At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, this morning, a visibly exhausted president of the United States of America rambled in angry free association in a speech before the world’s leaders.
Amid the horrors here and abroad, there was one event at Davos that gave me some hope - Mark Carney’s sober prescription for moving forward - defining a rational path through the current age of Hegemons.
Watch this:
Mark Carney's full speech at the World Economic Forum
The most profound discomfort in Mark Carney's speech is its tacit acknowledgement the ChristoNazis have won, that our Republic is dead and so thoroughly conquered and subjugated it can never be restored. I listened to his speech three times, also read its text, always hoping to discover a less terminal analysis, but the conclusion I summarize above is everywhere apparent. Nevertheless, let us not succumb to despair, the bright spot in Mark Carney's speech is that it provides rallying-points in Canada, Europe, Asia and potentially in Africa for the preservation of the very humanitarian civilization the eternally failed United States -- that is, the ChristoNazis' "Unified Reich" -- will do everything in its considerable power to destroy. Which is of course why Trump wants Greenland: as a base from which to launch one prong of a two-front Putin-Trump invasion of Europe, and/or to launch a third prong of a three-front invasion of Canada. Let us hope the German General Staff and its French, British and Canadian counterparts have the brilliance of their most successful forebears and are preparing accordingly.
"The most profound discomfort in Mark Carney's speech is its tacit acknowledgement the ChristoNazis have won, that our Republic is dead and so thoroughly conquered and subjugated it can never be restored."
Take heart. We can restore our democratic republic. Carney quoted Vaclav Havel on how the participation of ordinary people sustained the Communist system and the potential for the people of every nation to resist and to take power through non-violent acts of non-compliance. Through the Havel story, Carney implicitly spoke of Americans' complicity in and our potential for non-violent non-compliance with the Trump regime. I'd say, in the streets - and at the ballot box, by uniting behind Democratic candidates and by advocating for your state to protect free and fair elections. (See Marc Elias' Democracy Docket for continually updated information on voter issues Democracy Docket
"In 1978, the Czech dissident Václav Havel, later president, wrote an essay called The Power of the Powerless, and in it, he asked a simple question: how did the communist system sustain itself?
And his answer began with a greengrocer.
Every morning, this shopkeeper places a sign in his window: ‘Workers of the world unite’. He doesn't believe it, no-one does, but he places a sign anyway to avoid trouble, to signal compliance, to get along. And because every shopkeeper on every street does the same, the system persist – not through violence alone, but through the participation of ordinary people in rituals they privately know to be false.
Havel called this “living within a lie”.
The system's power comes not from its truth, but from everyone's willingness to perform as if it were true, and its fragility comes from the same source. When even one person stops performing, when the greengrocer removes his sign, the illusion begins to crack. Friends, it is time for companies and countries to take their signs down."
I've posted this story before, but for the new folks here, let me tell the story of a road trip in Sept of 2016.
We took a wonderful loop from Chicago, to Springfield, Memphis, Asheville, up the Blue Ridge, through Gettysburg, to Indianapolis, then back home. Much of the time was spent on Lincoln--seeing the exceptional Lincoln Museum, and two days touring Gettysburg.
On the way home, we needed to stop to get gas in Pennsylvania. We pulled off the road and had to go a bit into a smallish town. I felt like we stepped into the Twilight Zone. I am 100% serious. EVERY. SINGLE. HOME and business--with the exception of perhaps 2-3 buildings out of HUNDREDS--every one displayed a Trump sign! Some lawns had near small billboards on their lawns.
I said to my husband--OMG this is creepy! I wondered who had the courage to NOT put up a sign. And this is when I started to worry that he'd win.
Did every single person in that town feel that way? Or was it easier to go along?
I wonder how much business the town might have lost? We were going to stop for lunch, but I couldn't get back on that highway fast enough!
That is the trouble. I don't know whether a distance of several thousand miles from the USA lends clarity but it seems to quite a lot of us Brits that the problem is not Trump: it is the fact that despite all his rapidly increasing deficiencies and declining mental state, a significant proportion of the people of the USA still support him (including some of my American cousins, who I thought would know better). If Trump shuffles off the stage he will simply be replaced by Trump #2, then #3 and so on until what remains of civilisation is destroyed. I do hope I am wrong.
In the Spring and Summer of 2016, through my local Democratic committee, I made thousands of phone calls to registered voters throughout Maine - across party affiliations. I was struck by how ardent Trump supporters were and how almost the best Hillary could do was to get people to hold their nose and vote Democratic, despite her (myself included.) In August, I called into radio shows and wrote to pundits saying "Please do not under estimate support for Trump. If the best you can do is make fun of him, then he will laugh his way into the White House." Basically the response was "Don't worry your little head over it. He can't win." By late October they were saying "This is what Democrats are saying behind the scenes." Too late.
I'm quite familiar with Havel -- enough to know his analysis is of no more relevance to the deliberately failed United States (now the ChristoNazis' "Unified Reich"), than the White Rose Society was relevant to what brought down Nazi Germany. Bear in mind three facts: firstly, the ChristoNazi conquest and its results -- the deliberate nullification of our Constitution, the deliberate reduction of our Republic to a Failed Nation and its deliberate replacement by the murderous horrors of the "Unified Reich" is the conscious, malice-of-forethought preference of the majority of the voters; secondly, the "Democratic" (sic) Party in which you so naively invest so much hope has been, since 22 November 1963, little more than the Fifth Column of the "Republican" (sic) ChristoNazi/Neoconfederate Party; thirdly, the election in which you unwittingly invest such hope will most likely never be allowed. (For documentation of points 2 and 3, see https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/the-last-election?r=5gckz&triedRedirect=true ) Lastly, the one analogy that (accurately) describes our (true) circumstances is "The Last Article," here: https://ia601501.us.archive.org/19/items/last-article-harry-turtledove/Last%20Article%20Harry%20Turtledove.pdf Read it if you dare.
If you think that about the Democrats, do you honestly believe that if Harris had won in 2024, we would be seeing the horrors that Trump and MAGA have visited on the country? ICE and economic devastation and foreign policy chaos etc etc etc? I don't think that myself.
Maybe the Dems are not as keen on deep economic reform as you would like. Some are, some aren't - but they respect constitutional laws and political norms.
I hope the population of the US has learned an invaluable lesion about voting but also to not push the derisively called woke issues toward the midterms. Will this happen? I doubt we have learned because the democrats will find a way to stumble over their own feet as they usually do. They will listen to and be inclusive of the distant left issues like trans girls on woman’s sports teams and they will lose 20% of the vote. I know I’ll get push back on this but this is a fact. I’m really supportive of anyone wanting to be any thing they want. But I don’t want to lose the fricken election over it and this is what the MAGAs will use to weaken us. It will happen regardless if anyone wants to deny it.
Carney's references to Havel were timely, brilliant and relevant.
* "Living within a lie": Carney invoked Havel’s concept of "living within a lie" to describe how nations and businesses were propping up a failing "rules-based international order".
* The Greengrocer Metaphor: Carney used Havel's story of the greengrocer who places a sign in his window ("Workers of the world, unite!") not because he believes it, but to comply with the system.
* Call to Action: Carney argued it is time to "take their signs down" and stop pretending the old international system is still working.
* Additional Quote: Another source indicates Carney also referenced the Havel quote: "It is not enough to stare up the steps, we must step up the stairs".
It was not a speech of doom but a speech of current political reality as well as a path for change. It promotes multinational spheres versus one or two super power total dominance. For me, it outlines a beginning not an end.
Those are much more well said, strings that have been resonating within me for too long. The trick will be 'playing just those strings' for long enough / repeatedly enough with firm confidence, till 'more' hear the tunes and sing them also. Time: Not unlike the determination and repetition the extremists have used for so many decades now; Constant, unwavering, repetitive; With the massive difference that we and the other 'strings or chords' rhyme from actual facts in history, evidence, law, precedence.
The central point Carney tried to make is that the Rules Based Order put in place 80 years ago replaced a system where large nations used physical force to forward their interests with one that has evolved into one where rich nations use economic force to meet the same ends. He also pointed out that while this system had lifted billions out of poverty, it was still flawed and could not go on forever.
His unfortunate use of the term "variable geometry" seems to have muddied the central, most hopeful idea: telling the truth about the real condition of world economic relations, they are a a staggeringly complex web of ad-hoc trade alliances in which no nation or group of nations could gain true ascendancy because of the very dynamism of the trade on which they all depend.
The ChristoNazis have hastened the demise of an increasingly unfair system they did not create and are not prepared to take over, they have not won. The world can't turn into a bunch of fortress-silos as per the Trump/Putin vision, not with what Carney calls the "middle powers" running rings around them economically and strategically.
The next few years will be very difficult. Much less so if we in the US can restore our democracy and clean up our economically coercive practices.
Lest there be any misunderstanding, I am wholeheartedly supportive of what Carney is proposing because, above all else, it guarantees the preservation of some semblance of humanitarian civilization. Yes,. I also recognize that it means the radical diminishing of the increasingly deluded, increasingly illiterate, increasingly diseased Failed-Nation wasteland that is the gleefully ChristoNazified former United States. But I see that plunge to permanent Third-World wretchedness as just karma for this nation's greed-motivated poisoning of our Mother Earth and all her children. Besides, I'm terminally ill, do not expect to see another Christmas and doubt I will see another Fourth of July. I am also a near-lifelong humanitarian activist, which means that even were I youthful and healthy, I'd eventually be murdered by the MAGAstapo.
Don’t accept the omnipotence of evil. The harm that has been done can be repaired and the nation can go forward, better than ever. It won’t be easy, and it will take much time and a great deal of work, but it is not impossible.
One of the most important lessons of World War II is that pacifism -- which has been at least minimally effective against every other ideology on this planet -- is not only utterly useless but genuinely suicidal against Nazism. Thus the attempt to oust the ChristoNazis by nonviolent means is doomed before it starts. And the resistant citizenry -- We the (fully human) People -- lack the training, the courage, the psychological commitment essential for disciplined solidarity and the leadership to mobilize anything like the French Resistance or the Yugoslav and Soviet Partizanskaya. (Thus we see manifest the true reason the draft was ended; the ruling class -- even then looking ahead to the Nazification of the nation -- recognized that compulsory military service was training the revolution. Ditto for forcible disarmament: an unarmed population is a defenseless population; note that on the third day of the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, the government opened the arsenals and armed the entire adult population. Very soon, firearms ownership in the former US will be limited to certified ChristoNazis, and the anti-gunowner infrastructure put in place by the Democrats will fulfill its clandestine purpose of disarming everyone else. (Historical note: the Nazification of the nation is a bi-partisan, multi-generation project that's been underway since 1933; see https://explorethearchive.com/business-plot also https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jan/11/trump-fdr-roosevelt-coup-attempt-1930s and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot Lastly, consider these facts in the contest of the U.S. adoption of legions of Nazi war criminals as advisors and comrades-at-arms, which started not after VE Day in 1945, but in 1944, shortly after the Red Army's victory at Stalingrad made it clear the Nazis would lose the war.)
The encirclement of the German 6th Army [ part of Operation Blau 1942] commenced by the Soviet Red Army on 19 Nov. and planned by General Zhukov and his staff. It was a large pincer type operation from north and south of the city. The two pincers linked up on Nov.23, 1942. Reduction of the pocket proceeded from that date.It was not at all clear in the winter of 1942 that Germany had lost the war by either the Allied powers nor the OKW leadership.
Loren, I appreciate your passion and acknowledge your despair. I feel much the same as you. Most of what you have written today can't be disputed, but ...
The United States is not dead. Rather, it is forever changed. That change is and will be reflected in our position in the world order. We are no longer – and probably never will be – first.
The White House stands as a perfect symbol of what has happened to the U.S. Donald demolished the East Wing and the structure is now smaller and less imposing than it was a year ago. It is less than it was, but it still stands. If Donald remains in office, I expect him to demolish the West Wing, thinking he needs something larger and more golden. If he does it, the symbolism will be stronger. The White House will still be there, only smaller and less imposing.
Implied in Mark Carney's brilliant address is that we Usonians* are now challenged to adjust to the reality that we are no longer first, and that isn't necessarily a tragedy. Being first carries with it heavy burdens, financial and moral. Maybe "just being one of the guys (or gals)" isn't such a bad thing. Maybe we will individually and collectively learn about humility and empathy, lessons we sorely need.
One thing evangelicals have taught me about christonazis is this: they can't get along. You know why there are so many Baptist churches across the United States? Because inevitably, some decision made by someone on the church board pisses off a handful of members; they leave and start their own church. In fact, with a handful of exceptions, every Baptist church in the U.S. exists because a handful of people got pissed off and started their own church. Membership grows at first, then it shrinks because the churches run on spite, which is not a sustainable model. We are already seeing these schisms in MAGA.
When the christonazis are comfortable and in charge, they will disintegrate.
Thinking, reasonable people should be ready to step into the breach. Is it the Democratic Party? Maybe. Maybe not. The party reminds me of a forsythia bush. It has become old, woody, misshapen and doesn't bloom much. An old forsythia can be restored by pruning all the old branches down to the ground during the winter, so only stubs sticking out of the soil remain. To the novice gardener, this drastic pruning is kinda scary, like maybe the plant will die. But in the early spring, vital new shoots leap from the ground and create a fountain of blazing yellow. The Democratic Party needs to be pruned hard, creating space for "new shoots" to spring up and make our landscape beautiful again.
*One of my heroes, preeminent architect Frank Lloyd Wright objected to U.S. residents being called "Americans." He argued that citizens of Canada, Mexico and all the nations in North, Central and South America are Americans. He coined a new term for U.S. residents: Usonians. He even designed a class of residences he called Usonian. I wish his term had caught on.
Dale, I gave you a "like" for your use of "Usonian." My preferance is "USian," which I used for several years in my blogs, "Outside Agitator's Notebook" and the now terminated, archives-destroyed "Dispatches from Dystopia," forever slain by the post-November-2024 death of its server, TypePad. My rational for "USian" was identical to Frank Lloyd Wright's, but I was dissuaded from using it by a number of readers who damned it as "arrogant." Now I shall go back to using it, as I think it is extremely important to distinguish between the fully ChristoNazified Malevolently Moronic Majority of USians and the legitimate peoples of the remainder of the Americas. Second thought, I'll update it to FUSians -- residents of the Failed United States. But I do not believe the nation can be saved; like Nazi Germany and Tojo's Japan, I believe it can only be liberated by conquest -- which means a war that will no doubt be the end of our species and the reduction of our Mother Earth to permanent Precambrian lifelessness. Relevant footnote: my oldest half-brother, a twice-Pulitzer-nominee journalist and a founding official of the EPA purged by Ronnie the Nazi in 1981, said as he was dying he believed the 2016 election of Trump was the literal beginning of the end of the world. Now I believe he spoke true prophecy.
Thank you for this sad but resolute post, Loren. We can only imagine the dismay of our allies’ leaders today, realizing that Trump has truly gone around the bend and over the cliff. My grandfather was born in New Brunswick, so we can actually claim Canadian citizenship because our ancestors were loyal to the king during the Revolution and went to Canada. This has never been a point of pride for me but is becoming so, sadly. Interesting that history is repeating itself, in a way, loyal Americans moving to Canada.
Very similar to my family history, here from about 1636 until 1788, deported as Loyalists. (A bit infamous, as Mary Blisse, a direct ancestor, beat a witchcraft rap in Boston c. 1675.) My paternal grandparents, both British subjects, moved here from Canada in 1901; my grandfather, Amos Read Bliss, was one of the founders of the automobile industry. Were I not terminally ill, I'd have already fled back to British territory, preferably Scotland -- genetically we're about 80 percent Celt -- but Canada would surely do. l
I love to hear that Mary Blisse beat a witchcraft rap. I thought once someone pointed the finger they were as good as dead. So interesting to look at one’s ancestors and imagine how their lives were. Makes us look pretty soft! I am intrigued to know that you are living so boldly with your terminal diagnosis! I often wonder how I will react when the day comes. You are demonstrating the way I would like to go. May your pain be bearable today! May you be able to sleep tonight. Please continue to give us the benefit of your thinking and long life.
Hm... that sounds a lot like anticipatory obedience, no?
The US "republic" isn't dead. "Republic" means: the head of state is appointed through elections, not hereditary rules. Even the worst possible GOP neofascist out there doesn't want to replace the republic with a monarchy. What they want is to replace the US Constitution and its democratic principles of government with a neofascist one - the same way Hitler did, namely by simply ignoring the Constitution and subordinating Congress and the courts to the executive branch.
THAT started already. But it merely STARTED. History shows that it takes about a decade to complete such a transformation, so NOW is the time to fight back rather than imagine that it's a done job already!
As to Carney: what he observed is correct, namely that the post WWII Atlantic order HAS been destroyed already by the neofascist GOP. As soon as a NATO member THREATENS to invade another NATO member, NATO de facto no longer functions as it should.
Trump is TCKA: a Totally Controlled Kremlin Asset. I can't say what he thinks. Or if he thinks. But it now must be clear to anyone with eyes, ears, & a functioning brain that he is now, and has been, enacting Putin's agenda since at least around 2010-12. Probably much longer.
The old detective adage goes, 'In trying to identify suspects, consider first 'who has a good motive to do the act?' So with that in mind, what if the act is to diminish, wound, even destroy America & the Western alliance? The #1 suspect, by his openly professed geopolitical aims and personal ambition for revenge, has the English initials VP. Trump IS treason. ##
It is nice to hear world leaders and our neighbor speak plainly about what is going on. It is hard to remain even a tad optimistic, but we must never give up.
Did Trump refer himself as an “Oh daddy?” Oh really. I can’t go further with this train of thought because it would quickly degenerate. Better he practice incest in his own degeneracy line within his family.
That may be what he's just said, but his mind is failing. It was, as I recall, Mark Rutte (English not his native language) who called him "Daddy" in a way intended to be jokey/friendly/flattering. We all shuddered, but it would seem that Rutte read him correctly, thus endearing himself to him.
It was a stupid misstep by Rutte, one that he's compounded by his conversation yesterday with Trump after which Trump was able to claim that he had agreed with Rutte the framework of a deal for the US to take control of Greenland. European leaders need to wake up and smell the coffee - Trump is not giving this up. It was a relief to see Starmer finally deciding not to have anything to do with Trump's ridiculous Board of Peace, which professor Stefan Wolff, university of Birmingham, has called a "privatised UN with one shareholder: the US president."
Rutte, when asked about this supposed "framework of a deal" (didn't we hear the same language in 2024 about the ACA during one of the appalling debates?) said it never happened and that they didn't discuss Greenland (or Iceland) at all. I agree: everyone's decision to flatter the naked emperor and dump golden prezzies before him was truly idiotic. I hope they have changed their position, especially in the wake of Carney's striking speech, to one that is based on reality rather than the fantasy that indulging the toddler in his tantrums will effect a change.
I wish Rutte would publicly and emphatically say there was never any such conversation and he has no idea why Trump is saying there was; it must be to save face.
"Board of Peace".., GMAFB! This belongs in Mad Magazine along with other quotes fromAlfred E Newman. What??? Me Worry? Alfred just won the "Piece" prize: The POS Prize. Take it awayyyy.
I think the incest angle is what’s in the Epstein files/videos/photos. He’s expressed sexual interest in his eldest daughter on several occasions, and there are photos with them together in somewhat sickening poses. I have no proof other than a sudden realization that this may be the case. For everyone’s sake, I hope I’m wrong.
I've posted the above link for about a week now. It is a LONG read, but anyone who is able (that is, not triggered by sexual abuse of children) absolutely MUST read this to know what Olear alleges TRUMP did. This article answered my worst fears of what could be so bad that Trump would go to these lengths to hide it.
on another podcast someone said trump loves to be called Daddy and I instantly got that heart missing a beat, adrenaline rush of dread and deep disgust.
I don't have a lot to invest, but I do have a little in a ROTH IRA I decided to put into dividend funds to provide a little boost to my monthly income. I turned away from US funds and found some really good Canadian dividend funds that were based not in technology or AI, which don't feel real stable right now, but basic things like railroads, Canadian real estate and finance. I was excited to put my small savings there and invest in that decent country until I read that Canada imposes a 15% tax on all investments outside the country. Rats. Wish I'd moved there when I was a younger gay woman and Canada felt so much more welcoming than my own country.
Carney’s speech was an adults response to the actions of a madman and his stupid and greedy handlers. These evil men (and women) have destroyed the US as a world leader. We can get rid of Trump and his henchmen but the damage is done,and it was done by the stupid voters who knowingly voted for a convicted felon and a lifelong greedy lying fraud. The world does not trust us, and with good cause. We are now isolated from the family of Nations, and this is an injury that will not be cured by simply voting for a sane and competent government to begin to undo the damage that these people have done. The world does not trust the American population to act like adults in their political choices. They lived through two terms of GWB with patience. He was stupid but he was not evil. This current bunch can only be described as the worst of humanity…..greedy, corrupt and yes, truly evil.
Agreed. A morality test; a lie detector test; a thorough psychiatric exam; and a complete background check - even traffic violations or overdue parking tickets.....
This is so important, but what jumped to my mind is the current DOJ indicting politicians and running them through a kangaroo court for conviction. Once the Republicans gave up acting in good faith (a long time ago) it became only a matter of time.
It works well in Australia. 90% Federal voting participation. It's not about the potential punishment ($25). It's about setting an obligation, a standard of social behavior - a legal/moral requirement.
