Don't let anyone frighten you. I took part in a protest at the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas on Monday....the local ABC station gave it very little coverage and showed a picture of about 10 people at the rally. The truth is there were close to 250-300 people protesting. You can't even trust the usual news outlets to be correct. G-d help us.
The Oligarchs have taken over much of the corporate media--networks, radio, print and many podcasts and now they are taking over the Federal government, department by department.
If we had only known in advance that all of this was going to happen. /S
One of my husband's favorite saying is "the only way to prove to a fool they are wrong is let them have their way". Sadly the consequences of those who voted for this monster will fall on ALL OF US....and the diehard MAGAS will never own their own demise. I am beyond words watching this country get decimated 💔😢
My impression of Lester Holt is that he leads with what is getting the most clicks on Facebook and closes with a “feel good”. Nothing of depth or substance in the middle. I once had some confidence in him but his nightly news could be put together by seventh graders.
Frankly, the same can be said for ABC and David Muir. No confidence at all in the major networks now reporting. CBS may be the best of the three. That's why I lean heavily to BBC and NPR.
I stopped watching ANY network news (NBC,CBS, ABC, CNN) back in the summer and don't miss it. Independent media is now where I get my news, plus some overseas, international media. American mainstream media has sold its soul to the devils in charge now. I prefer to READ my news now, not watch it on TV. I've given up the WaPo and still subscribe to the NYT and the local papers (in Atlanta and in my little burg) because I do like to keep tabs of stuff locally. I fear objective journalism in the US has taken a quantum leap backwards, and some of the big names from the past are more than likely tut-tutting from the "other side". Where else in mainstream media could one find a similar clear and concise recounting of the Trump regime's (I refuse to call it an "administration") capitulation to Putin and Russia than right here in HCR's Letter for today??
That is the reason I stopped watching network news. Network news is all headlines and very little if any, background story or discussion of the topic. I now watch PBS News Hour for substance. I come away from the News Hour better informed.
Even Facebook and Google are calling the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America. AP seems to be the only major news source to stand up to trump even at the expense of being locked out of Air Force One and other meetings. From what you have said, it seems that ABC has thrown in the towel, too.
There are actually cartographic societies that are charged with cartography. It would be good to find out the history and bring these groups to the fore of the conversation.
So far, System1's MapQuest still displays Gulf of Mexico. But of course, they have such a tiny share of the online mapping market, they are not noticed nor do they have much to lose by resisting.
Yes Sinclair are a large part of the arsonists who are fomenting these actions. We need to regulate who can own stations and how many. Then break up the monolithic mindset. There used to be rules against consolidation of media…Newt and Bill got rid of them! Bring them back! Monopolies are not safe!
I agree. I attended a couple protests here in downtown Columbus but didn't hear much - if anything - about those protests on the news. The (illegitimate) government is already controlling the media. I wish people would wake up.
Yes it is. Our glorious VP Justa hails from Ohio. He makes me want to puke. Columbus (where I live) is pretty much blue, tho, and the Columbus Dispatch is fairly left leaning. Yay.
Yes they are... sadly. Ohio was one of the early gerrymandered states. It used to be a reliably "bell-weather" state. The early alarm was sounded, but it fell on mostly deaf ears. I'm talking over a decade ago.
The same thing happened here on Cape Cod. Falmouth had a very large demonstration on 2/17
of maybe 200 plus people. Since I was there, I absolutely know. The Cape Cod Times photos totally minimized it reporting as if the maga demo down the street of maybe 6-7 people was equal. I was as you might imagine beyond livid. And this is Massachusetts.
We need one of our alternative media sites to monitor all the protests and then help report. The protesting would be more effective if it was more organized and the reporting would be better.
The small protests with a few hundred are no less important then ones with several thousand people, but the impact is not as great if there's no reporting.
Well then. You’ve evidently stumbled into a pro-democracy, pro freedom, pro Constitutional Republic, forum, my man. The bootlicking, neo-Nazi psychopath, Nazi tech-broligarchy group is thatta way. Kindly see your fascist self out.
"...Case in point is the current [upcoming as of Oct 30 2024] election. Both presidential candidates are proposing tax and spending giveaways to curry favor with voters. The nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget projects that Vice President Kamala Harris’ proposals will increase the debt by $3.95 trillion over the next 10 years, which pales in comparison to Donald Trump’s plans, which will increase it by $7.75 trillion..."
Almost double under Trump (1.96x). Under Biden we were getting twice as much good things like restoring and building new infrastructure instead of seeing falling bridges and much more disaster relief from a more effective FEMA that, if anything did more of the already finished, as well as planning longer term improvements in Red States (making me think it should be seen as trying to earn votes from Republicans by doing the things their representatives voted against, but still claimed Republican credit for).
My guess is we got double the benefit from Biden's debt increase (badly needed to make up for previous neglect), where we are likely to be paying double (or 1.96 times as much), for less than half of the benefits to anyone but billionaires.
I actually think the world, and even the US alone, will get far less than half the benefit, even far below of what we all got under any previous Republican administration.
While it is possible that calling on the military to rescue us will create more than a few unintended consequences, it's important to recognize that the military is not a monolith, and among its ranks, especially the educated ranks, are many true patriots who take their vows to the Constitution very seriously. Some of these commanders are public figures and have made their negative opinion of our PINO plain. And that was before the past month. If anyone had any doubts about Trumpmusk's competence or motivations, they must have been multiplied by their actions since the inauguration.
In a nutshell, I blame the Democrats for not doing what needed to be done.
Call me crazy but I believe we were dealt a hand and we did not play it. And by we, I mean Biden and the Democrats.
Under the SCOTUS presidential immunity ruling, a sweeping executive order to clean house of all January 6th co-conspirators should have occurred, swiftly and abruptly. There were mountains of evidence of treason by these people. Mountains. We had VIDEO of these people. Eye witnesses. Ad nauseum. Meanwhile, we held quaint “committee hearings” and Merrick Garland sat on his hands for YEARS letting the cancer of fascist neo Nazi propaganda to metastasize.
Biden et al should have arrested and imprisoned all members of congress who took part in the January 6th insurrection and who perpetuated the Big Lie, starting with the head traitor.
Then let the punishments fit the treasonous crimes. All you have to do is read the Constitution to know what that punishment is.
ALL of this could’ve been avoided.
Would that have been a revolutionary act? Would that have started a civil war? Oh, sure. Perhaps.
But rather that than THIS psychopathic destruction.
SCOTUS would never have let BIDEN get by with those things! The whole point is that they reserved the job of deciding WHAT constitutes 'official acts' for themselves....so they can parcel out rulings they way THEY want. And THEY want Trump or anyone else who will implement THEIR vision..white, christian, male rule.
They knew he was too honest to take advantage of that ruling. If they even remotely thought he would act like tRump, they would have never made that decision.
That’s exactly it. There was a hand to play. He didn’t play it. We all knew how this would play out if Trump won the election. And here we are. Mueller adhering to a Nixon era “memo” not to indict a sitting president? Utterly feckless and asinine. All of it was feckless and asinine.
These Nazis needed to be drive hard and put away wet, as the saying goes. We needed to run over them just as they’ve done to us, for the GREATER GOOD. Instead we brought a knife to a gun fight. Again and again.
While I know we are in a right wing propaganda hell, I’m not entirely convinced Trump won legitimately this time. Hear me out, please: At the risk of sounding like “them,” let’s take a look at some key differences: Elon Musk, the richest man on the planet had his hands in it this time, to the tune of a quarter billion dollars, as did Putin, openly this time, just blatant “talks.” Utterly insane. He never once won the popular vote and this time he did? Plus, this time he won ALL the swing states? I’m not buying it, and let’s not forget that Trump admitted on camera several times that the fix was in. It reeks of a rigged election, does it not?
I disagree...they protected their interests by saying only the courts can decide what an 'official act' is..no one but a Trump-like democracy destroyer will get away with anything. Biden knew this, of course.
There is much to agree with. Sarah Kenzdior's book They Knew was a very well presented gathering of information where she laid out the case that tRump would not be held accountable since he lost the election. She pointed out that the establishment would not prosecute him and his congressional helpers. Why, you ask? Rachel Maddow explained that in her book Prequel and podcast ULTRA. America has a history of letting off seditionists due to the belief in the first amendment. Our devotion to rights is allowing one side to abuse those rights by saying untrue things with no consequences for lying. Fox and the right wing outlets should been criminally charged.
Most just remember the "Now go out and make me do it," as the part that the petitioners needed to earn enough public support for it to succeed, in the current case to get the careless, unaware of the personal and other consequences, Trump voters and all that didn't bother to vote, to join a coalition of all opposed to the policies he is enabling (and who I would hope to look for the most supported goals of all in the regions).
An earlier version from Lincoln, "With public sentiment, nothing can fail. Without it, nothing can succeed."
At a meeting with one of our Congress member's staff (there in a personal role), an attendee asked about forming a "shadow cabinet." I didn't get a chance to talk to her as I was in the overflow area, but would have suggested using "People's Cabinet" as more inclusive coalition.
Jessie, donthecon was impeached twice in first term and repubs wouldn’t vote to convict. Mueller report was discredited by Barr. Donthecon put 3 lying magats on the Supreme Court. Colorado wanted to keep him off the 2024 ballot and the court over rode it.
I know it is alarming and also yes FOX News has been part of the military culture for along time. That never ever should have happened. There used to be a military news and radio service as in Good Morning Vietnam and other films and books that used that type of service for a narrative. I think Bonhoeffer and his cohorts like The White Rose Society felt similar reactions . Vera Britten’s Testament to Youth records the WWI issues of before, during, and after. And in Hitler’s Germany pacifists were ostracized and encamped.
One hopes for some sort of non military action to change the flow but sometimes it seems there are no other options. Though I would posit we had them but didn’t use as in the 24 th Amendment or were blocked as in the two impeachments. Like an elderly body whose medical with a plethora of chronic conditions eventually the cascade happens and the human dies.
How is it that FOX is so compelling, and believable by military personnel. The military should be the ones protecting truth (or at least knowing what that is). Who and what are they fighting for?
I will suggest at the onset that I am not very knowledgeable about international politics but I’ll toss my opinionated slab of political meat on the table. I believe war must be avoided especially when no alternatives are any good. When the diminutive dictator Putin threatened Ukraine with invasion in 2022 if NATO didn’t proclaim Ukraine ineligible for NATO membership, that was a no brainer. Ukraine was arguably not prepared for NATO and it isn’t today so why not have given the dictator what he asked for. Membership could have been considered in the future. But we in the West had to snub our nose at Putin. We had to make comparisons to Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement of Hitler post invasion. I’ve always felt that this was faulty reasoning even if a defacto war already existed in eastern Ukraine. There were no good options. However, saving hundreds of thousands of lives might have been a less bad one.
After the breakup of the Soviet Union, there was ambiguity about how much NATO, as a defensive pac, should grow to the east. And there was a brief time under Chairman Gorbachev that seemed to be ushering in a western-style and friendly Russian government. The problem with Russia is that it has never had a representative democracy in modern times to model. It went from an absolute monarchy to totalitarianism then to a brief experiment in democracy under a weak and corrupt first president in the name of Boris Yeltsin who then groomed an up and coming dictator.
Even though NATO is purely defensive, to an insecure dictator, it seemed threatening. Also, Ukraine is partially within the Russian geographical orbit. Why didn’t the West come to the aid of Chechnya when Russia invaded that nation and bombed the hell out of it? Why? Because Chechnya is in the Russian orbit. Dominant cultures dominate their neighbors. Historically, the US has practiced the same inclinations as other dominant cultures. Admittedly, Ukraine falls within both the Russian orbit but its western side is also quite European. This political situation is nuanced and ripe for what has happened; war. A pro Russian Ukrainian government was ousted in “Maidan Revolution” of 2014 and Russia blamed Western influence. A perfect intro for the first Russian invasion.
Now the US has elected the worst person to ever hold this office. He is a moron whose motivation is total destruction of the status quo mixed with self-aggrandizement and graft on an incomprehensible scale and who is a divider instead of a uniter. Donald Trump is clearly a traitor to the American constitution. He has scorned our European allies and befriended the worst of humankind. The European Union and NATO without participation of the US, should send arms and a new European army to save Ukraine. War might have been avoided at one time but now it’s urgent to defeat Russia with whatever it takes. At this point in time, I don’t know if the United States will survive this grand electoral mistake. If the Courts do not stop Trump, and/or if he refuses Court findings we slip into a 21st century civil war or we capitulate to dictatorship. It’s not a pleasant thought.
Russia shares borders with 16 countries and has actively sought to undermine democratic processes in all of them. The professor has mentioned the installation of a puppet regime in Ukraine which was ousted in a violent uprising. Putin has used the excuse of state oppression of ethnic Russian minorities in Georgia (the breakaway provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia) and Moldova (Transnistria). There's pro-Russian governing parties in Georgia and Belarus. The Russians have tried to intervene in EU elections - https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/may/18/disappearing-ink-fake-polls-and-voter-eu-fears-as-russian-propaganda-ads-target-euro-elections
For Heaven's sakes, they've even influenced US elections as the Mueller Report confirmed. I know about Russian paranoia about NATO encroachment. I remember when the Russian poet, Yevgeny Yevtushenko warned the west: " In Russia, borders are not simply borders." But what we're seeing today is Russian imperialism. Putin doesn't want a peace deal with Ukraine. He wants to absorb the country into Russia. Time and time again, the west has learned that giving in to Putin is a huge mistake.
Ukraine’s glory has not yet died, nor her freedom,
Upon us, my young brothers, fate shall yet smile.
Our enemies will perish, like dew in the morning sun,
And we too shall rule, brothers, in our own land.
The Republican party's fealty to Putin precedes Donald Trump, Tulsi Gabbard, Marco Rubio, Pete Hegseth, Stephen Miller et al. It goes back to the 1990s when former KKK Grand Wizard and perennial GOP gadfly David Duke sold the White Supremacist Christian extremist GOP base on Russia as the exemplar of Christian White Supremacist Nationalism and Putin as their savior.
When it became clear that US ambassador to Great Britain Joseph Kennedy was a flaming Hitler fanboy, Pres. FDR recalled Kennedy from London as unfit to serve. Now the POTUS is a flaming fascist fanboy.
"They Say America First But They Mean America Next" - Woody Guthrie
Lin-You put your finger on the underlying issue related to the U.S. policies toward Russia. It’s difficult for most to understand the role that white supremacy plays as the world struggles to find peace.
Trump’s ability to seat in the Oval Office twice now is the result of an ongoing backlash against the idea of “equality and justice for all”.
Russia has been instrumental in stirring up fear that people with white skin in the U.S. will soon be a “minority”.
There has been one successful coup in American history. Watch American Coup: Wilmington 1898 on You Tube. It confirms your astute observation about what’s really happening today.
Having Black men sitting in the seats of president, defense secretary, speaker of the house, attorney general etc. means the end of the America as it has been.
If you want to know how white make grievance operates this film tells the honest truth about how white supremacy is driving world affairs and American elections check out the details involving America’s successful coup. The media, politicians and big business are the stars.
Putin wants to resurrect the Russian Empire. He wants to be an "Alexander the Great". The KGB was his university.
Putin is a vicious beast. A beast ONLY understands strength and recoils only when threatened with overwhelming force. Trump is his toy to play with because Trump thinks he is a great negotiator. But he is just a clown.
Putin could have been stopped in 2014. But Obama did want to go to war. THAT was the red line. Putin had a taste of what he could get away with and that just whetted his appetite.
Putin is also a patient beast. He will negotiate with his toy, reset the Ukrainian boundaries, undermine democracy in Ukraine, ultimately making Ukraine a vassal. He will be encouraged by this success. Then on to Finland, Poland or wherever there is a sign of weakness. He is like a wolf that follows a herd of elk. When he sees one limping or running too slow, he will attack and eat.
My great hope is that this debacle created by our fascist regime will truly unite Europe to make NATO even stronger. Unlike America, WWII was fought on European soil. The scars of aggression by people like Putin are all over the landscape. Americans don't have those physical reminders.
So for what it's worth, IMO, in a useless exercise in retrospective overthink, I suggest that the proper thing for the "West" to do in 2014 was to immediately accept Ukraine in to the European family - including NATO.
There is no negotiating with a beast. There is only a choice: giving up and being its tool - or scaring it away.
For now, it is our lot to be embarrassed and viewed as foolish tools.
Putin is also a wounded beast. His invasion of Ukraine was spectacularly incompetent. He assumed his tanks and armoured vehicles would roll into Kyiv and topple the Ukrainian government in three days. Instead, they ran out of fuel, leading Russian soldiers to request, commandeer and steal diesel to continue progress. The conscripted soldiers were forced to steal chickens, and special forces soldiers break into shops to loot food. That was just the beginning. By the end of 2022, the first year of the campaign, Putin had lost 1,500 officers including 160 generals and colonels. The Russian economy is failing. The rouble has lost half its value and inflation is rising. The economy is also overheating because of the huge military budget. They're using prisoners for forced labour in factories. Bloomberg estimates that Russia has lost almost half its national wealth fund. Export bans for petrol and sugar have been introduced to secure domestic supply. Strict capital controls have been put in place to prevent the exodus of private funds from the country and keep the ruble from freefalling. Even so, there are still reports of billions of US dollars being transferred out of the country. Putin needs this peace deal so there's really no need to offer him sweeteners.
I'd also credit the fortunate growth in Ukrainians understanding of possibilities and huge increase in resolve by the 2nd invasion. They were portrayed as somewhat hesitant and internally divided, not sure of what the best course and what was possible. By the 2nd invasion they were so much more appreciative of what they could be, and ferociously prepared to defend it. The harder they were attacked the harder their resolve and strength in fighting back.
Putin's mistake was in thinking a bully can surprise and overwhelm a portion of seemingly weaker country, then come back and try to grab the rest of it.
Sometimes the once bullied become much stronger and determined to never be bullied again.
Yes. And Obama had run on ending wars, not starting new ones. That being said, when Putin took Crimea, he was taking the first of many steps to expanding his Russian Empire. It's easy to look back and second guess. But the fact remains that he got away with a land grab. It tasted great. He paid hardly any real price. So he went for more.
I'd rather see Timothy Snyder's opinion than me trying to get the facts straight. To me, it seems the conditions were very different in 2014 and would have been much harder without greater unity of purpose in Ukraine and especially with my old party sabotaging everything Obama would try to do (even if it was what they would do if they could get the credit for it).
"...This all began as an internal Ukrainian crisis in November 2013, when President Viktor Yanukovych rejected a deal for greater integration with the European Union (here's why this was such a big deal), sparking mass protests, which Yanukovych attempted to put down violently. Russia backed Yanukovych in the crisis, while the US and Europe supported the protesters.
Since then, several big things have happened. In February, anti-government protests toppled the government and ran Yanukovych out of the country. Russia, trying to salvage its lost influence in Ukraine, invaded and annexed Crimea the next month. In April, pro-Russia separatist rebels began seizing territory in eastern Ukraine. The rebels shot down Malaysian Airlines flight 17 on July 17, killing 298 people, probably accidentally. Fighting between the rebels and the Ukrainian military intensified, the rebels started losing, and, in August, the Russian army overtly invaded eastern Ukraine to support the rebels. This has all brought the relationship between Russia and the West to its lowest point since the Cold War. Sanctions are pushing the Russian economy to the brink of recession, and more than 2,500 Ukrainians have been killed..."
That doesn't seem too different from other sources and should give clues to why it would have been far more difficult back then.
before the attack on Pearl Harbor, the US was pretty much isolationist which is what they seem to be trending towards now. Me first, the heck with everyone else. It was the president (FDR? my history isn't so good) who was encouraging Congress to send aid; and not until the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor did we get involved. I wonder how many people knew that the nazis had implanted spies into our country and were sinking our merchant ships on our East Coast?
Putin’s 2007 Munich Security conference speech is where he laid these plans. This belligerence was made possible by soaring oil prices post 911, as Russia was able to pay off Western loans by 2004. 2004 began investments in their military. But corruption has kept that growth and strength in. Check. While the west was developing new communications technology, Russian FSB was learning how to manipulate the population of adversarial countries like the EU in America and especially Ukraine the war in Ukraine represents where Russia started working first to influence a foreign population through cyber weapons delivered through social media. I think it’s important to educate Americans that the Ukraine war started in 2014 not 2022 2022 was just the invasion to try to take Kia out and the rest of the country so we think the war is three years. It’s actually a lot more than that.
