinkins and https://apnews.com/article/poll-election-2025-demographics-voters-latino-black-b59518a2c8d2f37f857fe1ac32995b9a plus https://msmagazine.com/2025/11/03/2025-election-results/ ) In short, whites remain reliably nazified – and thus will always be so – with white males about 15 percent more fanatical than white females. As a consequence, my own belief is our only possible “rescue” is the total collapse of modern technology – which in all probability will be (no) rescue at all because it will not only exterminate our entire species, but poison our Mother Earth to everlasting Precambrian lifelessness.
I think they plan to plead ignorance, if they are ever held to account. It will be a variation of the Nazi "I was only following orders" excuse. They will be removed from power, but they won't care. They will get their pensions and settle into a little coterie of their former comrades, living the good life and never being sanctioned in any way for their complicity.
The House Rules committee just voted to NOT condemn fascism In a New Republic piece, “A fascist is one whose lust for money or power is combined with such an intensity of intolerance toward those of other races, parties, classes, religions, cultures, regions or nations as to make him ruthless in his use of deceit or violence to attain his ends,” wrote Vice President Henry A. Wallace for The New York Times in 1944
Pretty well sums it up for the Nazi/GOP Perry Bacon in his podcast(https://bit.ly/4nZ1Izx) talks about it’s time for D’s to take their gloves off and begin an anti-corruption campaign to salvage the country from the Nazi/GOP who has shown that it’s ok for immoral conduct, disgusting political retribution, reprehensible immigrant policy, political monetary opportunism, attempted government oligarchic takeover, rigging elections and persistent gerrymandering, attempting to buy elected offices, abuse of executive power, abuse of SCOTUS power The American public has seen and had enough
36 House Nazis are not seeking re-election in 2026 They’re seeing the writing on the wall The jig is up….the MAGA façade has been ripped away and there is no turning back But a unanimous House vote for the Epstein file release cannot wipe away decades of power grabbing politics with nothing in return to the American people Vote the Nazis out until they have a moral compass if that's at all possible because I think this Nazi group is beyond hope
And do it with tenacity and a "no holds barred" approach No reaching across the aisle SCOTUS enlargement to 13 Meaningful election reform to eliminate gerrymandering and other red state anti voting legislation Repeal of past tax legislation and 50% tax on billionaires in order to pay down national deficit Restitution of a Constitutional mandated bimetallic standard(gold/silver standard) Voiding all Cheeto executive orders Restitution of Biden legislation Impeachment of Cheeto and his cabinet including Just Dance Vance Begin grifter tax on misinformation sources Change the pardon power
If the SCOTUS is enlarged to thirteen justices (as I think it should be) the arch-conservative members will retire - not just Thomas and Alito, but perhaps the rest as well, with the exception of Amy Rabbit Barrett.
With Cheeto as president, it's the perfect time for Nazis Thomas and Alito to retire so Cheeto can appoint another couple of corrupt Federalist judges to the court
I could see that they (meaning the puppet-masters like Vought and Miller) would approve of that, younger appointees to keep control that much longer. But my fervent hope is that we've learned the justices are not infallible. They aren't gods and are as subject to wanting power, prestige, wealth as are many of us peons. It's time to enlarge the slate to 13, to limit the terms on the bench, and perhaps have a rotation of Chief Justice.
I’m far from a foreign policy expert, but it seems to me that the main reason Trump is targeting Venezuelan vessels is to try to provoke Maduro. If Maduro gives him any excuse to “retaliate” in “defense” of the U.S., he will—in hopes of removing Maduro and installing a right-wing government friendly to American interests. Then the U.S. can take their oil. This whole rules of war scandal means nothing to the Trump cabal. Just a distraction in the pursuit of their ultimate goal—controlling the oil reserves in the whole Western hemisphere.
I see your reading more fit to the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz-Rice cabal of 20 years ago, Heidi.
Then the fossil fuelers ran the U.S. Today an even more dehumanized set of elites has coalesced internationally, all bent on expanding their authoritarianism for much more wealth for them, the cynical few, much less for the bottom 95%.
They still include the fossil fuelers, but now also the social media billionaires, AI, and crypto.
Phil, that’s a good point and one more argument in favor of my opinion that we Boomers need to take a much smaller role in governance and policy setting. I’m 74 and tend to see things through a 20-30 year old lens. That said, Trump et al do seem determined to carve the world into early 20th century spheres of influence, and he at least seems fixated on fossil fuels. Desire to control Venezuelan oil may still have a part in the tech bros thinking, both to keep Trump happily distracted and to provide power for their vast data centers.
Many thanks Heather for your cogent analysis and update. Note also that, under the legal doctrine of command responsibility, Hegseth and Trump could be held culpable for the extrajudicial execution of civilians, a war crime and a criminal act.
The military could not find the larger vessel??? With all the satellite coverage, all the radar, all the submarines we have in that carrier battle group, I find that simply not credible. It is either a lie, or our military is truly led by incompetents.
If so, those boats were definitely no threat... headed in the wrong direction (south) and not carrying enough fuel to reach the US. The lawlessness of our military's actions is still patently clear. We are the war criminals now.
The core problem is the country accepts the Trump administration's false premise that it is going after drug runners, then tries lamely to explain why it is wrong to fight drug trafficking this way. But that's not what the administration is doing. They aren't going after the "worst of the worst." They have no idea who they're deporting and no idea who they're killing on those boats. As for the second strike on Sept. 2, it is hard to avoid the assumption that it was to eliminate potential witnesses who could testify in court who they are and what they were doing on that boat. Since Hegseth has no idea, he has no intention of risking it.
If the Trump administration was fighting drug runners & criminals, Trump would not have pardoned a man convicted of facilitating the smuggling of 400 tons of cocaine into the country nor other convicts
Beat me to it. A "double tap" is not descriptive of this incident, nor is the incident one in which the common usage of "double tap" is used. In my training, a "double tap" is two rounds fired in immediate succession. I don't think guided missiles fired in that fashion qualify.
Anybody who believes anything that chump says is a fool to start with. The man is a proud liar, having learned from Mein Kampf, section on the big lie. The agenda is the same. Power over the vulnerable, and money, money, money. The most useful tool to achieve power, just like Jesus said, hahahaha
It is unclear so far as I know whether Trump read Mien Kampf , but he did apparently own a book of Hitlers speeches. His ex-wife said he kept it at his bedside.
Back in the first Gulf War the GOP was able to manipulate what people saw in the media and this has never stopped. Of course the video needs to be made public whether it's palatable or not. If you are older and remember ten minutes of Vietnam on television nightly fifty years ago you will probably concur. People like Hesgeth are poison to U.S. society in or out of the military. He'll bring the country down ultimately.
I know I have said this before and most of us have said it to ourselves--What is it going to take for the main force of the GOP to do the right thing and repudiate MAGA? The old guard knows damn well this that the regime and those behind it are traitors to the constitution and to their country. When will they act on what they know to be true? Are they all so corrupt?
Yes. All Republicans who have betrayed their oath to the Constitution should be investigated, prosecuted, and tried for treason along with Trump, Hegseth, and other members of the regime along with the rightwing members of the Supreme Court.
I've long believed the old saying "knowledge is power," but anymore it's more like "money is power." In this case, I think the Republicans guilty of either outright assistance to this regime, or tacit approval, will never be prosecuted or even sanctioned for what they've done. Instead, they will retire on their hefty pensions and their mega-coverage medical plans.
Money has always been the power — going all the way back to the ancient Romans. Not even communist nations were immune to this. Stalin through to Gorbachev, they and their cronies relied on it. (Not sure about Lenin).
In the opening chapter of his “authoritarian manifesto,” A Conflict of Visions (1987), Thomas Sowell attempts to answer a valid question: Why do the same people tend to be political adversaries in issue after issue, when the issues vary enormously in subject matter and sometimes hardly seem connected to one another? Then his cynical assumption that the conflict is impossible to resolve leads to the inevitable conclusion that the neo-conservative “tragic vision” is better than the neo-progressive “utopian vision.”
What the (profoundly anti-conservative) neo-conservative philosophy fails to acknowledge is that its pessimism is a self-fulfilling and self-defeating prophecy. The optimistic and pragmatic response to a conflict of visions is to resolve the conflict. As Homer Simpson would say: Doh!
Reading “Injustice.” That Trump through a series of fortuitous events (to him) was never punished for his document stealing—or anything else—gives him a vision of his own grandiosity and invulnerability. With reason.
Correct. Reason, like a hammer, is a tool. You can use it wisely to create something of lasting value, or you can use it unwisely by hitting someone over the head. The moral of the story? We are wise to always use all our tools wisely.
"Pessimism is a self-fulfilling and self-defeating prophecy." Thank you for this, James R. Carey.
An excellent post overall, as well.
And there is certainly something in between pessimism and utopianism. Right?
The challenge, there are a lot of rich and emotionally-needy folks who need the conflicts so they can acquire more money and power and can prove their manhood or force others to participate in the conflict. In the meantime, they gloat while sitting behind an oval or rectangular desk moving the pieces around, pretending to worry or show sadness or something to look concerned for those involved when they are not.
I agree, but think of this way:
The “powerful and the enabled” (aka the authoritarians) live on the other side of a conceptual wall built with conceptual bricks. So, what do we do about that?
First things first: stop making bricks. In other words, we should not tolerate expressions of the immoral “I think, therefore I am right” philosophy whether it’s from ourselves or from others.
Second: start dismantling the wall one brick at a time by applying and promoting the moral “I think, therefore I am testing my potentially erroneous assumptions” philosophy.
New York Times piece acknowledges that Biden was asleep at the wheel on immigration. Everything I have written on this topic is now proven by 12 combining journalists who wrote that Biden just didn’t want to follow in the footsteps of Trump and therefore became lost in the weeds. This one issue destroyed his chances beside that fateful moment on the debate stage when he fell into a purple haze. The administration simply did not know how to tackle this out of control madness. Then Texas and Florida began flooding northern cities with busloads of immigrants. I wrote Mayor Adams to simply confiscate the buses and let it become a court battle.
Biden never allowed Ukraine to be more aggressive in the war and how the hell to you win a war with one hand tied behind your back. You don’t. And lastly, the Build Back Better act? There was a lot of waste in this legislation. Yes it achieved much but as usual, states grabbed what they could and spent it on anything they could dream up. Billkatz@substack.com
Bill Katz:
Nope. Biden was ready to sign a bi-partisan bill that had been developed in the Senate. It included additional resources to beef up the Border Patrol, install more, better fentanyl detecting equipment and more immigration judges to process those seeking asylum.
You may remember the phone call to Mike the Puppet from Trump who didn't want to see Biden have a "win" on immigration.
The blame lies squarely on Trump's shoulders whose specialty is to create problems so he can appear to solve them.
BTW, IMHO? We still need MORE immigrants as our population ages out. We are not having enough kids. We need new people who want to work hard, pay taxes and help support social programs like Social Security and Medicare.
MORE Immigrants, Bill.
Bill, what did Biden say? “Don’t compare me to the Almighty. Compare me to the alternative.” What did Bill Katz do? Compare Biden to the Almighty. What did James Carey say? “Sigh!”
With all due respect, everything you’re saying is the truth and nothing but the truth, which is to say that you need to subject your implicit assumptions to some basic level of skepticism by asking yourself why you’ve “conveniently” ignored the middle “whole truth” part.
Say WHAT? CATman where were you when a bipartisan bill on Immigration was destroyed because candidate trump told the magas to sink it? Your comment seems to be a retread of a previous post! By the way, now the immigration policy is to kill them!
I’ve long wondered how to define my outlook in times like this (I’m 80). After re-“measuring my brain,” I’m adopting (and probably adapting) “skeptical optimism!” Thank you, James.
'Then his cynical assumption that the conflict is impossible to resolve leads to the inevitable conclusion that' He's just plain lazy!
L A Z Y! Unwilling to work or use energy.
I think of what The Resistance did during WWII and today's politicians, in comparison, come out looking absolutely pathetic!
Maybe they’re lazy. A person who puts zero effort into resolving a conflict that would otherwise require not much effort certainly appears to be lazy. But to me, a person who puts that much time, energy, attention, and resources into getting their way at the expense of the greater good appears to be a lot less “lazy” and a lot more “immature.”
My father, a wise and courageous man who fought fascists in WWII and then worked for NATO, often used to say "money is the root of all evil".
That's almost true, meaning not true. The love of money is the root of a lot of evil. I think Trump's main problem is wealth addiction.
And I am grateful for your father's service. My father served also, and his life is an inspiration for me in all this. He would laugh and say, "Money isn't everything, but you can buy everything with it." He served love and duty.