We get DEEP in the weeds here, Marj. First, bring back, and make into law, the Fairness Doctrine. Second, major, MAJOR punishment for ANY media outlet disseminating provable falsehoods. From there, bringing our public schools back to the standards needed. Suffice to say, we have a LOT of work ahead of us!
Well done Albert. Your formula matches my own. We need a new Age of Reform-on an unprecedented scale - or we’re accepting relegation to serfdom under a reigning King.
Thank you, Albert--for all your informed posts, and also for the generous way you responded to MLM. I, too, sometimes have difficulty reading comments that are formatted that way.
I've seen squabbles break out on here over the slightest things! We are all worn out and on edge.
Love this, Albert!! I agree about the paragraphs; I understand writing styles and missions have different focus, but wowza!
(When my wife was in grad school and I was a street cop, she would struggle with writing some papers. I'd ask "what do you want to say", listen to it, and then, in true cop fashion, would write three or four sentences, paraphrasing what she said. She'd splice them together, edit the language, and she was off and running.)
I think the founders would like this train of thought. I'm not sure about the specific divisions, but the idea of breaking it up a bit and having some significant qualifications is spot on. That would seem to be what the founders had in mind with the original concepts for both the Senate and the method for choosing electors, with the notion that people with experience in their respective state legislatures would exercise this kind of judgement about the relative qualifications of those that were put forward as potential senators, the president and VP.
We definitely need to reform our Federal Government. And we can and must insist that the cap on the number of Congress members be removed. 435 members is grossly inadequate to represent a country of 330 million Americans. And the Supreme Court Justices must expand to 13. Both of these measures can be accomplished immediately, without a Constitutional Amendment. We can go from there to a careful, very careful update of our Constitution, beginning with abolishing the Electoral College and increasing Congressional terms to four years.
Mr. Killackey, I appreciate your thoughtfulness about changes that need to be made in this democratic republic of ours. It makes a lot of sense to me. However true thinking people need to be involved in this process. Right now I am not aware of more than a handful of thinking republicans- those willing to stand against this regime. As I witness the heinous lawless actions by thugs dressed in paramilitary gear in my home in Minneapolis and the fear it is instilling into our citizens, legal or illegal, I am worried and scared about what will happen during the midterm elections. The news is thick with the right wing claiming it has legal rights to, basically, break into anyone's home. Our economy is being directly harmed by this untrained fascist militia. What will happen in blue cities come election time?
While I think your deep thought about what changes need to be made once humanity returns to the country, we still need to get there first. Mr. Bliss seems to be advocating blood shed will be the only way to make this happen. I believe the basic fiber of democrats is to NOT use blood shed to achieve our goals. My hope, possibly naively, is that we can figure out a way to get everyone to the poles in a safe manner. None of my guns were ever designed to kill people.
Albert, I am for much of what you propose. However, for any of those things to happen, we need to win back a majority in congress and make it veto-proof. Moreover, some of them require constitutional amendment which means we need a supermajority of states to ratify them. That’s a long winded way of saying that elections matter, everywhere. There should be not a single uncontested GOP seat in these midterms. And we who care about elections need to not just volunteer at the phone banks, write postcards, leave door hangers, etc. All those things are important but so is election protection. Free and fair elections will be under assault everywhere and we need to fight those efforts tooth and nail. Don’t just stand outside your polling place; be an observer inside it. Or be a paid pollworker because capturing those jobs is one the things Republicans do to tip the scales in their favor. We need to be confrontational in the face of adversity. We are not going to take it: not here, not there, not anywhere.
Mark Carney’s speech was perfect. Not because he was diplomatic or conciliatory, but because he refused to appease the bully. He spoke truth to power clearly: the world is building what comes next, with or without America.
This is exactly what I mapped in World Ahead 2026: Part 3. While the bully rambled about “daddy” and threatened prosecution for the 2020 election, allies were drawing the line. When he backed down on tariffs and claimed a “framework deal” on Greenland (which, as Filipkowski noted, is just surrendering back to the original agreement), it proved the strategy works.
The bully confused Greenland with Iceland at Davos. The president of the United States, threatening to annex territory, can’t keep straight which country he’s targeting. And Carney, Macron, and other leaders watched this mental deterioration while calmly explaining they’re building European defense independence, activating economic countermeasures, and decoupling from American reliability.
The domestic brutality you’re tracking (secret ICE memos, Fourth Amendment shredding, detaining children) and the international realignment happening at Davos are the same phenomenon: American institutional collapse forcing everyone to build alternatives.
Allies aren’t waiting for 2026 midterms or hoping resistance materializes. They’re watching federal agents operate like brownshirts, a president who can’t distinguish NATO allies, and a regime that openly discusses prosecuting people for refusing to help steal elections. That’s disqualifying. Even if American democracy somehow recovers, the trust is gone.
Carney’s speech matters because it signals the strategy shift: not hoping America stabilizes, but building what works without American reliability. That external pressure might be the only thing that forces accountability domestically.
The world is moving on. And Davos this week showed they’re done waiting.
Carney's speech was a masterpiece. Not just a repudiation of that maniac, but an actual way forward for the sane non-superpowers to band together and become the most relevant superpower.
For me, if anything, Carney's speech was a plea for a return to sensible alliances between nation states based on mutual interests rather than the formation of a new superpower (Heaven forbid!).
I'm with Isaac here. We need to think about this as a much bigger problem then just "Make Trump Go Away".
Trump appears to be 'going away' soon. But he has exposed the weaknesses of our system. If we do what we did last time, when Biden was in office, and just go 'back to normal' and pretend that Trump did nothing wrong then the entire corrupt system stays in place. The name of the dictator may change and the level of evil may vary but there is nothing to keep it from happening again with the next populist dictator.
Precisely. Our domestic resistance can only go so far to restrain the madman that our core institutions (congress and the enforcement of constitutional/real laws) are permitting to run amok. Thanks for the chat yesterday laying out the “reasons” they are failing so blatantly - each craven decision reinforcing the next so that the incompetent team T assembled owes too much to him to remove him, and the power struggle behind the throne leaves virtually no one in his camp feeling free to act decisively. Handing our government over to incompetent bullies leaves us in turn with little direct leverage now - even Dem “leadership” is afraid of being abused if not imprisoned.
We need some bravery in DC comparable to what we are seeing in MN at all levels from streets to cops to elected leaders.
Trump has already slammed the door on our Canadian neighbors who have always been free to cross the border without concerns. But since last January, the border crossings are way down across the northern border. Thankfully, Carney and the Canadians aren't hateful evil thugs like Trump and every fucking Republican politician is.
Apropos Trump's evil, here is the full text of the Jane Doe lawsuit against Trump and Epstein -- later withdrawn in response to credible death threats against the plaintiff: https://cdn.factcheck.org/UploadedFiles/Johnson_TrumpEpstein_Lawsuit.pdf Please let us ensure this text is linked early (and therefore prominently) on as many Resistance sites as possible every day until the traitorous regime of ecogenocidal Christonazi pedophiles is no more. (I'll do my best to be responsible for this posting, but I am 85 years old and terminally ill, which means others need be ready to pick up the torch on days I am absent and after I am no more.)
It made me happy because I used to be a Canuck, and I love it when the "mouse" tells the "elephant", especially now, where to get off. I am not at all blue eyed about our future Russell.
Bruce, I'm not sure excitement is exactly the right response. Resolve and determination might be.
I live in what is nicknamed "Tornado Alley" and, in fact, my home was demolished by a tornado in 2010. I lost some possessions, but not everything. I rebuilt. In the process, I upgraded some parts of my home, so it's nicer than it was. I was never excited by rebuilding. It was a difficult, stressful process that took enormous amounts of determination and resolve. And patience. I made the improvements and finished the rebuilding with the knowledge that another tornado could come through and undo everything I've done. But I can't – and won't – live in fear of that possibility.
Trumpism is the tornado that has demolished our collective home on this planet. Rebuilding will be strenuous and require strength and resolve. The world will rebuild with or without the U.S. Hopefully, nations' leaders will acknowledge some of the weaknesses in the previous world order and correct them. With any luck, everyone will be safer and more comfortable, even U.S. citizens who do, or don't, participate in the rebuild.
I agree Dale, read my reply to Russell: It made me happy/excited because I used to be a Canuck, and I love it when the "mouse" tells the "elephant", especially now, where to get off. I am not at all blue eyed about our future, Russell. This is going to be tough. And, Dale, I am not so sure that the "world" is demolished. I know that Europe has, with Canada and other "countries" picked up their socks. Germany, although battered is still a powerhouse of knowhow and deep market penetration through their Network of ca. 1600 international "Mittelstand Hidden Champions"...They are now doing what is necessary to build the IT infrastructure to connect them, thereby making that capability faster and better quality. They have realized that this is make or break time. Europe will either be a viable third competitor to China and the USA, or they will become customers and their high standard of living will suffer. They know this. The biggest unaddressed problem now is structural...their bloated bureaucracy and and plethora of regulations. Germany/Europe needs to cut the state employee bloat.
Bruce, not to beat the illustration to death, when my house was "demolished," you couldn't tell it from the street because all the damage was in the back.
I didn't mean to imply that the world is demolished. But the structure of the world order has been "involuntarily rearranged." 😁
Who knows? This dramatic inflection point has already motivated visionaries to take action and may jar some bureaucrats out of their comfortable slumber.
Carney is letting the world know that countries captured by Trump's military will not be willingly occupied but will fight against the regime the entire time. That Canada already has planned that. It seems like US citizens not in the US are in danger from Trump's actions differently than those who remain in the US. Those abroad are subject to becoming enemy aliens if the US makes war on the countries they are living in. This is a big discussion right now among the US residents of NATO ally countries.
By negotiating with Trump yesterday, the EU may have turned Trump away from "taking" Greenland, but I bet this will be back on the table again. According to William Spaniel Trump is taking Greenland for Putin. If Putin wants Greenland, it will be back on the table again.
Linda, it's not that Putin wants Greenland (or it's Iceland?), Putin wants the useful idiot to weaken and disrupt NATO for the benefit of his territorial ambitions .
Putin is now a paper tiger...Our support of Ukraine is doing him in, as they say. If Europe sticks together (or kicks some out), Pee-Pee le Put hasn't got a hope in Hades of rolling over the other Estern Eu States on his calendar.
If the scumbag president we have had acted as a traditional republican, the Russian aggression against Ukraine would be over by now. Our beloved great leader owes something to putin and the whole world is paying the consequences. Thanks for your comment Bruce 👍
Yes Mary, you have it right but he needs a NATO not capable of counteract his actions and for that he is getting a lot of help from our beloved great leader.
A small scale figure (as of a person or animal) usually with a cloth body and HOLLOW head that fits over and is moved by the hand. -Merriam Websters Dictionary
You're absolutely correct, Linda, about the military intentions motivating Trump's claims against Greenland; please see my brief summary of them above. (They should be obvious to any analytically minded veteran, or for that matter to anyone aware of the unprecedented magnitude of Absolute Evil by which we are now ruled.)
I wish you the very best in your efforts. As part of your quest for sanctuary you might consider making your knowledge of the U.S. available to the military intelligence services of your chosen nations; that would probably also expedite your acquisition of citizenship. And you should resist any notion you are betraying anything because the America you knew has been conquered by ChristoNazi traitors and therefore no longer exists.
Hello Linda... As DJT is pursuing his Protection Racket, the Resistance is Stiffening.... On 20-Jan-2020, the Dow dropped over 800pts... That apparently caused DJT to drop his threatened European Tariffs over Greenland.... The European Counter is to dump US Treasuries... The Europeans hold more US Debt than China, or Japan... Allegedly, DJT has added 2.5 Trillion$ to the National Debt in the past year, and is on track to add $10,000,000,000,000 to the National Debt by 2029... Par For The Course For A 6X Bankrupt Business Man.... Read Paul Krugman's Substack Today....
It will surely be back on the table, because it isn't really about Greenland, is it? Or Iceland. Or Venezuela. Or Vanuatu. it's about that necklace and plaque and "honor" they were supposed to give him at Oslo but wouldn't, because he's a thug and an asshole, an unbelievably dumb moron, and a tiny, tiny, tiny tiny little brat playing at being tough.
It's about Barack Obama. HE got a Nobel Peace Prize (waaaaaaahh) 😭, how come MEEE doesn't get a Peace Prize (waaaaaah) 😭. It's at that level, no higher.
The threat is there as long as he lives because America was too stupid to recognize how predictable -- and predicted -- this moment was, and sent the moron to Washington with a "mandate."
We have all been living under an immensely worthwhile, valuable international system that granted peace, stability and shared prosperity. Not equally, but one hell of a lot better than the wars, chaos, beggar-thy-neighbor tariffs and gunboat diplomacy which preceded it. That system is now being stabbed to death by a psychotic 2-year-old. Tremendous realignments are now taking place. The only immediate lesson is that if our allies band together against us as a single bloc, they can head off at least some of the worst malevolence. That's about it. The entire international system -- political, financial, and military -- has never been less stable than it is today.
Sadly, I agree with you. It’s too bad that we have a self castrated Congress (and that includes the women in it), a corrupted SCOTUS, an evil VP who is licking his lips in anticipation, a deputy chief of staff that should be tried for crimes against humanity, etc., etc….
Yes. It is about the prize, but that is because Putin probably told him to take it if he was not given it. Putin tells him this stuff and he takes it to heart.
It reminds me of the cover of My Fair Lady. Putin controls Trump, who controls his appointees. The rest of us have to suffer from their dysfunction. Europe is trying to stabilize it because none of the authoritarian leaders will stop it. They are egging it on until it accomplished what they want, the total isolation of the US, NATO breaking up, and the EU falling apart. In Germany, the AfD is now clamoring for Nuclear weapons, something that they were against while the US was aligned with Europe, but now with the US aligned with Russia and China that is the natural outcome.
Putin is the daddy trump never had, who showers him with (false) love, encouragement, compliments, etc. and assuages his deep, unfullable bottomless void.
LInda, you bring up a point that I ponder from time to time. Recall perhaps a year or so back, Putin, too had bruised hands? I believe he fell a few times. There was reports of diarrhea, too, I think.
It seemed as though his demise was near. What wonder drug did he get?!
Mentioning little brats, consider the Stubborn Child Law.
I took an Abnormal Psychology course in the Springfield, MA area that included a presentation by a noticeably drunk former administrator of a juvenile detention center, just as they were drastically reforming the abuses that occurred under the Massachusetts Juvenile Law courts that went back to a law passed in 1664. That law went so far as to allow capital punishment for children that were disobedient to their parents. He described one child who was sent here by his wealthy father who needed nothing more to commit him than the father's say so and had to remain there under his father's say so until he aged out.
Donald Trump's father didn't do that (he was in New York) but did something similar to stories I've heard from other "stubborn" children who's fathers sent them to military schools (against their will), to set them straight. The results seem a bit mixed, with some rather extreme differences in outcomes, the worst of which for the world, I would submit would be the present occupant of the White House.
Who can forget Mary Trump's story about how Donald was such a sniveling, nasty little brat who wouldn't stop ragging his little brother until his uncle simply dumped a giant bowl of mashed potatoes over his head at a family dinner. The whole family laughed because Donnie got what he deserved. Since then, he's been trying to get back -- at Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Bette Midler, Taylor Swift, Mark Rutte, Immanuel Macron, the Nobel Prize Committee......
"Immensely worthwhile." I read that and feel heartbroken, realizing it will be a long-time before we get back to anything resembling what once was, or if that will even be possible.
That's not the way Le Monde has reported it. What they said sounds like a very clever idea by Rutte - I'll say no more, as I can't get the exact text, but if correct it will surely emerge shortly.
I don't envy Rutte. It's like trying to quiet an angry chimpanzee playing with the pin on a hand grenade. "Just put it down, fella, nice banana here if you just put it down..."
Reminds me of a team member assigned to me that I told to wait while I disconnected a cable that was run through a flooded mine field to our wind measuring equipment at Tan An. I cut it so it wouldn't get caught in the barbed wire and went back around the flooded area to pull it through the mine field and reinstall the connector. It was dusk and just before I got there he yanked on a different wire he had been pulling on until it got caught in the barbed wire. Simply by it being caught, I knew it couldn't be the wire I wanted, confirmed a second later when two electrically operated Claymore mines were seen (flying through the air) in the dim light, and landed at our feet.
I removed the electrical detonators after sending him to get EOD or whoever they could send to get the mines and decide if they needed to be redeployed.
The third time he was assigned to me (and made a 3rd dangerous mistake the afternoon before Tet started in our area), I refused to go into the field with him, so I spent most of the last 9 months traveling solo (and feeling safer for doing so).
ay that he and the Secretary General of NATO had developed "the framework for a future agreement concerning Greenland." The Secretary General, for his part, stated that the question of the sovereignty of the autonomous Danish territory "had not been discussed" with the American president.
"The President of Ukraine has arrived in Switzerland to take part in the World Economic Forum and meet with President Trump ," said his spokesman Sergii Nykyforov on Thursday, adding that he would meet with Donald Trump at 1 p.m. and deliver a speech at 2:30 p.m.
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In response to Donald Trump's threat of tariffs against any country that opposes the desire to make Greenland an American territory, "there has been a very strong reaction, first from Europe, from France, Germany and a few others, from Canada," noted Mr. Lescure, interviewed on French radio RTL.
"And I think that this firmness began to convince the American president that it was necessary to find other ways and means than force ," because "firmness today, in a world where the law of the strongest sometimes tends to prevail, is important," he continued.
Mr. Lescure also confirmed that France had no intention of joining the peace council proposed by Mr. Trump, and that it preferred the United Nations framework for resolving diplomatic disputes. "We consider the United Nations to be the Peace Council ," he explained.
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Following his retreat on Greenland, Donald Trump unveils his "peace council" today in Davos.
At 10:30 a.m. , Donald Trump is scheduled to participate in the signing ceremony of the founding charter of a peace council of his own making, intended to work towards resolving conflicts around the world in competition with the UN ➡️ It was initially designed to oversee the reconstruction of Gaza, but the draft charter provides for a mandate far broader than the sole issue of Palestinian territory.
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In response to Donald Trump's threat of tariffs against any country that opposes the desire to make Greenland an American territory, "there has been a very strong reaction, first from Europe, from France, Germany and a few others, from Canada," noted Mr. Lescure, interviewed on French radio RTL.
"And I think that this firmness began to convince the American president that it was necessary to find other ways and means than force ," because "firmness today, in a world where the law of the strongest sometimes tends to prevail, is important," he continued.
Mr. Lescure also confirmed that France had no intention of joining the peace council proposed by Mr. Trump, and that it preferred the United Nations framework for resolving diplomatic disputes. "We consider the United Nations to be the Peace Council ," he explained.
08:38
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Following his retreat on Greenland, Donald Trump unveils his "peace council" today in Davos.
At 10:30 a.m. , Donald Trump is scheduled to participate in the signing ceremony of the founding charter of a peace council of his own making, intended to work towards resolving conflicts around the world in competition with the UN ➡️ It was initially designed to oversee the reconstruction of Gaza, but the draft charter provides for a mandate far broader than the sole issue of Palestinian territory.
Question from reader Alya: I don't understand. Mark Rutte says at 1:40 that they haven't discussed Greenland. And at 5:30 you publish an article about the proposal for American sovereignty over a military base in Greenland.
Hello Alya,
Yes, it can be confusing. Donald Trump asserted on Wednesday that he and NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte had developed "the framework for a future agreement concerning Greenland ." However, Rutte told Agence France-Presse that there is "still a lot of work to be done" to reach an agreement on the autonomous Danish territory, after having stated on Fox News that the Greenland issue "had not been raised during [his] discussions with the US president." This is what we are discussing in the 1:42 post you mentioned.
On the other hand, the exchange between Mark Rutte and Donald Trump – which preceded the discussion of a possible transfer of sovereignty of the Pituffik military base in northern Greenland entirely to the United States – took place, as we mention in the article you are referring to and in this live broadcast , last Sunday.
You know what it is? It's modelled on the insoluble solution to the Cyprus problem back in the days of enosis and Archbishop Makarios. Cyprus is now Greek, but has two British implants which are British, with consular facilities.
I went into Saigon a couple of days into Tet 68 with a former Marine (then in our Air Force field maintenance shop), to get the last of our guys still not able to get back to the base. His previous experience as a Marine on diplomatic guard duty on Cyprus was very reassuring and useful to me, especially in that trip, and many others throughout Vietnam and Thailand. One of which was varying speed in areas where snipers typically fired at them from hills along the road (too far away for accuracy or for them to try to chase themdown).
Me neither. I am moving myself off of Google slowly but surely. I have started a new Indivisible Abroad group in my city in Germany, and have joined the Indivisible Abroad Economic Resistance Group as well. Here is the IA website. Our group in Bremen is now on the map even though it has existed less than a week. We hope to have a webpage up soon as well.
I don't subscribe to my local newsletter because it requires me to use PayPal. I have been boycotting this Paypal mafias moneymaker for years. Over a decade. My daughter had to go through high school without getting things that only offered Paypal as a source of purchase. What is good about that is that she has learned through me, we also boycotted Starbucks in the US, to give up things.
Now we have cancelled Amazon as well. My husband does not use an iPhone, and is looking to replace the mac he used for work, with a freeware platform. We all have non-US platformed emails as well as Gmails. There is a move in Europe to get off of US platforms. Hard to do because most are so good. Let us hope that it provides incentive for people in Europe to be more creative. A big problem with innovativeness in Europe is that Europeans save, they don't invest. There is a move to get them to be more financially literate and do both.