He's a bad lot. The FSB has been protecting a cybercriminal gang called the Evil Corp which has been carrying out attacks on NATO countries. The UK National Crime Agency says that they used family links with Russia’s domestic spy agency to protect its members after being targeted by US authorities. Trump will probably invite them to join DOGE and help wreak havoc on US federal agencies.
“— Both during the run-up to and shortly after, the launch of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, the [2007] speech was revisited with some political analysts and commentators arguing it to have been a revelation of Putin's intentions that was at the time misread by the West and not taken seriously enough. According to Andrew A. Michta's opinion published by The Wall Street Journal in August 2022, Western leaders had failed in 2007 to recognize the speech "amounted to a declaration of war on the West." —“
And,
“— Putin later made other speeches that were called follow-ups to the Munich speech, including:
The 2013 Valdai speech of Vladimir Putin in Sochi on 19 September 2013
The Crimean speech of Vladimir Putin to the Federal Assembly of Russia on 18 March 2014
The 2014 Valdai speech of Vladimir Putin in Sochi on 24 October 2014
The 2015 U. N. General Assembly speech of Vladimir Putin in New York on 28 September 2015 ("I'm urged to ask those who created this situation: do you at least realize now what you’ve done?") —“
You probably know the story of how Vladimir Putin was a young KGB officer in Dresden when the Soviet Union began to disintegrate. In 1989, when the Berlin Wall fell the KGB HQ building in Dresden was surrounded by an angry mob of Germans, He warned them off wanting to avoid bloodshed, according to contemporary accounts of the incident, and he and his comrades spent the rest of the night burning documents. He described later how he rang the headquarters of a Red Army tank unit to ask for protection. The answer he received was a devastating, life-changing shock. "We cannot do anything without orders from Moscow," the voice at the other end replied. "And Moscow is silent." From that point, he said he was determined that when asked for help Moscow would never be silent again. The humiliation of this experience was pivotal to the way he runs Russia today.
His threats of nuclear aggression are the empty threats of a wounded beast. His invasion has been a spectacular failure and the Russian economy is tanking. He needs a peace deal that he can sell to the Russian public as a victory and Trump inexplicably seems only too eager to hand him one.
I don't think so. Putin can sell _everything_ as a victory to the Russians, doesn't matter what. Plus: he has shown quite clearly that he doesn't give a sh•t about human lives, not even Russian lives. It's definitely not his moral qualities that will hold him back from nuking a European city. Putin has nothing to worry about anymore: he will order his orange puppet to lift the sanctions against Russia, and money will be flowing in again soon. I wouldn't be surprised if many of the GOP oligarchs turn out to be all to happy to invest in Russian assets again (looking at you, Moscow Mitch McConnell...) Besides, Putin is getting old, too - it's nice to create a legend about yourself of being invulnerable, but so far, nobody reached immortality; he needs to move fast if he wants to enter the history books as Czar of the Eurasian Empire. And don't forget: wounded beasts can lash out in very unpredictable ways...
P.S. Inexplicable?? Putin OWNS Trump, and he knows it. _Of course_ the Convicted Orange Felon is eager to hand Putin everything he wants!
Putin first has other levers he is already pulling: electric grid (recently de-coupled but still…), gas pipelines, severed undersea communications, naval patrols popping up everywhere. Acts of war sabbotage are ongoing.
Nuke, in a veiled sense: what about this Russian drone strike on the old-but-still-hot Chernobyl reactor containment vessel? That’s a pretty direct targeted hit. Nice landscape you got there, would be a shame if i exploded this dirty bomb…. Yet, a plume is just as likely to drift into western Russia or allied Belarus.
" Nice landscape you got there, would be a shame if i exploded this dirty bomb…. Yet, a plume is just as likely to drift into western Russia or allied Belarus."
Yeah, that's the part I didn't understand, either... Or is Putin "testing the waters" for something?
I can only agree with all of this. Trump has capitulated (as expected, anyone who didn't know this was clearly in a delusional state = ~ 30% of American voters)( 20% knew it and wanted it) Now NATO has to prove it is a multi national organization that isn't, wasn't, totally dependent on the US. And, what happens here, looks increasingly grim. I suspect too many are thinking we can weather Trump, come out the other side in 2 years or 4 years and do something different. These people are also in a delusional state, fear driven, understandable, but still delusional. If we do not take Trump to task for violating the orders of our judicial system then we are irretrievably broken. What that Taking to Task looks like depends on how far the Christian Nationalists are willing to go. From my point of view I don't see any indication that they won't go to civil war. "This is our chance" that is what they have said. So the question isn't If it is When. Or do we become a country run by Christian National Apartheidists. And by the way -- why is the Christian Church allowing itself to be used this way? Why do/did Muslim organizations allow Terrorists within their Mosques? FEAR. Yes the bully stands up and terrorizes from within first. Is that what is happening in the Christian sphere? Why isn't the Pope denouncing Trump's actions? Does he favor Christian Nationalism and the rule of white men calling themselves Christians even while the majority of his religions practitioners are not white or men? How many real Christian men want this? And don't tell me Jesus said... Because he absolutely did not.
The Pope has denounced Trump. What,two or three weeks ago. He’s now in hospital with Double pneumonia, but he has been a Trump critic all along. Unlike you, I do not think Christian Nationalists have any real power with Trump or Vance. They are being used by the GOP a la their history since the Seventies. Ralph Reed put it the other way around re Trump as their candidate in his first election. So maybe it’s mutual but Trump is amoral and so is the chameleon Vance. Which suit is emptier, Trump or Vance. This is really more about the oligarchs in both the US and Russia and their mutuals around the world, I think. Using flags and the cross as they always have the aristocracy is on its never ending quest to rob the poor to help the rich. The rich includes Putin, of course, as well as other heads of state and royalty.
It may be worth stepping back and getting a bigger picture of Russia and where it may be going. Admittedly, the re-election of the Donvict has put a new wrinkle into the mix. Here is a link to a Forign Affairs article by Stephen Kotkin titled "The Five Futures of Russia". A sixth future may be what Putin wanted all along: Russia as a regional power. Here is the link. Sorry if it is pay walled. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/russian-federation/five-futures-russia-stephen-kotkin?check_logged_in=1
Regional? I'd suggest that Putin wants Russia to be a "World Power". I am old. I remember when there were two "super powers". Russia was viewed as one of them.
Of course, China is the super power now. Xi must be loving this European dustup - is anybody in the WH watching the other flank?
Hi Bill. Yes, regional. When the Soviet Union was a global superpower, China was a bum. Russia will never be a global power again, especially without Ukraine. Even with a total military victory in Ukraine, the Russians face a decades long insurgency there, aided by the likes of Romania, Poland, most of Western Europe, etc. Regional power is the best the Russians will ever be able to aspire to.
If they had spent the $2T or so on invading Ukraine on their own infrastructure, their situation would be markedly different...
I watch Steven Kotkin a lot. He’s an expert on Russia and well worth following. He’s not the only one, of course, so catch others as you can. He is writing the definitive biography of Stalin. Three volumes.
Bill, since you say that you aren't very knowledgeable about international politics perhaps you might seek to do some research before commenting on them.
I've known some Ukrainians and a bit of their history, stuck between choices of bad alliances whichever way they went. Some, particularly ethnic Germans, thought the Nazi invaders would be better allies against the oppression by Russians and, as I heard it, joined the Nazis but later turned against them on the side of the Russians whom they saw as actually less oppressive than the Nazis turned out to be once they were no longer useful to them.
The first sentence of the 1st paragraph confirms what I have thought since shortly after the 2nd Invasion started Feb 24th 2022. The series started Sep 3, 2022, 6 months after the start of the invasion. No matter what most Ukrainians were going through in the 1st invasion and up to the 2nd, it seems any that had lingering doubts and old alliances with former Nazi allies quickly united as fast and as much or more than America First and the majority anti-Nazi Americans did after Pearl Harbor.
That 1st paragraph:
Ukraine must have existed as a society and polity on 23 February 2022, else Ukrainians would not have collectively resisted Russian invasion the next day. What does it mean for a nation to exist? Is this a matter of structures, actions, or both? Why has the existence of Ukraine occasioned such controversy? In what ways are Polish, Russian, and Jewish self-understanding dependent upon experiences in Ukraine? Just how and when did a modern Ukrainian nation emerge? For that matter, how does any modern nation emerge? Why some and not others? Can nations be chosen, and can choices be decisive? If so, whose, and how? Ukraine was the country most touched by Soviet and Nazi terror: what can we learn about those systems, then, from Ukraine? Is the post-colonial, multilingual Ukrainian nation a holdover from the past, or does it hold some promise for the future?
I fear many Americans labor under the illusion that our military, if brought into play, would save us. It would not. Putting boots on the ground, on American soil would be a slaughter. It would be Civil War II with huge civilian casualties and a complete decimation of our armed forces. If anyone thinks active duty US forces would fight against MAGA, they are badly mistaken. At least half of them ARE MAGA.
61% of the military - people he called suckers and losers - voted for Trump. I am not sure they can be trusted. I know we can't trust Scotus or the majority party in Congress.
Very bad idea outright. Our far better, nobler hope must be that, when Trump decides to USE the military against our own citizenry (not an if, it's a when), that enough generals refuse those orders such that they are delayed in execution (Trump and Commander Pete will then have to formally fire them and appoint new ones) enough that they are exposed in real time, and beget a TRUE tide of popular unrest against him. No, we do not want officers violating their oath to the constitution (most military senior officers take this seriously), in fact, we want them sticking to it meticulously.
Trump did try to use the military against us. Esper resisted Trump's order to use troops to attack protesters in DC. Esper was vilified, then fired. Now Hegseth's removed Esper's photo from the Pentagon. And is removing generals who are not Trump loyalists.
Unfortunately there likely won't be many of them left after this week. Firings of generals and flag officers are set to begin imminently. But if we do the things we need to do and this regime does not take root completely, we may not need them. But so far, that is a big if.
You are in the grip of a serious fever dream to believe that most, even a bare majority of senior US generals will refuse to obey orders of the President. There may be some who choose to play "slow ball" in moving against our own citizens but the rank and fire military will almost certainly follow orders unless they are so totally outrageous that even the dumbest can't agree.
But that is highly unlikely to happen. Yes, the current administration is clearly out of control but they are NOT as stupid as we all suggest in our posts. They will know how far the military can be pushed in one increment of time and they will do this in a way that seems "ok" to many if not most.
For instance ordering the military to assume control of deportation of illegal immigrants is patently unlawful but NOT likely to create a strong resistance in the military because in the end the purpose will feel reasonable (unless you are like me and want to end all restrictions on immigration, who is going to be able to argue against Trump's plan to deport illegals? Its the law even now, right?
And once that is done, there can be further orders given that incrementally expand the military dominion over domestic affairs. Sure, some military will protest but they can be discharged, and citizen protests who be mostly futile.
Just as Hitler did in pre WW2, they can slowly move towards their goals albeit faster than we might expect.
In the end the hope for military resistance of any great level is probably a pipe dream.
I hate that you are right. Our naivete has no limits. One of the sad truths about humans is that the collective memory is diluted as we move from one generation to the next. I'm old. I have a picture of my Dad in his WWII uniform on a table. I know what he fought against. Gen X - some might, Gen Y - a few, Gen Z - not many.
I recommend to all Americans the recent film " Lee". Aside from the amazing acting of Kate Winslet, one can appreciate what WWII participants felt for a few minutes.
We are forgetting...and we will suffer the consequences again.
A better route to take is build pressure on politicians in the red states. They can stop this at any time. Their constituents have to care. So if you live in a red state, please be contacting them. You have more power than you know. It doesn't have to be dramatic or dangerous, just call, write, show up at a town hall.
Jon-I agree-we can just look at how the media, congress and the highest court in the judicial system have capitulated and coddled Trump-no doubt the military will do the same.
You're right, Jon. It might take only a few months to get the military so far to execute American citizens. Don't forget, it took Hitler only a few weeks to get the first concentration camps running and start executing his political enemies...
This idea of Aryan superiority was a long time coming and Germans came to our country to see the effect of Jim Crow laws and the effect of eugenics. Eugenics was a real issue and many people involved even Helen Keller. PBS has a documentary on its history. It’s worth knowing about and many times like in the famous case of Carrie Buck and more misogynistic than not.
I don't think HCR mentioned this but Hegseth said firings of generals and flag officers are set for this week and maybe the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs but maybe not him... And I'm just mentioning this for the heck of it, no particular reason, none at all, not commenting one bit on highly skilled, trained, experienced and pissed off military folks being sent out among the populace. Nope, no reason for posting this.
Rebel Gadfly: "...not commenting one bit on highly skilled, trained, experienced and pissed off military folk being sent out among the populace..."
That is plain nasty. You are adding insult to injury. Military staff fired by Hegseth will be righteously pissed off, responsible, anti coup, good citizens. Please do not smear them by your implication that they will be a danger. For example, the Vindman brothers, who when Trump destroyed their high level military careers, found other way's to serve. Including, now, in Congress.
I know a CIA analyst who has worked for the CIA for over 20 years. This person is married with several kids. I am afraid to call, text or write to them for fear of retaliation by the Fascist Trump regime. The US government has a license for Pegasus which allows the intelligence services to hack your phone and steal EVERYTHING on it. Trump's brownshirts cannot be trusted any more than Putin, by any American. Pegasus was only intended to be used by the US intelligence services for very specific cases. And maybe it is, but who knows who those cases are.
The general was almost certainly expressing his REAL opinion, not diffusing as a subterfuge. I have known a number of US senior military officers and about the only order most felt would not be obeyed by most officers would be to actually unilaterally start a war by launching nuclear weapons. Beyond that most felt that there were enough checks and balances in the system to keep any war making power in check. And most felt that they owed the country they're allegiance unless and until things went so off the trails that they had no choice.
I knew several command level offcers who had been retired and after Jan 11 were recalled -- and were generally pissed. Plus one of my colleagues, a hero, chief prosecutoir at Git-mo, refused to use evidence obtained from torutre.....
I sure HOPE that there are more like these. Unfortunately I fear that there are more than enough who favor the skuM goon squads that there just won't be enough resistance.
Thank you, Jon and Daniel; my very limited experience corresponds more with Daniel's; they are more like what General Hertling seems to be from his essay. My cousin sent me a book, 'On Killing'. I had little appetite for reading it. When I did, I was surprised.
The author was a Lieutenant-Colonel psyche professor and expert on the topic at West Point. That book was rational, not violent and sobering with respect to implications of enculturated violence for the wider society and rule-of-law.
You are right. How stupid of me with the Pegasus program, etc. and Kash Patel now confirmed as the head of the F.B.I. I deleted the correspondence in its entirety, telling my acquaintance that I did so by accident.
But having a few "conversations" is a long way from figuring out how to take over a million and a half person military command. I seriously question if that is even possible.
I have faith in our younger brothers and sisters in uniform; not all of them, but most of them. Soldiers in the field may have won the 1864 election -- or, at least, made that victory decisive -- for President Lincoln.
The great majority of the several hundred with whom I worked over time had a deep sense of service and came from families, often in the South and Midwest, with a rich heritage of service.
Yes, there were those who, left to their own thoughts and private actions, were frightening in their views. The culture, albeit rigid, of the U.S. Army was superordinating in their daily actions. Let us hope it sticks.
Aristocracy or militocracy? Doubt both. What we now have is a wannabe monarchy, fed by greed. I think our best choice is a widespread boycott of all the billionaires who back the orange monarchist and the Muskrat. They only listen to the sound of their wallets swelling, and our secret power is to make their wallets shrink, but it has to be widespread. It will involve sacrifice, because the kakistocracy (reign of idiots) owns so much. My own focus is on Amazon, Meta, PayPal, X, Tesla, and anything connected to AI. This will not be easy, but if we want a democracy (which we have almost lost), then boycott, boycott, boycott and resist, resist, resist.
That was my sentiment but I’m not so sure anymore. We will be witness to 4 years of chaos and destruction. Can the nation survive it? I don’t know. One point is that Europe is far stronger than Russia. That nation is nearing collapse. Western Europe must send troops to Ukraine and we should encourage American trained soldiers to volunteer to fight. It’s now or never. It can be won.
If Europe is so strong, why don't they step up to the plate. Very interesting how things are changing . In a few instances Ukraine has stopped Russian advances with First View armed drones. Didn't use any troops. The biggest build of Ukrainian military was under Trump.
I suspect any such morally strong individuals with leadership potential have long since been strategically sidelined in their career or simply fired from all national security. Both in the US and the UK. These days we are experiencing the consequences of a longterm plan to collapse the postwar global Western Alliance. Putin wants to destroy Pax Americana and the EU Peace Project and then have open revenge upon any who have upheld them. Donald Trump and Rupert Murdoch are his willing acolytes.
Monnina, I don't think you can write a paragraph such as you have written without including Musk's name. Donald and Rupert may be acolytes, but Elon is a partner. While Donald and Rupert are working FOR Vladimir, Elon is working WITH him to develop a plan to conquer the world. I see them dividing the spoils thusly: Vladimir will control all the resources and Elon will control all the information.
Like U.S. Democrats, China is sitting on the sidelines as a spectator, watching to see how the empires unfold, perhaps thinking they will get to keep their slice of the pie.
There are a couple you never hear about, too. They have deeper pockets than even Murdoch. Check out "Deomcracy in Chains" if you want to know more. (I will also give you this warning: 50 pages in, I got so mad I almost broke a window with it.)
It's the only thing that can save America. But the more likely scenario is that the generals will comply, and that they will send American soldiers to Europe to assist the Russians. We will be fighting _both_ here in Europe before the end of this year, I'm afraid.
My fear also. Without the threat of a US response, Putin will feel embolden. A single nuke in downtown Kiev would not be responded to and it would be over for Europe.
That is a good point James. The US is clearly the strongest nuclear power but the UK still has some and the French have a few more (but very few). However more than enough to at least put the center of Moscow under glazed earth and kill several hundred thousand Russians.
Simple. Putin orders his orange puppet in the White House to set his nukes on Europe. Trump wouldn't give a sh•t about pushing that button: Europe can go up in flames for all he cares, it's the other side of the ocean, and he doesn't like us anyway because we're not his fans.
A few months ago the British were on a joint submarine exercise and launched a new generation Polaris, I think, and it did not go well at all. Hope they got the bugs worked out.
I, too, feel that we are on a collision course with nuclear annihilation :( I have a bottle of very expensive tequila and a joint rolled for if and when they come our way.
Yes they will. Because Putin simply lacks the material and the men to subdue all of Europe, so he will nuke an important European city; then, he will demand surrender from all European leaders, threatening to "set another example". I don't think the leaders of Europe will stand up to that.
That tells us that education is a weapon that can also be used for good. Let’s continue to educate ourselves and others. Where’s our answer to testing, book bans, Moms for Liberty and whitewashing our history?
Since the Dept. of Education will be gutted, we all need to act locally and transform our schools. A lot can be accomplished informally too. Project based learning and action research can produce results that allow us to counter forces against education.
My stomach is churning. My mother was Ukrainian and they never believed that they were “little Russians”. The HOLOMODOR! Yes, my European friends are horrified and my Canadian ones have a new found love for snow. They are going bananas.
While the writing there briefly tries to present several points of view, IMO was a Stalin-engineered purge via starvation to punish Ukraine, and Putin is/will reprise.
An alternative before that radical step of a military coup (or counter-coup), the precedent of which would cause permanent damage to the American political process, is outlined by Jerry Weiss, "Feathers of Hope", in his Substack post of February 18: "Impeachment is Imperative". An overwhelming rejection of the MAGA agenda by the American public will be a necessary precursor to get the cooperation of Republicans in Congress, but that would make it possible (and maybe even likely?).
Which would lead to civil war. First, the Nazis will never go against Dear Leader, and vote to impeach. But, should they decide enough is enough, do you really believe he would just walk away? Of course not. What he WOULD do, is send the call out to the likes of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, who are heavily armed, and ready. The escalation would be rapid, the tragedies immense, and who knows the outcome. No, at this point, we need the military to step in, and that won't be any fun either. Buckle up, folks.
A new civil war wouldn't resemble the first one; it would be more like Northern Ireland in the 1970s. It would also almost certainly trigger Trump's declaring martial law, complete with the suspension of elections, the rule of law and restrictions on citizens rights, followed by deep-think editorials about "Who is a citizen, anyway?"
Yes, martial law. Which would suspend elections. Which is exactly the accusation being leveled at Ukraine. Again, every accusation is a confession with these Nazis. But the frightening thing is, martial law would be enforced more by the Gestapo he released from prison a month ago than your local law enforcement, although beware of your local sheriffs.