SJR, I affirm Anne B's comment. My evangelical parents, who could recite most of the King James Bible from memory, were always quick to correct anyone who omitted the "love of" part of that maxim about money.
While I think evangelicalism is wrong about virtually everything, it is important to remember that "love of money" or greed is the source of all evil.
Money, itself, has no inherent moral value. It can just as easily be used to create good in the world as it can be used to create harm.
Human lust for wealth has been the source of all our human problems since the beginning of time.
David, you are a new name on here (WELCOME to the LFAA forum!👋) so perhaps you have not seen my frequent rant I post, which is, what obscene amount of wealth is ENOUGH for these people? I simply cannot understand why when you have more money than you could possibly spend in 1000 years, you need more! It's really a sickness.
Miselle. Money can be accrured in different ways. What is important in what you do with it. Bezos of Amazon built a yacht that was so big it could not be sailed out of the harbor. Bill Gates and Bloomberg pay little taxes because they support so many cultural and health organizations.
Very true, George. In the early DOGE days, I used to tell my husband that Elon could leave a legacy that people would admire and respect. He could fund cancer research, water and air pollution, etc, etc. Instead, he chooses to act like an arrogant asshole.
David, it goes back further than the Romans where wealth, however it was measured, meant power. The wealthy and the powerful have always made sure that they held everything while the peasants and peons did the work. This is why I do not think that the Russian and the Chinese revolutions changed anything except who were the elite.
are you SERious? all the Beatles were very wealthy.
Money is one vehicle of power. It’s how one chooses to regard and use it. “All you need is love…” isn’t Trump’s or Putin’s refrain.
money don't get everything it's true...
but what it don't get i can't use...
Clever, Isaac. Very clever.
a got a whole load more for Marx...i'm just waiting for the right moments... a little comic relief from the weight of the darkness...
MTG is quitting on 1/4/26 to qualify for her Congressional pension.
She's just a neofascist who is faster to see where the wind blows than some of her colleagues, that's all.
Skip “neo” she is just fascist.
No, the difference is crucially important.
What neofascist ideology learned from fascism (Hitler, Mussolini, ...) is that, contrary to what fascists believed, it is NOT necessary for ONE fascist regime to militarily conquer and dominate the rest of the world. That will never work.
Instead, as neofascist Putin ideologue Alexander Dugin explains (and explained to America's and Europe's neofascists - for instance already in 2008, when Steve Bannon met him in Italy), it is smarter to opt for a world with a handful of big, fascist empires, that each cultivate their own form of nationalism, based on the imposition of a fundamentalist version of the local dominant religion.
It would be a real end to the Cold War, with democracy losing and fascism winning.
At the same time, neofascism also understands that the word "fascism" is no longer popular. So they'll keep fake elections going, and will continue to claim (as Vance already did) that neofascism is the highest form of... democracy (with the executive branch of government directly doing what "the people" want, rather than having three independent branches of government, as is the case in any constitutional democracy).
These differences are really important to keep in mind. If not, we won't understand what is happening today, and our strategy to fight back will be inefficient.
Well, she only has $25 million, poor thing.
How much of that was PPP 'gift loans' from us?
We still truly are more powerful with knowledge... These sick infadels will get there's one day.
Keep the faith.. and commit to action.
Peggy, 👏🏻YES WE ARE!
Thank you for your positive attitude! And you are a new-ish person on the Forum, so may I say WELCOME!! It is good to have you here!
Thank you
“With knowledge” Peggy, and with truth. It is so much easier to simply tell the truth and not have to keep revising with blatant falsehoods. I have given over patented political parties and joined the Kimmel Party. Good humor rides our human frailties.
Knowledge and money are two different kinds of power although they interact.
Epstein was an example of the two combined.
John Mitchell went to jail after Watergate, as did about a dozen others. Pam Bondi should certainly be charged with prosecuting innocent people, abuse of power, and pedophile coverup.
And many of the Democrats and, of course, the majority sitting on the SCOTUS are also linked arm in arm with Republican debauchery, greed, depravity, and betrayal of their oaths of office. They all need to be purged and new Constitutional safeguards need to be put in place.
We also had a pooch in the family called Einstein. One had to pass a test before he would deign to let you rub his furry noggin. We called it the theory of relativity. If you were related you passed the test. He was a stickler about that. Such a test could discern for us the morons incapable of governance. Why not apply such a test to aspiring politicians so that we may know if they can relate to us? Truth be told.
Given:
1. Money = Power
2. Time = Money
3. Therefore Time = Power (because algebra!)
The Less You Know (call this K⁻¹) → the Less Time You Waste (because you don’t overthink).
So:
Less Knowledge → More Time Saved
But since:
Time = Money
we get:
Less Knowledge → More Money
And combining with Money = Power:
Less Knowledge = More Power
Final equation:
K^{-1} \T^{+} = M^{+} = P^{+}
or in plain English:
Ignorance × Confidence = Salary²
It sure looks that way. I don't have the exact quote from jd vance but it goes something like this " there is no right and wrong, there is only power." I don't believe that this is a bastardization of what he said. Donald trump needs to be impeached. We who read Dr. Richardson's letters may be more aware of documents like the trump corollary than I would guess most Americans are. If you read other news reports European leaders are condemning the document while Putin applauds it. Any one remember when it was popular to call democrats communists?
There is an increase of exports from China to Europe. trump believes that only he can negotiate deals. Turns out trump and his lackie's and his puppeteers are shooting themselves in the foot as markets shift away from the US. So much for job creation. It can only get harder and harder for the lackies to convince the public that every thing will be better in the next quarter. I hope people understand that Jerome Powell is not approving interest drops because the feds are trying to lower inflation but instead in the last 10 months or so the economy is slowing down and dropping interest rates is a way to shore up the damage the trump regime has done to the economy. On top of that the imported inventories prior to "liberation day" are running out and more and more tariffs will not just have to be added to the cost of goods but financing of goods will also be added to the cost of goods as well. I wonder who pays for that?
All that being said, to Kasey Coff and Annabel Ascher the problem isn't just money has power. It only has the power we give it. Mike Johnson is a known loser Christian Nationalist, yet he is third in line to the presidency. Think about that! Mike Johnson is third in line to the presidency of the United States of America. John Thune is the senate majority leader ( that's using the word leader very loosely) sits in the senate office being complicit to the man sitting in the oval office who has no respect or care that he has broken his vows to uphold the constitution. Thune's get out of jail free card is getting more and more his turning on trump and not just impeaching him, but convicting him this time. Johnson on the other hand is broken and needs to be replaced. Pressure by the press to replace him with an anti maga and anti trump representative would open the doors to the litigation necessary to put trump not just out of office but behind bars.
The only way I see this happening is if the major media networks start producing news to undermine Thune's position and influence republicans to put a real diplomat into the speakership. I really don't know if that's possible but I'm praying that it is. This regime MUST go!
Kasey, yes, and We the People will be paying for those treasonous folks' pensions and healthcare! Disgusting, but we've done it before: Nixon and Reagan for example.
Kasey 🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬so damn true💩
A little off the subject, in regards to the money is power, Mother Jones suggested that these Honduran cyber cities like Prospera and run by the likes of Thiel and other rich tech executives, maybe was the reason trump pardoned Hernandez. He was very big on these foreign run "cyber cities." Cuba 's Supreme Court declared them illegal. trump, probably at the behest of some of these tech billionaires pardoned him. Perhaps to undermine her term. We all know how deep the trumps are in this crypto money.
Hear! Hear!
Tragic!
I agree, Kasey, and it's very disheartening.
(BTW, I see you are a new-ish subscriber here on the LFAA. WELCOME to the group! It's good to have you here!)
Deception accomplished, American voters attention diverted away from Epstein's Pedo Files .
Trumps actions taking out speedboats without evidence of cargo on board are no different than Putin invading and bombing Ukraine .
Its all about personal gain for the two. Trump wants the Western Hemisphere, Putin wants the Eastern hemisphere.
Then what is left of our world when these two mad men are done divvying up what is not theirs?
Is this what the end of America looks like?
I thought trump was a sleepy old fart. It is really others in the administration that have their eyes set on Kleptocracy. Jared kushner and trump kids along with Rubio, and others who are fleecing our system. Let’s talk about healthcare and affordability. Let’s talk about hypocrisy like child trafficking and stealing our info do they can sell it back. Let’s talk about people being arrested without due process. It is all disgusting but trump is not an old geezer who takes on whatever rant he is fed. Work to defeat with that realization.
The Epstein files allow us to show MAGA voters themselves how their emperor has no clothes. That's why it's fundamental that we keep talking about them too.
Most wouldn't care. How many times has some disgusting detail been released about trump, yet nothing sways their devotion the least. They are in a cult, believing "dear leader" even when solid evidence proves how reprehensible he is.
Nothing mattered, the mocking of a disabled man, the disparaging of our military and Sen John McCain, the "Hollywood" tapes, Stormy Daniels, his degradation of women, minorities, people of color, his sneering at the educated.
None of this matters to the cult. They revel in the hatefulness; the misogyny, the horrific deportations, the attacks against LGBTQ, trans, and every marginalized member of society, the homeless, the poor, the owning of the "libtards". They are anti society, anti civility, anti goodness and justice. We will never win them over. They need to be seen as a lost cause. The only power we have is to outvote them and end this festering cancer on our democracy called the republican party.
Here too, imho Kamala Harris is right. We constantly risk falling into the same trap of DEHUMANIZING THE OTHER (in this case, GOP voters) if we forget that, as she calls it, we and them do not start from the same facts.
They have been brainwashed by DECADES of GOP propaganda.
So no, they never stopped caring about moral behavior! These people are as "good" as you and me!
What happened is that the GOP made them believe that Democrats and even many GOP leaders are morally at least as bad as Trump, so that Trump actually looks BETTER, morally, than them, because at least he doesn't hypocritically try to claim to be such a moral man in the first place.
It's crucial to understand this.
The same goes for their racism, misogyny etc: the "alternative facts" bubble of which they became a VICTIM made them believe that these attitudes towards others are justified because they correspond to real facts.
And the ONLY way to save a democracy is for us citizens to stop the demonizing and start seeing, as Kamala Harris repeated again and again in the summer of 2024, ourselves in the face of the other. That means: our own goodness in them. Saving a democracy, history shows, starts by seeing the GOODNESS in your political opponents, especially when it comes to the ordinary citizens voting for them.
It's the one option out there.
Good luck.
👏🏼And that is why this forum is so powerful! The subscribers to HCR's Letter are going up, up, up, and getting attention from those who are part of the festering cancer! There are people here who offer their years of professional experience, and actionable tactics we can use. It will become even more powerful as the midterms approach. Every one of us who subscribes can forward the daily Letter onto another person(s) and hopefully they will do so, too. Very organic and very formidable.
There are a number of "Sharon's" on the forum, so if I've already welcomed you, I apologize, but I'm glad you're here!
WELCOME, Sharon!!
Trump Dozes
Hegseth Drones
MADA!
Follow the money.. it's about oil..
Bunker under a ballroom. 300 million dollar project, AI, white greedy power and control,...
Real Christian
Probably a good portion of Americans couldn't care less about the Epstein files, sad to say. Many polled republicans say they would still support trump even if found to be a child rapist!
I think the Epstein files are the real distraction. Keep our eyes focused on all those salacious details while trump sells the US to russia, saudi arabia, israel, argentina and the "oiligarchs" and oligarchs who are really controlling the narrative. This is what we need to be shouting from the rooftops! Not the distractive Epstein files. While important, they don't compare to our democracy being sold to the highest "flatterer".
It's not about Epstein. It's sbout kleptocracy.
Paul. I hope to God this is not the end. May they die by the sword they are living by, greed of power and money. It does NOT save!
Even if they die by the sword.. it's still the end of the American experiment.
SCOTUS ended it with their support of Unitary Executive theory.
They have literally said that Congress doesn't have the power to write any laws to constrain the President.
That makes him the King.
And makes the Constitution nothing more than a scrap of old paper.
There is no way back from this. America is done. We are just playing out the final turns of the game.
I hope that whatever comes next is better. But I won't be holding my breath.
BLB, this fatalistic line of thinking is not helpful to anyone who hopes to remain in the U.S. and live a fulfilling life.
I worked in real estate development and planning at the corporate headquarters of a couple major department store companies Although we built new stores, the majority of our resources were devoted to remodeling existing stores that had become obsolete for any number of reasons. In many cases, the "old school" structures weren't that good, even when new.
Before we could build new walls and decor, we had to demolish the existing. It was always messy, and while we tried as best we could to mitigate the inconvenience, the remodeling project always interfered with the store staff's ability to conduct business. But what we built would enhance the store's business and make the temporary inconvenience worthwhile. We effected a transformation of the store, but the original store was still there. Just better.