I still receive the titles and first paragraph of articles since I had a subscription a few years ago. I wanted to resubscribe - but if you have to go through Google, I won't, either.
I can see it through perplexity AI free. Maybe they have a deal to access text in return for teaching their AI. You could try it for future reference, but maybe it would be blocked in Europe. In that case let me know and I will copy and paste.
The only real asset that Greenland has is it's ice sheet which locks up a potential 23 feet of global sea level rise. I doubt that ownership of Greenland is on Putin's wish-list, but the break-up of NATO certainly is.
I agree Linda -- people saluting his statement that he would not use force perhaps forget how often and how quickly he changes his mind and this too can be changed in a heartbeat -- if he actually has a heart.
I don't know why it would give you, as an American (I am assuming) hope. It was a clarion call squarely in the ancient tradition of self-interest, of taking care of oneself when failing systems everyone has relied on for decades begin spiraling wildly out of control. What almost always follows such a time is chaos, neither pretty nor cheap.
Decades ago, an Italian historian during the late 1920s remarked that "the old order is dying; a new one is yet to be born. In the period between, morbid realities assert themselves." Things sometimes do not work out for the best.
A sensible direction for Canada, for sure. He's broadcasting the international system's death certificate in the hopes mid-size powers will now bandwagon together to form their own blocs. It doesn't spell progress or stability, just the opposite, in fact. As far as history and prophecy go, we all know the adage -- history might not repeat exactly, but it does an amazing job of reverberating with the same themes (and often similar outcomes), over and over again, through hundreds of years.
We think this is all great stuff only because we hate Trump so much. None of us has any experience living under a broken international system where there literally are no rules of the game. None of what is transpiring now bodes well for future peace or stability, much less shared prosperity. We're standing at the edge of a precipice and sliding down. Carney is just making it official.
I trust you’re not suggesting that Trump ever had any intention of *shared ‘peace / stability’. He only wishes to be King of the Heap … plus he is right in the midst of his attempt of *breaking the international system … altho mainly just causing TACO chaos. The European response - when push came to shove - was the ‘BAZOOKA’ anti-trade coercion plan that caused Trump to fold like lady’s hankie. 🤣
Excerpt from G & M re: Carney : “To succeed Canadians are being asked by Mr. Carney to do what they have not had much practice doing in recent times. They must name reality, that is live in this world and not a wished-for one. Build what we say we believe in and “reducing the (economic) leverage that enables coercion.”
The Prime Minister has been on a tour de force signing 🔹12 trade and security deals in the last six months and added deals with China and Qatar most recently.
He has in his sights the creation of a new trading block uniting the 🔻Trans-Pacific Partnership and the 🔻European Union, creating a 1.5-billion people strong trading zone.
“This is not naïve multilateralism,” Mr. Carney said. “It is building the coalitions that work, issue by issue, with partners who share enough common ground to act together.”
Business leaders have an existential role to play in securing Canadian sovereignty.” end quote
Canada’s agriculture business is underdeveloped compared to what it could & should be, and that sector is currently very happy with Carney.
The 🍁 auto sector will need to pivot no matter what, because Trump is not budging in that sector at all anyway, and it relys on provincial & federal subsidies to the tune of 20%, so it’s a fool’s errand to keep nannying it along - in its current configuration at least.
— Some of that auto & steel sector can be repurposed into producing military vehicles & arms etc … some of which is in the works now & other has been done before - thus keeping the majority of its current workforce through retraining.
Trump & chumps are expecting their intended prey to be so shocked as to be immobilized & defenceless — not! He & Putin are about to discover that those they consider to be softies can play hardball & smart.
* Just because T & P are mean doesn’t mean they’re tough, or smart.
Exactly. When your political boss says everything is going to be fine, that’s when know it’s time to worry. When he says “I am not a crook” you know he’s a crook. Sometimes you need to hedge your bets. “We’re not waiting around” made it very clear. “If you’re not at the table you’re on the menu” got a big laugh. A bit overstated, but the meaning was clear.
It gives me hope as an American because it may wake up the broligarchs to something that will impact their bottom line negatively. And that, in turn, will get some of them to put the brakes on Trump's alignment with Putin and China.
And that is realism--recognizing the power of the broligarchs to control America
I wrote earlier that everything Trump said screws Americans living in the US, Americans living abroad, Venezuelans and Greenland, not to mention things he did not say, but he is out to get Somalia and Somalians, and Iran is on the table. I don't believe they were invited to his Board of "Peace."
1984 is so prevalent right now.
Three slogans of the party:
WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
Right now we are all struggling to maintain as things are thrown at us right and left.
There is more Trump mischief coming today at Davos as he is apparently going to be signing his "Peace Board" compact with other world leaders on the sidelines. The original version approved by the UN Security Council, in an apparent fit of insanity, gave Trump control over the Gaza settlement. He is now claiming it will cover all conflicts, which members of the administration are saying is "aspirational." He is asking for $1 billion donations to a fund he will control, as the price of membership for those he invites, kind of like the fee for Mar-a-Lago. He has invited Putin to join.
So far, there is no word from the Security Council on curbing Trump's aspirations.
"A senior White House official said on Wednesday about 35 world leaders have so far committed to joining the Board of Peace out of the 50 or so invitations that were sent.
These include Middle East allies such as Israel, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Jordan, Qatar and Egypt. NATO members Turkey and Hungary, whose nationalist leaders have cultivated good personal ties with Trump, have also agreed to take part, as have Morocco, Pakistan, Indonesia, Kosovo, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Paraguay, and Vietnam.
Others which have accepted include Armenia and Azerbaijan, which reached a U.S.-brokered peace agreement last August after meeting Trump at the White House.
More controversially, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, long shunned by the West over his country's poor human rights record and backing for Russia's war in Ukraine, has accepted Trump's invitation, which comes amid a broader rapprochement between Washington and Minsk."
Ooh, how exciting! Surely a Nobel Prize this time! Plus lots and lots of money. He's "invited" Australia, but I don't know how we've replied. Our secretary of state is a shrewd little Chinese-Australian.
At 10:00 a.m., Jack Smith speaks, and the panic beforehand tells the story. This satire tracks the shouting, the threats, and the quiet arrival of evidence. When power melts down, the clock keeps ticking, and democracy listens. Fear is loud. Facts are patient and inevitable.
P.M. Carney gave one of the great speeches of this era. It was masterful - not just his words, but in its grammar, organization, and weaving fact with narrative. Mark Carney wrote that speech. His speech and his intellect are in stark contrast to the Felon.
He’s not just stupid, an ignoramus, but testament to the U.S.’s establishment status quo.
65 years ago John Kennedy, at his inaugural, to the superb contrary testified to that earlier America’s much, much higher standards – aspirations based on how we all might be not only better able to see “others,” but also to give of ourselves to them.
But now we have the pedophile, rapist, fraudster, bully, vulgarian criminal Donald, with his private militias in masks and military gear cruelly attacking fellow Americans, while he unrelentingly insults and attacks our former democratic allies.
And still covers up for the worldwide moneyed who for years raped the underage girls Donald’s pals trafficked.
I am thinking we add murderer to the Trump list of characteristics. Not because has it been implied by Greg Olear that what is hidden in the Epstein Files is Trump participating in a snuff film of a 12 year old Latina. It was even wondered if there were more than one such film. Someone shared this in a Substack chat the other day.
But, people in ICE detention are dying, ICE shot and killed Renee Good and other people. The US cut off USAID and thousands of people have died from starvation. There are the people of Venezuela, and perhaps other countries. All of this is on Trump and his policies. Evil is an attribute we should be giving to him.
Yes. These are prison camps that people are being taken too, and it is illegal to take people who have legal documents to be in the USA, but they are being taken too. No one is safe. Someone in a chat was pointing out that there are a lot of children 5 and under in ICE detention. It is totally inappropriate. I have studied the Nazi regime in Germany and we are making our parallels. I am glad people are rising up. We don't want to say in the end, "I did not know!" or "There was nothing I could do."
Linda, having been to Dachau (and having known an artist who spent time there in the late ‘30’s) I know what you are learning. Having also read Timothy Snyder on the gulags behind the Iron Curtain, I have chosen to call ICE “facilities” gulags. There seems to be no escape until the “organization” is completely reformed.
I think you err, dear Russell John, with your final conjugative: "is horrifying"
Wouldn't we all be better off for the alternative, "is normalized."
Then might we account for the many elite institutions so cravenly prone to cover for the criminality built into their many-other-rationalized but also dehumanized conceits?
I have been several times a week to my Republican (Fascist) Senator and she finally replied when I demanded that she convince her Republican colleagues to impeach Trump, Noem, Hegsbreth, Rubio, Bondi and others within the cabinet.
Her reply was that the House has to do it first. She offered nothing else.
Has any other Republican Senator or Congresscritter responded to your letters?
The answer to your last question is, one senator has not answered my email and the one that has answered pushed the narrative off to Greenland and what a strategic piece of land it is. He is also one of the enablers that you see standing to the side of Trump in oval office photos. His answers are always worthless and why I keep sending emails to him, just to let them know I ain't buying their shit and voicing my opinion.
My nastily pejorative spelling of "RepubliKlan" is a statement of absolute truth; there's not a one in that bloody lot of sociopaths I'd trust even for a New York Minute.
Oil! When will climate change get into the discussion? DT almost got it there by insults in Davos, but BIG Oil will kill us to hold onto its subsidies. What if those subsidies were put into clean energy?
The following industries receive subsidies: agriculture; dairy; farmers; tech; airlines; auto; oil and gas; housing; shipping and maritime; healthcare; pharma; coal; professional sports and renewable energy. The two that benefit the public are housing and renewable energy. Sports, healthcare, all the rest make huge profits while using our tax dollars. I read a long article on the history of subsidies and where we are today by the Cato Institute:
"Corporate Welfare in the Federal Budget
This study tallies corporate welfare in the federal budget and finds that the government spends $181 billion a year on aid to businesses.
Yesterday's calls I made to Congress were to GOP Senators. I reminded them of the role GOP Senators played in the resignation of Nixon, and I asked "WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?!?"
I also reminded them that on nearly EVERY issue, with nearly EVERY demographic, TRUMP IS UNDERWATER. They back him at their own risk of losing their seats.
When I have written to Bill Huizenga I get a canned letter back. When I have called t hey used to be polite. That is all gone. Now when you call they are nasty and confrontational. I think they are being hammered with calls from angry constituents but Bill Huizenga STILL won’t hold a town hall where has to face us!
Murderer, well who will check out Ivana’s death. So many questions. As Greg Olear says “infrequently asked questions…” that need to be asked. Would take Jack Smith many lifetimes…
No one will take this on, but I am always suspicious of a woman falling down the stairs as a means of death or injury. I had a boss who had 3 falls down stairs, and I have met her husband. Also, her daughters never smile. She has a fake life. He has recently become a Chicago Judge, and was the endorsed candidate, but I also worked with a woman who was married to a politician who had done really cool things with children in the projects, but he beat her. So, when I heard that Ivana fell down the stairs, I though at least the children should be suspicious, but they clearly don't want to think like humane beings.
I have wondered why the 3 younger chumps were not suspicious but guess I know the answer. They have been indoctrinated since birth most likely and Ivana was bought off. Still I would bet my booties…
Phil, I loved that you used that word, "vulgarian" ! Lol, it's so apt, yet not enough is it ? I can't recall just now who it was that first used the creation.... You ? No matter. Bravo amigo !
Per conversation of James Coyle and myself - too rich !
James Coyle
James Coyle
13h
I think Professor 'Enry 'Iggins said "Wagnerian" in the musical, but I'm sure 'e'd 'ave used "vulgarian" in the appropriate circumstance. :-)
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D4N
12m
"Et too" James ? Here I go down the rabbit hole searching for origins. Lol !
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James Coyle
James Coyle
6m
I know the feeling. And the rabbit holes become rabbit warrens, from which we emerge hours later. It’s a good thing I’m retired.😁
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D4N
just now
Yes.... I keep dreading the notion of running into Rabbit of Caerbannog, ala Monty Python and "The Holy Grail" !!! horhai would bust a gut at this; I should copy and paste our conversation; Think I will lest it's missed !
Yes.... I keep dreading the notion of running into Rabbit of Caerbannog, ala Monty Python and "The Holy Grail" !!! horhai would bust a gut at this; I should copy and paste our conversation; Think I will lest it's missed !
Hell Janis; I can't recall just now. I'm just sure that neither Phil, nor I invented it. It will bug me for a bit, like an obsession unless one of our 'resident genius's' comes up with it. My 'ethos' if you will is to always give appropriation if I use the words of others; Feels dishonest otherwise... Great 'word' though.
I love that you guys love to live in history, especially fabled history try to catch up it’s January 2026 and Donald Trump is the most influential human human being on planet Earth. And if you keep fighting, it’s gonna get worse for you. Do you like Clinton and Gingrich did come together and help the country come together Donald Trump is just having to deal with the excrement that Joe Biden left in the street by opening the border. Otherwise we would be a rocket ship to Mars instead of just a rocket ship to the moon.
If John Kennedy were alive today, he’d be a middle of the road republican. Just like many Democrats have said I didn’t leave the party. The party left me. You’ve gone left wacko Woko defending the criminal instead of the citizen
>>>Tom Nichols of The Atlantic wrote: “No one can be watching this Davos speech and reach any conclusion but that the President of the United States is mentally disturbed and that something is deeply wrong with him. This is both embarrassing and extremely dangerous.”<<<
Most of the GOP in Congress, (indeed in state legislatures across the country) except for truly ignorant oafs like James Bubba Comer, et al, know this. But liars abound. Still - STILL - they support and cover for this deranged lunatic and sexual predator because being the party in power matters more than even our founding principles and the Constitution. Traitors all.
Your basic premise is sound, but there's an added element taking place -- sheer laziness. 90% of these lazy cowards would be happy to see the problem go away....but by someone else's hand. 'Let somebody else get primaried, doxxed, threatened by goons and lowlifes, I'm not about to put my ass on the line.' (An exception for Senator PittyPat from South Carolina who simply enjoys debasing himself for posterity...)
Indefensible and ironic, considering they created the monster now eating their faces. One more reason to vote everyone of them out.
What you seem to forget, but it’s not memory lapse, you people are so freaking ignorant that you’re blaming a fireman for putting out a fire caused by Joe Biden and you’re blaming Donald Trump for putting it out yikes literally incomprehensible
Yes Republican abdication, timidity, aiding and abetting in this lawlessness, high crimes and misdemeanors, and demented Donold's delusions and other associated psychotic episodes and breakdowns.
Speaker Mike 'little weinie' Johnson is at the top of that list of Trump suck ups, sycophants and liars
Every right-winger in Congress and the Supreme Court are equally responsible for every atrocity by trump and his fascist henchmen nation wide. If they were loyal to our Constitution as they pleged to be, they would have stoped trump with the first fake national emergency he declared and stopped the lose of everything we, as a country have worked and invested in for the last eighty years.
I would hope that at least the people who participate on this site would wake up and realize that we are in much more trouble than just a batshit crazy President.
They all know he’s nuts, even Bubba Comer and the Stupidest Man Ever Elected To The Senate, the eminently forgettable dumbass football coach Thomas “Tommy” Tuberville. They all know, they’re just too cowardly to do anything about it and too stupid to take to heart Liz Cheney’s admonition that they will be remembered in history for their cowardice, complicity and complete dishonor.
True, Michael, it's not that they only support this Nazi behavior because they are blindly and ignorantly loyal to trump.
Read Project 2025, that spells out every right-wingers vision for the United States. They have been very successful at implementing upwards of 50% of it so far. You can see how they will use the sadistic secret police (ICE) to force everybody in the country to comply with their fascist white christian nationalist rule. The circuit court that handles Minnesota, put a stay on the Judges direction not to attack peacefull protesters so ICE will feel free to use ever increasing brutal tactics against US citizens performing their Constitutional rights.
Make no mistake, is a vast right-wing coup and every right-winger is dead set on taking and keep power using any measure needed.
You know every time you use that four letter word Nazi you tell us how ignorant and stupid you are and what a hater you are. I’m guessing that you’re young enough not to know what happened in Nazi Germany in detail, but you should make sure your brain is engaged before you put your mouth and gear and use that word. I would love to see any facts that you might provide us to demonstrate that this administration is treating anybody like Hitler treated the Jews or the weak minded or any other racial group. He burnt them alive. He gassed them to death. He shot them and buried them in pits by the hundreds. I’m sorry I didn’t hear any news about that here in the United States. Maybe you’re privy to some news that none of us are aware of. What an effing ignoramous you are. And probably a Jew hater to boot.
Wait, you’re actually quoting the Atlantic. The Atlantic is drowning in the Atlantic when it comes to factual information change the channel walk outside your home and the bubble that you’re in and see reality for what it is. And by the way, Gavin Newsome just won a major award. He is now been named Realtor of the year in Nevada, Idaho, Texas, Florida, Arizona, and the Carolinas. 1 million former California Residents now live in these states so thank you very much for your hard work Gavin.
And Newsom (not Newsome) has won no such award. He’s not a licensed realtor in California nor any other state. This rumor has been flying around since 2021, a satirical tweet by a Texas state rep ("Texas Realtor of the Year Award goes to California Gov. Gavin Newsom!"). It was a political jab, not a literal award announcement.
You should get outside of YOUR political information silo, and join us normies in the real world. You might learn something factual.
So you’re the one that likes grading ninth grade papers. I guess nobody ever taught you about content over form I voice text everything And AutoCorrect does the rest
Gavin Newsom has so much baggage that Kamala Harris might get more votes than him. The woman whose nickname is cackling. Kneepads couldn’t run a lemonade stand and obviously he can’t run a state.
Oh shit well I guess you don’t understand humor then But 1 million people have left the state in the last two years. Wow, no wonder you’re so gullible. Are you actually that brain dead to think this was true? Yikes
Use/share this spreadsheet (bit.ly/Goodtrouble) as a resource to contact members of Congress, the Cabinet and news organizations. Call. Write. Email. Protest. Unrelentingly. We deserve better ❤️🩹🤍💙
Reach out (beyond your own) to as many in the Senate and House as you can. All of this is bigger than “I only represent my constituents” issues.
YES! 😹 my feet are not safe to move at night. He’s almost 5 months old and is all playful nocturnal kitten.
His stray mama decided to have him and 2 other kittens under our porch. When they all came out early November very scared, we started to feed them and spend time around them hoping we could help them find homes. After about 4 weeks of spending time outside before school and before bed every night, I was able to catch them all. They are all happy with families now ❤️
One of my two cats is purring very loudly and pacing back and forth over my belly… rubbing her cheeks on the edge of my iPad. Guess it’s time to sleep. 😴
My girl usually is across my chest, pinning my left arm which she occasionally frowns at when I have to move it. Her "blood lust" is up now, after a rousing event of chasing the fast mousie across the wood floors. She's on post in the catio instead of snuggling this morning.
We actually have two; one right off the living room that overlooks the back yard and another that was an enclosed garden area (it took quite a bit of work to make it escape proof!). Apollo actually caught a junco that was dumb enough to fly into the fully caged smaller catio off our living room.
Our orange boy is a hand licker. If there's a hand outside the covers, he's licking it. Nothing like rough tongue, cold nose, and drool to wake one up out of a deep sleep.
I have been owned by 3 orange cats in my lifetime. Octavius Augustus Caesar Teakettle Cat (Gus; I was a baby), Copernicus Southpaw Teakettle Cat (Copper; my first orange as a grown up when my wife and I moved to Eugene), and Apollo, Chaser of Bottle Caps (our Covid kitten, along with his sister, Artemis the Brave, a dilute calico torbie).
Love the names! I kept the names the rescue shelter gave them. I think they must still talk about us: when we came, we adopted 4 at once. We brought three crates, so they gave us one. They were so excited!
Ginger is the only one we know much about. She was brought there as a kitten, very poor shape. Bad eye infection, pneumonia, and lost the tip of her tail. She was adopted and returned at age two. Their loss, our gain! She's the one who has started getting arthritis shots a few months ago. They work wonders on her!
I wanted so badly to keep the 4 kitties we rescued…but we already have 2 cats and 2 young kids. Back in November we found out a mama stray and her 3 kittens were living under our porch. After hours and hours outside before school and before bed I was able to get mama cat to let me pet her, ultimately after about 4 weeks I was able to catch them all. My neighbor fostered the 4 while we found them homes. She ended up keeping 2 kittens, we took 1 (the last one I caught who I spent the most time with) and mama went to a sweet home too 💙
Good to know; we had a Scottish Fold rescue cat who had (as is typical for that breed) horrible arthritis. We didn't know it at the time, but had friends who also had a Scottish Fold whose life was cut short when almost all of his joints fused.
In my small herd which I call the "sorority" (all females) I have one who likes to let me share her pillow at night, purring up a storm! The best white noise machine there is in my opinion. However, she sometimes likes to make biscuits ON my head and those claws are SHARP!
Megan, when my three kids were teens, of course NOTHING I did was right. There could be real tension in the house. At times, the only thing we could agree upon and smile about was the antics of the three cats we had at the time. I highly recommend pets for all who can have them, especially if there are kids. However, I don't agree with making the kids be responsible for them. Just my opinion.
I love that you could find that common ground during those tough teen years.
We plan to get a dog when our kids are old enough to help with the responsibility - help more with walks, food, water, outside for the bathroom. Definitely not to give them the sole responsibility. Learning to help take care of a pet I think is a really great set of life skills to learn 💜
I had a friend whose son got a chinchilla. She said the cage was a mess and she'd frequently find the water bottle empty. And he was in his early 20s!!!