First: We have to find a way to destroy Fox news' messaging. Short of hobbling transmission facilities (which I am in no way condoning), how do you counter propaganda with that level of reach? I studied media, but not this thoroughly.
Sit in, picket. Heather -- yesterday on a Maine site, we had a discussion about Susan Collins. She worked for former Sen. Republican Bill Cohen, wsho flipped tol the Dem Party to work in the Clinton cabinet. Please get him on the record.
Sadly, there's no mechanism or procedure in our Constitution to handle a coup. We have to rely on our elected officials to somhow stop the orange blight from becoming king. Of course he wants to be king. It's so much fancier to be a king than a plain old dictator.
Eighty years of global leadership, traded for a photo op with Putin. This isn’t diplomacy—it’s a fire sale. Trump isn’t just walking away from NATO, he’s handing Putin the keys to Europe.
Hate to say "I told you so". That was the deal: Vlad hoisted the Convicted Orange Felon on the throne of America using his 'political technogly', and in return, Rump has to give him Ukraine and a free road to Europe by pulling the US out of NATO - and lift the economic sactions, of course. That is the price.
Good question... It is ok to use 'political technology' to manipulate people into thinking the right way (at least, what we here consider the right way...) ?
I’m not even talking about convincing. We should be out there fighting back. Where are our trolls supporting democracy and encouraging unity here and abroad? And calling out Republicans for supporting dictators? And for being weak cowards. This is like the Wizard of Oz. Pull back the curtain already!
Well, you're right about that... My guess is that the Democratic side still wants to be the nice guy too much. But we're waaay past that point...
Edit: on the other hand, it might as well boil down to that same old thing that is always the cause: money. The amount of money that was, and is, poured in to these campaigns "flooding the zone" and controlling people's thoughts is likely more than enough to eliminate poverty in a couple of countries. The "good guys" don't have that kind of money, I'm afraid (otherwise, they would be filthy rich themselves...)
There's more to this that we're not privy to. trump has always been a Putin sycophant but this is just ridiculous. There must be a serious piece of blackmail being held over trump's head. I realise the orange buffoon is addled with the onset of dementia, and i've seen that play out in real time with relatives, but there HAS to be safeguards in place within the American system to put a halt to this, the 'man' is acting completely against everything he swore an oath to. 25th Amendment section 4? And somebody with an ounce of sanity needs to get rid of Musk, he's playing the orange buffoon and every US citizen for the idiot he appears to actually be. You'll all be learning the Russian language in schools soon the way this is playing out.
Yes and no. No doubt Trump feels "love" for Putin because he IS well aware of the subterfuge that helped him, but no, I don't think its about blackmail (what could be exposed that would "blackmail" Trump? He launched a coup of our own government in broad daylight, got impeached twice and 100% got away with it). No, it's even more Trumpian than that. Trump is acting with alacrity to get quick, easy "wins" that he hopes will translate into polls (and adulation. Never discount that). "I ended the war in Ukraine that would never have happened if I'd rightfully still been in the White House--AS I WAS ELECTED IN THE FIRST PLACE!!!!" This dovetails nicely with the Tech Bro Nazis, who want to destroy the entire government so they can turn us into human batteries (okay, I'm exaggerating. By 5%). That's it, and the fact that, yes, he's already decided to leave NATO (I give it 90 days, max) and concentrate on taking over Greenland.
The Trump Organization has been floated by Russian Money for Decades... DJT is a Mob-Boss... He understands the Russian Mob Bosses... Putin is the Capo-A-Capo... It has been said that Putin is the Richest Person in the World... Putin kills his Enemies, though Elon could give him a Run with his Cyber-Trucks... The 'Tech Nazi Bros'? Very Narrow Spectrum Humans...
Here's what their cult leader Curtis Yarvin thinks should become of us, the "undesirable elements from society." It is long but y'all deserve to know the depths of their depravity of those running this coup, and this includes Musk and Vance too, regarding how much they despise those of us who are not them. This was written regarding one of their patch or network cities they are working to create all over the world.
"There is one problem, though, which is the problem I mentioned in Chapter 1: the problem of adults who are not productive members of society. In our little Newspeak we call them wards of the realm. A ward is any resident who is not capable of earning a living, is not accepted as a dependent by any guardian, and is not wanted by any other patch.
The initial conversion of our present, democratic, and of course completely dysfunctional San Francisco into the realm of Friscorp will produce quite a few wards. At least relative to the number we would expect to emerge in a healthy society. But there will always be black sheep, and there will always be wards.
As Delegate of San Francisco, what should you do with these people? I think the answer is clear: alternative energy. Since wards are liabilities, there is no business case for retaining them in their present, ambulatory form. Therefore, the most profitable disposition for this dubious form of capital is to convert them into biodiesel, which can help power the Muni buses.
Okay, just kidding. This is the sort of naive Randian thinking which appeals instantly to a geek like me, but of course has nothing to do with real life. The trouble with the biodiesel solution is that no one would want to live in a city whose public transportation was fueled, even just partly, by the distilled remains of its late underclass.
However, it helps us describe the problem we are trying to solve. Our goal, in short, is a humane alternative to genocide. That is: the ideal solution achieves the same result as mass murder (the removal of undesirable elements from society), but without any of the moral stigma. Perfection cannot be achieved on both these counts, but we can get closer than most might think.
The best humane alternative to genocide I can think of is not to liquidate the wards—either metaphorically or literally—but to virtualize them. A virtualized human is in permanent solitary confinement, waxed like a bee larva into a cell which is sealed except for emergencies."
And I am so sorry to do that to you. I really am. I hate doing it to myself but if we don't know what we are fighting we can't win. We'll be like Congressional Dems still talking about working with this administration blah blah blah. THIS can't and should not be worked with.
“ Curtis Yarvin wants American democracy toppled. He has some prominent Republican fans. The New Right blogger has been cited by Blake Masters and J.D. Vance. What exactly is he advocating?” VOX, Andrew Prokop Oct 24, 2022
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Yeah, since the day I found out about Yarvin, et al, feels like decades ago but it's only been weeks, every day I read more and worse dystopian things about this contemptuous and treasonous crew. Don't know if you are on bsky, but I just read a long thread about their Nation State concept that they are already implementing that rump fully embraced with his so-called Freedom Cities takeover of public parks. This one is about taking over the Presidio in SF but it goes into lots of details of their plan for creating essentially fascistic cities or nations within existing countries. And now with these Freedom Cities, they're taking over areas within the US with a welcome mat laid at their feet.
I've had this video cued up about these criminals for a couple of days that I've promised myself to get to it today. Thank you for talking about this too. Everyone needs to know about these so-called "billionaire bros" cuz they are so much more dangerous and insidiously involved than that innocuous designation hides. https://substack.com/home/post/p-157293157
Disturbing that you make these observations … more disturbing that I think you are right on the money with them. I just don't know that there is a way back from this when/if America ever wakes up. The strange thing (for me) is that the maga crowd are in large part staunchly US centric, (that's ignoring the religious zealots), they SHOULD be the ones most up in arms at this sellout of the country.
Putin and his lackeys bailed Trump out when his entire empire was failing and every bank in the US looked at Trump as radioactive material. Putin's got the goods on Trump. You can thank Citizens United for this mess.
"Citizens United" (a label that could have been penned by Orwell) is a big part of it, but our failure to stem the tide of intrusion of patent de facto bribery and plutocratic encumbrances to democracy earlier on goes even deeper. Ronald Reagan was selling poison, but a preponderance of citizens and the press was buying it, and even many liberals now opine that Reagan was the last "good" Republican president. No, Musk's cruel ans responsible depredations run a straight line from Reagan's dishonest smearing of the democratic process and his insistence that wealth is proper qualification for leadership, his so called "Supply Side". Who supplies what?
Two of Trump's sons have been reported as talking about money pouring in from Russia. between that, sweetheart deals with the mob, and the perfect marketing tool of being president, I wonder if he would not have blown though his entire inheritance by now? Maybe all the Russian money was just a lot of talk, but yeah, he seems way too undisciplined and impulsive to make it as a normal businessman.
DJT has been Cultivated by the Russians for Decades... The Trump Organization was floated by Russian Money... DJT is a World-Class Grifter, and Horrible Businessman that has declared Bankruptcy 6-Times... In 2024 he was bought by Elon Musk for ~$250-Million. Chump Change for a Person with over $250-Billion... I would beware the Musk/Putin tie-in... DJT is noticeably Declining... DJT is becoming obviously Delusional... From Recent Appearances, DJT has become a Repulsive Orange Puppet pulled by Strings held by Musk, and Putin...
Perhaps, but Vance is just as focused on our destruction. For twisted religious reasons. He wants to usher in the apocalypse, Revelations and the second coming of Jesus.
He believes in Yarvin and Thiel’s political philosophy, and he’s a convert to my faith, Catholicism, and shows he doesn’t understand it as well as he should. We Catholics don’t generally share the apocalyptic obsessions of the fundamentalists, and I was taught Revelation was about the past, the persecution of the church under Rome, not about the future.
I agree with Kathy Hughes. Vance's "faith" is new and shallow, and not apocalyptic. That whole end-of-the-world, mansions-in-the-sky scenario is strictly a protestant evangelical fever dream. They've incorrectly understood Revelation to be prophecy when it was actually John's coded commentary on the Roman occupation.
True, Vance uses keywords to keep the evangelicals fascinated and in line, but he's a technocrat first, believer second.
I honestly don't get JD Vance. He's the oddball in this mess. The messages he's spreading are frightening as all h-e-double hockey sticks and I don't get where they're coming from. Someone's got the goods on him, too, but I have zero clue who's got what.
My take on Vance is that he's a puppet of the Yarvin/Thiel technocrat wing of the new GOP order. Compare him with Mike Johnson, puppet of the christo-fascist wing. They are numbers 2 and 3 behind Donald, who is Putin's poodle. Up until now, and into the foreseeable future, these two wings are cooperating to acquire power and control. But eventually, there will be a showdown to decide whether the U.S. is going to be a technocracy or a theocracy.
Meanwhile, Elon is letting them have their fun while he takes it all.
The British tabloid The Daily Star interprets the changes in American politics differently. Its cover tomorrow features Vladimir Putin walking “PUTIN’S POODLE”: the president of the United States.
He always has been and always will be. Remember, he called Putin "brilliant" when he attacked Ukraine.
I totally agree with your assessment. Peter Pappas. Trump is Putin’s lap dog and he will the USA and Europe down the river so he can pedal his golden shoes in Russia.
One added thought today. If humanity survives its second round of mass experimentation with modern authoritarianism (and to my mind the existence of nuclear weapons makes the survival of the second round unlikely) then we must think anew not just in terms of a greater sense of social justice, but in ridding ourselves of our deep national loyalties, making our loyalty to human dignity and freedom greater than all else, certainly well above claims to national greatness.
That, and that alone, is why the ruling authority in the US currently deserves scorn and resistance - its contempt for human dignity and worth, and, for that matter, the worth of any living thing, given its attitude toward the environment. And if the dust ever settles, the GOP must be outlawed as a white supremacist terrorist organization. Because that is what it is.
your mention of nukes is spot on....Jonathan Last in the Bullwark makes the argument that an arms race to acquire nukes by our allies - from Germany, to Japan, to Turkey - to deter aggression - is the logical consequence of the current situation...our allies have lived under our protective "umbrella" of MAD, and now have seen the result when Ukraine turned over their arsenal with a "guarantee" of protection. Maybe tRumps plan is to solve climate change with a nuclear winter.
I would agree; A new arms race is imminent. That's a logical consequence.
I took a look-see at tomorrows cover of the UK Daily Star; It's hilarious and should be pasted world wide. It's a fluffy pink poodle with the orange wonders face being walked by a caricature of Putin. I fell off my chair laughing. The cffg "hates" to be laughed at.... I invite all to have a ball posting it up.
I sent it to everyone on my "fellow traveler" email list....I laughed until I realized he just crapped on our collective lawn, and all the animal control officers have been fired!
One of the most important points made here. You are in good standing with President Kennedy, Prime Minister Pierre Eliot Trudeau, and Governor Adlai Stevenson.
I believe that "focus on humanity" was the original goal of the United Nations. But the UN (which I have had a variety of connections to for many years) is a "failure by design"... set up by people who didn't know how to achieve its very altruistic goals.
That word altruism is key however. The great socio-biologist E.O. Wilson noted that altruistic societies thrive, selfish societies fail. We are seeing that play out in real time in the US. Having lived in a number of countries, my admittedly anecdotal observation is the greater sense of common good in a country, the greater the sense of well-being and general sense of security. That is absent in the US, which is why I have chosen to live elsewhere.
E.O. Wilson also made the case that humans had ravaged far too much of this planet's ecosystems, causing more extinctions of the flora and fauna on Earth everyday. He suggested that humans should fall back from at least 50% of the lands and waters of this precious planet and let it return to wilderness. That just our so-called civilization was too often in conflict with the natural world and we needed to give the Earth a reprieve from our destruction, unquenchable thirst for natural resources and never ending incursions into wilderness. There appears to be no way of that happening now with this insanity and recklessness unfolding before us and the lunatics running our ship of state right into the rocks, sowing chaos and division, wishing to wreck every last inch of this planet instead.
Yes-a focus on human dignity and worth could take us far down the road to peace… it’s hard to see how we get there in this climate dominated by cruelty, fear and lies.
If we ever make it through this mess a top priority must be to reduce presidential power. We now see what a person with no personal inhibition can do in that office in the White House. Ending Citizens United must also be acted on. And we must not forget to tax the rich, instead of gutting government programs.
You need a new Constitution. When it comes to the scope of presidential power, nobody seems to have the answers and so one is forced to wait with bated breath for a ruling from one of the most corrupt and partisan Supreme Courts in many years. Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson wrote in 1952 that what the Founders intended about the limits of presidential power “must be divined from materials almost as enigmatic as the dreams Joseph was called upon to interpret for Pharaoh.”
The truly problematic issue here now is that even if by some miracle you could be rid of Trump, you get Vance, then Johnson, then any number of rabid ideologues of diminishing charisma - and gods know if monsters like Thiel and Musk will remain the real power. Probably. In short, the US is stuck with this madness for the next four years, possibly beyond - well beyond. Barring a black swan event or a convulsive and likely violent revolution of some sort, I see no way out for the US or the world for this. Lincoln presented a scenario by which we died from suicide - regrettably we may be seeing it, except the intended subject has simply mortally wounded itself to die a lingering and miserable death.
Ned, there's no cure for stupidity. They might feel the pain eventually but Fox will have to work a little bit harder to keep washing their brains or what's left of it.
Maybe the US needs to consider regicide, since he seems to have proclaimed himself king.. I have some other ideas .. but in todays watched-over internet, mum's the word.
Reading the stream above, I find this the most pertinent observation. It is not just Trump... it is the legions who are using him to re-write the Constitution to intrench white christianity as only “Civilization” worth promoting.
Just spent time in Ecuador and Peru where people, although Catholic, are still discussing the spread of "Christianity". Historically, this has not gone well for people.
Every single day, since the two criminals have been in charge, has been a virtual shitshow. The frenetic behavior of Elon and his band of merry men going from building to building, downloading our personal data, are now at the Pentagon. Can you imagine how being a career military servant must feel? They cannot express their disdain for fear of retribution. All of it is evil.
Tomorrow night I will be attending my Congressman’s 2nd town hall. I am anticipating that the college campus hall he will be having it at, will be at full capacity. I will be there with my sign showing how, in 1936, Hitler was seen at the Olympics in Munich, riding in his car at the stadium, and patrons were gibing the Nazi salute. Beneath that picture is another but it is of Trump riding in his limo all around the racetrack. The message is very clear.
Thank you, Marlene, for that comparison. I hope to attend my congressman's town hall on Saturday, and I'm going to note that if I get a chance to speak with him.
Democratic congress critters put on citizen meetings at various times, usually when Congress is not in session, and they're home to chat with constituents. Republicans of late tend to ignore them, as they tend to turn into mob scenes. But I know you knew that. 8)
The latest IPSOS poll shows approval of Putin at 9%. Putin is not popular with MAGA. Neither is Musk and even Trump is dropping. However, the US is fickle. If the price of eggs drop ( which it won’t due to cold weather in the South and molting if the weather warms up, ) they will love Trump again. (I blame all the bad fathers in the country for this phenomenon of loving a rat).
The people who said they were voting for Trump because of high egg prices were lying. It was a handy cover story for vocally supporting Trump when, in fact, they were never gonna vote for the black lady Democrat.
Less strategy than up-bringing, Ricardo; tee-hee. 🤫 Unfortunately, loyalty to the Republic will have to supersede good manners. (Please see Kathy's response below.) 😰
Since people who are every bit as decent, erudite, intelligent, loving, refined as I -- often more than I -- voted for Trump, I had to pause and think -- REALLY THINK -- how the election could have resulted in in this rampage and the clear and present possibility of fascism with up to five thousand nuclear war-heads.
1st, people sent a message: no more career politicians.
2nd, people thought: whoa! Too much, too soon!
3rd, people fear the 'deep state'.
4th, many Midwesterners and others in rust belt states have not given up on the republican experiment; they feel that said experiment has given up on them.
5th, the middle class is getting crushed; Trump presents a better chance of relief.
If the high-minded progressives (e.g., you), loyal conservatives (e.g., me), and faithful moderates (i.e., everyone else) fail to identify why this outcome occurred, we will not win our Republic back and can kiss us good-bye. As the Great Civil War arguably started with 'Bleeding Kansas' so might we be in civil conflict now.
What is most troubling, however, is that "la cousine" whom admire most thinks Trump is a pig but voted for him anyways since she is so fed up with what we have now. What happened to make an intelligent, kind, well read, well bred lady so disillusioned?
The problem is that they voted out a system they were feed up to be replaced by maga. Good luck trying to replace maga system if you become feed up with it and you want to get back.
Why I believe we are in civil conflict already; the war is simmering.
“If we are to have another contest in the near future of our national existence, I predict that the dividing line will not be Mason and Dixon's but between patriotism and intelligence on the one side, and superstition, ambition and ignorance on the other.” ― Ulysses S. Grant, 1875.
You are exactly right Ned. What we don't know but the Proyect 2025 architects do know, is if we are going to have a free and fair election in 2926, or a cooked one, or if we are going to have one at all. They won't risk loosing Congress after so many years of planning and huge investment specially when they are starting to flavor the unopposed power they started to enjoy now.
Thank you, Ricardo, as always. I read 'Project 2025' and found it to be, at its core, re-cycled Reaganism with some extensions to cover issues arising since the 1980s.
Since Reaganism is an exhausted political framework, the same old stuff -- like a higher dose of opioids -- is increasingly radicalized to get the '1981 pop'.
As 2026 elections, I am not altogether convinced that there was NOT a lot of monkey business going on in 2024. Not so much in fraud but in intimidation and disenfranchisement.
If they were well-informed, they'd have known that the president has little impact on the price of eggs especially when there is a bird flu going around.
The problem is that long time Republicans are just that, and can't be convinced to change their minds that they are voting dumbly, no matter what happens to the US and the World, handing it to Russia!
No, Trump is not Putin's poodle. There's method to the former, even as insanity is normalizing.
First, the convicted criminal in the White House has all his cabinet appointees sycophantic to his lies, criminality.
Second, democracy is besieged in Europe, as the White House felon ups lies to side with the tyrant, kleptocrat, war criminal Putin.
Third, Republicans in Congress are not only all cowardly, willing to spurn our democratic allies, willing to grow the American wealth gap. All side with Elon Musk and his team of illegal, nihilist tech terrorists tearing apart all key American institutions and programs.
What’s the end game of 1-2-3 insanity and criminality normalizing? It’s for a few billionaires to rule the world: 1) Xi and his cadres; 2) Putin and his fellow oligarchs; 3) Trump with Musk and fellow billionaires.
The orange felon is nobody's poodle. He aims to roost at the top, with his main fellow world gangsters -- and with contempt for the American people, contempt for U.S. courts and democracy itself, whose carcass Musk is now carving up.
And if I may, let me add one more piece to this on-point explanation of what is happening and that is the plan for us, the people. These people engaged in our current coup are accelerationists. They believe the United States is losing its dominance in the world and they have decided to hurry its destruction along. Why? As they make our lives worse and more desperate, they will get to exploit us even more and get the cheap labor out of us to work all the industries they will have scooped up once government control over them is no more. They will divvy up the remains of our once economic dominance, shuttle between their homes in Russia, the Gaza Riviera, China, and fortressed compounds in the US, while we will live lives beholden to them, desperate enough to take any work at any wage with benefits we will have to scrape together ourselves. That's the future they desire, the future they are orchestrating with what seems like to most to be stupid, reckless, devastating policies but that are intentional to quicken the destruction that is coming at their hands. That wealth gap? Yeah, that is exactly the plan -- a two-tier society in which they have everything, we serve at their pleasure, and survive any way we can with no say whatsoever in how they lord over us. If we do not act decisively and very, very soon, this is where they are taking us. Side note: this scenario is what I believe has been represented to the GOP and they've been promised they will get better treatment in this new reality if they do what is demanded of them and they are also being threatened that if they don't, their fate will be like ours, or worse.