I'm pretty sure that everyone (with a couple exceptions) who reads LFAA loves the U.S. and wants it to prosper. I'm equally certain that everyone agrees that America has never been truly "great." We've had great moments, but our history is riddled with regrettable periods. Theft of land from the original owners, witch-hunts, slavery, the "Gilded Age," the "Red Scare," to name only a few. Still, when you love someone, you love them, warts and all ... including your country.
Perhaps it's best to look at the Trump era as the "demolition period." His regime has certainly exposed weaknesses in the structure of our democracy that need to be replaced or reinforced.
This is not the end. It's the messy, inconvenient, unsafe hardhat zone that precedes a time of rebuilding a better society.
Oh how I totally agree with you.
When we win we can rebuild better but the original "store"
will still be there.
this is my belief as well. Those who have not only failed to support the Constitution, but act to overthrow it, are clearly traitors. Those committing these crimes against the Constitution have uncannily and deviously used that very document to justify those crimes. And the Supreme Court are the worst offenders of them all for supporting this treasonous behavior.
We must take the majority away from the republicans in Congress in 2026. There is no other recourse if we are to protect the Constitution, the very thing that dictates our freedom, and remove the nazis, better known as maga, from our government.
Taking away Republican power (MAGA) may, by November of 2026, mean fighting Trump’s Gestapo, which gets larger every day. He is pardoning criminals as he destroys our cultural heritage (look at the Kennedy Center takeover, the “cleansing” of the Smithsonian, the destruction of the East Wing, the “gilding” of the Oval Office), our standing in the civilized world, and our sense of safety in our homes, schools, and churches.
Trump and his henchmen (I prefer “mafia”) are aided by SCOTUS, which until his presidency, usually been a refuge of last resort. The majority of the court has become as racist and greedy as the majority of the Republican Party.
In this context we MUST prepare for the vote as we have never before prepared, imagining ICE in every precinct, stolen repositories of ballots wherever they are, and declarations of victory that may have no resemblance to truth.
We are being warned every day that our democratic values are under threat by the current administration. It is time to plan with all our energy, while we are under daily assault by the powers that be, to protect the 2026 vote and all the votes that come as Republican House members are replaced.
In Chicago we have ICE sirens at all hours to remind us of our duty to our democracy. So do an increasing number of patriotic Americans—military, diplomats, podcasters, and marchers. All who are paying attention are now aware that we are seeing a race cleansing situation, not “the worst of the worst,” and must act accordingly. I wonder what our 250th celebration will mean if we do not.
We WILL take the majority! As the midterms come closer, more and more tactics will be discussed here. When I first subscribed, there was a person here who offered plenty of suggestions. I haven't seen Ellie Kona post in a while, (I hope she's still around) but because of HER, I started doing letters/postcards to voters! I didn't even know you could volunteer that way! And Meghan daily posts her wonderful spreadsheet of Congress phone numbers. There will be more.
Most importantly, it's people like YOU, celeste, who have chosen to pull out your credit card and grow this forum! Even though I'm in Illinois in a mostly blue area, it's still good to know I'm not alone in my beliefs, and I know there are some here for which this Letter and group are life support for them in their ruby red area.
Some of us have been around since Trump 1.0, others merely a few weeks. Each one is a brick in the wall of resistance. I value each one.
Celeste. AGREE
Robin, I totally agree.
Let's not get to far down the road to "Treason" without bothering to read the applicable U.S. Code.
Yes, but they can be tried for perjury, at least anyone who raised their right hand and swore to defend the Constitution knowing full well they had no intention of doing so. Trump tried to dodge this by not putting his hand on the Bible, but I don’t think a holy book is necessary to binding an oath. The fact that he tried to protect himself by not putting his hand on the Bible seems to me pretty good proof that he had no intention to uphold the Constitution.
You mean the part about giving aid and materiel support to America's enemies, like Putin and China and Saudi Arabia? That part?
A country founded on treason (common definition)
“Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.”
It seems as though "treason" and "traitor" have some common colloquial definitions that do not rise to the constitutional standard. I found this snippet fascinating:
https://www.federalcharges.com/treason-laws-charges/
You have to realize of course that if the letter of the law MATTERED, than Trump would have been prosecuted for sedition after Jan 7th, the Dept of Education wouldn't have been closed by fiat, and we wouldn't be kidnapping citizens off the streets with a masked gestapo. So many things would be VERY different if the letter or spirit of the law actually mattered and we didn't allow Republican fascists to do whatever they please, like kidnap people in defiance of court orders.
The letter of the law no longer matters, and it HASN'T mattered for years, long before Trump. Trying to pretend that it does is just playing the game the Republicans want and expect us to play, which is stupid. The sooner we realize that the letter of the law no longer applies the sooner we can begin to try and fix the problems that exist in our society that we created by not holding Republicans accountable to the letter and spirit of the laws we enacted and create a system by which six Klan members in robes can't override the constitution whenever they feel like it. Until we DO THAT we are just re-arranging the deck chairs on the titanic, and the most important thing we must do in this moment is to remind fascists that they are a minority, and all the things they are doing to minorities now can (and MUST, for the protection of everyone) be done to them as well.
So yes, Trump committed Treason, because liberals and progressives SAY he has committed treason, the same way Tren de Aragua is a terrorist organization, because Trump says it is. As long as that's all that matters, then those standards are universal.
Wandyer, like it or not, the "T-word" is applicable only if we are in a declared war with said enemies. We are not at war with any of those nations.
The best term to describe what the Trump regime is up to is seditious conspiracy.
https://factually.co/fact-checks/justice/definition-of-sedition-us-constitution-efd6df
But they are not our enemies in terms of the definition.
we're all frustrated, but even if it turned out Trump was feeding secrets to all of these states, it would only be a violation of other laws, not treason.
You might want to direct that comment to Trump.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/nov/20/democrats-condemn-trump-military-video-post
the difference between being a traitor and being guilty of treason.
We can dream. I have suggest that before. In a functioning democracy that could happen. But we live in a bifurcated society 40% live in an altered universe where the truth and reality are turned upsidedown. How can 40% of voters buy so much BS? They hear from RW media nothing more then constant rationalizations for all the insanity, corruption, and treason. There is no limit to their ability to rationalize.
Trump is immune, Hegseth will get a pardo (unless the hamburger revenge that awsits Trump strikes suddenly), and the electorate will have no patience if we prosecute the drone class.
AMEN. To the wall with them!
How?
So many of them are “retiring” to escape accountsbility?
Very unlikely to happen. These people are the poster children for not taking responsibility for their actions! It’s always ‘blame someone else’ while I lie about what I m doing .
Then taken out one at a time by the edge of the Potomac. And live stream in on tic tok.
While the US is making war on Venezuela, following a playbook Prof. Ruth Ben-Ghiat has been discussing for a while in which Trump takes the US from being a global player into being a regional player. There is some agreement for him to run the Americas, that means take over and take resources (you see him eyeing Venezuelan oil), and Putin gets Europe and Xi gets Asia. I see that as this plays out Putin and Xi will then want to divide the Americas between them since Putin and Xi have no liking or respect for Trump, who has just allowed the Kremlin to make the US a Client State or as Olga Lautman puts it a Satellite State with this foreign policy. Next it will be between Xi and Putin who will take over. That is the plan that I see being in place. I do not think our military or the EU will go along with this plan, but it is someone's plan and Trump is playing right along.
Since Trump first took office I have felt like anything he does is like living in a dystopian nightmare. Not my preferred genre of reading, but now I get to live it.
Leaving behind the entire post-war international order and re-carving the world back into bizarre, 19th century, retro 'spheres of influence' has been part of the plan (if anything as coherent as a plan can be said to exist) for some time now.
Trump thinks William McKinley was a great president. Most serious observers understand that beggar-thy-neighbor tariff wars, gunboat diplomacy, protectionism and multi-country imperialism of the latter part of the 19th century and the first decade of the 20th were direct causes of the First World War.
This time all the players have nuclear weapons...
And we all know that at least one of those 'world leaders' would love to be able to toss a couple of those nukes around. If he ever saw any video of any A-test or Hiroshima or Nagasaki, it didn't make any real impression on him - he thinks it's all a video game.
Above it all.
Yup!
It Come to This. So damn scary 😱
China is the chief customer for Venezuelan oil. Their foreign ministry spokesperson, Lin Jian, has condemned the closing of Venezuelan airspace and any US interference in Venezuelan affairs.
https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/eng/xw/fyrbt/202512/t20251203_11766027.html
It has been an ally of Venezuela since the Chavez regime and has contributed more than $60bn to oil production there. It is also continuing to sell arms to the Maduro regime.
https://apnews.com/article/china-venezuela-relationship-all-weather-0c9122e6e69c29ebe1a99356d1a4560a
I don't know if anyone in the Trump administration knows or cares anything about this. If this intended to be an attack on Chinese interests in the region the US may be in for a heap more trouble than they're presently counting on.
Russell, All accounts even sans China have the US in a heap of trouble if Trump and his Secretary of War Crimes, Hegseth continue down the path they are going with Venezuela. I can see in Trump's mind he is going to rule the Americas including Greenland. Last night the latter was discussed on Ruth Ben-Ghiat's Zoom meeting, but it started at 2 am here, and I fell asleep. Her guest is Gil Duran, who is writing book on Silicon Valley Fascism. I think the first half is recorded. Here is a link. https://youtu.be/AI5aJhTVjVo?si=AsHqw26DEu11UM9t
It seems that more and more corporate media have finally figured out that Trump's interest in Venezuela is about oil and not about drugs. The same is true for Canada since their oil reserves exceed the US reserves.
Trump's obsession with fossil fuels is just as insane as his obsession with tariffs.
He is cancelling as many renewable energy projects as he can just to fuel his obsession.
Gil has his finger on the pulse of the Nerd Reich.
Yes. I will look forward to his book on it.
Thanks, Linda.
Steve Bannon, soi-distant prophet of the far right, in his absurd War Room podcast, said:
“We’re a Pacific nation … the pivot, the strategic heartland of America, is actually the Pacific.”
There's nothing at all 'pacific' about this administration despite all Trump's claims that he's a peacegiver.
There's a withering article by Sydney Blumenthal on Hegseth in the Guardian. I especially loved the bit about how this ridiculous man has sunk from John McLane to Franklin the Turtle since becoming secretary for war.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/dec/08/does-pete-hegseth-even-believe-that-war-crimes-exist
I wasn't aware, for instance, that he was thrown out of the National Guard after being exposed as an "insider threat".
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/11/15/pete-hegseth-flagged-insider-threat-00189991?internal=true
Oh, the irony when DHS has been deporting people for having tattoos that they falsely claim indicate membership of a drugs cartel.
The US has threatened the EU that they need to give free rein to the US digital giants if they want to avoid damaging steel tariffs. It's about time the EU grew some balls and invoked the anti-coercion instrument against Trump because it's only going to get worse if they don't.
https://policy.trade.ec.europa.eu/enforcement-and-protection/protecting-against-coercion_en
"Secretary of War Crimes" sounds perfect for the next crop of protest signs.
They think it's a "cakewalk".
OH!
China has expanded it sphere of influence for some time now by providing loans for infrastructure etc to poorer nations who are then in debt to China. They are looking for sources of food, and minerals etc to continue to grow their economy. And they are getting ahead of us in technology. To them, this MAGA crowd is playing right into their hands.
Exactly. Trump is playing right into China's hands, and the rabid dogs in his administration are doing their best to help him.
You've left out Netanyahu. He's going to want to be in on this and already had a stranglehold on the US.
I left him out because he will be left out in the end. He and his wants and needs are not being considered by Putin who runs Trump or Xi, who runs Putin who runs Trump. Israel does not have the numbers when it comes to asserting itself. And, if it aligns with anyone against the EU, those countries will stop giving any money to Israel. It will be dependent on the US, which is a Satellite State of Russia.
Nitwityahoo is simply a punk who overplayed his hand
Spot on.
Biff Tannon World
Lind, I feel the same😠
Yes. Because they still think they can profit off it. They are in it for their own gain and will support the Orange Goblin King no matter what. If they had had ANY sense of justice or decency, they would have impeached the Orange Dictator when they had the chance. Instead, they chose the dark side and went for the power.
And still are, even though the evil Kentuckian has been replaced with more of the same.
Billionaires are lining up to please the orange tyrant.
655 "big" firms bankrupt under Trump, and thousands of small firms. Many of the largest companies can be bribed to pay off Trump to eliminate WH created obstacles. But Trump and his evil Cabal don't give a damn about any of the others.