Apparently, he never learned anything. (in all honesty, I can say the mom was an enabler)
Thank you Megan, I live in France (US citizen) and after reading more unbelievable news everyday, wondering why he's still in office and why nobody is doing anything and what can I do, I'm glad to have this website!
I also am an American living in France. First off, make sure you are set up to vote in November. Go to https://votefromabroad.org. In addition we have monthly meetings where local Americans discuss experiences in going back to the US for a visit and other such topics. At least these meetings make us aware that we are not alone.
I live in Maryland and have written my Rep, Jamie Raskin, and Senators Chris Van Hollen and Angela Alsobrook… but really… I think this crew knows what to do. It is such a pleasure to vote for these people.
I'm fortunate to have Merkley and Wyden for senators and Val Hoyle for a representative. Hoyle replaced Pete DeFazio when he retired and she's not got the seniority horsepower yet.
I have Padilla (who replaced Harris) and Schiff (who replaced Feinstein) as Senators but am stuck with Kevin Kiley for Representative, whose best quality is that he’s not Tom McClintock.
He came out with news yesterday that your Maryland, now via legislature there, may approve redistricting in time for this November's elections so Maryland may counter the Republican states that have fallen in line with Donald's schemes to corrupt them.
While I personally might not be affected by the atrocities of ICE, I will not be quiet or content with how other people are treated and impacted. It’s not about my comfort. It’s about the comfort of us as humans, as a community. One day maybe you’ll learn to be empathetic and stop trolling.
Megan on the other hand if you simply let ice do what they are supposed to be doing and not putting citizens in harm’s way ice will do the job that they are doing by ridding ourselves of illegals who Biden let in and lied
Tell that to the kids they’re taking and the people who have to carry around papers proving they’re citizens just because the color of their skin. Tell that to the drastically huge increase in people ICE has taken who don’t have a criminal record. Look up US Immigrations and Customs Enforcement’s detention statistics since I can’t put the photo of the graph here. Tell that to the people who are being taken who are following the legal process of becoming citizens while here.
I know I shouldn’t respond to you because you just troll everyone here. Open your eyes and start caring about others.
I'm gonna' guess, from the abrupt change of typical, Megan type discourse that our resident "wanna' be, influencer dingleberry" has made another rude appearance. There are means to 'disappear' the fruit's comments from your view. It's really not worth reading or even spending any consideration energy on. Most of us have caught on to 'it's' game - responses keeps it here, trying to consume space and oxygen.
Yeahhh I need to just ignore him. The rose colored glasses part of me keeps thinking maybe he’ll realize what’s actually happening and not a story he’s being fed
I care about every legal immigrant in this country, every single one.Period. And so does every single Republican every Republican wants immigrants loves immigrants cares about immigrants what they don't care about is anyone with the word ILLEGAL and stop listening to the lying media they're full of shit when they say anything, but that we all like immigrants what we don't like are people who are here illegally get that through your head
You do not have to speak to ICE, answer any questions, or show any documents. If you are asked where you were born, how you entered the United States, or your immigration status, you may refuse to answer or remain silent.
Let me say this again clearly 95% or more of all the illegal immigrants are people of color that don’t wear signs that say I’m illegal are you catching on yet? stop listening to the fables there are going to be errors because in some cases there are people they collect along with people that they are harboring and so they detained them and in try to ensure if in fact they’re legal or they’re not, but nobody carries papers and I hired 4 to 500 foreign workers overtime and they all had green cards
I’m gonna say this very slowly NO BODY space carries papers. Nobody do you carry papers you don’t carry papers. Nobody carries papers. People have ID cards in their wallet like an I-9 card. Or alien registration card or whatever documents they have I don’t know how you can be so gullible to actually think that they’re asking for papers now let me say this though and you need to understand this illegal immigrants do not have a sign on their back that says come arrest me or frisk me because I’m illegal you have no idea and the problem is that 95% of the people that came in are people of color from South America, Central America, Caribbean, Asia, and Africa in the Middle East almost nobody came in from Denmark as an example so unless they have specific knowledge or a direction and an address to a home, they don’t go asking for papers. I don’t know what the hell people are thinking about papers. It’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard of my life. many of these people have deportation orders in fact, final deportation orders, including the 20 they just captured in Minnesota the other day who were child, rapists, sodomizes, female and male sodomizes, strangulation convictions, and three murder murders. How gullible can you people be to think that you need papers? I own 41 business lifetime and everybody had an ID alien registration cards papers are from the 40s, not from the two go ahead and send me factual data on all the people they’re taking
And let me say this, so everybody here hears it this would not have happened if Joe Biden had not opened the border to anybody who wants to come in and even flown some people in and not vetted them and not have them vaccinated and all the getaways over 300,000 getaways that are known, but it’s obviously gonna be a lot more if Biden hadn’t opened the border NONE OF THIS WOULD BE HAPPENING
I heard on the news that Ghislane will be testifying on February 9th, under oath I assume, before an appropriate committee. Mmmmmm… can she take the 5th?
World Economic Forum in Davos seems like it would be the perfect venue to release them. Donold could attempt a powerpoint presentation that would turn into a Rohrshach test from all the redacted blacked out pages where he sees the late great Hannibal Lechter, menacing windmills and whatever other twisted visions, thoughts and gobbledygook he can spout.
Tick tock, well past time to release the damn Epstein files!
As a graduate of Bates College in Lewiston, Maine, I was surprised to hear that this small town has been targeted by ICE as one of its next major operations under the dubious name "Operation Catch of the Day." This must be because of the town's growing refugee population from Somalia (now most of them are naturalized citizens). How are these priorities decided? This seems highly cruel, ineffective, and likely to generate a lot of fear and disruption in the local community. We're paying for this nonsense!
It appears that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) chose and released the phrasing in the official announcement of the enforcement action in Maine. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-MUWsacZqo
Most of us reading this newsletter are old enough to remember — vividly so — the following tidbit from Woodward and Bernstein of ‘All the President’s Men’ — in 1974, after dropping to his knees in front of Henry Kissinger (something Kissinger found profoundly wretched and utterly distasteful), Nixon began weeping. “And then, still sobbing, Nixon leaned over and struck his fist on the carpet, crying, “What have I done? What has happened?”
We found out later that Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and apparently even Alexander Haig himself basically disconnected the nuclear football and kept VERY close control over command, control and communication systems during those last hours as Nixon spiraled into self-pitying delusion and approaching madness.
Going to go out on a limb here to assert that despite what we see, somebody (surely not Pete Kegsbreath) is keeping watch over those C3 systems (at least I hope to God somebody is). History repeats itself. The end is visible, one way or another. Let us keep the pressure on — particularly on that long list of co-dependent, wretched Republican Congresscritters who have bizarrely tied their fate to his. And if it is a part of your tradition, pray — that when they take Fat Rancid Mango away in a straitjacket, we’ll still have a country, an alliance (tho battered, bruised and beaten) and a world more or less still intact.
There will be a great many pieces to pick up afterward. And please spare me some pointless, self-righteous drivel about JD Wanker. The clear and present danger is the one we’re all looking at and talking about. One peril at a time…
“And still, I am incredibly proud of our community for refusing to accept authoritarianism quietly.”
“People here are organizing, protecting one another, and stepping into leadership roles that history will remember. We are not lying down. We are showing what resistance looks like in real time.”
“Black and Indigenous peoples have lived inside a violent police state since the very beginning of this country. This is not new to us. What feels new is that more people across the United States are choosing to side with humanity instead of the Trump agenda.”
JACK is back Today at 10 am Eastern & 7AM Pacific. Meanwhile Senator, RICHARD BLMUENTHAL was interviewed by Jen Psaki last night.
Senator BLUMENTHAL has published a DHS' secret policy memo authorized by top ICE leadership Trump, Noem et al permitting ICE agents to enter homes without a judicial warrant required by the 4th Amendment
This is a major ICE bust: The Whistleblowers' (plural) revelation busts all ICE unlawful break-ins to date.
****
Senator Blumenthal himself has published a separate report the documents the arrest of twenty (20) U.S. Citizens in the ICE unlawful dragnet & terrorism of Minneapolis persons & their families.
The state of Minnesota's prosecutors has all the admissible evidence they needs to prosecute now.
"But then Trump went on to say: “People will soon be prosecuted for what they did. It’s probably breaking news but it should be. It was a rigged election. You can’t have rigged elections.”"
If Trump tells Pam Bondi to arrest / indict Jack Smith and she follows his order, I predict the Democratic Party's leaders will do nothing... but I hope that We the People will SHUT THE COUNTRY DOWN! If Jack Smith becomes a target then that means Trump is moving to criminalize anyone who says anything bad about him.
I hope there is a special place in Hell for James O'Keefe he pulled a similar stunt on an abused woman too scared to not go along with what Hanna Giles was setting her up for with O'Keefe menacingly off camera. We campaigned with the woman's supervisor who told us what the frightened woman went through, alone in the office at the time.
Tom Nichols said it: “the President of the United States is mentally disturbed and … something is deeply wrong with him.” Yet we continue to spend millions and millions of dollars producing tons of extra greenhouse gases to cart this bag of wind all over the world to put his incompetence on full display and embarrass the country. How long is this going to continue?
In a dictatorship, you have no rights, other than those that the state chooses to allow you to have, and that the state can withdraw at any time, with no reason. No right to privacy, no right to property, no right to speech, no right to protest, no right to citizenship, no right to life. No rights at all.
Portland, OR; Minnesota; and now Maine are experiencing ICE surges despite being some on the 'whitest' places I have ever visited. I know there are immigrants everywhere but if you wanted to have the biggest bang for the buck, wouldn't you focus your surges on states like FL and TX that literally have *millions* of undocumented immigrants? Hmmm. Almost like it's all about politics and not about enforcing immigration law.
So noted, Dana. It seems that the issue of undocumented immigrants is not an issue in states that voted for the current regime which (by geography) are entry points for any number of not whyte people fleeing countries in search of a better life. But by all means, fly in the poor, downtrodden whyte South Africans.
Back in the Obama administration the first ICE action I saw was pretty tame with just one agent I could see, who picked up a down and out looking landscape laborer near the college I worked at.
Now there is a curious way to look at the figures that my conservative friends use as an excuse to justify trying to exceed the numbers and percentages Obama is credited with or blamed for by my liberal friends. Obama removed nearly 3 million in 8 years, up to near 4% of all the estimated illegal population according to a Cato Institute chart. Though I don't look at the data the same way Cato does, I do find they do a better job than many in collecting the data, this from https://www.cato.org/blog/deportation-rates-historical-perspective.
To me, the INS predecessor (before ICE), deported what I believe were the worst of the worst which were around 1% of the estimated total illegals from 1990 to 1996 but ramped up to nearly 3% during the start of Clinton's second term. Then it tapered off to about 2% by the end of his term. I wonder if they got most of the worst deported early so there was a lower percentage at the end.
The percentage dropped at the start of the GWB years to less than 2%, but rose through 2.5% after 9/11 and the creation of DHS and ICE, rising gradually but with a slight negative dip before pretty continuous increases through the end of GWB and continuing to the all time high around 3.5% or more before steep drops after the second term started, and nothing but decreases after Trump took office.
I suspect someone was more responsibly deporting the worst of the worst, and the more recent one is trying to deport anything non-White Christian (for now) anyway.
In 1933, the Dachua concentration camp started with 4 unusual deaths being investigated nearly 9 years before the Final Solution (kill all Jews anywhere they were found), was formally enacted. I believe 2/3rds of all the Jews in Germany were killed and 6 million of the 11 million I'm assuming were still in Europe.
How far are we going to let our secretive camps no congress people can check on go before we start to look at them as our 1933 Dachuas?
I am EXTREMELY PLEASED that the Fourth Ammendment has finally made an appearance here. ICE has been violating it SYSTEMATICALLY FROM THE OUTSET, but "legacy media" has apparently failed to notice this FUNDAMENTAL point.
Senator Gallego says he won't vote to give ICE any more taxpayer money, but it's FAR too late for such laudable sentiments. A HUGE increase in funding for ICE is ALREADY in the budget for 2026. Elon Musk's chainsaw attack on the so-called "deep state" apparently resulted in 300,000 lost Federal jobs, by some estimates, but the net loss in the size of the Federal government was ZERO, because ICE was beefed up to about the same extent. Which should be enough to make clear just how serious T. and his people are/were when they claimed to be ending "waste, fraud and abuse" in the Federal government.
When they have convinced themselves of the delusion that “god” is on their side there is no reasoning with them. Mike Johnson and too many in the Republican Party have bought into the lie that they are agents of some “god” who allows them to murder people “ in a good cause”. The entire Republican Party is insane.
Thank you Professor Richardson.
Amid the horrors here and abroad, there was one event at Davos that gave me some hope - Mark Carney’s sober prescription for moving forward - defining a rational path through the current age of Hegemons.
Watch this:
Mark Carney's full speech at the World Economic Forum
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btqHDhO4h10
Mark Carney’s speech was incredible and timely and reverberated around the world. So many people in my life are talking about it.
Powerful, accurate, and professional, yet discomforting (except for an example) as a needed admonishment of the US.
The most profound discomfort in Mark Carney's speech is its tacit acknowledgement the ChristoNazis have won, that our Republic is dead and so thoroughly conquered and subjugated it can never be restored. I listened to his speech three times, also read its text, always hoping to discover a less terminal analysis, but the conclusion I summarize above is everywhere apparent. Nevertheless, let us not succumb to despair, the bright spot in Mark Carney's speech is that it provides rallying-points in Canada, Europe, Asia and potentially in Africa for the preservation of the very humanitarian civilization the eternally failed United States -- that is, the ChristoNazis' "Unified Reich" -- will do everything in its considerable power to destroy. Which is of course why Trump wants Greenland: as a base from which to launch one prong of a two-front Putin-Trump invasion of Europe, and/or to launch a third prong of a three-front invasion of Canada. Let us hope the German General Staff and its French, British and Canadian counterparts have the brilliance of their most successful forebears and are preparing accordingly.
"The most profound discomfort in Mark Carney's speech is its tacit acknowledgement the ChristoNazis have won, that our Republic is dead and so thoroughly conquered and subjugated it can never be restored."
Take heart. We can restore our democratic republic. Carney quoted Vaclav Havel on how the participation of ordinary people sustained the Communist system and the potential for the people of every nation to resist and to take power through non-violent acts of non-compliance. Through the Havel story, Carney implicitly spoke of Americans' complicity in and our potential for non-violent non-compliance with the Trump regime. I'd say, in the streets - and at the ballot box, by uniting behind Democratic candidates and by advocating for your state to protect free and fair elections. (See Marc Elias' Democracy Docket for continually updated information on voter issues Democracy Docket
.https://www.democracydocket.com/.)
"In 1978, the Czech dissident Václav Havel, later president, wrote an essay called The Power of the Powerless, and in it, he asked a simple question: how did the communist system sustain itself?
And his answer began with a greengrocer.
Every morning, this shopkeeper places a sign in his window: ‘Workers of the world unite’. He doesn't believe it, no-one does, but he places a sign anyway to avoid trouble, to signal compliance, to get along. And because every shopkeeper on every street does the same, the system persist – not through violence alone, but through the participation of ordinary people in rituals they privately know to be false.
Havel called this “living within a lie”.
The system's power comes not from its truth, but from everyone's willingness to perform as if it were true, and its fragility comes from the same source. When even one person stops performing, when the greengrocer removes his sign, the illusion begins to crack. Friends, it is time for companies and countries to take their signs down."
.https://www.weforum.org/stories/2026/01/davos-2026-special-address-by-mark-carney-prime-minister-of-canada/.
lin*
I've posted this story before, but for the new folks here, let me tell the story of a road trip in Sept of 2016.
We took a wonderful loop from Chicago, to Springfield, Memphis, Asheville, up the Blue Ridge, through Gettysburg, to Indianapolis, then back home. Much of the time was spent on Lincoln--seeing the exceptional Lincoln Museum, and two days touring Gettysburg.
On the way home, we needed to stop to get gas in Pennsylvania. We pulled off the road and had to go a bit into a smallish town. I felt like we stepped into the Twilight Zone. I am 100% serious. EVERY. SINGLE. HOME and business--with the exception of perhaps 2-3 buildings out of HUNDREDS--every one displayed a Trump sign! Some lawns had near small billboards on their lawns.
I said to my husband--OMG this is creepy! I wondered who had the courage to NOT put up a sign. And this is when I started to worry that he'd win.
Did every single person in that town feel that way? Or was it easier to go along?
I wonder how much business the town might have lost? We were going to stop for lunch, but I couldn't get back on that highway fast enough!
That is the trouble. I don't know whether a distance of several thousand miles from the USA lends clarity but it seems to quite a lot of us Brits that the problem is not Trump: it is the fact that despite all his rapidly increasing deficiencies and declining mental state, a significant proportion of the people of the USA still support him (including some of my American cousins, who I thought would know better). If Trump shuffles off the stage he will simply be replaced by Trump #2, then #3 and so on until what remains of civilisation is destroyed. I do hope I am wrong.
Yes, in the area in Pa. right over the Rt 80 border from NJ: many Trump signs. You gotta wonder what is wrong with these people??
In the Spring and Summer of 2016, through my local Democratic committee, I made thousands of phone calls to registered voters throughout Maine - across party affiliations. I was struck by how ardent Trump supporters were and how almost the best Hillary could do was to get people to hold their nose and vote Democratic, despite her (myself included.) In August, I called into radio shows and wrote to pundits saying "Please do not under estimate support for Trump. If the best you can do is make fun of him, then he will laugh his way into the White House." Basically the response was "Don't worry your little head over it. He can't win." By late October they were saying "This is what Democrats are saying behind the scenes." Too late.
When I returned to PA from years living overseas my sister reminded me that parts of PA were the bible belt. Even philadelphia isn't all that liberal.
I'm quite familiar with Havel -- enough to know his analysis is of no more relevance to the deliberately failed United States (now the ChristoNazis' "Unified Reich"), than the White Rose Society was relevant to what brought down Nazi Germany. Bear in mind three facts: firstly, the ChristoNazi conquest and its results -- the deliberate nullification of our Constitution, the deliberate reduction of our Republic to a Failed Nation and its deliberate replacement by the murderous horrors of the "Unified Reich" is the conscious, malice-of-forethought preference of the majority of the voters; secondly, the "Democratic" (sic) Party in which you so naively invest so much hope has been, since 22 November 1963, little more than the Fifth Column of the "Republican" (sic) ChristoNazi/Neoconfederate Party; thirdly, the election in which you unwittingly invest such hope will most likely never be allowed. (For documentation of points 2 and 3, see https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/the-last-election?r=5gckz&triedRedirect=true ) Lastly, the one analogy that (accurately) describes our (true) circumstances is "The Last Article," here: https://ia601501.us.archive.org/19/items/last-article-harry-turtledove/Last%20Article%20Harry%20Turtledove.pdf Read it if you dare.
If you think that about the Democrats, do you honestly believe that if Harris had won in 2024, we would be seeing the horrors that Trump and MAGA have visited on the country? ICE and economic devastation and foreign policy chaos etc etc etc? I don't think that myself.
Maybe the Dems are not as keen on deep economic reform as you would like. Some are, some aren't - but they respect constitutional laws and political norms.
You make a strong case, but I think there is a spark left in Dems, wish it would spontaneously combust
I hope the population of the US has learned an invaluable lesion about voting but also to not push the derisively called woke issues toward the midterms. Will this happen? I doubt we have learned because the democrats will find a way to stumble over their own feet as they usually do. They will listen to and be inclusive of the distant left issues like trans girls on woman’s sports teams and they will lose 20% of the vote. I know I’ll get push back on this but this is a fact. I’m really supportive of anyone wanting to be any thing they want. But I don’t want to lose the fricken election over it and this is what the MAGAs will use to weaken us. It will happen regardless if anyone wants to deny it.
Ah, playing the Democrats card! Surprised you didn’t use the maga favorite “Joe Biden did it”! Line!
A couple of days ago, I read Letter from a Birmingham Jail (https://www.csuchico.edu/iege/_assets/documents/susi-letter-from-birmingham-jail.pdf). I recommend it for those seeking inspiration in the face of the nation we are in danger of becoming, but have not yet become.
Carney's references to Havel were timely, brilliant and relevant.
* "Living within a lie": Carney invoked Havel’s concept of "living within a lie" to describe how nations and businesses were propping up a failing "rules-based international order".
* The Greengrocer Metaphor: Carney used Havel's story of the greengrocer who places a sign in his window ("Workers of the world, unite!") not because he believes it, but to comply with the system.
* Call to Action: Carney argued it is time to "take their signs down" and stop pretending the old international system is still working.
* Additional Quote: Another source indicates Carney also referenced the Havel quote: "It is not enough to stare up the steps, we must step up the stairs".
It was not a speech of doom but a speech of current political reality as well as a path for change. It promotes multinational spheres versus one or two super power total dominance. For me, it outlines a beginning not an end.
1978?
This is 2026. The ordinary people are being murdered by our government. Soon we will have martial law.
It will either be other nations ganging up to stop us or it will be war and destruction like what happened to Japan and Germany. They got stopped.