Short answer: I really don't know the answer to that but maybe. I mean, why would I have ever needed to know the answer to such a question before all this but okay here we are, right?
Longer answer: Every day I try to figure out if this protest or that general strike or these boycotts will do the trick. Where I stand so far is that the boycotts may not work simply because there are not enough of us to stop buying that would make a big enough impact to actually harm these businesses or get them to change what they are doing because they are all so diversified around the world, especially in China, and are rapidly expanding that they can pretty quickly make up the difference of the insufficient loss in revenues and stock prices if every single one of us except MAGAs boycott them. And that goes for social media as well. But that said, these boycotts and other actions help us in one way I hadn't thought of.
That spark of inspiration comes from the story of a reporter who asked a man who had been protesting every night outside the White House holding a candle, "Do you really think you are going to change the policies of this country by standing out here alone at night in front of the White House with a candle?" The man, A.J. Muste, replied, "Oh I don't do this to change the country. I do this so the country won't change me.” And so yes, these actions will fortify our own sense of purpose and importantly bring us together because nothing happens if we don't and we are really out of practice in doing that even in small numbers.
A general strike and massive, sustained protests, yes, I think they can work but we need to do them NOW! I've seen that the number is 3.5% of the population is needed for that but I have this sense that the number would need to be larger. And we might have better luck if those military folks who are getting canned join these protests, not for anything violent, but to show they have our backs.
These people doing all this are cowards, they are weak, and we can drive them back when we are not.
Having been a toddler military dependent in Munich during the Nuremberg Trials, I was a little more attentive to my mother's warnings to never think it couldn't happen here.
It describes the worst of Heydrich, but also a bit of where some restraint was seen as "useful." After tens of thousands of thousands of Jews were sent off to be worked to death and killed:
"...Heydrich as acting Reich Protector then courted Czech industrial workers and farmers, whose productive capacity was necessary to the German war effort, with wages and benefits packages equivalent to those of their German counterparts. The result of his policies was a 73% reduction in acts of sabotage within six months. By spring of 1942, the German authorities could boast of a pacification of the Protectorate..."
Perhaps the MAGA fans should consider their fate if they think about the "wages and benefit packages equivalent to those of their German counterparts," offered to the "Czech industrial workers and farmers whose productive capacity was necessary to the German war effort." What do they think their fate will be after they are no longer needed?
I don't laugh at or otherwise dismiss any of them -- not their racism, not their ferocious tribalism, nor their hatreds and frequently "manly" tendencies to rape, to carrying around mass murder military-style weaponry.
And they're organized under all these far-right authoritarians (including nationalist religious zealots) all over the world.
Do we all need to read more Hannah Arendt?
Or is it just academic, and they're bringing The Rapture sooner than any of us thought?
More Hannah Arendt, yes, yes. But as for these tech guys, they were weaned on Ayn Rand in their computer lab geek youth. Plus regardless of what other religious beliefs they may have or not, they all bow to the god of capitalism, like it is the center of all they do, perverted, but at the center. They also truly believe that it is tech that rules the world and since they do tech, they should be the rulers and NOTHING must ever interfere with the development of tech... and now, oh goody, they have AI (and I don't think the rush to superintelligence is about beating China; it's about beating and controlling us.) But yeah, Ayn Rand is their north star I think. Oh, and as for The Rapture, that's only for us. They plan on living forever or at least for some, to have their DNA live on indefinitely via their ever-expanding broods cuz yeah, after destroying as many of us as possible, repopulating the earth with spawn having their "superior" genes is already underway too. So so many layers of sick.
Thankful to inhabit this planet same time as you, however outpowered we might be by the nihilist techies, cowardly suckers-up-to-power, speakers of wonk, social media living dead, standardized testers, mass murderers, and lone wolf murderers.
I have decided to not send in my income tax payment. 1. I no longer have a competent president. 2. My representatives are out manned by a corrupt,incompetent and idle Congress. 3. The Supreme Court has only two non corrupt justices. So,not a penny from me. I’ll seek extensions until one of us goes first.
I agree with everything you stated and the story about the guy with the candle, to me is a very important one I had not been focused on recently. I will keep this in the forefront of my mind going fwd. I also agree that our numbers need to be huge. In the millions. Repeating a unified message. We can't afford to water our power down by going off on individual tangents. Our message needs to be the same across the country and then sustained for the duration needed. I do believe that we...the people and we...the country need the military on our side resisting all that Trump & his loyalists is doing.
Over on bsky, I'm seeing lots of folks using the word courage right now.
AOC: "The time to be courageous is now." “Every day wake up and say what can I do today?’ — There is no act too small. Every action matters."
And someone reposted this from Timothy Snyder: Lesson #20 "Be as courageous as you can" - T. Snyder 'On Tyranny'.
Don't feel like you have to do something dramatic, and thus become paralyzed with inaction, make eye contact, say thank you, challenge word choice, support a local institution, like a Bluesky post, check in on an old friend."
I really appreciate that last part because I am a teensy blue dot in a sea of red. But I can still do more.
They've had 50 years working up to this. It's gonna take us more than a sec to get going but we do need to get on this FAST. And yes, YES, to your last sentence. The regime is quickly cleansing and consolidating security forces and if they stick to the plan, which they have so far, doing the same plus arming and bringing under monarchy control of the police is coming. That was a key Hitler move in his first 53 days of toppling Germany's democracy. Just awaiting the EO that talks about something like more funding to strengthen police blah blah. That day I will tremble... again. So getting out in front of that would be so helpful.
As ever, it is about workforce and the capturing and subjugation of it. When that workforce realizes how much power they actually have, then the power begins to act. People just need to be convinced of that reality. The power to change their condition. And there lies the road ahead. The convincing and call to action.
Trump is a lot of things; and none of them good. I'd say he is Putin's Poodle insofar as his relationship with Putin seems different, somehow, than with others. Putin says "Donald, come!" and Donald comes. Putin says "Roll over" and Donald rolls over.
I think Donald tolerates some upstaging of Musk so long as he believes Musk can be fired,and gives Musk free reign because he cannot well comprehend what He and his redhat hackers are actually up to, except that it rapidly unravels the Republic, and with it, barriers to working his whims. He would drop Elon like a rock if he didn't need him. At least he would try to. Trump seems more genuinely dependent on Putin.
All laughing severely underestimate the layers of hatred and vengeance in him. Just as our clever elites laughed at him in 2016. Just as Merrick Garland and everybody at the Department of Justice then and for too long a time dawdled and pooh-poohed the chances of Trump ever escaping federal justice.
Certainly this is not a time to laugh MAGA off. The danger and damage is real and ongoing. And yet my sense of history is that well crafted ridicule can be an effective political weapon. Defeatism is at least a pernicious as denial, and I think humor can tear at illusion legitimacy and invincibility that despots devise to concoct; as Thomas Nast challenged the same old serpent in the 19th Century. All of the self-righteous bloviating of MAGA figures is preposterous fiction of the Emperor's New Clothes variety, even when deadly. I saw a recent cartoon of Musk in his gladiator costume, with an apparently dead, starvation emaciated African child at his feet; hailing to a thumbs-up Trump as approving emperor. The image, like some of those of Thomas Nast is humor that is not really "funny", yet is not misplaced. One is reminded of the 'gallows humor' attributed to Benjamin Franklin, "Yes, we must, indeed, all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately.” Trump imagined as "Putin's poodle" is similarly not just comic relief.
I worked in Psychiatry for over 40 years. I said that Trump was a very “sick puppy” all the way back when he took his wife, Ivana, AND Marla Maples to Aspen CO skiing, and watched with glee as they fought over him in a cafe. I warned all my family that he is a Malignant Narcissist who is EXTREMELY DANGEROUS when he rode down the escalator and announced his candidacy. Still, many voted for him. You are witnessing the acts of a man who is UNABLE to consider anyone but himself, UNABLE to feel compassion or guilt or any sense of conscience, is very paranoid and extremely sadistic. There is no negotiating with him. The only negotiating cards we had were held during the impeachments, and then after office if he had been arrested for J6. The tiny card we hold now is if the Republicans in the Senate and House develop spines and do their jobs!!
Liar, Fraud, Con, Grifter, Felon, Racist, Fascist Trump is a TRAITOR. Traitor Trump is America’s Disgrace! Traitors should be indicted, arrested, tried, convicted and sentenced to death by hanging.
Yes, you know that DEMOCRACY has failed because the traitor trump and the unelected co-president elon musk are not in prison. But the solution for a failed democracy is not a dictatorship, nor authoritarianism; it's a REFORMED and IMPROVED democracy.
All of you who stayed home on Election Day because you didn’t like Biden’s middle of the road approach, his support of Israel, his allowing drilling to continue, f—- you. We needed your vote and you chose ideology over democracy. To all of you that voted for Trump, f—- you coming and going. Normally I’d say something like you’re getting what you deserve, but we’re getting what you selected, and non of us deserve it.
Who’s left? Lawyers. Bless them.
Don’t wait for the military to save the country. That cure might be worse than the disease. No, we’ll have to suffer through a wrecked world and a wrecked economy before the country might try something else, assuming the constitution isn’t thrown out altogether.
I did my job and voted for the VP. I was able to vote at the county election office the weekend before Election Day and there was heavy turnout. Unfortunately, it did us no good.
Trump/ Vance / Rubio/ Hegseth -and the rest of the Republican enablers, are TRAITORS. trump must be removed or impeached. there must be a reckoning in this country. Thankfully we still have journalists who report what’s happening. Fascism/ Nazism must be stopped.
"Thankfully we still have journalists who report what’s happening"
We do? Please let me know where I can find them. . . WaPo and NYT seem to be talking in some sort of strange "nudge, nudge, wink, wink" jargon at the moment. And what we need is a press that shouts from the rooftops.
Lady E, I agree!! Where was Bezos when his editorial board wanted to endorse Harris? Where was Bezos when a large ad against Trump was proposed recently? And Was he not in the front row at Trump inauguration?!? He is helping to destroy democracy.
And we need our Federal Democratic Legislators in the House and Senate to use every archane rule and procedure to impede, fight, and block the Constitutional Coup we've watched unfold since January 20!
"The British tabloid The Daily Star interprets the changes in American politics differently. Its cover tomorrow features Vladimir Putin walking “PUTIN’S POODLE”: the president of the United States"
I recently send you a letter expressing my concerns about the administration’s disregard for law, integrity, and accountability with respect to freezing congressionally approved funding. Since then, it seems that there are daily reports and developments that are a clear escalation of this financial situation that also carries over to every other aspect of the administration’s actions regarding everything about everything!
I know you don't have a crystal ball, or a magic wand to set things right, and I'm interested in your thoughts on how we can work with this administration to find a solution when it appears that the administration is completely willing to do whatever it pleases without regard for law, integrity, or accountability.
I'm sickened each time I think about what Musk and DOGE have already done to the security of our sensitive and confidential data and that they appear to be continuing without guardrails or any congressional oversight. It doesn't seem like the courts are going to back up integrity or honor either.
When do we call it a coup and take action fitting with the severity of the situation?
A final thought for today as I watch the unremitting horror show in the now occupied US from a still for the moment free France (then it's off for morning shopping - sorry!): all of those cosplayers who dressed up for all these damn years as 1776ers and wanted to play Mr. Lexington Green Minute Man and party like it was April 19, 1775 in Concord Massachusetts? Well, since we apparently now have a king, here is your real chance . . .
I never thought I'd be hoping for a military intervention. But by now I'm hoping that sane generals will step in and do something about this insanity.
Be careful the most popular channel at military bases is FOX News.
Believe me, if you had any idea how I feel about the military, you'd know what a Hail Mary it was for me to post that.
Don't let anyone frighten you. I took part in a protest at the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas on Monday....the local ABC station gave it very little coverage and showed a picture of about 10 people at the rally. The truth is there were close to 250-300 people protesting. You can't even trust the usual news outlets to be correct. G-d help us.
The Oligarchs have taken over much of the corporate media--networks, radio, print and many podcasts and now they are taking over the Federal government, department by department.
If we had only known in advance that all of this was going to happen. /S
We DID know! We were told over and over again. No one listened. No on paid attention to the real issues at hand.
Trump told the public, Kamala warned the public. Now HERE IT IS...
One of my husband's favorite saying is "the only way to prove to a fool they are wrong is let them have their way". Sadly the consequences of those who voted for this monster will fall on ALL OF US....and the diehard MAGAS will never own their own demise. I am beyond words watching this country get decimated 💔😢
If we had only known in advance that all of this was going to happen. /S
"/S" is for Sarcasm (in this case rather extreme sarcasm)
. . . "and over and over and over and . . . "
I agree! Thanks Melanie.
Some of us knew
Everyone knew. Half ignored it.
Yup we did! But our voices fell on deaf ears.!
My impression of Lester Holt is that he leads with what is getting the most clicks on Facebook and closes with a “feel good”. Nothing of depth or substance in the middle. I once had some confidence in him but his nightly news could be put together by seventh graders.
Frankly, the same can be said for ABC and David Muir. No confidence at all in the major networks now reporting. CBS may be the best of the three. That's why I lean heavily to BBC and NPR.
I stopped watching ANY network news (NBC,CBS, ABC, CNN) back in the summer and don't miss it. Independent media is now where I get my news, plus some overseas, international media. American mainstream media has sold its soul to the devils in charge now. I prefer to READ my news now, not watch it on TV. I've given up the WaPo and still subscribe to the NYT and the local papers (in Atlanta and in my little burg) because I do like to keep tabs of stuff locally. I fear objective journalism in the US has taken a quantum leap backwards, and some of the big names from the past are more than likely tut-tutting from the "other side". Where else in mainstream media could one find a similar clear and concise recounting of the Trump regime's (I refuse to call it an "administration") capitulation to Putin and Russia than right here in HCR's Letter for today??
And when Gordon Lightfoot died, Lester ignored this news.
That is the reason I stopped watching network news. Network news is all headlines and very little if any, background story or discussion of the topic. I now watch PBS News Hour for substance. I come away from the News Hour better informed.
Bingo. Do not watch network news. Nothing personal against Lester Holt, David Muir, and others on network news as they may be fine people.
However it became apparent about 2 - 3 years ago that the networks were going for ratings rather than any in depth analysis of what was happening
It was laid out in Project 2025. It is still there. Plus Trump told us what he was going to do. ‘A dictator on Day One!’
Sorry Gary. The situation is so extreme that I don’t even recognize sarcasm anymore.
We did know in advance. DT is doing what he said he would do once he became President.
Gary, yeah, if only. But the price of eggs. I see lots of FAFO directed at people who are now lamenting their vote.
That is sarcasm isn’t it? Project 2025 is being followed to the letter
I am assuming you were being sarcastic in that last sentence???
If only.......wink, wink.
That’s if your comment aimed for sarcasm. See? I still can’t tell. Aye me.
Even Facebook and Google are calling the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America. AP seems to be the only major news source to stand up to trump even at the expense of being locked out of Air Force One and other meetings. From what you have said, it seems that ABC has thrown in the towel, too.
How can anyone accept this name change after 400 years, based solely on an executive "order"?? Such BS.
There are actually cartographic societies that are charged with cartography. It would be good to find out the history and bring these groups to the fore of the conversation.
My musical contribution titled, "Blue Daze" Enjoy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYtTGIzb7OA
Thanks for sharing
The mildest reply to the globally insulting name change is to suggest calling it the Gulf of an American Autocrat.
There are other names that I will refrain from suggesting instead of Autocrat.
GAA, yeh, that works. lol
So far, System1's MapQuest still displays Gulf of Mexico. But of course, they have such a tiny share of the online mapping market, they are not noticed nor do they have much to lose by resisting.
Is your ABC affiliate owned by Sinclair? If so, there's your answer why so little coverage.
Yes Sinclair are a large part of the arsonists who are fomenting these actions. We need to regulate who can own stations and how many. Then break up the monolithic mindset. There used to be rules against consolidation of media…Newt and Bill got rid of them! Bring them back! Monopolies are not safe!
I agree. I attended a couple protests here in downtown Columbus but didn't hear much - if anything - about those protests on the news. The (illegitimate) government is already controlling the media. I wish people would wake up.
DebbieM (OH) -- Write to your local press !!! Let them know that you are witness to their bias. Ohio is predominantly a Republican state, is it not?
Yes it is. Our glorious VP Justa hails from Ohio. He makes me want to puke. Columbus (where I live) is pretty much blue, tho, and the Columbus Dispatch is fairly left leaning. Yay.
Yes they are... sadly. Ohio was one of the early gerrymandered states. It used to be a reliably "bell-weather" state. The early alarm was sounded, but it fell on mostly deaf ears. I'm talking over a decade ago.
Good for you- keep going. More & more people will show up.
The same thing happened here on Cape Cod. Falmouth had a very large demonstration on 2/17
of maybe 200 plus people. Since I was there, I absolutely know. The Cape Cod Times photos totally minimized it reporting as if the maga demo down the street of maybe 6-7 people was equal. I was as you might imagine beyond livid. And this is Massachusetts.
ABC is complicit and our local ABC Channel 27 news representing South Central PA is pathetic.
We need one of our alternative media sites to monitor all the protests and then help report. The protesting would be more effective if it was more organized and the reporting would be better.
The small protests with a few hundred are no less important then ones with several thousand people, but the impact is not as great if there's no reporting.
300 people protesting what?
Are you DEMANDING more government waste and fraud? We need to a large and growing NATIONAL debt?
Are you demanding more DEI programs in Burma?
Republican popularity is blasting OFF. Republicans are +2 nation wide.
Democrats were +6 in 2022.
Trump is at 53% popularity. Democrats are at 21% favorability.
Keep up the good work
Well then. You’ve evidently stumbled into a pro-democracy, pro freedom, pro Constitutional Republic, forum, my man. The bootlicking, neo-Nazi psychopath, Nazi tech-broligarchy group is thatta way. Kindly see your fascist self out.
Pro democracy? Ukraine is a dictatorship. No elections and they jail and censor political opposition
You are a phony. If you believed in tge war you would go over and fight
Instead you talk shit and do nothing
Funny thing about that growing national debt, see https://wwsg.com/speaker-news/sheila-bair-u-s-debt-could-drive-the-next-financial-crisis/
"...Case in point is the current [upcoming as of Oct 30 2024] election. Both presidential candidates are proposing tax and spending giveaways to curry favor with voters. The nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget projects that Vice President Kamala Harris’ proposals will increase the debt by $3.95 trillion over the next 10 years, which pales in comparison to Donald Trump’s plans, which will increase it by $7.75 trillion..."
Almost double under Trump (1.96x). Under Biden we were getting twice as much good things like restoring and building new infrastructure instead of seeing falling bridges and much more disaster relief from a more effective FEMA that, if anything did more of the already finished, as well as planning longer term improvements in Red States (making me think it should be seen as trying to earn votes from Republicans by doing the things their representatives voted against, but still claimed Republican credit for).
My guess is we got double the benefit from Biden's debt increase (badly needed to make up for previous neglect), where we are likely to be paying double (or 1.96 times as much), for less than half of the benefits to anyone but billionaires.
I actually think the world, and even the US alone, will get far less than half the benefit, even far below of what we all got under any previous Republican administration.
Roll your window down.
The days of massive deficit spending are OVER.
The goal is cut the federal budget by $1T and balance the budget,
Even better the days of leftist NGO’s stealing from the taxpayer are OVER.
Good for you- keep going. More people will show up, hopefully soon.
While it is possible that calling on the military to rescue us will create more than a few unintended consequences, it's important to recognize that the military is not a monolith, and among its ranks, especially the educated ranks, are many true patriots who take their vows to the Constitution very seriously. Some of these commanders are public figures and have made their negative opinion of our PINO plain. And that was before the past month. If anyone had any doubts about Trumpmusk's competence or motivations, they must have been multiplied by their actions since the inauguration.
I thought t Rump was about to fire the Generals he does not like…
He did , General Milley for one, he's the most important one. Please read what the General stated about trump.
In a nutshell, I blame the Democrats for not doing what needed to be done.
Call me crazy but I believe we were dealt a hand and we did not play it. And by we, I mean Biden and the Democrats.