America’s corporate meltdown: 655 big firms bankrupt as 2025 crisis surges to 15-year high
Read more at:
https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international/us/us-corporate-bankruptcy-2025-americas-corporate-meltdown-655-big-firms-bankrupt-surges-to-15-year-high/articleshow/125347948.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst
Those who screw unto others will screw unto you.
Yes they are. Write down their names...
Dutch 🤬💩
What it is going to take is getting rid of them. They are all corrupt and tainted and at some point the fact that your family is threatened does not justify taking the American taxpayers money to do nothing.
I am wondering how recruitment is going in the military under Trump and I found this.
"Additionally, the U.S. Army has established its “Future Soldier Prep Course,” which offers lower-performing recruits up to 90 days of academic or fitness instruction. The U.S. Navy has followed suit with its Future Sailor Preparatory Course.
There have been reports that the change at the very top, with a new “Commander-in- Chief” in Washington, D.C., can be credited with the surge this year. However, that fails to explain last year’s recruiting goals being met. Instead, some officials have pointed to increased compensation, expanded delayed entry programs, and even more targeted marketing campaigns, including on social media.
The COVID-19 pandemic also disrupted in-person recruiting efforts and access to. high school students. With the pandemic essentially a distant memory, recruiting is finally returning to normal."
There have been many recent stories about how a large portion of the pool of 17-24 year olds are fat, lazy and stupid. Fewer than half the recruits meet the physical and/or cognitive requirements which are already very low. And the fact that the Army (and likely other branches) requires a "Future Soldier Prep Course" says it all.
Oddly, I couldn't find a single story that reports the wash-out rate of recruits.
It occurred to me that there are evil alternatives to enticing recruits at the front end. I already see signs that reducing the number of young men entering 2 and 4 year colleges and universities may be part of the plan.
According to the military themselves, they are losing 1/4 of new recruits within 2 years. So this is your wash out rate. https://www.military.com/daily-news/2025/03/07/army-losing-nearly-one-quarter-of-soldiers-first-2-years-of-enlistment.html
It sounds like so many ICE recruits. I am surprised the military can get any recruits with ICE paying so much in bonuses. I will assume those joining are not doing it for just the paycheck, but for some other reason.
Seems like there are still problems with recruiting too. There is not enough staff to process recruits in a timely manner. That is in part because of the Trump layoffs of civilians in the military according to Business Insider this past August.
https://www.businessinsider.com/the-command-that-okays-military-recruits-approaching-crisis-point-2025-8
Thanks for the article Linda. 8% of recruits have a "clean recruitment" according to the article. Do you think that in today's environment that we will ever have a need for a traditional Army with Infantry etc? For 250 years we have put our recruits through basic training meaning they have to be physically fit enough to shoot other people. Are these really the skills a modern Army needs?
Thank you for this insight. I saw an article in my local paper earlier this year stating various branches of the military had met their goals and thought ugh. At my local county fair in October, I passed by several times, an outside Marine recruiting booth complete with chin up bar, and I never saw anyone at the table.
I'll not bore anyone with my tale of how an aggressively stupid recruiter who, by slander and threats, attempted to ruin the career of a high school career prep specialist I knew. Will only say she called on some of her associates in the military who had cooperated with her on previous projects.
The stupid recruiter never knew what hit him.
I don't think that would be boring, Bern. Is your "high school career prep specialist" an educational position? It is a title unfamiliar to me.
See below.
?
OK, the story is my friend the school counselor (career advisor) held that title for decades and loved her work. Among other things she managed an annual career fair for an entire high school district (in a big Bay Area subregion) and brought in dozens of recruiters from all sorts of colleges, industries, public service sectors, etc. She built a rep as eminently skilled, personable and accommodating. She was one of those people in a school setting who had regular contact with her student/clients thanking her years later.
One year a new military recruiter (I forgot which branch) got the task of presenting at career fairs. The counselor made her routine annual outreach to that office and only heard once from there, that a new recruiter would be following up. Eventually and after numerous attempts the counselor closed the invitation as there was no time left to get names, recruitment descriptions, contact info and the like into the brochures, media outreach etc. That's when the shit started.
This new "recruiter" suddenly realized he had fucked up. His response to his own incompetence was to blame her for cutting military recruiters off entirely, as if it was some lefty conspiracy. He threatened to file formal complaints over first amendment violations and worse. It was salacious bullshit whether he knew it or not. Her attempts to set him straight went nowhere as he escalated. Finally, in serious threat of losing her job, she called a few of her military recruiters, colleagues and others in the services. One of her partners over the years immediately said "leave it to me". He apparently outranked the "recruiter" by a lot, and had a personal meeting with the guy. He then called my friend to say she would never hear from that person again.
And she never did.
I typed a long reply which, probably lucky for you, I accidentally deleted while hunting down YouTube links. Some time within the last year, "Belle of the Ranch" who is ex-military nurse addressed this topic.
There is so much to read/listen to, it's difficult to keep up. Belle posts 3 short version clips (<4 min) daily and 2 long version (The Roads with Belle, about 15 minutes) weekly. Besides HCR, she's the only source I check daily.
Link for the Roads:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yglRXcf16Xo&t=12s
Link for Belle of the Ranch:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Hc9_p0XIoY&t=31s
What did the nation do to escape some of the worst abuses and systemic corruption of the Gilded Age?
20 years of progressive Republicans and Democrats, from Teddy Roosevelt, Robert LaFollete, to Woodrow Wilson. An entire generation. And then the vigilance of the next generations not to allow it to happen again. Except now that it has.
It seems that Teddy Roosevelt's ascension to the Presidency was dumb luck for us. He was a rarity in politics -- willing to stand up for "we the people."
His biggest mistake was announcing as soon as he won the 1904 election that he would not run again. He probably would have won again in 1908 and changed history from 1908 on.
Yeah- that’s one of the events I wish we could do over in government. But he really thought Taft was up to the job. Having Wilson in for two terms after the mess that was Taft was beneficial to the progressive cause
Alex, since you've only been here a week (WELCOME to the forum! Good to have you here!) you obviously didn't see my post from about a month ago, where I said that many members of Congress were in the military--and I was incredulous that they were more afraid of TRUMP than armed combat!!
I believe this was after MTG started getting death threats. I have no info on this, so anyone who does and reads this, please reply--but can't death threats be tracked somehow?
And prosecuted?
Some are genuinely terrified. You are overlooking this new, awful reality. Trump is a stochastic terrorist -- he uses others to do his dirty work for him so he can sort of waddle in front of the press going "I didn't know anything about it...I don't know who he is...somebody told me that...I have no problems with..." It isn't just about corruption, it may be about physical harm.
There are a lot of Proud Boy types out there who have really gone off the deep end. They do the doxing, the pizza-ordering, the threatening, the 'we know how your kids get to school' statements. He knows they're there and ready to do his bidding, even as his support crumbles into nothing. This is never far from his mind. It never has been. Elise Slotkin and Mark Kelly are on 24/7 protection right now -- and they're Democrats. Think what he might to do a Republican who dares tell a military officer 'you have a responsibility to disobey orders you know to be illegal.'
It's really quite a serious situation in this country. This part is new, not something we've really seen before. There are no guidebooks for we get out of this part.
It is important to get through Americans minds--we have not seen anything like this in our history. Even something like the Civil War in 1860. People like the Proud Boys don't know history generally. What Trump is relying on and also what follows him in the GOP is a reliance on people who simply do not think things through. The January 6 riot in D.C. said it all.
👏🏼
All of us here who read the Letter and forward it/discuss it with our friends/family/coworkers, etc are forming the resistance. I have been watching this group greatly expand in the last few months, which to me, is the oxygen masks dropping in the plane! Just as I forward the Letter to five people daily, I hope others do the same. Thank you, Walter, for pulling out your credit card and joining this group! It's good to have you here!
And that is so frustrating to me. I feel so powerless and cannot count on ANY institution—Congress, SCOTUS for two—to do the first thing. Why don’t they see the gravity of our situation? Is Trump that powerful?
To answer your second question: no.
Trump tries very hard to project strength. He and his flying monkeys want you to believe that he is inevitable. He is not.
Some of the Democrats in Congress do. Since they are not in power, all they can do is stick sand in the gears and point out, ad infinitum, how horrific, destructive, and dangerous this regime is.
Some Democratic politicians across the various states are also aware. They are doing what they can. However they, at most, have jurisdiction over their own state, city, or region.
The Republicans in Congress, who are currently in power, can stop all of the corruption and abuses of the regime tomorrow, if not on a dime. But they are too complicit, indifferent, or cowardly to make a move. They have abdicated their power to the executive branch. These are the same politicians who refused to convict Trump and throw him out of office AFTER HE INCITED AN INSURRECTION. Had they done their duty then, we would not have Trump 2.0.
Mitch McConnell has wheedled and cheated to stack the Supreme Court with far-right ideologues. If not for him, the Court would be, at worst, 5-4. The Supreme Court (the 6 in the majority anyway.) abdicated almost all its responsibility to check the president when it decided to give him immunity.
Do not look for a leader to save us. After all, Trump told a lot of people that he could save them, that he alone could fix it and Make America Great Again(tm), and look where that got us.
The only ones who can save us is us. Thankfully, there are a LOT of us — far more than there are of them.
I'm sure Slotkin and Kelly are just as "protected" as Pence was on Jan 6th. Not like the USSS tried to kidnap and have Pence taken "somewhere" right? On orders from Trumps personal bodyguard.
Hegseth is more than corrupt…So is Miiler…These guys are pure evil…immoral…
Sociopaths.
Yes, they are all so corrupt. I know we, as Americans, don’t like to think this could be happening in the United States. Heather’s friend and fellow podcaster, Joanne Freeman, said on a recent podcast that the trope of “America exceptionalism” has perhaps had the unfortunate effect of making us think it can’t happen here- that because we’re America we’re immune to broadbased corruption. I believe she’s right. Like the frog in water analogy, it has happened so incrimentally we didn’t notice or we blew it off as ‘all politicians are crooked’.
"The main force of the GOP"? The GOP was taken over by its neofascist neoliberal wing, and, as Kamala Harris repeats during her current book tour, this power grab has been decades in the making.
There is no way back.
The few Republicans who are still anti-fascism have been thrown out of the party (Adam Kinzinger, Liz Cheney, ...).
It's the GOP ITSELF that WANTED this. How long will it take for people to finally realize this fact?
Their propaganda machine is by now 25 years old (Fox Entertainment, Sinclair etc.), while the neoliberal narrative was launched already by Reagan. THAT is when the systematic lying began. And as historian Quinn Slobodian shows in his book "Crack-up Capitalism", the idea that capitalism and democracy are by nature incompatible was something the very founders of neoliberalism already believed (and neoliberalism was invented as reaction against the New Deal, so it was based on the idea that IF we allow "the people" to govern, the "freedom" of the wealthiest to do whatever they want will always be limited, and that's the thing that neoliberals reject the most).
It was all there. From the very beginning. It's just that today, thanks to distractor-in-chief Trump, they finally managed to impose it on all levels of government.
The only solution is a massive Democratic landslide in 2026, 2028 and beyond. And that has nothing to do with who's the Democratic nominee or how good their "message" is. It has to do with how much "we the people" care about democracy and want to fight back against fascism. It has to do with how much WE decide to organize and mobilize. Because that is always how a democracy is saved.
All the messages from the WH is that the elections in 2026, 2028 will not be free and fair. More like selected candidates winning, and 'we the people' objectors will be silenced by 'executive order' as un-American well in advance. That is the 25 year+ plan of also selecting preferred candidates to the Courts, buying the Press .... Goodbye USA and eventually overreach causes implosion, that's history. Sad but very possible.
That's what they hope we'll believe, so that we start practicing "anticipatory obedience."
In real life, history shows that it takes at least ten years before a democracy is entirely turned into a fascist regime, so... it's still extremely early, and this fight has merely begun!!
All they have is propaganda.
All we have is the power of the people to say no and vote them all OUT!
There's virtually no old guard left. It's the MAGA Party now. I listen to and read the old guard a lot, and they are saying almost all the things said in HCR's comments.
When was the last time you heard Trump or any MAGA say "drain the swamp?"
They are the swamp and always have been but even they won't say it out loud anymore.
Swamp Restoration is on their collective bingo card.
Even swamps are better than the cesspool they are replacing it with.
As a retired wetland restoration supervisor I concur.
Sandra, those are the folks who are persuadable, methinks! We need to gently, gently, gently work on those we know who are "waking" up to what MAGA really means. It's painful for them, so please don't dump on with "I TOLD YOU SO" but with, "you were conned/lied to". We can grow the resistance to this attack on our democracy!