Profound lin. Thank you for sharing ~
Those are much more well said, strings that have been resonating within me for too long. The trick will be 'playing just those strings' for long enough / repeatedly enough with firm confidence, till 'more' hear the tunes and sing them also. Time: Not unlike the determination and repetition the extremists have used for so many decades now; Constant, unwavering, repetitive; With the massive difference that we and the other 'strings or chords' rhyme from actual facts in history, evidence, law, precedence.
The central point Carney tried to make is that the Rules Based Order put in place 80 years ago replaced a system where large nations used physical force to forward their interests with one that has evolved into one where rich nations use economic force to meet the same ends. He also pointed out that while this system had lifted billions out of poverty, it was still flawed and could not go on forever.
His unfortunate use of the term "variable geometry" seems to have muddied the central, most hopeful idea: telling the truth about the real condition of world economic relations, they are a a staggeringly complex web of ad-hoc trade alliances in which no nation or group of nations could gain true ascendancy because of the very dynamism of the trade on which they all depend.
The ChristoNazis have hastened the demise of an increasingly unfair system they did not create and are not prepared to take over, they have not won. The world can't turn into a bunch of fortress-silos as per the Trump/Putin vision, not with what Carney calls the "middle powers" running rings around them economically and strategically.
The next few years will be very difficult. Much less so if we in the US can restore our democracy and clean up our economically coercive practices.
Lest there be any misunderstanding, I am wholeheartedly supportive of what Carney is proposing because, above all else, it guarantees the preservation of some semblance of humanitarian civilization. Yes,. I also recognize that it means the radical diminishing of the increasingly deluded, increasingly illiterate, increasingly diseased Failed-Nation wasteland that is the gleefully ChristoNazified former United States. But I see that plunge to permanent Third-World wretchedness as just karma for this nation's greed-motivated poisoning of our Mother Earth and all her children. Besides, I'm terminally ill, do not expect to see another Christmas and doubt I will see another Fourth of July. I am also a near-lifelong humanitarian activist, which means that even were I youthful and healthy, I'd eventually be murdered by the MAGAstapo.
I hear you Loren, and I cannot share your despair.
I hope you will see we have not given up, from wherever you may be.
Don’t accept the omnipotence of evil. The harm that has been done can be repaired and the nation can go forward, better than ever. It won’t be easy, and it will take much time and a great deal of work, but it is not impossible.
One of the most important lessons of World War II is that pacifism -- which has been at least minimally effective against every other ideology on this planet -- is not only utterly useless but genuinely suicidal against Nazism. Thus the attempt to oust the ChristoNazis by nonviolent means is doomed before it starts. And the resistant citizenry -- We the (fully human) People -- lack the training, the courage, the psychological commitment essential for disciplined solidarity and the leadership to mobilize anything like the French Resistance or the Yugoslav and Soviet Partizanskaya. (Thus we see manifest the true reason the draft was ended; the ruling class -- even then looking ahead to the Nazification of the nation -- recognized that compulsory military service was training the revolution. Ditto for forcible disarmament: an unarmed population is a defenseless population; note that on the third day of the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, the government opened the arsenals and armed the entire adult population. Very soon, firearms ownership in the former US will be limited to certified ChristoNazis, and the anti-gunowner infrastructure put in place by the Democrats will fulfill its clandestine purpose of disarming everyone else. (Historical note: the Nazification of the nation is a bi-partisan, multi-generation project that's been underway since 1933; see https://explorethearchive.com/business-plot also https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jan/11/trump-fdr-roosevelt-coup-attempt-1930s and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot Lastly, consider these facts in the contest of the U.S. adoption of legions of Nazi war criminals as advisors and comrades-at-arms, which started not after VE Day in 1945, but in 1944, shortly after the Red Army's victory at Stalingrad made it clear the Nazis would lose the war.)
What total nonsense. Ghandi, King, both pacifists.
The encirclement of the German 6th Army [ part of Operation Blau 1942] commenced by the Soviet Red Army on 19 Nov. and planned by General Zhukov and his staff. It was a large pincer type operation from north and south of the city. The two pincers linked up on Nov.23, 1942. Reduction of the pocket proceeded from that date.It was not at all clear in the winter of 1942 that Germany had lost the war by either the Allied powers nor the OKW leadership.
Loren, I appreciate your passion and acknowledge your despair. I feel much the same as you. Most of what you have written today can't be disputed, but ...
The United States is not dead. Rather, it is forever changed. That change is and will be reflected in our position in the world order. We are no longer – and probably never will be – first.
The White House stands as a perfect symbol of what has happened to the U.S. Donald demolished the East Wing and the structure is now smaller and less imposing than it was a year ago. It is less than it was, but it still stands. If Donald remains in office, I expect him to demolish the West Wing, thinking he needs something larger and more golden. If he does it, the symbolism will be stronger. The White House will still be there, only smaller and less imposing.
Implied in Mark Carney's brilliant address is that we Usonians* are now challenged to adjust to the reality that we are no longer first, and that isn't necessarily a tragedy. Being first carries with it heavy burdens, financial and moral. Maybe "just being one of the guys (or gals)" isn't such a bad thing. Maybe we will individually and collectively learn about humility and empathy, lessons we sorely need.
One thing evangelicals have taught me about christonazis is this: they can't get along. You know why there are so many Baptist churches across the United States? Because inevitably, some decision made by someone on the church board pisses off a handful of members; they leave and start their own church. In fact, with a handful of exceptions, every Baptist church in the U.S. exists because a handful of people got pissed off and started their own church. Membership grows at first, then it shrinks because the churches run on spite, which is not a sustainable model. We are already seeing these schisms in MAGA.
When the christonazis are comfortable and in charge, they will disintegrate.
Thinking, reasonable people should be ready to step into the breach. Is it the Democratic Party? Maybe. Maybe not. The party reminds me of a forsythia bush. It has become old, woody, misshapen and doesn't bloom much. An old forsythia can be restored by pruning all the old branches down to the ground during the winter, so only stubs sticking out of the soil remain. To the novice gardener, this drastic pruning is kinda scary, like maybe the plant will die. But in the early spring, vital new shoots leap from the ground and create a fountain of blazing yellow. The Democratic Party needs to be pruned hard, creating space for "new shoots" to spring up and make our landscape beautiful again.
*One of my heroes, preeminent architect Frank Lloyd Wright objected to U.S. residents being called "Americans." He argued that citizens of Canada, Mexico and all the nations in North, Central and South America are Americans. He coined a new term for U.S. residents: Usonians. He even designed a class of residences he called Usonian. I wish his term had caught on.
Thank you, Dale, for this well written post. You state the reality without dragging us down to the depths of the underworld, known as despair!
Dale, I gave you a "like" for your use of "Usonian." My preferance is "USian," which I used for several years in my blogs, "Outside Agitator's Notebook" and the now terminated, archives-destroyed "Dispatches from Dystopia," forever slain by the post-November-2024 death of its server, TypePad. My rational for "USian" was identical to Frank Lloyd Wright's, but I was dissuaded from using it by a number of readers who damned it as "arrogant." Now I shall go back to using it, as I think it is extremely important to distinguish between the fully ChristoNazified Malevolently Moronic Majority of USians and the legitimate peoples of the remainder of the Americas. Second thought, I'll update it to FUSians -- residents of the Failed United States. But I do not believe the nation can be saved; like Nazi Germany and Tojo's Japan, I believe it can only be liberated by conquest -- which means a war that will no doubt be the end of our species and the reduction of our Mother Earth to permanent Precambrian lifelessness. Relevant footnote: my oldest half-brother, a twice-Pulitzer-nominee journalist and a founding official of the EPA purged by Ronnie the Nazi in 1981, said as he was dying he believed the 2016 election of Trump was the literal beginning of the end of the world. Now I believe he spoke true prophecy.
Thank you for this sad but resolute post, Loren. We can only imagine the dismay of our allies’ leaders today, realizing that Trump has truly gone around the bend and over the cliff. My grandfather was born in New Brunswick, so we can actually claim Canadian citizenship because our ancestors were loyal to the king during the Revolution and went to Canada. This has never been a point of pride for me but is becoming so, sadly. Interesting that history is repeating itself, in a way, loyal Americans moving to Canada.
Very similar to my family history, here from about 1636 until 1788, deported as Loyalists. (A bit infamous, as Mary Blisse, a direct ancestor, beat a witchcraft rap in Boston c. 1675.) My paternal grandparents, both British subjects, moved here from Canada in 1901; my grandfather, Amos Read Bliss, was one of the founders of the automobile industry. Were I not terminally ill, I'd have already fled back to British territory, preferably Scotland -- genetically we're about 80 percent Celt -- but Canada would surely do. l
I love to hear that Mary Blisse beat a witchcraft rap. I thought once someone pointed the finger they were as good as dead. So interesting to look at one’s ancestors and imagine how their lives were. Makes us look pretty soft! I am intrigued to know that you are living so boldly with your terminal diagnosis! I often wonder how I will react when the day comes. You are demonstrating the way I would like to go. May your pain be bearable today! May you be able to sleep tonight. Please continue to give us the benefit of your thinking and long life.
Hm... that sounds a lot like anticipatory obedience, no?
The US "republic" isn't dead. "Republic" means: the head of state is appointed through elections, not hereditary rules. Even the worst possible GOP neofascist out there doesn't want to replace the republic with a monarchy. What they want is to replace the US Constitution and its democratic principles of government with a neofascist one - the same way Hitler did, namely by simply ignoring the Constitution and subordinating Congress and the courts to the executive branch.
THAT started already. But it merely STARTED. History shows that it takes about a decade to complete such a transformation, so NOW is the time to fight back rather than imagine that it's a done job already!
As to Carney: what he observed is correct, namely that the post WWII Atlantic order HAS been destroyed already by the neofascist GOP. As soon as a NATO member THREATENS to invade another NATO member, NATO de facto no longer functions as it should.
Typing Class 101: Now is the time to come to the aid of our brothers.
Repeat, repeat, repeat …
Thanks for the reminder, EUWDTB.
Our “civil war” moment! Our ancestors rose ro the fore then and we will restore OUR Democratic Republic again!
Trump is TCKA: a Totally Controlled Kremlin Asset. I can't say what he thinks. Or if he thinks. But it now must be clear to anyone with eyes, ears, & a functioning brain that he is now, and has been, enacting Putin's agenda since at least around 2010-12. Probably much longer.
The old detective adage goes, 'In trying to identify suspects, consider first 'who has a good motive to do the act?' So with that in mind, what if the act is to diminish, wound, even destroy America & the Western alliance? The #1 suspect, by his openly professed geopolitical aims and personal ambition for revenge, has the English initials VP. Trump IS treason. ##
More evidence for your conclusion (which I share):
https://phillipspobrien.substack.com/p/people-are-still-not-getting-trump?publication_id=1176440&post_id=185150023&isFreemail=true&r=cb67r&triedRedirect=true
(sorry dreamhawk; compu-idiot that I am -- oh how I despise computers -- I posted a non-operational link.)
And, to a certain degree, embarrassing. That's because it is not within the capabilities of the US President to match Carney's thoughts and speech.
It is nice to hear world leaders and our neighbor speak plainly about what is going on. It is hard to remain even a tad optimistic, but we must never give up.
Did Trump refer himself as an “Oh daddy?” Oh really. I can’t go further with this train of thought because it would quickly degenerate. Better he practice incest in his own degeneracy line within his family.
That may be what he's just said, but his mind is failing. It was, as I recall, Mark Rutte (English not his native language) who called him "Daddy" in a way intended to be jokey/friendly/flattering. We all shuddered, but it would seem that Rutte read him correctly, thus endearing himself to him.
It was a stupid misstep by Rutte, one that he's compounded by his conversation yesterday with Trump after which Trump was able to claim that he had agreed with Rutte the framework of a deal for the US to take control of Greenland. European leaders need to wake up and smell the coffee - Trump is not giving this up. It was a relief to see Starmer finally deciding not to have anything to do with Trump's ridiculous Board of Peace, which professor Stefan Wolff, university of Birmingham, has called a "privatised UN with one shareholder: the US president."
Rutte, when asked about this supposed "framework of a deal" (didn't we hear the same language in 2024 about the ACA during one of the appalling debates?) said it never happened and that they didn't discuss Greenland (or Iceland) at all. I agree: everyone's decision to flatter the naked emperor and dump golden prezzies before him was truly idiotic. I hope they have changed their position, especially in the wake of Carney's striking speech, to one that is based on reality rather than the fantasy that indulging the toddler in his tantrums will effect a change.
I wish Rutte would publicly and emphatically say there was never any such conversation and he has no idea why Trump is saying there was; it must be to save face.
The EU needs to immediately act to remove Rutte. Another Chamberlain is NOT what the world needs at this critical moment.
"Board of Peace".., GMAFB! This belongs in Mad Magazine along with other quotes fromAlfred E Newman. What??? Me Worry? Alfred just won the "Piece" prize: The POS Prize. Take it awayyyy.
What happened to the creators of Mad? I read it religiously.
Starmer showed evidence of having a spine? That's newsworthy.
or as Sarah Longwell said "The Evil UN"
And the fee?
Nice one, Prof. Wolff.
It is telling that Trump remembered Rutte saying “daddy” but remembered, apparently, not much else.
I hope that Rutte's peers have given Rutte an earful about his foolish efforts to flatter Trump. Rutte made a major mistake.
Yeah Anne- we're in "deep" now. Welcome to the 'deep state'..,, morality lost.
I think the incest angle is what’s in the Epstein files/videos/photos. He’s expressed sexual interest in his eldest daughter on several occasions, and there are photos with them together in somewhat sickening poses. I have no proof other than a sudden realization that this may be the case. For everyone’s sake, I hope I’m wrong.
a tape of Don and Ivanka? Hmmmm, I don't know but I do think he had Ivana murdered.
Jane, see my reply to Derek directly above yours.
This might answer your question.
📢📢WARNING GRAFIC CONTENT!📢📢
https://gregolear.substack.com/p/infrequently-asked-questions-about-519
I've posted the above link for about a week now. It is a LONG read, but anyone who is able (that is, not triggered by sexual abuse of children) absolutely MUST read this to know what Olear alleges TRUMP did. This article answered my worst fears of what could be so bad that Trump would go to these lengths to hide it.
on another podcast someone said trump loves to be called Daddy and I instantly got that heart missing a beat, adrenaline rush of dread and deep disgust.
Who says he hasn't already done that. He publicly said his 10yo daughter was more sexually attractive than his wife (not sure which one)
Montana, daughters or wife?
Thank you for posting that.
Albert, my Arkansas relatives always said "That tree ain't got no forks!"
Trump is making Canada great (like never before).
Whereas most of the magnificen 7 stocks were down in the 4th quarter, Canada was up 5.95%.
I don't have a lot to invest, but I do have a little in a ROTH IRA I decided to put into dividend funds to provide a little boost to my monthly income. I turned away from US funds and found some really good Canadian dividend funds that were based not in technology or AI, which don't feel real stable right now, but basic things like railroads, Canadian real estate and finance. I was excited to put my small savings there and invest in that decent country until I read that Canada imposes a 15% tax on all investments outside the country. Rats. Wish I'd moved there when I was a younger gay woman and Canada felt so much more welcoming than my own country.
Carney’s speech was an adults response to the actions of a madman and his stupid and greedy handlers. These evil men (and women) have destroyed the US as a world leader. We can get rid of Trump and his henchmen but the damage is done,and it was done by the stupid voters who knowingly voted for a convicted felon and a lifelong greedy lying fraud. The world does not trust us, and with good cause. We are now isolated from the family of Nations, and this is an injury that will not be cured by simply voting for a sane and competent government to begin to undo the damage that these people have done. The world does not trust the American population to act like adults in their political choices. They lived through two terms of GWB with patience. He was stupid but he was not evil. This current bunch can only be described as the worst of humanity…..greedy, corrupt and yes, truly evil.
America is NOT going to fix itself. It's up to the rest of the world: the EU, Canada, China, even Russia...BRICS countries.
And, it's not just Trump. The problems with the USA are far deeper than one crazy person.
CIA, War machine, guns, AIPAC, SCOTUS, corporate greed, disgusting billionaires.
And one more additional requirement for President of the United States. That no convicted felon can seek this office.
That should’ve been a given!
Agreed. A morality test; a lie detector test; a thorough psychiatric exam; and a complete background check - even traffic violations or overdue parking tickets.....
Who gets to decide what morality is? Remember, we're escaping Christo based ism. Is it a religious test? Is it an ethics test? Is it a strength test?
Ally, I agreed with the spirit of Stephanie's suggestions, but was going to jump in and question the morality test. You beat me to it, as usual.
I think Margaux’s requirement above is simple and to the point, and doesn’t go down the relativistic rabbit hole of what constitutes “morality.”
Add to that undeniable proof that the candidate can pass a civics test.
This is so important, but what jumped to my mind is the current DOJ indicting politicians and running them through a kangaroo court for conviction. Once the Republicans gave up acting in good faith (a long time ago) it became only a matter of time.
I agree, I said this just yesterday on another podcast I listened to.
And that voting in the United States is a requirement BY LAW for all citizens therein. Incremental fines levied for having not participated.
It works well in Australia. 90% Federal voting participation. It's not about the potential punishment ($25). It's about setting an obligation, a standard of social behavior - a legal/moral requirement.
Exactly!
Only if we start to educate people - their civic duties. We have enough unsmart voters as it is.
We get DEEP in the weeds here, Marj. First, bring back, and make into law, the Fairness Doctrine. Second, major, MAJOR punishment for ANY media outlet disseminating provable falsehoods. From there, bringing our public schools back to the standards needed. Suffice to say, we have a LOT of work ahead of us!
Well done Albert. Your formula matches my own. We need a new Age of Reform-on an unprecedented scale - or we’re accepting relegation to serfdom under a reigning King.
A suggestion: I had to bypass your comment because the presentation is too dense for me to read comfortably. Please use paragraphs.
Presentation matters
Thank you, Albert--for all your informed posts, and also for the generous way you responded to MLM. I, too, sometimes have difficulty reading comments that are formatted that way.
I've seen squabbles break out on here over the slightest things! We are all worn out and on edge.
Jill Lepore wrote a compelling article in The Atlantic titled Amend It.
It's worth the read.
But please amend with care. Get the bums out first and take a deep breath.
Bravo.
Love this, Albert!! I agree about the paragraphs; I understand writing styles and missions have different focus, but wowza!
(When my wife was in grad school and I was a street cop, she would struggle with writing some papers. I'd ask "what do you want to say", listen to it, and then, in true cop fashion, would write three or four sentences, paraphrasing what she said. She'd splice them together, edit the language, and she was off and running.)
Wow.
I think the founders would like this train of thought. I'm not sure about the specific divisions, but the idea of breaking it up a bit and having some significant qualifications is spot on. That would seem to be what the founders had in mind with the original concepts for both the Senate and the method for choosing electors, with the notion that people with experience in their respective state legislatures would exercise this kind of judgement about the relative qualifications of those that were put forward as potential senators, the president and VP.
We definitely need to reform our Federal Government. And we can and must insist that the cap on the number of Congress members be removed. 435 members is grossly inadequate to represent a country of 330 million Americans. And the Supreme Court Justices must expand to 13. Both of these measures can be accomplished immediately, without a Constitutional Amendment. We can go from there to a careful, very careful update of our Constitution, beginning with abolishing the Electoral College and increasing Congressional terms to four years.
I like your ideas, except that we already have so many UNIFORMED VOTERS. I can see them elect reality stars for any of these offices.
Mr. Killackey, I appreciate your thoughtfulness about changes that need to be made in this democratic republic of ours. It makes a lot of sense to me. However true thinking people need to be involved in this process. Right now I am not aware of more than a handful of thinking republicans- those willing to stand against this regime. As I witness the heinous lawless actions by thugs dressed in paramilitary gear in my home in Minneapolis and the fear it is instilling into our citizens, legal or illegal, I am worried and scared about what will happen during the midterm elections. The news is thick with the right wing claiming it has legal rights to, basically, break into anyone's home. Our economy is being directly harmed by this untrained fascist militia. What will happen in blue cities come election time?
While I think your deep thought about what changes need to be made once humanity returns to the country, we still need to get there first. Mr. Bliss seems to be advocating blood shed will be the only way to make this happen. I believe the basic fiber of democrats is to NOT use blood shed to achieve our goals. My hope, possibly naively, is that we can figure out a way to get everyone to the poles in a safe manner. None of my guns were ever designed to kill people.
Albert, I am for much of what you propose. However, for any of those things to happen, we need to win back a majority in congress and make it veto-proof. Moreover, some of them require constitutional amendment which means we need a supermajority of states to ratify them. That’s a long winded way of saying that elections matter, everywhere. There should be not a single uncontested GOP seat in these midterms. And we who care about elections need to not just volunteer at the phone banks, write postcards, leave door hangers, etc. All those things are important but so is election protection. Free and fair elections will be under assault everywhere and we need to fight those efforts tooth and nail. Don’t just stand outside your polling place; be an observer inside it. Or be a paid pollworker because capturing those jobs is one the things Republicans do to tip the scales in their favor. We need to be confrontational in the face of adversity. We are not going to take it: not here, not there, not anywhere.
Mark Carney’s speech was perfect. Not because he was diplomatic or conciliatory, but because he refused to appease the bully. He spoke truth to power clearly: the world is building what comes next, with or without America.
This is exactly what I mapped in World Ahead 2026: Part 3. While the bully rambled about “daddy” and threatened prosecution for the 2020 election, allies were drawing the line. When he backed down on tariffs and claimed a “framework deal” on Greenland (which, as Filipkowski noted, is just surrendering back to the original agreement), it proved the strategy works.