Under the SCOTUS presidential immunity ruling, a sweeping executive order to clean house of all January 6th co-conspirators should have occurred, swiftly and abruptly. There were mountains of evidence of treason by these people. Mountains. We had VIDEO of these people. Eye witnesses. Ad nauseum. Meanwhile, we held quaint “committee hearings” and Merrick Garland sat on his hands for YEARS letting the cancer of fascist neo Nazi propaganda to metastasize.
Biden et al should have arrested and imprisoned all members of congress who took part in the January 6th insurrection and who perpetuated the Big Lie, starting with the head traitor.
Then let the punishments fit the treasonous crimes. All you have to do is read the Constitution to know what that punishment is.
ALL of this could’ve been avoided.
Would that have been a revolutionary act? Would that have started a civil war? Oh, sure. Perhaps.
But rather that than THIS psychopathic destruction.
Rather that all day long.
SCOTUS would never have let BIDEN get by with those things! The whole point is that they reserved the job of deciding WHAT constitutes 'official acts' for themselves....so they can parcel out rulings they way THEY want. And THEY want Trump or anyone else who will implement THEIR vision..white, christian, male rule.
They knew he was too honest to take advantage of that ruling. If they even remotely thought he would act like tRump, they would have never made that decision.
That’s exactly it. There was a hand to play. He didn’t play it. We all knew how this would play out if Trump won the election. And here we are. Mueller adhering to a Nixon era “memo” not to indict a sitting president? Utterly feckless and asinine. All of it was feckless and asinine.
These Nazis needed to be drive hard and put away wet, as the saying goes. We needed to run over them just as they’ve done to us, for the GREATER GOOD. Instead we brought a knife to a gun fight. Again and again.
While I know we are in a right wing propaganda hell, I’m not entirely convinced Trump won legitimately this time. Hear me out, please: At the risk of sounding like “them,” let’s take a look at some key differences: Elon Musk, the richest man on the planet had his hands in it this time, to the tune of a quarter billion dollars, as did Putin, openly this time, just blatant “talks.” Utterly insane. He never once won the popular vote and this time he did? Plus, this time he won ALL the swing states? I’m not buying it, and let’s not forget that Trump admitted on camera several times that the fix was in. It reeks of a rigged election, does it not?
I disagree...they protected their interests by saying only the courts can decide what an 'official act' is..no one but a Trump-like democracy destroyer will get away with anything. Biden knew this, of course.
My view is that trump and musk are Domestic Terrorists, and should be arrested as such!
There is much to agree with. Sarah Kenzdior's book They Knew was a very well presented gathering of information where she laid out the case that tRump would not be held accountable since he lost the election. She pointed out that the establishment would not prosecute him and his congressional helpers. Why, you ask? Rachel Maddow explained that in her book Prequel and podcast ULTRA. America has a history of letting off seditionists due to the belief in the first amendment. Our devotion to rights is allowing one side to abuse those rights by saying untrue things with no consequences for lying. Fox and the right wing outlets should been criminally charged.
I have always believed in the principle, and even the actual words, of FDR when he said, “You’ve convinced me. I agree with what you’ve said. Now go out and make me do it.” See https://www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/the-make-me-do-it-myth/
Most just remember the "Now go out and make me do it," as the part that the petitioners needed to earn enough public support for it to succeed, in the current case to get the careless, unaware of the personal and other consequences, Trump voters and all that didn't bother to vote, to join a coalition of all opposed to the policies he is enabling (and who I would hope to look for the most supported goals of all in the regions).
An earlier version from Lincoln, "With public sentiment, nothing can fail. Without it, nothing can succeed."
At a meeting with one of our Congress member's staff (there in a personal role), an attendee asked about forming a "shadow cabinet." I didn't get a chance to talk to her as I was in the overflow area, but would have suggested using "People's Cabinet" as more inclusive coalition.
Jessie, donthecon was impeached twice in first term and repubs wouldn’t vote to convict. Mueller report was discredited by Barr. Donthecon put 3 lying magats on the Supreme Court. Colorado wanted to keep him off the 2024 ballot and the court over rode it.
I know it is alarming and also yes FOX News has been part of the military culture for along time. That never ever should have happened. There used to be a military news and radio service as in Good Morning Vietnam and other films and books that used that type of service for a narrative. I think Bonhoeffer and his cohorts like The White Rose Society felt similar reactions . Vera Britten’s Testament to Youth records the WWI issues of before, during, and after. And in Hitler’s Germany pacifists were ostracized and encamped.
One hopes for some sort of non military action to change the flow but sometimes it seems there are no other options. Though I would posit we had them but didn’t use as in the 24 th Amendment or were blocked as in the two impeachments. Like an elderly body whose medical with a plethora of chronic conditions eventually the cascade happens and the human dies.
How is it that FOX is so compelling, and believable by military personnel. The military should be the ones protecting truth (or at least knowing what that is). Who and what are they fighting for?
It was the channel of choice for some reason and again I have no idea of the how , why , or who and the history of how that evolved.
🫶
The Politics of War In Europe
I will suggest at the onset that I am not very knowledgeable about international politics but I’ll toss my opinionated slab of political meat on the table. I believe war must be avoided especially when no alternatives are any good. When the diminutive dictator Putin threatened Ukraine with invasion in 2022 if NATO didn’t proclaim Ukraine ineligible for NATO membership, that was a no brainer. Ukraine was arguably not prepared for NATO and it isn’t today so why not have given the dictator what he asked for. Membership could have been considered in the future. But we in the West had to snub our nose at Putin. We had to make comparisons to Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement of Hitler post invasion. I’ve always felt that this was faulty reasoning even if a defacto war already existed in eastern Ukraine. There were no good options. However, saving hundreds of thousands of lives might have been a less bad one.
After the breakup of the Soviet Union, there was ambiguity about how much NATO, as a defensive pac, should grow to the east. And there was a brief time under Chairman Gorbachev that seemed to be ushering in a western-style and friendly Russian government. The problem with Russia is that it has never had a representative democracy in modern times to model. It went from an absolute monarchy to totalitarianism then to a brief experiment in democracy under a weak and corrupt first president in the name of Boris Yeltsin who then groomed an up and coming dictator.
Even though NATO is purely defensive, to an insecure dictator, it seemed threatening. Also, Ukraine is partially within the Russian geographical orbit. Why didn’t the West come to the aid of Chechnya when Russia invaded that nation and bombed the hell out of it? Why? Because Chechnya is in the Russian orbit. Dominant cultures dominate their neighbors. Historically, the US has practiced the same inclinations as other dominant cultures. Admittedly, Ukraine falls within both the Russian orbit but its western side is also quite European. This political situation is nuanced and ripe for what has happened; war. A pro Russian Ukrainian government was ousted in “Maidan Revolution” of 2014 and Russia blamed Western influence. A perfect intro for the first Russian invasion.
Now the US has elected the worst person to ever hold this office. He is a moron whose motivation is total destruction of the status quo mixed with self-aggrandizement and graft on an incomprehensible scale and who is a divider instead of a uniter. Donald Trump is clearly a traitor to the American constitution. He has scorned our European allies and befriended the worst of humankind. The European Union and NATO without participation of the US, should send arms and a new European army to save Ukraine. War might have been avoided at one time but now it’s urgent to defeat Russia with whatever it takes. At this point in time, I don’t know if the United States will survive this grand electoral mistake. If the Courts do not stop Trump, and/or if he refuses Court findings we slip into a 21st century civil war or we capitulate to dictatorship. It’s not a pleasant thought.
Russia shares borders with 16 countries and has actively sought to undermine democratic processes in all of them. The professor has mentioned the installation of a puppet regime in Ukraine which was ousted in a violent uprising. Putin has used the excuse of state oppression of ethnic Russian minorities in Georgia (the breakaway provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia) and Moldova (Transnistria). There's pro-Russian governing parties in Georgia and Belarus. The Russians have tried to intervene in EU elections - https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/may/18/disappearing-ink-fake-polls-and-voter-eu-fears-as-russian-propaganda-ads-target-euro-elections
For Heaven's sakes, they've even influenced US elections as the Mueller Report confirmed. I know about Russian paranoia about NATO encroachment. I remember when the Russian poet, Yevgeny Yevtushenko warned the west: " In Russia, borders are not simply borders." But what we're seeing today is Russian imperialism. Putin doesn't want a peace deal with Ukraine. He wants to absorb the country into Russia. Time and time again, the west has learned that giving in to Putin is a huge mistake.
Timothy Snyder: The Making of Modern Ukraine
.https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLh9mgdi4rNewfxO7LhBoz_1Mx1MaO6sw_&si=EdY1wgZBXh0e2fCu.
Ukrainian National Anthem
.https://youtu.be/mUfwy3f3R4s?si=Uz5RCIjR-vvHKMvq.
Sofia explains and sings the anthem
.https://youtu.be/ZRLT_HZDf84?si=xQpC8eoA4z_XtyVD.
Ukraine’s glory has not yet died, nor her freedom,
Upon us, my young brothers, fate shall yet smile.
Our enemies will perish, like dew in the morning sun,
And we too shall rule, brothers, in our own land.
The Republican party's fealty to Putin precedes Donald Trump, Tulsi Gabbard, Marco Rubio, Pete Hegseth, Stephen Miller et al. It goes back to the 1990s when former KKK Grand Wizard and perennial GOP gadfly David Duke sold the White Supremacist Christian extremist GOP base on Russia as the exemplar of Christian White Supremacist Nationalism and Putin as their savior.
When it became clear that US ambassador to Great Britain Joseph Kennedy was a flaming Hitler fanboy, Pres. FDR recalled Kennedy from London as unfit to serve. Now the POTUS is a flaming fascist fanboy.
"They Say America First But They Mean America Next" - Woody Guthrie
https://youtu.be/Mw9qJhvxytg?si=Msi9eZua9bIVzr5Y
Slava Ukraini!
Lin-You put your finger on the underlying issue related to the U.S. policies toward Russia. It’s difficult for most to understand the role that white supremacy plays as the world struggles to find peace.
Trump’s ability to seat in the Oval Office twice now is the result of an ongoing backlash against the idea of “equality and justice for all”.
Russia has been instrumental in stirring up fear that people with white skin in the U.S. will soon be a “minority”.
There has been one successful coup in American history. Watch American Coup: Wilmington 1898 on You Tube. It confirms your astute observation about what’s really happening today.
Having Black men sitting in the seats of president, defense secretary, speaker of the house, attorney general etc. means the end of the America as it has been.
If you want to know how white make grievance operates this film tells the honest truth about how white supremacy is driving world affairs and American elections check out the details involving America’s successful coup. The media, politicians and big business are the stars.
Thanks for adding the Woody Guthrie song - where is our new Woody? On TikTok?
Lin, Gina, thanks.
For those wanting the Wilmington 1898 story in text rather than video, here:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilmington_massacre
Agreed. And now we have a Putin puppet running our country.
Add the Heritage Foundation apparently…and the House of Representatives!
Thank you Russell.
Putin wants to resurrect the Russian Empire. He wants to be an "Alexander the Great". The KGB was his university.
Putin is a vicious beast. A beast ONLY understands strength and recoils only when threatened with overwhelming force. Trump is his toy to play with because Trump thinks he is a great negotiator. But he is just a clown.
Putin could have been stopped in 2014. But Obama did want to go to war. THAT was the red line. Putin had a taste of what he could get away with and that just whetted his appetite.
Putin is also a patient beast. He will negotiate with his toy, reset the Ukrainian boundaries, undermine democracy in Ukraine, ultimately making Ukraine a vassal. He will be encouraged by this success. Then on to Finland, Poland or wherever there is a sign of weakness. He is like a wolf that follows a herd of elk. When he sees one limping or running too slow, he will attack and eat.
My great hope is that this debacle created by our fascist regime will truly unite Europe to make NATO even stronger. Unlike America, WWII was fought on European soil. The scars of aggression by people like Putin are all over the landscape. Americans don't have those physical reminders.
So for what it's worth, IMO, in a useless exercise in retrospective overthink, I suggest that the proper thing for the "West" to do in 2014 was to immediately accept Ukraine in to the European family - including NATO.
There is no negotiating with a beast. There is only a choice: giving up and being its tool - or scaring it away.
For now, it is our lot to be embarrassed and viewed as foolish tools.
t Rump is giving US away to the Ruskies while Muskie is hijacking all our data and installing AI. Heads are spinning. Stop the Steal.
Putin is also a wounded beast. His invasion of Ukraine was spectacularly incompetent. He assumed his tanks and armoured vehicles would roll into Kyiv and topple the Ukrainian government in three days. Instead, they ran out of fuel, leading Russian soldiers to request, commandeer and steal diesel to continue progress. The conscripted soldiers were forced to steal chickens, and special forces soldiers break into shops to loot food. That was just the beginning. By the end of 2022, the first year of the campaign, Putin had lost 1,500 officers including 160 generals and colonels. The Russian economy is failing. The rouble has lost half its value and inflation is rising. The economy is also overheating because of the huge military budget. They're using prisoners for forced labour in factories. Bloomberg estimates that Russia has lost almost half its national wealth fund. Export bans for petrol and sugar have been introduced to secure domestic supply. Strict capital controls have been put in place to prevent the exodus of private funds from the country and keep the ruble from freefalling. Even so, there are still reports of billions of US dollars being transferred out of the country. Putin needs this peace deal so there's really no need to offer him sweeteners.
I'd also credit the fortunate growth in Ukrainians understanding of possibilities and huge increase in resolve by the 2nd invasion. They were portrayed as somewhat hesitant and internally divided, not sure of what the best course and what was possible. By the 2nd invasion they were so much more appreciative of what they could be, and ferociously prepared to defend it. The harder they were attacked the harder their resolve and strength in fighting back.
Putin's mistake was in thinking a bully can surprise and overwhelm a portion of seemingly weaker country, then come back and try to grab the rest of it.
Sometimes the once bullied become much stronger and determined to never be bullied again.
Vietnam comes mind. And Afghanistan as well.
In response to Bill Alstrom, I think Bill meant to say:
“ Putin could have been stopped in 2014. But Obama did [not] want to go to war. “
?
Yes. And Obama had run on ending wars, not starting new ones. That being said, when Putin took Crimea, he was taking the first of many steps to expanding his Russian Empire. It's easy to look back and second guess. But the fact remains that he got away with a land grab. It tasted great. He paid hardly any real price. So he went for more.
Watch for his appetite to grow.
I'd rather see Timothy Snyder's opinion than me trying to get the facts straight. To me, it seems the conditions were very different in 2014 and would have been much harder without greater unity of purpose in Ukraine and especially with my old party sabotaging everything Obama would try to do (even if it was what they would do if they could get the credit for it).
A quick look found https://www.vox.com/2014/9/3/18088560/ukraine-everything-you-need-to-know
"...This all began as an internal Ukrainian crisis in November 2013, when President Viktor Yanukovych rejected a deal for greater integration with the European Union (here's why this was such a big deal), sparking mass protests, which Yanukovych attempted to put down violently. Russia backed Yanukovych in the crisis, while the US and Europe supported the protesters.
Since then, several big things have happened. In February, anti-government protests toppled the government and ran Yanukovych out of the country. Russia, trying to salvage its lost influence in Ukraine, invaded and annexed Crimea the next month. In April, pro-Russia separatist rebels began seizing territory in eastern Ukraine. The rebels shot down Malaysian Airlines flight 17 on July 17, killing 298 people, probably accidentally. Fighting between the rebels and the Ukrainian military intensified, the rebels started losing, and, in August, the Russian army overtly invaded eastern Ukraine to support the rebels. This has all brought the relationship between Russia and the West to its lowest point since the Cold War. Sanctions are pushing the Russian economy to the brink of recession, and more than 2,500 Ukrainians have been killed..."
That doesn't seem too different from other sources and should give clues to why it would have been far more difficult back then.
before the attack on Pearl Harbor, the US was pretty much isolationist which is what they seem to be trending towards now. Me first, the heck with everyone else. It was the president (FDR? my history isn't so good) who was encouraging Congress to send aid; and not until the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor did we get involved. I wonder how many people knew that the nazis had implanted spies into our country and were sinking our merchant ships on our East Coast?
Obama did not have the political backing to do anything but load up Russia with sanctions which have ruined the Russian economy.
This is true, thank you. But look what the current White House is doing and what he WILL do without broad political support.
I have enormous respect for Obama. The Crimea crisis doesn't just lay at his feet. WE as a nation should and could have responded more forcefully.
Putin’s 2007 Munich Security conference speech is where he laid these plans. This belligerence was made possible by soaring oil prices post 911, as Russia was able to pay off Western loans by 2004. 2004 began investments in their military. But corruption has kept that growth and strength in. Check. While the west was developing new communications technology, Russian FSB was learning how to manipulate the population of adversarial countries like the EU in America and especially Ukraine the war in Ukraine represents where Russia started working first to influence a foreign population through cyber weapons delivered through social media. I think it’s important to educate Americans that the Ukraine war started in 2014 not 2022 2022 was just the invasion to try to take Kia out and the rest of the country so we think the war is three years. It’s actually a lot more than that.
He's a bad lot. The FSB has been protecting a cybercriminal gang called the Evil Corp which has been carrying out attacks on NATO countries. The UK National Crime Agency says that they used family links with Russia’s domestic spy agency to protect its members after being targeted by US authorities. Trump will probably invite them to join DOGE and help wreak havoc on US federal agencies.
And, to call back to the 2007 Putin speech reveals the long timeline that led to current events.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Munich_speech_of_Vladimir_Putin
Legacy:
“— Both during the run-up to and shortly after, the launch of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, the [2007] speech was revisited with some political analysts and commentators arguing it to have been a revelation of Putin's intentions that was at the time misread by the West and not taken seriously enough. According to Andrew A. Michta's opinion published by The Wall Street Journal in August 2022, Western leaders had failed in 2007 to recognize the speech "amounted to a declaration of war on the West." —“
And,
“— Putin later made other speeches that were called follow-ups to the Munich speech, including:
The 2013 Valdai speech of Vladimir Putin in Sochi on 19 September 2013
The Crimean speech of Vladimir Putin to the Federal Assembly of Russia on 18 March 2014
The 2014 Valdai speech of Vladimir Putin in Sochi on 24 October 2014
The 2015 U. N. General Assembly speech of Vladimir Putin in New York on 28 September 2015 ("I'm urged to ask those who created this situation: do you at least realize now what you’ve done?") —“
Yikes.
Putin wants to reconstitute the Russian Empire and add to it if he can.
You probably know the story of how Vladimir Putin was a young KGB officer in Dresden when the Soviet Union began to disintegrate. In 1989, when the Berlin Wall fell the KGB HQ building in Dresden was surrounded by an angry mob of Germans, He warned them off wanting to avoid bloodshed, according to contemporary accounts of the incident, and he and his comrades spent the rest of the night burning documents. He described later how he rang the headquarters of a Red Army tank unit to ask for protection. The answer he received was a devastating, life-changing shock. "We cannot do anything without orders from Moscow," the voice at the other end replied. "And Moscow is silent." From that point, he said he was determined that when asked for help Moscow would never be silent again. The humiliation of this experience was pivotal to the way he runs Russia today.
Putin has clearly stated that he wants his Eurasian empire, stretching from Lissabon to Petrograd. He will nuke Europe into submission.
His threats of nuclear aggression are the empty threats of a wounded beast. His invasion has been a spectacular failure and the Russian economy is tanking. He needs a peace deal that he can sell to the Russian public as a victory and Trump inexplicably seems only too eager to hand him one.
I don't think so. Putin can sell _everything_ as a victory to the Russians, doesn't matter what. Plus: he has shown quite clearly that he doesn't give a sh•t about human lives, not even Russian lives. It's definitely not his moral qualities that will hold him back from nuking a European city. Putin has nothing to worry about anymore: he will order his orange puppet to lift the sanctions against Russia, and money will be flowing in again soon. I wouldn't be surprised if many of the GOP oligarchs turn out to be all to happy to invest in Russian assets again (looking at you, Moscow Mitch McConnell...) Besides, Putin is getting old, too - it's nice to create a legend about yourself of being invulnerable, but so far, nobody reached immortality; he needs to move fast if he wants to enter the history books as Czar of the Eurasian Empire. And don't forget: wounded beasts can lash out in very unpredictable ways...
P.S. Inexplicable?? Putin OWNS Trump, and he knows it. _Of course_ the Convicted Orange Felon is eager to hand Putin everything he wants!
Putin first has other levers he is already pulling: electric grid (recently de-coupled but still…), gas pipelines, severed undersea communications, naval patrols popping up everywhere. Acts of war sabbotage are ongoing.