Yes
and chicken.
and RINOs Nazis.
The RepubliKlan Party -- premeditated treason and sadistic, high-tech ecogenocide combined, thus more Evil than the Original Nazis.
Loren, I've been using "RepubliKKKan" recently. I think I might adopt your "RepubliKlan" instead.
Human corruption is bottomless and Hegseth is a remarquable example of it
The GOP no longer exists as a party. It has become a right wing movement, but most Americans do not understand this. Faux Fox News gives them bread and circuses they are content with King Herod’s rule. And he has lots of Henchmen like Pontus Pilate to carry out his terror. ( Miller Hegseth, JD, et all)
That is the question I ask myself every day. Yesterday on one of the news shows I saw Tom Tillis -- and he kept referring to "Trump's legacy" and saying that pardons of drug dealers and shooting small boats out of the water were not the kinds of things Trump would want his legacy to be. I agree with Tillis on almost nothing. But I thought he was speaking directly to Trump and saying, basically, 'don't do this stupid shit because it will become your legacy.' Time will tell.
With the carelessness and indifference to national security shown by the president and his incompetent SecDef and HHS killer, how long until something happens to us? Don’t Repub leaders realize that and their families are at risk too? Are they so nihilistic they just don’t care?
Not one R Congress member deserves to be reelected. They are NOT ‘representative(s).’
Their fealty gives you your answer
Annabel, good question. To understand MAGA, we first need to recognize that they are essentially Republicans—so what motivates most Republicans? Look at their policies: what they support and what they oppose. The old guard understands exactly what Trump is, and what he represents reflects much of what they are. They may dislike his style, his tweets, his crude comments, but as you suggest, they are clearly complicit in his corruption.
I'm reluctant to paint them all as racists and xenophobes, but when it walks like a duck and talks like a duck—I'm sorry, but the evidence is clear. They are corrupt and supportive of much of what Trump is doing.
The long game, yes, but I’m getting old and I want to see the end of MAGA, and I want my grandchildren to live in a free democratic country where people care about people, not just power and money.
Hang in there, Susan. I'm old, too. The "long game" might not take that long, if we're talking about blocking the MAGAt administration's depredations. Repairing, or better yet replacing the things that it has broken is the struggle that will take the longest. When my time comes, I want to be a citizen of a country that has cast aside this repugnant fascism and become the best version yet of itself.
It’s getting late for me to play the long game, I’m 82. I hope to live long enough to see Trump and his criminal administration sent to prison for crimes against humanity!
I am getting close to 90 and this is also my fervent hope! So, let's get this show on the road!!!
CALLING BULLSHIT.
What crime? Killing drug narco terrorists who want to poison and kill our children
is AN ACT YOU SUPPORT?
Tells you everything you need to know about the DEMOCRATIC party.
I’m not supporting drug traffickers.
I’m questioning the accuracy of the claim that these small boats were on a direct route from Venezuela to the U.S.
The distance from Venezuelan waters to Florida is over 1,300 miles, far beyond the typical range of these vessels. Independent reports show they were intercepted near Venezuela, not approaching U.S. shores.
It’s reasonable to expect clarity about what the mission was and what threat it actually addressed.
That’s not partisan — it’s basic accountability.
Troll. Bait not taken.
Ya need to respond to trolls in their native languages. Use Google Translate for Russian, North Korean, Chinese...etc.
Why don't you be a MAN and defend your position?
Usually people like this are arrested, not just outright murdered in cold blood. Because sometimes the wrong people get targeted. And if ICE is any example that happens around 2/3 of the time, maybe more. Tells you everything you need to know about the Republican, wait, scratch that. Tells you everything you need to know about the MAGA party. And tells me everything I need to know about you, James A.
ONLY A LEFTIST would have sympathy for a CARTEL DRUG RUNNER
but no sympathy for the AMERICAN lives they DESTROY.
YES ....its virtuous to kill people who want to poison and destroy the lives of AMERICANS.
Your view on this SAYS EVERYTHING ABOUT THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY.
They HATE America and love anyone that wants to destroy our country.
You do not KNOW that these people are cartel drug runners. In fact you are willfully IGNORANT of the most basic principles of LAW. Yet I bet you are a strong proponent of LAW and ORDER. You are either a POSTURING fool or a MAGA TROLL. My bet is on the latter. And what have you done with Rick Sender? At least he doesn’t type in HYSTERICAL UPPERCASE.
YOU ARE IN THE RUNNING for the stupidest post of the year.
How do I know they are drug runners? Because they are in a boat transporting drugs.
Are you claiming that they are lost religious missionaries who accidentally ended up on a drug speed boat with a MACHINE GUN?
This is like saying you can't kill someone in a tank because you aren't sure if they are a soldier.
YOU ARE THE MORON. BTW Because they have designated as TERRORISTS they aren't covered by Geneva Convention.
Every time I read these words or similar it gets me right in the gut: “The world order, or agree, or alliances or whatever IN THE LAST 80 YEARS” because I’m 80 and the child of a young man killed in WWII. I want this ended before my siblings and I die and especially before my only grandchild can be coerced or drafted by this fascist regime.
I'm nearly your age and I agree we need to support our allies, and at the same time support our own military's strategic capability. Trump's "spend-thrift" tax system, favoring the top 0.1% of earners and never preparing for that "rainy day" or viscous conflict near our NATO ally, Poland! I'm ashamed of our Republican Party who seems to forget about how fragile our "Free World" really is
💌
I second your motion. I worry about what my grandchildren will have to go through to get that free, democratic country. Knowing how entrenched the T**** virus is, the quest is not going to be peaceful.
Exactly.. that's the real cost
They are the future, but likely they will have to fight like their great grandparents.
I agree, Susan! Just as important, I want them (and all of We the People) to be safe.
Question….Are we safer now than we were 2 years ago?
Agree wholeheartedly, Susan!
Ditto, Susan.
CALLING BULLSHIT.
You live in a free democracy. Name one right you've lost.
I want to see the end of DRUG CARTELS shipping drugs into our country and using their profits to bribe governments, human and sex traffic woman and children and DESTROY their cultures.
ONLY a LEFTIST would side with REAL EVIL.
Yet again you are coming to the AID of people who want to destroy AMERICA.
Nice Job.
Try educating yourself with facts- there’s more than one side of the story.
WHAT IS THE OTHER SIDE?
That DRUG CARTELS have the right to SELL drugs to the US?
Neither you or Heather, or anyone else makes the case?
Trump is bad is the only brain activity
Venezuelan Drug Cartels are designated TERRORISTS. They aren't covered
by the Geneva Convention. Even if they were as the NY TIMES REPORTED
The two survivors radioed for help and attempted to save the DRUGS....
The Pentagon had looked at scenarios before hand and after consulting a DOJ lawyer they took a second strike.
YOU AREN"T BULLSHITING ANYONE Here.....
For the little open boats we’re seeing in the videos, a direct trip from Venezuela to the U.S. is way too far.
The kind of small “go-fast” boats shown in the strike footage typically have an effective range of maybe 100–300 nautical miles unless they are absolutely loaded with fuel drums and/or refuel from another vessel.
For the 2025 strikes, the Pentagon says the vessels were “headed for the U.S.”, but all the reporting shows they were hit in Caribbean waters near Venezuela, not anywhere close to U.S. shores.
IN OTHER WORDS, you don't have an OUNCE of proof.
You are just speculating and making it UP, yet you and all your friends
are claiming its the end of DEMOCRACY.
As usual you have NO SOLUTION. BIDEN just sat by and watched as the drug cartels COLLECTED MILLIONS in fees to bring illegals to the US. They took children in the sex trade and SHIPPED BILLIONS of dollars of drugs into the US.
NOT A WORD ABOUT THAT........CRICKETS.
TRUMP does something about it and you HYPERVENTILATE.
Yes....I'm calling Bullshit.
I can’t shake the picture: two men on a scrap of wood, waving at the sky while the second strike turns back.
Show us the tape.
If you have to hide it, that’s not prudence, it’s shame.
Show us the tape.
A “war department” dodging Congress, leaking secrets on a private phone, and drafting a strategy to walk away from allies puts the target on the rule of law, not just a boat.
Show us the tape.
Put the chain of command under oath, release the full video, and let the people judge.
Because dignity belongs to those last two souls on the water as much as anyone in Washington….show us the tape, show us the tape, show us that damn tape. www.xplisset.com
Quite a stretch to suppose that at that moment they worried about salvage no mater what the cargo. Sociopaths count life as cheap.
It’s not only a stretch, it’s utter madness to think they had anything but survival on their minds with 9 of their fellow passengers now dead. No matter what he did in the past the man that said that has no business in any leadership role in our military, he’s obviously clueless.
Or a damned liar, the quality of character that unites "Republican" leadership.
Perhaps psychopaths, JL Graham: Zero conscience with malicious intent.
Cozy as the freezer
sweeping through many of our States now. However, reading these responses to professor Heather Cox Richardson brings me some hope that somehow someway we will manage to bring a new Democracy up from the almost pitch black fog into the light.
Sociopath and psychopath are not official diagnostic terms and there is controversy over whether there is a difference, but I use them because we have a shared general picture of what they are. It is not unreasonable to suppose that some are born that way, although we see in the history of nations that antisocial urges seem to ebb and flow over time. From what I can see there are self-serving urges in all of us, and while they are there for a reason, it is problematic or dangerous when selfishness fully takes over. As a society, there seems to be an agreement to cultivate civilizing skills in children that we somehow offten abandon when it comes to politics. The way our populace reacted to the excesses of Nixon vs Trump suggests a societal shift of values. As in Nazi Germany, I think the normalizing of lies has a lot to do with it, as has our dramatic relaxation of checks and balances on monopolization of financial as well as political power, and on the interchangeability of both. Power tend to corrupt,
Not only shame - evidence of murder.
Powerfully said.
The two most egregious crimes that Hegseth is being charged with just barely account for the destruction of our military order. He has/ is purging all the forces of any of the adults who might challenge his madness. And we end up with “leaders” like “ adm” Frank Bradley, and outright murder on the high seas.
Democracy presumes the negotiation of contrasting views. Autocracy, the crime that the Declaration of Independence protests, seeks to prohibit them.
"There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty."
-- John Adams in 1772. Even he endangered public liberty before he was done. The urge to abuse power never sleeps, nor can our vigilance against it.
I want all the tapes. I haven’t forgotten Epstein. He protected himself with video but I expect that DJT’s vanity was so great that he wanted video of his abuses. Perhaps these DJT and Hegseth videos would indelibly bookend his evils while we wait for our, America’s, existential realization that anyone who opposes “the administration” will be attacked and imprisoned until mass graves are required for “logistical” reasons.
It is like this is a video game to Hegseth, "Secretary of War Crimes" who seems to be like an immature child emotionally. He does not value human life of others. It is terrifying how depraved the Trump regime is.
“The war department will not be distracted by democracy building, interventionism, undefined wars, regime change, climate change, woke moralizing and feckless nation building.”
Look at what Hegseth is saying. We will NOT be distracted by democracy building BECAUSE WE ARE ALIGNING WITH AUTHORITARIANS, interventionism BECAUSE THAT IS WHAT WE ARE DOING RIGHT NOW IN THE COLUMBIAN ELECTIONS, undefined wars BECAUSE THAT IS WHAT WE ARE DOING RIGHT NOW IN VENZUELA, regime change BECAUSE THAT IS WHAT WE ARE DOING IN I CAN'T COUNT HOW MANY COUNTRIES AROUND THE WORLD, climate change BECAUSE ALL WE WANT IS DRILL, BABY, DRILL, woke moralizing BECAUSE MAXIMUM LETHALITY IS A SHOW OF MANLINESS, feckless nation buiding BECAUSE WE ALL KNOW DEMOCRACY IS DOOMED--CURTIS YARVIN TOLD US SO.
God help us!!!
Exactly. I am in Germany and someone in Indivisible Abroad sent out the next meeting the AfD party in Germany has with the Trump administration.
From Der Spiegel is this heading translated into English.
"Far-right party visits Republicans
The AfD wants to overthrow the German government—and is seeking support in the US. Confidential talks in ministries, meetings with MAGA Republicans: the AfD is building a network in the US. This week, a delegation is traveling to Washington. The new American security strategy is giving the party a boost."