The bully confused Greenland with Iceland at Davos. The president of the United States, threatening to annex territory, can’t keep straight which country he’s targeting. And Carney, Macron, and other leaders watched this mental deterioration while calmly explaining they’re building European defense independence, activating economic countermeasures, and decoupling from American reliability.
The domestic brutality you’re tracking (secret ICE memos, Fourth Amendment shredding, detaining children) and the international realignment happening at Davos are the same phenomenon: American institutional collapse forcing everyone to build alternatives.
Allies aren’t waiting for 2026 midterms or hoping resistance materializes. They’re watching federal agents operate like brownshirts, a president who can’t distinguish NATO allies, and a regime that openly discusses prosecuting people for refusing to help steal elections. That’s disqualifying. Even if American democracy somehow recovers, the trust is gone.
Carney’s speech matters because it signals the strategy shift: not hoping America stabilizes, but building what works without American reliability. That external pressure might be the only thing that forces accountability domestically.
The world is moving on. And Davos this week showed they’re done waiting.
— Johan
Carney's speech was a masterpiece. Not just a repudiation of that maniac, but an actual way forward for the sane non-superpowers to band together and become the most relevant superpower.
For me, if anything, Carney's speech was a plea for a return to sensible alliances between nation states based on mutual interests rather than the formation of a new superpower (Heaven forbid!).
A European refrain: "Make America Go Away"
I see it as, Let America Go Away...
Make Trump Go Away
I'm with Isaac here. We need to think about this as a much bigger problem then just "Make Trump Go Away".
Trump appears to be 'going away' soon. But he has exposed the weaknesses of our system. If we do what we did last time, when Biden was in office, and just go 'back to normal' and pretend that Trump did nothing wrong then the entire corrupt system stays in place. The name of the dictator may change and the level of evil may vary but there is nothing to keep it from happening again with the next populist dictator.
I don't disagree with you. One step at a time.
really? you think Trump going away will solve that nation's problems? we'll see soon enough...
No. I should have added "and his entire regime."
Precisely. Our domestic resistance can only go so far to restrain the madman that our core institutions (congress and the enforcement of constitutional/real laws) are permitting to run amok. Thanks for the chat yesterday laying out the “reasons” they are failing so blatantly - each craven decision reinforcing the next so that the incompetent team T assembled owes too much to him to remove him, and the power struggle behind the throne leaves virtually no one in his camp feeling free to act decisively. Handing our government over to incompetent bullies leaves us in turn with little direct leverage now - even Dem “leadership” is afraid of being abused if not imprisoned.
We need some bravery in DC comparable to what we are seeing in MN at all levels from streets to cops to elected leaders.
Bravo!
Carney makes me excited about the future again. What can be....What is!
Trump has already slammed the door on our Canadian neighbors who have always been free to cross the border without concerns. But since last January, the border crossings are way down across the northern border. Thankfully, Carney and the Canadians aren't hateful evil thugs like Trump and every fucking Republican politician is.
Apropos Trump's evil, here is the full text of the Jane Doe lawsuit against Trump and Epstein -- later withdrawn in response to credible death threats against the plaintiff: https://cdn.factcheck.org/UploadedFiles/Johnson_TrumpEpstein_Lawsuit.pdf Please let us ensure this text is linked early (and therefore prominently) on as many Resistance sites as possible every day until the traitorous regime of ecogenocidal Christonazi pedophiles is no more. (I'll do my best to be responsible for this posting, but I am 85 years old and terminally ill, which means others need be ready to pick up the torch on days I am absent and after I am no more.)
I don't think that he intended to suggest that the new order of international relations was anything to be happy about! Quite the reverse, in fact.
Reluctantly facing reality. Stripped the emperor of the facade of clothes.
It made me happy because I used to be a Canuck, and I love it when the "mouse" tells the "elephant", especially now, where to get off. I am not at all blue eyed about our future Russell.
Bruce, I'm not sure excitement is exactly the right response. Resolve and determination might be.
I live in what is nicknamed "Tornado Alley" and, in fact, my home was demolished by a tornado in 2010. I lost some possessions, but not everything. I rebuilt. In the process, I upgraded some parts of my home, so it's nicer than it was. I was never excited by rebuilding. It was a difficult, stressful process that took enormous amounts of determination and resolve. And patience. I made the improvements and finished the rebuilding with the knowledge that another tornado could come through and undo everything I've done. But I can't – and won't – live in fear of that possibility.
Trumpism is the tornado that has demolished our collective home on this planet. Rebuilding will be strenuous and require strength and resolve. The world will rebuild with or without the U.S. Hopefully, nations' leaders will acknowledge some of the weaknesses in the previous world order and correct them. With any luck, everyone will be safer and more comfortable, even U.S. citizens who do, or don't, participate in the rebuild.
I agree Dale, read my reply to Russell: It made me happy/excited because I used to be a Canuck, and I love it when the "mouse" tells the "elephant", especially now, where to get off. I am not at all blue eyed about our future, Russell. This is going to be tough. And, Dale, I am not so sure that the "world" is demolished. I know that Europe has, with Canada and other "countries" picked up their socks. Germany, although battered is still a powerhouse of knowhow and deep market penetration through their Network of ca. 1600 international "Mittelstand Hidden Champions"...They are now doing what is necessary to build the IT infrastructure to connect them, thereby making that capability faster and better quality. They have realized that this is make or break time. Europe will either be a viable third competitor to China and the USA, or they will become customers and their high standard of living will suffer. They know this. The biggest unaddressed problem now is structural...their bloated bureaucracy and and plethora of regulations. Germany/Europe needs to cut the state employee bloat.
Bruce, not to beat the illustration to death, when my house was "demolished," you couldn't tell it from the street because all the damage was in the back.
I didn't mean to imply that the world is demolished. But the structure of the world order has been "involuntarily rearranged." 😁
Who knows? This dramatic inflection point has already motivated visionaries to take action and may jar some bureaucrats out of their comfortable slumber.
Carney is letting the world know that countries captured by Trump's military will not be willingly occupied but will fight against the regime the entire time. That Canada already has planned that. It seems like US citizens not in the US are in danger from Trump's actions differently than those who remain in the US. Those abroad are subject to becoming enemy aliens if the US makes war on the countries they are living in. This is a big discussion right now among the US residents of NATO ally countries.
By negotiating with Trump yesterday, the EU may have turned Trump away from "taking" Greenland, but I bet this will be back on the table again. According to William Spaniel Trump is taking Greenland for Putin. If Putin wants Greenland, it will be back on the table again.
https://youtu.be/mQGMGnhC-NA?si=7wvd1reVuG3uIHqN
Linda, it's not that Putin wants Greenland (or it's Iceland?), Putin wants the useful idiot to weaken and disrupt NATO for the benefit of his territorial ambitions .
Putin is quite capable of wanting both.
Putin is now a paper tiger...Our support of Ukraine is doing him in, as they say. If Europe sticks together (or kicks some out), Pee-Pee le Put hasn't got a hope in Hades of rolling over the other Estern Eu States on his calendar.
If the scumbag president we have had acted as a traditional republican, the Russian aggression against Ukraine would be over by now. Our beloved great leader owes something to putin and the whole world is paying the consequences. Thanks for your comment Bruce 👍
Thank You, Bruce!!! The way you put it, I believe it!! I will sleep better tonight.
Yes Mary, you have it right but he needs a NATO not capable of counteract his actions and for that he is getting a lot of help from our beloved great leader.
"puppet"
A small scale figure (as of a person or animal) usually with a cloth body and HOLLOW head that fits over and is moved by the hand. -Merriam Websters Dictionary
As Hillary claimed.
Head filled with toxic mush
So, you disagree with what Spaniel is saying in the end of the video?
You're absolutely correct, Linda, about the military intentions motivating Trump's claims against Greenland; please see my brief summary of them above. (They should be obvious to any analytically minded veteran, or for that matter to anyone aware of the unprecedented magnitude of Absolute Evil by which we are now ruled.)
Yes. I have now read it. I agree with you whole-heartedly. My region of Democrats have put on our meeting agenda to discuss
What happens to Americans Abroad if they do not have dual citizenship during a war?
What happens to our Social Security and investments in the US if we are abroad?
What should we do to prepare ourselves for a war against the countries in which we live?
What political actions can we take to help defeat this regime from abroad.
I wish you the very best in your efforts. As part of your quest for sanctuary you might consider making your knowledge of the U.S. available to the military intelligence services of your chosen nations; that would probably also expedite your acquisition of citizenship. And you should resist any notion you are betraying anything because the America you knew has been conquered by ChristoNazi traitors and therefore no longer exists.
Exactly Ricardo and if NATO goes Putin will feel like he can march into Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and across Europe without much resistance.
Absolutely 💯 % right Collette ✅️ 👏
That too 🤬
Hello Linda... As DJT is pursuing his Protection Racket, the Resistance is Stiffening.... On 20-Jan-2020, the Dow dropped over 800pts... That apparently caused DJT to drop his threatened European Tariffs over Greenland.... The European Counter is to dump US Treasuries... The Europeans hold more US Debt than China, or Japan... Allegedly, DJT has added 2.5 Trillion$ to the National Debt in the past year, and is on track to add $10,000,000,000,000 to the National Debt by 2029... Par For The Course For A 6X Bankrupt Business Man.... Read Paul Krugman's Substack Today....
It will surely be back on the table, because it isn't really about Greenland, is it? Or Iceland. Or Venezuela. Or Vanuatu. it's about that necklace and plaque and "honor" they were supposed to give him at Oslo but wouldn't, because he's a thug and an asshole, an unbelievably dumb moron, and a tiny, tiny, tiny tiny little brat playing at being tough.
It's about Barack Obama. HE got a Nobel Peace Prize (waaaaaaahh) 😭, how come MEEE doesn't get a Peace Prize (waaaaaah) 😭. It's at that level, no higher.
The threat is there as long as he lives because America was too stupid to recognize how predictable -- and predicted -- this moment was, and sent the moron to Washington with a "mandate."
We have all been living under an immensely worthwhile, valuable international system that granted peace, stability and shared prosperity. Not equally, but one hell of a lot better than the wars, chaos, beggar-thy-neighbor tariffs and gunboat diplomacy which preceded it. That system is now being stabbed to death by a psychotic 2-year-old. Tremendous realignments are now taking place. The only immediate lesson is that if our allies band together against us as a single bloc, they can head off at least some of the worst malevolence. That's about it. The entire international system -- political, financial, and military -- has never been less stable than it is today.
Sadly, I agree with you. It’s too bad that we have a self castrated Congress (and that includes the women in it), a corrupted SCOTUS, an evil VP who is licking his lips in anticipation, a deputy chief of staff that should be tried for crimes against humanity, etc., etc….
Yes. It is about the prize, but that is because Putin probably told him to take it if he was not given it. Putin tells him this stuff and he takes it to heart.
It reminds me of the cover of My Fair Lady. Putin controls Trump, who controls his appointees. The rest of us have to suffer from their dysfunction. Europe is trying to stabilize it because none of the authoritarian leaders will stop it. They are egging it on until it accomplished what they want, the total isolation of the US, NATO breaking up, and the EU falling apart. In Germany, the AfD is now clamoring for Nuclear weapons, something that they were against while the US was aligned with Europe, but now with the US aligned with Russia and China that is the natural outcome.
Putin is the daddy trump never had, who showers him with (false) love, encouragement, compliments, etc. and assuages his deep, unfullable bottomless void.
I wish Putin were not such a health freak.
LInda, you bring up a point that I ponder from time to time. Recall perhaps a year or so back, Putin, too had bruised hands? I believe he fell a few times. There was reports of diarrhea, too, I think.
It seemed as though his demise was near. What wonder drug did he get?!
Mentioning little brats, consider the Stubborn Child Law.
I took an Abnormal Psychology course in the Springfield, MA area that included a presentation by a noticeably drunk former administrator of a juvenile detention center, just as they were drastically reforming the abuses that occurred under the Massachusetts Juvenile Law courts that went back to a law passed in 1664. That law went so far as to allow capital punishment for children that were disobedient to their parents. He described one child who was sent here by his wealthy father who needed nothing more to commit him than the father's say so and had to remain there under his father's say so until he aged out.
Donald Trump's father didn't do that (he was in New York) but did something similar to stories I've heard from other "stubborn" children who's fathers sent them to military schools (against their will), to set them straight. The results seem a bit mixed, with some rather extreme differences in outcomes, the worst of which for the world, I would submit would be the present occupant of the White House.
Some background is at https://sites.bu.edu/masslaw/files/2023/07/Deirdre-Mask-Final-Paper.pdf
Who can forget Mary Trump's story about how Donald was such a sniveling, nasty little brat who wouldn't stop ragging his little brother until his uncle simply dumped a giant bowl of mashed potatoes over his head at a family dinner. The whole family laughed because Donnie got what he deserved. Since then, he's been trying to get back -- at Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Bette Midler, Taylor Swift, Mark Rutte, Immanuel Macron, the Nobel Prize Committee......
You speak for me…
"Immensely worthwhile." I read that and feel heartbroken, realizing it will be a long-time before we get back to anything resembling what once was, or if that will even be possible.
That's not the way Le Monde has reported it. What they said sounds like a very clever idea by Rutte - I'll say no more, as I can't get the exact text, but if correct it will surely emerge shortly.
I don't envy Rutte. It's like trying to quiet an angry chimpanzee playing with the pin on a hand grenade. "Just put it down, fella, nice banana here if you just put it down..."
Reminds me of a team member assigned to me that I told to wait while I disconnected a cable that was run through a flooded mine field to our wind measuring equipment at Tan An. I cut it so it wouldn't get caught in the barbed wire and went back around the flooded area to pull it through the mine field and reinstall the connector. It was dusk and just before I got there he yanked on a different wire he had been pulling on until it got caught in the barbed wire. Simply by it being caught, I knew it couldn't be the wire I wanted, confirmed a second later when two electrically operated Claymore mines were seen (flying through the air) in the dim light, and landed at our feet.
I removed the electrical detonators after sending him to get EOD or whoever they could send to get the mines and decide if they needed to be redeployed.
The third time he was assigned to me (and made a 3rd dangerous mistake the afternoon before Tet started in our area), I refused to go into the field with him, so I spent most of the last 9 months traveling solo (and feeling safer for doing so).
I'd rather have had that chimpanzee.
https://www.lemonde.fr/economie/live/2026/01/22/en-direct-davos-donald-trump-affirme-qu-il-a-concu-le-cadre-d-un-futur-accord-sur-le-groenland-avec-le-chef-de-l-otan_6663326_3234.html
https://www.lemonde.fr/economie/live/2026/01/22/en-direct-davos-donald-trump-affirme-qu-il-a-concu-le-cadre-d-un-futur-accord-sur-le-groenland-avec-le-chef-de-l-otan_6663326_3234.html
you can click on the links and then on the the English translation
ay that he and the Secretary General of NATO had developed "the framework for a future agreement concerning Greenland." The Secretary General, for his part, stated that the question of the sovereignty of the autonomous Danish territory "had not been discussed" with the American president.
"The President of Ukraine has arrived in Switzerland to take part in the World Economic Forum and meet with President Trump ," said his spokesman Sergii Nykyforov on Thursday, adding that he would meet with Donald Trump at 1 p.m. and deliver a speech at 2:30 p.m.
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https://www.lemonde.fr/economie/live/2026/01/22/en-direct-davos-il-y-a-encore-beaucoup-de-travail-a-faire-pour-trouver-un-accord-sur-le-groenland-declare-mark-rutte-le-chef-de-l-otan_6663326_3234.html
In response to Donald Trump's threat of tariffs against any country that opposes the desire to make Greenland an American territory, "there has been a very strong reaction, first from Europe, from France, Germany and a few others, from Canada," noted Mr. Lescure, interviewed on French radio RTL.
"And I think that this firmness began to convince the American president that it was necessary to find other ways and means than force ," because "firmness today, in a world where the law of the strongest sometimes tends to prevail, is important," he continued.
Mr. Lescure also confirmed that France had no intention of joining the peace council proposed by Mr. Trump, and that it preferred the United Nations framework for resolving diplomatic disputes. "We consider the United Nations to be the Peace Council ," he explained.
08:38
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Following his retreat on Greenland, Donald Trump unveils his "peace council" today in Davos.
At 10:30 a.m. , Donald Trump is scheduled to participate in the signing ceremony of the founding charter of a peace council of his own making, intended to work towards resolving conflicts around the world in competition with the UN ➡️ It was initially designed to oversee the reconstruction of Gaza, but the draft charter provides for a mandate far broader than the sole issue of Palestinian territory.
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En tant qu’abonné, vous pouvez offrir jusqu’à cinq articles par mois à l’un de vos proches grâce à la fonctionnalité « Offrir un article ».
https://www.lemonde.fr/economie/live/2026/01/22/en-direct-davos-il-y-a-encore-beaucoup-de-travail-a-faire-pour-trouver-un-accord-sur-le-groenland-declare-mark-rutte-le-chef-de-l-otan_6663326_3234.html
In response to Donald Trump's threat of tariffs against any country that opposes the desire to make Greenland an American territory, "there has been a very strong reaction, first from Europe, from France, Germany and a few others, from Canada," noted Mr. Lescure, interviewed on French radio RTL.
"And I think that this firmness began to convince the American president that it was necessary to find other ways and means than force ," because "firmness today, in a world where the law of the strongest sometimes tends to prevail, is important," he continued.
Mr. Lescure also confirmed that France had no intention of joining the peace council proposed by Mr. Trump, and that it preferred the United Nations framework for resolving diplomatic disputes. "We consider the United Nations to be the Peace Council ," he explained.
08:38
Share
Following his retreat on Greenland, Donald Trump unveils his "peace council" today in Davos.
At 10:30 a.m. , Donald Trump is scheduled to participate in the signing ceremony of the founding charter of a peace council of his own making, intended to work towards resolving conflicts around the world in competition with the UN ➡️ It was initially designed to oversee the reconstruction of Gaza, but the draft charter provides for a mandate far broader than the sole issue of Palestinian territory.
Question from reader Alya: I don't understand. Mark Rutte says at 1:40 that they haven't discussed Greenland. And at 5:30 you publish an article about the proposal for American sovereignty over a military base in Greenland.
Hello Alya,
Yes, it can be confusing. Donald Trump asserted on Wednesday that he and NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte had developed "the framework for a future agreement concerning Greenland ." However, Rutte told Agence France-Presse that there is "still a lot of work to be done" to reach an agreement on the autonomous Danish territory, after having stated on Fox News that the Greenland issue "had not been raised during [his] discussions with the US president." This is what we are discussing in the 1:42 post you mentioned.
On the other hand, the exchange between Mark Rutte and Donald Trump – which preceded the discussion of a possible transfer of sovereignty of the Pituffik military base in northern Greenland entirely to the United States – took place, as we mention in the article you are referring to and in this live broadcast , last Sunday.
You know what it is? It's modelled on the insoluble solution to the Cyprus problem back in the days of enosis and Archbishop Makarios. Cyprus is now Greek, but has two British implants which are British, with consular facilities.
I went into Saigon a couple of days into Tet 68 with a former Marine (then in our Air Force field maintenance shop), to get the last of our guys still not able to get back to the base. His previous experience as a Marine on diplomatic guard duty on Cyprus was very reassuring and useful to me, especially in that trip, and many others throughout Vietnam and Thailand. One of which was varying speed in areas where snipers typically fired at them from hills along the road (too far away for accuracy or for them to try to chase themdown).
Thank you for the LaMonde text and translation. Georgia.
Side note: there was a time I could sit and read Le Monde in French <sigh>
Thank you Georgia
Thanks. They seem to have a paywall, so I cannot read it. Perhaps because I did not accept the data collecting.
Linda: yes, I've just given up trying to renew my subscription because they've altered it - you have to go through Google now, and I won't.
Me neither. I am moving myself off of Google slowly but surely. I have started a new Indivisible Abroad group in my city in Germany, and have joined the Indivisible Abroad Economic Resistance Group as well. Here is the IA website. Our group in Bremen is now on the map even though it has existed less than a week. We hope to have a webpage up soon as well.
https://indivisibleabroad.org/
I don't subscribe to my local newsletter because it requires me to use PayPal. I have been boycotting this Paypal mafias moneymaker for years. Over a decade. My daughter had to go through high school without getting things that only offered Paypal as a source of purchase. What is good about that is that she has learned through me, we also boycotted Starbucks in the US, to give up things.
Now we have cancelled Amazon as well. My husband does not use an iPhone, and is looking to replace the mac he used for work, with a freeware platform. We all have non-US platformed emails as well as Gmails. There is a move in Europe to get off of US platforms. Hard to do because most are so good. Let us hope that it provides incentive for people in Europe to be more creative. A big problem with innovativeness in Europe is that Europeans save, they don't invest. There is a move to get them to be more financially literate and do both.
I still receive the titles and first paragraph of articles since I had a subscription a few years ago. I wanted to resubscribe - but if you have to go through Google, I won't, either.
I can see it through perplexity AI free. Maybe they have a deal to access text in return for teaching their AI. You could try it for future reference, but maybe it would be blocked in Europe. In that case let me know and I will copy and paste.
I would love to read that. I am about to watch Merz speaking at DAVOS.
The only real asset that Greenland has is it's ice sheet which locks up a potential 23 feet of global sea level rise. I doubt that ownership of Greenland is on Putin's wish-list, but the break-up of NATO certainly is.
So, you disagree with what Spaniel is saying about 10 years from now? He makes a case.