Nuke, in a veiled sense: what about this Russian drone strike on the old-but-still-hot Chernobyl reactor containment vessel? That’s a pretty direct targeted hit. Nice landscape you got there, would be a shame if i exploded this dirty bomb…. Yet, a plume is just as likely to drift into western Russia or allied Belarus.
" Nice landscape you got there, would be a shame if i exploded this dirty bomb…. Yet, a plume is just as likely to drift into western Russia or allied Belarus."
Yeah, that's the part I didn't understand, either... Or is Putin "testing the waters" for something?
I can only agree with all of this. Trump has capitulated (as expected, anyone who didn't know this was clearly in a delusional state = ~ 30% of American voters)( 20% knew it and wanted it) Now NATO has to prove it is a multi national organization that isn't, wasn't, totally dependent on the US. And, what happens here, looks increasingly grim. I suspect too many are thinking we can weather Trump, come out the other side in 2 years or 4 years and do something different. These people are also in a delusional state, fear driven, understandable, but still delusional. If we do not take Trump to task for violating the orders of our judicial system then we are irretrievably broken. What that Taking to Task looks like depends on how far the Christian Nationalists are willing to go. From my point of view I don't see any indication that they won't go to civil war. "This is our chance" that is what they have said. So the question isn't If it is When. Or do we become a country run by Christian National Apartheidists. And by the way -- why is the Christian Church allowing itself to be used this way? Why do/did Muslim organizations allow Terrorists within their Mosques? FEAR. Yes the bully stands up and terrorizes from within first. Is that what is happening in the Christian sphere? Why isn't the Pope denouncing Trump's actions? Does he favor Christian Nationalism and the rule of white men calling themselves Christians even while the majority of his religions practitioners are not white or men? How many real Christian men want this? And don't tell me Jesus said... Because he absolutely did not.
Thank you!!
The Pope has denounced Trump. What,two or three weeks ago. He’s now in hospital with Double pneumonia, but he has been a Trump critic all along. Unlike you, I do not think Christian Nationalists have any real power with Trump or Vance. They are being used by the GOP a la their history since the Seventies. Ralph Reed put it the other way around re Trump as their candidate in his first election. So maybe it’s mutual but Trump is amoral and so is the chameleon Vance. Which suit is emptier, Trump or Vance. This is really more about the oligarchs in both the US and Russia and their mutuals around the world, I think. Using flags and the cross as they always have the aristocracy is on its never ending quest to rob the poor to help the rich. The rich includes Putin, of course, as well as other heads of state and royalty.
It may be worth stepping back and getting a bigger picture of Russia and where it may be going. Admittedly, the re-election of the Donvict has put a new wrinkle into the mix. Here is a link to a Forign Affairs article by Stephen Kotkin titled "The Five Futures of Russia". A sixth future may be what Putin wanted all along: Russia as a regional power. Here is the link. Sorry if it is pay walled. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/russian-federation/five-futures-russia-stephen-kotkin?check_logged_in=1
Yes, True. But...
Regional? I'd suggest that Putin wants Russia to be a "World Power". I am old. I remember when there were two "super powers". Russia was viewed as one of them.
Of course, China is the super power now. Xi must be loving this European dustup - is anybody in the WH watching the other flank?
Hi Bill. Yes, regional. When the Soviet Union was a global superpower, China was a bum. Russia will never be a global power again, especially without Ukraine. Even with a total military victory in Ukraine, the Russians face a decades long insurgency there, aided by the likes of Romania, Poland, most of Western Europe, etc. Regional power is the best the Russians will ever be able to aspire to.
If they had spent the $2T or so on invading Ukraine on their own infrastructure, their situation would be markedly different...
Musk is close to Xi, so he's probably watching. The rest? Who knows?
I watch Steven Kotkin a lot. He’s an expert on Russia and well worth following. He’s not the only one, of course, so catch others as you can. He is writing the definitive biography of Stalin. Three volumes.
Bill, since you say that you aren't very knowledgeable about international politics perhaps you might seek to do some research before commenting on them.
Just a thought
I appreciate anyone searching for a more complete, honest and comprehensive history.
Elucidate me. What do I have wrong? Am ready to learn.
I think your comment is unfair. This is an open forum, not an Oxford debate. Addressed to bitchy x3
I've known some Ukrainians and a bit of their history, stuck between choices of bad alliances whichever way they went. Some, particularly ethnic Germans, thought the Nazi invaders would be better allies against the oppression by Russians and, as I heard it, joined the Nazis but later turned against them on the side of the Russians whom they saw as actually less oppressive than the Nazis turned out to be once they were no longer useful to them.
I'm very impressed by Lin's link to Timothy Snyder's "Making of Modern Ukraine" at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJczLlwp-d8&list=PLh9mgdi4rNewfxO7LhBoz_1Mx1MaO6sw_
The first sentence of the 1st paragraph confirms what I have thought since shortly after the 2nd Invasion started Feb 24th 2022. The series started Sep 3, 2022, 6 months after the start of the invasion. No matter what most Ukrainians were going through in the 1st invasion and up to the 2nd, it seems any that had lingering doubts and old alliances with former Nazi allies quickly united as fast and as much or more than America First and the majority anti-Nazi Americans did after Pearl Harbor.
That 1st paragraph:
Ukraine must have existed as a society and polity on 23 February 2022, else Ukrainians would not have collectively resisted Russian invasion the next day. What does it mean for a nation to exist? Is this a matter of structures, actions, or both? Why has the existence of Ukraine occasioned such controversy? In what ways are Polish, Russian, and Jewish self-understanding dependent upon experiences in Ukraine? Just how and when did a modern Ukrainian nation emerge? For that matter, how does any modern nation emerge? Why some and not others? Can nations be chosen, and can choices be decisive? If so, whose, and how? Ukraine was the country most touched by Soviet and Nazi terror: what can we learn about those systems, then, from Ukraine? Is the post-colonial, multilingual Ukrainian nation a holdover from the past, or does it hold some promise for the future?
I fear many Americans labor under the illusion that our military, if brought into play, would save us. It would not. Putting boots on the ground, on American soil would be a slaughter. It would be Civil War II with huge civilian casualties and a complete decimation of our armed forces. If anyone thinks active duty US forces would fight against MAGA, they are badly mistaken. At least half of them ARE MAGA.
I have two friends in special forces who did multiple tours in Afghanistan. They are as liberal as it gets. They loathe these fascists.
And half of them are not.
That is my worry as well.
1984 all over again.
Good point. It's everywhere in offices, bars, etc. in North Carolina. Go to get an oil change, and there it is, beating into your brain.
WE need to remember this.
Watch American Coup: Wilmington 1898 on You Tube. You’ll have a better understanding of how and why Trump and his supporters are “saving” America.
Not the most popular, the default one through some “agreement” as I understand it.
Fox should be banned on military sites.
According to ex-military ex-student about 15 years ago, it had been MSNBC and then Fox took over. He was surprised by how fast that happened….
Bases and VA hospitals. Chilling.
61% of the military - people he called suckers and losers - voted for Trump. I am not sure they can be trusted. I know we can't trust Scotus or the majority party in Congress.
Very bad idea outright. Our far better, nobler hope must be that, when Trump decides to USE the military against our own citizenry (not an if, it's a when), that enough generals refuse those orders such that they are delayed in execution (Trump and Commander Pete will then have to formally fire them and appoint new ones) enough that they are exposed in real time, and beget a TRUE tide of popular unrest against him. No, we do not want officers violating their oath to the constitution (most military senior officers take this seriously), in fact, we want them sticking to it meticulously.
Trump did try to use the military against us. Esper resisted Trump's order to use troops to attack protesters in DC. Esper was vilified, then fired. Now Hegseth's removed Esper's photo from the Pentagon. And is removing generals who are not Trump loyalists.
Unfortunately there likely won't be many of them left after this week. Firings of generals and flag officers are set to begin imminently. But if we do the things we need to do and this regime does not take root completely, we may not need them. But so far, that is a big if.
You are in the grip of a serious fever dream to believe that most, even a bare majority of senior US generals will refuse to obey orders of the President. There may be some who choose to play "slow ball" in moving against our own citizens but the rank and fire military will almost certainly follow orders unless they are so totally outrageous that even the dumbest can't agree.
But that is highly unlikely to happen. Yes, the current administration is clearly out of control but they are NOT as stupid as we all suggest in our posts. They will know how far the military can be pushed in one increment of time and they will do this in a way that seems "ok" to many if not most.
For instance ordering the military to assume control of deportation of illegal immigrants is patently unlawful but NOT likely to create a strong resistance in the military because in the end the purpose will feel reasonable (unless you are like me and want to end all restrictions on immigration, who is going to be able to argue against Trump's plan to deport illegals? Its the law even now, right?
And once that is done, there can be further orders given that incrementally expand the military dominion over domestic affairs. Sure, some military will protest but they can be discharged, and citizen protests who be mostly futile.
Just as Hitler did in pre WW2, they can slowly move towards their goals albeit faster than we might expect.
In the end the hope for military resistance of any great level is probably a pipe dream.
I hate that you are right. Our naivete has no limits. One of the sad truths about humans is that the collective memory is diluted as we move from one generation to the next. I'm old. I have a picture of my Dad in his WWII uniform on a table. I know what he fought against. Gen X - some might, Gen Y - a few, Gen Z - not many.
I recommend to all Americans the recent film " Lee". Aside from the amazing acting of Kate Winslet, one can appreciate what WWII participants felt for a few minutes.
We are forgetting...and we will suffer the consequences again.
A small comfort: it will be the last time. As Einstein said: IF there will be a war after WWIII, it will be fought with sticks and stones.
A better route to take is build pressure on politicians in the red states. They can stop this at any time. Their constituents have to care. So if you live in a red state, please be contacting them. You have more power than you know. It doesn't have to be dramatic or dangerous, just call, write, show up at a town hall.
500 combat ready members of the 10th Mountain Division, Ft. Drum, NY, have deployed to Ft. Huachuca, AZ.
Jon-I agree-we can just look at how the media, congress and the highest court in the judicial system have capitulated and coddled Trump-no doubt the military will do the same.
Gina, that's because trump fired any general who disagrees with his policy. Just ask General Milley.
You're right, Jon. It might take only a few months to get the military so far to execute American citizens. Don't forget, it took Hitler only a few weeks to get the first concentration camps running and start executing his political enemies...
This idea of Aryan superiority was a long time coming and Germans came to our country to see the effect of Jim Crow laws and the effect of eugenics. Eugenics was a real issue and many people involved even Helen Keller. PBS has a documentary on its history. It’s worth knowing about and many times like in the famous case of Carrie Buck and more misogynistic than not.
I don't think HCR mentioned this but Hegseth said firings of generals and flag officers are set for this week and maybe the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs but maybe not him... And I'm just mentioning this for the heck of it, no particular reason, none at all, not commenting one bit on highly skilled, trained, experienced and pissed off military folks being sent out among the populace. Nope, no reason for posting this.
Rebel Gadfly: "...not commenting one bit on highly skilled, trained, experienced and pissed off military folk being sent out among the populace..."
That is plain nasty. You are adding insult to injury. Military staff fired by Hegseth will be righteously pissed off, responsible, anti coup, good citizens. Please do not smear them by your implication that they will be a danger. For example, the Vindman brothers, who when Trump destroyed their high level military careers, found other way's to serve. Including, now, in Congress.
Then why post it?
As self indulgent provocation.
I asked a U.S. General about this possibility via social media:
YESTERDAY:
NED: "Tough question: ¿would you support a 'soft coup d'état' with the U.S. military leadership belaying unconstitutional orders?"
GENERAL: "There is no such thing as a soft coup. No."
NED: "Thank you. If Trump thumbs his nose at the Courts, what can we do?"
TODAY, a P.S.:
NED: "Y'all with the oath to the Constitution may be the remaining rampart of republicanism."
The general was smart to stop putting his responses in writing.
I know a CIA analyst who has worked for the CIA for over 20 years. This person is married with several kids. I am afraid to call, text or write to them for fear of retaliation by the Fascist Trump regime. The US government has a license for Pegasus which allows the intelligence services to hack your phone and steal EVERYTHING on it. Trump's brownshirts cannot be trusted any more than Putin, by any American. Pegasus was only intended to be used by the US intelligence services for very specific cases. And maybe it is, but who knows who those cases are.
Watch for resignations at NSA. Their current leader, a general, has degrees in Russian studies.
We don’t need nobody with any stinking education. Remember he loves the uneducated.
The general was almost certainly expressing his REAL opinion, not diffusing as a subterfuge. I have known a number of US senior military officers and about the only order most felt would not be obeyed by most officers would be to actually unilaterally start a war by launching nuclear weapons. Beyond that most felt that there were enough checks and balances in the system to keep any war making power in check. And most felt that they owed the country they're allegiance unless and until things went so off the trails that they had no choice.
I expect we are still s long way from that point.
I knew several command level offcers who had been retired and after Jan 11 were recalled -- and were generally pissed. Plus one of my colleagues, a hero, chief prosecutoir at Git-mo, refused to use evidence obtained from torutre.....
I sure HOPE that there are more like these. Unfortunately I fear that there are more than enough who favor the skuM goon squads that there just won't be enough resistance.
Thank you, Jon and Daniel; my very limited experience corresponds more with Daniel's; they are more like what General Hertling seems to be from his essay. My cousin sent me a book, 'On Killing'. I had little appetite for reading it. When I did, I was surprised.
The author was a Lieutenant-Colonel psyche professor and expert on the topic at West Point. That book was rational, not violent and sobering with respect to implications of enculturated violence for the wider society and rule-of-law.
You are right. How stupid of me with the Pegasus program, etc. and Kash Patel now confirmed as the head of the F.B.I. I deleted the correspondence in its entirety, telling my acquaintance that I did so by accident.
Please let us know what reply you get to that.
None, so far. It is, understandably, a touchy subject.
I believe there's no way conversations are not being had and that more will be had after firings this week of generals and flag officers.
Rebel, that's what I believe, too. Of course no one's going to say so!
But having a few "conversations" is a long way from figuring out how to take over a million and a half person military command. I seriously question if that is even possible.
I have faith in our younger brothers and sisters in uniform; not all of them, but most of them. Soldiers in the field may have won the 1864 election -- or, at least, made that victory decisive -- for President Lincoln.
The great majority of the several hundred with whom I worked over time had a deep sense of service and came from families, often in the South and Midwest, with a rich heritage of service.
Yes, there were those who, left to their own thoughts and private actions, were frightening in their views. The culture, albeit rigid, of the U.S. Army was superordinating in their daily actions. Let us hope it sticks.
I agree. But not in public fora. Thanks to these comments, I will delete that note; could put a fine human being in an awkward spot.
Aristocracy or militocracy? Doubt both. What we now have is a wannabe monarchy, fed by greed. I think our best choice is a widespread boycott of all the billionaires who back the orange monarchist and the Muskrat. They only listen to the sound of their wallets swelling, and our secret power is to make their wallets shrink, but it has to be widespread. It will involve sacrifice, because the kakistocracy (reign of idiots) owns so much. My own focus is on Amazon, Meta, PayPal, X, Tesla, and anything connected to AI. This will not be easy, but if we want a democracy (which we have almost lost), then boycott, boycott, boycott and resist, resist, resist.
That was my sentiment but I’m not so sure anymore. We will be witness to 4 years of chaos and destruction. Can the nation survive it? I don’t know. One point is that Europe is far stronger than Russia. That nation is nearing collapse. Western Europe must send troops to Ukraine and we should encourage American trained soldiers to volunteer to fight. It’s now or never. It can be won.
I pray it is only 4. And I'm not religious.
If Europe is so strong, why don't they step up to the plate. Very interesting how things are changing . In a few instances Ukraine has stopped Russian advances with First View armed drones. Didn't use any troops. The biggest build of Ukrainian military was under Trump.
I suspect any such morally strong individuals with leadership potential have long since been strategically sidelined in their career or simply fired from all national security. Both in the US and the UK. These days we are experiencing the consequences of a longterm plan to collapse the postwar global Western Alliance. Putin wants to destroy Pax Americana and the EU Peace Project and then have open revenge upon any who have upheld them. Donald Trump and Rupert Murdoch are his willing acolytes.
Rupert always behind the scenes, head of propaganda to make Americans more stupid than they have ever been before.
A truly evil wizard of Oz 🐈⬛
Monnina, I don't think you can write a paragraph such as you have written without including Musk's name. Donald and Rupert may be acolytes, but Elon is a partner. While Donald and Rupert are working FOR Vladimir, Elon is working WITH him to develop a plan to conquer the world. I see them dividing the spoils thusly: Vladimir will control all the resources and Elon will control all the information.
Like U.S. Democrats, China is sitting on the sidelines as a spectator, watching to see how the empires unfold, perhaps thinking they will get to keep their slice of the pie.
There are a couple you never hear about, too. They have deeper pockets than even Murdoch. Check out "Deomcracy in Chains" if you want to know more. (I will also give you this warning: 50 pages in, I got so mad I almost broke a window with it.)
Why do you think Musky and Vance support the Afd? They want Europe to implode.
"... willing acolytes."? More like willing supplicants, no? .
It's the only thing that can save America. But the more likely scenario is that the generals will comply, and that they will send American soldiers to Europe to assist the Russians. We will be fighting _both_ here in Europe before the end of this year, I'm afraid.
You might be right but what I fear GREATLY is that tactical nukes might be entering the chat soon.
My fear also. Without the threat of a US response, Putin will feel embolden. A single nuke in downtown Kiev would not be responded to and it would be over for Europe.
A single nuke in Kyiv, followed by a single nuke in Moscow. The Brits and the French are nuclear powers. I don't think they'd take that lying down.
OK, then what.....
The question for our age…
That is a good point James. The US is clearly the strongest nuclear power but the UK still has some and the French have a few more (but very few). However more than enough to at least put the center of Moscow under glazed earth and kill several hundred thousand Russians.
The question at that point is what happens then?
Simple. Putin orders his orange puppet in the White House to set his nukes on Europe. Trump wouldn't give a sh•t about pushing that button: Europe can go up in flames for all he cares, it's the other side of the ocean, and he doesn't like us anyway because we're not his fans.
A few months ago the British were on a joint submarine exercise and launched a new generation Polaris, I think, and it did not go well at all. Hope they got the bugs worked out.
EXACTLY what I thought too.
Exactly.
I, too, feel that we are on a collision course with nuclear annihilation :( I have a bottle of very expensive tequila and a joint rolled for if and when they come our way.
Well, if that is the case, then humanity will at least end itself before climate change or the biodiversity collapse do us in...
Great idea. I need to head down to our local dispensary to stock up. I haven't purchased weed (legal or not) in decades!
Yes they will. Because Putin simply lacks the material and the men to subdue all of Europe, so he will nuke an important European city; then, he will demand surrender from all European leaders, threatening to "set another example". I don't think the leaders of Europe will stand up to that.
A message from a great man who knew what he was talking about ⬇️
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DFupogkyNeq/?igsh=cWg2d21tZjllaThr
Another message from another man who knew what he was talking about:
"I love the uneducated!" - Donald trump.
Sagan was right. That's why the GOP has been destroying the education system for the last fifty years.
exactly -- it's gutted civics, real history, languages and the humanities.
That tells us that education is a weapon that can also be used for good. Let’s continue to educate ourselves and others. Where’s our answer to testing, book bans, Moms for Liberty and whitewashing our history?
Since the Dept. of Education will be gutted, we all need to act locally and transform our schools. A lot can be accomplished informally too. Project based learning and action research can produce results that allow us to counter forces against education.
They gutted science! Noah’s arc and 6700 years old…humanities is such a quaint thought…civic? Thinking…banned. Certainly no independent thoughts.
My stomach is churning. My mother was Ukrainian and they never believed that they were “little Russians”. The HOLOMODOR! Yes, my European friends are horrified and my Canadian ones have a new found love for snow. They are going bananas.
And for those who skipped past holomodor, read this history lesson.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor
While the writing there briefly tries to present several points of view, IMO was a Stalin-engineered purge via starvation to punish Ukraine, and Putin is/will reprise.
It was hideous.
Alexandra,
An alternative before that radical step of a military coup (or counter-coup), the precedent of which would cause permanent damage to the American political process, is outlined by Jerry Weiss, "Feathers of Hope", in his Substack post of February 18: "Impeachment is Imperative". An overwhelming rejection of the MAGA agenda by the American public will be a necessary precursor to get the cooperation of Republicans in Congress, but that would make it possible (and maybe even likely?).