The AfD has been meeting regularly with Trump and other MAGAs to get probably dark money and strategies for taking over in Germany. It is truly frightening. Right now Trump has turned the US into a Satellite State of Russia and the Kremlin's goals are the cleave the US from NATO and the EU. It has done this. They also want to cleave the EU countries from each other. All of the far right parties they are supporting are ones that want to exit the EU like England did, which destroyed their economy even more. This would happen to European countries too. More importantly for Putin, no unity against Russia which would take each country over or have them operate as satellite states, like in the Soviet Union. And, then Tech Bros would have no large entity trying to hold them accountable for their actions. They could run rough shod over us all.
Last night Prof. Ruth Ben-Ghiat spoke with Gil Duran, of the podcast The Nerd Reich. https://youtu.be/AI5aJhTVjVo
I am deeply ashamed of my country. We are in another period of the flood the zone with shit strategy.
The new defense appropriations bill cuts aid to Ukraine back to PRE-WAR levels. And there is no guarantee that Trump won't withhold the funds. Trump makes a speech at an awards dinner and says he's disappointed that Zelensky didn't read the latest version of the "peace deal," neglecting to mention that Trump has already dissed it. And mainstream media is basically spouting pro-Putin talking points, focusing on Putin gaining ground, and no mention of the "betrayal" leak or the Trump self-dealing and absolution of Putin's war crimes in the 28-point plan.
Looks like it is going to be a tought week.
Georgia, I can understand your feelings. I feel more scared than ashamed. Trump should be the one who is ashamed. His presidency is destroying the US. This is the dystopian nightmare we cannot wake up from and must fight our way out of. Meanwhile the AfD is visiting Washington this week to talk with MAGA. I hope they give AfD the advice that has MAGA on the outs with the American people.
I think Vance spoke to them.
Representative Luna met with them last time they were in Washington. I read she invited them. I was so glad to see she is planning on resigning.
Let's see how Mark Elias makes out with the Supreme's Tuesday. Could be a nice win for Campaign Finance Protections.
I don't think we will know for sure for several months. But I am not holding my breath.
Trump is building an international organized crime syndicate beyond the reach of all law enforcement. He aims for it to be an extension of himself and as such a law unto itself.
This criminal organization will be powered by a monopoly over crypto currency. At its heart will a world wide money laundering operation. At the heart of that will be the international illegal trade in drugs and arms. He is no stranger to any of this. He will expand and defend this syndicate by means of extortion and a protection racket employing the power of his position and the forces at his disposal. His current war on "narco-terrorists" is one to eliminate competition and gain control of the black market. The Honduran drug kingpin he has just pardoned will help him set up a new hell town on an island off the coast off Honduras that will eclipse the Cayman Islands as a center for unregulated and secretive business transaction. As a center for crypto currency trading it will be a smugglers paradise. It's business will be run by a council consisting of Trump family members and friends, including Peter Thiel and Elon Musk. It's operations will have Trump's protection. It will be subject to no laws other than those thus council agrees upon.
Nice comment, George.
Too bad so many Americans are apparently unable to understand Hegseth's words as well as you (and I) do. Of, course, his actions leave him naked to anyone with half a brain.
The Trump presidency: war crimes, murder, sexual assault of minors, massive corruption, environmental destruction, ruining every worthwhile thing he can.
If you meant to type Georgia, I heartily agree.
Yes, another inappropriate typo. My apologies to Georgia. Thanks, Terry, for the heads up.
This many seem off-topic, but circa 1995, I was sitting next to a former special forces sniper who had retired from the US Army. He shared several top-secret stories with me during our two hour flight.
One story he shared with me was that US snipers get their training and experience shooting at and killing drug lords in Columbia. The CIA provides the Intel and then the snipers do the deed.
I have also chatted with retired Navy Seals who have detailed covert operations like what is happening in Venezuela since at least the 1980's.
But none of the previous administrations have used these operations as photo-ops like Trump and his moronic group of thugs.
They learned from the best. From the book “Adventurers of a Bystander,” by Peter Drucker, quoting his newly-anointed Nazi friend, “But I’m beginning to be scared. You can’t imagine the things some of the higher ups say to us when no one from the outside is listening.” Well, the “higher-ups” here are saying those things, and not just to insiders. We ignore at our peril, the crosshairs are coming for any of us.
JD. I love that you quote Peter Drucker. As a new manager of just a few people, I realized I was clueless when it came to managing people. I turned to Peter Drucker and a few others to help me. Thanks for the Drucker reference. It made me smile and give me hope.
Thanks goodness for Heather and others who aggregate the news of the day.
Scary stuff.
Yes, he is a child. Over the years I represented several thousand children in court and there were more than a few who were not honest with me... The way Hegseth moves around in his seat, the arm and hand movements when he speaks, the facial expressions all are not adult like but appear the same to me as a child who was caught stealing something. See 1:40 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDJONvjeHBU&list=RDNSNDJONvjeHBU&start_radio=1
Having taught K, 3-5 and HS from 1989-2022 and some middle school grades , I have a good sense of developmentally appropriate behavior. Hegseth is like a 5th grader.
In 5th grade class, I brought a pet garter snake to school just to disrupt the class. And that I did.
Bill, in fifth grade, for show and tell, a boy in my class, whose name I won't say, brought a fish tank and then electrocuted the fish in front of us. I can see him as working in the Trump administration now. Our class was not having any of it. We were so disgusted by what he did, that him getting in trouble with the teacher was not enough, we all treated him like a little sicko! So, his family pulled him out of the school and moved him to the suburbs. He may now be a Hegseth. He certainly was a rotten little shit back then.
In third grade my best friend Sean, brought in the Playboy centerfold for show and tell. He and I were both 7 in third grade so he was a precocious kid. He had tried to show it to the teacher first. I was watching and could see how uninterested she was. In fact, while children who were showing their items that day, she was dusting the bookcases with a feather duster. Then, Sean showed the centerfold, and the whole class screamed "It's a naked lady!" The teacher spun around, her face beet red, and snatched the magazine from him and whipped him across the face with it. A child who had been sent out in the hall, ran in upon hearing us and stood in front of the magazine just quivering with excitement until the teacher intervened. Back then teachers hit kids. My friend's dad was a photographer for Playboy, so not only did it cause problems between his parents, but it also meant that his son was exposed to what he did for a living already at the age of 5.
Holy Moly!!
An immature relationship to substances. And to women. It sounds like he treats his wife like his mommy. Why was she privy to his top secret Signal calls?
Um...look who hired him, Mr. Pump-That-Invisible-Concertina-Back-and-Forth as fast as you can (meaning GO AWAY, I'M LYING, STOP ASKING QUESTIONS).
I've never figured out why reporters glom onto the words (which don't make the slightest sense) but not the body language, which broadcasts loud and clear.
They don't get what the words mean either. With the Trumpist word salads these guys put out, the real meaning is in how the words they use change over time.
They test out more extreme words and concepts, and then, when there is no pushback or acknowledgment by the media, they get integrated into the standard rant.
Slow acclimatization over time. It is what drew the MAGA faithful in, and it is why we democracy defenders are constantly on adrenaline overload, which makes us less effective.
Racism, narcissim and pettyness packaged together with gift wrap and a bow.
Donald Trump gives himself an early birthday present.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-adds-his-birthday-free-national-park-day-while-axing-mlk-day-juneteenth
I knew I did not need to search it but I did and there is no other U.S. president to unilaterally declare their own birthday something special for the public. On
June 14, 2025, Trump gave us that large military parade in Washington, D.C on his 79th birthday and now this. He gives free admission to the public and eliminates Martin Luther King Jr. Day and Juneteenth as a gift to himself. I think we need to get ready for the postage stamp and finally the $100 bill coming next.
We’re already getting the two-headed dollar coin unless Bessent stops it.
Heads, I win, other heads I win, no matter which you always lose.
Sounds like a perfect reflection of America today
I am not placing any bets on Bessent rejecting the coin.
I saw that coin but it did not have two heads like you say. I saw two backsides.
For numerous reasons intercepting the boats would have been a better option. That means blowing up the boats is all about sending a message. A message that gets sent regardless of whether or not the boats were actually running drugs. There's a disturbing element of racism in how casually this administration murders Latin Americans.
I think their behavior is the result of the video games culture, combined with their juvenile, man-child state of mind.
I don't think it's the video game culture, I think it's the Fox News culture. Older people like to blame video games but Fox News has done considerable more damage on purpose and continues to do so.
In reality, there are multiple reasons.
The message is "Scare Maduro out of office so Trump can take over the oil." While it is racist, Trump is mean to White people when they don't do what he wants.
It's a free for all.. (in their eyes.). just for the elite tho. Leave your soul at the door I say
Peggy, Trump and his cohort and followers are all soulless!
Trump's policy on these drug runners is flat out illegal...and Hegseth is a total disgrace compared to anyone who was Sec Def before him. These strikes should not be happening. If you REALLY want to put a dent in the drug trade then seize these boats and build a case, the way the US Coast Guard does every day, all around the world. The double tap against these 2 individuals who were clinging to a sinking boat is illegal. The American military just does not do that....and if they were hailing help, that's what you want. Bring in more bad guys to sink. The Republican talking point is absurd and they should all be ashamed of themselves for sinking to this level. As to Russia liking our new "World Position"...is anyone comfortable with that thought ? This administration MUST GO.
Our new world position is being ignored by our MSM as far as I can tell. Where are the headlines. I think I’ll start asking that of the MAGAts I know, How “Christian” is it to ally with Russia using Nazi tactics?
Very Christian. The National Socialist movement was characterized by its faith and specifically its Christianity, even to the persecution of those responsible for the death of Jesus Christ.
Fascism always stands upon the leg of religion, because religion teaches authoritarianism better than any other system. Even Mussolini and Hitler knew that.
There's nothing more Christian than fascism and racism.
Wanderer, I think it was Sinclair Lewis who said "When Fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in a flag, carrying a cross."
The irony of course being that fascism began in America, and leaders from abroad studied the black codes and race laws like Jim crow to figure out how to implement it in Germany and Italy.
More than just that, Hitler studied how we dealt with our "Indian problem" by putting them on reservations and putting their children into boarding schools to make them Christian Americans. He just perfected it and put the "other", the Jew enemy into camps and killed them....and apparently Trump has looked at Mein Kampf (doubt that he read it all) and praised Hitler for doing some "good things" and Trump expressed wanting Generals, like Hitler's...well a bunch of them almost killed him...(have you seen the Tom Cruise movie) be careful what you wish for DJT.
Ignoring laws seems to run through every single aspect of this regime. The goal is for the president to be the law. Admiral Bradley said that his actions in the so-called double-tap were justified because because the president had authorized destroying “narco-terrorists” (I paraphrase). Never mind the international laws against war crimes.
The president thinks he is the law, and thought so in his first term too. And why not? There has never been one consequence to his egregious lawbreaking. The stolen docs case alone would have put his fat a$$ in prison till he died, except for the complete failure to see reality and the corruption of Aileen Cannon and her accomplice, SCOTUS.
Admiral Bradley should know that defense didn't work too well at Nuremberg. "Hitler said we should kill all the Jews" so we were "just following orders." This is a REALLY sad week for the US Military and for anyone attempting to justify and enable this murder on the high seas.
For those who missed it, Miles Taylor compiled a "Top 25" list (with more probably to follow) of ongoing lies and idiocies told thus far about whatever is actually transpiring in the southern Caribbean. They are (in chronological order...sort of):
1. A very dangerous boat is headed to America, they said.
2. Okay, it isn’t headed to America. But the boat poses an imminent threat to the United States.
3. What ‘imminent threat,’ you ask? Not your business.
4. But trust us, the people on board the vessels were “terrorists.”
5. Alright, they were low-level drug dealers. But we’re also at war with them. So they’re battlefield “combatants,” too.
6. We watched it all unfold in real-time.
7. The president himself ordered the strike.
8. A second strike against survivors? Fake news! The reporting is a total fabrication.
9. It never happened.
10. Okay, it might have happened, but we didn’t know it happened.
11. Fine. Maybe it shouldn’t have happened.
12. When we said we watched it ‘live,’ we meant that we left the meeting early and didn’t see illegal stuff.
13. Forget the part about the president ordering it. Someone else ordered it, not the president or Hegseth.
14. Look, if mistakes happened, it’s because of the ‘fog of war.’
15. Actually, there were no mistakes. The second strike was perfect.
16. The survivors were ‘continuing their mission,’ so we had to kill them.
17. They were still in the fight and trying to radio for backup.
18. Actually, it was ‘self defense.’
19. Nevermind. We weren’t targeting the men at all. We were just trying to sink the boat.
20. Just kidding. We were targeting the men.
21. By ‘continuing the mission’ and ‘trying to radio for backup,’ what we really meant is the men were clinging to the boat for dear life.