I agree Linda -- people saluting his statement that he would not use force perhaps forget how often and how quickly he changes his mind and this too can be changed in a heartbeat -- if he actually has a heart.
I think he has an AI heart, not mirroring any human characteristics.
Trump is Vladimir's little bitch.
If Trump had a conscience, he'd die of guilt!
I don't know why it would give you, as an American (I am assuming) hope. It was a clarion call squarely in the ancient tradition of self-interest, of taking care of oneself when failing systems everyone has relied on for decades begin spiraling wildly out of control. What almost always follows such a time is chaos, neither pretty nor cheap.
Decades ago, an Italian historian during the late 1920s remarked that "the old order is dying; a new one is yet to be born. In the period between, morbid realities assert themselves." Things sometimes do not work out for the best.
Someone showing fortitude & positive, sensible direction, after their cohorts have been practicing failing appeasement is cause for hope.
Also History is not prophecy.
Things may get worse before they get better, but at least we’re not helping our assailant by digging our own grave.
A sensible direction for Canada, for sure. He's broadcasting the international system's death certificate in the hopes mid-size powers will now bandwagon together to form their own blocs. It doesn't spell progress or stability, just the opposite, in fact. As far as history and prophecy go, we all know the adage -- history might not repeat exactly, but it does an amazing job of reverberating with the same themes (and often similar outcomes), over and over again, through hundreds of years.
We think this is all great stuff only because we hate Trump so much. None of us has any experience living under a broken international system where there literally are no rules of the game. None of what is transpiring now bodes well for future peace or stability, much less shared prosperity. We're standing at the edge of a precipice and sliding down. Carney is just making it official.
I trust you’re not suggesting that Trump ever had any intention of *shared ‘peace / stability’. He only wishes to be King of the Heap … plus he is right in the midst of his attempt of *breaking the international system … altho mainly just causing TACO chaos. The European response - when push came to shove - was the ‘BAZOOKA’ anti-trade coercion plan that caused Trump to fold like lady’s hankie. 🤣
Excerpt from G & M re: Carney : “To succeed Canadians are being asked by Mr. Carney to do what they have not had much practice doing in recent times. They must name reality, that is live in this world and not a wished-for one. Build what we say we believe in and “reducing the (economic) leverage that enables coercion.”
The Prime Minister has been on a tour de force signing 🔹12 trade and security deals in the last six months and added deals with China and Qatar most recently.
He has in his sights the creation of a new trading block uniting the 🔻Trans-Pacific Partnership and the 🔻European Union, creating a 1.5-billion people strong trading zone.
“This is not naïve multilateralism,” Mr. Carney said. “It is building the coalitions that work, issue by issue, with partners who share enough common ground to act together.”
Business leaders have an existential role to play in securing Canadian sovereignty.” end quote
Canada’s agriculture business is underdeveloped compared to what it could & should be, and that sector is currently very happy with Carney.
The 🍁 auto sector will need to pivot no matter what, because Trump is not budging in that sector at all anyway, and it relys on provincial & federal subsidies to the tune of 20%, so it’s a fool’s errand to keep nannying it along - in its current configuration at least.
— Some of that auto & steel sector can be repurposed into producing military vehicles & arms etc … some of which is in the works now & other has been done before - thus keeping the majority of its current workforce through retraining.
Trump & chumps are expecting their intended prey to be so shocked as to be immobilized & defenceless — not! He & Putin are about to discover that those they consider to be softies can play hardball & smart.
* Just because T & P are mean doesn’t mean they’re tough, or smart.
Exactly. When your political boss says everything is going to be fine, that’s when know it’s time to worry. When he says “I am not a crook” you know he’s a crook. Sometimes you need to hedge your bets. “We’re not waiting around” made it very clear. “If you’re not at the table you’re on the menu” got a big laugh. A bit overstated, but the meaning was clear.
It gives me hope as an American because it may wake up the broligarchs to something that will impact their bottom line negatively. And that, in turn, will get some of them to put the brakes on Trump's alignment with Putin and China.
And that is realism--recognizing the power of the broligarchs to control America
I wrote earlier that everything Trump said screws Americans living in the US, Americans living abroad, Venezuelans and Greenland, not to mention things he did not say, but he is out to get Somalia and Somalians, and Iran is on the table. I don't believe they were invited to his Board of "Peace."
1984 is so prevalent right now.
Three slogans of the party:
WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
Right now we are all struggling to maintain as things are thrown at us right and left.
There is more Trump mischief coming today at Davos as he is apparently going to be signing his "Peace Board" compact with other world leaders on the sidelines. The original version approved by the UN Security Council, in an apparent fit of insanity, gave Trump control over the Gaza settlement. He is now claiming it will cover all conflicts, which members of the administration are saying is "aspirational." He is asking for $1 billion donations to a fund he will control, as the price of membership for those he invites, kind of like the fee for Mar-a-Lago. He has invited Putin to join.
So far, there is no word from the Security Council on curbing Trump's aspirations.
https://www.reuters.com/world/china/what-is-trumps-board-peace-who-has-joined-so-far-2026-01-21/
"A senior White House official said on Wednesday about 35 world leaders have so far committed to joining the Board of Peace out of the 50 or so invitations that were sent.
These include Middle East allies such as Israel, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Jordan, Qatar and Egypt. NATO members Turkey and Hungary, whose nationalist leaders have cultivated good personal ties with Trump, have also agreed to take part, as have Morocco, Pakistan, Indonesia, Kosovo, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Paraguay, and Vietnam.
Others which have accepted include Armenia and Azerbaijan, which reached a U.S.-brokered peace agreement last August after meeting Trump at the White House.
More controversially, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, long shunned by the West over his country's poor human rights record and backing for Russia's war in Ukraine, has accepted Trump's invitation, which comes amid a broader rapprochement between Washington and Minsk."
Ooh, how exciting! Surely a Nobel Prize this time! Plus lots and lots of money. He's "invited" Australia, but I don't know how we've replied. Our secretary of state is a shrewd little Chinese-Australian.
Yes, and in the Globe & Mail 🍁 comment section some a few were knocking it,
— not all such comments were ‘in good faith’, I’m sure.
With Trump you’re damned if you do & damned if you don’t … stand up to him. 🙄
At 10:00 a.m., Jack Smith speaks, and the panic beforehand tells the story. This satire tracks the shouting, the threats, and the quiet arrival of evidence. When power melts down, the clock keeps ticking, and democracy listens. Fear is loud. Facts are patient and inevitable.
https://essayx.substack.com/p/the-10-am-panic-broadcast
I watched his speech yesterday - it's absolutely marvelous and historic.
I hope our Republican Congress was listening. I'm not holding my breath.
I could not agree more. In an age where statesmanship seemed all but dead, he revived it with superb skill and humanity
Yes, but residents of Minneapolis, Portland and Maine need an immediate help from the threat of ICE. Speech will not work.
P.M. Carney gave one of the great speeches of this era. It was masterful - not just his words, but in its grammar, organization, and weaving fact with narrative. Mark Carney wrote that speech. His speech and his intellect are in stark contrast to the Felon.
For crying out loud, Folks!
Face it. The whole world knows!
Trump is a MADMAN!!!!
EVERY country should STOP communicating with him. Period. NO phone calls, NO visits. NOTHING!
The USA has NO allies. (except for Israel, that uses us)
The Republicans in government will finally have a job : deal with their MADMAN in the White House. Get him out!!!
Obviously, US citizens have NO power to do anything. If one gets murdered by MADMAN’s Brown Shirt’s, MADMAN just ups the violence.
So, China, Russia, Denmark, ALL countries: STOP TALKING TO THE MADMAN!
2nd time I posted this. how can I get it to the leaders of every, or any country.?? what would they have to lose by cutting out the USA?
Mark Carney is amazing. A stellar example of the type of leader that the US needs but, frankly, does not deserve at this moment in time.
Mark Carney is a beacon of rational, civil thought, thank goodness
He’s not just stupid, an ignoramus, but testament to the U.S.’s establishment status quo.
65 years ago John Kennedy, at his inaugural, to the superb contrary testified to that earlier America’s much, much higher standards – aspirations based on how we all might be not only better able to see “others,” but also to give of ourselves to them.
But now we have the pedophile, rapist, fraudster, bully, vulgarian criminal Donald, with his private militias in masks and military gear cruelly attacking fellow Americans, while he unrelentingly insults and attacks our former democratic allies.
And still covers up for the worldwide moneyed who for years raped the underage girls Donald’s pals trafficked.
I am thinking we add murderer to the Trump list of characteristics. Not because has it been implied by Greg Olear that what is hidden in the Epstein Files is Trump participating in a snuff film of a 12 year old Latina. It was even wondered if there were more than one such film. Someone shared this in a Substack chat the other day.
https://open.substack.com/pub/gregolear/p/infrequently-asked-questions-about-519?utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web
But, people in ICE detention are dying, ICE shot and killed Renee Good and other people. The US cut off USAID and thousands of people have died from starvation. There are the people of Venezuela, and perhaps other countries. All of this is on Trump and his policies. Evil is an attribute we should be giving to him.
Judd Legum notes that ICE has suspended payments for the medical treatment of detainees in its facilities.
https://popular.info/p/ice-has-stopped-paying-for-detainee?hide_intro_popup=true
Meanwhile, DHS continues to deport people urgently needing medical attention.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jan/21/pregnant-woman-ice-deportation-atlanta
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jan/11/ice-deportation-costa-rica-man
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/24/man-dies-ice-custody-wife-deported
The routine cruelty of this administration is horrifying.
Yes. These are prison camps that people are being taken too, and it is illegal to take people who have legal documents to be in the USA, but they are being taken too. No one is safe. Someone in a chat was pointing out that there are a lot of children 5 and under in ICE detention. It is totally inappropriate. I have studied the Nazi regime in Germany and we are making our parallels. I am glad people are rising up. We don't want to say in the end, "I did not know!" or "There was nothing I could do."
Linda, having been to Dachau (and having known an artist who spent time there in the late ‘30’s) I know what you are learning. Having also read Timothy Snyder on the gulags behind the Iron Curtain, I have chosen to call ICE “facilities” gulags. There seems to be no escape until the “organization” is completely reformed.
I think you err, dear Russell John, with your final conjugative: "is horrifying"
Wouldn't we all be better off for the alternative, "is normalized."
Then might we account for the many elite institutions so cravenly prone to cover for the criminality built into their many-other-rationalized but also dehumanized conceits?
Phil that is part of what is horrifying.
I have been several times a week to my Republican (Fascist) Senator and she finally replied when I demanded that she convince her Republican colleagues to impeach Trump, Noem, Hegsbreth, Rubio, Bondi and others within the cabinet.
Her reply was that the House has to do it first. She offered nothing else.
Has any other Republican Senator or Congresscritter responded to your letters?
The answer to your last question is, one senator has not answered my email and the one that has answered pushed the narrative off to Greenland and what a strategic piece of land it is. He is also one of the enablers that you see standing to the side of Trump in oval office photos. His answers are always worthless and why I keep sending emails to him, just to let them know I ain't buying their shit and voicing my opinion.
My nastily pejorative spelling of "RepubliKlan" is a statement of absolute truth; there's not a one in that bloody lot of sociopaths I'd trust even for a New York Minute.
I might steal this, Loren; I've been using RepubliKan, but the Klan is more apt.
Thank you. Be my guest, Ally.
Oil! When will climate change get into the discussion? DT almost got it there by insults in Davos, but BIG Oil will kill us to hold onto its subsidies. What if those subsidies were put into clean energy?
The following industries receive subsidies: agriculture; dairy; farmers; tech; airlines; auto; oil and gas; housing; shipping and maritime; healthcare; pharma; coal; professional sports and renewable energy. The two that benefit the public are housing and renewable energy. Sports, healthcare, all the rest make huge profits while using our tax dollars. I read a long article on the history of subsidies and where we are today by the Cato Institute:
"Corporate Welfare in the Federal Budget
This study tallies corporate welfare in the federal budget and finds that the government spends $181 billion a year on aid to businesses.
March 4, 2025 • Policy Analysis No. 990
By Chris Edwards"
Yesterday's calls I made to Congress were to GOP Senators. I reminded them of the role GOP Senators played in the resignation of Nixon, and I asked "WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?!?"
I also reminded them that on nearly EVERY issue, with nearly EVERY demographic, TRUMP IS UNDERWATER. They back him at their own risk of losing their seats.
When I have written to Bill Huizenga I get a canned letter back. When I have called t hey used to be polite. That is all gone. Now when you call they are nasty and confrontational. I think they are being hammered with calls from angry constituents but Bill Huizenga STILL won’t hold a town hall where has to face us!
Nope.
But then he is owned by a much more influential party than me: Enbridge Oil
Murderer, well who will check out Ivana’s death. So many questions. As Greg Olear says “infrequently asked questions…” that need to be asked. Would take Jack Smith many lifetimes…
No one will take this on, but I am always suspicious of a woman falling down the stairs as a means of death or injury. I had a boss who had 3 falls down stairs, and I have met her husband. Also, her daughters never smile. She has a fake life. He has recently become a Chicago Judge, and was the endorsed candidate, but I also worked with a woman who was married to a politician who had done really cool things with children in the projects, but he beat her. So, when I heard that Ivana fell down the stairs, I though at least the children should be suspicious, but they clearly don't want to think like humane beings.
I have wondered why the 3 younger chumps were not suspicious but guess I know the answer. They have been indoctrinated since birth most likely and Ivana was bought off. Still I would bet my booties…
Perhaps they were suspicious but not curious. Raised in a fascist household they have learned to obey.
No more proof needed, they are the poster children
Phil, I loved that you used that word, "vulgarian" ! Lol, it's so apt, yet not enough is it ? I can't recall just now who it was that first used the creation.... You ? No matter. Bravo amigo !
Vulgarian…sounds like a word that Henry Higgins may have used…..
John Cleese's character Archie calls Otto(Kevin Kline) "a true vulgarian" in 'A Fish called Wanda'.
Per conversation of James Coyle and myself - too rich !
James Coyle
James Coyle
13h
I think Professor 'Enry 'Iggins said "Wagnerian" in the musical, but I'm sure 'e'd 'ave used "vulgarian" in the appropriate circumstance. :-)
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"Et too" James ? Here I go down the rabbit hole searching for origins. Lol !
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I know the feeling. And the rabbit holes become rabbit warrens, from which we emerge hours later. It’s a good thing I’m retired.😁
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just now
Yes.... I keep dreading the notion of running into Rabbit of Caerbannog, ala Monty Python and "The Holy Grail" !!! horhai would bust a gut at this; I should copy and paste our conversation; Think I will lest it's missed !
🤣
By gosh horhai ; I think you've got it !!! I'm a huge fan of that stuff !
That’s so funny D4N! By George, yes, I did finally get it.
Though vulgar is Latin for common, and surely Trump is uncommonly disgusting.
I think Professor 'Enry 'Iggins said "Wagnerian" in the musical, but I'm sure 'e'd 'ave used "vulgarian" in the appropriate circumstance. :-)
"Et too" James ? Here I go down the rabbit hole searching for origins. Lol !
I know the feeling. And the rabbit holes become rabbit warrens, from which we emerge hours later. It’s a good thing I’m retired.😁
Yes.... I keep dreading the notion of running into Rabbit of Caerbannog, ala Monty Python and "The Holy Grail" !!! horhai would bust a gut at this; I should copy and paste our conversation; Think I will lest it's missed !
🤣
Hell Janis; I can't recall just now. I'm just sure that neither Phil, nor I invented it. It will bug me for a bit, like an obsession unless one of our 'resident genius's' comes up with it. My 'ethos' if you will is to always give appropriation if I use the words of others; Feels dishonest otherwise... Great 'word' though.
I love that you guys love to live in history, especially fabled history try to catch up it’s January 2026 and Donald Trump is the most influential human human being on planet Earth. And if you keep fighting, it’s gonna get worse for you. Do you like Clinton and Gingrich did come together and help the country come together Donald Trump is just having to deal with the excrement that Joe Biden left in the street by opening the border. Otherwise we would be a rocket ship to Mars instead of just a rocket ship to the moon.
I'm thinking, D4N, Graydon Carter and Kurt Andersen may have used the term "short-fingered vulgarian" in "Spy" magazine back in the mid-1980s.
YES !!! There it is... !
Graden Carter, when he was at Vanity Fair (I think) coined the term "short-fingered Vulgarian" to describe Trump.
Here, laurie (or, Laurie), Kurt Andersen's account of its origins:
https://www.bing.com//watch?v=D-K2RgJfB8E
thanks Phil! Oops -- link didn't work for me.
Please, laurie (Laurie) enter into search engine "short-fingered vulgarian."
You'll get to Joanna Coles' "Daily Beast" interview with Kurt Andersen.
If John Kennedy were alive today, he’d be a middle of the road republican. Just like many Democrats have said I didn’t leave the party. The party left me. You’ve gone left wacko Woko defending the criminal instead of the citizen
>>>Tom Nichols of The Atlantic wrote: “No one can be watching this Davos speech and reach any conclusion but that the President of the United States is mentally disturbed and that something is deeply wrong with him. This is both embarrassing and extremely dangerous.”<<<
Most of the GOP in Congress, (indeed in state legislatures across the country) except for truly ignorant oafs like James Bubba Comer, et al, know this. But liars abound. Still - STILL - they support and cover for this deranged lunatic and sexual predator because being the party in power matters more than even our founding principles and the Constitution. Traitors all.
Your basic premise is sound, but there's an added element taking place -- sheer laziness. 90% of these lazy cowards would be happy to see the problem go away....but by someone else's hand. 'Let somebody else get primaried, doxxed, threatened by goons and lowlifes, I'm not about to put my ass on the line.' (An exception for Senator PittyPat from South Carolina who simply enjoys debasing himself for posterity...)
Indefensible and ironic, considering they created the monster now eating their faces. One more reason to vote everyone of them out.
What you seem to forget, but it’s not memory lapse, you people are so freaking ignorant that you’re blaming a fireman for putting out a fire caused by Joe Biden and you’re blaming Donald Trump for putting it out yikes literally incomprehensible
Yes Republican abdication, timidity, aiding and abetting in this lawlessness, high crimes and misdemeanors, and demented Donold's delusions and other associated psychotic episodes and breakdowns.
Speaker Mike 'little weinie' Johnson is at the top of that list of Trump suck ups, sycophants and liars
Every right-winger in Congress and the Supreme Court are equally responsible for every atrocity by trump and his fascist henchmen nation wide. If they were loyal to our Constitution as they pleged to be, they would have stoped trump with the first fake national emergency he declared and stopped the lose of everything we, as a country have worked and invested in for the last eighty years.
I would hope that at least the people who participate on this site would wake up and realize that we are in much more trouble than just a batshit crazy President.
They all know he’s nuts, even Bubba Comer and the Stupidest Man Ever Elected To The Senate, the eminently forgettable dumbass football coach Thomas “Tommy” Tuberville. They all know, they’re just too cowardly to do anything about it and too stupid to take to heart Liz Cheney’s admonition that they will be remembered in history for their cowardice, complicity and complete dishonor.
True, Michael, it's not that they only support this Nazi behavior because they are blindly and ignorantly loyal to trump.
Read Project 2025, that spells out every right-wingers vision for the United States. They have been very successful at implementing upwards of 50% of it so far. You can see how they will use the sadistic secret police (ICE) to force everybody in the country to comply with their fascist white christian nationalist rule. The circuit court that handles Minnesota, put a stay on the Judges direction not to attack peacefull protesters so ICE will feel free to use ever increasing brutal tactics against US citizens performing their Constitutional rights.
Make no mistake, is a vast right-wing coup and every right-winger is dead set on taking and keep power using any measure needed.
You know every time you use that four letter word Nazi you tell us how ignorant and stupid you are and what a hater you are. I’m guessing that you’re young enough not to know what happened in Nazi Germany in detail, but you should make sure your brain is engaged before you put your mouth and gear and use that word. I would love to see any facts that you might provide us to demonstrate that this administration is treating anybody like Hitler treated the Jews or the weak minded or any other racial group. He burnt them alive. He gassed them to death. He shot them and buried them in pits by the hundreds. I’m sorry I didn’t hear any news about that here in the United States. Maybe you’re privy to some news that none of us are aware of. What an effing ignoramous you are. And probably a Jew hater to boot.
Wait, you’re actually quoting the Atlantic. The Atlantic is drowning in the Atlantic when it comes to factual information change the channel walk outside your home and the bubble that you’re in and see reality for what it is. And by the way, Gavin Newsome just won a major award. He is now been named Realtor of the year in Nevada, Idaho, Texas, Florida, Arizona, and the Carolinas. 1 million former California Residents now live in these states so thank you very much for your hard work Gavin.
Oh, I’m not the one in a bubble, friend.
And Newsom (not Newsome) has won no such award. He’s not a licensed realtor in California nor any other state. This rumor has been flying around since 2021, a satirical tweet by a Texas state rep ("Texas Realtor of the Year Award goes to California Gov. Gavin Newsom!"). It was a political jab, not a literal award announcement.
You should get outside of YOUR political information silo, and join us normies in the real world. You might learn something factual.
So you’re the one that likes grading ninth grade papers. I guess nobody ever taught you about content over form I voice text everything And AutoCorrect does the rest
Gavin Newsom has so much baggage that Kamala Harris might get more votes than him. The woman whose nickname is cackling. Kneepads couldn’t run a lemonade stand and obviously he can’t run a state.