Which would lead to civil war. First, the Nazis will never go against Dear Leader, and vote to impeach. But, should they decide enough is enough, do you really believe he would just walk away? Of course not. What he WOULD do, is send the call out to the likes of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, who are heavily armed, and ready. The escalation would be rapid, the tragedies immense, and who knows the outcome. No, at this point, we need the military to step in, and that won't be any fun either. Buckle up, folks.
A new civil war wouldn't resemble the first one; it would be more like Northern Ireland in the 1970s. It would also almost certainly trigger Trump's declaring martial law, complete with the suspension of elections, the rule of law and restrictions on citizens rights, followed by deep-think editorials about "Who is a citizen, anyway?"
Yes, martial law. Which would suspend elections. Which is exactly the accusation being leveled at Ukraine. Again, every accusation is a confession with these Nazis. But the frightening thing is, martial law would be enforced more by the Gestapo he released from prison a month ago than your local law enforcement, although beware of your local sheriffs.
First: We have to find a way to destroy Fox news' messaging. Short of hobbling transmission facilities (which I am in no way condoning), how do you counter propaganda with that level of reach? I studied media, but not this thoroughly.
Support Meidas Touch—their YouTube postings and podcasts are already surpassing Joe Rogan and they’re aiming at Fox
It does sound like a plan...
Treason. The best WE can do is pressure the Senate Republicans who voted for the Ukraine package https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/4464791-here-are-the-senate-republicans-who-voted-for-the-ukraine-package/
Sit in, picket. Heather -- yesterday on a Maine site, we had a discussion about Susan Collins. She worked for former Sen. Republican Bill Cohen, wsho flipped tol the Dem Party to work in the Clinton cabinet. Please get him on the record.
And I never thought I would be this embarrassed for this country....
That's my hope, too. Possible?
Sadly, there's no mechanism or procedure in our Constitution to handle a coup. We have to rely on our elected officials to somhow stop the orange blight from becoming king. Of course he wants to be king. It's so much fancier to be a king than a plain old dictator.
Eighty years of global leadership, traded for a photo op with Putin. This isn’t diplomacy—it’s a fire sale. Trump isn’t just walking away from NATO, he’s handing Putin the keys to Europe.
Hate to say "I told you so". That was the deal: Vlad hoisted the Convicted Orange Felon on the throne of America using his 'political technogly', and in return, Rump has to give him Ukraine and a free road to Europe by pulling the US out of NATO - and lift the economic sactions, of course. That is the price.
Ita a price way too high Dutch. We shouldn't pay.
Yes it is. But the trouble is, "you the people" have nothing to say about it anymore...
indeed.
Today's Global Post. https://globalpost.com/stories/ukraine-western-leaders-rebuke-trump-for-exclusive-peace-talks-with-russia/?lh_aid=35942&lh_cid=97n0zy815c&lh_em=apaalj%40gmail.com&di=6f96b66e491a94de6b842183dc28a6e5
At Saudi summit in Miami, Trump strikes Zelensky: ‘Not going to have a country’
Read more at: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/article300627369.html#storylink=cpy
I wouldn't count NATO out even without the US. This isn't 1939 Europe.
I dunno... The US military is quite a big part that we're losing now.
Gotta wonder… where is our political technology? THAT is the war we’ve been in since 2014.
Good question... It is ok to use 'political technology' to manipulate people into thinking the right way (at least, what we here consider the right way...) ?
I’m not even talking about convincing. We should be out there fighting back. Where are our trolls supporting democracy and encouraging unity here and abroad? And calling out Republicans for supporting dictators? And for being weak cowards. This is like the Wizard of Oz. Pull back the curtain already!
Well, you're right about that... My guess is that the Democratic side still wants to be the nice guy too much. But we're waaay past that point...
Edit: on the other hand, it might as well boil down to that same old thing that is always the cause: money. The amount of money that was, and is, poured in to these campaigns "flooding the zone" and controlling people's thoughts is likely more than enough to eliminate poverty in a couple of countries. The "good guys" don't have that kind of money, I'm afraid (otherwise, they would be filthy rich themselves...)
There's more to this that we're not privy to. trump has always been a Putin sycophant but this is just ridiculous. There must be a serious piece of blackmail being held over trump's head. I realise the orange buffoon is addled with the onset of dementia, and i've seen that play out in real time with relatives, but there HAS to be safeguards in place within the American system to put a halt to this, the 'man' is acting completely against everything he swore an oath to. 25th Amendment section 4? And somebody with an ounce of sanity needs to get rid of Musk, he's playing the orange buffoon and every US citizen for the idiot he appears to actually be. You'll all be learning the Russian language in schools soon the way this is playing out.
Yes and no. No doubt Trump feels "love" for Putin because he IS well aware of the subterfuge that helped him, but no, I don't think its about blackmail (what could be exposed that would "blackmail" Trump? He launched a coup of our own government in broad daylight, got impeached twice and 100% got away with it). No, it's even more Trumpian than that. Trump is acting with alacrity to get quick, easy "wins" that he hopes will translate into polls (and adulation. Never discount that). "I ended the war in Ukraine that would never have happened if I'd rightfully still been in the White House--AS I WAS ELECTED IN THE FIRST PLACE!!!!" This dovetails nicely with the Tech Bro Nazis, who want to destroy the entire government so they can turn us into human batteries (okay, I'm exaggerating. By 5%). That's it, and the fact that, yes, he's already decided to leave NATO (I give it 90 days, max) and concentrate on taking over Greenland.
The Trump Organization has been floated by Russian Money for Decades... DJT is a Mob-Boss... He understands the Russian Mob Bosses... Putin is the Capo-A-Capo... It has been said that Putin is the Richest Person in the World... Putin kills his Enemies, though Elon could give him a Run with his Cyber-Trucks... The 'Tech Nazi Bros'? Very Narrow Spectrum Humans...
Red, White and Blue Land, please.
After all, the Gulf of America is getting competition: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/2/19/2304903/-Mapquest-Delivers-Name-Your-Own-Gulf-of-It-Works?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=trending&pm_medium=web#comment_90754182
good stress release
Here's what their cult leader Curtis Yarvin thinks should become of us, the "undesirable elements from society." It is long but y'all deserve to know the depths of their depravity of those running this coup, and this includes Musk and Vance too, regarding how much they despise those of us who are not them. This was written regarding one of their patch or network cities they are working to create all over the world.
"There is one problem, though, which is the problem I mentioned in Chapter 1: the problem of adults who are not productive members of society. In our little Newspeak we call them wards of the realm. A ward is any resident who is not capable of earning a living, is not accepted as a dependent by any guardian, and is not wanted by any other patch.
The initial conversion of our present, democratic, and of course completely dysfunctional San Francisco into the realm of Friscorp will produce quite a few wards. At least relative to the number we would expect to emerge in a healthy society. But there will always be black sheep, and there will always be wards.
As Delegate of San Francisco, what should you do with these people? I think the answer is clear: alternative energy. Since wards are liabilities, there is no business case for retaining them in their present, ambulatory form. Therefore, the most profitable disposition for this dubious form of capital is to convert them into biodiesel, which can help power the Muni buses.
Okay, just kidding. This is the sort of naive Randian thinking which appeals instantly to a geek like me, but of course has nothing to do with real life. The trouble with the biodiesel solution is that no one would want to live in a city whose public transportation was fueled, even just partly, by the distilled remains of its late underclass.
However, it helps us describe the problem we are trying to solve. Our goal, in short, is a humane alternative to genocide. That is: the ideal solution achieves the same result as mass murder (the removal of undesirable elements from society), but without any of the moral stigma. Perfection cannot be achieved on both these counts, but we can get closer than most might think.
The best humane alternative to genocide I can think of is not to liquidate the wards—either metaphorically or literally—but to virtualize them. A virtualized human is in permanent solitary confinement, waxed like a bee larva into a cell which is sealed except for emergencies."
https://www.unqualified-reservations.org/2008/11/patchwork-2-profit-strategies-for-our/
You've introduced me to a whole 'nother universe; a ring of hell even Dante could not have imagined.
And I am so sorry to do that to you. I really am. I hate doing it to myself but if we don't know what we are fighting we can't win. We'll be like Congressional Dems still talking about working with this administration blah blah blah. THIS can't and should not be worked with.
He's a BAD man that fella Yarvin is!
Yarvin wrote uner the name Mencius Moldbug. And, Yarvin is a fave philosopher and brain trust bro of…. Rich guy and tech titan Peter Thiel.
A couple Wired magazine articles about this.
Thanks for completing this circle back to rump campaign backers.
Correction: source Vox, here, 2022:
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/23373795/curtis-yarvin-neoreaction-redpill-moldbug
“ Curtis Yarvin wants American democracy toppled. He has some prominent Republican fans. The New Right blogger has been cited by Blake Masters and J.D. Vance. What exactly is he advocating?” VOX, Andrew Prokop Oct 24, 2022
Subscribe free to Vox or click “reader view” in your browser to bypass the popup.
Yeah, since the day I found out about Yarvin, et al, feels like decades ago but it's only been weeks, every day I read more and worse dystopian things about this contemptuous and treasonous crew. Don't know if you are on bsky, but I just read a long thread about their Nation State concept that they are already implementing that rump fully embraced with his so-called Freedom Cities takeover of public parks. This one is about taking over the Presidio in SF but it goes into lots of details of their plan for creating essentially fascistic cities or nations within existing countries. And now with these Freedom Cities, they're taking over areas within the US with a welcome mat laid at their feet.
https://bsky.app/profile/jennycohn.bsky.social/post/3limiwxaaok2p
I've had this video cued up about these criminals for a couple of days that I've promised myself to get to it today. Thank you for talking about this too. Everyone needs to know about these so-called "billionaire bros" cuz they are so much more dangerous and insidiously involved than that innocuous designation hides. https://substack.com/home/post/p-157293157
Disturbing that you make these observations … more disturbing that I think you are right on the money with them. I just don't know that there is a way back from this when/if America ever wakes up. The strange thing (for me) is that the maga crowd are in large part staunchly US centric, (that's ignoring the religious zealots), they SHOULD be the ones most up in arms at this sellout of the country.
Putin and his lackeys bailed Trump out when his entire empire was failing and every bank in the US looked at Trump as radioactive material. Putin's got the goods on Trump. You can thank Citizens United for this mess.
"Citizens United" (a label that could have been penned by Orwell) is a big part of it, but our failure to stem the tide of intrusion of patent de facto bribery and plutocratic encumbrances to democracy earlier on goes even deeper. Ronald Reagan was selling poison, but a preponderance of citizens and the press was buying it, and even many liberals now opine that Reagan was the last "good" Republican president. No, Musk's cruel ans responsible depredations run a straight line from Reagan's dishonest smearing of the democratic process and his insistence that wealth is proper qualification for leadership, his so called "Supply Side". Who supplies what?
Yup
Two of Trump's sons have been reported as talking about money pouring in from Russia. between that, sweetheart deals with the mob, and the perfect marketing tool of being president, I wonder if he would not have blown though his entire inheritance by now? Maybe all the Russian money was just a lot of talk, but yeah, he seems way too undisciplined and impulsive to make it as a normal businessman.
The 25th does that not require the Cabinet to initiate?
And he wouldn't mind handling the keys to America if there's something that benefits him and his family.
DJT has been Cultivated by the Russians for Decades... The Trump Organization was floated by Russian Money... DJT is a World-Class Grifter, and Horrible Businessman that has declared Bankruptcy 6-Times... In 2024 he was bought by Elon Musk for ~$250-Million. Chump Change for a Person with over $250-Billion... I would beware the Musk/Putin tie-in... DJT is noticeably Declining... DJT is becoming obviously Delusional... From Recent Appearances, DJT has become a Repulsive Orange Puppet pulled by Strings held by Musk, and Putin...
Musk's stiff-arm disorder makes me think of Dr. Strangelove.
Well, Musk is from Apartheid South Africa...
His paternal grandpappy was a Nazi....
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jan/26/elon-musk-peter-thiel-apartheid-south-africa
Ex nihilo nihil fit, nothing comes from nothing.
Vance is just as bad
but Vance does not have the blind adulation of the MAGA loonies. So reason might penetrate some of them with him, as it cannot with Trump.
Perhaps, but Vance is just as focused on our destruction. For twisted religious reasons. He wants to usher in the apocalypse, Revelations and the second coming of Jesus.
He believes in Yarvin and Thiel’s political philosophy, and he’s a convert to my faith, Catholicism, and shows he doesn’t understand it as well as he should. We Catholics don’t generally share the apocalyptic obsessions of the fundamentalists, and I was taught Revelation was about the past, the persecution of the church under Rome, not about the future.
I agree with Kathy Hughes. Vance's "faith" is new and shallow, and not apocalyptic. That whole end-of-the-world, mansions-in-the-sky scenario is strictly a protestant evangelical fever dream. They've incorrectly understood Revelation to be prophecy when it was actually John's coded commentary on the Roman occupation.
True, Vance uses keywords to keep the evangelicals fascinated and in line, but he's a technocrat first, believer second.
Or anti-Christ.
Is there a REAL Vance? Regardless, JD does not have the Magnetism of DJT... Musk is more Dangerous...
I honestly don't get JD Vance. He's the oddball in this mess. The messages he's spreading are frightening as all h-e-double hockey sticks and I don't get where they're coming from. Someone's got the goods on him, too, but I have zero clue who's got what.
My take on Vance is that he's a puppet of the Yarvin/Thiel technocrat wing of the new GOP order. Compare him with Mike Johnson, puppet of the christo-fascist wing. They are numbers 2 and 3 behind Donald, who is Putin's poodle. Up until now, and into the foreseeable future, these two wings are cooperating to acquire power and control. But eventually, there will be a showdown to decide whether the U.S. is going to be a technocracy or a theocracy.
Meanwhile, Elon is letting them have their fun while he takes it all.
In any case an autocracy. Left wing, right wing, theocratic, they are all a horror.
He is evil to the core, dementia is not. No excuses for the viper…
Playpen Diplomacy.
Not just a "photo op". Putin is the strong man giving Trump the affection and love Trump never got from his strong man father.
Or the illusion of affection. Comrades in cruelty.
The British tabloid The Daily Star interprets the changes in American politics differently. Its cover tomorrow features Vladimir Putin walking “PUTIN’S POODLE”: the president of the United States.
He always has been and always will be. Remember, he called Putin "brilliant" when he attacked Ukraine.
Chump has plans to fatten his purse, split the spoils with Putin. He never forgets to take his share…
I totally agree with your assessment. Peter Pappas. Trump is Putin’s lap dog and he will the USA and Europe down the river so he can pedal his golden shoes in Russia.
And the United States
Traded for a photo and money
One added thought today. If humanity survives its second round of mass experimentation with modern authoritarianism (and to my mind the existence of nuclear weapons makes the survival of the second round unlikely) then we must think anew not just in terms of a greater sense of social justice, but in ridding ourselves of our deep national loyalties, making our loyalty to human dignity and freedom greater than all else, certainly well above claims to national greatness.
That, and that alone, is why the ruling authority in the US currently deserves scorn and resistance - its contempt for human dignity and worth, and, for that matter, the worth of any living thing, given its attitude toward the environment. And if the dust ever settles, the GOP must be outlawed as a white supremacist terrorist organization. Because that is what it is.
your mention of nukes is spot on....Jonathan Last in the Bullwark makes the argument that an arms race to acquire nukes by our allies - from Germany, to Japan, to Turkey - to deter aggression - is the logical consequence of the current situation...our allies have lived under our protective "umbrella" of MAD, and now have seen the result when Ukraine turned over their arsenal with a "guarantee" of protection. Maybe tRumps plan is to solve climate change with a nuclear winter.
I would agree; A new arms race is imminent. That's a logical consequence.
I took a look-see at tomorrows cover of the UK Daily Star; It's hilarious and should be pasted world wide. It's a fluffy pink poodle with the orange wonders face being walked by a caricature of Putin. I fell off my chair laughing. The cffg "hates" to be laughed at.... I invite all to have a ball posting it up.
I sent it to everyone on my "fellow traveler" email list....I laughed until I realized he just crapped on our collective lawn, and all the animal control officers have been fired!
One of the most important points made here. You are in good standing with President Kennedy, Prime Minister Pierre Eliot Trudeau, and Governor Adlai Stevenson.
I believe that "focus on humanity" was the original goal of the United Nations. But the UN (which I have had a variety of connections to for many years) is a "failure by design"... set up by people who didn't know how to achieve its very altruistic goals.
That word altruism is key however. The great socio-biologist E.O. Wilson noted that altruistic societies thrive, selfish societies fail. We are seeing that play out in real time in the US. Having lived in a number of countries, my admittedly anecdotal observation is the greater sense of common good in a country, the greater the sense of well-being and general sense of security. That is absent in the US, which is why I have chosen to live elsewhere.
E.O. Wilson also made the case that humans had ravaged far too much of this planet's ecosystems, causing more extinctions of the flora and fauna on Earth everyday. He suggested that humans should fall back from at least 50% of the lands and waters of this precious planet and let it return to wilderness. That just our so-called civilization was too often in conflict with the natural world and we needed to give the Earth a reprieve from our destruction, unquenchable thirst for natural resources and never ending incursions into wilderness. There appears to be no way of that happening now with this insanity and recklessness unfolding before us and the lunatics running our ship of state right into the rocks, sowing chaos and division, wishing to wreck every last inch of this planet instead.
40 years too late
Yes-a focus on human dignity and worth could take us far down the road to peace… it’s hard to see how we get there in this climate dominated by cruelty, fear and lies.
Perfectly stated unfortunately.
If we ever make it through this mess a top priority must be to reduce presidential power. We now see what a person with no personal inhibition can do in that office in the White House. Ending Citizens United must also be acted on. And we must not forget to tax the rich, instead of gutting government programs.
And SCOTUS
You need a new Constitution. When it comes to the scope of presidential power, nobody seems to have the answers and so one is forced to wait with bated breath for a ruling from one of the most corrupt and partisan Supreme Courts in many years. Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson wrote in 1952 that what the Founders intended about the limits of presidential power “must be divined from materials almost as enigmatic as the dreams Joseph was called upon to interpret for Pharaoh.”
We may get one. But it won't be the one you want.
I live in the UK so it's not a question of what I want but rather of what I suspect you need.
Wish I could join you in the UK.
The streets aren't exactly paved with gold here.
Understood. Still would make the move in a heartbeat.
Dream on
The truly problematic issue here now is that even if by some miracle you could be rid of Trump, you get Vance, then Johnson, then any number of rabid ideologues of diminishing charisma - and gods know if monsters like Thiel and Musk will remain the real power. Probably. In short, the US is stuck with this madness for the next four years, possibly beyond - well beyond. Barring a black swan event or a convulsive and likely violent revolution of some sort, I see no way out for the US or the world for this. Lincoln presented a scenario by which we died from suicide - regrettably we may be seeing it, except the intended subject has simply mortally wounded itself to die a lingering and miserable death.
That could well be, but we are still in the first act.
Unless and until the Trumpanzee's base wakes up, wises up, steps ups. Unlikely. Most Trump voters were looking cheaper eggs, not cheating dregs.
Ned, there's no cure for stupidity. They might feel the pain eventually but Fox will have to work a little bit harder to keep washing their brains or what's left of it.
"You do not know anyone as stupid as Donald Trump. You just don’t.” - Fran Lebowitz
Fran Lebowitz is right, as well as general Kelly.
That is the crazy-making truth of all of this careening scheiße.
Sadly, you are likely correct, Ricardo.
Ned, I detected a little bit of optimism when you say, you are "likely" correct .😄
Good one, good man.
Maybe the US needs to consider regicide, since he seems to have proclaimed himself king.. I have some other ideas .. but in todays watched-over internet, mum's the word.
Reading the stream above, I find this the most pertinent observation. It is not just Trump... it is the legions who are using him to re-write the Constitution to intrench white christianity as only “Civilization” worth promoting.
Just spent time in Ecuador and Peru where people, although Catholic, are still discussing the spread of "Christianity". Historically, this has not gone well for people.
This is definitely a collective suicide. Nothing good will come out of this for us.
Dr Bandy Lee has been discussing this collective death-wish for quite sometime. Each of you is on to something. https://bandyxlee.substack.com/p/dr-bandy-lee-tries-again-to-protect
77 million amerikans selected trump as the better person to be our president. I suggest we have a 49 million persons problem.
Schadenfraude be damned, I’ve been fantasizing about a black swan event.
It's just Trump. It ends when he is gone. Others will try but will not succeed. That should be clear to everyone.
The Republic is a belief. Democracy is a belief. These things are spiritual. They will not die.