22. Look, we’re in a war, okay? Drug couriers are ‘terrorists’ at war with the U.S.
23. All of these boaters are lawful military targets because we say they are.
24. But — sorry — again to be clear, we’re not targeting the boaters… just the boats… but if we kill the boaters, that’s okay too.
25. Just trust us. This is lawful.
Oh what a tangled web we weave..... 🕷️
"Russian officials are happy with U.S. foreign policy. They welcomed the National Security Strategy the Trump administration released on Thursday, saying that '[t]he adjustments we’re seeing...are largely consistent with our vision.'"
Of course. Russia was the intended beneficiary, after all.
And in other Ukraine news:
https://substack.com/@georgiafisanick/note/c-185450959 (see the graph and links to the Times article)
The defense authorization bill is up for a vote in both the House and the Senate after reconciliation, according to the NY Times.
Aid for Ukraine is included in the bill, with a reauthorization of $400 million in annual security assistance through the 2027 fiscal year, as the country faces military setbacks in its war with Russia.
To provide some perspective, see the graph below, from a Perplexity query. It shows US military aid to Ukraine over the past 10 years. The scale is in billions of dollars.
The new aid appropriation is back to pre-war levels.
Of course, Trump could always refuse to comply with the law and withhold the funds.
Trump and Republican lawmakers are throwing Ukraine a bone, more like a wishbone, when Ukraine needs the whole damn skeleton. Purple-state candidates can tell independents and Democrats that they support Ukraine, but omit how much.
So much for supporting democracies.
And the New York Times pops out an article on corruption in the Ukraine political establishment - rotten, though not as bad as here. And it's old news, so the timing has to be propaganda linked to the upcoming votes on defense authorization.
The coverage of Trump's saying Zelensky didn't even read the latest version of the "peace deal" at his Kennedy Center event is missing quite a bit of context--no description of the points in the 28-point "peace deal" that was leaked about Trump's self-dealing with the economic proposals with Russia, no discussion of not prosecuting war crimes,...
Then no cover of the leaked phone call where Macron said Trump would betray Zelensky, or if there was, that Macron had walked back the remarks when he side-stepped the remarks. He did not deny.
And then there was Putin completely trashing the plan before the Ukrainian negotiators even got back to Kyiv.
And then there was last night's Russian attack on the dam that supplies the 1,300,000 people in Kharkiv with water causing severe damage.
Indeed they may have had a hand in its formulation.
Putin's puppet performs perfectly.
Poetic
Sadly
I still hold that they helped author it.
I feel like I’m holding my breath under water. I can see the top of the water; I know it’s there. But can I hold my breath long enough to make it to the top?
That’s how I feel right now.
Please, rise to the surface. Take a breath and then another one and continue to find many more. We all need you …
Thank you. There are days when I feel cautiously optimistic. But then I realize all the damage that is being done not only to the US but to the entire world. When Trump is called the most powerful man in the world it is no exaggeration. It’s sort of like in the comic books where a super person has the power to be incredibly good or incredibly evil. Trump has chosen the evil route. He has chosen to do whatever he wants, damn everything else. I doubt he will manage to live to the end of his term but in the mean time he’s being a petulant child knocking down a large Lego city just because he likes the noise it makes. That’s it - it’s all about the noise.
Take a peek at the Re-envisioning America posts that were inspired by Heather's What the heck just happened? video on Saturday here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApscIwDrWJI&t=493s
They may give you an outlet to relieve the stress. It's a group effort.
https://georgiafisanick.substack.com/p/re-envisioning-america-personal-freedoms
The prompt is "I want to live in a country where..."
Be happy it is only water. I feel like we are all underground deep inside a septic tank and we need to call and have the tank pumped out.
Excellent visual, Betsy. That’s exactly how I feel too.
In a video conversation today, Heather and Wajahat Ali both focused on equality.
They agreed as to three ways Americans face our main challenges 1) sheer greed from some, 2) racism from some, and 3) misogyny from some.
Most Americans actually disagree with the some – most are open to equality. But the problem from some keeps seeming intractable due to any of the ways elites push any hierarchies.
Heather and Wajahat both recalled Lyndon Johnson on this back in the days of the 1964 civil rights act and the following year’s voting rights act. Lyndon saw racism’s pull if any politicians could make the poorest white man feel that due to race at least he was better than any of the best black men.
There’s another way, however, equality-destroying hierarchy intrudes, and that’s the one schools foster by the conceits built into testing. Those conceits join so one form of intelligence trounces all others: the one where grouping skills and neutered rationality link up with linear causality and chronology only. Such testing predicts success in college courses, but in ruling out any and all other imaginative skill sets it enthrones one hierarchy permanent over all.
The conceits enthroned in testing thus invite the three other forms of hierarchy Heather and Wajahat discussed today: greed, racism, and misogyny.
In 1968, when I was in high school, part of our Social Studies class that year revolved around equality and Johnson's impact. I remember discussion about the inherent bias in standardized tests and how in turn they affected a student's future, including college admission.
To highlight this, our teacher gave us a short ten-question sample of a test biased in favor of Black culture. I remember it included items about Black history, music, idioms, etc.
I attended a rural school mostly consisting of White farm kids with relatively few Black kids. There were two Black kids in our Social Studies class. And this is why that quiz has stayed with me all these years: the White kids made a poor showing on the test, most scoring only a couple of correct answers with many having 0%. But the Black kids were more than passing - they had 80% or more.
This was a "country" school in central Maryland, not an urban school, where you might expect to find higher exposure to Black culture and history, yet even there the Black students had more knowledge of what had happened in their racial past and present.
I have no way of knowing how these students (or any other Black people in our school) scored on the traditional standardized test, but it was a real awakening for me of the power that such tests could have in determining one's path in life.
What gets me is, not much seems to have changed in nearly sixty years, but what's worse is the deliberation of the inculcated prejudice from the grassroots of American education. I'm under no illusions the so-called overhaul of the educaitonal system and closing of the Department of Education are going to improve things. Quite the contrary.
Your teacher was ahead of her time. Shamefully, we still refuse to “get it”. And that white supremacy is exactly what Project 2025 is implementing now and the useful idiot is the tool to enforce it.
I’d have said so too, Sandra, but in truth, it was part of the curriculum. The course was set up by the county for Social Studies across the high schools (of which there were only four in the whole county; today there are twice that many, including a tech center). I’m sure some teachers were better than others, of course, and I will gladly say I was lucky to have a good one. I had many good teachers throughout my twelve years, in fact. I believe I got a sterling educaiton for that time and place.
Thank you for sharing this interesting personal anecdote.
Great background story to support your conclusion. IMO Trump closing of the Department of Education is going to be one of the major screw-ups he will be remembered for. Republicans want to divide and conquer the 50 States. That requires to dumb down society with vouchers handed out to thousands of private schools around the "Not Untied States." Their goal is to weaken the Federal government to a degree that the corporate take over of each State can be more easily achieved. A vast amount of cheap labor. That is what Brixit was about; divide and conquer. Democrats know that our survival in a complicated, high tech, advanced knowledge world requires that We the People be ONE. Education is a primary requirement for any society to survive. Tribes always have a story teller who teaches the past, present and future goals of the tribe. There will be no survival with 50 tribes. Not even California with it's being a 4t or 5th strongest economy can compete alone against the biggest of all which also his more bombs. The greed among Republican leaders with their degree as a business major blinds them from seeing their is no profits when the State dies.
E pluribus unum.
Diane Ravitch is very good, Kasey, on how much human experience stays outside testing.
Her 2003 book, "The Language Police," makes it clear how regional, racial, and other personally differing experiences are totally shut out of all standardized testing and all corporate-packaged textbooks. This shut-out of the human is part of testing's agenda for a race of elites all deracinated, all void of any of the arts conscious of the human.
And so we have today the predator wealthy, from Putin's Russia to Donald's U.S. Each follows its given scripts for the greed, racism, and misogyny whose doors testing in its humanly blind and stupid ways bid worsen.
I worked (not taught) at a liberal arts college throughout the "70s. I could almost draw a line - circa 1975 - when professors began griping about "teaching to the test."
Around that same time HR introduced faculty evaluations: feedback forms filled in by students at the end of a semester, gauging the effectiveness of the instructor.
What the results did was accelerate grade inflation and reinforce teaching-to-the-test. The original idea of universities was to assign texts and exercises for students to cover outside of class, with class time devoted to discussion and analysis of the material assigned.
The feedback system was a bureaucratic response to student complaints: "She didn't ask test questions based on the book" and "He asked questions that weren't in the book."
Poor evaluations affected merit-based raises and promotions, which often brought untenured professors into line. The business departments of many colleges were more interested in the almighty-dollar of tuition rather than awarding any diplomas based on academic excellence.
Not to paint all institutions of higher learning with the same brush, but as more and more colleges are now businesses rather than bastions of academics, the dumbing down of America is full speed ahead.
I despair at this loss of value for thinking: sure, art for art's sake, but what about learning for learning's sake?
p.s. And thanks for the mention of Diane Ravitch’s book - I will look it up.
That’s why CRT is so frightening to those who promote white supremacy.
I love that quote. Johnson saw what Berry Goldwater started in the Republican party; the "southern strategy" to win votes. “If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you.” ― Lyndon B. Johnson. Trump's campaign flipped it to "convince the lowest man he's better than the best woman... "
The counter to that, sir, is that the idiom you mention is culturally (via religion) taken as a given. Look no further than the Christian Bible to find that.
I think you just explained the movement by Trump and his Nazis toward Christian Nationalism.
I thought Nixon was responsible for the ‘Southern Strategy,’ aided by Pat Buchanan, a right-wing religious zealot.
Nixon was the first to win using it. However, Goldwater used it and won some States in the south doing so. He argued against the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as not being within the federal powers but stepping on powers of the states. Some Republicans today like to claim it is not used. After Obama won twice all but one Republican candidate in 2016 did not use it. The one that did won the nomination and the White House; Trump. He won twice expressing hate and fear (build a wall) which is what the Southern Strategy is all about.
I think that was always the assumption. If race is emphasized, women of that race think they are included. Woman's place in white supremacy? See the 14 words. Came in the second verse, an afterthought. At the bottom of the hierarchy.
Ouch.
LBJ knew of what he spoke. Just a lack of melanin makes one the cat’s meow. How pathetically ignorant. Seems a lack of melanin makes at least one prone to spray himself orange.
I’d say it is the ‘old serpent’ of ‘modern’ scientific reductionist-materialistic thinking. This stimulates “part-thinking”, thinking in terms of separation and in ‘usefulness’, and very effectively counters holistic “we”-thinking, connected-thinking and spirituality, a basic need of human beings.
Divide and conquer, is it not.
Many creatures of the animal kingdoms need "we" thinking, too, Dutch.
Even if they lack spoken-written language, such as humans have, or had, before testing so drastically narrowed, dehumanized those resources.
Hi Phil,
As someone who managed to get into a good liberal arts college back in the early 70s thanks to high SAT scores and despite very erratic grades in high school, I can only say, "you're right!"
Scholarly virtue and serious learning have nothing to do with multiple-choice test-taking skills. I figure a precocious interest in poker and backgammon was more useful to me than serious study.
Luckily I discovered Tolstoy later on.
I had a conversation with a representative of my university Friday. When I went to college, the state was invested in the education of its children. Not any more. She explained the legislature has cut and cut and cut appropriations to the university and is now pushing vocational education.
When will congress on the whole grow a pair? They have the power to stop tariffs, develop reasonable and equitable budgets and enforce national policy with their power of approval. It’s not only Trump and his staff but a party of enablers not live up to their oath of office.
Not to mention the Supreme Court
The Roberts six are the primary problem. I believe Alito is writing the script which Trump follows and creates the cases that the other five will join with him to alter our Constitution in ways which we must Amend. After Obama won it scared the hell out of these Nazis. Their southern strategy of validating hate and fear to rally enough votes to win the White House failed. Then one year after Obama swore the Oath the Roberts five handed down Citizens United (2011). That money is a part of the reason why Trump has won twice. Winning with a felon candidate is why these Nazis now feel secure in all these bad deeds they are doing. Killing innocent people? Then after releasing every other kill video they pick one they refuse to show? Murder, clear as day, more clear in this video. This all hangs on the door to the Supreme Court. We need to inform people that when they vote for President they are voting for Justices who will stay for life. Thomas may retire before Trump's coach turns back into a pumpkin to allow a younger corporate replacement part to fill his seat. If one of the Democrat appointees leaves a vacant seat then the Roberts Seven will become that much bolder.