Oh shit well I guess you don’t understand humor then But 1 million people have left the state in the last two years. Wow, no wonder you’re so gullible. Are you actually that brain dead to think this was true? Yikes
Be LOUD. Let Congress hear you!
Use/share this spreadsheet (bit.ly/Goodtrouble) as a resource to contact members of Congress, the Cabinet and news organizations. Call. Write. Email. Protest. Unrelentingly. We deserve better ❤️🩹🤍💙
Reach out (beyond your own) to as many in the Senate and House as you can. All of this is bigger than “I only represent my constituents” issues.
Comments/reactions help keep this bumped ✊
Thanks to my new cat who likes to attack feet at night I woke up to comment this instead of waiting until morning 😹
Ha, the nocturnal pounce? amazing what we put up with from cats.
Hey, I’m familiar with that…
YES! 😹 my feet are not safe to move at night. He’s almost 5 months old and is all playful nocturnal kitten.
His stray mama decided to have him and 2 other kittens under our porch. When they all came out early November very scared, we started to feed them and spend time around them hoping we could help them find homes. After about 4 weeks of spending time outside before school and before bed every night, I was able to catch them all. They are all happy with families now ❤️
Cats keep one on one's toes.
Yes they certainly do…and we now have 3 so we know!
Just so long as they don't keep the toes!
😅
Thank-you for not going right back to sleep. Appreciated!
Hello to your new cat, Megan!
He’s a sweetie! His mama was a stray and she decided to have 3 kittens under our porch. We worked on catching them and they all have warm homes now 🩷
Oh so wonderful! We have one that came to us that way, too!
Megan, that's the reason why I have a dog...🐕
Haha! We would like a dog one day!
Schmuppy! Puppy!
😅
One of my two cats is purring very loudly and pacing back and forth over my belly… rubbing her cheeks on the edge of my iPad. Guess it’s time to sleep. 😴
My girl usually is across my chest, pinning my left arm which she occasionally frowns at when I have to move it. Her "blood lust" is up now, after a rousing event of chasing the fast mousie across the wood floors. She's on post in the catio instead of snuggling this morning.
She’s got the zoomies… 😻
That was Apollo about 2 hours ago...
We have a catio too! I love that we can provide a safe outside space for them 😻
We actually have two; one right off the living room that overlooks the back yard and another that was an enclosed garden area (it took quite a bit of work to make it escape proof!). Apollo actually caught a junco that was dumb enough to fly into the fully caged smaller catio off our living room.
Our orange boy is a hand licker. If there's a hand outside the covers, he's licking it. Nothing like rough tongue, cold nose, and drool to wake one up out of a deep sleep.
Ally, my orange one is a girl! Not a whole lot of them out there. She's the one who sleeps on my head.
I have been owned by 3 orange cats in my lifetime. Octavius Augustus Caesar Teakettle Cat (Gus; I was a baby), Copernicus Southpaw Teakettle Cat (Copper; my first orange as a grown up when my wife and I moved to Eugene), and Apollo, Chaser of Bottle Caps (our Covid kitten, along with his sister, Artemis the Brave, a dilute calico torbie).
Ours was Cheddar picked up from a grocery warehouse supervisor who gave all their cats grocery related names
😅
Love the names! I kept the names the rescue shelter gave them. I think they must still talk about us: when we came, we adopted 4 at once. We brought three crates, so they gave us one. They were so excited!
Ginger is the only one we know much about. She was brought there as a kitten, very poor shape. Bad eye infection, pneumonia, and lost the tip of her tail. She was adopted and returned at age two. Their loss, our gain! She's the one who has started getting arthritis shots a few months ago. They work wonders on her!
I wanted so badly to keep the 4 kitties we rescued…but we already have 2 cats and 2 young kids. Back in November we found out a mama stray and her 3 kittens were living under our porch. After hours and hours outside before school and before bed I was able to get mama cat to let me pet her, ultimately after about 4 weeks I was able to catch them all. My neighbor fostered the 4 while we found them homes. She ended up keeping 2 kittens, we took 1 (the last one I caught who I spent the most time with) and mama went to a sweet home too 💙
Good to know; we had a Scottish Fold rescue cat who had (as is typical for that breed) horrible arthritis. We didn't know it at the time, but had friends who also had a Scottish Fold whose life was cut short when almost all of his joints fused.
Very unusual; You're certainly aware of that as I see.
😅
In my small herd which I call the "sorority" (all females) I have one who likes to let me share her pillow at night, purring up a storm! The best white noise machine there is in my opinion. However, she sometimes likes to make biscuits ON my head and those claws are SHARP!
Good to see your post as always, Megan!
On your head 😹😹 oh the things we allow our cats to do!
Megan, when my three kids were teens, of course NOTHING I did was right. There could be real tension in the house. At times, the only thing we could agree upon and smile about was the antics of the three cats we had at the time. I highly recommend pets for all who can have them, especially if there are kids. However, I don't agree with making the kids be responsible for them. Just my opinion.
I love that you could find that common ground during those tough teen years.
We plan to get a dog when our kids are old enough to help with the responsibility - help more with walks, food, water, outside for the bathroom. Definitely not to give them the sole responsibility. Learning to help take care of a pet I think is a really great set of life skills to learn 💜
I had a friend whose son got a chinchilla. She said the cage was a mess and she'd frequently find the water bottle empty. And he was in his early 20s!!!
Apparently, he never learned anything. (in all honesty, I can say the mom was an enabler)
KITTY! KITTY!
Thank you Megan, I live in France (US citizen) and after reading more unbelievable news everyday, wondering why he's still in office and why nobody is doing anything and what can I do, I'm glad to have this website!
I also am an American living in France. First off, make sure you are set up to vote in November. Go to https://votefromabroad.org. In addition we have monthly meetings where local Americans discuss experiences in going back to the US for a visit and other such topics. At least these meetings make us aware that we are not alone.
Yes, I am. Also a member of Democrats Abroad.
You’re welcome! Thank you for not just checking out while living abroad. We need so many voices to raise up together.
I live in Maryland and have written my Rep, Jamie Raskin, and Senators Chris Van Hollen and Angela Alsobrook… but really… I think this crew knows what to do. It is such a pleasure to vote for these people.
Raskin is great. I wish there were more like him.
I'm fortunate to have Merkley and Wyden for senators and Val Hoyle for a representative. Hoyle replaced Pete DeFazio when he retired and she's not got the seniority horsepower yet.
I have Padilla (who replaced Harris) and Schiff (who replaced Feinstein) as Senators but am stuck with Kevin Kiley for Representative, whose best quality is that he’s not Tom McClintock.
I saw him this morning. What a jerk!
SNL's Minneapolis on I.C.E.
https://youtu.be/uA8Oury0a80?si=yiixhxM3tkbD4H_k
Also, Karen, you have Wes Moore.
He came out with news yesterday that your Maryland, now via legislature there, may approve redistricting in time for this November's elections so Maryland may counter the Republican states that have fallen in line with Donald's schemes to corrupt them.
Yep… I don’t know if there is such a thing as a “Quadfecta” but I think that’s where I am. 🙂
Go Meg go !!! Brava lil' sista !
Among my friends we call each other “RESISTOR SISTERS” 💪❤️💪
I love that!
😅
💜✊
Megan,
Thanks for the spreadsheet, I have seen this before and this time I saved it to my laptop for use. 😊
You’re welcome! Thanks for continuing to be aware and active!
Thank you!
Megan wake up this year is gonna be the best year of your life with Trump behind the wheel
While I personally might not be affected by the atrocities of ICE, I will not be quiet or content with how other people are treated and impacted. It’s not about my comfort. It’s about the comfort of us as humans, as a community. One day maybe you’ll learn to be empathetic and stop trolling.
Megan on the other hand if you simply let ice do what they are supposed to be doing and not putting citizens in harm’s way ice will do the job that they are doing by ridding ourselves of illegals who Biden let in and lied
Tell that to the kids they’re taking and the people who have to carry around papers proving they’re citizens just because the color of their skin. Tell that to the drastically huge increase in people ICE has taken who don’t have a criminal record. Look up US Immigrations and Customs Enforcement’s detention statistics since I can’t put the photo of the graph here. Tell that to the people who are being taken who are following the legal process of becoming citizens while here.
I know I shouldn’t respond to you because you just troll everyone here. Open your eyes and start caring about others.
I'm gonna' guess, from the abrupt change of typical, Megan type discourse that our resident "wanna' be, influencer dingleberry" has made another rude appearance. There are means to 'disappear' the fruit's comments from your view. It's really not worth reading or even spending any consideration energy on. Most of us have caught on to 'it's' game - responses keeps it here, trying to consume space and oxygen.
Yeahhh I need to just ignore him. The rose colored glasses part of me keeps thinking maybe he’ll realize what’s actually happening and not a story he’s being fed
We are all immigrants We are not illegal immigrants and that's the Rob Megan. That's all this is about.
I care about every legal immigrant in this country, every single one.Period. And so does every single Republican every Republican wants immigrants loves immigrants cares about immigrants what they don't care about is anyone with the word ILLEGAL and stop listening to the lying media they're full of shit when they say anything, but that we all like immigrants what we don't like are people who are here illegally get that through your head
And here's the problem right here
You do not have to speak to ICE, answer any questions, or show any documents. If you are asked where you were born, how you entered the United States, or your immigration status, you may refuse to answer or remain silent.
Let me say this again clearly 95% or more of all the illegal immigrants are people of color that don’t wear signs that say I’m illegal are you catching on yet? stop listening to the fables there are going to be errors because in some cases there are people they collect along with people that they are harboring and so they detained them and in try to ensure if in fact they’re legal or they’re not, but nobody carries papers and I hired 4 to 500 foreign workers overtime and they all had green cards
I’m gonna say this very slowly NO BODY space carries papers. Nobody do you carry papers you don’t carry papers. Nobody carries papers. People have ID cards in their wallet like an I-9 card. Or alien registration card or whatever documents they have I don’t know how you can be so gullible to actually think that they’re asking for papers now let me say this though and you need to understand this illegal immigrants do not have a sign on their back that says come arrest me or frisk me because I’m illegal you have no idea and the problem is that 95% of the people that came in are people of color from South America, Central America, Caribbean, Asia, and Africa in the Middle East almost nobody came in from Denmark as an example so unless they have specific knowledge or a direction and an address to a home, they don’t go asking for papers. I don’t know what the hell people are thinking about papers. It’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard of my life. many of these people have deportation orders in fact, final deportation orders, including the 20 they just captured in Minnesota the other day who were child, rapists, sodomizes, female and male sodomizes, strangulation convictions, and three murder murders. How gullible can you people be to think that you need papers? I own 41 business lifetime and everybody had an ID alien registration cards papers are from the 40s, not from the two go ahead and send me factual data on all the people they’re taking
And let me say this, so everybody here hears it this would not have happened if Joe Biden had not opened the border to anybody who wants to come in and even flown some people in and not vetted them and not have them vaccinated and all the getaways over 300,000 getaways that are known, but it’s obviously gonna be a lot more if Biden hadn’t opened the border NONE OF THIS WOULD BE HAPPENING
In the meantime, what about the Epstein files ?
Oh, those. Any year now.
I heard on the news that Ghislane will be testifying on February 9th, under oath I assume, before an appropriate committee. Mmmmmm… can she take the 5th?
Her lawyer reportedly has already stated that she will take the 5th.
World Economic Forum in Davos seems like it would be the perfect venue to release them. Donold could attempt a powerpoint presentation that would turn into a Rohrshach test from all the redacted blacked out pages where he sees the late great Hannibal Lechter, menacing windmills and whatever other twisted visions, thoughts and gobbledygook he can spout.
Tick tock, well past time to release the damn Epstein files!
As a graduate of Bates College in Lewiston, Maine, I was surprised to hear that this small town has been targeted by ICE as one of its next major operations under the dubious name "Operation Catch of the Day." This must be because of the town's growing refugee population from Somalia (now most of them are naturalized citizens). How are these priorities decided? This seems highly cruel, ineffective, and likely to generate a lot of fear and disruption in the local community. We're paying for this nonsense!
Sadly rather than nonsense it's a plan to both intimidate and to provoke a violent reaction that provides an excuse to corrupt the next elections.
Unfortunately, you're probably correct.
And I feel so terribly for all the people suffering these cruel cruel injustices.
Catch of the day? Who is it that invents these ridiculous titles?
Warped, ridiculous people? Who get their jollies by being misusing the entrusted powers of government to be bullies?
Yeah, the cruelty's the point.
"Let them hate so long as they fear"- Caligula
It appears that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) chose and released the phrasing in the official announcement of the enforcement action in Maine. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-MUWsacZqo
That’s how “they” see this…It’s a sport.
Morons invent them!
Racism is perhaps one of the core principles underlying and undermining our law based system of government.
I felt immediate alarm after hearing Maine was the next state to experience ICE. Please stay safe Prof Richardson.
That's a good point. Considering how close the newest front line is to HCR's home, I wonder if she'll participate in local protests, for example.
Most of us reading this newsletter are old enough to remember — vividly so — the following tidbit from Woodward and Bernstein of ‘All the President’s Men’ — in 1974, after dropping to his knees in front of Henry Kissinger (something Kissinger found profoundly wretched and utterly distasteful), Nixon began weeping. “And then, still sobbing, Nixon leaned over and struck his fist on the carpet, crying, “What have I done? What has happened?”
We found out later that Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and apparently even Alexander Haig himself basically disconnected the nuclear football and kept VERY close control over command, control and communication systems during those last hours as Nixon spiraled into self-pitying delusion and approaching madness.
Going to go out on a limb here to assert that despite what we see, somebody (surely not Pete Kegsbreath) is keeping watch over those C3 systems (at least I hope to God somebody is). History repeats itself. The end is visible, one way or another. Let us keep the pressure on — particularly on that long list of co-dependent, wretched Republican Congresscritters who have bizarrely tied their fate to his. And if it is a part of your tradition, pray — that when they take Fat Rancid Mango away in a straitjacket, we’ll still have a country, an alliance (tho battered, bruised and beaten) and a world more or less still intact.
There will be a great many pieces to pick up afterward. And please spare me some pointless, self-righteous drivel about JD Wanker. The clear and present danger is the one we’re all looking at and talking about. One peril at a time…
There are a lot of sobriquets for the Veep; I do like your JD Wanker; I kinda like Corporal Couchf***er and Maybelline Queen myself.
Somewhere, I saw his called The Sofasexual, and I LOVE that one!
That. Is. PERFECT!!!
“Things are not good here in Minnesota.”
< See link for video in article >
https://open.substack.com/pub/siouxchef/p/updates-from-the-frozen-frontlines?r=kxzps&utm_medium=ios&shareImageVariant=overlay
“And still, I am incredibly proud of our community for refusing to accept authoritarianism quietly.”
“People here are organizing, protecting one another, and stepping into leadership roles that history will remember. We are not lying down. We are showing what resistance looks like in real time.”
“Black and Indigenous peoples have lived inside a violent police state since the very beginning of this country. This is not new to us. What feels new is that more people across the United States are choosing to side with humanity instead of the Trump agenda.”
#
‘Updates from the Frozen Frontlines’
THE SIOUX CHEF BY SEAN SHERMAN
JAN 21 2026 | Substack
https://open.substack.com/pub/siouxchef/p/updates-from-the-frozen-frontlines?r=kxzps&utm_medium=ios&shareImageVariant=overlay
We are all so proud of you and how the communities are uniting. The barbarism and cruelty is just unbelievable.
Thank You. Shared.
UPDATE:
*********
DHS/& ICE is now attacking Somalis in Heather's state of Maine.
Protect ALL Maine persons now.
*********************************************************************************
JACK is back Today at 10 am Eastern & 7AM Pacific. Meanwhile Senator, RICHARD BLMUENTHAL was interviewed by Jen Psaki last night.
Senator BLUMENTHAL has published a DHS' secret policy memo authorized by top ICE leadership Trump, Noem et al permitting ICE agents to enter homes without a judicial warrant required by the 4th Amendment
This is a major ICE bust: The Whistleblowers' (plural) revelation busts all ICE unlawful break-ins to date.
****
Senator Blumenthal himself has published a separate report the documents the arrest of twenty (20) U.S. Citizens in the ICE unlawful dragnet & terrorism of Minneapolis persons & their families.
The state of Minnesota's prosecutors has all the admissible evidence they needs to prosecute now.
JACK IS BACK
Also...
"But then Trump went on to say: “People will soon be prosecuted for what they did. It’s probably breaking news but it should be. It was a rigged election. You can’t have rigged elections.”"
If Trump tells Pam Bondi to arrest / indict Jack Smith and she follows his order, I predict the Democratic Party's leaders will do nothing... but I hope that We the People will SHUT THE COUNTRY DOWN! If Jack Smith becomes a target then that means Trump is moving to criminalize anyone who says anything bad about him.
"Fired DHS worker sues agency after he criticized Noem on an alleged fake date"
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jan/21/fired-dhs-worker-date-lawsuit-noem
Holy Moly!
I hope there is a special place in Hell for James O'Keefe he pulled a similar stunt on an abused woman too scared to not go along with what Hanna Giles was setting her up for with O'Keefe menacingly off camera. We campaigned with the woman's supervisor who told us what the frightened woman went through, alone in the office at the time.
Tom Nichols said it: “the President of the United States is mentally disturbed and … something is deeply wrong with him.” Yet we continue to spend millions and millions of dollars producing tons of extra greenhouse gases to cart this bag of wind all over the world to put his incompetence on full display and embarrass the country. How long is this going to continue?
The question is no longer what is wrong with trump? We all know the answer to that question.
Worse than hitler, yada yada yada. Seinfeld: 'Wait, you yada yada'd genocide?!'
THE question NOW is, what is wrong with the Republicans in Congress?
They must be fucking morons.
My Republican Congressperson was purchased by big oil for this position, as I suspect a goodly (powerful) number of Rep Reps have been.
💯
In a dictatorship, you have no rights, other than those that the state chooses to allow you to have, and that the state can withdraw at any time, with no reason. No right to privacy, no right to property, no right to speech, no right to protest, no right to citizenship, no right to life. No rights at all.
Portland, OR; Minnesota; and now Maine are experiencing ICE surges despite being some on the 'whitest' places I have ever visited. I know there are immigrants everywhere but if you wanted to have the biggest bang for the buck, wouldn't you focus your surges on states like FL and TX that literally have *millions* of undocumented immigrants? Hmmm. Almost like it's all about politics and not about enforcing immigration law.
Bingo!
Though down here in the Keys families and businesses are being decimated, not much seems to be happening in South Florida.
So noted, Dana. It seems that the issue of undocumented immigrants is not an issue in states that voted for the current regime which (by geography) are entry points for any number of not whyte people fleeing countries in search of a better life. But by all means, fly in the poor, downtrodden whyte South Africans.
Back in the Obama administration the first ICE action I saw was pretty tame with just one agent I could see, who picked up a down and out looking landscape laborer near the college I worked at.
Now there is a curious way to look at the figures that my conservative friends use as an excuse to justify trying to exceed the numbers and percentages Obama is credited with or blamed for by my liberal friends. Obama removed nearly 3 million in 8 years, up to near 4% of all the estimated illegal population according to a Cato Institute chart. Though I don't look at the data the same way Cato does, I do find they do a better job than many in collecting the data, this from https://www.cato.org/blog/deportation-rates-historical-perspective.
To me, the INS predecessor (before ICE), deported what I believe were the worst of the worst which were around 1% of the estimated total illegals from 1990 to 1996 but ramped up to nearly 3% during the start of Clinton's second term. Then it tapered off to about 2% by the end of his term. I wonder if they got most of the worst deported early so there was a lower percentage at the end.
The percentage dropped at the start of the GWB years to less than 2%, but rose through 2.5% after 9/11 and the creation of DHS and ICE, rising gradually but with a slight negative dip before pretty continuous increases through the end of GWB and continuing to the all time high around 3.5% or more before steep drops after the second term started, and nothing but decreases after Trump took office.
I suspect someone was more responsibly deporting the worst of the worst, and the more recent one is trying to deport anything non-White Christian (for now) anyway.
In 1933, the Dachua concentration camp started with 4 unusual deaths being investigated nearly 9 years before the Final Solution (kill all Jews anywhere they were found), was formally enacted. I believe 2/3rds of all the Jews in Germany were killed and 6 million of the 11 million I'm assuming were still in Europe.
How far are we going to let our secretive camps no congress people can check on go before we start to look at them as our 1933 Dachuas?
I am EXTREMELY PLEASED that the Fourth Ammendment has finally made an appearance here. ICE has been violating it SYSTEMATICALLY FROM THE OUTSET, but "legacy media" has apparently failed to notice this FUNDAMENTAL point.
Senator Gallego says he won't vote to give ICE any more taxpayer money, but it's FAR too late for such laudable sentiments. A HUGE increase in funding for ICE is ALREADY in the budget for 2026. Elon Musk's chainsaw attack on the so-called "deep state" apparently resulted in 300,000 lost Federal jobs, by some estimates, but the net loss in the size of the Federal government was ZERO, because ICE was beefed up to about the same extent. Which should be enough to make clear just how serious T. and his people are/were when they claimed to be ending "waste, fraud and abuse" in the Federal government.
They are definitely working to provoke the civil war they so obviously want.
Grandiosity uber alles.
When they have convinced themselves of the delusion that “god” is on their side there is no reasoning with them. Mike Johnson and too many in the Republican Party have bought into the lie that they are agents of some “god” who allows them to murder people “ in a good cause”. The entire Republican Party is insane.