Every single day, since the two criminals have been in charge, has been a virtual shitshow. The frenetic behavior of Elon and his band of merry men going from building to building, downloading our personal data, are now at the Pentagon. Can you imagine how being a career military servant must feel? They cannot express their disdain for fear of retribution. All of it is evil.
Tomorrow night I will be attending my Congressman’s 2nd town hall. I am anticipating that the college campus hall he will be having it at, will be at full capacity. I will be there with my sign showing how, in 1936, Hitler was seen at the Olympics in Munich, riding in his car at the stadium, and patrons were gibing the Nazi salute. Beneath that picture is another but it is of Trump riding in his limo all around the racetrack. The message is very clear.
Thank you, Marlene, for that comparison. I hope to attend my congressman's town hall on Saturday, and I'm going to note that if I get a chance to speak with him.
What are “town halls”? Those are unheard of in my state.
Democratic congress critters put on citizen meetings at various times, usually when Congress is not in session, and they're home to chat with constituents. Republicans of late tend to ignore them, as they tend to turn into mob scenes. But I know you knew that. 8)
Yeah,I know about not doing them.
I doubt that even the people who voted for Trump want the USA to be a vassal state of Russia.
I would not be so certain about that. The level of some people’s stupidly can always surprise
The latest IPSOS poll shows approval of Putin at 9%. Putin is not popular with MAGA. Neither is Musk and even Trump is dropping. However, the US is fickle. If the price of eggs drop ( which it won’t due to cold weather in the South and molting if the weather warms up, ) they will love Trump again. (I blame all the bad fathers in the country for this phenomenon of loving a rat).
I agree. Many of my relatives voted for Trump. They are educated, run their own companies. They voted for cheaper eggs, not cheating dregs.
The people who said they were voting for Trump because of high egg prices were lying. It was a handy cover story for vocally supporting Trump when, in fact, they were never gonna vote for the black lady Democrat.
And what do they have to say now Ned?
Needless to say, that subject is not discussed.
Good strategy Ned. In any case, let them talk firs. 😜
Less strategy than up-bringing, Ricardo; tee-hee. 🤫 Unfortunately, loyalty to the Republic will have to supersede good manners. (Please see Kathy's response below.) 😰
Good point Ned, and Kathy is 💯 % right.
My family didn’t vote for this fool. They are very well of who and what Trump is, and we know he portends no good for the country or the world.
Since people who are every bit as decent, erudite, intelligent, loving, refined as I -- often more than I -- voted for Trump, I had to pause and think -- REALLY THINK -- how the election could have resulted in in this rampage and the clear and present possibility of fascism with up to five thousand nuclear war-heads.
1st, people sent a message: no more career politicians.
2nd, people thought: whoa! Too much, too soon!
3rd, people fear the 'deep state'.
4th, many Midwesterners and others in rust belt states have not given up on the republican experiment; they feel that said experiment has given up on them.
5th, the middle class is getting crushed; Trump presents a better chance of relief.
If the high-minded progressives (e.g., you), loyal conservatives (e.g., me), and faithful moderates (i.e., everyone else) fail to identify why this outcome occurred, we will not win our Republic back and can kiss us good-bye. As the Great Civil War arguably started with 'Bleeding Kansas' so might we be in civil conflict now.
What is most troubling, however, is that "la cousine" whom admire most thinks Trump is a pig but voted for him anyways since she is so fed up with what we have now. What happened to make an intelligent, kind, well read, well bred lady so disillusioned?
The problem is that they voted out a system they were feed up to be replaced by maga. Good luck trying to replace maga system if you become feed up with it and you want to get back.
Why I believe we are in civil conflict already; the war is simmering.
“If we are to have another contest in the near future of our national existence, I predict that the dividing line will not be Mason and Dixon's but between patriotism and intelligence on the one side, and superstition, ambition and ignorance on the other.” ― Ulysses S. Grant, 1875.
You are exactly right Ned. What we don't know but the Proyect 2025 architects do know, is if we are going to have a free and fair election in 2926, or a cooked one, or if we are going to have one at all. They won't risk loosing Congress after so many years of planning and huge investment specially when they are starting to flavor the unopposed power they started to enjoy now.
Thank you, Ricardo, as always. I read 'Project 2025' and found it to be, at its core, re-cycled Reaganism with some extensions to cover issues arising since the 1980s.
Since Reaganism is an exhausted political framework, the same old stuff -- like a higher dose of opioids -- is increasingly radicalized to get the '1981 pop'.
As 2026 elections, I am not altogether convinced that there was NOT a lot of monkey business going on in 2024. Not so much in fraud but in intimidation and disenfranchisement.
If they were well-informed, they'd have known that the president has little impact on the price of eggs especially when there is a bird flu going around.
They were well enough informed.
But why did / do so many people believe what he says. He’s a convicted felon.
The problem is that long time Republicans are just that, and can't be convinced to change their minds that they are voting dumbly, no matter what happens to the US and the World, handing it to Russia!
Nine million registered Dems didn’t vote. About two million Dems crossed over. Dems expected more Repugs to cross over. They didn’t.
Most long-time Republicans are long gone.
I tried to tell them, nobody listens to this day…
Don't bet on that Lisa, you might loose.
Probably not even the Republican Senate, and yet they feed it.
No, Trump is not Putin's poodle. There's method to the former, even as insanity is normalizing.
First, the convicted criminal in the White House has all his cabinet appointees sycophantic to his lies, criminality.
Second, democracy is besieged in Europe, as the White House felon ups lies to side with the tyrant, kleptocrat, war criminal Putin.
Third, Republicans in Congress are not only all cowardly, willing to spurn our democratic allies, willing to grow the American wealth gap. All side with Elon Musk and his team of illegal, nihilist tech terrorists tearing apart all key American institutions and programs.
What’s the end game of 1-2-3 insanity and criminality normalizing? It’s for a few billionaires to rule the world: 1) Xi and his cadres; 2) Putin and his fellow oligarchs; 3) Trump with Musk and fellow billionaires.
The orange felon is nobody's poodle. He aims to roost at the top, with his main fellow world gangsters -- and with contempt for the American people, contempt for U.S. courts and democracy itself, whose carcass Musk is now carving up.
Trump may not know he was Putin's poodle until he falls out of his hotel window of the Moscow Trump tower.
Ahhh... another victim of window cancer.
My comment that you beat me to. Thanks for reading my mind
Unfortunately, Putin could do just that.
Lovely thought, thank you!
And if I may, let me add one more piece to this on-point explanation of what is happening and that is the plan for us, the people. These people engaged in our current coup are accelerationists. They believe the United States is losing its dominance in the world and they have decided to hurry its destruction along. Why? As they make our lives worse and more desperate, they will get to exploit us even more and get the cheap labor out of us to work all the industries they will have scooped up once government control over them is no more. They will divvy up the remains of our once economic dominance, shuttle between their homes in Russia, the Gaza Riviera, China, and fortressed compounds in the US, while we will live lives beholden to them, desperate enough to take any work at any wage with benefits we will have to scrape together ourselves. That's the future they desire, the future they are orchestrating with what seems like to most to be stupid, reckless, devastating policies but that are intentional to quicken the destruction that is coming at their hands. That wealth gap? Yeah, that is exactly the plan -- a two-tier society in which they have everything, we serve at their pleasure, and survive any way we can with no say whatsoever in how they lord over us. If we do not act decisively and very, very soon, this is where they are taking us. Side note: this scenario is what I believe has been represented to the GOP and they've been promised they will get better treatment in this new reality if they do what is demanded of them and they are also being threatened that if they don't, their fate will be like ours, or worse.
What if everyone, except MAGA of course...stopped working? Brought the country to a crawl. Could that change anything Trump's doing now?
Short answer: I really don't know the answer to that but maybe. I mean, why would I have ever needed to know the answer to such a question before all this but okay here we are, right?
Longer answer: Every day I try to figure out if this protest or that general strike or these boycotts will do the trick. Where I stand so far is that the boycotts may not work simply because there are not enough of us to stop buying that would make a big enough impact to actually harm these businesses or get them to change what they are doing because they are all so diversified around the world, especially in China, and are rapidly expanding that they can pretty quickly make up the difference of the insufficient loss in revenues and stock prices if every single one of us except MAGAs boycott them. And that goes for social media as well. But that said, these boycotts and other actions help us in one way I hadn't thought of.
That spark of inspiration comes from the story of a reporter who asked a man who had been protesting every night outside the White House holding a candle, "Do you really think you are going to change the policies of this country by standing out here alone at night in front of the White House with a candle?" The man, A.J. Muste, replied, "Oh I don't do this to change the country. I do this so the country won't change me.” And so yes, these actions will fortify our own sense of purpose and importantly bring us together because nothing happens if we don't and we are really out of practice in doing that even in small numbers.
A general strike and massive, sustained protests, yes, I think they can work but we need to do them NOW! I've seen that the number is 3.5% of the population is needed for that but I have this sense that the number would need to be larger. And we might have better luck if those military folks who are getting canned join these protests, not for anything violent, but to show they have our backs.
These people doing all this are cowards, they are weak, and we can drive them back when we are not.
Having been a toddler military dependent in Munich during the Nuremberg Trials, I was a little more attentive to my mother's warnings to never think it couldn't happen here.
While still hard to believe it could become as bad here as it was by 8 or 9 years since 1933 in the areas Germany controlled, it is easier to imagine some version of what was done. See https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/reinhard-heydrich-in-depth
It describes the worst of Heydrich, but also a bit of where some restraint was seen as "useful." After tens of thousands of thousands of Jews were sent off to be worked to death and killed:
"...Heydrich as acting Reich Protector then courted Czech industrial workers and farmers, whose productive capacity was necessary to the German war effort, with wages and benefits packages equivalent to those of their German counterparts. The result of his policies was a 73% reduction in acts of sabotage within six months. By spring of 1942, the German authorities could boast of a pacification of the Protectorate..."
Perhaps the MAGA fans should consider their fate if they think about the "wages and benefit packages equivalent to those of their German counterparts," offered to the "Czech industrial workers and farmers whose productive capacity was necessary to the German war effort." What do they think their fate will be after they are no longer needed?
Apparently they never read Animal Farm.
Let me ask you a Q, please, Rebel.
What animates them?
I don't laugh at or otherwise dismiss any of them -- not their racism, not their ferocious tribalism, nor their hatreds and frequently "manly" tendencies to rape, to carrying around mass murder military-style weaponry.
And they're organized under all these far-right authoritarians (including nationalist religious zealots) all over the world.
Do we all need to read more Hannah Arendt?
Or is it just academic, and they're bringing The Rapture sooner than any of us thought?
More Hannah Arendt, yes, yes. But as for these tech guys, they were weaned on Ayn Rand in their computer lab geek youth. Plus regardless of what other religious beliefs they may have or not, they all bow to the god of capitalism, like it is the center of all they do, perverted, but at the center. They also truly believe that it is tech that rules the world and since they do tech, they should be the rulers and NOTHING must ever interfere with the development of tech... and now, oh goody, they have AI (and I don't think the rush to superintelligence is about beating China; it's about beating and controlling us.) But yeah, Ayn Rand is their north star I think. Oh, and as for The Rapture, that's only for us. They plan on living forever or at least for some, to have their DNA live on indefinitely via their ever-expanding broods cuz yeah, after destroying as many of us as possible, repopulating the earth with spawn having their "superior" genes is already underway too. So so many layers of sick.
I hear you, Rebel.
Absolutely hear you.
Thankful to inhabit this planet same time as you, however outpowered we might be by the nihilist techies, cowardly suckers-up-to-power, speakers of wonk, social media living dead, standardized testers, mass murderers, and lone wolf murderers.
I have decided to not send in my income tax payment. 1. I no longer have a competent president. 2. My representatives are out manned by a corrupt,incompetent and idle Congress. 3. The Supreme Court has only two non corrupt justices. So,not a penny from me. I’ll seek extensions until one of us goes first.
I agree with everything you stated and the story about the guy with the candle, to me is a very important one I had not been focused on recently. I will keep this in the forefront of my mind going fwd. I also agree that our numbers need to be huge. In the millions. Repeating a unified message. We can't afford to water our power down by going off on individual tangents. Our message needs to be the same across the country and then sustained for the duration needed. I do believe that we...the people and we...the country need the military on our side resisting all that Trump & his loyalists is doing.
Over on bsky, I'm seeing lots of folks using the word courage right now.
AOC: "The time to be courageous is now." “Every day wake up and say what can I do today?’ — There is no act too small. Every action matters."
And someone reposted this from Timothy Snyder: Lesson #20 "Be as courageous as you can" - T. Snyder 'On Tyranny'.
Don't feel like you have to do something dramatic, and thus become paralyzed with inaction, make eye contact, say thank you, challenge word choice, support a local institution, like a Bluesky post, check in on an old friend."
I really appreciate that last part because I am a teensy blue dot in a sea of red. But I can still do more.
They've had 50 years working up to this. It's gonna take us more than a sec to get going but we do need to get on this FAST. And yes, YES, to your last sentence. The regime is quickly cleansing and consolidating security forces and if they stick to the plan, which they have so far, doing the same plus arming and bringing under monarchy control of the police is coming. That was a key Hitler move in his first 53 days of toppling Germany's democracy. Just awaiting the EO that talks about something like more funding to strengthen police blah blah. That day I will tremble... again. So getting out in front of that would be so helpful.
As ever, it is about workforce and the capturing and subjugation of it. When that workforce realizes how much power they actually have, then the power begins to act. People just need to be convinced of that reality. The power to change their condition. And there lies the road ahead. The convincing and call to action.
The Hunger Games in real life, Suzanne Collins was prescient.
I hear you, Rebel.
As I said earlier, Putin, and T**** (and his billionaire techbros) are, at their core, just common thieves. Follow the money.
They are the parasites
Perhaps "uncommon" thieves, in rarefied atmosphere that can have so much impact on civilization and even the human supporting climate of the planet.
Trump is a lot of things; and none of them good. I'd say he is Putin's Poodle insofar as his relationship with Putin seems different, somehow, than with others. Putin says "Donald, come!" and Donald comes. Putin says "Roll over" and Donald rolls over.
I think Donald tolerates some upstaging of Musk so long as he believes Musk can be fired,and gives Musk free reign because he cannot well comprehend what He and his redhat hackers are actually up to, except that it rapidly unravels the Republic, and with it, barriers to working his whims. He would drop Elon like a rock if he didn't need him. At least he would try to. Trump seems more genuinely dependent on Putin.
The Putin poodle bit lets people laugh, J L.
All laughing severely underestimate the layers of hatred and vengeance in him. Just as our clever elites laughed at him in 2016. Just as Merrick Garland and everybody at the Department of Justice then and for too long a time dawdled and pooh-poohed the chances of Trump ever escaping federal justice.
Certainly this is not a time to laugh MAGA off. The danger and damage is real and ongoing. And yet my sense of history is that well crafted ridicule can be an effective political weapon. Defeatism is at least a pernicious as denial, and I think humor can tear at illusion legitimacy and invincibility that despots devise to concoct; as Thomas Nast challenged the same old serpent in the 19th Century. All of the self-righteous bloviating of MAGA figures is preposterous fiction of the Emperor's New Clothes variety, even when deadly. I saw a recent cartoon of Musk in his gladiator costume, with an apparently dead, starvation emaciated African child at his feet; hailing to a thumbs-up Trump as approving emperor. The image, like some of those of Thomas Nast is humor that is not really "funny", yet is not misplaced. One is reminded of the 'gallows humor' attributed to Benjamin Franklin, "Yes, we must, indeed, all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately.” Trump imagined as "Putin's poodle" is similarly not just comic relief.
I worked in Psychiatry for over 40 years. I said that Trump was a very “sick puppy” all the way back when he took his wife, Ivana, AND Marla Maples to Aspen CO skiing, and watched with glee as they fought over him in a cafe. I warned all my family that he is a Malignant Narcissist who is EXTREMELY DANGEROUS when he rode down the escalator and announced his candidacy. Still, many voted for him. You are witnessing the acts of a man who is UNABLE to consider anyone but himself, UNABLE to feel compassion or guilt or any sense of conscience, is very paranoid and extremely sadistic. There is no negotiating with him. The only negotiating cards we had were held during the impeachments, and then after office if he had been arrested for J6. The tiny card we hold now is if the Republicans in the Senate and House develop spines and do their jobs!!
It’s a tiny card alright, in fact it’s almost invisible. 🤬
Liar, Fraud, Con, Grifter, Felon, Racist, Fascist Trump is a TRAITOR. Traitor Trump is America’s Disgrace! Traitors should be indicted, arrested, tried, convicted and sentenced to death by hanging.
Yes, you know that DEMOCRACY has failed because the traitor trump and the unelected co-president elon musk are not in prison. But the solution for a failed democracy is not a dictatorship, nor authoritarianism; it's a REFORMED and IMPROVED democracy.
All of you who stayed home on Election Day because you didn’t like Biden’s middle of the road approach, his support of Israel, his allowing drilling to continue, f—- you. We needed your vote and you chose ideology over democracy. To all of you that voted for Trump, f—- you coming and going. Normally I’d say something like you’re getting what you deserve, but we’re getting what you selected, and non of us deserve it.
Who’s left? Lawyers. Bless them.
Don’t wait for the military to save the country. That cure might be worse than the disease. No, we’ll have to suffer through a wrecked world and a wrecked economy before the country might try something else, assuming the constitution isn’t thrown out altogether.
I did my job and voted for the VP. I was able to vote at the county election office the weekend before Election Day and there was heavy turnout. Unfortunately, it did us no good.
Trump/ Vance / Rubio/ Hegseth -and the rest of the Republican enablers, are TRAITORS. trump must be removed or impeached. there must be a reckoning in this country. Thankfully we still have journalists who report what’s happening. Fascism/ Nazism must be stopped.
"Thankfully we still have journalists who report what’s happening"
We do? Please let me know where I can find them. . . WaPo and NYT seem to be talking in some sort of strange "nudge, nudge, wink, wink" jargon at the moment. And what we need is a press that shouts from the rooftops.
Lady E, I agree!! Where was Bezos when his editorial board wanted to endorse Harris? Where was Bezos when a large ad against Trump was proposed recently? And Was he not in the front row at Trump inauguration?!? He is helping to destroy democracy.
Yes
And we need our Federal Democratic Legislators in the House and Senate to use every archane rule and procedure to impede, fight, and block the Constitutional Coup we've watched unfold since January 20!
You know Bezos just spiked an anti-T**** ad for the DC issue of WaPo, right? https://www.wjtv.com/news/washington-post-backs-out-of-fire-elon-musk-ad-order/
And a few weeks ago he stifled a cartoonist, who then resigned. https://anntelnaes.substack.com/p/why-im-quitting-the-washington-post
Can you say 'Freedom of the Press'?
Can you say power of the oligarchs and non press corporations?
You mean like Rupert but telling the truth. Maybe we could beg Bloomberg
Detroit Free Press if you can get past all the sports.
We need aRecall Trump vote by us citizens.
Enjoy the information provided by those journalists while they last .
Br whom
I vote for removed, all of them... permanently
"The British tabloid The Daily Star interprets the changes in American politics differently. Its cover tomorrow features Vladimir Putin walking “PUTIN’S POODLE”: the president of the United States"
Bingo!
I feel so ashamed!!!!!
Yeah, I nothing I wanted, but we're in the same boat.
Thanks Heather! Go get some sleep if you can.
I sent this to my congressional representatives:
I recently send you a letter expressing my concerns about the administration’s disregard for law, integrity, and accountability with respect to freezing congressionally approved funding. Since then, it seems that there are daily reports and developments that are a clear escalation of this financial situation that also carries over to every other aspect of the administration’s actions regarding everything about everything!
I know you don't have a crystal ball, or a magic wand to set things right, and I'm interested in your thoughts on how we can work with this administration to find a solution when it appears that the administration is completely willing to do whatever it pleases without regard for law, integrity, or accountability.
I'm sickened each time I think about what Musk and DOGE have already done to the security of our sensitive and confidential data and that they appear to be continuing without guardrails or any congressional oversight. It doesn't seem like the courts are going to back up integrity or honor either.
When do we call it a coup and take action fitting with the severity of the situation?
You mean your representatives care what you think??
A final thought for today as I watch the unremitting horror show in the now occupied US from a still for the moment free France (then it's off for morning shopping - sorry!): all of those cosplayers who dressed up for all these damn years as 1776ers and wanted to play Mr. Lexington Green Minute Man and party like it was April 19, 1775 in Concord Massachusetts? Well, since we apparently now have a king, here is your real chance . . .