The fact We the Empathetic People have no possible way to remove the lifetime-appointed Christonazis from the Supreme Court is one of the primary reasons I say, as I do below, "our ship has already sunk." That said, Mr. Killackey's analysis -- Citizens United (to nullify the Constitution and murder the Republic) as the racio-misogynist reaction of our Hitler-worshiping masters to a Black president in the White(men's) House -- is so irrefutably accurate, it will be denied only by those who remain too deluded to recognize the absolute bottomlessness of the Evil those same financially omnipotent tyrants have unleashed literally to perish us forever from the earth. (Let us hope more of us are now at last moved to acknowledge the equally irrefutable circumstantial evidence of multi-generation ruling-class treason that leads from the (traitorous) end of Reconstruction in 1878 through the Banker's Plot of 1933, the eager post-Stalingrad adoption of legions of Nazi war criminals as comrades-at-arms and the coup of 22 November 1963 to culminate in the 77-million vote by the Malignantly Moronic Majority that reduced us to eternal odium as our species' first deliberately Failed State.) Meanwhile, Mr. Killackey, I salute you in gratitude for your exceptional valor, just as I again salute Dr. Richardson for the courage and determination it takes to maintain a realm committed to genuine First Amendment freedom.
"...multi-generation ruling-class treason..." Well put. I once said here that Daniel Shays was an American war hero and boy was I pushed back for doing so. As you well know he was a Minute Man who served as a Captain in the Revolutionary War and who like so many farmers fought at the Siege of Boston, both Battles of Saratoga, and the Battle of Stony Point. He was wounded in action and received a sword from the Marquis de Lafayette. Then after the war he saw banks foreclosing on farms and people sent to debtors' prison. IOW, the rich and well connected acting just the same as King George did before the war. He then became known for leading Shays' Rebellion which closed banks. Under the Articles of Confederation there was no standing army among the other States to quash the Rebellion. Shays' Rebellion resulted in the Constitutional Convention three months later. That resulted in the standing army we have today to, as the Preamble puts so well, "...in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility,..." Today Trump claims, in so many words, he is using the armed forces to insure domestic Tranquility. The rich and well connected are with him as he cuts taxes for the rich. I salute you Loren Bliss.
Never. Thus we shall remain what we have become: not only a Failed State, but the first nation in our species' entire history in which a Malignantly Moronic Majority of the voters deliberately, gleefully, vindictively, hatefully chose to destroy their nation by reducing it to Failed State status. And given the new national security policy and the violence with which the Regime intends to perpetuate that Failed State status, I no longer see (any) possibility for liberation; not now, not ever. But humanitarian honor nevertheless demands we fight on as best we can....
Loren, don’t give up the ship! We have plenty to fight for and against. We cannot succumb to this regime’s every whim. They are a danger to us and those abroad but WE THE PEOPLE have more power than you think. Invite yourself to listen to the founders of the organization, Indivisble, Ezra and Leah. They are dynamic and thousands upon thousands of us follow their lead about protesting. Look, realize that things could get worse but that doesn’t mean we cave in. It means that we fight harder and harder. www.indivisible.org.
Marlene...Like the West Virginia at Pearl Harbor, our ship has already been sunk. What objectively defines our situation as hopeless is the hitherto-unacknowledged truth that we the empathetic citizenry – as never before in our national history – are forever denied (any and all) legal protections formerly provided us by the armed and therefore defense-capable elements of local, state and federal government. We are not only abandoned; we are now the Regime's designated prey.
Thus – particularly since the ruling class has further ensured our utter defenselessness by denying us the vital training provided by mandatory military service and methodically fostering a climate of anti-Second-Amendment hysteria – there can be no (effective) resistance to the Regime when – not if – it fulfills its pledge to expand its resumption of Hitler’s Holocaust to include all of us it deems “enemies within.” (See also my response to Ally House.)
Nor are these precursors of apocalypse limited to our deliberately Failed Nation; they are prevalent everywhere on the globe. We the (last remaining) Empathetic People are to be the ultimate targets of our species’ newest, ever-more-dominant subspecies, homo sapiens inhumanus. We are thus reduced to the powerlessness that defined First Nations folk and other targets of ecogenocide. Which means our only option to escape the humiliating doom intended by our masters is to continue resisting and, when our terminal moment arrives, refuse to surrender.
Loren, we have to recognize a failure in our system: in the 2024 Presidential Election, the largest block of the voting eligible population DID NOT CAST A BALLOT. I don't want to chase exact numbers (I've done it before, and since numbers and I do not get along this is simplified), but the breakdown to 32% Harris, 33% trump, 35% did not vote is fairly close. The explanation for that is multi faceted, from voter apathy (my vote doesn't count) to voter exclusion (removal from voting rolls without notification, inability to vote because of voting locations or the lack of the ability to leave work to vote in person to access of ballot drop boxes being reduced) to not being able to vote for either ffpotus or a woman of color whose laugh irritated them.
Ally...That my sunken-West-Virginia analogy above is the ultimate truth of our situation is proven by the evidence – too vast to summarize in this limited space – that our nation’s oath-breaking military and law-enforcement agencies have been irremediably subverted to the Christonazi cause. This is further underscored by two equally apocalyptic truths: that the nation’s longstanding “Better Dead than Red” pledge to destroy the world rather than surrender eternally kills any possibility of 1945-type liberation by external forces; and that – as proven by the demographics of this November’s vote – not even presence of humanitarian candidates will prompt the white majority to abandon its misogyno-racist hatefulness. (See: https://www.vitalcitynyc.org/articles/mamdanis-victory-and-memories-of-dinkins and https://apnews.com/article/poll-election-2025-demographics-voters-latino-black-b59518a2c8d2f37f857fe1ac32995b9a plus https://msmagazine.com/2025/11/03/2025-election-results/ ) In short, whites remain reliably nazified – and thus will always be so – with white males about 15 percent more fanatical than white females. As a consequence, my own belief is our only possible “rescue” is the total collapse of modern technology – which in all probability will be (no) rescue at all because it will not only exterminate our entire species, but poison our Mother Earth to everlasting Precambrian lifelessness.
The party has no excuse. Evil action for power. As old as humanity, but now with threats to our existence on planet Earth…
I think they plan to plead ignorance, if they are ever held to account. It will be a variation of the Nazi "I was only following orders" excuse. They will be removed from power, but they won't care. They will get their pensions and settle into a little coterie of their former comrades, living the good life and never being sanctioned in any way for their complicity.
And can't agent orange just pardon the lot of them, keeping them from facing any charges?
12th of Never, I believe.
Time For D’s To Go Mad Max On GOP/Nazis
The House Rules committee just voted to NOT condemn fascism In a New Republic piece, “A fascist is one whose lust for money or power is combined with such an intensity of intolerance toward those of other races, parties, classes, religions, cultures, regions or nations as to make him ruthless in his use of deceit or violence to attain his ends,” wrote Vice President Henry A. Wallace for The New York Times in 1944
Pretty well sums it up for the Nazi/GOP Perry Bacon in his podcast(https://bit.ly/4nZ1Izx) talks about it’s time for D’s to take their gloves off and begin an anti-corruption campaign to salvage the country from the Nazi/GOP who has shown that it’s ok for immoral conduct, disgusting political retribution, reprehensible immigrant policy, political monetary opportunism, attempted government oligarchic takeover, rigging elections and persistent gerrymandering, attempting to buy elected offices, abuse of executive power, abuse of SCOTUS power The American public has seen and had enough
36 House Nazis are not seeking re-election in 2026 They’re seeing the writing on the wall The jig is up….the MAGA façade has been ripped away and there is no turning back But a unanimous House vote for the Epstein file release cannot wipe away decades of power grabbing politics with nothing in return to the American people Vote the Nazis out until they have a moral compass if that's at all possible because I think this Nazi group is beyond hope
And do it with tenacity and a "no holds barred" approach No reaching across the aisle SCOTUS enlargement to 13 Meaningful election reform to eliminate gerrymandering and other red state anti voting legislation Repeal of past tax legislation and 50% tax on billionaires in order to pay down national deficit Restitution of a Constitutional mandated bimetallic standard(gold/silver standard) Voiding all Cheeto executive orders Restitution of Biden legislation Impeachment of Cheeto and his cabinet including Just Dance Vance Begin grifter tax on misinformation sources Change the pardon power
If the SCOTUS is enlarged to thirteen justices (as I think it should be) the arch-conservative members will retire - not just Thomas and Alito, but perhaps the rest as well, with the exception of Amy Rabbit Barrett.
With Cheeto as president, it's the perfect time for Nazis Thomas and Alito to retire so Cheeto can appoint another couple of corrupt Federalist judges to the court
I could see that they (meaning the puppet-masters like Vought and Miller) would approve of that, younger appointees to keep control that much longer. But my fervent hope is that we've learned the justices are not infallible. They aren't gods and are as subject to wanting power, prestige, wealth as are many of us peons. It's time to enlarge the slate to 13, to limit the terms on the bench, and perhaps have a rotation of Chief Justice.
Absolutely
Well said, repeat ad nauseam
I’m far from a foreign policy expert, but it seems to me that the main reason Trump is targeting Venezuelan vessels is to try to provoke Maduro. If Maduro gives him any excuse to “retaliate” in “defense” of the U.S., he will—in hopes of removing Maduro and installing a right-wing government friendly to American interests. Then the U.S. can take their oil. This whole rules of war scandal means nothing to the Trump cabal. Just a distraction in the pursuit of their ultimate goal—controlling the oil reserves in the whole Western hemisphere.
I see your reading more fit to the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz-Rice cabal of 20 years ago, Heidi.
Then the fossil fuelers ran the U.S. Today an even more dehumanized set of elites has coalesced internationally, all bent on expanding their authoritarianism for much more wealth for them, the cynical few, much less for the bottom 95%.
They still include the fossil fuelers, but now also the social media billionaires, AI, and crypto.
Phil, that’s a good point and one more argument in favor of my opinion that we Boomers need to take a much smaller role in governance and policy setting. I’m 74 and tend to see things through a 20-30 year old lens. That said, Trump et al do seem determined to carve the world into early 20th century spheres of influence, and he at least seems fixated on fossil fuels. Desire to control Venezuelan oil may still have a part in the tech bros thinking, both to keep Trump happily distracted and to provide power for their vast data centers.
Many thanks Heather for your cogent analysis and update. Note also that, under the legal doctrine of command responsibility, Hegseth and Trump could be held culpable for the extrajudicial execution of civilians, a war crime and a criminal act.
And Trump has immunity for "official acts". These acts are illegal and thus not under that umbrella
The military could not find the larger vessel??? With all the satellite coverage, all the radar, all the submarines we have in that carrier battle group, I find that simply not credible. It is either a lie, or our military is truly led by incompetents.
Or the larger vessel did not exist.
If so, those boats were definitely no threat... headed in the wrong direction (south) and not carrying enough fuel to reach the US. The lawlessness of our military's actions is still patently clear. We are the war criminals now.
The reporting increasingly suggests that we are indeed.
The core problem is the country accepts the Trump administration's false premise that it is going after drug runners, then tries lamely to explain why it is wrong to fight drug trafficking this way. But that's not what the administration is doing. They aren't going after the "worst of the worst." They have no idea who they're deporting and no idea who they're killing on those boats. As for the second strike on Sept. 2, it is hard to avoid the assumption that it was to eliminate potential witnesses who could testify in court who they are and what they were doing on that boat. Since Hegseth has no idea, he has no intention of risking it.
If the Trump administration was fighting drug runners & criminals, Trump would not have pardoned a man convicted of facilitating the smuggling of 400 tons of cocaine into the country nor other convicts
Ain't that a key question!
I'm please you use the phrase "second strike," as opposed to the casual (and dismissive) "double tap," as if it's a video game or something.
Beat me to it. A "double tap" is not descriptive of this incident, nor is the incident one in which the common usage of "double tap" is used. In my training, a "double tap" is two rounds fired in immediate succession. I don't think guided missiles fired in that fashion qualify.
Anybody who believes anything that chump says is a fool to start with. The man is a proud liar, having learned from Mein Kampf, section on the big lie. The agenda is the same. Power over the vulnerable, and money, money, money. The most useful tool to achieve power, just like Jesus said, hahahaha
It is unclear so far as I know whether Trump read Mien Kampf , but he did apparently own a book of Hitlers speeches. His ex-wife said he kept it at his bedside.
Back in the first Gulf War the GOP was able to manipulate what people saw in the media and this has never stopped. Of course the video needs to be made public whether it's palatable or not. If you are older and remember ten minutes of Vietnam on television nightly fifty years ago you will probably concur. People like Hesgeth are poison to U.S. society in or out of the military. He'll bring the country down ultimately.
Seems like the media has been played by power ever since Reagan. Muzzled and in-bedded.